Who?: Karl Marx
What?: An Industrial Revolution era philosopher who supported the rights of the proletariat.
Where?: Germany
When?: 1848
Major Book?: The Communist Manifesto
Main Ideas:
1) History is the history of class struggle
2) The workers must unite to overthrow the owners
3) Shared ownership (no private property)
4)The workers control the means of production.
Why?: Marx was horrified by the suffering of the proletariat (working classes) and he was proposing a way to solve the problems of class struggle.
Importance: His ideas inspire Lenin and the 1917 Russian Revolution. (As well as the Chinese Communist Revolution (1949) and the Cuban Revolution (1960))
Quote: “Workers of the world unite”
Related Terms: 1) Proletariat, 2) Communism, 3) Means of Production, 4) Class struggle