Essay Comparing The Communist Manifesto And The Descent Of Man

Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man both present the separation of humans into categories. In Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, he divides the human population into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat based on income, but claims disregarding classes and having a society in which everyone can benefit from the same level of production and do an equal amount of work will lead to a better society. Darwin brings forth the idea that ancestors of an organism contribute to the current features of an organism through natural and sexual selection, and that humans can be divided by physical features, such as skin color, and that these differences may allow one group to be more progressive than another. Although the idea of progress is present in both Marx and Darwin’s ideas, both differ in how they approach progress. Darwin believes that progress occurs due to the separation of species in the world and Marx claims that …show more content…
By understanding the human anatomy and mind, he emphasizes that humans have evolved from organisms that were less complex and that “man has been raised to his present state” (Darwin, 245). The usage of the word “raise” in this sense suggests that man would not have been where he is without a force that has propelled him. In this case, the force is natural selection. For example, through his study of the human anatomy, Darwin proposes that humans evolved from primates due to the similarity between human ear structure and orangs’ ear structure and many other rudimentary traits. However, unlike Marx, Darwin acknowledges that humans possess innate and instinctive features such as the ability to develop love, care, and reason. Along with his idea of instinct pre-existing inside a person, Darwin values the present because he offers the idea that modification of certain physical features results in the survival of the