Fundamental beliefs are Communism, Fascism, and liberalism, Reflection history essay help
Excerpts: Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844)
THE INDUSTRIAL PROLETARIAT.
. . . It has been already suggested that manufacture centralises property in the hands of the few. It requires
large capital with which to erect the colossal establishments that ruin the petty trading bourgeoisie and
with which to press into its service the forces of Nature, so driving the hand labour of the independent
workman out of the market. The division of labour, the application of wa ter and especially steam, and the
application of machinery, are the three great levers with which manufacture, since the middle of the last
century, has been busy putting the world out of joint. Manufacture, on a small scale, created the
middle -class; on a large scale, it created the working -class, and raised the elect of the middle -class to the
throne, but only to overthrow them the more surely when the time comes. Meanwhile, it is an undenied
and easily explained fact that the numerous, petty middle -cla ss of the "good old times" has been
annihilated by manufacture, and resolved into rich capitalists on the one hand and poor workers on the
other. {20}
The centralising tendency of manufacture does not, however, stop here. Population becomes centralised
just as capital does; and, very naturally, since the human being, the worker, is regarded in manufacture
simply as a piece of capital for the use of which the manufacturer pays interest under the name of wages.
A manufacturing establishment requires many workers employed together in a single building, living near
each other and forming a village of themselves in the case of a good -sized factory. They have needs for
satisfying which other people are necessary; handicraftsmen, shoemakers, tailors, bakers, c arpenters,
stonemasons, settle at hand. The inhabitants of the village, especially the younger generation, accustom
themselves to factory work, grow skilful in it, and when the first mill can no longer employ them all,
wages fall, and the immigration of f resh manufacturers is the consequence. So the village grows into a
small town, and the small town into a large one. The greater the town, the greater its advantages. It
offers roads, railroads, canals; the choice of skilled labour increases constantly, new establishments can
be built more cheaply because of the competition among builders and machinists who are at hand, than in
remote country districts, whither timber, machinery, builders, and operatives must be brought; it offers a
market to which buyers crowd, and direct communication with the markets supplying raw material or
demanding finished goods. Hence the marvellously rapid growth of the great manufacturing towns. The
country, on the other hand, has the advantage that wages are usually lower tha n in town, and so town and
country are in constant competition; and, if the advantage is on the side of the town today, wage s sink so
low in the country to morrow, that new investments are most profitably made there. But the centralising
tendency of manufa cture continues in full force, and every new factory built in the country bears in it the
germ of a manufacturing town. If it were possible for this mad rush of manufacture to go on at this rate
for another century, every manufacturing district of England would be one great manufacturing town,
and Manchester and Liverpool would meet at Warrington or Newton; for in commerce, too, this
centralisation of the population works in precisely the same way, and hence it is that one or two great
harbours, such as Hu ll and Liverpool, Bristol, and London, monopolise almost the whole maritime
commerce of Great Britain.
THE GREAT TOWNS .
. . . Hence it comes, too, that the social war, the war of each against all, is here openly declared. Just as in
Stirner's recent book, people regard each other only as useful objects; each exploits the other, and the end
of it all is, that the stronger treads the weaker under foot, and that the powerful few, the capitalists, seize
everything for themselves, while to the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains.
What is true of London, is true of Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, is true of all great towns. Everywhere
barbarous indifference, hard egotism on one hand, and nameless misery on the other, everywhere so cial warfare, every man's house in a state of siege, everywhere reciprocal plundering under the protection of
the law, and all so shameless, so openly avowed that one shrinks before the consequences of our social
state as they manifest themselves here undi sguised, and can only wonder that the whole crazy fabric still
hangs together.
Since capital, the direct or indirect control of the means of subsistence and production, is the weapon with
which this social warfare is carried on, it is clear that all the d isadvantages of such a state must fall upon
the poor. For him no man has the slightest concern. Cast into the whirlpool, he must struggle through as
well as he can. If he is so happy as to find work, i.e ., if the bourgeoisie does him the favour to enric h
itself by means of him, wages await him which scarcely suffice to keep body and soul together; if he can
get no work he may steal, if he is not afraid of the police, or starve, in which case the police will take care
that he does so in a quiet and inoffensive manner. During my residence in England, at least twenty or
thirty persons have died of simple starvation under the most revolting circumstances, and a jury has rarely
been found possessed of the courage to speak the plain truth in the matter. Let the testimony of the
witnesses be never so clear and unequivocal, the bourgeoisie, from which the jury is selected, always
finds some backdoor through which to escape the frightful verdict, death from starvation. The
bourge oisie dare not speak the truth in these cases, for it would speak its own condemnation. But
indirectly, far more than directly, many have died of starvation, where long continued want of
proper nourishment has called forth fatal illness, when it has produ ced such debility that causes which
might otherwise have remained inoperative, brought on severe illness and death. The English working -
men call this "social murder," and accuse our whole society of perpetrating this crime perpetually. Are
they wrong?
True, it is only individuals who starve, but what security has the working -man that it may not be his turn
to-morrow? Who assures him employment, who vouches for it that, if for any reason or no reason his
lord and master discharges him to -morrow, he can struggle along with those dependent u pon him, until he
may find some one else "to give him bread?" Who guarantees that willingness to work shall suffice to
obtain work, that uprightness, industry, thrift, and th e rest of the virtues recommended by the bourgeoisie,
are really his road to happiness? N o one. He knows that he has something to -day, and that it does not
depend upon himself whether he shall have something to -morrow. He knows that every breeze that
blows, every whim of his employer, every bad turn of trade may hurl him back into the fierce whirlpool
from which he has temporarily saved himself, and in which it is hard and often impossible to keep his
head above water. He knows that, though he may have the means of living to -day, it is very uncertain
whether he shall to -morrow.