The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844: with a Preface written in 1892 — John Shaqi
The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844: with a Preface written in 1892Engels, Friedrich
History
The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844: with a Preface written in 1892
Engels, Friedrich
Great Britain -- Economic conditions; Working class -- Great Britain
the cottages owned by the companies.
I have not attempted, in this translation, to bring the book up to date,
or to point out in detail all the changes that have taken place since
1844. And for two reasons: Firstly, to do this properly, the size of the
book must be about doubled; and, secondly, the first volume of "Das
Kapital," by Karl Marx, an English translation of which is before the
public, contains a very ample description of the state of the British
working-class, as it was about 1865, that is to say, at the time when
British industrial prosperity reached its culminating point. I should,
then, have been obliged again to go over the ground already covered by
Marx's celebrated work.
It will be hardly necessary to point out that the general theoretical
standpoint of this book--philosophical, economical, political--does not
exactly coincide with my standpoint of to-day. Modern international
Socialism, since fully developed as a science, chiefly and almost
exclusively through the efforts of Marx, did not as yet exist in 1844. My
book represents one of the phases of its embryonic development; and as
the human embryo, in its early stages, still reproduces the gill-arches
of our fish-ancestors, so this book exhibits everywhere the traces of the
descent of modern Socialism from one of its ancestors,--German
philosophy. Thus great stress is laid on the dictum that Communism is
not a mere party doctrine of the working-class, but a theory compassing
the emancipation of society at large, including the capitalist class,
from its present narrow conditions. This is true enough in the abstract,
but absolutely useless, and sometimes worse, in practice. So long as the
wealthy classes not only do not feel the want of any emancipation, but
strenuously oppose the self-emancipation of the working-class, so long
the social revolution will have to be prepared and fought out by the
working-class alone. The French bourgeois of 1789, too, declared the
emancipation of the bourgeoisie to be the emancipation of the whole human
race; but the nobility and clergy would not see it; the
proposition--though for the time being, with respect to feudalism, an
abstract historical truth--soon became a mere sentimentalism, and
disappeared from view altogether in the fire of the revolutionary
struggle. And to-day, the very people who, from the "impartiality" of
their superior standpoint, preach to the workers a Socialism soaring high
above their class interests and class struggles, and tending to reconcile
in a higher humanity the interests of both the contending classes--these
people are either neophytes, who have still to learn a great deal, or
they are the worst enemies of the workers,--wolves in sheeps' clothing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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