The future in the writings of Karl Marx

It was in critical humanistic intent that Karl Marx attempted the overturning of Hegel's dialectic in Historical Materialism: understanding future human humanity as the necessary overcoming (Aufhebung) of private productivity which failed 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 explicated. It is however a promise premised on a persistent idealism in Marx's claimed materialism which compromises the depths of man's human need in a future whose realization is necessarily (only) future.