Either history is really governed by laws, and in that case a truly human-activity is impossible, except perhaps in a technical sense; or human beings really make their own history, and then the task of theory will not be directed to discovering 'laws', but to the elucidation of the conditions with in which human activity unfolds.

From an interview conducted on 23 March 1983 for the May-August issue of the French journal Lutter ("Marx today: the tragicomical paradox "). It was translated by Franco Schiavoni for the January 1984 issue of the Australian magazine Thesis Eleven.