Open System: Marxist metaphysics — the conception is so unfamiliar in the Marxist tradition that there is a danger that Bloch's achievement will be read down to the sources which were his starting points. Bloch, however, is not a metaphysician manqué, but a Marxist philosopher of unusual originality. In this and the following chapter, an attempt is made to give an account of Open System which remains faithful to the radicalism of the design. Hitherto, many commentators have trivialised Bloch's stress on process, and then complained of his "lack of system". They have domesticated his central concepts, and then found the pseudo-radicalism of the neo-classical metaphysics which ensued incompatible with Marxism. In contrast, these chapters attempt to explain Bloch's central concepts and categories without making them clearer than they actually are.