Socialism, Idealism, We

Marx's personal derivation of Socialism from Hegelianism begins with an external critique of the latter, i. e. a Materialist inversion of the Idealism of the latter. However, a perhaps more direct route between the two begins with an internal critique of Hegel's system. Specifically, while Hegel conceives the terminal point of the Phenomenology of Mind, i. e. Absolute Mind, as an 'I', the overcoming of the Subject-Object opposition that preserves both moments is more accurately conceived as a 'We'. From there, it is easy to argue that 'We' must be a Materialist rather than an Idealist concept, i. e. because it entails a concrete multiplicity, and, furthermore, that it signifies agency. In turn, from 'We act' follows 'We own', i. e. the collectivization of property, the historical occasion of which, according to Marx, is the emergence of the consciousness of the 'we act' of the co-operators of a collective means of production. If Marx misses that derivation, it is perhaps because he fails to recognize that Idealism cannot accommodate Multiplicity, as is explicit in Parmenides' original version of it.