The Old Mole of History

Spirit, Hegel said, works inwardly, ever forward, until “grown strong in itself it bursts asunder the crust of earth which divided it from the sun . . . so that the earth crumbles away.”  Apparently addressing relentless Geist , Hegel quotes Hamlet to his father’s ghost: “Well said, old mole!  Canst work i’the ground so fast?”

Marx knows of the mole of historical development too.  Countering Hegel’s idealist use of the Aeneid , Marx claimed (in de Grazia’s summary) that “The modern equivalent of imperial Rome is the empire not of consciousness but of capitalism, and it was attained through the ordeal not of philosophical dialectic but of class struggle.  So, too, in quoting Hamlet , Marx changes Hegel’s ideational mole to a materialist one.  When it finally breaks through the crust of the earth, it will be to attain not absolute consciousness but rather the utter overthrow or ‘inevitably breaking up’ of the capitalist system.  At this world-shattering event, ‘Europe will lead from her seat and exultantly exclaim, Well grubbed, old mole!”’”