Western societies had dramatically changed since the industrial revolution. The revolution led to the rise of the time of enlightenment as well as the rise of new social ideas and classes. No doubt that the revolution had positive effects on western societies but it also had negative ones. The political economist Karl Marx and the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau both dealt with the problems of western societies after the industrial revolution and discussed the idea of how the civilization and development had negatively affected western societies. Both of them were seeking ideal society. However, each of them dealt with the problem from his own perspective. Marx was seeking the ideal society in terms of economics and that was through communism, while Rousseau was seeking it in terms of returning back to nature and that was through romanticism. .
In Marx's Communist Manifesto, Marx seeks to explain how the development and the expansion of the society after the industrial revolution had led to a "class struggle". He says that the discovery of America and the expansion of modern industry had led to the establishment of the world market. This market in its turn gave immense development to commerce, navigation, communication, and industry leading to the rise and growth of a Bourgeois class. This Bourgeois class began to take control of international and domestic trade and began to gain political power which enabled them to destroy the small part that was left from the old feudal society. Not only did they destroy the remaining feudal society but also they began to create a new social class which is the Proletariat class. This class includes the wage laborers who are forced to work very hard for the Bourgeois without owning any means of production and with a very little compensation which only ensures that they are physically "not bad" and can still produce and work for the benefit of the Bourgeois.