Class Antagonism In Marx And Engels

Karl Mark and Friedrich Engels were well known German philosophers who worked together throughout their entire adult lives, and who were regarded as the founders of the socio-economical ideology called “Marxism”. Among their many influential written pieces was the infamous pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, which set out to explain why they believed a communist revolution was bound to happen. They argued that the foundation of any society’s political and intellectual history is the economic production and structure of that society. They further argued that history shows there is the repetitive issue of class struggles between those who are exploited and oppressed and those who are dominant and exploiting, with each struggle eventually drastically …show more content…
These various social orders are what have consistently caused the numerous class antagonisms, or class struggles. Class struggles were noted back in Roman times when the oppressors such as the patricians and knights oppressed the subordinate plebeians and slaves. Class struggles were also seen during the Middle Ages with the lords and vassals exploiting the serfs and journeymen. Though the classes themselves are different and change throughout history, the fact that there are gradations of social classes is what has always caused such …show more content…
The first three stages are considered to have long come to pass; those being primitive communism, slave society, and feudalism. The fourth stage, capitalism, is what Marx and Engels considered the middle of the nineteenth century to have been in. Though each of the first four stages creates a new class, creates a new invention, or raises the standard of living, they eventually lead to their own downfall because of the constant class antagonisms that are ever present. Stage five, socialism, occurs when the last oppressive class is overthrown by the proletariat and society as a whole is put under the proletariat’s dictatorship. The destructive conflicts between competing capitalists and nations will be ended, and the need for imperial conquest in order to possess markets and commodities will be ended as well. This leads to the final stage, stage six of the political revolution, which is stateless