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The philosopher Étienne Balibar wrote in a 1993 introductory text that "there is no Marxist philosophy and there never will be; on the other hand, Marx is more important for philosophy than ever before." So even the existence of Marxist philosophy is debatable (the answer may depend on what is meant by "philosophy," a complicated question in itself). Balibar's remark is intended to explain the significance of the final line of Karl Marx's eleven Theses on FeuerbachThe Theses on Feuerbach are eleven short philosophical notes written by Karl Marx in 1845. They outline a critique of the ideas of Marx's fellow Young Hegelian philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach. But the text is often seen as more ambitious than this, criticizi, which can be read as an epitaph for philosophy:

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.

If this claim (which Marx originally intended as a criticism of German Idealism and the more moderate Young Hegelians) is still more or less the case in the twenty-first century, as many Marxists would claim, then Marxist theory is in fact the practical continuation of the philosophical tradition, while much of philosophy is still politically irrelevant.

Many critics, both philosophers outside Marxism and some Marxist philosophers, feel that this is too quick a dismissal of the post-Marxian philosophical tradition. Much sophisticated and important thought has taken place after the writing of Marx and Engels; much or perhaps even all of it has been influenced, subtly or overtly, by Marxism. Simply dismissing all philosophy as sophistry might condemn Marxism to a simplistic empiricismEmpiricism is the school of Epistemology (in philosophy or psychology) that virtually all knowledge is the result of our experiences. See John Locke's Tabula rasa or "blank slate" theory. Radical Empiricism holds that our knowledge is essentially nothing or economism , crippling it in practice and making it comically simplistic on the level of theory.

Nonetheless, the force of Marx's opposition to HegelianGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ( August 27, 1770 November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher born in Stuttgart, Wurttemberg, in present-day southwest Germany. He received his education at the Tubinger Stift (seminary of the Protestant Church in Wurttemberg idealism and to any "philosophy" divorced from political practice remains powerful even to a contemporary reader. Twentieth-century Marxist and Marx-influenced theory, such as (to name a few examples at random) the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, the political writing of Antonio Gramsci, and the neo-Marxism of Fredric Jameson, must take Marx's condemnation of philosophy into account, but many such thinkers also feel a strong need to remedy the perceived theoretical problems with orthodox Marxism or Communism. Such problems might include a too-simple economic determinism , an untenable theory of ideology as " false consciousness," or a simplistic model of state power rather than hegemony. So Marxist philosophy must continue to take account of advances in the theory of politics developed after Marx, but it must also be wary of a descent into theoreticism or the temptations of idealism.