The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844
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4.9 • 8 Ratings
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Publisher Description
This is Engels' first book (since considered a classic account of England's working class in the industrial age), which argues that workers paid a heavy price for the industrial revolution that swept the country. Engels wrote the piece while staying in Manchester from 1842 to 1844, based on th bohis observations and several contemporary reports conducted over the period.
Customer Reviews
Worth the Read
It has been a long read, but unlike with Anti-Duhring, not out of annoyance and long-windedness. This is one of those books that, in its longevity, will ignite hatred, putrid wrath, in your soul. The conditions expounded upon herein are so grotesque it had me putting the book down to contemplate, for some time, my understanding as the bourgeoisie as a class and its “morals”. You will read this, and you will feel a fire in you as you do — the treatment of the workers explained in this book goes on today in the Global South, and to a lesser extent in the Imperial Core.
“It is too late for a peaceful solution. The classes are divided more and more sharply, the spirit of resistance penetrates the workers, the bitterness intensifies, the guerilla skirmishes become concentrated in more important battles, and soon a slight impulse will suffice to set the avalanche in motion. Then, indeed, will the war-cry resound through the land: “War to the palaces, peace to the cottages!”—but then it will be too late for the rich to beware.”
Ambient historicism
This incipient codex of communist thought is a wondrous primer for any reader of history unsated. In order of Engels’s trenchant bibliography this book serves as a interlude between tracts such as “The communist manifesto” and more
compendious volumes in his early years as a circumspect social critic.