 The truth of the hypothesis could not be recognized except as confirmed by the changes that its application to experience generated for future experience. By stressing this parallel between Marx and Deweyan instrumentalism, Marxism was not interpreted by Hook as a dogmatic thesis about historical inevitability but as an experimental hypothesis to be confirmed by its future consequences. In developing this parallel, Hook also asserted that his interpretation of Marx differed from the materialist variant of an Hegelian dialectic of history, which he ascribed to “orthodox idolaters” of Marxism (Hook, The Meaning of Marx, 1934, “The Meaning of Marx”). The analogy to Deweyan pragmatism also enabled Hook to differentiate his interpretation of Marxism from what he referred to as the misinterpretation by Stalin and the Soviet authorities which, according to Hook, had transmuted Marxism into a species of secular religion.