Karl Marx and The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto in February 1848. They argued that history was driven by class struggle, and that industrial capitalism had created two main classes: the bourgeoisie, who owned factories and capital, and the proletariat, who sold their labor for wages. Marx predicted that competition would push wages down and concentrate wealth, until workers overthrew capitalism and created a classless communist society. His later work, Capital (first volume 1867), analyzed how capitalism worked in detail.

Marx's ideas inspired socialist parties and later revolutionary movements, including the Bolsheviks. Critics point out that revolutions came in mainly agricultural countries rather than industrial Britain, that workers' living standards rose in many industrial nations, and that 20th-century communist states became authoritarian. Supporters argue his analysis of inequality and economic crises remains insightful.