What parts of the ideology of Marx and Engels were borrowed from previous political thinkers?

Answer 1

The roots of communism as expressed by Karl Marx and Friedrich reach back to earlier social and political thinkers in Europe. They were present in Europe before the industrial revolution reached the high levels in England and Germany when Marx and Engels could properly gauge the consequences of the political and economic forces driving capitalism. In perhaps layman's terms, the Primacy of Matter and the Reality of Change helped Marx and Engels refine their thinking and publish works central to the goal of communism.

European socialists were dealing with the ideas of dialectics and materialism and it's well known that a wide view of socialist change in Europe found their way into a variety of social and economic thinkers.

The idea of the primacy of matter were part of French thinkers in the eighteenth century. These ideas were formulated from ancient Greek philosophers such as Democritus. Concerning the reality of change, a modern part of Hegal's thinking which defined how opposing social ideas clashed to form a synthesis was given a new name, dialectics.

From these roots, Marx and Engels refined and better "defined" their impact on European thinkers.