“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
–Karl Marx
Do we live in a delusion? Are we led to believe that we are free? It were these two life defining questions that Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels tackled with, when they published the Communist Manifesto on February 26, 1848. The premise of this ground breaking document are two-fold – the Bourgeoisie is the dominant class which exploits the working class – called the Labour. The issue that Marx and Engels argued was that the Labour works out of desperation, and is then exploited by giving the bare minimum in terms of wage – which is not representative of the magnitude of hard work put in by the Labour. In the contemporary time, with the lack of labour protection laws and the unenforced nature of the minimum wage – we can see a simulacrum to what Marx and Engels basically said. They ultimately predicted that the Labour would rise up and revolt against their oppressors. With the lack of social security nets preset in the Pakistani society today, who says their prediction cannot be applied here?