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145he Genesis of lilgher Mental Functionsthem a major place in genetic explanation.

The most important of these qualitative shifts in ontogenesisis concerned with the introduction of cultural means of media-t ion into what were formerly "natural" processes. The use ofcultural sign systems plays an especially important role inthis qualitative shift. The introduction of these sign systemsinto the child's functioning in areas such as memory and prob-lem solving changes the nature of these processes in a fundamental way. There ar e a massive disruption and a restructuringof the child's mental processes a t this point. There may evenbe a temporary decrease in the level of functioning; but afterthe psychological processes have been restructured as a resultof acquiring sign systems, the process (e.g., memory) becomesmuch more powerful in the cultural milieu in which it will becalled upon to operate.

In what we have covered so far there ar e two ways in whichthe ideas expressed in the present work ar e direct reflectionsof Marx's ideas. First, Vygotsky stressed that the explanationof a phenomenon in social and psychological realms must reston an analysis of it s origins and development. J us t a s Marxargued that an analysis of society must be based on a knowledgeof the socioeconomic history of that socie ty, V y ~ o t s k y claimedthat an analysis of an individual 's menta l processes must bebased on a knowledge of t he earlier stages through which he/sheha s gone. Second, Marx emphasized that although a societymay develop over long periods of time by making quantitativeincrements (e.g., f rom a n earlier form of capitalism to a laterone), fundamental qualitative shifts will occasionally take placeand will restructure the entire society. These revolutions ar ea necessary am important aspect of history. In the presentpaper Vygotsky uses the notion of revolution in his argumentagainst theories of chi ld development that view ontogenesis as

. a steady stream of quantitative increments in mental functioning.Per.haps the most interes t ing argument Vygotsky makes in

th is paper (and in t he paper on voluntary attention) is concernedwith the social foundations of cognition. As noted in the intro-duc t ion to this volume, this is one of the key ideas in t he theory

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