Essay on Class Struggle and the Communist Manifesto

Class Struggle and the Communist Manifesto The Communist Manifesto is profoundly marked by the history of class struggle and social inequality throughout history. In fact Marx suggests that history is in essence merely a timeline of class struggle, unchanging apart from the alteration in mode of production. The document is the story of the conflict between the Proletariat and the Bourgeois, the oppressed and the oppressor, the haves and the have nots, etc? However, this is not a new idea and Marx is really not all that radical. In his Politics, Aristotle wrote, ?Those who have too much of the goods of fortune, strength, wealth, friends and the like, are neither willing nor able to submit to authority?On the other hand,†¦show more content†¦Stephen Hoch in a study that he conducted on a small Russian village called Petrovskie makes some insightful inferences about the serf system there. In Russia, as well as Europe in the 17th century, the serfs were ?managed? in a way that more closely represented exploitation. Very little was invested in improving the state of the land that they cultivated and instead the emphasis was placed on compelling the serfs to produce more. Meanwhile the landowner merely reaped the benefits and rarely reinvested in the venture. This study is relevant because it was taking place at the same time as the Manifesto was being written.[v] The system led to a series of revolutions because as Hoch deduced, ?Serf behavior and attitudes were in fact an integrated human response to the ecological constraints at work in the society and to the inhumane degradation of being reduced to property.?[vi] Its existence during the Enlightenment is an indicator that social inequality is the child of economics. Stanislav Ossowski states that class itself is the result of economic criteria paired with class consciousness and consciousness of common interests.[vii] When men like Thomas Jefferson wereShow MoreRelatedcommunist manifesto and heart of darkness powe struggles Essay1025 Words   |  5 Pagesï » ¿The Communist Manifesto and Heart of Darkness: Power Struggles While The Communist Manifesto and Heart of Darkness detail different ills of European civilization and different potential cures for those ills, ultimately, the two ills described in each of the texts are comparable in that they arise from the desire and struggle for power. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx outlines the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletarians and prescribes an â€Å"overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, [and]Read MoreCommunist Manifesto Essay999 Words   |  4 Pages The Communist Manifesto The Communist Manifesto is too long to be a concise declaration of principles and too short to be a book. 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