n their conditions of existence" by the inexorable advance of industry. In the process, ruling classes "supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress" (Marx 62), though the hard reality of enlightenment is that it points up alienation and powerlessness that are irrevocable. Accordingly, however necessary progressive ideas may be to Marx's social critique, they are not sufficient to the Marxist agenda, which is to delegitimate and demolish philosophical and political commitment to "eternal truths" of religion and morality. Hence the argument of The Communist Manifesto: "forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions" (91). The communist revolution is "the most radical rupture with traditional relations . . . the most radical rupture with traditional ideas" (74), which have informed what Marx sees as the puny projects of political and social reform born of the Enlightenment mind-set. Mere reform, Marx makes clear, would smack too much of previous philosophical tradition, which is attached to eternal truths that Communism s
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