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Comparison Of Marx, Engels, And The Industrial Revolution

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Comparison Of Marx, Engels, And The Industrial Revolution
Marx, Engels, and the Industrial Revolution
Born in Trier, Prussia in 1818, Karl Marx was the son of a Jewish lawyer who later converted to Lutheranism (History.com Staff). During his studies in Berlin, he was greatly influenced by a 19th-century philosopher and later became the editor for a liberal democratic newspaper in Cologne. After the newspaper was shut down by the authorities, Marx moved to Paris, where his socialist views were embraced by the populace. However, in less than two years, he and his collaborator, Friedrich Engels, were expelled from France for their calls for a revolution, settling in Brussels and writing their views into The Manifesto of the Communist Party. Their pamphlet emboldened like-minded socialists who sought …show more content…
However, in reading their work, The Manifesto of the Communist Party, the reader can see that they believed the industrial revolution would act to bring about their ideal communist society. They speak of the bourgeois and the proletarians as an extension of feudal classes of citizens. The bourgeois are the modern capitalists, those who own the means of production and employee the proletarians, the lower working-class citizen (Marx and Engels 2191-2198). In their view, both groups are contradictory, yet also complimentary and needed to bring about their revolutionary vision for a utopian …show more content…
In turn, the workers unions would support the workers and begin to control the output of the manufacturing and distribution of goods and services. Thus, they would reduce the power and influence of the bourgeois, eventually eliminating them altogether. They view the development of industry as a requirement to “increase the numbers” of the proletariat (Marx and Engels 2196). To bring about the purist form of communism, the workers or proletariat only had to unite as one, rather than acting as a “incoherent scattered mass” all over the country (Marx and Engels 2196). As the numbers and cooperation between the working class increased, the power of the bourgeois
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