Beginning of Essay
In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels present their view of human nature and the effect that the economic system and economic factors have on it. Marx and Engels discuss human nature in the context of the economic factors which they see as d ....

Middle of Essay
.... that in earlier societies there were many gradations of social classes. He also states that this class conflict sometimes leads to "...the common ruin of the contending classes" (Marx 9). Marx sees the modern age as being distinguished from earlier periods by the simplification and intensification of the class conflict. He states that "Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps... bourgeoisie and proletariat" (Marx 9). The bourgeoisie, as the dominant class of capitalists, subjugates the proletariat by using it as an object for the expansion of capital. As capitalism progresses, this subjugation reduces a larg ....