it, the “dialectic”. But I discovered its true content: matter, not spirit. Hegel thought that ideas caused historical conflicts; I found the causes in the real world. Ideas are only the echo or the effect. Furthermore, within the real world I found the source of historical change, not in unpredictable individual characters or choices or passions, but in economic determinism. This was the key to making history a science: something predictable and controllable. The forces of the dialectic of history