companied by a corresponding political advance in that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association of medieval commune.... The bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."
This view of mankind as bound by the conditions of labor and subject to class distinctions and disadvantages directly challenges the Enlightenment argument that a social contract which acknowledges the autonomy of all individuals regardless of their status or skills or wealth. It argues that modern societies that are driven by industrial capitalism were in retreat from the theoretical constructs of the Enlightenment and that the very mode of production which had emerged was such that no genuine autonomy for the masses could be achieved. Marx and Engels (8) make note of the fact that class structures in and of themselves inhibit individuality and create what amounts to subcultural groupings within societies that are dominated by elites.
Friedrich Nietzsche (465), in Twilight of the Idols, recognized that by the close of the nineteenth century, a "reevaluation of all values" had taken place in which the world had experienced a trend away from the ideals that were presented in the Enlightenment. He contended that men "elected virtue and the swelled bosom and yet you leer enviously at the advantages of those without qualms" (Nietzsche, 469). He argued that
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