Marx refused the label materialist for his own philosophy of praxis

Evidence

Here again one can see how the terminology is conventional but not without importance in making for errors and deviations as soon as one forgets that it is always necessary to return to the cultural sources in order to identify the exact value of concepts, since there may be different heads under the same hat. It is well known, moreover, that the originator of the philosophy of praxis [Marx] never called his own conception materialist and that when writing about French materialism he criticises it and affirms that the critique ought to be more exhaustive. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1616

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘historical materialism’ is an imposed label whose common-sense meaning (traditional matter-first materialism) Marx himself disowned.