Abstract

It was in critical humanistic intent that Marx attempted the overturning of Hegel's dialectic in Historical Materialism: understanding future human humanity as the necessary overcoming («Aufhebung») of private productivity which fails to satisfy man's human need. This study, based on a spectrum of primary sources from the young to the mature Marx, presents the critical function and the praxis-inductive role the future had in Marx's thought. The promise that continues to live in this thought is thereby explicitated. It is however a promise premised on a persistent idealism in Marx's claimed materialism which compromises the depth of man's human need in a future whose realization is necessarily (only) future.