| Describe the working conditions of industrial workers during the Industrial Revolution. | As workers moved to cities to work in factories, they often worked long hours in dangerous conditions and were frequently exploited or mistreated. |
| How did reformers hope to improve the lives of workers? | Reformers were individuals wanting new laws to protect workers. |
| How did revolutionaries hope to improve the lives of workers? | Revolutionaries were individuals advocating revolution and radical change. |
| Who were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels? | Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were two radicals who advocated revolution. |
| What did Marx and Engels write in 1848? | The Communist Manifesto |
| Define bourgeoisie (according to Marx and Engels). | Wealthy industrialists, the owners of factories. |
| Define proletariat (according to Marx and Engels). | The workers in the factories. |
| According to Marx and Engels, what is history? | “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” |
| What does “class struggle” mean? | a struggle between the classes of rich and poor |
| What class struggle did Marx and Engels believe existed in the modern era? | Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat… |
| According to Marx and Engels, how did the class struggle in the modern epoch differ from earlier class struggles? | There are only two classes in the modern era whereas there were more than two classes in the past. |
| According to Marx and Engels, what has every form of society been based on? | Every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, the antagonism of the oppressing and oppressed classes. |
| According to Marx and Engels, how did the modern laborer differ from the serf or the petty bourgeois? | The modern laborer sinks lower while the serf (peasants) could raise himself to become the petty bourgeois. |
| Why did Marx and Engels see the bourgeoisie as unfit to rule? | The bourgeoisie are unfit to rule because they would allow workers to sink lower in society. |
| What did Marx and Engels believe was the essential condition for the existence of the bourgeois class? | The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital [increase of wealth]; the condition for capital is wage labor. |
| What did Marx and Engels believe was inevitable? | The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. |
Communist Manifesto Worksheet Answers
June 12, 2020