Essay --

The Law and Communist Manifesto In the 1800’s, the social structure of Europe was changing. The industrial revolution brought new technologies and techniques that lead to more production, and a more prosperous European society. With these great changes to society and the way things were produced, changes in the government and how the society was run was imminent. Both The Law by Frederic Bastiat and Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx present new and fresh ideas on how society should be governed, Bastiat going into the concepts of liberalism and Marx the concepts of communism, both of which are oriented to the individual rights of people in these European societies. Both Bastiat and Marx believe that every person has individual rights and that every person should have an equal opportunity to lead a successful life. They believe that people should have the right to lead whatever life they chose to. Class structure and how individuals are placed into these classes is the biggest concept that Marx speaks about in Communist Manifesto. Marx believes that there should not be different social classes of people. During his time, there were two main classes of people; the bourgeois and the proletariat. The bourgeois were the modern Capitalist’s, who owned means of production and would employ wage-workers to operate these machines, generating huge profits for themselves. The proletariats were the wage-workers, who could not afford their own means of production, therefore relied on the bourgeois for work and income. The bourgeois had all the power in society. Marx believed that centralizing the means of production would take away the social power that the bourgeois had over the proletariats. He believed in the abolition of private property ... ...ety. Both authors believe that all people should have an equal chance to pursue the life that they want to lead. They believe that society should not be run by the wealthy. Marx argues against social classes, the sense of nationality and the idea that private property lead to social power and the bourgeois dominance in society. They had all the control. Bastiat believed that all people had a God given right to defend themselves, their property, and their liberties. He believed that law was necessary, but that it should be fair and consistent to all of the individuals in a society, no matter their economic stature. He argued that law was changing, and that it was actually going against what it was designed to uphold in the first place. These two authors presented ideas of government that at the time were unheard of, but are still very present across the globe today.