Karl Marx (1818-1883) & Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) on Historical Materialism*

Back to Realism... Turns out I really enjoyed reading and commenting on the Romantic texts more than these- which is somewhat strange because I consider myself pretty pragmatic. Realist theory just seems unpleasant. And reality can be unpleasant, but it's just as often quite incredible in a positive way. I've given up talking about the main points, because they don't always line up with what I find to be actually interesting. Here goes
"Hitherto men have constantly made up for themselves false conceptions about themselves, about what they are and what they ought to be. They have arranged their relationships according to their ideas of God, of normal man, etc. The phantoms of their brains have got out of their hands."
I understand this to be talking about how we construct our identities. We fool ourselves about who we are because we're too busy considering what others might view us as. This reminds me of the sociological concept developed in 1902 called the "looking glass self" which states that a person views him/herself through others' perceptions in society and in turn gains identity- but apparently we get it skewed. In reality, we probably spend more time worrying about what people think of us than the amount of actual time any number of people think about us- after all, their all too busy thinking about themselves as well. Why don't we all just get our heads out of our respective asses and focus our energy on actual interraction or productivity?!
*Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe, Moscow 1932.