‼️ The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 by Friedrich Engels ‼️
71/∞
🔑 Key Words: #Engels #Marx #MarxAndEngels #IndustrialRevolution #England #VictorianEra #Manchester #Cottonopolis #WorkingClass #1844
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Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4 out of 5) (still an excellent read)
📚 Length: 324 pages
🔊Audiobook: 14 hours 5 minutes
Why should you read this book?
💡History repeats itself, Engels has more in common with the AI Revolution than you may initially think
💡The learn that if born in 1800’ to a poor working-class family, you would probably be working since the age of 2
💡To learn about all the atrocities the quick industrial and social change brings on its people
…
Since I was a child and I attended a school, I was told by the teachers how fuckin’ grateful I should be to be in school and not in a factory as children in 1800’. Honestly, after reading this book, I guess that my teachers had a point… After reading what was happening to children during the Industrial Revolution in England, I would rather not be born… Many children worked longer hours than today’s adults would manage.
The creation of the proletariat
The majority of today’s Western civilisation belongs to the proletariat class. A worker is somebody who does not own anything: no house, no farm. The worker cannot provide for himself unless employed and is being exploited by an employer. The source of sustenance comes from wages, which the proletariat uses to buy foodstuffs. But a member of the proletariat does not own a house (he or she rents from the employer), a member of the proletariat cannot grow his own tomatoes (no time and no garden). He has to buy them in the store and if there is inflation, well, he has to pay more for the tomatoes. But his wages will never go up enough to catch up with the inflation.
The proletariat did not exist before the Industrial Revolution in England.
Why is this topic so close to my heart? ❤️
One might say I am a fallen bourgeois who, after some years and really hard effort, regained my value, leverage and strength. But as a bourgeois who was for a while a fallen angel, I had the opportunity (similarly to Engels) live among the poorest of the poor immigrants in many different countries (but mainly in the UK and what would be today’s Republic of Ireland). Maybe I should write a book about it one day...
I had seen with my own eyes how evil and greedy the bourgeoisie could be. How they would take every single advantage to destroy them, how they enjoy seeing the working men on their knees and have the power to decide another man’s destiny.
This book brought back some (now) very distant memories of my life in Cardiff, Wales, the UK. I remember being a student, studying at a law school. Working nearly full-time and fighting the pompous bourgeoisie who is still trying to steal my resources away from me. I remember working long hours to the point I did not know who I was anymore. I remember having 3 jobs and still barely making it…
The Migrating Irish 🇮🇪 ☘️
When Engels was writing this book, he was accompanied in Manchester by Mary Burns. An Irish-born woman who then lived and worked in factories. She showed him around and it is said she introduced him to the slums and the real people who suffered tremendously, all of which later became material for this book. Some even say that Mary Burns was more for Engels than a mere guide around factories and slums and that she was his mistress.
The Irish played an interesting role during the Industrial Revolution in England. As there was barely enough paid work or industry in Ireland, many flocked to England in the hope of finding work. One can almost say there were more Irish than English working in the factories.
They lived in really poor conditions, not only in Ireland, but also in England.
Engels calls the Irish 'Milesians.' He refers to the lower cultural development of the migrating Irish. E.g., the Irish never bothered to wear shoes; they always walked barefoot. They came from cottages in Ireland, which were just one room, no floor, just mud floor. They often lived with livestock (mostly pigs), which were meant as an extra income. However, they replicated this standard of living when coming to the UK. As a consequence, one Irish family would fit into one room. It is important to note that one Irish family did not consist of 4 people. It did consist of a decent 6 - 10 people. Remember, there was no contraception back then. When people fucked they had to bear the consequences, not like nowadays…
When you read Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, this is exactly what Adolf Hitler refers to as a working-class family at the beginning of his book. One family, squeezed in one room. None of the family members had their own space or privacy. The arguments between the mother and father were frequent. The children did not grow up in a stable environment and there was barely any place they could escape to. If you add the fact that the lifespan of the breadwinners in the family was short. This was Vienna in 1800' and one would say that these living conditions were spread all across Europe, but they were... Exploitation was happening all over the old continent. And by the way, this misery, these undignifying living conditions was what gave rise to one of the evilest regimes in human history.
But back to this book. By the way, the lifespan of a worker was shorter in some strands of the industry than in others. The shortest lifespan had the ironworkers, miners, and knife cutters, but the textile industry workers had unimaginably bad working conditions as well.
There was no legislation in place to regulate the safety in factories or child labour. Imagine all the dust in factories, machines could not be stopped and in some cases they claimed the entire limbs or bodies.
On top of that, what if I tell you that some children worked 18 hours per day? Day after day. For a salary that could not buy them a better life. What if I tell you that your nice fuckin’ parents would send you to a factory at the age of 2? Or maybe you did not have any parents. You were an orphan and you already worked 18 hours per day. Where is the time for play and school? What if the work brought you deformities and debility later on in your life? Do you think that the employers cared? And what if you survived all of this shit and you turned 18 and then you were dismissed because your fingers were too big to do the piecework and you had nothing else in your life? You could not read nor write. You were a stupid piece of shit, not good for anything. All you were good for was to be exploited by the bourgeoisie for a certain time and then it was all over. Go away and die… Or go away and starve to death, which was pretty common scenario.
Now, it took a little bit of time for the Industrial Revolution to go and conquer the continent. It all started in the UK in 1760’. When you read Engels, you will really come to the conclusion that the condition of the working class in England in 1844 was unbearable. Not only men but the entire families, including their offsprigs were treated worse than animals. Engels writes about the poorest districts of what back then would be the UK (that means incl. the Kingdom of Ireland).
Even though I got a degree from the same university in Ireland that James Joyce had attended (he did not finish school, nor did he attend on what we would call a 'regular basis'), I was made to suffer the insufferable living conditions in Dublin, Ireland. I lived worse than a mizer lives. All because of the greed of the Irish landlords and their rental pyramid scheme…
On the other hand, when living in Ireland, I have seen how badly the Irish treat all other immigrants outside of the EU. If you were EU, you were okay… You had rights. In my case, I was proficient in English on a level of a native speaker and being in the EU gives you the right to work anywhere in Ireland without any need of visa. But all non-EU immigrants were treated worse than scum in German concentration camps. They were worked to death. I now know why… Well, I knew before… When living in the UK, they told us at the law school that the old signs on the 'ale houses' stated: No Irish. Why was that? Well, the Irish did the worst jobs out of the worst. When you do a dull job a robot could do, you need to get drunk. Wasted, to be precise. Because the job wears you down. It destroys you. The repetitiveness of the tasks you are asked to perform every day will turn you into what Germans call an 'Untermensch' - 'an underhuman.' Drink is the only way to escape it. Not forever, just for a moment. You live in a permanent state of exhaustion. In other words, you do not live. You are already dead inside. The only way would be to switch jobs, but you cannot do that. It does not pay enough to escape the spider net of the bourgeoisie. You are a fly and the longer you stay, the nearer is your death.
In other words, the bourgeoisie created the working class by giving them too little to live and by keeping all the profits for themselves. The bourgeoisie is to blame. The dire living conditions of the working class are their creation. They do not want the working class to live a decent human life. They want the working class to be desperate. To beg for work that does not even pay bills or grant a decent human life.
Fast-forward to today. The current cost of living is exactly the same scenario as the one during the Industrial Revolution in England. A regular job won’t pay enough to pay bills. Everything is getting more and more expensive. The bourgeoisie keeps piling profits, and the little man is fucked. He cannot do a shit. He is trapped, and he knows that he won’t escape alive.
The textile workers
The English Industrial Revolution took off with the textile industry. Its center was Manchester, also known as Cottonopolis. Manchester was processing all the cotton from the South of the US, which was produced by black slaves in so called triangular trade. The UK ships delivered UK goods in Africa, then were loaded with black slaves, they brought them to the US and then brought US raw materials (cotton) to the UK. A vicious triangle we can call it.
The cotton was then processed by the factory operatives. Their working conditions were terrible, and although at the beginning of the industrial revolution they were receiving decent wages, the ever improving machinery pushed their wages lower and lower. This led to the dismissal of the workers, longer working hours (up 18 hours per day - sometimes even exceeding that)
Children labour
Engels refers to numerous governmental reports produced to show how great the state of development of the UK is. In one of them, children are compared to little elves cheerfully working in a factory. Children developed numerous deformities and diseases while working in the factory. Did not have any time to go to school, or if they did go to school, they were too tired to learn anything. As a consequence, about 3/4 of all children cannot read nor write.
Child care
Little children were often sedated by opium so as not to make any noise. If too much opium was induced, the child died… This was caused predominantly by the fact that working parents did put their children in a 'daycare'. But the term of modern daycare is miles away. They just paid somebody else to take care of their children while the parents were at work. The children were often undernourished and if too little, then sedated by alcohol or opium so as not to bother the carers. If they got too much opium, they died. Imagine a poor and exhausted mother coming back from her shift only to discover that her child is dead...
Truck sales
Many factory owners paid their workers in goods they produced in the factory. These sales were called truck sales. The owner had set up a little truck (today we would refer to it as a cart) in the factory’s courtyard and attempted to pay the workers in goods. Technically, they let the workers decide whether they want their pay or the goods. However, if they opted for goods, they got paid immediately. Whoever wanted to be paid in money had to wait an additional couple of weeks (at least two) to get their salary. Some factory owners had even such influence that they 'bribed' a local minister in the church who was then preaching on Sunday mass to being paid in goods and not in money. This was the utmost barbarity.
This barbarous practise was later prohibited. However, did not disappear for a long time. As the saying goes: No complainant, no case.
Overlap of the interests
Factory owners were very influential people. Judges, mayors ect. Imagine you work in a factory and have a dispute with the owner. But the owner is simultaneously a judge in your town. Are you going to get an impartial decision? The answer is no…
Diseases
The worst diseases were related to the ironworkers. Children working in environments filled with vapours from lead often ended up epileptic or paralysed for a lifetime. A grown-up man coped better, but only for a limited period of time.
Housing during the Industrial Revolution
Housing during the Industrial Revolution was built to last only 30-40 years. The developments were overcrowded, offered no means of ventilation into the inner yards, and oftentimes no daylight. The plots were leased only for a limited time period. The owners counted on the fact that the houses built on these plots would be taken down in a few decades. The plot could be leased for 99 years, but leased to build a housing development only toward the end of its lease period. This means the capitalists, in order to save money, did not lay the bricks as they should be laid. They laid them on side, which means thinner walls, poorer quality and lower sound insulation. Today, there is only one such court in Manchester, which was converted into a museum dedicated to the industrial revolution in Manchester, that gives you an idea how well built these housing developments were in what one might consider 'a civilised country.’
When you go to the UK now, you would admire how 'developed’ and distinct the UK working culture is. I tell you what… I remember while living in Wales and being a student at the university that there were quite a few students from overseas (mostly Asian - countries like Indonesia or Malaysia). These students did not have a work permit (they could work 20 hours per week to be precise, but that is not enough to keep you alive). These students were able to find work as factory operators. They were paid below the minimum wage (back then, around 5 GBP - the minimum wage was 6.20 GBP as I remember - talking about the years of 2014 and 2016). In these factories, they could work as long as they wanted to. I remember I was complaining about my work at the bar, the late hours etc., but when I heard how these students were treated - Oh my fuckin' God. They were not treated as pieces of shit, they were treated worse than inmates in Nazi concentration camps or political prisoners in Soviet GULAGs.
I was once on a train from Trefforest to Cardiff and I was complaining to a black guy about how shit my life is. He told me.
What are you even complaining about? he asked.
You are white… It cannot be that bad, it is all just an experience.
(That left me speechless, and since then I have never complained about my life to black people…) Lesson? It does not matter how bad you have it, there are always people who have it worse...
May this help you to get a proper picture of the UK as a civilised and developed country… And imagine how much worse it was in 1800’…
A man or a child in the era of the Industrial Revolution in England was nothing to the evil capitalists.
Applicable take-offs
As we know, AI is going to eradicate loads of jobs. I am aware that AI will have similar consequences as the industrial revolution had on England. Although this time, the consequences will be felt globally. Loads of programmers and high-skilled workers get replaced by AI, and their livelihoods will be taken away. What Engels described in 1844 will happen again (and it is already happening). There are no well-paid jobs in Europe. The salaries cannot cover the cost of living and cannot provide a decent life. Having a family is an economic suicide. Therefore, Western civilisation will die out and get replaced by uncivilised migrants from 3rd world countries. The lower culture always takes over the more developed one.
Then the AI steps in and takes away jobs that people had for many years. Many will be desperate and fall on hard times. Every single time a job is replaced by an AI, the capitalists save money. Machines and algorithms do not need breaks, maternity leaves, holidays or any sort of human treatment, they run 24/7 without a break. History will repeat itself.
Engels is great, but it is one of his early works. He is not as punchy and does not go into as much depth as Karl Marx. Some of his arguments require more refinement. Nevertheless, it is a very interesting historical introspection into the living conditions of the English working class.
I give it 4 out of 5 possible. Marx definitely surpasses Engels’s work. Because Marx is better and more detailed. Therefore, I cannot give Engels 5 out of 5.
But it does not mean that his book is not interesting. Quite the opposite.
If you think you might like this one, then you will also like George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier and Karl Marx’s Capital Vol. I - III.
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Peace 🧘♂️✌️🌱
Coming Up Next:
Paris France by Gertrude Stein
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