There's no need to imagine anything, here's the discussion Engels was having: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/letters/88_04_15.htm https://www.

There's no need to imagine anything, here's the discussion Engels was having: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/letters/88_04_15.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/letters/88_... He's replying to an aspiring author who sees Engels as an authority on the matter, and he's giving an account of the structure of a new genre of literature (realism) and using its greatest representative (Balzac) to do so. Presumably she takes Engels to be an authority for the same reason many do today: he's one of the best read people to have lived and he was on the frontier of every domain of science for which he had utility. (See the lasting impact of his Anti-Dühring.) My intent was to provide an entry point into the rich domain of Marxist literary theory by the authority of two of its most important progenitors. Engels and Lenin were crucial in developing an apparently important way of studying and creating history. I figured this is a relevant addition to the conversation because I am gesturing to a positive answer to the gaping question that you opened: what is it that makes a historical interpretation "correct"? Unless perhaps your intent was to leave it agape, which is fit for the postmodernist ideological realm in which Downton Abbey and Bridgerton were written in the first place.