The Life and Work of Friedrich Engels/Chapter 4
The Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844
After their meeting and complete understanding in Paris, Engels went back to Barmen, there to complete and publish the results of his economic investigations in England—his historic Condition of the Working Classes in England in 1844—a reprint of the English edition of which, we are glad to learn, has just appeared.
The first edition was published in German in the summer of 1845, and was very widely read and criticised. Its chief merit is not so much the actual description of the conditions of life of the English workers, good as it was, for this had to some extent also been done by others, but the marvellous acuteness with which the young author (Engels was then only twenty-four years old) grasped the true inwardness of capitalist production and the contradictions inherent in bourgeois society.
The central idea of the book was to show how capitalist industry produces the modern working class. How it breeds the miserable conditions under which they live. How it demoralises them, dehumanises them, and reduces them to a condition of slavery in all but name; indeed, to worse than slavery, for the worker under capitalism, whilst he has to sell his body, and at that time, before he had learned the true value of efficient organisation, also his soul, to the owner of the means of production—the capitalist—he is not even sure from day to day whether he will have the wherewithal to satisfy his most elementary bodily needs.
At the same time, and this is the most important point of all, the author saw in this very despairing condition of the workers, the germ of the new hope. He saw how the bringing together of great masses of workers into a collective form of industry (with, of course, individual ownership) would gradually develop a mass consciousness in the workers. How the mastery of man over nature (as illustrated in factory and town life) would breed confidence in the masses in their own power. How the workers would be forced by their very conditions of life to see that their only way out of their misery and degradation was by their combination as fellow workers against the exploiting class—the capitalists—and that in the horrible conditions of the present life of the workers there already existed, and was germinating, the hope of the future; the Communist working-class movement, which would finally deliver mankind from all forms of slavery, from all forms of domination of man by his fellow men. This work was thus the first to lay the foundation of scientific Socialism, and was but the earnest beginning of Engels' life-long work in the Socialist Labour movement.
The book shows how far he had emancipated himself from the intricacies, the useless parts, and the idealism (in a philosophic sense) of German philosophy, whilst yet holding fast and using with a sure hand all that was true and fruitful in the Hegelian philosophy.
In addition to his masterly analysis of capitalist industry and its economic and social results, Engels also investigates the various forms of the English labour movement of the time. He sees the significance, the importance of the Trade Union movement, and yet its inadequacy so long as it remains a purely professional organisation.
He therefore hails the Chartist movement as the compact political form of the proletarian opposition to the bourgeoisie. In Chartism, the workers, as a whole class, stand against the bourgeoisie in order to filch from it political power.
But whilst the Chartists rightly take an active part in all the social struggles of the Trade Unions (for higher wages, shorter hours and better conditions of work and so forth), they are not yet sufficiently imbued with Socialist ideals and ideas. All their strivings are directed to bettering the condition of the workers within the framework of capitalist society. The Chartists are theoretically backward, but, nevertheless, they are in the main real proletarians imbued with the living fighting spirit.
The Socialists of the time, on the other hand, are more far-sighted, but they come mostly from the bourgeoisie and are mainly pacifist, tame, and live on abstract ideals. They see and lament the demoralisation of the lower classes, but they do not realise that the germ of future progress lies in these classes, and that the real demoralisation of the possessing classes, induced by their private interests and hypocrisy, is far greater.
The Socialists do not recognise historical development. They deplore the bitterness displayed by the workers against the bourgeoisie, and they desire and hope to bring about their own Communist ideals by means of wholly fruitless moral suasion and philanthropy.
But if Socialism is to become a living part of the working-class movement, Engels maintains, it must adopt the revolutionary spirit of the Chartists, just as the Chartists need the far-sightedness and clear theoretical understanding of the Socialists. Or, in other words. Socialism must be essentially a proletarian movement, and the proletarian movement must be Socialist ere the working class can gain its emancipation from capitalism.
And although we have travelled far since then, although the workers have gained all the political aims of the Chartists, have indeed gained well-nigh all that there is to be gained within the framework of capitalist society by purely political means, and political action has become more a method of propaganda and agitation than a means of improving to any great extent the lot of the worker, yet it is truer than ever to-day that the working-class movement, unless imbued with Socialist ideals, unless it is consciously working for the overthrow of capitalism and the attainment of a Socialist system of society, will never accomplish its real aim: the emancipation of the worker from its slavery.
Conversely, not only will the Socialists who rely on the moral conversion, on a change of heart of the bourgeoisie as a class, never make any progress, but so long as the Socialist parties, who do rely on the working class, are not an integral part of the general labour movement, so long as they are content to stand outside, hugging their moral and intellectual superiority, and preaching to and at the workers instead of being within and part of the labour movement itself, so long will most of their work and their sacrifices be in vain.
In the conclusion of his book, Engels expresses the opinion that England is not far from an outbreak of revolution. And it was this prophecy which was most seized upon by the critics because, at any rate in the form in which Engels predicted it, it was not fulfilled. Of course, the fact that Engels made a mistake in the nearness or the exact form of the revolution does not in the least detract from the value of the book, and we may indeed rather wonder, as Engels himself did shortly before his death, not that some of the hopes and prophecies of his fiery youth had fallen wide of the mark, but that so many of them had, indeed, come to pass.
It may be noted that particularly in their early years both Marx and Engels were prone to overestimate at times the tempo of the revolutionary Labour movement. But we must remember it was the tempo not the course of the revolution that was sometimes overestimated.
Whilst things did not move as quickly as they sometimes thought they should do, their analysis of the past, present, and future course of development of society has proved remarkably apt and accurate.
But this was only because they saw the final course and aim so clearly themselves that the actual road to be traversed seemed to them shorter than it was. As Lange has said: "In general, what we foresee very clearly we are wont to imagine as being nearer than it really is." The only really valid criticism on the book is that passed by Engels himself in his Introduction to the 1892 edition:
"It will be hardly necessary to point out that the general theoretical standpoint of this book—philosophical, economical, political—does not exactly coincide with my standpoint to-day. Modern international Socialism, since fully-developed as a science chiefly and almost exclusively by the efforts of Marx, did not as yet exist in 1844. My book represents one of the phases of its embryonic development, and as the human embryo in its early stages still reproduces the gill-arches of our fish ancestors, so this book exhibits everywhere the traces of the descent of modern Socialism from one of its ancestors—German philosophy. Thus great stress is laid on the dictum that Communism is not a mere party doctrine of the working class, but a theory, compassing the emancipation of society at large, including the capitalist class, from its present narrow condition. This is true enough in the abstract, but absolutely useless and sometimes worse in practice. So long as the wealthy classes not only do not feel the want of any emancipation, but strenuously oppose the self-emancipation of the working class, so long will the social revolution have to be prepared and fought out by the working class alone." And the experience of the last few years in Russia, in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, and, aye, here in England, too, have proved the last few lines to be truer than ever to-day. Unless, which is not altogether impossible, although improbable, England becomes the China of Europe and remains capitalist after all the other European countries have gone through the fire of revolution and established Communism, then, and then only, the English capitalist classes may be convinced of the folly of the present system, themselves resign their power, and help the workers to emancipate the whole of society from the shackles of capitalist production for profit. But no one in their senses would set to work now on such an assumption.
The Conditions of the Working Classes was to have been only the first part of an all embracing history of the English people. At the same time Engels was planning a monthly Socialist paper, to be edited together with Moses Hess, and also the publication of an encyclopædia of Socialist literature abroad, the publication of a criticism of List, and so on. The latter work he left to Marx, who had also intended doing it. The stress of the coming years, however, did not allow of the completion of all these plans.