In the first half of the 19th century the processes known as Industrialization and Urbanization started to transform Europe. It affected and changed every aspect of life of every citizen of every European nation. The notorious results of these changes were the horrible living and working conditions of the working class, who made up the majority of the society. Great Britain was involved most profoundly in this Industrial Revolution as it led the way in the development of railroads and factories. We find a lot of documents from that time period describing working conditions in Britain during that era. As a response to those changes created by Industrial Revolution many sought reforms to confront those social problems. Karl Marx was one of those reformers proposing and arguing for the reforms in his Communist Manifesto. There are a number of direct correlations between the descriptions of working conditions in 19th century Britain and Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.
While reading one of the many articles describing working conditions in Britain during the Industrial Revolution I noticed that it has a very close links to the work of Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto. The things that Marx talked about in general in his work are reflected as a specific case in that article. The article I am talking about is Leeds Woolen Workers Petition, 1786. There are a lot more articles such as this one that are associated with the Communist Manifesto just as strong. But for now I want to stop my attention on this one in particular and analyze it at first to show what exact correlations it has with the work of Karl Marx. The Leeds Woolen Workers Petition was an article written as a complaint about the effects of the Industrialization o...
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...tanding pools for gutters, and a stench which alone would make it impossible for a human being in any degree civilized to live in such a district." These unsanitary conditions resulted in a widespread of epidemic diseases such as scrofula, diphtheria, and cholera. Living in these unhealthy conditions receiving low wages and working long hours a working people were nothing more than the "instruments of labor, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex." A problem of the Child Labor is inderectly described in Dickens: Hard Times (Chapter 2) but does not have a specific reference in Marx's Communist Manifesto.
After analyzing readings I have talked about it becomes evident that there are some close correlations between the descriptions of the working conditions of the 19th century Britain in those readings and Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto
Throughout the first half of the 19th century, and especially after the War of 1812, America has taken on yet another revolution. In this time period, the country saw a rapid expansion in territory and economics, as well as the extension of democratic politics; the spread of evangelical revivalism; the rise of the nation’s first labor and reform movements; the growth of cities and industrial ways of life; a rise in abolitionism and reduction in the power of slavery; and radical shifts in the roles and status of women.
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is a short publication that contains Marx’s and Engel’s theories on the nature of society and politics, as well as class struggle, problems with capitalism, and how to slowly change the government from capitalist to socialist and finally communist. The start of the first chapter in the essay, "Bourgeois and Proletarians", states ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’ (...
The end of 19th century, Western Society was changing physically, philosophically, economically, and politically. It was an influential and critical time in that the Industrial Revolution created a new class. Many contemporary observers realized the dramatic changes in society. Among these were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who observed the conditions of the working man, or the proletariat, and saw a change in how goods and wealth were distributed. In their Communist Manifesto, they described their observations of the inequalities between the emerging wealthy middle class and the proletariat as well as the condition of the proletariat. They argued that the proletariat was at the mercy of the new emerging middle class, or bourgeoisie, and could only be rescued by Communism: a new economic form.
From the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century major historical events such as the Industrial revolution had occurred. During this period of time Europe was switching into an economy that is focused mostly in the industrial field. From this emerged two social-economic classes, the rich bourgeoisie and the poor proletariats. Furthermore tension brewed from the two groups since the bourgeoisie source of wealth was from the exploitation of the proletariats. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ book The Communist Manifesto responded to the situation and created a vision of an equal communist society. The Communist Manifesto was defined by the abolishment of the bourgeois sovereign rule that followed to a revolution against capitalism
The changes which arose by way of the Industrial Revolution had a significant and long-term impact on the economy, the political arena, and society. Because of all the negative changes caused by industrialization and urbanization the Europeans wanted and needed answers on how to deal with these changes. Society was now divided into different classes the upper-middle class (wealthy) and the lower class (working), “Although reform organizations grew rapidly in the 1830s and 1840s, many Europeans found them insufficient to answer the questions raised by industrialization and urbanization” (Hunt 703). The rich was getting richer at the expense of the workers and with the issues and concerns building “New ideologies such as liberalism and socialism offered competing answers to these questions and provided the platform for new political movements” (Hunt 703). The communist wanted the working class to rise, the division of different classes to go away as well as private property, so they wrote a manifesto, The Communist Manifesto (1848) a collaboration between Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels “laid out many of the central principles that would guide Marxist revolution in the future: they insisted that all history is shaped by class struggle” (Hunt 708).
micro-study on Marx's view of freedom will help not only reveal why Marx feels labour
The Industrial Revolution brought social change and economic growth for Great Britain. This era provided the perfect environment for a new social class to emerge from urban squalor. During the Industrial Revolution a group of citizens who breathed polluted air, drank toxic water, worked fourteen-hour days in dimly lit factories and lived in close quarters. This group is known as the working class. In Karl Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party he predicted that the development of Modern Industry cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie (the upper class) produces and appropriates products. The bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat (the working class) are equally inevitable (Marx, 5). However Marx’s predict revolution of the working class never comes to be in England. It is a wonder why a large social group composed of a huge majority of a countries population never triggered rebellion within the cities streets. A huge contributing factor of the era was the large amounts of mind-altering “drugs” readily available to the nations poorer peoples. If it wasn’t for the Industrial Revolution, we may not have been as technologically advanced in the modern world. However, opium provided the solution to all of these men and their troubles. Opium created an escape and made life tolerable for working class preventing them from rebelling, making the industrial revolution successful.
Marx expressed many views about the over empowerment of the bourgeoisies in The Communists Manifesto. Marx believed that the working class was not getting paid what they deserved for the quality of work that they were producing. Marx thought that the all workers should be paid the same rather than by social position. For instance, Marx thought that a mineworker should be paid as much as a doctor. Marx states, ?The average price of w...
The working classes’ unrest and radicalism in this period was motivated primarily by their economic and pecuniary environment. This economic milieu which incorporated the working classes of the nineteenth century was the fundamental basis from which unrest sprang; it was the origin of their motivation, rationale and, to the limited extent it existed, their solidarity. In this context radicalism found purchase; it capitalised on the latent political energy of the working class, emergent amongst the economic malaise that followed the end of twenty-three years of war in 1815, as well as the failure of Luddism
According to Marx, the key to understanding the social reality is not found in abstract ideas, but in the factories or in the coal mines, where workers carry out the duties that are beyond the limitations of humanity, to prevent themselves from dying of starvation, in which the unemployed people find dignity as a human being because there is no way aside from it. The capitalist is
The German thinker, Karl Marx (1818-1883), wanted to understand and explain the changes that occurred in society at the time of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. (ibid) In 1843 Marx met Engels in Paris. It marked the beginning of a lifelong of friendship and professional collaboration. In 1848 Marx and Engels published “The Communist Manifesto”. The Manifesto outlined the struggles between classes. From then onwards it has become apparent that Marx was not an economist. His theories are a combination of economics, history, sociology and politics. Marx moved to London in 1849 where he spent the rest of his life.
Karl Marx noted that society was highly stratified in that most of the individuals in society, those who worked the hardest, were also the ones who received the least from the benefits of their labor. In reaction to this observation, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto where he described a new society, a more perfect society, a communist society. Marx envisioned a society, in which all property is held in common, that is a society in which one individual did not receive more than another, but in which all individuals shared in the benefits of collective labor (Marx #11, p. 262). In order to accomplish such a task Marx needed to find a relationship between the individual and society that accounted for social change. For Marx such relationship was from the historical mode of production, through the exploits of wage labor, and thus the individual’s relationship to the mode of production (Marx #11, p. 256).
The second half of the 19th century introduced a new style of enterprise to America, Big Business. The 19th century values of work and of being an independent business man clashed with the modern 20th century values of extreme expansion with large work forces and of earning the most money possible. The rise of the robber barons and the captains of industry helped the economy by pushing America into first place in the production of several products and by creating many new jobs. Although these new opportunities appealed to the masses, not everyone was satisfied by his new occupation. The creation of labor unions was a reaction to the numerous complaints about working conditions, wages, and work hours. The first unions protested with peace and reason. Once they realized that nothing could be accomplished through negotiation, drastic measures were taken and violence was the answer to their problems. The clashes between management and workforce in the Great Railroad Strike, Homestead Strike, and Pullman Strike emphasize these crises that were resolved through force and destruction.
In 1848, Karl Marx became renowned for his work, The Communist Manifesto, which was considered one “of the most eloquent and undoubtedly the most influential political pamphlet ever published…” (Waugh 140). Marxism, as it later became known as, explored “the intellectual rationale of the numerous Communist and Socialist parties” (Waugh 140). The foundation of Marxist views relied on that of class struggle: “Marxist criticism must always insist upon the issue of class relations, and class struggle, in unlikely contexts no less than likely ones” (Waugh 143). Works dealing with Marxism must, then, show the difference in classes, and the struggle and plight that the lower class faces at the hand of the upper class. It was also the Marxist belief that in order to exact social change, the masses would need to come together and cause a social upheaval.