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Essay / The themes of division and conflict in Plato's Republic?
Throughout this course, the main goal was to analyze these texts as if we were scholars, to make connections and identify common themes between them. In doing so, we were supposed to be able to understand each text and each person's argument more deeply. Throughout the readings, the most prominent themes have been those of struggle and division, although they are certainly more prevalent and evident in some texts than others. Although all the texts depict division and struggle, they focus on different societal divisions. These texts perhaps allow the reader to see these struggles from another, perhaps more subjective, angle. This depiction of struggle first became clear when reading Plato's Republic in Book I, where The struggle between the proletariat or working class and the bourgeoisie or the rich. According to Marx, this struggle, along with the mistreatment of the powerless by the powerful, constitutes the main flaw of capitalism and this will lead to the eventual evolution towards communism. Marx begins his book with “The history of every society up to the present is the history of class struggles” (Marx and Engels 1). Throughout history, according to Marx, the constant struggle of the bourgeoisie to maintain power over the proletariat has been the main driving force of history. There is therefore an obvious division between the proletariat, described as the workers or working class, and the bourgeoisie, who control the means of production. While all of the above texts describe wrestling in one form or another, they also have another, more specific, point in common. This is because they all describe some sort of class struggle/division. Marx describes the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In Anzaldua there is a struggle between several ethnic and social groups. Wollstonecraft writes about the struggle for equality between men and women (at least in some areas). Plato, like Marx, describes the division of