In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels expressed the view that "the epoch of the bourgeoisie", by contrast with earlier stages in human history, had "simplified class antagonisms", with the result that "Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat." One reason for this, they suggested, was that capitalism had had the effect of stripping away the various ideological veils, religious and secular, by which exploitation and oppression had normally been both concealed and justified, and had "left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'." They summed up this process of de-mystification as follows: "In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation." We do not need to assume that this represents the most central, or the most considered view on the subject expressed by Marx and/or Engels to recognise that this particular expectation as to the character of class conflict within capitalist society has not been fulfilled. Capitalist exploitation is not uniquely naked and unveiled. Ideology, bourgeois ideology, continues to play a quite decisive role in disguising and blurring class conflicts, and sustaining the claims to legitimacy made by the state and its agencies in capitalist society
