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McClellan’s Intro

What is this work?
- “a fine bill of indictment”
- “foundation document” for “Marxist socialist tradition”
- Empirical basis for Marx
- “a classic of early social geography” (xix)
- First work to cover entire manufacturing system, not just partic type
Reception
- Marx
  - So youthful, powerful and passionate
  - Contrasts favorably with the “gray on gray” nature of later work
  - Warmth, humor, energy, certainty
- Attention from Germany and Russia at first
  - They liked his observations
  - They didn’t agree w/conclusions (ie, prophcy)
- 1887: first English translation (Florence Kelly Wischnewetsky) for Americans
- 1892: first translation published in Britain
- As socialism spreads, more people read it
- Scholars: Steven Marcus, Maxine Berg, Gertrude Himmelfarb
Problems
- “Underrates” the “drive and vitality” of bourgeoisie
  - Doesn’t pay attention to its positive work
  - Doesn’t see positive side of Corn Law repeal
- Derisive about Irish, essentialist about women
- Prematurely believes working class to be homogeneous
- Overly dependent upon technological determinism
  - For example, what of artisanal production in London? asks \McC
- Incorrect Predictions
  - Too confident in Young Hegelian teleology
  - 1850s-60s would be “the Golden Age of Victorian capitalism”
Biography
- Engels wrote this book at age 24!
- Father
  - Pious businessman of Barmen, called “Little Manchester” (Rhenan Prussia)
    - Owns business that sews thread
  - Thus, Weber is on to something here: religion + business
- Age 16
  - Dad pulls him out of school to apprentice him to family biz
  - Sent to Bremen, port town, to work with their exporters
- At Bremen
  - Cosmopolitan port town
  - Publishes newspaper articles on Bremen social life and Barmen working class
  - Joins the Young German Movement (liberal, socially minded, Heine)
- 1841: Military Service takes him to Berlin
  - Reads Hegel
  - Joins Young Hegelians
    - “Young Hegelian enterprise of helping humanity in its appointed task of making rationality unfold itself in history” xi
- 1842: To Cologne on way home
  - Meets Moses Hess (first Y H to become Commie), becomes Communist
    - In his Preface to German ed: Says German Socialism/Communism “proceeded, more than any other, from theoretical premisses” (thus Germany needs his empirical work, his “authentic” data, esp b/c he thinks that Germany will soon follow England’s example); “none…arrived at Communism otherwise than by way of the Feuerbachian dissolution of Hegelian speculation” (13)
  - Visits Rheinisch Zeitung office (they publish Young Hegelian work), meets Marx (Marx 2 years older)
- 1842-4: Manchester
  - Arrives right in midst of a crash
  - 21 months in Manchester
  - Prepares MS material (using Parlia reports, newspapers, books, personal experience, local politics, Chartists and Owenites)
  - Learns that economic facts greatly influence modern world
  - Writes “Outline of a Critique of Political Economy,” sends to Marx to publish at D-F-G
    - Prods Marx to begin thinking about economics
  - Writes positive review of Carlyle’s Past and Present
  - Begins relationship with Irish servant, Mary Burns
- Summer 1844
  - Stops in Paris on way home
  - Meets up with Marx; they begin collaboration
- Late Summer 1844 to March 1835
  - Revises MS at Barmen (family home)
  - Family completely pissed at his Communism: “middle class fury”
  - Their religious concern about his “soul” is a disguise for their “sheer malice”
- June 1845: Published! at Leipzig
  - Moves to Brussels: with Marx ever after

What Is It? and Definitions

A summary of the condition of the working class, indeed
- Meant to send it to party leaders, MPs, men of letters in England: “something to remember me by”
A social analysis of capitalism (ie, studying the mode of production) that condemns the inhumanity of the system and projects its fiery end in revolution
Capital: “the direct or indirect control of the means of subsistence and production” 37

Competition: “the completest expression of the battle of all against all which rules in modern civil society,” not only between classes, but also within classes (87)

Within bourg: Even companies that don’t get the new machines must adjust their prices to be competitive with the others, so they reduce wages so they can keep competitive prices, making the worker “the universal scapegoat of society” (149)
Within proletariat: because of the surplus population (the “reserve army” always there, which also makes the competition between proles always worse than the bourg’s need for worker); because of imported Irish and Scottish workers

Working Class
- Proletariat
- Propertyless class of people who sell their labor
Middle Class
- Bourgeoisie
- Possessing class
Upper Class
- Aristocracy
- Political power
Later, however, he uses these terms somewhat differently to convey the changes that occurred
- Lower middle class (his example: the weavers who do home work) turns into proletariat
  - No longer have hope of rising
  - Before, they had little plots of land
  - Chance to gather a little capital, make own workshop
- Tradesmen turn into manufacturers
- In other words, the petty middle class disappears (ie small shop-keepers and skilled artisans), the agricultural class is shrunk to almost nothing, and the aristocrats begin to share political power with bourgeois and lose economic supremacy (to the extent to which they are not capitalists, but only old-style land-owning folk), so that the whole population turns into two opposing camps, workers and capitalists.
  - Capitalists include bourgeois (mostly manufacturing, but also farming and a little bit of mining) and aristocrats (mostly mining and agricultural)

Content

Introduction: Summarizes history of Industrial Revolution
- Lots of facts
  Story: Inventions of 1760s-80s which automized work and made use of natural forces begin the process, leading to rapid growth that culminates in the terrible system of 1830s-40s
  
  Story: how factory system from cloth industry has infiltrated all the others, incl. mining, agriculture, and dressmaking
- Includes some basic political economy
  - ie, New machines lead to lower wages and unemployment
- Includes prophesy of revolution at close
Chapter on “The Great Towns”
- London, Glasgow, Dublin, Birmingham, esp Manchester
- Descriptions of living conditions are here
- Called the heart of the book by McClellan
Chapter on competition: as the main rule by which things run
Chapter on results of these conditions
- Immorality, vice, ignorance, health problems, crimes
Descriptions of particular industries in cloth-making
- Machines, female labor, children working, aging/diseases/bad health, truck, fine, and cottage systems
- Weavers, stocking makers, lace workers, printers, potters, machinery and metal production glass, dressmakers/sewers
Labor Movements
- Strikes, unions, Chartism, Socialism, look into future Communism
Mining
Agricultural Work
The Bourgeois Attitude
- Just rips them a new one

Historical Background

Various Narratives

Society is reduced to two opposing camps
Machines division of labor application of natural forces = IR
Machines
- New machines, plus application of natural forces (wind, steam, water) lead to beginning of Industrial Revolution
- Weavers and spinners—the first modernized industry—used to be free, have leisure time, well-paid, small plots of land to supplement, potential to get into petty middle class. Idyllic, but “intellectually dead,” “cosily romantic as it was, was nevertheless not worthy of human beings” (17) (later: “morals and customs of the good old times are completely obliterated,” 34 but he’s not really that interested in the old times and doesn’t want to go back to them: he ridicules that impulse)
  - You see that the “thesis” doesn’t have consciousness…
- Workers used machines…. then became machines
- Machines lead to high productivity, which makes products cheaper, increasing demand, increasing wages, leading to exclusive careers.
  - ie, initial increase in wages upon mechanization leads people to abandon traditional way of life and depend only on single trade
  - single trade-ism leads to competition
  - abandoning agriculture completely leads to giving up small holds, leading to big farms with wage laborers on them, leading to agriculture run by manufacturing rules (ie low low wages and competition)
Machines replace hand-work, thus lowering prices (prosperity, exports, national wealth), and creating proletariat (destruction of widespread property ownership, demoralization, and creation of political excitement)
Growth of associated industries: Steam engine needed, creating need for coal to smelt iron, thus more attn on iron mines
Division of labor: by age and gender (b/c of machines, early ones are big and need men; later ones intricate and need women and children) and by types of jobs
Lancashire was an “obscure, ill-cultivated swamp,” and becomes a network of 2 big towns (Manchester and Liverpool) and many other small ones
Inventions of 1760s-80s which automized work and made use of natural forces begin the process, leading to rapid growth that culminates in the terrible system of 1830s-40s
- 1764: Watt, steam engine
- 1767: Arkwright, spinning jenny
  - Arkwright, “father of factory system,” combined water power, jenny, continuous production with modern employment practices
  - Remember, 1835: 1.5 million in cotton industry: 220,000 of them are in mills
  - Spinning = making yarn
  - Looms = weave yarn into cloth
- 1785: Steam applied to spinning
- 1804: Power loom
- Keep in mind: “Every new advance brings with it loss of employment, want, and suffering.” (149) due to lower wages, unemployment (the benefit of lower-cost goods won’t surface for years, but the suffering is immediate)
How factory system from cloth industry has infiltrated all the others, incl. mining, agriculture, and dressmaking, and even the trades that still use hand work, not machines, with division of labor, strict hours, etc
Unions will lead to democracy will lead to socialism. The only question is, lawfully or by force?

Reaction, Rebellion, and Movements
- Progression of Working Class
  - First, theft
  - Second, destruction
  - Third, unions
    - Core is the factory hands
  - Fourth, Chartism
  - Fifth (in future, really): Communism
- 1824: Right of free associations or “combinations”
  - Right to strike, be part of a union
- Unions: what do they do?
  - Standardize wages
    - So that the workers don’t compete with each other and thus drive wages down
    - So that they don’t get huge reductions in bad times
    - This is the key says Engels because what they really do at the level of political economy is take out competition: “first attempt to abolish competition” (226) ie among themselves, making them truly dangerous to social law, no longer sold as goods subject to supply and demand
    - He says they will eventually abolish all competition
  - Limit supply of labor
    - So demand for workers is always high
  - Help individual workers in bad times
    - eg, give out cash during strikes; pay funeral costs
- Unions: Method
  - First, petition the employer
  - If that doesn’t work: Strike
    - Required by law to give notice
- Strike Vocabulary
  - Partial strike: workers of one or more manufacturers in one trade
  - General strike: workers in all of that trade strike
  - Knobstick: someone who accepts work during a strike (scab)
- Effectiveness of Strikes?
  - Admits that they can’t really manage to fix wages irregardless of supply and demand
  - Plus, it usually hurts the workers more (no wages)
  - However, effective in particular cases and for particular issues/problems
  - Best work is preventative
    - Employers know if they reduce wages for no good reason (eg, if the competitors don’t lower them), they will strike
English Socialism: Universal Love, Doomed to Fail
- Far-seeing, tame, peaceable, nice dudes
- But too abstract, too psychological, too metaphysical, so don’t really get much done
- Unavoidably problematic b/c founded by manufacturer, Robert Owen
  - 244: “injustice”
- Goals
  - Possession in common in communes
  - Rational government
  - Divorce
  - Freedom of conscience
  - Equal rights
  - Manufacturing and agricultural work
- Real help: Education
  - Makes available some great literature, esp in translation
    - He cites Shelley, Byron, Proudhon, Diderot, Strauss
  - Have great lecture series
  - Reading rooms are a great resource
- Future: through work with Chartism, will become more practical, as it gives Chartism the advantages of French socialism’s theory (example, Saint-Simonism, which has positive view on industry)
Chartism
- A political movement when it begins (1838) that becomes a social movement (1845) (242)
  - Attempts to change political law to enact social change (236: republican)
  - “A knife and fork question” (237), a phrase he takes from a Chartist leader
- Origins
  - 1780s-90s with growth of Democratic Party, esp. during French Rev
  - After Fr Rev: Radical Party emerges
    - At first, Radical Party tends to embrace both Radical bourgeois and the Chartist workers
    - 1842: Due to the failure of bourg to follow through with support for the workers striking (with the bourg telling them to do so) for the sake of the (apparently mutual, but really just the bourg’s) interest in repealing Corn Laws, they move apart
- ~~1835:~~ 1838: People’s Charter drawn up
  - Leader: William Lovett, in London
- Its Agitation
  - Two big times: 1839, 1842 (3.5 million signatures)
  - 1842: Banded together peacefully, amazingly cohesive, except they had no concrete goals b/c of the fact that the bourg had caused them to strike for the Corn Law repeal….
Laws: Parliamentary Acts
- 1802, Apprentices Act
  - No making kids go off to work camps, housed and controlled completely by masters
- 1819, 1825, 1831 Factory Acts
  - Owen and Peel
  - First ones never enforced
  - Last one spottily enforced
  - Restricting working house of kids
- 1832: Reform Bill
- 1832: Michael Sadler’s Committee
  - To investigate conditions of factories
    - Sympathetic to workers; exaggerated in their favor
  - New Investigation Demanded
    - Goes in the other direction: not harsh enough
    - But still reveals enough to make public horrified
- 1832: Factory Act
  - Limits work hours of children and teens
  - Under 8 can’t work (except in silk industry)
  - No nightwork for kids
  - 2 hrs day compulsory school
  - Inspectors and surgeons hired to enforce
  - Of course, some still get away with it
  - It erases the most “heinous” but things still bad
- 1842, The Coal Mines Act
  - No women and children under 10 in underground mines
  - Not well enforced
- 1847, Ten Hours Act
  - Agitation 1839, 1844 etc
  - A long time coming!

Agriculture

Before I R
- Agricultural masses of leaseholders or landowners who own small plots: patriarchal but free
- There always were surplus people hangin’ around
- There were always times when people had no work to do
After I R
- Agriculture labor now modeled after factory labor
- Day laborers hired for massive farms: an agricultural proletariat
  - Large farms by enclosure of previous Commons (where people would pasture animals or let kids play)
  - They now compete among selves, wages lower
- Excess people and unproductive hours no longer tolerated: they are surplus and need jobs
How the Changes Went
- Early I R, manufacture absorbs the surplus population of agr
- But, introduction of machinery meant that it could NOT absorb the agricultural surplus
  - This occurred about the time Napoleonic Wars end:
Post-Napoleon, farmers get in distress:
- No longer shutting off imports
- No longer exporting lots of food
- No longer supplying army
Extra workers lower demand foreign competition = problem
1815: Corn Laws passed (protectionism)

Critique of Political Economy

~~No,~~ Political ~~laborers~~ economy ~~don’t~~ makes ~~actually~~ a ~~have~~ man ~~freedom~~ not to a ~~contract~~ man, but an object
- “as human beings, shall not be made to bow to social circumstances, but social conditions ought to yield to them as human beings” (226)
~~Critique~~ No, of laborers ~~Adam~~ don’t ~~Smith~~ actually have freedom to contract
- 92 “Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests! A fine ‘equivalent’ valued at the pleasure by the bourgeoisie!” (88)
~~227~~ Critique of Adam Smith
- 92: “gets its work done more cheaply than is possible with slave labour, as Adam Smith comfortingly pointed out” b/c doesn’t have to ensure their survival (surplus population ensures having enough workers: they refuse to support them, cf Poor Law, but these folks only exist because of the factories)
- 92: Quotes Smith as saying “The demand for men, like that for any other commodity, necessarily regulates the production of men.”
~~230~~ 227: Based on people as commodities
- “The moment workers resolve to be bought and sold no longer…at that moment the whole Political Economy of today is at an end.”
~~242~~ 230:P E is not the whole, entire truth
- “grounds which are economically perfectly correct, but for that very reason partially mistaken”
~~246~~ 242: Competition and free trade are mistakes
- He interprets the demands of Chartism (good wages, Ten Hours Bill, guaranteed job, repeal of Poor Law) to show that what’s really behind it is that they “are directly opposed to free competition and Free Trade”
~~252~~ 246: Gives nothing to the working man at all
- “whose sum and substance for the working man is this, that he cannot do anything more rational than resign himself to starvation”
~~282~~ 258: Free Trade and competition not actually experienced by worker
- Can’t freely move from one employer to next except at one day a year (yearly contracts)
- Truck system (you have to buy your food and wares from company store), cottage system (you have to rent your house from your boss), and fine system (not given the money equivalent of what you produced) are all against free trade
~~299~~ 282: Political Economy is too abstract
- “has nothing human in it”
- “The manufacturer is Capital; the operative Labour. And if this operative will not be forced into this abstraction, if he insists that he is not Labour, but a man who possesses, among other things, the attribute of labour-force…the bourgeois reason comes to a stand-still.”

299: P E don’t even know that America is poised to overtake England sometime in near future

Political economists say that workers and bourgeoisie have same interests, but no, they’re “diametrically opposed” despite what the bourg try to say (9)

Political Economy is an excuse to be brutal

“Nothing is more revolting than to compare the long register of diseases and deformities engendered by overwork, in this report, with the cold, calculating political economy of the manufacturers, by which they try to prove that they, and with them all England, must go to ruin, if they should be forbidden to cripple so and so many children a year.” (180)

Republicanism/Enlightenment Link

~~Reliance~~ Still on has ~~laws~~ basic ~~and~~ faith ~~science~~ in Enlightenment
- ~~140,~~ “No ~~31,~~ working ~~287,~~ man ~~134,~~ in ~~234~~ England—nor in France, by the by—ever treated me as a foreigner;” “sympathize with everyone who earnestly applies his powers to human progress,” “I found you to beMen, members of the great and universal family of Mankind, who know their interests and that of all of the human race to be the same,” “members of this Family of ‘One and Indivisible’ Mankind” (10); “our common cause, the cause of Humanity” (11)

Reliance on laws and science

“the speedy collapse of which is as certain as a mathematical or mechanical demonstration” (31)
140, 287, 134, 234

Unionism, Chartism, Socialism, as going towards Communism, seen as continuous w/Fr Rev
- “the experience of the French will not have been undergone in vain” (302)
Rebellion is seen as the way to keep your manhood
- 130: if you are a good worker, it will reduce you to a “brute” but if you rebel you will keep your manhood
Critique of capitalism = takes away universal manhood
- “the human being, the worker, is regarded in manufacture simply as a piece of capital” (33)
- “Londoners have been forced to sacrifice the best qualities of their human nature, to bring pass all the marvels of civilization which crowd their city,” to become the “commercial capital of the world” (36)
Capitalism Takes Away Worker’s Freedom
- 140: Subject to “necessity”
- Belief that you have free right to contract yourself out is B.S.
Abuse of Enlightenment Rhetoric to Enslave Workers
- The “Free Contract” is a chain
  - If you complain that the manufacturer is acting like the allmighty lawgiver and can fire you at will, telling you when you can sleep and eat, they respond, “You were your own master, no one forced you to agree to such a contract…but now, when you have freely entered into it, you must be bound by it.” (187)
  - “When you accepted your card you entered upon a contract, and you must abide by it.” AND “resists the lawful order as established by weavers’ cards” (note that there is a LAW established here, but w/out representation or election or anything) even if sick, even if the materials weren’t given to you to make it (206)
- Prime example, Malthus
  - Used to justify the New Poor Law
  - “that the earth is perennially overpopulated, whence poverty, misery, distress, and immorality must prevail; that it is the lot, the eternal destiny of mankind, to exist in too great numbers, and therefore in diverse classes, of which some are rich, educated, and moral, and others more or less poor, distressed, ignorant, and immoral”
  - So that there’s no reason for charities or poor rates
  - “the whole problem is not how to support the surplus population but how to restrain it”
  - “Malthus declares in plain English that the right to live, a right previously asserted in favour of every man in the world, is nonsense.” (289)
  - Thus, Malthus used for New Poor Law means that: “to have the law actually declare them superfluous” (290)
  - “Malthus characterizes poverty, or rather the want of employment, as a crime under the title ‘superfluity,’ and recommends for its punishment starvation.” (291)
  - Bottom Line: Bourg tells prol that they do not have “the right to exist as befits human beings” (291), that they are “pests” that must stay quiet if they will not get out of the way
~~187~~ Despite Hypocrisy, Thinks It Can Work
- “But the hypocritical disguised slavery recognizes the right to freedom, at least in outward form; bows before a freedom-loving public opinion, and herein lies the historic progress as compared with the old servitude, that the principle of freedom is affirmed, and the oppressed will one day see to it that this principle is carried out.” (194)
~~188~~ 297: “Leave it to the proletarians of the British Empire to reconquer their human rights.”

~~194~~

~~206~~

~~220~~

~~226~~

~~242~~

~~283~~

Dialectic Theory of History

General Timeline
- Crises will get worse each time
- Gap between bourg and workers will widen
- Conflict between them will get worse and worse
- Finally, to revolution
Conflict Drives History
- Conflict of opposites is engine of history
  - “gradually dividing into two great camps—the bourgeoisie on the one hand, the workers on the other” (143)
- Conflict of opposing classes as engine of history
  - “Hence it [communism] recognizes as justified, so long as the struggle exists, the exasperation of the proletariat.” (301)
- Conflict of opposites creates consciousness as its final result
  - See 133 on class consciousness arising out of awful cities, for example
~~Certainty~~ Dialectical of Reversal ~~Historical~~ ~~Law~~
- ~~Believes~~ Bourg in become ~~historical~~ unintelligent b/c too full of prejudices and narrow self-interest (for example, “castrated editions” of Byron and Shelley, refusal to read Proudhon, Strauss 247)~~law, tho’ it isn’t the only force ever~~
- ~~“These~~ Prol: ~~are~~ “in ~~all~~ this ~~inferences~~ class ~~[ie~~ reposes ~~certainty~~ of ~~coming~~ ~~revolution]~~ ~~which~~ ~~may~~ be ~~drawn~~ ~~with~~ the ~~greatest~~ strength ~~certainty;~~ and ~~conclusions,~~ the ~~premisses~~ capacity ~~for~~ ~~which~~ ~~are~~ ~~undeniable~~ ~~facts,~~ ~~partly~~ of ~~historical~~ development ~~development,~~ of ~~partly~~ the ~~facts~~ nation” ~~inherent~~ (247) in b/c ~~human~~ not ~~nature.”~~ hoodwinked ~~(301)~~ by religion or nationalism or capitalism
~~Must~~ Certainty Go of ~~Through~~ Historical ~~Capitalism~~ Law
- ~~“Unavoidable~~ Believes ~~march”~~ in he historical ~~calls~~ ~~it,~~ ~~saying~~ ~~that~~ ~~change~~ ~~won’t~~ ~~come~~ ~~overnight~~ ~~(244)~~law, tho’ it isn’t the only force ever
- ~~Have~~ “These to are in all ~~order~~ inferences to [ie ~~build~~ certainty up ~~class~~ ~~consciousness~~ ~~(133:~~ ~~“the~~ ~~consciousness~~ of ~~oppression~~ coming ~~awakens”)~~ revolution] which may be drawn with the greatest certainty; conclusions, the premisses for which are undeniable facts, partly of historical development, partly facts inherent in human nature.” (301)
  ~~143, 216, 243, 244, 247, 297~~
~~266,~~ Must ~~274,~~ Go ~~300,~~ Through ~~301~~ Capitalism
- “Unavoidable march” he calls it, saying that change won’t come overnight (244)
  - On Socialists’ silly misunderstanding of the importance of this stage: “They are blind to the element of progress in this dissolution of the old social order… They acknowledge no historical development, and wish to place the nation in a state of Communism at once, overnight, not by the unavoidable march of its political development up to the point at which this transition becomes both possible and necessary.”
- Have to in order to build up class consciousness (133: “the consciousness of oppression awakens”)
Confident about Results of Worsening ~~Conditions~~ Conditions: Negation leads to Synthesis
- Will just lead to revolution sooner
- 134: It’s good for workers to feel alienated from bosses because this will advance their class consciousness
- Thus, the alienation caused by the big factories and big cities will help to tear it all down.

Inevitable Revolution

“The only possible solution is violent revolution, which cannot fail to take place.” 266
“If, up to that time [ie the next huge crisis], the English bourgeoisie does not pause to reflect…a revolution will follow with which none hitherto known can be compared” (300)

Will Produce New Social Order

“The only possible step further is a radical transformation of the social order” (274)

Communism as Synthesis

“Communism stands, in principle, above the breach between bourgeoisie and proletariat…wishes, indeed, to bridge over this chasm, to do away with all class antagonisms.”

Who Works for the Bourgeoisie?

Science
- 230
- 245-6
Mathematics
Religion
Justices of the Peace and Policemen
- They only care about working class when they become “obnoxious” (125
Parliament
- “law which is made by the bourgeoisie” (187)
- Particularly after 1832 Reform Bill, which “legally sanctioned the distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat, and made the bourgeoisie the ruling class” (222)
  - As soon as they get in power, the New Poor Law (1834)
- As All ~~soon~~ as they ~~get~~ have in done ~~power,~~ is ~~the~~ make ~~New~~ Blue ~~Poor~~ Books; ~~Law~~ that’s ~~(1834)~~ all (cf Sorel)
Nationalism
- Invoked to keep workers chained and hungry
- Another kind of competition that kills workers: foreign competition
- “Ah! it is a noble thing this competition, this ‘race of the nations.’”
- Not just English nationalism, but German nationalism too (“honour of the Fatherland demands that his table should be bare” (198)

Results

“Social Murder”
- 106: Gradually and by “omission” rather than “commission”
- Doctors without a doubt trace diseases and deaths to factory work, and very often they tell the capitalists how to solve it (for example ventilation shafts in mines; fans in threading and spinning rooms) yet employers will not make those (or any) changes
- Proof that with every economic crisis, epidemics plague the working quarters (109)
Population and capital centralized
Atomisation of society: Capitalism is the atomisation of the social
- Great Cities: “they crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another” (ie perversion of universalism, misunderstanding of mode of prod); “unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest” which is “repellent and offensive,” a “shamelessly barefaced” example of “narrow self-seeking” that is capitalism 37
- “the dissolution of mankind into monads, of which each one has a separate principle and a separate purpose, the world of atoms, is carried here [cities] to the extreme” (37)
- “social war, the war of each against all, is here openly declared” 37
- “Society is already in a state of visible dissolution.” (142)
- 37: “monads”
- 85: “society, wholly composed of atoms”
Uncertainty of living
Vice, immorality, cruelty
Family Life Destroyed
- Women and children get jobs, while men can’t
  - “Inverse” of the “right” family life”
  - Women never get to know domestic duties, nor have time for them
  - Children don’t love parents, nor parents children
  - Not a place for morals, but just another economic tie
A Life Not Fit for a Human
A New Race
- “The race that lives in these ruinous cottages…must have really reached the lowest stage of humanity.” (73)
- 113 (“enfeeblement of the whole race of workers”)
- 135 (“has gradually become a race wholly apart from the English bourgeoisie. The bourgeosie has more in common with every other nation of the earth than with the workers in whose midst it lives.”)
- 220 (“English nationality is annihilated in the working man.”)

The Precedent It Sets for Marxism

~~Cold,~~ Anti-nationalism ~~Cruel~~ and ~~Rhetoric~~ internationalism of the above point from p 220
Breathless mixture of now-ness (231) and futurity (232), of diagnosis and prophecy

Certainty and grim excitement of Manifesto

Harsh Language: bourg as “vampire,” Enlightenment political metaphor of the body politic everywhere (ie, “social disease”); “social murder”

The picture of capitalism

Crisis ridden: “disturbances inevitably arise at every moment,” he calculates about every 5-6 years (94), each time getting worse
- The booms require the standing armies that during other times are nearly starved…

German thinkers need less abstraction, more empiricism (13)

We “start out from the most ridiculous and preposterous judgments concerning the condition of the workers” (13)

Cold, Cruel Rhetoric

Breathless mixture of now-ness (231) and futurity (232), of diagnosis and prophecy
Certainty and grim excitement of Manifesto

Scare Tactics

“Let the wealthy beware!” 298
Harsh Language: bourg as “vampire,” Enlightenment political metaphor of the body politic everywhere (ie, “social disease”); “social murder”

Ideology Critique
- “the only help for the working class consists in laying bare the true state of things and destroying this hypocrisy” so that no longer can the bourg “perpetrate secretly, treacherously against the workers” (221)
Fetishism
- Engels notes that for working class, money is useful (it buys things) but for the bourg, it has “inherent” value (136)
Hist Mat
- “Poverty is the result of our social conditions” (278) he repeats
- Predicts England having revolution and going communist
Proletariat
- Says that the most important result of I R is creation of English proletariat (29)
Consciousness
- Engels uses the term “consciousness” three or four times to describe the proletariat becoming aware that they as a group are being mistreated and don’t have to take it
- 133: “The workers begin to feel as a class, as a whole….they form a power united….the consciousness of oppression awakens, and the workers attain social and political importance.”
- “recognize his own interests and develop independently” (134) with devpt of big cities and big factories make boss, worker “estranged”

Space: Manchester

Manchester laid out so that bourg don’t have to see working classes
- Due to spatial configuration, protecting your gentle eyes
- Strategic ignorance: they couldn’t possibly know how bad it is, could they?
- Sequestration: it’s a ghetto, apartheid, etc
Map
- Central: commercial district (warehouses, offices, factories)
- Girdle: outer ring of worker’s homes, “cattlesheds” (66) build to fall down before the builder’s lease is up
- Outer: bourgeois homes, the further out, the richer
- Intersecting: roads and railway lines connect bourg to factories
  - Lined with shops so that you don’t have to see the “girdle”
    - Shops are more expensive in middle, then cheaper as they front working class homes
    - Gin shops, pubs, etc versus the elegant shops
“Hypocritical plan” common to all cities (59)
- “Systematic” but looks like an “accident” (59)
Worker’s Areas
- Lack of rational order
  - Chaotic
  - Labyrinthine (dead ends, twisting narrow streets)
  - Hard to enter
- Easy to get lost in
- Hard to find: they are literally hidden: you wouldn’t know they were there
Panopticon
- Bridges have “parapets” so high that people can’t look down and see polluted river or terrible housing for workers
- Workhouse (“Poor Law Bastille”) looks down “threateningly” on the workers’ dwellings
  - It literally looms over them as they walk to work
- Factories
  - Also loom over workers’ neighborhoods
Something I noticed
- An excerpt from an article in Times that draws attention to disgusting parts of London
- It seems that the writer objects not to the poorer areas themselves, but instead when those poorer areas are too close to the rich ones
  - This person wants them invisible!
- “But within the precincts of wealth, gaiety, and fashion, nigh the regal grandeur of St. James, close on the palatial splendour of Bayswater, one the confines of the old and new aristocratic quarters…that there want, and famine, and disease, and vice should stalk….” (44)
Cities In General Speed Up Dialectical Process
- “The great cities have transformed the disease of the social body, which appears in chronic form in the country, into an acute one, and so made manifest its real nature and the means of curing it.” (133)

“town and country are in constant competition” (34)

Interesting country rhetoric: he talks about beauty of valleys and mountain scenery around many factory areas (53)

Factoids/Random

He almost destabilizes gender identities when talking about the men forced to play the domestic role (156)

But backs away and says that it means that “the necessary inference is that this community of possession is no true and natural one”
Even though he initially said that “the sexes have been placed in a false position from the beginning” and that “pristine rule of the husband over the wife must have been inhuman too” (156).
How does he back out? By saying that it’s the economy that made the mean brutal tyranny of husband over wife

Different Countries, Different Revolutions

English: Industrial Revolution
France: Political Revolution
Germany: Philosophical Revolution

Building of new roads and canals chiefly by private enterprise

First steamboat in England, 1811
By 1836, more than 500 in operation there

I R doesn’t just “ruin beautiful country,” like you’d think, but also converts waste lands into productive places (ie Lancashire, which was desert really)

Places and Industries, Chronology

Cotton, 1760s (Lancashire)
Lace, late 1770s (Nottingham, Leicester, Devonshire)
Wool, 1790s (Leeds, Yorkshire)
Linen, 1810s (Yorkshire, Belfast)
Silk, 1820s (Cheshire)

Preface

“I wanted more than a mere abstract knowledge of my subject, I wanted to see you in your own homes, to observe you in your everyday life, to chat with you on your conditions and grievances, to witness your struggles against the social and political power of your oppressors. I have done so: I forsook the company and the dinner-parties, the port wine and champagne of the middle classes, and devoted my leisure hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain Working Men. I am both glad and proud to have done so.”
- Typical leisure seems to keep classes separate

Liberal politicians not cool: just bourgeois
Right kind of labor (129-30)
- People should work from a “natural impulse,” whereas now they have to “work for money,” which isn’t right
- “Human feeling” cannot stand repetitive work without “field for mental activity”
- 204: with machines, there is no more “art” in the work (“no longer an art”) which had been source of pride and paycheck (ie, skilled trade so you have desirable skill developed over time & can’t be replaced easily)
- Wrong kind of work leads to “relaxation” of the body (166-7)
Who?
- Archetypal proletariat are the folk in cloth trade
  - Weavers, spinners, printers, threaders for cotton, linen, silk, and wool
  - Particularly in Manchester, also Birmingham: they are the classic representatives
- Miners
- Agricultural Workers
- Potters/glass factories
- Metal Goods manufacture
- Sewing/dressmaking
  - They have the worst hours and lowest pay, truly treated as slaves
  - Also, the more “fashionable” the industry, the more uncertain it is (203)
Contingency
- Labor unions as anti-contingency: 226
- Labor unions thus have same goal as modernist aesthetics
Problems with Working Class
- Insecurity of position (worst)
  - Could be laid-off
  - Work goes in stops and starts
  - Supply/demand problems passed on to working class
- Malnourishment
  - Not enough food
  - Bad/spoiled food
  - Adulterated food
  - Wrong kind of food
- Terrible Living Conditions
  - Damp
  - Infested
  - No furniture
  - Crowded
  - Noxious
- Disease and Death
  - On-the-job accidents
  - Starvation
  - Susceptibility to Illness
  - Consumption
  - Industry-specific disorders
- Uneducated/Intellectual Nullity
  - Lack of schools, teachers
    - Bourg repeatedly fend off compulsory edu
  - No time to take off for school
  - Too tired to attend
  - No time to think
- Inanity of Job
  - Tedium, Not Real Work (185)
  - It never stops
  - No real intellectual engagement
  - No room to think of anything else
- Poverty
  - Treated as a crime
- Inversion of Social Order
  - Families supported by women, children
  - Men out of work
  - Family life non-existent
  - Moral life corrupted
- No Freedom
  - Truck, Cottage, and Fine Systems
  - Freedom to Contract is Not Freedom
  - Everything Human Derided and Dissolved
Interesting Phrases
- 235: vampire, to describe bourg
- “degenerate,” to describe working classes in regard to health (166-7) (not by Engels, but by doctors he uses for evidence already in 1840s)
  - Question: is there then a relationship between working classes and the aesthetes who will be called degenerates fifty years later?

Relation to Gaskell and Other Works

Both in Manchester at the same time, and both see Manchester as the best example of the I R
The R. H. Greg Engels mentions is the brother of Gaskell’s manufacturing friend W. R. Greg
Same evaluation of living conditions and well-being of the classes
Agreement about the role of Enlightenment in abusing workers
Both know about the same events: the Preston riots, the murder of young Ashton, used as base for Mary Barton and cited as empirical evidence for Engels
Major Disagreement: Role of Religion
- Barton wants to portray the working class as pious or at least (in case of materialist Higgins) able to be converted
- Engels proves that manufacturing classes aren’t religious at all; ignorant about religious issues too (though agric. workers know more)
  - He also realizes how religion is the toady for the bourg: “a belief which, as they will more and more clearly perceive, serves only to make them more weak and resigned to their fate, obedient and faithful to the vampire property-holding class” 235
Another book: Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own: “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” (37 as he describes “social war” declared in capitalist countries)

~~Quotes~~

9

91

126

133

180

Stuff to Read/Know About

Carlyle, “Chartism,” The French Revolution, and Past and Present
- “he has my best wishes” (298)
Dr. Kay on Manchester Workers
Good guys: Oastler, W. P. Roberts
Bad: Andrew Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures
Hood, “Song of the Shirt”
Symons, Art and Artisans
Alison, Principles in Production
Cobbett, Rural Rides (1830)
Mentions Carlyle (101), Disraeli (Sibyl 135), Dickens (Copperfield 34), Stirner (37), Malthus ~~(91)~~ (91, 289)

Revised on September 28, 2008 21:12:46 by Shawna? (71.58.78.59)

Andrew's Wiki Condition English Working (changes)