I am not very literal, either, but to my understanding, Marx took the principle of "dialectic", taught by Hegel - thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis, as a foundation for his "dialectic materialism". While Hegel's dialectic was based in the metaphysical, Marx postulated that historic societal change/events are brought about by man and their conscious actions, culminating in devising his political agenda with Lenin.Accoding to Marx, communism would be the final stage of development, where all, specially economic, differences are dissolved.Let's not forget that Marx was foremost a philosopher and theorist, and would probably turn in his grave had be seen what had become of the Russian revolution later on.

Fritz you are mostly correct.  Well done.  The only thing I would like to add is that Hegel believed in a philosophy of History.  In other words Hegel believed that History was guided thematically in an intelligent way.  He used the dialectic structure to outline a causal relationship of world events that directed the course of History to its logical conclusion.  Marx borrowed heavily from Hegel in his own philosophy of History based upon economic and ideological components.  Marx understood that capital allocation created social class, and social class led to inequality and social conflict.  Therefore, bourgeois wealth concentration (as reasoned by Marx) was the primary cause for war and the rise of the nation-state system which he abhorred.  The problem with both Hegel and Marx is that their approach to History is based on a pre-concluding thesis.  Modern historians reject any "invisible hand" (to borrow from Adam Smith) approach to historical study.  We understand today that History is the summation of random events that stem from many causes such as resource allocation, push/pull factors such as immigration/emigration, famine, technology changes, religion, and philosophical ideas etc.....History is a process of action-reaction from arbitrarily linked events.  One can use Marxism or Hegelian Dialectic as a framework to make sense out of the chaos of History, but one cannot expect more than a limited result.  Usually amateur historians such as those who wrote the early histories of India during the British Raj,  tried to relate their version of history as part of the thematic rise of England.  So their historical method was a pre-concluding thesis that events were Anglo-centrically driven and therefore somehow contributory to England's greater glory.  Themistocles was no different as he thought historical events were relegated to Greece and that the Peloponnesian War was the climax of history and all things prior were of no concern except how they contributed to the lead up to war between Sparta and Athens.  So without rambling any more on historical method, it should suffice for any good historian today to avoid encapsulating their interpretation of History into a pre-conceived framework where one has to twist and contort events to fit that rationale.  History is random and driven by so many different variables, it is utterly irresponsible to try and fit it to some clever mold....yet the temptation to do so has entrapped many a historian over the ages. 😀