What Are The Stages Of The Communist Manifesto

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Marx begins The Communist Manifesto (1848) with the following phrase: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” In other words, all of history until the present is the history of a series of class struggles. Each society possesses a characteristic structure defined by scientifically identifiable modes of production, of which are splits into the following stages: primitive communism, age of slavery, age of feudalism, age of capitalism, age of socialism and age of advanced communism. In each of these stages, competing socioeconomic interests create tensions and lead to the development of the next stage, with the final stage being advanced communism. Marx asserts that the bourgeoisie are different from the ruling classes of prior historical periods in that they are solely economic; they accumulate more wealth by investing, rather than in the previous feudal society where the wealth was kept in the same place. …show more content…

A conflict between the proletariat and bourgeois develops and grows sharper until a point is reached where it culminates in a social revolution. The proletariat will raise themselves to the position of ruling class, and then use their power to discharge all capital from the bourgeoisie and centralize all means of production to the state, or the proletariat (workers) united as the ruling class. In place of a bourgeoisie society or class-antagonisms based society, there will be a communist society where a free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. For Marx, this will be the final stage of