What is important is that Marx’s theory of history is a vision of human beings in a state of alienation. Human beings cannot be free if they are subject to forces that determine their thoughts, their ideas, their very nature as human beings. The materialist conception of history tells us that human beings are subject to forces they do not understand and cannot control. These forces are not supernatural tyrants, forever above and beyond human control, but the productive powers of human beings themselves. These productive powers, instead of serving human beings, appear to them as alien and
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