A Communist Manifesto and Social Movements - Essay Example

Generally speaking, Marx set forth a theory in which conflict, or class struggle, was both caused and perpetuated by a division of individuals into a bourgeois group and a proletarian group. The bourgeois controlled the means of production in a capitalist system and the proletariat functioned as labor for wages. In this way, still speaking generally, the bourgeois were in possession of wealth and resources and the proletariat, wages aside were largely powerless and dispossessed. Marx refined this general model by characterizing a variety of social and economic relationships according to this framework; indeed, attempting to emphasize the pervasive nature of this bourgeoise-proletariat divide, he stated that,Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes (Marx, 1848: np).

Thus, Marx viewed the social forces driving societies towards a proletarian revolution as being essentially twofold. . an initial matter, from a historical point of view, Marx did credit the bourgeois with aiding in the downfall of the old feudal classes; on the other hand, he characterized this development as predictable and as a temporary ascension to power.