Selected Philosophical Works Volume I Quotes

“People made and had to make their history unconsciously as long as the motive forces of historical development worked behind their backs, independently of their consciousness. Once those forces have been discovered, once the laws by which they work have been studied, people will be able to take them in their own hands and submit them to their own reason. The service rendered by Marx consists in having discovered those forces and made a rigorous scientific study of their working. Modern dialectical materialism, which, in the opinion of philistines, must turn man into an automaton, in actual fact opens for the first time in history the road to the kingdom of freedom and conscious activity. But it is possible to enter that kingdom only by means of a radical change in the present social activity.”
― Georgi Plekhanov, Selected Philosophical Works Volume I