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 progress occurs if unity exists within the human population. Thus, the question is, “How does progress occur: through the division of society or through the unity of people?” A close analysis of their respective texts reveals that both individuals interpret the idea of progress differently due to their professions and them being a product of their time. In order for progress to occur in modern society, a combination of Darwin’s and Marx’s idea are required despite each of them inevitably being blind to certain aspects of life one of the reasons being due to their training. Marx, an economist, describes the theory of communism simply as, “the abolition of private property”, which helps people in society move forward together (Marx, 82). Marx also envisions that through communism, people can enjoy the production of others and claims that in order for communism to develop, a revolution must occur in which there is the “formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power” (Marx, 82). The problem with Marx’s idea of communism is that Marx strongly believes that people are defined by the amount of money they possess and the productions that they control, such as factories and shops. Consequently, for Marx, a society is defined by its economy. Marx also claims that capitalism leads to the exploitation of the worker because the capitalist owners only make profit by selling products at a higher price than it takes to manufacture it by underpaying the proletariat. Although Marx’s communism does have several benefits, one problem in Marx’s argument is that Marx is blind to certain human qualities, such as creativity. Marx, an economist writing during the Industrial Revolution, was watching the economy flourish drastically and perceived society only in terms of how it was doing financially simply because of his profession. This bias towards the economy is shown through his exclusion of the human mind in his text. In Marx’s explanation of communism, there is no innovation, one of the key features for progress in a society, and the human imagination is diminished as people are constantly doing the same work. Additionally, in a communist society, the notion of progress would be difficult to understand as there is no opposition to one’s idea and progress is an idea which is understood through frames of reference such …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