White Plains Public Schools



Core Practice: The Communist Manifesto

World History Name: ______________________

E. Napp Date: _______________________

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Pre-Primary Source Activity:

The Industrial Revolution was a “marker event,” an event that changed the course of history. The Industrial Revolution first occurred in Britain in the textile or clothing industry. Britain possessed natural resources necessary for industrialization (coal and iron), good ports, new technological inventions, and capital or wealth to invest in new industries. During the Industrial Revolution, machines and factories replaced goods made at home and by hand. With the Industrial Revolution, changes in production and the structuring of society occurred such as increased production of goods and urbanization or movement to cities. As workers moved to cities to work in factories, they often worked long hours in dangerous conditions and were frequently exploited or mistreated while their bosses and managers grew wealthier. In this atmosphere of great change, some individuals began to question the working and living conditions of workers. Reformers, individuals wanting new laws to protect workers, and revolutionaries, individuals advocating revolution and radical change, debated the best ways to improve the lives of workers. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were two radicals who advocated revolution. Indeed The Communist Manifest, written by Marx and Engels in 1848, was a call to revolution. Written in response to the poor working conditions of the early Industrial Revolution, Marx and Engels envisioned a new society, a society where wealthy industrialists, what Marx and Engels called the bourgeoisie, were overthrown by the workers or proletariat. The Communist Manifesto was and remains a primary source that greatly impacted the course of history.

A Useful Flashcard for the Primary Source:

Karl Marx:

• The most radical of the socialists was probably Karl Marx, a German theorist who believed that revolution – not reform – was the only solution to the misery and unfairness that resulted from industrialization

• Often known as the father of communism, he addressed the issues in a sweeping interpretation of history and vision for the future, The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848

• He believed capitalism – or the free market – to be an economic system that exploited workers and increased the gap between the rich and the poor

• He believed that conditions in capitalist countries would eventually become so bad that workers would join together in a revolution of the proletariat (workers), and overcome the bourgeoisie, or owners of factories and other means of production

• Marx envisioned a new world after the revolution, one in which social class would disappear because ownership of private property would be banned

• According to Marx, communism encourages equality and cooperation, and without property to encourage greed and strife, governments would be unnecessary, and they would wither away

• He developed his views fully in a longer work called Das Capital

Pre-Primary Source Questions:

1. Describe work and the production of goods in Western Europe before the Industrial Revolution.

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2. Where were most goods made in Western Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Describe work and the production of goods in Western Europe during the Industrial Revolution. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. Where were most goods made in Western Europe during the Industrial Revolution? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5. Describe the working conditions of industrial workers during the Industrial Revolution.

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6. What country first experienced the Industrial Revolution?

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7. What factors allowed this country to be the first country to experience an Industrial Revolution?

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8. How did the Industrial Revolution change the production of goods?

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9. How did reformers hope to improve the lives of workers? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

10. How did revolutionaries hope to improve the lives of workers? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

11. Who were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

12. What did Marx and Engels write in 1848? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

13. Define bourgeoisie (according to Marx and Engels). ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

14. Define proletariat (according to Marx and Engels). ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Think Point of View: [pic]

A person’s point of view is the perspective from which the person understands a historical event. For example, during the Industrial Revolution, the owner of a factory might have a different point of view than a worker in the factory. For the factory owner, the Industrial Revolution was a beneficial change. It allowed more goods to be produced and more profits to be made. However, a worker in the owner’s factory might view the Industrial Revolution negatively. The long hours, low wages, and unsafe working conditions might lead the worker to view the Industrial Revolution as harmful. Ultimately, it is important to determine the person’s point of view in order to understand the person’s reaction to a particular event. The following questions may help the student determine the individual’s point of view:

• Who wrote the primary source?

• What was the social class background of the author?

• How did the author’s experiences influence his/her perspective of the event?

• When was the source written?

• What historical events were occurring when the source was written?

Remember: No two individuals experience the same event exactly the same.

The Primary Source: Excerpt from The Communist Manifesto



“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. 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…

Questions:

1. According to Marx and Engels, what is the history? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. What class struggles existed in the past? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. What class struggle exists in the modern epoch? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. How does the class struggle in the modern epoch differ from earlier class struggles? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5. By the way, what does “class struggle” mean? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“…Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an overriding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labor. Wage labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. 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.”

Questions:

1. According to Marx and Engels, what has every form of society been based on? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2. How does the modern laborer differ from the serf or the petty bourgeois? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Why is the bourgeoisie unfit to rule? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

4. What is the essential condition for the existence of the bourgeois class? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

5. What do the bourgeoisie really produce? ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Content Vocabulary Checklist:

Industrial Revolution: __________________________________________________________

Factory System: _______________________________________________________________

Urbanization: _________________________________________________________________

Capitalism: ___________________________________________________________________

Bourgeoisie: __________________________________________________________________

Proletariat: __________________________________________________________________

Karl Marx: __________________________________________________________________

The Communist Manifesto: _____________________________________________________

General Vocabulary Checklist:

Reformer: ____________________________________________________________________

Revolutionary: ________________________________________________________________

Radical: ______________________________________________________________________

Class Struggle: ________________________________________________________________

Violent Revolution: ____________________________________________________________

Enrichment Activities (To Be Completed on a Separate Piece of Paper):

1. Provide a Point of View Analysis for Karl Marx and a Point of View Analysis for Friedrich Engels. (Use the Point of View questions earlier in the packet and find online biographies for the authors of The Communist Manifesto).

2. List ten facts about the kind of society that Marx and Engels believed would exist after a communist revolution.

3. Yet the communist experiment ultimately failed in many countries, particularly the Soviet Union. List five reasons for the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union.

4. Write a thesis statement either agreeing or disagreeing with Marx and Engels vision of history, class struggle, and revolution.

5. Create an obituary for Karl Marx.

6. Identify the significant communists in the photograph below:

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