" Do you folks think Hegel INVENTED the reality of a thesis and its antithesis being forged into a new synthesis?"
The first person I heard to use the terms was Karl Marx!
"The first person I heard to use the terms was Karl Marx!"
One interesting thing about "Dawn to Decadence" by Barzun is that it appears such utopian movements have been around for at least hundreds of years.
Marx (Karl not Groucho) conveniently pilfered from Hegel the idea of the ever unfolding reality---inevetable change. Marx saw everything--political movements, scientific ideas, cultural beliefs, philisophical notions in terms of opposites; contradictions. That everything we can know and believe have diametrical opposites. And so for all of those who believe in and willfully participate in the prevailing capitalist culture, there are those who "quite naturally" (under dialectics) oppose it. Thus for Marx, communistic overthrow of capitalism is a scientific inevetability. Dialectical materialism is the movement that gives birth to opposition of capitalism.