In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels provide their analysis of the evolution of societies through history. Rather looking at slavery, feudalism, or capitalism, Marx and Engels (1) arrive at one overarching conclusion, ôThe history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.ö This class struggle ultimately ends in a power struggle between the working and upper classes that results in revolution and the destruction of the established social order and class stratification. Likewise, capitalism is no better than feudalism for preventing this struggle from reoccurring, merely establishing ônew classes, new conditions or oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old onesö (Marx and Engels 2).
Marx and Engels viewed capitalism as merely another form of master-slave relationship that favored the owners of the means of production at the expense of the working class laborer, who becomes alienated from his or her labor and barely earns a sustenance wage. This class of individuals, the ôbourgeoisie,ö are ruled by the ôproletariatö class that owns the means of production, maintains a concentration of resources, and who exploits the freedom of the worker for sustenance or slave wages, (Marx and Engels 5). This unequal relationship eventually pits even the laborer against other laborers as he or she competes for wage-labor. Marx and Engels conclude that only a revolution will restore balance of power in society, eliminate property ownership, and free the laborer by ending exploitation and unfair advantage of the upper classes. Marx and Engels end their manifesto by explaining that only a revolution waged by the working class will result in the destruction of the social conditions of capitalism and pave the way for the only truly free social system, communism. The final line of The Communist Manifesto is a call to arms of the working classes: ôWorking men of all countries, uni...