Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels are considered the two most influential thinkers of nineteenth-century Europe. Both Marx and Engels had a more radical opinion of the European period of industrial capitalism and predicted its end of as the citizens united and took control of the corrupt system that demoralized them and treated them equally to machines. Marx argues that class struggles are the driving force that keeps the world thriving. .
However, throughout Communist Manifesto, the main argument is that class struggles can be resolved while still having a thriving society. The problem with the Industrial Revolution was not the machines and technology itself, the problem was the people who owned the machines and technology. .
Both Communist Manifesto and The Condition of the Working Class in England discuss the consequences of the communistic aspect of the nineteenth-century European society. Engels and Marx are arguing against capitalism, which is simply that the people or person producing the products rather then should own the means of production solely the owner. .
One of the more basic elements that Marx and Engels accentuate is the exact time that capitalism would fall apart upon the perception of Europe. The "spectre" of capitalism is "haunting" Europe and is one that is insisting for a transformation.(CM, p2) Marx and Engels make a point that a process has defined historical perception called dialect materialism in which one's reality is defined by material wealth. Marx and Engels were evidently opposed to the idea of way industrial capitalism took away the "wealth" of those who worked to earn something. "In proportion therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases." (CM, p12) According to Marx and Engels, there is an ongoing dialect throughout the industrial revolution between those who possess power, the Bourgeois, and those who lack it, the proletarians.
