te!ö (Marx and Engels 25).
My response to a co-studentÆs essay is that his essay demonstrates quite clearly why communism is more advantageous to promoting freedom in society on an equal level than a system such as capitalism.
Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich. Manifesto of the Communist Party. In Blaisdell, B. The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings: Marx, Marat, Paine, Mao Tse-Tung, Gandhi and Others. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2003.
The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (25) is a call for revolution by the working classes (ôWorking men of all countries, unite!ö) to expand their freedom from the oppression and exploitation of capitalism by establishing a communist socioeconomic and political system. It is only in communism, where property ownership is shared by all individuals, that Marx and Engels (1) believed that societies would stop evolving toward revolution due to the unequal relationship between economics, ownership, and labor, ôThe history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle.ö Whether slavery, feudalism, or capitalism, Marx and Engels argue that the worker is at an unfair advantage, exploited by the owners of the means of production until he or she is alienated from his or her labor and from other laborers against whom they must compete for wage-labor.
Marx and Engels believe that for true freedom to evolve for the laboring class, communism must replace the unequal social, economic and political relationships that arise under capitalism. The laborer is trapped in a sustenance earning position as the owners of the means of production continue to appropriate property, resources, and products of that labor. Eventually, because of the competition to survive, the laborer becomes alienated from the product he or she produces and from other laborers. Only communism, according to Marx and Engels (p. 13) eliminates this unfair advan...