mazzi Chart Czar posted:

Excuse this attempt: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/european-thought-and-culture-in-the-19th-century


Marx studied Hegel. So you have to go back to Hegel.

Hegel was trying to understand history, but all of it. (Before French Revolution people just had personal history, or national history)

Hegel said that things go through a process:
First you have an idea. Then you have the anti-idea.

Then the idea and anti Idea combine into a thing called the synthesis.

A historical example is, having the various enlightenment ideas and events, then countered by the various Romantics thoughts and ideas.
Then they are combined and people move toward understanding a meaning, or sort of ending/goal.

There is this idea that history is moving toward something. And has a meaning. Hegel a label used is "the spirit."
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Marx is a strict materialist, so if you ask to explain how history happened, he would say, they are fights over resources, and trying to keep your body alive.

So you take Hegel's frame work of stuff happening. The end goal is Communism, the utopia end goal.
Everything has a meaning or reason and the end of it is communism.