The factory workers of the early Industrial Revolution were often exploited, mistreated, and abused.

Workers received extremely low wages. Laborers worked in unsafe working conditions. Child labor was used.

In addition to the horrible working conditions, factory workers lived in crowded tenements (run-down apartments) in slums. Poor sanitation plagued slum dwellers.

Some thinkers began to question laissez-faire capitalism.

The Industrial Revolution had made a few capitalists extremely rich.

While the majority of people, the working people, were extremely poor.

Karl Marx was a German social philosopher. He lived from 1818 t0 1883.

Karl Marx co-wrote The Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels in 1848.

Marx blamed problems faced by workers on capitalists or business owners. He blamed the laissez-faire capitalist system.

Marx believed that it was unfair for workers to get less for their labor than capitalists for their investments.

Marx encouraged workers to unite and overthrow their bosses.

After overthrowing their bosses through violent revolution, a dictatorship of the proletariat would govern until it withered away.

Marx believed that the government should own the factors of production Marx believed that the government should own the factors of production. Private property should not exist.

Marxists or Communists wanted to abolish private property. Marxists wanted economic equality. Marxists wanted to abolish all socioeconomic classes.

“Workers of the world unite “Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains,” Marx wrote.

While Marxists advocated violent revolution, others believed that change was possible without violence, dictatorship, and abolishing all social classes.