Which version of Hugo are you running? This works in v0.13.
$ cat layouts/index.html
<section>
{{ range $taxonomyname, $taxonomy := .Site.Taxonomies }}
{{ if eq "categories" $taxonomyname }}
{{ range $key, $value := $taxonomy }}
<div>{{ $key }}</div>
<ul>
{{ range $value.Pages }}
<li>{{ .Date }} {{ .Title }}</li>
{{ end }}
</ul>
{{ end }}
{{ end }}
{{ end }}
</section>
Results:
$ hugo && cat public/index.html
0 draft content
0 future content
4 pages created
0 paginator pages created
0 tags created
2 categories created
0 series created
in 8 ms
<section>
<div>golang</div>
<ul>
<li>2015-03-02 19:09:18 -0600 CST golang post 2</li>
<li>2015-03-02 19:09:12 -0600 CST golang post 1</li>
</ul>
<div>html</div>
<ul>
<li>2015-03-02 19:09:36 -0600 CST html post 1</li>
<li>2015-03-02 19:09:25 -0600 CST html post 2</li>
</ul>
</section>