He was very impressed with Marx's explorations of alienation, btw. Incidentally all these things are reasons he was perversely
attracted to Nazism. --------------- I write:
I suspect the main reason Heidegger gives Marx kudos in the Letter on Humanism -- to which I think you're refering to -- was to appeal to the intellectual fashions of post-war France. I think that's the only mention of Marx in Heidegger's entire corpus.
I remember reading somewhere that H was furiously boning up on Marx near the end of WWII because he wanted to maintain his Great Philosopher position (actually, get it back, since the Nazis didn't think highly of him at all) even if the Soviets wound up occupying all Germany.
He really was a distasteful son-of-a-bitch. Treated Husserl and Arendt shamefully -- though some of the Arendt-Heidegger correspondence from near the end of their lives is rather touching. Arendt signed her last letter to him with Augustine's definition of love -- volo ut sis, I want you to be -- and dedicated it "To Martin, to whom I was faithful and unfaithful, but always in love." Awww...
Chris Doss The Russia Journal