Manifesto of the Communist Party
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Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, shows briefly and simply the basic tenets of communism. The authors present their fundamental argument: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (9). Their argument from that foundation is that history is a material process in which the relations between the oppressor and the oppressed evolve as inevitably as a boulder rolling down a steep hill. Class conflict becomes worse and worse between the rich and the working classes, between those who own property and those who do not, between those who control the forces of production and those who are at the mercy of those forces. This process of worsening class struggle moves through history from the feudal age to the capitalist age and, finally, to the salvation of socialism or communism. The authors present a portrait of history's class struggles and the saving era of socialism with enough solid-seeming argument to be convincing, but they never linger too long on any single aspect. The work is clearly meant to be an overview of communist theory. The chronological order of the argument keeps that argument clear. The authors briefly examine each stage of economic development step-by-step as capitalism evolves. They present their argument in black-and-white terms which make clear their belief that capitalism is evil and communism is the only solution to that evil. The argument is that because capitalism is the result of
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h. On a slave ship, instead of losing faith, he calls on his tormentors to live up to their own claims of religious belief; "O, ye nominal Christian! might not an African ask you, learned you this from God? who says unto you, Do unto all men as you would men should do unto you?" (61).
In other words, Equiano is challenging the white "Christians" who are treating Africans not as their God told them to treat others. Not only does he challenge his captors to live up to the commandments of their God, but he himself comes to take that same religion for himself. He is able to take from the culture of the white that which he sees as worthy, and not to judge the religion of Christianity based on the sins and failures of white "Christians."
Equiano's faith in the midst of slavery and other sins against humanity extends beyond Christianity to all humanity. In other words, he sees that there is a higher calling which all human beings of all religions must live up to. Noting horrors committed against slaves on ship, Equiano writes, "I have known our mates to commit these acts most shamefully, to the disgrace, not of Christians only, but of men" (104). Even though these men are committing crimes against humanity such as slavery and the rap
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1594
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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