Karl Marx and the Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a time of great modernization and technological advances. It improved everyday life, making labor easier with new machines. Products were made faster and easier, for cheaper prices and in surplus. While most people thought the Industrial Revolution was an extraordinary thing, some people disagreed. One such person was Karl Marx. Karl Marx disliked the Industrial Revolution a lot.

Karl Marx is one of the most influential socialist thinkers that had emerged during the late 19th century. Karl Marx disliked the Industrial Revolution greatly. He was distressed by the treatment of factory workers in Europe. The conditions in factories were cruel and unsafe. Marx broke down the social classes into two categories: the bourgeoisie, being factory & business owners and landlords and the proletariat, everyone else. He thought that the proletariat class was forever to be doomed with work and will always be in the mercy of bourgeoisie, if they didn’t unite and overthrow the bourgeoisie class. Marx believed that workers as to landlords should control factories and farms. He thought that the workers in factories should be given all the power and wealth should be distributed equally amongst them. Marx’s ideas were known as Communism, a word formed from common. Communism is a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed. It is the abolition of oppression or the power of people over people.

Marx's ideas were known as Communism, a word formed for common. Workers would share wealth in a communist society. Marx wrote that wealth should be distributed "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Thought he was basically unobserved by most scholars, his political, economic and social ideas gained acceptance after his death.