Intorno alla fecondità euristica del materialismo storico come comune terreno d’indagine del giovane Benedetto Croce e di Max Weber

There are objective points of contact between the interpretation of historical materialism and Marxist economics developed by the young Benedetto Croce from 1896 onwards and by Max Weber between 1904 and 1907. Both reject the idea that Marx’s theory, properly understood, is a philosophy of history, and are therefore not interested in refuting Marx in the name of an alternative philosophy of history. On the contrary, both value Marx’s theory as a fruitful heuristic tool in the service of historical knowledge. By discussing two contributions on this topic by Pietro Rossi (1985) and Claudio Tuozzolo (2016), the article highlights the broad constellation of issues here at stake. The article focuses, on the one hand, on the young Croce’s reading of the Marxian equation of value and labor and its possible comparison with the Weberian thesis of the typical-ideal character of the conceptual constructions of Marxism, and, on the other hand, on the different ways in which the young Croce and Weber relate to the “pure economy”, conceived by both in accordance with the new marginalist canon in the version of the “Austrian School”. The article employs the apparatus of the critical edition of Materialismo storico ed economia marxistica (2001) in order to take into account some significant variations in Croce’s essays which are collected in the volume.