Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness...

Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness From social relationships to political power structures, all aspects of society were changed by the technology innovations of the industrial revolution. Manufacturing goods on a mass scale led to the development of an entirely new worker who’s success now depended on his ability to operate machines rather than his talent as a craftsman. The steam engine revolutionized modes of transportation: trains and railroads were implemented everywhere and steamboats facilitated cross-oceanic trade and exploration. In developed nations, agriculturally based economies gave way to manufacturing and trading economies as feudal systems were replaced by democratic societies. What allowed†¦show more content†¦Tocqueville observes that with increasing equality, an unprecedented value is assigned to personal property, thus changing the simplistic medieval power structure that was based solely on property ownership to a far more complicated equation. Tocqueville states that every new inve ntion, every new need occasioned thereby, and every new desire craving satisfaction were steps toward a general leveling. The taste for luxury, the love of war, the dominion of fashion, all the most superficial and profound passions of the human heart, seemed to work together to impoverish the rich and enrich the poor. (pp. 10-11). This new system of meritocracy allowed people to put their personal virtues, such as intelligence, knowledge, and intellect, to use when attempting to achieve power and wealth. But Tocqueville sees society’s democratization as no novelty. Rather, as he states on page 9, the democratic movement is the most continuous, ancient, and permanent tendency known to history. Tocqueville goes on to support this bold statement with his observations of France: the noble has gone down in the social scale, and the commoner gone up; as the one falls, the other rises. Each half century brings them closer, and soon they will touch (11). From reading Tocqueville, th e reader soon associates democracy as being a savior for the people because the conditions implied by it are responsible for the inevitable general