Karl Marx gets all the press, but it is important to realize that much of

the writing which established the communist ideology was either co-
written by Friedrich Engels or based on concepts and research
established and conducted by Engels. Then there are those essential
sociological studies which served to explain and describe the real-life
historical conditions and situations that facilitated Marx to formulate
his theses for an economic system capable of addressing his various
critiques of capitalism. One of those formulary studies conducted by
Engels examined the manner in which capitalist expansionism as a
result of the Industrial Revolutionary concretely impacted the lives of
the greater majority of the population most impacted by it. That
sociological study would eventually be published under the title The
Condition of the Working Class in England.
The stimulus behind this historical analysis conducted by Engels was
a mass immigration into urban centers from the outlying rural areas in
Britain. That populated migration had resulted from a wholesale
revolution in the economic structure of the country resulting from
harnessing of the power of steam to power engines capable of turning
the potential of new inventions into machines capable of doing in less
than half the time what used to take more than twice the labor force to
accomplish. With The Condition of the Working Class in England Engels
helped to reveal that the effects of the Industrial Revolution were not
limited merely to the business world, but had also forever altered the
domestic situation of the population.
The term that would eventually come to be used to describe the
impact of the Industrial Revolution on the way people lived is
“urbanization.” His book is one of the earliest—if not the earliest—
description of the effects of urbanization on workers, their families,
communities and entire cities. Within The Condition of the Working Class
in England Engels also expands his sociological study into the realm of
psychology. Ultimately, the effects of urbanization contributed to an
alteration not just of the outward means in which those who moved
into the city from the outskirts reacted to the change, but to an altered
consciousness. Urbanization was more than just a population and
immigration issue, it was a lifestyle issue. Many of those who came
into the big city looking for work in factories had lived their entire lives
primarily through a system of self-sustainment and low-level socialism.
In other word: they were used to providing for themselves and when
they couldn’t, a system of neighborly support took up the slack. Upon
moving into the city, this very sense of identity through independence
was lost overnight. Every aspect of daily living from eating from to
getting water to waste removal had been either entirely or mostly
within their control. Tenement living stripped people of their very
sense of autonomy and such a loss inevitably results in a
psychological toll.
That toll was discontent. One of the central theories developed by
Engels from his investigation into the decline in living conditions faced
by those forced to move into constricted living conditions in order to
live where the jobs were is that discontent would be the singular
element that could possibly lead to future improvement in conditions
related to waste management, public transportation, education and
health. The owners of the factories and the tenements and the city
managers beholden to those interests had no motivation to improve
living conditions as they were enjoying a buyer’s market as far the
labor force went. Only social discontent, large-scale activism guided
by small-scale radicalism was ever going to motivate the capitalist
system becoming ever more firmly in place to address the conditions
of the working class in England.

The Condition of the Working Class in England

in 1844
 Stan Parker |
 London |
 Frederick Engels |
 19th Century
It is 150 years since Friedrich Engels wrote his classic The Condition of the Working
Class in 1844. He described in graphic detail the wretched lives that workers were forced
to lead at that time, and he looked forward to the early ending of the capitalist system
and its replacement by socialism. His hopes have not been realised, and today we may
ask two questions: (1) in what ways and to what extent have the conditions of the
working class changed since he wrote? And (2) is the call to abolish the capitalist system
and replace it by socialism as valid today as it was then?
In 1844 the Industrial Revolution was approaching its zenith. Engels vividly documents
the sordid conditions in the working class districts of the great towns; the effect of
competition ("the completest expression of the battle of all against all which rules in
modern civil society"); the immigrant Irish workers willing to take even lower wages
than the impoverished English working class; the poor health and short lives that were
the rule, and the drunkenness and depravity that were common; the factory hands
exploited long hours in filthy and often dangerous conditions, by day and night, women
and children as well as men.

There is no doubt that working and living conditions in Britain have vastly improved for
the working class in the last 150 years. Workplaces are cleaner and safer, hours of work
are generally shorter, homes better constructed and furnished, health improved and
longevity extended. Yet in some ways the situation has not changed that much. This is
what Engels wrote about London:

"The turmoil of the streets have something repulsive, something against which human
nature rebels . . . The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private
interest becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are
crowded together, within a limited space . . . 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."

Today most workers have more than a bare existence, but the gap between the rich and
the poor is growing wider. We are encouraged by the system to pursue our private
interest and this does lead to isolation and brutal indifference, mitigated only by the
collective efforts to resist the inequalities and the injustices.

The stern realities of capitalist employment are the same now as then. We work if an
employer can see a profit in employing us, otherwise we don't. The current version of
the system is more than hitherto. Relatively high paid managers do the dirty work of the
capitalist class by hiring and firing workers, organising their exploitation and breaking
their strikes. Such is the anarchy of the system that managers are sometimes called on to
fire other managers.

On the second question of whether the call to socialism is as relevant today as in Engel's
time there can be little doubt. Defenders of capitalism point to the improvement in the
material conditions of life for the mass of people over the last century or so. Certainly
most workers are better housed, better fed and better clothed than they were. How
much this is due to the beneficence of the ruling class and how much to their
opportunities to extract profits from getting workers to improve their own conditions is
another matter.

But working-class life is still far from ideal, still far from the life that is possible if
production for profit were replaced by production solely to meet needs. More
purchasing power entails poverty of another kind, that of economic insecurity, of worry
about losing the job on which "prosperity" depends. And we must not forget that, even if
the material conditions of working class have improved in the economically "advanced"
countries, many workers and their families in the Third World still suffer deprivations
comparable to, if not worse than, those described by Engels.

In 1844 there might have been some excuse for not demanding an immediate end to the
system that produced poverty for the mass and riches for the few: the wealth produced
by workers was far less abundant. Today there is no such excuse. We have the means -
the knowledge, the accumulated capital, the technology and the willing workers - to
meet all the reasonable needs of all the world's population. What stands in the way is the
support given to the profit system.

Engels understood well the nature of socialism, even though he was over-optimistic
about when it would come. He wrote of "the moment when the workers resolve to be
bought and sold no longer" and of "the abolition of the class antagonism between
bourgeoisie and proletariat". The language may be archaic but the thinking was and is
sound. Socialism is not out of date. It is more needed and more practically possible than
ever.