ce of the Enlightenment and the liberal tradition of the West, which in the shape of the Reformation and Renaissance articulated ideas of individual liberty and nation-state alignments to counter the political ethos of monarchy and religious hegemony, and which achieved expression in the American and French Revolutions. 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). As a document that explains the basis on which revolution can be justified, The Communist Manifesto can also be compared to Locke's Second Treatise of Government, which describes the conditions under which the social contract between monarch and people can be broken by the people--although of course Locke (18ff) connects government legitimacy to its protection of property and The Commun
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