I think one problem you and the author are ignoring is the fact that Hegel's (un-)popularity varied at different times from country to country.

In Germany, for instance, Hegel was immensely popular just in the 1830s and 1840s, but soon became old-fashioned. This is visible in Marx's works: in his writings from the 1840s he's very critical of Hegel, while in his later texts became much more reverential, as to oppose the prevailing bourgeois mentality (in the preface of Capital, he complains it was fashionable to treat Hegel as a "dead dog" [1]).

But this is just Germany. In US & UK Hegel became popular only during the end of the XIX century (with the British Idealists and the St. Louis Hegelians). In Italy, his popularity dates to the early XX century (with Croce and Gentile). And in France I think he was never really popular.

[1]: https://www.marxists.org/subject/dialectics/marx-engels/capi...

To an extent, I agree: Hegel is subject to the normal waxing and waning of intellectual trends. On the other hand, I think really seismic shifts in faculty are generally driven by outside pressure - and the largest source of pressure, historically, has been political witch-hunting, closely followed by marketization.

I'm not saying your general idea is wrong (or right) but this misses how influential Marx's ideas already were. Revolutionary unions, trade unions, social democratic and communist parties had been started all over Europe... The SDAP, for example, was founded in 1869 and was hugely influential in shaping things to come.

The analogy in my mind was somebody like Mark Fisher. In hard left circles, he's a common reference point, and terms like 'capitalist realism' creep into the left mainstream. Outside of those circles, he's an absolute unknown.

Obviously Marx was a lot more influential than Fisher, but you actually see this phenomenon all the time: consider Foucault, or Zizek, or even Said, or Fanon. They are absolute giants amongst certain groups, and absolute unknowns outside.

I don't really think 19th and early 20th century Germany, France, Scandinavia, etc. can be considered such bubbles. Elections were won, wars were stopped, wages were raised...

My feeling is that before the Russian revolution, Marx was just the last of a long line of luminaries in the socialist tradition, a tradition that had almost never been a part of a government, had never commanded a great deal of support, and was generally illegal.

I also think there's no thinker like Marx before Marx. No single thinker was so influential to a revolutionary movement as Marx was to the communists. Rousseau doesn't come close.