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Alienation, class, and hegemony are three important terms defined in Raymond Williams' "Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture of Society." These terms apply in both Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.

Alienation, as defined by Williams, has two meanings. He first describes the term as "an act of estrangement, normally in relation to a `cutting-off' or being cut off from God, or to a breakdown of relations between a man or a group and some received political authority." The second definition Williams gives for alienation is "the act of transferring the ownership of anything to another, and especially the transfer of rights, estates, or money. Alienation is a major concept in Marx's Communist Manifesto. Marx argues that class struggle causes the formation of all historical developments. He identifies alienation as the main cause of class inequality. The two...