Communist Manifesto And The Origin Of Species: A Comparative Analysis

The day to day interactions that we experience with each other is what defines our lives. Of course everyone is an individual, but it is the people the individual acts with that brings him into true existence. Karl Marx and Charles Darwin were very cognizant of these day to day interactions, yet they produced two very different texts as they fleshed their ideas out; however, what remains a constant through both The Communist Manifesto and The Origin of Species is the notion of struggle. In looking at the way both thinkers contextualize “struggle,” we are given the notion that struggle is not only inevitable, but that it is the result of exploitation. Although his “struggle for existence” is primarily concerned with natural selection and evolution, Darwin’s ideas can be applied to a more Marxist view of socioeconomics. The Struggle for Existence is
The first way we can see this struggle is as an optimist: Man and his neighbor struggling together to thrive. However, it is more pertinent to take a pessimistic view: One man will exploit another man for his own needs. As we introduce the idea of exploitation we also introduce the notion of a social hierarchy and “class struggles” (Marx, 14). The interactions are no longer benevolent, rather they are poignant and exploitative. The exploited man becomes a “[slave] of the bourgeoisie,” no longer the arbiter of his time or his will (Marx 18). The issue is no longer the presence of struggle, rather it is the fact that one man attempts to ease his own struggle by increasing that of another. As a result of this, the exploiter only continues to flourish while the exploited “sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of