Those who try it merely substitute a phantom of their own invention for reality. From the point of view of his professed materialism and, for that matter, from the point of view of any materialistic doctrine Marx did not have the right to reject as false any doctrines developed by those with whom he disagreed. His materialism would have enjoined upon him a kind of listless recognition of any opinion and a readiness to attach to every idea advanced by a human being the same value as to any other idea advanced by somebody else. To escape such a self-defeating conclusion, Marx took recourse to his scheme of philosophy of history. He pretended that, by dint of a special charisma, denied to other mortals, he had a revelation that told him what course history must necessarily and unavoidably take.
History leads to socialism.
There is no need to pay any attention to the ideas of people whom this message did not reach or who stubbornly refuse to believe in it. Thus, materialism ultimately engenders the same methods of dealing with dissent that tyrants used always and everywhere. In establishing this fact epistemology provides a clue for the understanding of the history of our age. Mises, Theory and History , pp. Karl Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie , ed.