The real Karl Marx

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/09/real-karl-marx/?pagination=false

Partly no doubt because it now seems in some respects embarrassingly reactionary, positivism has been neglected by intellectual historians. Yet it produced an enormously influential body of ideas. Originating with the French socialist Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) but most fully developed by Auguste Comte (1798–1857), one of the founders of sociology, positivism promoted a vision of the future that remains pervasive and powerful today. Asserting that science was the model for any kind of genuine knowledge, Comte looked forward to a time when traditional religions had disappeared, the social classes of the past had been superseded, and industrialism (a term coined by Saint-Simon) reorganized on a rational and harmonious basis—a transformation that would occur in a series of evolutionary stages similar to those that scientists found in the natural world.

(via Instapaper)