The industrial age brought much hunger, poverty and desperation with its many technological innovations aimed at improving man's life. Although Kuyper and Marx agreed that social conditions in the industrial age were not acceptable, they differed on the cause and solution to poverty and despair in the modern world. Kuyper's approach to the problem of poverty is similar to minimally invasive surgery, less harmful but more time-consuming. Marx's approach, however, is like an amputation without cauterization, rapid but with little chance of recovery. Marx tries to heal one wound by creating another; Kuyper seeks to heal by correcting the heart of his era. According to Marx, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, where one class maintains its power by suppressing other classes. He states that the opposing forces of the industrial age are the bourgeoisie and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeoisie as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the factory owners who abuse their workers and deprive them of all human dignity for a few cents. Industry, says Marx, has made the working class proletariat merely an instrument for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Since the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase its trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the work of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease. Marx claims that the bourgeoisie not only took advantage of the proletariat through a horrible relationship between wages and work, but also through other atrocities; states that it was a common practice...... middle of paper......nt. What makes Kuyperian methods work is that it is not based on the perfection of man, but on the perfection of Christ. Christians are able to put aside their selfishness and greed because their beliefs and the Holy Spirit allow them to do so. They realize the fallen state of man and therefore are already on the alert against abuses of power and position. Another strength of Kuyperian methods is that they are voluntary, not involuntary. Communism is imposed on the population, creating resentment that leads to rebellion. Generosity and dedication to the service of the poor are not imposed on anyone, leaving them free to enjoy them. In a culture as focused on personal desires as that of the twenty-first century, Kuyper's methods are much more likely to succeed on a large scale. Works Cited Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx The Problem of Poverty, Abraham Kuyper