What is class struggle in The Communist Manifesto?

In The Communist Manifesto, class struggle is the engine of historical change: each era’s ruling class extracts surplus from those who produce, and antagonism builds until political forms break or transform. The opening pages list earlier oppositions (master/slave, lord/serf) to argue that modern society simplifies conflict into bourgeoisie versus proletariat under industrial capitalism.

Struggle is material and collective — fought in factories, law, and ideology, not only in consciousness. Communists align with proletarian organization because that class’s emancipation requires overturning property relations that sustain the bourgeois state. Teach students to read “struggle” as analysis of power, not as encouragement of personal resentment; the pamphlet’s next sections specify who belongs to which camp and what action follows.