George Gilliam Marx/More Comparative Essay English 215 In both Thomas More's Utopia and Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, we see the authors portray two different visions of a better system in which all citizens are on the same level. Both works arise from the authors' own complaints about the "status quo" and seek to provoke serious reflection and (in Marx's case) action on the state of affairs existing in their respective times. The context of both of these works is quite important when considering the substance of Utopia and the Communist Manifesto: Thomas More lived in a time when European government was based on feudalism, which meant that royal families and wealthy nobles held the vast majority of power. Marx lived during the Industrial Revolution, when class antagonisms became quite aggressive due to the strong gap between rich and poor (bourgeois and proletarian) as a consequence of the greater need for a large number of workers and the resulting wealthy minority. Utopia and the Communist Manifesto are similar in the way they propose or at least stimulate visions of major ideological change, but both also have a number of key differences. More's Utopia is more like a fantasy story on the surface, but there is obviously a lot of depth to this piece of literature. Utopia is set primarily as a conversation between three men: More, Hythloday, and Giles. Hythloday is undoubtedly the most significant character in this story, as he is the one who conveys all the information about the land of Utopia to More. Hythloday made many explorations with Amerigo Vespucci and in his travels he came across the island "Utopia" - there he had the opportunity to act almost like an anthropologist, observing and studying... middle of paper... .urgeoisie and system industrial in general (especially when compared to our current economic crisis), it seems to me that the moral values ​​of Utopia are extremely significant for the development of humanity. Of course, as is the case with a text like the Bible, not all things are to be taken literally. I don't agree with everything More wrote about in Utopia. However, I believe that the general philosophy “act with good intentions and good things will come to you” is a very important one that all human beings must adhere to. I'm a bit of a cynical when it comes to human nature, and unfortunately, seeing the parallels between Marx's complaints and our modern economic and political situation, I have little hope that any kind of change in our government will succeed. . Human nature is to be greedy, and unfortunately, I don't think that will ever change.