Marx & Engels, Communist Manifesto, 1848

In this process, Marx saw the seeds of a society that would eventually be reduced to two classes—owners and workers.

We can say, to put it briefly, that up to the present mankind has known two principal forms of oppression, the one (slavery or serfdom) exercised in the name of armed force, the other in the name of wealth thus transformed into capital; what we have to determine is whether these are not now being succeeded by a new species of oppression, oppression

Marx saw history as an ongoing struggle between the social classes of each era, the outcome of which was based on the “tension and antagonism” of the struggle. In Marx’s view, this meant capitalist society was a historical stage, not a permanent one. As an economist, he contested the classical view of market growth as a force that produced harmonio