In 1848 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argued in the Communist Manifesto that the historic fight between the oppressor and oppressed ended 'either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes'. Engels said that 'bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism'. Later Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish revolutionary working in Germany at the end of the First World War, raised the slogan: 'Socialism or Barbarism'! [She in fact quotes Engels in the Junius Pamphlet - JB].
Source of paragraph: http://www.revolutionarycommunistgroup.com/frfi/166/166_wel.htm See also: http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/oct_02/oct_02_25.html http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/chadwick/excerpt.html
