The different forms of class struggle

Abstract

The Communist Party Manifesto invites us to read history as the history of "class struggles"(in the plural). The struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is only one of the various forms that class struggle may take. A second form has as its protagonists the peoples who rebelled against colonial rule and against slavery proper. Finally, there is a third form (to which Engels draws attention in particular). It is the class struggle that sees women free themselves of the condition of social segregation and house slavery which the traditional patriarchal family subjected them to.