communist manifesto and heart of darkness powe struggles...

The Communist Manifesto and Heart of Darkness: Power Struggles While The Communist Manifesto and Heart of Darkness detail different ills of European civilization and different potential cures for those ills, ultimately, the two ills described in each of the texts are comparable in that they arise from the desire and struggle for power. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx outlines the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletarians and prescribes an â€Å"overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, [and] conquest of political power by the proletariat† as a cure. (The Communist Manifesto, p.67) Heart of Darkness describes the struggle for power through imperialism and the capacity for darkness that is inherent to man’s nature. However, Conrad†¦show more content†¦The two texts, Heart of Darkness and The Communist Manifesto are very different in that the former is a novel and the latter is more of a declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, and motives. How ever, even though Marx describes no characters in The Communist Manifesto like Conrad does in Heart of Darkness, the humane cannibals and bloodthirsty pilgrims are comparable to the hard-working proletarians and the money hungry bourgeoisie. In both relationships, one group is the dominant, ruling group (the pilgrims and the bourgeoisie) and the other groups (the cannibals and the proletarians) are subject to the will of the first group. These relationships can be described, using Marx’s very words, as relationships between â€Å"freeman and slave,†¦lord and serf,†¦oppressor and oppressed.† (The Communist Manifesto, p.55) The pilgrims share the same animosity toward the natives and treat them as poorly as the bourgeois class does the proletarian. The proletariat class is taken advantage of and oppressed for not having their own means of production, while the cannibals are taken advantage of and oppressed for being savage and immoral. But Marlow discovers mora lity and restraint in the cannibals; he looks â€Å"at them†¦ in a new light† and comes to realize â€Å"how unwholesome the pilgrims looked.† (Heart of Darkness, p. 41) To Marlow’s surprise the