Abstract

We all, I believe, accept Marx's 1843 exposition—in his Hegel-critique—of the revolutionary power of thought (“theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses”), of the disproportion between historical development and philosophical achievement (“as the ancient peoples went through their pre-history in imagination, in mythology, so we Germans have gone through our post-history in thought, in philosophy”), and of the manifold ways in which superstructural models (“dream history”) anticipate and help to bring about changes in the political process and in the mode of production itself (“you cannot abolish philosophy without making it a reality”).