The revolt of the workers began soon after the first industrial
development, and has passed through several phases. The investigation of
their importance in the history of the English people I must reserve for
separate treatment, limiting myself meanwhile to such bare facts as serve
to characterise the condition of the English proletariat.
The earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that
of crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others
were better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did more
for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under these
conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the sacredness of
property, and he stole. We have seen how crime increased with the extension
of manufacture; how the yearly number of arrests bore a constant relation
to the number of bales of cotton annually consumed.
The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters. The criminal
could protest against the existing order of society only singly, as one
individual; the whole might of society was brought to bear upon each
criminal, and crushed him with its immense superiority. Besides, theft was
the most primitive form of protest, and for this reason, if for no other,
it never became the universal expression of the public opinion of the
working-men, however much they might approve of it in silence. As a class,
they first
[p.241]
manifested opposition to the bourgeoisie when they resisted the
introduction of machinery at the very beginning of the industrial .period.
The first inventors, Arkwright and others, were persecuted in this way and
their machines destroyed. Later, there took place a number of revolts
against machinery, in which the occurrences were almost precisely the same
as those of the printers' disturbances in Bohemia in 1844; factories were
demolished and machinery destroyed.
This form of opposition also was isolated, restricted to certain
localities, and directed against one feature only of our present social
arrangements. When the momentary end was attained, the whole weight of
social power fell upon the unprotected evil-doers and punished them to its
heart's content, while the machinery was introduced none the less. A new
form of opposition had to be found.
At this point help came in the shape of a law enacted by the old,
unreformed, oligarchic-Tory Parliament, a law which never could have passed
the House of Commons later, when the Reform Bill had legally sanctioned the
distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat, and made the bourgeoisie
the ruling class. This was enacted in 1824, and repealed all laws by which
coalitions between working-men for labour purposes had hitherto been
forbidden. The working-men obtained a right previously restricted to the
aristocracy and bourgeoisie, the right of free association.
...
When... the working-men received in 1824 the right of free association,
these combinations
p.242]
were very soon spread over all England and attained
great power. In all branches of industry Trades Unions were formed with the
outspoken intention of protecting the single working-man against the
tyranny and neglect of the bourgeoisie. Their objects were to deal, en
masse, as a power, with the employers; to regulate the rate of wages
according to the profit of the latter, to raise it when opportunity
offered, and to keep it uniform in each trade throughout the country. Hence
they tried to settle with the capitalists a scale of wages to be
universally adhered to, and ordered out on strike the employees of such
individuals as refused to accept the scale. They aimed further to keep up
the demand for labour by limiting the number of apprentices, and so to keep
wages high; to counteract, as far as possible, the indirect wages
reductions which the manufacturers brought about by means of new tools and
machinery; and finally, to assist unemployed working-men financially. This
they do either directly or by means of a card to legitimate the bearer as a
"society man," and with which the working-man wanders from place to place,
supported by his fellow-workers, and instructed as to the best opportunity
for finding employment. This is tramping, and the wanderer a tramp. To
attain these ends, a President and Secretary are engaged at a salary (since
it is to be expected that no manufacturer will employ such persons), and a
committee collects the weekly contributions and watches over their
expenditure for the purposes of the association. When it proved possible
and advantageous, the various trades of single districts united in a
federation and held delegate conventions at set times. The attempt has been
made in single cases to unite the workers of one branch over all England in
one great Union; and several times (in 1830 for the first time) to form one
universal trades association for the whole United Kingdom, with a separate
organisation for each trade. These associations, however, never held
together long, and
p.243]
were seldom realised even for the moment, since an
exceptionally universal excitement is necessary to make such a federation
possible and effective.
The means usually employed by these Unions for attaining their ends are the
following: If one or more employers refuse to pay the wage specified by the
Union, a deputation is sent or a petition forwarded (the working-men, you
see, know how to recognise the absolute power of the lord of the factory in
his little State); if this proves unavailing, the Union commands the
employees to stop work, and all hands go home. This strike is either
partial when one or several, or general when all employers in the trade
refuse to regulate wages according to the proposals of the Union. So far go
the lawful means of the Union, assuming the strike to take effect after the
expiration of the legal notice, which is not always the case. But these
lawful means are very weak when there are workers outside the Union, or
when members separate from it for the sake of the momentary advantage
offered by the bourgeoisie. Especially in the case of partial strikes can
the manufacturer readily secure recruits from these black sheep (who are
known as knobsticks), and render fruitless the efforts of the united
workers. Knobsticks are usually threatened, insulted, beaten, or otherwise
maltreated by the members of the Union; intimidated, in short, in every
way. Prosecution follows, and as the law-abiding bourgeoisie has the power
in its own hands, the force of the Union is broken almost every time by the
first unlawful act, the first judicial procedure against its members.
The history of these Unions is a long series of defeats of the working-men,
interrupted by a few isolated victories. All these efforts naturally cannot
alter the economic law according to which wages are determined by the
relation between supply and demand in the labour market. Hence the Unions
remain powerless against all great forces which influence this relation.
...
p.245] It will be asked, "Why, then, do the workers strike in
such cases,
when the uselessness of such measures is so evident?" Simply because they
must protest against every reduction, even if dictated by necessity;
because they feel bound to proclaim that they, as human beings, shall not
be made to bow to social circumstances, but social conditions ought to
yield to them as human beings; because silence on their part would be a
recognition of these social conditions, an admission of the right of the
bourgeoisie to exploit the workers in good times and let them starve in bad
ones. Against this the working-men must rebel so long as they have not lost
all human feeling...
...
The active resistance of the English working-men has its effect in holding
the money-greed of the bourgeoisie within certain limits, and keeping alive
the opposition of the workers to the social and political omnipotence of
the bourgeoisie, while it compels the admission that something more is
needed than Trades Unions and strikes to break the power of the ruling
class. But what gives these Unions and the strikes arising from them their
real importance is this, that they are the first attempt of the workers to
abolish competition. They imply the recognition of the fact that the
supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based wholly upon the competition of the
workers among themselves; i.e., upon their want of cohesion. And precisely
because the Unions direct themselves against the vital nerve of the present
social order, however one-sidedly, in however narrow a way, are they so
dangerous to this social order. The working-men cannot attack the
bourgeoisie, and with it the whole existing order of society, at any sorer
point than this.
If the competition of the workers among themselves is
destroyed, if all determine not to be further exploited by the bourgeoisie,
the rule of property is at an end. Wages depend upon the relation of demand
to supply, upon the accidental state of the labour market, simply because
the workers have hitherto been content to be treated as
chattels, to be
bought and sold. The moment the workers resolve to be bought and sold no
longer, when, in the determination of the value of labour, they take the
part of men possessed of a will as well as of working-power, at that moment
the whole Political Economy of today is at an end.
p.254] Since the working-men do not respect the law, but simply
submit to
its power when they cannot change it, it is most natural that they should
at least propose alterations in it, that they should wish to put a
proletarian law in the place of the legal fabric of the bourgeoisie. This
proposed law is the
People's Charter, which in form is purely political, and demands
a democratic basis for the House of Commons. Chartism is the compact form
of their opposition to the bourgeoisie. In the Unions and turnouts
opposition always remained isolated: it was single working-men or sections
who fought a single bourgeois. If the fight became general, this was
scarcely by the intention of the working-men; or, when it did happen
intentionally, Chartism was at the bottom of it. But in Chartism it is the
whole working-class which arises against the bourgeoisie, and attacks,
first of all, the political power, the legislative rampart with which the
bourgeoisie has surrounded itself.
Chartism has proceeded from the Democratic party which arose between 1780
and 1790 with and in the proletariat, gained strength during the French
Revolution, and came forth after the peace as the Radical party. It had its
headquarters then in Birmingham and Manchester, and later in London;
extorted the Reform Bill from the Oligarchs of the old Parliament by a
union with the Liberal bourgeoisie, and has steadily consolidated itself,
since then, as a more and more pronounced working-men's party in opposition
to the bourgeoisie.
In 1838 a committee of the General Working-men's Association of London,
with William Lovett at its head, drew up the People's Charter, whose six
points are as follows:
- Universal suffrage for every man who is of age, sane and unconvicted
of crime
- Annual Parliaments
- Payment of members of Parliament, to enable poor men to stand for
election
- Voting by ballot to prevent bribery and intimidation by the
bourgeoisie
- Equal electoral districts to secure equal representation; and
- Abolition of the even now merely nominal property qualification of
œ300 in land for candidates in order to make every voter eligible.
These six points, which are all limited to the reconstitution of the House
of Commons, harmless as they seem, are sufficient to overthrow the whole
English Constitution, Queen and Lords included. The so-called monarchical
and aristocratic elements of the Constitution can maintain themselves only
because the bourgeoisie has an interest in the continuance of their sham
existence; and more than a sham existence neither possesses today. But as
soon as real public opinion in its totality backs the House of Commons, as
soon as the House of Commons incorporates the will, not of the bourgeoisie
alone, but of the whole nation, it will absorb the whole power so
completely that the last halo must fall from the head of the monarch and
the aristocracy. The English working-man respects neither Lords nor Queen.
The bourgeois, while in reality allowing them but little influence, yet
offers to them personally a sham worship. The English Chartist is
politically a republican, though he rarely or never mentions the word,
while be sympathises with the republican parties of all countries, and
calls himself in preference a democrat. But he is more than a mere
republican, his democracy is not simply political.
Chartism was from the beginning of 1835 chiefly a movement among the
working-men, though not yet sharply separated from the bourgeoisie. The
Radicalism of the workers went hand in hand with the Radicalism of the
bourgeoisie; the Charter was the shibboleth of both. They held their
National Convention every year in common, seeming to be one party. The
lower middle-class was just then in a very bellicose and violent state of
mind in consequence of the disappointment over the Reform Bill and of the
bad business years of 1837-1839, and viewed the boisterous Chartist
agitation with a very favourable eye. Of the vehemence of this agitation no
one in Germany has any idea. The people were called upon to arm themselves,
were frequently urged to revolt; pikes were got ready, as in the French
Revolution, and in 1838, one Stephens, a Methodist parson, said to the
assembled working- people of Manchester:
"You have no need to fear the power of Government, the
soldiers, bayonets, and cannon that are at the disposal of your oppressors;
you have a weapon that is far mightier than all these, a weapon against
which bayonets and cannon are powerless, and a child of ten years can wield
it. You have only to take a couple of matches and a bundle of straw dipped
in pitch, and I will see what the Government and its hundreds of thousands
of soldiers will do against this one weapon if it is used
boldly."
As early as that year the peculiarly social character of the working-men's
Chartism manifested itself. The same Stephens said, in a meeting of 200,000
men on Kersall Moor, the Mons Sacer of Manchester:
"Chartism, my friends, is no political movement, where the main
point is your getting the ballot. Chartism is a knife and fork question:
the Charter means a good house, good food and drink, prosperity, and short
working-hours."
The movements against the New Poor Law and for the Ten Hours' Bill were
already in the closest relation to Chartism. In all the meetings of that
time the Tory Oastler was active, and hundreds of petitions for
improvements of the social conditions of the workers were circulated along
with the national petition for the People's Charter adopted in Birmingham.
In
1839 the agitation continued as vigorously as ever, and when it
began
to relax somewhat at the end of the year, Bussey, Taylor, and Frost
hastened to call forth uprisings simultaneously in the North of England, in
Yorkshire, and Wales. Frost's plan being betrayed, he was obliged to open
hostilities prematurely. Those in the North heard of the failure of his
attempt in time to withdraw. Two months later, in January, 1840, several
so-called spy outbreaks took place in Sheffield and Bradford, in Yorkshire,
and the excitement gradually subsided. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie turned its
attention to more practical projects, more profitable for itself, namely
the Corn Laws. The
Anti-Corn-Law Association was formed in Manchester, and
the consequence was a relaxation of the tie between the Radical bourgeoisie
and the proletariat. The working-men soon perceived that for them the
abolition of the Corn Laws could be of little use, while very advantageous
to the bourgeoisie; and they could therefore not be won for the project.
The crisis of 1842 came on. Agitation was once more as vigorous
as in 1839. But this time the rich manufacturing bourgeoisie, which was
suffering severely under this particular crisis, took part in it. The Anti-
Corn Law League, as it was now called, assumed a decidedly revolutionary
tone. Its journals and agitators used undisguisedly revolutionary language,
one very good reason for which was the fact that the Conservative party had
been in power since 1841. As the Chartists had previously done, these
bourgeois leaders called upon the people to rebel; and the working-men who
had most to suffer from the crisis were not inactive, as the year's
national petition for the Charter with its three and a half million
signatures proves. In short, if the two Radical parties had been somewhat
estranged, they allied themselves once more. At a meeting of Liberals and
Chartists held in Manchester, February 14th, 1842, a petition urging the
repeal of the Corn Laws and the adoption of the Charter was drawn up. The
next day it was adopted by both parties. The spring and summer passed
amidst violent agitation and increasing distress. The bourgeoisie was
determined to carry the repeal of the Corn Laws with the help of the
crisis, the want which it entailed, and the general excitement. At this
time, the Conservatives being in power, the Liberal bourgeoisie half
abandoned their law-abiding habits; they wished to bring about a revolution
with the help of the workers. The working-men were to take the chestnuts
from the fire to save the bourgeoisie from burning their own fingers. The
old idea of a "holy month," a general strike, broached in 1839 by the
Chartists, was revived. This time, however, it was not the working-men who
wished to quit work, but the manufacturers who wished to close their mills
and send the operatives into the country parishes upon the property of the
aristocracy, thus forcing the Tory Parliament and the Tory Ministry to
repeal the Corn Laws. A revolt would naturally have followed, but the
bourgeoisie stood safely in the background and could await the result
without compromising itself if the worst came to the worst. At the end of
July business began to improve; it was high time. In order not to lose the
opportunity, three firms in Staleybridge reduced wages in spite of the
improvement. Whether they did so of their own motion or in agreement with
other manufacturers, especially those of the League, I do not know. Two
withdrew after a time, but the third, William Bailey & Brothers, stood
firm, and told the objecting operatives that "if this did not please them,
they had better go and play a bit." This contemptuous answer the hands
received with jeers. They left the mill, paraded through the town, and
called upon all their fellows to quit work. In a few hours every mill stood
idle, and the operatives marched to Mottram Moor to hold a meeting. This
was on August 5th. August 8th they proceeded to Ashton and Hyde five
thousand strong, closed all the mills and coal-pits, and held meetings, in
which, however, the question discussed was not, as the bourgeoisie had
hoped, the repeal of the Corn Laws, but, "a fair day's wages for a fair
day's work." August 9th they proceeded to Manchester, unresisted by the
authorities (all Liberals), and closed the mills; on the 11th they were in
Stockport, where they met with the first resistance as they were storming
the workhouse, the favourite child of the bourgeoisie. On the same day
there was a general strike and disturbance in Bolton, to which the
authorities here, too, made no resistance. Soon the uprising spread
throughout the whole manufacturing district, and all employments, except
harvesting and the production of food, came to a standstill. But the
rebellious operatives were quiet. They were driven into this revolt without
wishing it. The manufacturers, with the single exception of the Tory
Birley, in Manchester, had, contrary to their custom, not opposed it. The
thing had begun without the working-men's having any distinct end in view,
for which reason they were all united in the determination not to be shot
at for the benefit of the Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For the rest,
some wanted to carry the Charter, others who thought this premature wished
merely to secure the wages rate of 1840. On this point the whole
insurrection was wrecked. If it had been from the beginning an intentional,
determined working-men's insurrection, it would surely have carried its
point; but these crowds who had been driven into the streets by their
masters, against their own will, and with no definite purpose, could do
nothing. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie, which had not moved a finger to carry
the alliance of February 15th into effect, soon perceived that the working-
men did not propose to become its tools, and that the illogical manner in
which it had abandoned its law-abiding standpoint threatened danger. It
therefore resumed its law-abiding attitude, and placed itself upon the side
of Government as against the working-men.
It swore in trusty retainers as special constables (the German merchants in
Manchester took part in this ceremony, and marched in an entirely
superfluous manner through the city with their cigars in their mouths and
thick truncheons in their hands). It gave the command to fire upon the
crowd in Preston, so that the unintentional revolt of the people stood all
at once face to face, not only with the whole military power of the
Government, but with the whole property-holding class as well. The working-
men, who had no especial aim, separated gradually, and the insurrection
came to an end without evil results. Later, the bourgeoisie was guilty of
one shameful act after another, tried to whitewash itself by expressing a
horror of popular violence by no means consistent with its own
revolutionary language of the spring; laid the blame of insurrection upon
Chartist instigators, whereas it had itself done more than all of them
together to bring about the uprising; and resumed its old attitude of
sanctifying the name of the law with a shamelessness perfectly unequalled.
The Chartists, who were all but innocent of bringing about this uprising,
who simply did what the bourgeoisie meant to do when they made the most of
their opportunity, were prosecuted and convicted, while the bourgeoisie
escaped without loss, and had, besides, sold off its old stock of goods
with advantage during the pause in work.
The fruit of the uprising was the decisive separation of the proletariat
from the bourgeoisie. The Chartists had not hitherto concealed their
determination to carry the Charter at all costs, even that of a revolution;
the bourgeoisie, which now perceived, all at once, the danger with which
any violent change threatened its position, refused to hear anything
further of physical force, and proposed to attain its end by moral force,
as though this were anything else than the direct or indirect threat of
physical force. 'I'his was one point of dissension, though even this was
removed later by the assertion of the Chartists (who are at least as worthy
of being believed as the bourgeoisie) that they, too, refrained from
appealing to physical force. The second point of dissension and the main
one, which brought Chartism to light in its purity, was the repeal of the
Corn Laws. In this the bourgeoisie was directly interested, the proletariat
not. The Chartists therefore divided into two parties whose political
programmes agreed literally, but which were nevertheless thoroughly
different and incapable of union. At the Birmingham National Convention, in
January, 1843, Sturge, the representative of the Radical bourgeoisie,
proposed that the name of the Charter be omitted from the rules of the
Chartist Association, nominally because this name had become connected with
recollections of violence during the insurrection, a connection, by the
way, which had existed for years, and against which Mr. Sturge had hitherto
advanced no objection. The working-men refused to drop the name, and when
Mr. Sturge was outvoted, that worthy Quaker suddenly became loyal, betook
himself out of the hall, and founded a "Complete Suffrage Association"
within the Radical bourgeoisie. So repugnant had these recollections become
to the Jacobinical bourgeoisie, that he altered even the name Universal
Suffrage into the ridiculous title, Complete Suffrage. The working-men
laughed at him and quietly went their way.
From this moment Chartism was purely a working-men's cause freed from all
bourgeois elements. The "Complete" journals, the Weekly Dispatch, Weekly
Chronicle, Examiner, etc., fell gradually into the sleepy tone of the other
Liberal sheets, espoused the cause of Free Trade, attacked the Ten Hours'
Bill and all exclusively working-men's demands, and let their Radicalism as
a whole fall rather into the background. The Radical bourgeoisie joined
hands with the Liberals against the working-men in every collision, and in
general made the Corn Law question, which for the English is the Free Trade
question, their main business. They thereby fell under the dominion of the
Liberal bourgeoisie, and now play a most pitiful role.
The Chartist working-men, on the contrary, espoused with redoubled zeal all
the struggles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Free competition
has caused the workers suffering enough to be hated by them; its apostles,
the bourgeoisie, are their declared enemies. The working-man has only
disadvantages to await from the complete freedom of competition. The
demands hitherto made by him, the Ten Hours' Bill, protection of the
workers against the capitalist, good wages, a guaranteed position, repeal
of the New Poor Law, all of the things which belong to Chartism quite as
essentially as the "Six Points," are directly opposed to free competition
and Free Trade. No wonder, then, that the working-men will not hear of Free
Trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws (a fact incomprehensible to the whole
English bourgeoisie), and while at least wholly indifferent to the Corn Law
question, are most deeply embittered against its advocates. This question
is precisely the point at which the proletariat separates from the
bourgeoisie, Chartism from Radicalism; and the bourgeois understanding
cannot comprehend this, because it cannot comprehend the proletariat.
Therein lies the difference between Chartist democracy and all previous
political bourgeois democracy. Chartism is of an essentially social nature,
a class movement. The "Six Points" which for the Radical bourgeois are the
beginning and end of the matter, which are meant, at the utmost, to call
forth certain further reforms of the Constitution, are for the proletarian
a mere means to further ends. "Political power our means, social happiness
our end," is now the clearly formulated war-cry of the Chartists. The
"knife and fork question" of the preacher Stephens was a truth for a part
of the Chartists only, in 1858; it is a truth for all of them in 1845.
There is no longer a mere politician among the Chartists, and even though
their Socialism is very little developed, though their chief remedy for
poverty has hitherto consisted in the land-allotment system, which was
superseded by the introduction of manufacture, though their chief practical
propositions are apparently of a reactionary nature, yet these very
measures involve the alternative that they must either succumb to the power
of competition once more and restore the old state of things, or they must
themselves entirely overcome competition and abolish it.
On the other hand, the present indefinite state of Chartism, the separation
from the purely political party, involves that precisely the characteristic
feature, its social aspect, will have to be further developed. The approach
to Socialism cannot fail, especially when the next crisis directs the
working-men by force of sheer want to social instead of political remedies.
And a crisis must follow the present active state of industry and commerce
in 1847 at the latest, and probably in 1846; one, too, which will far
exceed in extent and violence all former crises. The working-men will carry
their Charter, naturally; but meanwhile they will learn to see clearly with
regard to many points which they can make by means of it and of which they
now know very little.
Meanwhile the Socialist agitation also goes forward. English Socialism
comes under our consideration so far only as it affects the working-class.
The English Socialists demand the gradual introduction of possession in
common in home colonies embracing two to three thousand persons who shall
carry on both agriculture and manufacture and enjoy equal rights and equal
education. They demand greater facility of obtaining divorce, the
establishment of a rational government, with complete freedom of conscience
and the abolition of punishment, the same to be replaced by a rational
treatment of the offender. These are their practical measures, their
theoretical principles do not concern us here. English Socialism arose with
Owen, a manufacturer, and proceeds therefore with great consideration
toward the bourgeoisie and great injustice toward the proletariat in its
methods, although it culminates in demanding the abolition of the class
antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat.
The Socialists are thoroughly tame and peaceable, accept our existing
order, bad as it is, so far as to reject all other methods but that of
winning public opinion. Yet they are so dogmatic that success by this
method is for them, and for their principles as at present formulated,
utterly hopeless. While bemoaning the demoralisation of the lower classes,
they are blind to the element of progress in this dissolution of the old
social order, and refuse to acknowledge that the corruption wrought by
private interests and hypocrisy in the property-holding class is much
greater. They acknowledge no historic 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. They understand, it is true, why the
working-man is resentful against the bourgeois, but regard as unfruitful
this class hatred, which is, after all, the only moral incentive by which
the worker can be brought nearer the goal. They preach instead, a
philanthropy and universal love far more unfruitful for the present state
of England. They acknowledge only a psychological development, a
development of man in the abstract, out of all relation to the Past,
whereas the whole world rests upon that Past, the individual man included.
Hence they are too abstract, too metaphysical, and accomplish little. They
are recruited in part from the working-class, of which they have enlisted
but a very small fraction representing, however, its most educated and
solid elements. In its present form, Socialism can never become the common
creed of the working- class; it must condescend to return for a moment to
the
Chartist
standpoint. But the true proletarian Socialism having passed through
Chartism, purified of its bourgeois elements, assuming the form which it
has already reached in the minds of many Socialists and Chartist leaders
(who are nearly all Socialists *), must, within a short time, play a
weighty part in the history of the development of the English people.
{* Socialists, naturally, in the general, not the specifically Owenistic
sense. (Note in the German edition)}
English Socialism, the basis of which is much more ample than that of the
French, is behind it in theoretical development, will have to recede for a
moment to the French standpoint in order to proceed beyond it later.
Meanwhile the French, too, will develop farther. English Socialism affords
the most pronounced expression of the prevailing absence of religion among
the working-men, an expression so pronounced indeed that the mass of the
working-men, being unconsciously and merely practically irreligious, often
draw back before it. But here, too, necessity will force the working-men to
abandon the remnants of a belief which, as they will more and more clearly
perceive, serves only to make them weak and resigned to their fate,
obedient and faithful to the vampire property-holding class.
Hence it is evident that the working-men's movement is divided into two
sections, the Chartists and the Socialists. The Chartists are theoretically
the more backward, the less developed, but they are genuine proletarians
all over, the representatives of their class. The Socialists are more far-
seeing, propose practical remedies against distress, but, proceeding
originally from the bourgeoisie, are for this reason unable to amalgamate
completely with the working-class. The union of Socialism with Chartism,
the reproduction of French Communism in an English manner, will be the next
step, and has already begun. Then only, when this has been achieved, will
the working-class be the true intellectual leader of England. Meanwhile,
political and social development will proceed, and will foster this new
party, this new departure of Chartism.
These different sections of working-men, often united, often separated,
Trades Unionists, Chartists, and Socialists, have founded on their own hook
numbers of schools and reading-rooms for the advancement of education.
Every Socialist, and almost every Chartist institution, has such a place,
and so too have many trades. Here the children receive a purely proletarian
education, free from all the influences of the bourgeoisie; and, in the
reading-rooms, proletarian journals and books alone, or almost alone, are
to be found. These arrangements are very dangerous for the bourgeoisie,
which has succeeded in withdrawing several such institutes, "Mechanics'
Institutes," from proletarian influences, and making them organs for the
dissemination of the sciences useful to the bourgeoisie. Here the natural
sciences are now taught, which may draw the working-men away from the
opposition to the bourgeoisie, and perhaps place in their hands the means
of making inventions which bring in money for the bourgeoisie; while for
the working-man the acquaintance with the natural sciences is utterly
useless now when it too often happens that he never gets the slightest
glimpse of Nature in his large town with his long working-hours. Here
Political Economy is preached, whose idol is free competition, and whose
sum and substance for the working-man is this, that he cannot do anything
more rational than resign himself to starvation. Here all education is
tame, flabby, subservient to the ruling politics and religion, so that for
the working-man it is merely a constant sermon upon quiet obedience,
passivity, and resignation to his fate.
The mass of working-men naturally have nothing to do with these institutes,
and betake themselves to the proletarian reading-rooms and to the
discussion of matters which directly concern their own interests, whereupon
the self-sufficient bourgeoisie says its Dixi et salvavi, and turns with
contempt from a class which "prefers the angry ranting of ill-meaning
demagogues to the advantages of solid education." That, however, the
working-men appreciate solid education when they can get it unmixed with
the interested cant of the bourgeoisie, the frequent lectures upon
scientific, aesthetic, and economic subjects prove which are delivered
especially in the Socialist institutes, and very well attended. I have
often heard working-men, whose fustian jackets scarcely held together,
speak upon geological, astronomical, and other subjects, with more
knowledge than most "cultivated" bourgeois in Germany possess. And in how
great a measure the English proletariat has succeeded in attaining
independent education is shown especially by the fact that the epoch-making
products of modern philosophical, political, and poetical literature are
read by working-men almost exclusively. The bourgeois, enslaved by social
conditions and the prejudices involved in them, trembles, blesses, and
crosses himself before everything which really paves the way for progress;
the proletarian has open eyes for it, and studies it with pleasure and
success. In this respect the Socialists, especially, have done wonders for
the education of the proletariat. They have translated the French
materialists, Helvetius, Holbach, Diderot, etc., and disseminated them,
with the best English works, in cheap editions. Strauss' Life of Jesus and
Proudhon's Property also circulate among the working-men only. Shelley, the
genius, the prophet, Shelley, and Byron, with his glowing sensuality and
his bitter satire upon our existing society, find most of their readers in
the proletariat; the bourgeoisie owns only castrated editions, family
editions, cut down in accordance with the hypocritical morality of today.
The two great practical philosophers of latest date, Bentham and Godwin,
are, especially the latter, almost exclusively the property of the
proletariat; for though Bentham has a school within the Radical
bourgeoisie, it is only the proletariat and the Socialists who have
succeeded in developing his teachings a step forward. The proletariat has
formed upon this basis a literature, which consists chiefly of journals and
pamphlets, and is far in advance of the whole bourgeois literature in
intrinsic worth. On this point more later.
One more point remains to be noticed. The factory operatives, and
especially those of the cotton district, form the nucleus of the labour
movement. Lancashire, and especially Manchester, is the seat of the most
powerful Unions, the central point of Chartism, the place which numbers
most Socialists. The more the factory system has taken possession of a
branch of industry, the more the working-men employed in it participate in
the labour movement; the sharper the opposition between working-men and
capitalists, the clearer the proletarian consciousness in the working-men.
The small masters of Birmingham, though they suffer from the crises, still
stand upon an unhappy middle ground between proletarian Chartism and
shopkeepers' Radicalism. But, in general, all the workers employed in
manufacture are won for one form or the other of resistance to capital and
bourgeoisie; and all are united upon this point, that they, as working-men,
a title of which they are proud, and which is the usual form of address in
Chartist meetings, form a separate class, with separate interests and
principles, with a separate way of looking at things in contrast with that
of all property-owners; and that in this class reposes the strength and the
capacity of development of the nation.
p.301:
The Attitude of the Bourgeoisie towards the Proletariat
(page numbers in a printed copy you use may differ. Count forward from
the first page of the chapter)
In speaking of the
bourgeoisie
I include the so-called
aristocracy, for
this is a privileged class, an aristocracy, only in contrast with the
proletariat. The proletarian sees in both only the
property-holder. the
bourgeois. Before the privilege of property all other privileges vanish.
The sole difference is this, that the bourgeois proper stands in active
relations with the manufacturing, and, in a measure, with the mining
proletarians, and, as farmer, with the agricultural labourers, whereas the
so-called aristocrat comes into contact with part of the mining and with
the agricultural labourers only.
I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by
selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English
bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper,
particularly the Liberal,
Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing
exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It
knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold.
In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a
single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted. True, these English
bourgeois are good husbands and family men, and have all sorts of other
private virtues, and appear, in ordinary intercourse, as decent and
respectable as all other bourgeois; even in business they are better to
deal with than the Germans; they do not higgle and haggle so much as our
own pettifogging merchants; but how does this help matters? Ultimately it
is self-interest, and especially money gain, which alone determines them. I
once went into Manchester with such a bourgeois, and spoke to him of the
bad, unwholesome method of building, the frightful condition of the
working-peoples quarters, and asserted that I had never seen
[p.302]
so ill-built a
city. The man listened quietly to the end, and said at the corner where we
parted:
"And yet there is a great deal of money made here, good morning,
sir."
It is utterly indifferent to the English bourgeois whether his
working-men starve or not, if only he makes money. All the conditions of
life are measured by money, and what brings no money is nonsense,
unpractical, idealistic bosh. Hence,
Political Economy, the Science of
Wealth, is the favourite study of these bartering Jews. Every one of them
is a Political Economist. The relation of the manufacturer to his
operatives has nothing human in it; it is purely economic. The manufacturer
is Capital, the operative Labour. And if the 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, if he takes
it into his head that he need not allow himself to be sold and bought in
the market, as the commodity "Labour", the bourgeois reason comes to a
standstill. He cannot comprehend that he holds any other relation to the
operatives than that of purchase and sale; he sees in them not human
beings, but hands, as he constantly calls them to their faces; he insists,
as Carlyle says, that
"Cash Payment is the only nexus between man and
man"
Even the relation between himself and his wife is, in ninety-nine cases out
of a hundred, mere "Cash Payment".
[See Communist
Manifesto]
Money determines the worth of the man;
he is "worth ten thousand pounds". He who has money is of "the better sort
of people", is "influential", and what he does counts for something in his
social circle. The huckstering spirit penetrates the whole language, all
relations are expressed in business terms, in economic categories. Supply
and demand are the formulas according to which the logic of the English
bourgeois judges all human life. Hence free competition in every respect,
hence the regime of laissez-faire, laissez-aller in government, in
medicine, in education, and soon to be in religion, too, as the State
Church collapses more and more. Free competition will suffer no limitation,
no State supervision; the whole State is but a burden to it. It would reach
its highest perfection in a wholly ungoverned anarchic society, where each
might exploit the other to his hearts content. Since, however, the
bourgeoisie cannot dispense with government, but must have it to hold the
equally indispensable proletariat in check, it turns the power of
government against the proletariat and keeps out of its way as far as
possible.
...
{footnote 2 pp 317-318} honourable exceptions. There are, on the one hand,
the pronounced Radicals, who are almost
Chartists, such
as a few members of
the House of Commons, the manufacturers Hindley of Ashton, and Fielden of
Todmorden (Lancashire), and, on the other hand, the philanthropic Tories,
who have recently constituted themselves "Young England", among whom are
the members of Parliament, Disraeli, Borthwick, Ferand, Lord John Manners,
etc.
Lord Ashley, too, is
in sympathy with them. The hope of Young England
is a restoration of the old "merry England" with its brilliant features and
its romantic feudalism. The object is of course unattainable and
ridiculous, a satire upon all historic development; but the good intention,
the courage to resist the existing state of things and prevalent
prejudices, and to recognize the vileness of our present condition, is
worth something anyhow.
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Engels, F. 1845 The Condition of the Working Class in
England.
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http://studymore.org.uk/xeng1845.htm
With intext references to (Engels 1845 p. -)
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