The history of society according to Marx and Engels, “is the history of class struggles” explain what this statement means in a brief paragraph citing reverent examples from the text
According to Engels in the 1883 preface to The Communist Manifesto, "all history has been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages of social evolution; that this struggle, however, has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles—this basic thought belongs solely and exclusively to Marx.
Thus, class struggle.... the struggle between those who labor and those who profit from their labor is viewed by both Marx and Engel as the key struggle. An example of this can be found in the the Manifesto, as Marx notes the conflict between the artisan class and industrialization.
