The role of Karl Marx in encouraging the emancipation of the working class from its chains to capitalist inequality has been questioned in recent years.  Critics of his role in history, such as David Icke, have even made the argument that Marx and Engels were themselves a part of an untold history of secret societies, elite autocracy, and the roll-out of divisive, diversionary, and ultimately dead-end politics. This idea is given further credence by the practical application of communism at various points in our history, i.e., by Stalin, by Mao and, more recently, in the ideological principles which underpin Schwab's 'Great Reset'.

Whilst the jury remains out on Marx's real motivations (and possible funding streams), he did at least recognise in his 'materialist conception of history', something which has been all but completely erased from today's political left – that society must be understood according to its material conditions, by the gap which exists between the rich and the poor, and finally by the relationship between the owners of the means of production, and those who sell their labour power to this ownership. Marx argued that to consider anything else in capitalist society is a distraction from the ongoing conflict between the owners and the non-owners – a political dance if you will, in a system of clear exploitation.

Marx was heavily criticised for developing what some perceived to be a 'teleological view' of history; a linear progression through feudalism-capitalism-socialism-communism, driven by the unfolding of class consciousness. Max Weber was one of the first to challenge Marx's 'historical materialism', arguing that consciousness is an individual property and not tied exclusively to a grand evolutionary narrative.  Weber's famous work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was his own attempt to provide an alternative explanation of the development of capitalism, where he argued that the fundaments of Calvinist religion – predestination, frugality, and discipline – can also explain the rapid expansion of business enterprise in the 19th Century.