In the centre of his particular view Marx situates “the specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labour is pumped out of direct producers”. Though it is written in Capital Volume 3, the passage clearly refers to his early discussions about alienation of labour. However, considering only the significance of surplus labour as the very heart of the whole capitalist structures, it is possible to deduce from it the capitalist mode of production. The surplus value is pulled off the worker and thereby bourgeoisie is able to maintain private property and forces of production under its control.

          Forces of production (technology, raw materials, labour force) constitute one side of the concrete economic base of an epoch. The “definite stage of development” of these forces, which is “independent” of men’s will, determines the whole group of social relations of production to be found in a specific historical moment. To put it more simply, both forces of production and relations of production compose the economic base of a given society. What Marx defines as “legal and political superstructure” directly emanates from those mentioned material circumstances (forces and relations), and it is possible to include in that superstructure ideology, religion, cultural production and, briefly, every thinkable form “of social consciousness”.

          This materialistic depiction of reality is put in movement through history by Marx’s philosophy. Historical materialism, however, leads to communism in two different and quite antagonistic ways, both deducible from Marx’s writings. The first possibility seems to be strongly deterministic, because it refers to the material productive forces of society coming “in conflict with the existing relations of production”. With evident reminiscences of Hegel’s dialectics, Marx believes in that moment in which “from forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters”, when “an epoch of social revolution” begins. Superstructure and social consciousness follow this change of “economic foundation” and we enter a new society. It seems that human agency is excluded from this process, in so far as forces of production evolve by themselves and initiate the transcendental conflict which will bring about a new mode of production.

       Nevertheless, a second view of social change is depicted in the passage chosen from “The Communist Manifesto”. There it is said that “in a constant opposition” (again a Hegelian reminiscence), class struggle determines the rhythm of history and produces either “the common ruin of the contending classes” or “a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large”. This second possibility drawn by Marx is an unmistakable product of human activity. The end of capitalism seems to be about to occur because, according to Marx, “society as a whole is more and more splitting up into [...] two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”.

          Therefore Marx leaves us in the dark: we are still wondering whether or not communism was supposed to be a consequence of the natural evolution of history.