In parts one and two of The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels argue that class struggles, or for lack of better words, class exploitation, is the driving force behind all historical developments. In essence, the Communist Manifesto lobbied for no freedom, no rights, no property insurance, no inheritance, and free education. With that being said, the key elements of the Communist Manifesto (parts one and two) are the relationships between the proletariat and the bourgeois, as well as the proletariats and the communists. Marx displays that, just like earlier civilizations, the bourgeois, or as we know them today “modern capitalists”, have abused the proletariat class. In layman's terms, the upper class was taking advantage of the lower class. In regard to the earlier civilizations, Marx refers to ancient Rome, stating “the class struggle took place only within a privileged minority, between the free rich and the free poor, while the great productive mass of the population, the slaves, formed the purely passive pedestal for these combatants. People forget Sismondi’s significant saying: The Roman …show more content…
It seems to me that, Marx is attempting to point out a noteworthy dissemblance between the working class of Rome and the modern proletariat. I believe that Marx was trying to explain to us that, the working class of Rome was obsequious in regard to excessive labor conducted by other people, whereas the latter, today’s modern working class, is the basis of capitalism’s wealth. Marx and Engels continue to infer that the bourgeois exploits the proletariat by means of the “constant revolutionizing of production and interrupted disturbance of all social conditions” (Marx & Engels, 1848). Thus, the conclusions which Marx and Engels form, logically follow from the