Early Europe
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Communism in Early Europe
Karl Marx, born in Prussia in 1818, was a journalist who held ideas on Communism and social reform. He was censored by authorities at a newspaper in Prussia and later left for Paris, where he met the wealthy financial support of Friedrich Engels, a successful aristocrat of France's bourgeoisie. Backed by the finances of Engel Marx, he went on to publish the Communist Manifesto in 1848 for England's Communist League after being expelled from France . Marx would live the rest of his life in England, publishing his radical ideas on social reform and Communism until his death in 1883.
The main idea of Marx' Communit Manifesto is that for all time, through past civilizations and societies, there has been the oppression of one class of society against another; the "haves", and the "have nots". He points to historical examples of the patricians and slaves in Rome and equates this inequality with the two conflicting social classes that existed in Europe during that time: the proletariats and the bourgeoisie. Claiming that the bourgeosie are only serving to further their success at the expense and labor of another, he says that this relationship is not new to mankind, but just a modern version of class oppression that has existed throughout history. He says to overcome this oppression, the suppressed will unite and reform not only economic structures but social ones as well. He says the reformation will most likely be a violent one but that it is probably needed because it will involve a "radical rupture [of] traditional ideas."
Fueled by the technological advances of the industrial revoultion, the steam engine, centralized manufacturing and capitalist markets, he is stating that the bourgeoisie of the time are merely a class that has been formed and handed from the classes of the Middle Ages, and in turn those classes from the era before that and so on...