I have published a defense of the quasi-Hegelian, neo-Marxian idea that social struggle does indeed tend towards greater freedom and moral progress. I don't offer it as an interpretation of Marx, but my attempts to disguise its Marxian origins were unsuccessful. For people who want to look at it, it is: Justin Schwartz, "Relativism, Reflective Equilibrium, and Justice," Legal Studies 1997. A shorter and more dogmatoc statement of the ide was presented in Against The Current, I think in 1993.
The main point of the argument is this: ruling groups that dominate others can't honestly state that they do so, but must present their claim to rule as legitimately in the interest of all. This claim to universal interests is false, however. Domination damages the objective interests of the dominated, giving them a motivation to fight, which is not always realized, but is sometimes. So we can expect,a nd often find, resistance. Moreover, resistance is sometimes successful. When it is, there is greater emancipation, pointing the way towards an emancipatory order where there is no domination. Although backsliding and reversions are actual and possible, nonetheless, success creates expectations of right--the (formerly) dominated come to think of their gains as something they are entitled to, and will fight to keep them. This is a universal, transhistorical fact about human nature.
There is, therefore, a rachet effect--not absolute, not inevitable, not guaranteed to be one way, but real. One can see the point, for example, in trying to imagine an attempt to to take away the gains of the feminist movement in the 20th century. It could be done--see the Taliban--but it would be resisted. In sort, there is a scientific basis for thinking that Hegel and Marx were right, that history is the progress of freedom, that there is real teleology--not a pull, but a push, and that we are not stuck on a treadmill. Therefore, I disagree with Leo that Marxisn teleology is an impediment. On the contrary, it is a rational basis for social hope.
Please note that there is no hint of class reductionism in the story: nothing in it depends on the centrality of any particular form of domination or resistance.
--jks
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