ications created by the modern industry (Marx 46). There haven't always been proletarians, though. They originated in the industrial revolution of England in the last half of the eighteenth century (Engels). The first industrial revolution began in Britain around 1750. It was during this time that many people turned to industry rather than farming to make a living (Wilkinson 70). Friedrich Engels often compared the average proletariat to a slave except one aspect. "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly" (Engels). The opposite class of the proletariat was the bourgeois. This was considered the modern capitalist class. According to Marx and Engels they were the "owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor" (34). The bourgeois, in other words, were the employers; the business men who sat around while their employees worked painstaking hours. Now the capitalists, who have always been the opposing party of the communists, was the political power. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels state political power as "merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another" (61). As the industrial revolution went on and became an international revolution, more factories were built and the two classes of people emerged; the huge army of working-class people (or proletarians), and their capitalist bosses (Wilkinson 70). The factory bosses were considered the capitalists because they supported the system in which the country's wealth is owned by individuals. These bosses were money hungry and used the unknowing workers to support their addiction. They became rich but paid workers low wages for long, strenuous hours of labor in difficult conditions (Wilkinson 70). These poor working conditions were the reason Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels joined to form the working-class movement and eventually wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848. There are ...
