From Hegel to Marx: Why Zakat Answers a Problem Capitalism Created — Ali Shukri Amin
First published on my writing site: www.aliamin.info/2026/10/hegel-marx-and-zakat/
By Ali Shukri Amin. I first wrote this as comments on r/IslamicFinance, in the thread “A billionaire realizing zakat is necessary to a functioning society”, copied here as written.
First comment
Broad strokes, after Hegel European philosophy split into two camps (continental & analytic). Previously, some form of neoplatonic Christianity & mercantillism were the most popular religion/economic model combo. After the materialist bent of post-Hegelian European philosophy, religion & philosophy were highly decentered for natural philosophy (i.e. sciences).
Although Adam Smith is more or less contemporaneous with Hegel, the full shift from Christianity -> capitalist realism or secular hegemony required the intellectual weakening of noumenal (non-material) Adyan (worldviews). This wasn’t possible without taking dialectical materialism from a philosophical perspective.
Obviously none of these things are in a vacuum, the European enlightenment, Protestant reformation, Calvanism cum Capitalism in the New World, development of secularism, Hegelianism & post-Hegelianism, are all complex multifaceted philosophies/movements/even periods of history.
But, yes, I would argue that you cannot get to modern technofeudalistic capitalism without Hegel (inadvertently of course). Both his ontology/epistemological discourses & his psuedoscientific approach to history either lead to Marxism or capitalism. Hegel IS the bipartisan or left-right basis.
Posted September 30, 2026. Read it on Reddit.
Follow-up comment
Yes, Marx & Engels took Hegel’s dialectic & some components of his political philosophy and married them to philosophical materialism. Instead of dialectic being about Being/nonbeing or ontology/epistemology from an idealist perspective, dialectic was applied as the driving force of history/economics.
It’s not really possible to get Marxism and dialectical materialism without the dialectic, and Marx/Engels are known as “young Hegelians.”
I wouldn’t describe Hegelianism as anti-materialistic. I think that’s misreading Hegel. Hegel attempted to establish in The Phenomenology of Spirit that Kant’s noumenal/phenomenal divide was usless using dialectic, trying to demonstrate that consciousness and perception of phenomenon is really the starting point for philosophy and using dialectic to proceed forwards. Any appreciation of the noumenon is subject to phenomenal experience according to Hegel.
So Hegel used idealism to ground his philosophy in materialism.
If by metaphysical materialism you mean philosophical materialism, it’s definitely related to dialectical materialism. While you could theoretically be a dialectical materialist while rejecting materialism as a broader philosophical outlook, like Christian Marxists or some religious anarchists, I don’t think there’s much doubt that Marx & Engels were also philosophical materialists. To them, even religion had to be viewed through the lense of a materialist reading of history, as a tool for control or at best an outlet for the subjugated – without contending with any religous claims.
If your ontological starting point is consciousness or Being, whether idealistically or materially, then there is a lot less relevance vis a vis the noumenon and/or God as an explanation for anything. Of course Hegel did believe in God and you can read The Science of Logic as an argument for God, but the phenomenological starting point of dialectic didn’t go that way historically.
Posted October 1, 2026. Read it on Reddit.
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