The Condition of the Working Class in England

“England, the great manufacturing centre of an agricultural world, with an ever-increasing number of corn and cotton-growing Irelands revolving around her, the industrial sun.”

This quote is an oblique commentary on the inherent connection between capitalism and colonialism. The ever-expanding markets, necessary for the continued flow of production, are made possible through the subjugation of less developed or powerful countries, such as Ireland. The quote suggests that any nations that come into contact with England would be subjugated and treated as inferior, unless they can protect their own interests.

“In truth, they were not human beings; they were merely toiling machines in the service of the few aristocrats who had guided history down to that time. The industrial revolution has simply carried this out to its logical end by making the workers machines pure and simple, taking from them the last trace of independent activity, and so forcing them to think and demand a position worthy of men.”

Engels clearly despises capitalism in its Western European form. However, he does not believe that life prior to the industrial revolution was much better, since the lack of mobility and education virtually enslaved farmers and workers. He sees the shift taking place in his lifetime in terms of quantity rather than quality: Because of the rapid urbanization and centralization, poverty grows faster and becomes more visible. The rise of the proletariat brings with it the potential for a positive change, since the workers can more clearly see what is in their best interest and can more easily get organized in the city.

“The dissolution of mankind into monads, of which each one has a separate essence, and a separate purpose, the world of atoms, is here carried out to its utmost extreme.”

Capitalism leads to extreme individualization through its promotion of competition. This process breaks up social and familial ties, and forces each person to go about their business individually and become extremely self-absorbed. Such rapid industrialization and urbanization was unprecedented in Europe and only visible in England at the time Engels was writing.

“And yet, in other respects, Manchester is less built according to a plan, after official regulations, is more an outgrowth of accident, than any other city; and when I consider in this connection the eager assurances of the middle class, that the working class is doing famously, I cannot help feeling that the liberal manufacturers, the bigwigs of Manchester, are not so innocent after all, in the matter of this sensitive method of construction.”

Considering the geography of Manchester, where the poor are isolated into neighborhoods made invisible by the pretty facades on the main roads leading into downtown, Engels touches on the potential connections between urban planning and social justice. One of his consistent criticisms of the bourgeoisie is their hypocrisy and denial. The fact that they can claim the working class is happy means that they purposefully refuse to acknowledge problems, which implies they want the poor to stay hidden in the slums.

“Competition is the completest expression of the battle of all against all which rules in modern civil society.”

This passage alludes to Thomas Hobbes’s treatise Leviathan on the importance of an authoritarian state as a way to prevent universal chaos. Hobbes’s premise is that the natural state of being is for each individual to be in constant war with everyone else, which has a negative impact on all aspects of society. Engels equates Hobbes’s term “war” with competition and indicates that society can be destroyed by it.

“But this competition of the workers among themselves is the worst side of the present state of things in its effect upon the worker, the sharpest weapon against the proletariat in the hands of the bourgeoisie.”

Reinforcing the idea of competition as war, Engels defines it as a weapon—something intended to injure or kill. He illustrates that competition between workers is damaging to themselves, not to anyone else. In fact, the employers benefit from competition and can use it to control the proletariat.

“In other words, the worker is, in law and in fact, the slave of the property-holding class, so effectually a slave that he is sold like a piece of goods, rises and falls in value like a commodity.”

This quote equates the capitalist system to slavery. It demonstrates that even if the members of the proletariat are not called slaves, they are seen and treated as such by the bourgeoisie. In a system that values labor in the abstract rather than the person actually doing it, workers are reduced to the monetary value of their labor. This is akin to the mechanism of dehumanization employed by slavers. Thus, Engels again sheds light on the inherent link between capitalism and colonialism.

“The temptation is great, he cannot resist it, and so when he has money he gets rid of it down his throat. What else should he do? How can society blame him when it places him in a position in which he almost of necessity becomes a drunkard; when it leaves him to himself, to his savagery?”

On one hand, Engels points out that many social problems, such as alcoholism and prostitution, are not inherent but caused by terrible poverty. It is not logical to blame people for their poor conduct when they are, in reality, victims of society. On the other hand, as a product of his generation, Engels has interiorized certain value-judgments about what constitutes “civilized” and “savage” behavior. He feels sympathy for the poor but still condemns their behavior.

“But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live—forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence—knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission.”

This sentence aims to shock the intended readers. The bourgeoisie in 19th-century Europe considered itself the judge of morality and aesthetics, so being accused of murder would have caused resentment and anger. Engels wants to provoke some kind of reaction, possibly hoping that if enough educated people consider his argument, they might adopt his point of view and begin promoting social change.

“It is all very pretty and very agreeable to the ear of the bourgeois to hear the ‘sacredness of property’ asserted; but for him who has none, the sacredness of property dies out of itself.”

The right to private property is one major factor that differentiates capitalist and socialist or communist systems. Since everything in England was owned by the upper-middle class and the aristocracy, it was in their best interest to promote an ideology that considers private property an essential right. Similarly, for the proletariat, who owned nothing and had no hope of acquiring anything, the distribution of property to a small select group would have seemed unjust and in no way a natural, or sacred, way of being. In this quote Engels demonstrates that what the bourgeoisie likes to consider “natural” or “sacred” is usually a mask for its own interests.

“Every improvement in machinery throws workers out of employment, and the greater the advance, the more numerous the unemployed; each great improvement produces, therefore, upon a number of workers the effect of a commercial crisis, creates want, wretchedness, and crime.”

Technological progress is often unquestioningly defined as a positive thing. However, depending on the society that implements it, it can actually have a deeply negative effect. What Engels criticizes in his book is the bourgeoisie’s use of technology to increase profit rather than benefit society at large. In the industrial sphere new technology is often not essential to the process but a way to increase production and decrease cost, which in turn creates a disadvantage for workers. In this way, machines become the proletariat’s enemy. They have the ability to displace workers and to bring wages down.

“If the family of our present society is being thus dissolved, this dissolution merely shows that, at bottom, the binding tie of this family was not family affection, but private interest lurking under the cloak of a pretended community of possessions.”

This quote reflects Engels’s belief that marriage in his time was a business transaction rather than a sacred union. This and similar observations foreshadow his well-known work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884), in which he demonstrates that bourgeois ideas and laws about monogamy are fundamentally connected to economic, not moral, concerns.

“The lord of the serf was a barbarian who regarded his villein as a head of cattle; the employer of operatives is civilized and regards his ‘hand’ as a machine. In short, the position of the two is not far from equal, and if either is at a disadvantage, it is the free working man.”

This quote draws a parallel between the medieval period and the 19th century, and alludes once again to the idea of capitalism as enslavement. Europeans would consider the feudal system “barbaric,” but the relationship between manufacturers and their workers was often just as injurous and unjust. Engels is being provocative by claiming that the presumably free people working in factories are treated worse than serfs.

“This is the price at which society purchases for the fine ladies of the bourgeoisie the pleasure of wearing lace; a reasonable price truly! Only a few thousand blind working men, some consumptive labourers’ daughters, a sickly generation of the vile multitude bequeathing its debility to its equally ‘vile’ children and children’s children.”

Engels underscores that the luxury goods required by the upper classes come at both a monetary and a human cost. The bourgeoisie does not like to be reminded of how its wealth impacts others and so purposefully attempts to dehumanize workers. By not thinking of the injuries and illnesses caused by factory work, members of the property-owning class can reduce the value of a product to its monetary price. Engels uses irony to reverse such an attitude and bring back an awareness of workers as human beings.

“It is a curious fact that the production of precisely those articles which serve the personal adornment of the ladies of the bourgeoisie involves the saddest consequences for the health of the workers.”

The worst aspect of the workers’ exploitation is that their injuries and deaths are unnecessary, since what they produce is often nonessential and decorative, with no practical purpose. In other words, work-related injuries and deformities are the result of frivolous demands, which could easily be dealt away with, if only the members of the bourgeoisie would stop buying such articles.

“The workers must therefore strive to escape from this brutalizing condition, to secure for themselves a better, more human position; and this they cannot do without attacking the interest of the bourgeoisie which consists in exploiting them.”

This sentence lays out the main issue at stake. Engels’s book makes it clear that workers’ conditions in England are inhumane and that people naturally would want to escape such misery. The problem is that the privation is so widespread and ingrained in the capitalist endeavor that improving life would require changing the entire system. The industrial revolution has created social extremes—the property-owning and wage-earning classes—whose interests are fundamentally irreconcilable. As a result, a clash between the two is inevitable.

“True, we shall have single acts of violence and even of brutality to report, but it must always be kept in mind that the social war is avowedly raging in England; and that, whereas it is in the interest of the bourgeoisie to conduct this war hypocritically, under the disguise of peace and even of philanthropy, the only help for the working men consists in laying bare the true state of things and destroying this hypocrisy; that the most violent attacks of the workers upon the bourgeoisie and its servants are only the open, undisguised counterpart of what the bourgeoisie perpetrates secretly, treacherously against the workers.”

The bourgeoisie treats acts of violence and crimes committed by the poor as individual aberrations or moral failings. Engels disputes such a view and places proletariat misconduct in a much wider context of the social classes at odds. The exploitation of workers is just as violent as individual murder or arson, and leads to many more serious losses, but it is so prevalent and systematic that it has been normalized and is taken for granted. Furthermore, newspapers, owned by members of the bourgeoisie, would place much more emphasis on occasional crimes committed against the upper classes than on daily accidents and deaths taking place in factories and mills. In this way, the crimes of the bourgeoisie are simply better hidden, while those committed by the working class are made public.

“Because the English bourgeois finds himself reflected in his law, as he does in his God, the policeman’s truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working man quite otherwise!”

This quote echoes the theme of “sacredness” when discussing the bourgeoisie’s interests. The author argues that the status quo in a given country is simply the reflection of the ruling class’ priorities, but it masquerades as the natural or divine way of being. Consequently, the law should not be considered an unchanging and error-free entity. If it were dictated by the proletariat’s interests, it would look fundamentally different.

“Since the working men do not respect the law, but simply submit to its power when they cannot change it, it is most natural that they should at least propose alterations in it, that they should wish to put a proletarian law in place of the legal fabric of the bourgeoisie.”

This passage is likely a response to the bourgeoisie’s inability to understand why workers want reforms and their hostility to such demands. Since capitalism is sustained by the legal system, putting the workers at a disadvantage, changing the conditions of the working class would require altering the law. This quote is another iteration of Engels’s desire for and prediction of large-scale social changes that must inevitably take place through the struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

“He cannot comprehend that he holds any other relation to the operatives than that of purchase and sale; he sees in them not human beings, but hands, as he constantly calls them to their faces; he insists, as Carlyle says, that ‘cash payment is the only nexus between man and man.’”

This quote identifies the key failing of the capitalist system by alluding to the process of dehumanization, which reduces humans the value of their labor. Such a dynamic is beneficial for employers or slavers as it allows them to mistreat humans without feeling guilty. When the only relation between people is money, then morality does not need to enter the equation. Without ethic consideration shaping human interaction, any atrocity becomes possible, like slavery, systematic exploitation, or murder.

“The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: ‘If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen; this I require, this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!”

Charity and philanthropy play an important role in 19th-century upper-class society as a way to demonstrate moral superiority. However, Engels debunks the belief that those who give money to various benevolent institutions are good people. He points out that charity is self-serving, since it is used as a way to buy aesthetically pleasing streets, devoid of beggars, not to truly help those in need. There is nothing religious, spiritual, or moral in donating; it is one more commercial transaction.

“Malthus declares in plain English that the right to live, a right previously asserted in favour of every man in the world, is nonsense. He quotes the words of a poet, that the poor man comes to the feast of Nature and finds no cover laid for him, and adds that ‘she bids him begone’, for he did not before his birth ask of society whether or not he is welcome.”

Engels is strongly opposed to Thomas Robert Malthus’s social theory, which goes against prevalent continental schools of thought focused on ideas of social justice and essential human rights. The problem with Malthus’s idea of “welcome” is that the capitalist system is based on a dichotomy between owners and workers, with the latter always being exploited in one way or another by the former. If only the bourgeoisie procreates, as Malthus would suggest is desirable, then eventually there would be no workers left and the property-owning class would become impoverished or would have to create a new proletariat. Thus, while Malthus’s theories present an excuse to mistreat workers without guilt, they are simply another way for the upper-middle class to sustain its control of the proletariat.

“If, then, the problem is not to make the ‘surplus population’ useful, to transform it into available population, but merely to let it starve to death in the least objectionable way and to prevent its having too many children, this, of course, is simple enough, provided the surplus population perceives its own superfluousness and takes kindly to starvation.”

Engels points out another fundamental problem with Malthus and his contemporaries. While for political theorists, who are members of the bourgeoisie, their ideas remain an abstraction and are meant to preserve their comfortable way of life, for everyone else, such opinions are offensive—no person would willingly give up their life on the say-so of a politician. As Engels points out, it is ridiculous to expect that a worker would accept starvation as “natural” and would not attempt to do something about it. Thus, following the logic of Malthus and his supporters, the New Poor Laws created even more despicable conditions for proletarians, punishing them for being born poor. Consequently, workers became even more willing to rebel.