Both Hegel and Marx believed that the evolution of human
societies was not open-ended, but would end when mankind had
achieved a form of society that satisfied its deepest and most fundamental
longings. Both thinkers thus posited an "end of history"
: for Hegel this was the liberal state, while for Marx it was a
communist society. This did not mean that the natural cycle of
birth, life, and death would end, that important events would no
longer happen, or that newspapers reporting them would cease to
be published. It meant, rather, that there would be no further
progress in the development of underlying principles and insti:
tutions, because all of the really big questions had been settled.