Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto essays

Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto essays Karl Marx's The Communist Manifesto forecasted the downfall of capitalism and the rise of communism. It predicted that the communist revolution was most likely to take place first in Britain or Germany because of their high population of proletarian factory workers. However, he was proved incorrect because these factory workers were happy with their conditions and felt no need to revolt. The Communist Manifesto appeals mostly to the lowest of the lower class, what he called the "proletariat". The idea of a communist society is that everything is owned by the state. People are paid "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"; meaning that depending on how many people the salary must support is the determining factor in the size of the paycheck. This would appeal to the proletariats because it would put them on equal footing with everyone else. The abolishment of a class system benefited them greatly. Marx reasoned that his ideas appealed most to the working class, therefore it would catch on in countries with large populations of working-class people, i.e. Germany and Britain. The reason that a communist revolution did not take place in Britain is due simply to Marx's timing. The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848, but the ideas of Marxism did not catch on until the 1870s-80s. When it was first published, the British Industrial Revolution had already started. When its popularity began to rise, it did not catch on in England because working conditions in the English factories had improved drastically from what they had once been. The "oppressed" people Marx was trying to appeal to in 1848 did not feel oppressed when they were being informed of the communist ideals, so, therefore, they had no reason to revolt. They were happy with the way things were because they had already gotten so much better. In the 1820s-30s, when the English proletariats felt oppressed, would have been the ideal time for a revo...