The Industrial Revolution contributed to the decline of slavery because it dramatically increased the profitability of businesses whilst allowing workers to be paid a tiny wage. Business owners realized that it was actually cheaper and less risky to pay workers than it was to buy and own slaves.

Labor unions emerged relatively quickly after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In many ways they were a continuation of guilds and peasant organizations from the pre-industrial era. However, the change they campaigned for came about very slowly. In the early years the efforts of labor unions were blocked by the government, which was almost exclusively controlled by people who benefited financially from holding unions back. The rate of change accelerated over the course of the nineteenth century and eventually labor unions were able to affect most of the changes they desired - such as child labor laws, limit on working hours, and the two-day weekend.

King Leopold was the king of Belgium when he established a personal colony in the Congo in the nineteenth century. Leopold’s Congo colony was extremely profitable due to the production of rubber, which was much in demand throughout the world. Under Belgian control the people of the Congo were heavily exploited and, according to many estimates, tens of millions of people died. The horrors and profits of Leopold’s Congo contributed to the convening of the Berlin Conference and the division of Africa among the various European imperial powers.

In the early years of the Industrial Revolution working conditions for the average individual were far worse than they had been before the revolution. Prior to the Industrial Revolution the average worker (in England) might have worked slightly less than eight hours a day tilling the fields and caring for crops and animals. In the early years of the Industrial Revolution workers were suddenly working fourteen or sixteen hour days, sometimes six or seven days a week, in horribly dangerous conditions. The relative autonomy of individuals also declined in the early years of the Industrial Revolution.

Smith believed that the economy should be driven by the market place with no outside interference. The idea was that people should push the economy to fill their needs while also determining what should not be in the economy. They would do this by buying the supplies they chose from the retailers they chose.

The factory system is where one central location houses the machinery of an industry and the workers come to the machinery to work it. This is the reason these places were called factories.

According to Karl Marx, in The Communist Manifesto, the primary enemy of the proletariat (workers) is the bourgeoisie (business-owning middle class). In order for the proletariat to improve their condition and form a classless society the bourgeoise needs to be overthrown.

The Industrial Revolution began in England in the second-half of the eighteenth century. There are many reasons why the Industrial Revolution began in England. To begin with England had just recently undergone a type of agricultural revolution that greatly increased food productivity and led to a decrease in the proportion of the population needed to work the fields to provide for the rest of the population. As such there was a surplus of available workers, as well as a growing population. Furthermore, England has an abundance of natural resources and relative ease of transportation. Finally, the government of England encouraged capitalism and free market innovation, leading to many industrial innovations. However, England’s public education system was not universally established until well after the Industrial Revolution was underway.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto, which outlines the key concepts of Marxism. According to Marx and Engels in order for the workers to form a classless society they need to seize control of the means of production from the capitalists. This is what Marx refers to as the Workers Revolution or the Proletarian Revolution.

The so-called Congo Free State, under the initial personal control of King Leopold II of Belgium and later under the control of the Belgian government, was extremely profitable due to the lucrative rubber plantations and the use of forced native labor.