18th Brumaire quote

Bruce Robinson (bruce.rob who-is-at btinternet.com)
Thu, 4 Sep 1997 15:13:47 +0100

Here to settle it, is what Marx actually wrote in the 18th Brumaire. This
is taken from the Marx Engels Internet archive (www.marx.org) where html
versions of most of their major texts can be found.

'Humans make their own history, but they do not make it as they please;they
do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances
existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an Alp on the brains of
the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing
themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before,
precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up
the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle
slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history
in this time-honored disguise and this borrowed language.'

What is this if not cultural-historical psychology?

Bruce Robinson