> Marx and Engels used the term "inevitable" with respect to the fall of
> the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat. * But we might interpret
> this as a form of "Peptalk" for the proletariat, "rah, rah team", not ignorance
> of the potential failure of the Communist revolution - maybe a secular form
> of the theory of the power of positive thinking or motivational speaking.
A perhaps not duly recognized influence on the philosophy of self-help so popular now in most of the world (with the possible exception of Western Europe?) is, of course, Hegel. Here is Gerald A. Cohen's superb "dramatization" of the anthropomorphized World Spirit in Hegel's conception of history (which, I guess, Cohen compiled from his reading of Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history) -- a conception that Marx inverted and grounded on the material conditions, natural and social. (It is interesting to contrast Cohen's rendition of Hegel with the 7th chapter, 1st volume of Capital.)
"Here, then, is a man, moving about the world. As he acts, observes, and suffers, the world reveals itself to him, and he reveals himself to it, imposing his demands on it and pursuing his purposes through it. He spiritualizes nature and it impresses a nature on his spirit. He discovers what stones and flowers and water are like, and how to look up at the stars and down canyons. He learns to change the shapes of nature, to mix and separate its elements. He learns how to live, how to make live, how to let live, and how to kill. He gains understanding of the world's glories, charms, deformities, and dangers. He intervenes in it to secure survival, power, and pleasure.
"But he also experiences a substance of a different order. He is in contact and in dialogue with himself. There is a contrast between his confrontation with the world outside and his encounter with the part of the world he is. In the first exercise he is distinct from what he examines; in the second he is not, and his study must be part of what he studies. He may learn about his surroundings without changing them, but his self-exploration is always a transformation. It leaves him no longer as he was, investing him with a new self, one more self-aware. And if he would keep hold of his nature he must inspect it afresh: a new nature has supervened on the one he penetrated, because that one was penetrated. His project of self-consciousness is a continual effort which yields continual achievement, a race whose tape is advanced when the finish is reached. It is only possessed by being constantly acquired and only acquired by being constantly developed.
"Nor is what a man knows about himself unaffected by what he believes about himself, by the conjectures attending his endeavor to see. If he thinks himself confident he is half way to being so. If he thinks himself contemptible, he elicits contempt. Supposing himself to be fragile, he is shaken by minor adversity. He makes himself, guided by an image of what he is, and what he believes he is thus contributes to what he is in fact.
"To come to know oneself has rewards but also pains, both in the process and in the product. For in the change of self, old manners, habits which give comfort, a residue of much living, is worried out of existence and an undefended character is born. Reorganization occurs, and reorganization means partial disorganization. Each partly new structure must in time in turn be superseded, else thought and feeling loose their spiritual status, and the man recedes into the animal kingdom. Self-development is the only alternative to that recession: it is not possible to stand still.
"Hegel's phrase 'the labor of the negative' covers this rending work of self-interrogation and self-alteration. Labour, because it is hard; negative, because it is destructive. And the model of a human being, moving painfully in stages to self-knowledge, helps us to understand the larger movement of human history as Hegel conceived it."
>From Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence, first chapter.
A propos of this, it is interesting to see how Fidel's conception of self evolved, as described by him in his autobiography published in today's Granma (in Spanish):
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/2010/08/06/nacional/artic02.html