“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” With this statement from section I of The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx succinctly summarizes the motivation behind and application of socialism, explaining that, throughout history, an oppressor and an oppressed have quietly fought each other until only two primary adversaries remained: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. In accordance with this perception of history, Marxian socialism as verbalized in the 19th century Communist Manifesto was a reaction to multiple factors that significantly altered the social, economic, and political landscape of 19th century European society. In tandem with the Industrial Revolution, the European Age of Exploration and
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For without adhering to the aspects of civilization characteristic of bourgeois nations, all nations felt compelled “ on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production….In one word, it creates a world in its own image.” However, because such exotic products were typically not indigenous to the countries to which they were sold, the market quickly overtook the speed of production, thus requiring a larger and longer-working labor force to match the demand; to maintain the same rate of profit, the bourgeoisie did not adjust their laborers’ pay and instead factored them into their overall capital, commodifying and dehumanizing them, according to Marx and Engels. To maximize their profits, they needed a “constantly expanding market for …show more content…
As a result of the Capitalist machine created by the Industrial Revolution, the inferior proletariat lived in a state of constant poverty with a cloud of precarious wages constantly hanging over their heads. Furthermore, the workers operated in factories and industrial workplaces where they were subjected to appalling working conditions in exchange for barely subsistence pay. Published around the time of the 1848 Spring of Nations, a series of uncoordinated workers’ revolts throughout countless states in Europe, Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto was more than a mere summation of Communist political ideology; it was a call to revolution where the Communist party detailed and explained the inevitable victory of the lower classes that extremely outnumbered that of the higher. However unsuccessful those revolts were, Marx’s arguments have gone on to embody and most succinctly summarize the ideologies of Communism and Socialism even in the modern
For without adhering to the aspects of civilization characteristic of bourgeois nations, all nations felt compelled “ on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production….In one word, it creates a world in its own image.” However, because such exotic products were typically not indigenous to the countries to which they were sold, the market quickly overtook the speed of production, thus requiring a larger and longer-working labor force to match the demand; to maintain the same rate of profit, the bourgeoisie did not adjust their laborers’ pay and instead factored them into their overall capital, commodifying and dehumanizing them, according to Marx and Engels. To maximize their profits, they needed a “constantly expanding market for …show more content…
As a result of the Capitalist machine created by the Industrial Revolution, the inferior proletariat lived in a state of constant poverty with a cloud of precarious wages constantly hanging over their heads. Furthermore, the workers operated in factories and industrial workplaces where they were subjected to appalling working conditions in exchange for barely subsistence pay. Published around the time of the 1848 Spring of Nations, a series of uncoordinated workers’ revolts throughout countless states in Europe, Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto was more than a mere summation of Communist political ideology; it was a call to revolution where the Communist party detailed and explained the inevitable victory of the lower classes that extremely outnumbered that of the higher. However unsuccessful those revolts were, Marx’s arguments have gone on to embody and most succinctly summarize the ideologies of Communism and Socialism even in the modern