Summary

It is common to attribute to Marx the notion that “history repeats itself; the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce”. In fact, when Marx said this, he was (mis)quoting Hegel. It is also the case that there is no shared understanding of what history is and what it does between the two thinkers. On examination, it is clear that Marx is making a very specific point regarding the nature of the consciousness required to make a “bourgeois” revolution, and that required for the “proletarian” one. The latter, he argues, because of its specific character, necessitates a degree of self-consciousness on the part of its agents without equal in human history.

More (pdf, 425 KB): Letting the Dead Bury the Dead: Limits of History in Marx and Hegel