Late 19th Century DBQ

During the late 19th century major changes were occurring in Europe, that had to do with the constant class struggles that Marx talked so much about.  Figure 1 shows the poorest of the poor people, the proletariats, and how they so struggled to make a living and support their families.  Figure 2 shows the upper class bourgeois, who were in control of the factories and had no trouble supporting their families and making a living.  The late 19th century was the time period in which Karl Marx began to put his views to action through Marxism, which was a more extreme branch of socialism that advocated for the proletariats to rise up against the wealthy factory owners; thus, beginning the people's fight for their rights.

The first image was most likely created by someone who was bias to towards the proletariats.  The proletariats was a term used by Marx in order to describe the poor factory workers.  The painter was showing the extremely poor quality of life that the factory workers had because they were put down by the bourgeois.  The bourgeois was a term used by Marx to describe the rich factory owners.  Marx believed that the factory workers could never move up from their position in society because the current system did not allow them to move up.  He believed that the proletariats should rise up against the rich factory owners, and destroy the current system.  The current economic system in place was capitalism.  Marx wrote Das Kapital, a critique of capitalism and a history of economics.  He was strongly against capitalism because it only allowed around two percent of people to be wealthy and extremely successful.  The rest of the people made up the poor and middle class.  The first image appears to show people riding on a train.  It is obvious that all of the bourgeois are sitting together in the train, and the proletariats are forced to ride alone in the back of the train.  This is just a simple example of how people were truly separated and unequal under capitalism.

The second image was probably created by a painter who was bias towards the rich bourgeois.  It shows the wealthy factory owners strolling around on a street in France.  The people seem to be taking a leisurely walk on the street without a care in the world, while the proletariats are forced to work in the horrible conditions of the factories.  The people had absolutely no labor rights, and they were forced to work 14 hour days in order to support their families.  Children were also forced to work long hours.  Unionism was one of the groups rising up in Europe at this time.  They created labor unions that would protest for the rights of workers, usually peacefully.  Marx advocated for people to rise up and complete destroy the current economic system.  Marxism is a much more extreme version of unionism.  Marx would have most likely been outraged by the second painting because it shows how the wealthy the bourgeois were and how they had to do no work in order to make a living.  They stole the money that their workers made and used it for their own luxury.  These are the things that made Marx completely outraged against the factory owners.

Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848 along with Engels.  It described the beliefs of the communist party, and how the current economic system was just not sustainable for society.  This manifesto had no effect whatsoever on the revolutions of the time.  Something that had huge effects on the people of the time were works of art.  The paintings above would have been extremely influential on the people.  The first image exposed the life of the proletariats and the second image exposed the life of the bourgeois.

The first image is a realist painting; it shows how things really looked during that time, and how the proletariats actually lived.  The second image is an impressionist painting; it shows the life of the bourgeois, but it does not show how life was actually like in France at that time.  It made life seem as if it was easy and luxurious for everyone, but it neglected to show the things that went on in factories and the living conditions of the poor factory workers.  The second image shows what life would have looked like to one of the rich factory owners because they only cared about their own luxurious lives.  They did not care about the lives of the poor factory workers that they were oppressing.  These two paintings show two very different scenes in the lives of people during the late 19th century, but they show that big changes were to come in society.