On Transhistorical Abstractions and the Intersection of Historical Theory and Social Critique

Historical Materialism , volume 12:3 (125–146) © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004 Also available online – www.brill.nl 1 Marx 1981, p. 10. Joseph Fracchia On Transhistorical Abstractions and the Intersection of Historical Theory and Social Critique Reading Marx as a critical social theorist, Moishe Postone designates the Grundrisse (1857–8) as the first of Marx’s ‘mature’ writings. In this, he disagrees with Marx’s own retrospective, written in 1859, which points to the first sketch of the materialist conception of history in the German Ideology (1845) as his work of self-clarification and, presumably, his entry into maturity. 1 My point in raising