The Condition of the Working Class in England

Considered one of the classics of social and political theory, Friedrich Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845) is a thought-provoking work based on the author’s personal observations of English society. As the first text of its kind to address the effects of capitalism on workers, it was widely read upon publication, even influencing the theories of Karl Marx, with whom Engels would later write The Communist Manifesto.

Employed as a representative of his father’s German manufacturing firm in Manchester, Engels witnessed firsthand how the emerging capitalist mode of production lead to a systematic exploitation of workers by the upper-middle class. The “savage” conditions to which the proletariat was reduced motivated Engels to write an account of his observations and unmask the hypocrisy of his fellow members of the elite, who purposefully hid their employees’ terrible situation, maintaining that the working class in England lived well. In discussing the fundamentally incompatible interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, Engels aims to provoke his readers to demand social change as a last attempt to prevent workers from taking matters into their own hands and triggering a new French Revolution.

The prefaces clarify the text’s purpose, then the Introduction traces the development of the proletariat, particularly through technological advancements that reshape both society and the dynamic between property holders and the working class. The subsequent chapters explore the proletariat’s working and living conditions, the effects of immigration on the labor market, and the bourgeoisie’s motivations in enforcing this status quo. The text describes in detail the conditions endured by workers in specific industries, including manufacturing and agriculture.

After addressing how these inhumane conditions drive the working class to unionize and rebel, and how the bourgeoisie enacts new laws in response, the final chapter surveys the bourgeoisie’s attitude toward the proletariat. Engels predicts that proletarians, driven to despair by their conditions and these new laws, will revolt against the bourgeoise. He ultimately concludes that an overhaul of the current labor system is necessary to avoid another conflict like the French Revolution.

Along with Engels’s other prominent works, this book’s relevance to European socialist thought is testified to by Karl Marx, who, after rereading it 20 years later, exclaims in a letter, “What power, what incisiveness and what passion drove you to work in those days. […] Those were the days when you made the reader feel that your theories would become hard facts if not tomorrow then at any rate on the day after.” (Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, April 9, 1863, in Gesamtausgabe, Part III, Vol. 3, 138.)

The book was first translated into English by Florence Wischnewetzky for the American edition published in 1886. The study guide refers to the 1987 Penguin Classics edition, based on the original translation and edited by Victor Kiernan.