White, "Metahistory", Ch 7&8

Pt III - Repudiation of "Realism" in Late Nineteenth Century Philosophy of History
Ch 7 - Historical Consciousness and the Rebirth of Philosophy of History
(267ff) The mid-19th century had effectively ignored Marx and Nietzsche. Historians at large had their ideas of how history should be written and ignored philosophical questions of etiology. Marx and Nietzsche on the other hand were questioning the idea of objectivity as historically bound, which effectively makes any attempt by the historian to be objective by its very nature subjective (or at least, culturally bound).

Ch 8 Marx
(281ff) Marx saw society as the force that (in his day) was both liberating humanity from nature and at the same time alienating humans from each other. However, he had a Romantic turn to his history. Society progressed and would eventually lead to transformation of society into community, wherein humans were liberated both from fear of nature and fear of other, leaving only the self as the obstacle to contentment.
(282ff) Historians of Marx's day preferred to portray history without attempting to make ethical or moral judgements of it. Marx countered that the entire point of studying history was to learn a better way to "do" society. Historians should not just depict historical events, but should posit how better things might be done.
(285ff) Humanity, for Marx, is in a tragic condition on the micro level. However, with a more macro-scale lens, humanity will eventually end up in the communistic utopia, that is, history is ultimately comic, even if on the individual scale it is tragic.
(287ff) For Marx, Value evolves. At first, value is determined through barter. Chickens for wheat, Wheat for pottery, but those relationships do not correspond with each other. Then a commodity establishes its value in all other forms (a chicken is worth X wheat, Y barley, Z pottery). Third, all commodities eventually are valued upon one (still socially useful) commodity (Wheat, Barley, pottery are all valued in chickens). Fourth, value is set to a meaningless commodity: Money (gold for him). Interesting that in the modern world, gold has found a se beyond simple decoration.  Value of commodities represents, in some way, the abstraction of human labor which went into a particular commodity. The final layer of abstraction becomes Ironic: that is, everything is valued in gold/money, but gold/money is itself valueless.
(297ff) Humanity differentiates itself from nature not through consciousness, but rather though its will to change its environment and its imaginative efforts to do so. Society forms out of this, starting first with the tribal world, then slave, then Feudal, then Capitalist.  Humanity begins to divide itself from nature and from each other as soon as it moves out of this "Primitive Communism" of a proto-tribal world. Eventually, this estrangement is strongest when Capitalism comes to bear.
(303ff) This estrangement grows. As technology advances, it does not alter the basis of society, rather it only incrementally solves particular problems in the base of a culture. Humanity is further trapped in the social construction of its own making. Individuals are trained into highly specialized tasks, and in the end that is all they are allowed to do. We, as humans are rendered into mere cogs in the machine. The irony in this is that we, humans, made the machine. Thus, what is necessary to fix the problems of the machine of society is a complete dissolution of the society at hand and its [ethical] reconstruction.
(309ff) Marx emplotted his history in a tragic-comic method, and saw much of the traditional elements of the acts of drama in his own history. The proletariat would slowly awaken to its own exploitation and eventually rise against their exploiters. Since the money system of Capitalism was the use of an absurd item as the symbol of value, it would eventually collapse when the proletariat learns this and begins to value labor itself. Then, Communism/Socialism can arise.
(317ff) In a concrete example, Marx uses this same idea of progression to explain the problems with the 1848 French revolution/civil war. At first, it begins with a "beautiful" revolution, because the bougious and the proletariat are working together. It falters when they turn on each other in June.
(320ff) This revolution (1848) was a farce of the tragedy of the 1789 revolution. Rather than hopes being dashed, no one seemed to have those hopes to being with, and in the end they end up in a situation worse than before the 1789 revolution. This absurdity would only grow, said Marx, through time, since after all, the economic system put its worth in something as worthless as gold. What would he say today with the complete abstraction of money?
(327ff) Marx sees the individual acts of history as Tragic, but he had the belief that the ultimate end of history would be Comic. That is, through our failures, Humanity would eventually transcend its alienation.