I've finished the first chapter so far, and so far I'm not so much put off as I am, for lack of a less confrontational word, unchallenged. If one accepts the Spenglerian idea of the cultural soul, changing in both the material reality it creates and its reflection on its prior stages, if this process is done through the mechanism of great men brought by their internal Destiny to conflict with the facts of their world, living out their possibilities, the material sciences providing the mechanical extension of the cultural direction, broadening the perspective and causality of the religion until Reason and Faith eventually conflict and a new stage begins, what fundamental contradiction is there between that view and the view of the Marxist materialism the text makes such an effort to dissent from?