individual will is not of itself part and parcel of the 'general will,' such Enlightenment notions as the social contract have no philosophical ground (Marcuse 185).
Marx, who owes much to Hegelian philosophy (particularly the dialectical method), nevertheless views Hegel as a German idealist who is as it were part and parcel of the Enlightenment, which is itself not unrelated to the Christian legacy to Western thought, whether Platonic or Aristotelian in character. Marx specifically and programmatically breaks with older intellectual traditions, amplifying the Hegelian critique by grounding it in the material historical and current conditions of existence. To be sure, Marx refers to the continuity of The Communist Manifesto with previous Western thought both directly and indirectly, but always with a view toward demonstrating its difference in both degree and kind from previous theoretical traditions.
When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the eighteenth century to nationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience, merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge (Marx 74).
The Communist Manifesto also echoes the famous first line of Rousseau's Social Contract, that man is born free but everywhere is in chains (387), in its last statement, that the proletarians of the world must unite because they have nothing to lose but their chains (Marx 91). The Communist Manifesto asserts continuity of ideas between its revolutionary project and enlightenment where social criticism is concerned, though he frames it not in terms of moral philosophy but rather in terms of class warfare waged by the bourgeoisie. All but the ruling class have been "precipitated into the proletariat or [] at least threatened i...