The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford World's Classics)

The natural price of labor is a concept used by 19th Century political economists as different as David Ricardo and Karl Marx. It refers to the minimum needed by wage laborers to survive and reproduce. It is a quantity that varies within narrow limits from person to person and place to place, but whatever its specific value, those who fall below the natural price do not survive. One way to read Friedrich Engels' classic The Condition of the Working Class in England is to take it as an exercise in finding out just how low the natural price can fall before the working class is threatened with extinction.Ironically, Engels wrote his book while working at his father's Manchester cotton mills from 1842 to 1844. Textile manufacturing, especially cotton, was then the backbone of Great Britain's industrial might. Engels, on occasion, actually worked side by side with those who labored in the cotton mills, and he visited them in their homes and wherever else they might gather, including churches, taverns, and rooming houses. While conditions were a bit worse among workers in agriculture and especially mining, the circumstance of those who worked in factories, such as those owned by Engels' wealthy bourgeois father, were unthinkably deplorable. For readers who have had their world view shaken by Katherine Boo's account of slum life in Mumbai, it may seem impossible that conditions were far worse among English laborers in 1844, but according to Engels' account, that was certainly the case. Slum life in Mumbai is relatively comfortable when compared with Manchester and other English cities and towns in 1844.Working sixteen hours a day and not infrequently even longer was commonplace for English laborers, with the meager compensation they received in exchange for their efforts varying with periodically changing economic conditions. Work places were hazardous, often lethally so, both with regard to the frequency of serious accidents and the closeted, polluted, and otherwise foul air breathed in unventilated buildings. In addition, discipline enforced by overseers hired for their uncompromising brutality, was harsh and arbitrary. Child labor, some as young as four or five, was commonplace, and women were subjected to the same destructive industrial regime as men. The work itself was typically tedious and repetitive, reducing men, women, and children to the status and condition of simple machines, until a machine was invented to do the same work even more cheaply. Then the workers were displaced, and thrown into the streets. As a result, starvation was not uncommon.All this is easy to report, though it's difficult to do so without sounding a bit histrionic. However, even more frightening and deplorable was the actual condition of the people who survived this way of working and the meager nutrition and barely livable places of habitation it provided. Engels describes them as stunted in growth, with narrow chests, underdeveloped physiques, gray skin, and deformities of the arms and legs whose particular nature was determined by the unnatural bodily positions and movements required by the tasks to which they were tied. Engels' descriptions are frightfully vivid and endorsed by physicians and disinterested others, but most unexpected and compelling are the intellectual costs of wage labor.Most of us in any society have a common stock of knowledge, things we unself-consciously know, without giving it a moment's thought, and we assume that others know as well. In this regard, however, English laborers were stunningly deficient. Many knew little or nothing of the world outside the demands of the workplace, their grotesquely deficient homes, and perhaps a roadhouse where they purchased spirits. Many if the younger ones, teens as well as those we today might call tots, didn't know that there was any other way of life. Ask them if they're tired or hungry, and the blank stares elicited by the query bespoke lack of understanding. The Hell of the workplace and the damp, dirt-floored, unheated, unfurnished, unventilated discomfort of their homes was all they knew or could imagine. And as noted above, miners and agricultural workers were worse off still. Life was lived according to a Malthusian prescription: short, nasty, and diseased. Just when it seemed that the natural price of labor could be no lower, an economic crisis would occur, and wages, unemployment rates, and the abysmally inhuman circumstances of the working class would deteriorate still further. Nevertheless, enough survived and enough reproduced to keep laborers on the job, with members of the ominously threatening surplus labor pool waiting to take their places.Engels was convinced that circumstances such as these could not prevail indefinitely. Come the next economic crisis, or the one after that, and the more intelligent and worldly workers would lead the others in a violent revolution.In time, however, world political and economic relationships changed, the self-interested bourgeoisie may have recognized that its interests were best served by workers whose prospects included more than a short and miserable life, and government intervention became more effective. What followed was still remotely distant from a workers' paradise, but there was no violent revolution in England. First published in German, in the Preface to the English edition (1885) of The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engel's refers the reader to Marx's Capital for a thorough account of these developments.The Condition of the Working Class in England is not an unreliable, ideologically driven, Marxist polemic. It is a very well written piece of scholarship replete with documentation and reports of first-hand observations made by professionals and men of means who had no stake in contributing to a politicized fictional account of life among wage laborers. It is to Engels' credit that the book, while fairly long, is not redundant, citing the same outrages and abuses again and again. Engels keeps it interesting, enabling the reader to see the consequences of the economic savagery of the ostensibly civilized bourgeoisie. Engels acknowledges, moreover, that in a competitive capitalist economic environment, a war of all against all, survival as a bourgeois demanded unmitigated ruthlessness, whatever the consequences for the working class. The alternative was to eventually sink into the working class one's self.As for the natural price of labor, I can't express its value in monetary terms, but it's certainly lower than I had ever imagined. In a world where those who don't die in infancy are old at thirty and dead at forty, and in the interim they are commodities unmercifully exploited by the bourgeoisie, the concept of the natural price of labor seems antiquated, misleading, and beside the point, which may explain why Engels didn't use it in this book. Perhaps those born dead were the lucky ones.

Friedrich Engels was born into a pietistic protestant family of textile industrialists in Barmen Wuppertal on November 28 1820. He wrote Romantic poetry and underwent the typical 19th century crisis of belief. Serving in the army in Berlin, he started to attend lectures on philosophy by Young Hegelians. His parents were not amused and decided to send him to Manchester in 1842. Engels stayed twenty-two months in Manchester from December 1842 to 1844. He worked in the business office of his father’s cotton manufacture Ermen & Engels. Young Friedrich fell in love with the red-haired uneducated Irish working class girl Mary Burns and lived with her without marriage for the rest of her life. During the twenty-two months in Manchester Engels collected the material for his first book, which appeared 1845 in German with the title “Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England”. Engels returned to Manchester after the defeat of the 1848 Revolution.Already in the preface to the first German edition of 1845 Engels writes that German Socialism and Communism have grown from theoretical premises. By studying the real condition of life of the proletariat, he wants to go the way of Feuerbach and overcome Hegelian speculation. In England the proletariat can be studies in all its developed form.The largest part of the reportage shows the slums and the quarters in Manchester. Engels describes crowded dwellings and fears these can be dangerous to the morals and the health of the inhabitants. Children and lodgers share their parents’ sleeping-rooms. Engels writes that there is no cleanliness and consequently to comfortable family life is possible in these dwellings. Only a degenerate race, robbed of all humanity, degraded and reduced morally and physically to bestiality, could feel comfortable and at home there. Engels then describes the relationship between commercial crisis, starvation, illness and child mortality. Engels argues that 57 percent of working class children die before the fifth year, while only 20 percent of the children of the upper classes do so. Engels deals with the quasi-absent education of the children in Manchester. He describes the absence of religion in the manufacturing proletariat and the anti-State church religiosity of the agricultural proletariat.Engels writes about vice on the great cities and contrasts it with the simplicity of country life. Engels seems to believe the proletarian family is dissolving. The mothers cannot care for their children. Engels cites one example where the father cares for the children and the mother works in the factory. This is an “insane state of things” which degrades both sexes. It “unsexes the man and takes all womanliness from women”, Engels writes. Engels is not free of Victorian ideas about gender and family.Engels has no comprehensive analysis of capitalist surplus production yet. The system is seen as the reign of competition combined with the advent of modern machinery. Competition makes life a battle for life and existence. There is a battle for life not only between the classes but also between individuals and members of these classes. In a well-ordered state of society improvements in machines work could only be a source of enjoyment. But in a society of war of all against all machine-work throws workers out of employment. Very often Engels characterizes capitalist society as war of all against all. His ideal is a well-ordered state.What is the proletariat? Engels distinguishes between working men and the proletariat. Home weavers are also working men but no proletarians. They had a little piece of land and were permanently settled. Machinery robs home workers from their trade and forces them to look for work in the town. They now depend exclusively on wages and belong to the proletariat. Engels compares the English working man with the poor small peasants in Germany. Both are poor. But the more demoralizing aspect on the English worker is the insecurity of his position.There are first elements of a theory of alienation. Home weavers are intellectually dead, not human beings but only tailing machines in the service of aristocrats. The industrial revolution made the class of farming weavers disappear. The industrial revolution has simply carried this on by making the workers machines pure and simple. Engels writes about the brutalizing influence of forced work.Engels formulates an early version of the labour theory of value. The minimum of concurrence is the existential minimum. The existential minimum depends on the state of civilization of the workers. The Irish are a sort of unemployed reserve army of workers. With such a competition the English working man has to struggle.Engels analyses different sections of the proletariat. The degree of intelligence of the various workers is in direct proportion to their relation to manufacture. The factory workers are more enlightened than miners and more than agricultural workers. There is a centralizing tendency in manufacturing and the proletarian population becomes centralized just as capital does. Engels continues with an analysis of the mining proletariat and the agricultural proletariat.Being without land, the proletariat is for the first time in position to undertake an independent movement. The working class has become a race wholly apart from the bourgeoisie. There are two radically dissimilar nations in England now, Engels writes following Thomas Carlyle. The last part of the book deals with the Labour movements in England. Chartism is the most developed form of opposition against the bourgeoisie. Engels describes how a proletariat section of Chartism separates itself from the bourgeoisie. Engels predicts a revolution in comparison with which the French Revolution of 1794 will prove to have been a child’s play.

Written in the 1840s when Engels was still in his 20s, "The Condition of the Working Class in England" combines razor sharp observations of slum life and factory conditions with scathing commentary on the callouness of British factory owners. It's a landmark in labor history and Marxist thought. It is also genuinely awareness-raising: few readers will ever think of "labor markets" -- a term Engels would have hated -- in quite the same way again, as the book shows vividly how workers became semi-slaves in the workshops and poorhouses of 19th-century industrial Britain.That said, "The Condition of the Working Class in England" is wildly unbalanced and shouldn't be treated as a serious history of the industrial revolution. It isn't even a good read -- the repetitions, sloppy organization, references to obscure events and personalities, and non-stop sarcasm and indignation get tiresome after 200 pages. The book is best dipped into rather than read from cover to cover. But anyone who reads even parts won't be disappointed.

A bit of a tedious read, but worth the trouble. If you want to know how we got into the whole "employee vs. employer" tension, this would shed some light. Granted, Engels is writing form a pre-conceived notion that worker revolt is needed to change things. Fortunately, this didn't happen as both sides eventually realized they needed each other to succeed. Still, his detailed description of the poverty caused by England's Industrial Revolution is hard to dismiss. It shows that no system is above reform and improvement.

A book that doesn't need an introduction from me, most potential readers will have some idea of what to expect when they buy this. They won't be dissapointed. it is easy to see why Engels name was made by the book. what is harder to see for a modern reader is how ground breaking it was at the time.

Don't be put off by the academic appearance of this book. It is very readable and in fact is as relevant today as when it was written. Engels reports in detail on the working conditions of Britain (not just England) in the 1840s. Any ardent Thatcherites who think we should return to 'Victorian values' would do well to read this book. The issues of poverty, exploitation, unfettered competition and slum housing are still with us today. Engels also sets out a devastating critique of the capitalist system. It is sobering to think that the sweatshop conditions he describes are all too common in the countries that provide us with cheap goods today. The book ends with a harrowing account of life in the workhouses. Highly recommended.

Marx is often a heavy read; this by the young Engels isn't. The book combines its historical portrait of a time not far distant with incisive philosophical commentary. It is a foreigner's book, written from the perspective of an outsider, but one already moved by the predicament of those he sees, burning to engage them. Descriptions of the attitudes of the bourgeoisie are stunningly vivid, precise and damning. The disunity and squalor of the masses are unromantically put across, their habits of life bluntly summarised.The book is not a manifesto for change but the urgent need to move in just that direction is palpable not far from the surface of the text. McLellan's introduction is perhaps too short and doesn't fully set the work in context against the wider body of Engels' writings. The book is a must read for anyone interested in Victorian Britain and the history of socialism.

I have read this classic book about the area called Angel Meadow and indeed I have had ancestors who lived there so had a vested interest in the book. Times were really hard in that time and this book really brings it home to us how lucky we are to be living at the present time. The area and the people who lived there were true characters and the book is a great read! Sad to see though that there are going to be multiple high rise apartment blocks built soon, but can highly recommend people to purchase the book from Amazon, the service is second to none.

Fantastic reporting from a young man on factories and conditions of operatives. He also investigated living conditions and health matters. The writing is factual and devastating, although compassionate. You have to remember that all this cruelty, poverty, malnutrition and very early death was at the time of The British Empire when many Irish (part of the Empire) were also flocking into places like Manchester to escape famine. He described cotton operatives as "white slaves". This at the time when some wealthy and devout men and women were agonising over and working to abolish slavery!