This essential aspect of Marx is missing from the post-structuralist "concept of multiplicity of oppressions."
"No philosophical proposition has earned more gratitude from narrow-minded governments and wrath from equally narrow-minded liberals than Hegel’s famous statement: 'All that is real is rational; and all that is rational is real.' That was tangibly a sanctification of things that be, a philosophical benediction bestowed upon despotism, police government, Star Chamber proceedings and censorship. That is how Frederick William III and how his subjects understood it. But according to Hegel certainly not everything that exists is also real, without further qualification. For Hegel the attribute of reality belongs only to that which at the same time is necessary: 'In the course of its development reality proves to be necessity.' A particular governmental measure — Hegel himself cites the example of 'a certain tax regulation' — is therefore for him by no means real without qualification. That which is necessary, however, proves itself in the last resort to be also rational; and, applied to the Prussian state of that time, the Hegelian proposition, therefore, merely means: this state is rational, corresponds to reason, insofar as it is necessary; and if it nevertheless appears to us to be evil, but still, in spite of its evil character, continues to exist, then the evil character of the government is justified and explained by the corresponding evil character of its subjects. The Prussians of that day had the government that they deserved." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.htm
Ted
^^^^ CB: Engels focuses on _necessity_as part of the rational kernel in Hegel's discussions. For Marx and Engels , science or materialism is discovering the necessary conditions of the "discpline". (And then even, from Hegel, freedom is had through mastery or understanding of necessity.) What is rational is actual translates to what is necessary is actual, maybe. In human history and society , the necessary conditions are material production. That's why Marx focuses on material production as a scientific, necessary or rational approach to human history.