based on material inequalities. The class struggle is the defining fact of societal life and leads in time to the violent overthrow of the capitalist class by the working class, leading to the dictatorship of the proletariate for a time until a completely classless society is produced. Marx in Das Kapital notes that the workers who are forced to sell their labor become nothing more than commodities in the economic market:
Marx preached that the only class which. under capitalism, produced more wealth than it enjoyed was the working class, the proletariat. (Lerner, Meacham & Burns, p. 876)
Marx's idea of human nature is seen in his concept of the force of history, in his theory of revolution and of the class struggle leading to revolution, and especially in his concept of alienation based on economic relationships. The human being is defined in terms of work, production, and his or her relationship to what is produced. Marx found there to be alienation in the individual's loss of control, of personal wholeness, an alienation that is basically economic. It is not timeless but is the result of economic forces in capitalism and derives from private property. The work is external to the worker and is not part of his nature, so rather than fulfilling himself in the work he denies himself. Marx and Engels write in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party": "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (Knoebel, p. 473). This struggle defines the ongoing stream of historical materialism, based on the necessary social conditions defined by economic relations. The class con
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