Friedrich
Engels,
the eldest son of a successful German industrialist, was born in Barmen
on 28th November 1820. As a young man his father sent him to England
to help
manage his cotton-factory in Manchester.
Engels was shocked by the poverty in the city and began writing an
account that was published as Condition
of the Working Classes in England
(1844). He also made friends with the leaders of the Chartist
movement in Britain.
In 1844 Engels began contributing to a radical journal called Franco-German
Annals that
was being edited by Karl Marx in Paris. Later
that year Engels met Marx and the two men became close friends. Engels
shared Marx's views on capitalism and after their first meeting he
wrote that there was virtually "complete agreement in all theoretical
fields". Marx and Engels decided to work together. It was a good
partnership, whereas Marx was at his best when dealing with difficult
abstract concepts, Engels had the ability to write for a mass audience.
While working on their first article together, The
Holy Family, the Prussian authorities put pressure on the
French government to expel Karl
Marx from the country. On 25th January 1845, Marx received an
order deporting him from France.
Marx and Engels decided to move to Belgium,
a country that permitted greater freedom of expression than any other
European state.
Friedrich Engels helped to financially
support Marx and his family. Engels gave Marx the royalties of his
book, Condition of the Working Class in England
and arranged for other sympathizers to make donations.
This enabled Marx the time to study and develop his economic and political
theories.
In July 1845 Engels took Karl Marx to England.
They spent most of the time consulting books in Manchester
Library. During their six weeks in England, Engels introduced
Marx to several of the Chartist leaders
including George Julian Harney.
Engels and Marx returned to Brussels and in
January 1846 they set up a Communist Correspondence Committee. The
plan was to try and link together socialist leaders living in different
parts of Europe. Influenced by Marx's ideas, socialists in England
held a conference in London where they formed a new organisation called
the Communist League. Engels attended as a delegate and took part
in developing a strategy of action.
Engels returned to England in December 1847 where he attended a meeting
of the Communist League' Central Committee in London.
At the meeting it was decided that the aims of the organisation was
"the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the domination of the proletariat,
the abolition of the old bourgeois society based on class antagonisms,
and the establishment of a new society without classes and without
private property".
Engels and Marx began writing a pamphlet together. Based on a first
draft produced by Engels called the Principles
of Communism, Marx finished the 12,000 word pamphlet in
six weeks. Unlike most of Marx's work, it was an accessible account
of communist ideology. Written for a mass audience, The
Communist Manifesto summarised the forthcoming revolution
and the nature of the communist society that would be established
by the proletariat.
The Communist Manifesto begins
with the assertion, "The history of all hitherto existing society
is the history of class struggles." Marx and Engels argued that
if you are to understand human history you must not see it as the
story of great individuals or the conflict between states. Instead,
you must see it as the story of social classes and their struggles
with each other. Marx and Engels explained that social classes had
changed over time but in the 19th century the most important classes
were the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. By the term bourgeoisie
Marx and Engels meant the owners of the factories and the raw materials
which are processed in them. The proletariat, on the other hand, own
very little and are forced to sell their labour to the capitalists.
Marx
and Engels believed that these two classes are not merely different
from each other, but also have different interests. They went on to
argue that the conflict between these two classes would eventually
lead to revolution and the triumph of the proletariat. With the disappearance
of the bourgeoisie as a class, there would no longer be a class society.
As Engels later wrote, "The state is not abolished, it withers
away."
The
Communist Manifesto was published
in February, 1848. The following month, the government expelled Engels
and Marx from Belgium. Marx and Engels visited Paris before moving
to Cologne where they founded a radical newspaper, New
Rhenish Gazette. The men hoped to use the newspaper to
encourage the revolutionary atmosphere that they had witnessed in
Paris.
Engels helped form an organisation called the Rhineland
Democrats. On 25th September, 1848, several of the leaders
of the group were arrested. Engels managed to escape but was forced
to leave the country. Karl Marx continued
to publish the New Rhenish Gazette
until he was expelled in May, 1849.
Engels
and Marx now moved to London. The Prussian
authorities applied pressure on the British government to expel the
two men but the Prime Minister, John Russell,
held liberal views on freedom of expression and refused. With only
the money that Engels could raise, the Marx family lived in extreme
poverty.
In order to help supply Karl Marx with an
income, Engels returned to work for his father
in Germany.
The two kept in constant contact and over the next twenty years they
wrote to each other on average once every two days. Friedrich Engels
sent postal orders or £1 or £5 notes, cut in half and
sent in separate envelopes. In this way the Marx family was able to
survive.
Other
books published by Engels include The Peasant
War in Germany (1850), Anti-Dühring
(1878) and the Origin
of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) .
Karl Marx died in
London in March, 1883. Engels devoted the
rest of his life to editing and translating Marx's writings. This
included the second volume of Das Kapital
(1885). Engels then used Marx's notes to write the third volume of
DAs Kapital (1894). Friedrich
Engels died in London
on 5th August 1895.
(1)
Friedrich Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England (1844)
All relief in money and provisions was abolished: the only relief
allowed was admission to the workhouses immediately built. The regulations
for these workhouses, or, as people call them. Poor Law Bastiles,
is such as to frighten away everyone who has the slightest prospect
in life without this form of public charity. To make sure that relief
be applied for in only the most extreme cases, and after every other
effort had failed, the workhouse has been made the most repulsive
residence which the refined ingenuity of a Malthusian can invent.
The food is worse than that of the most ill-paid working-man, while
employed, and the work harder, or they might prefer the workhouse
to their wretched existence outside. Meat, especially fresh meat,
is rarely furnished, chiefly potatoes, the worst possible bread and
oatmeal porridge, little or no beer. The food of criminal prisoners
is better, as a rule, so that the paupers frequently commit some offence
for the purpose of getting into jail. For the workhouse is a jail,
too; he who does not finish his task gets nothing to eat; he who wishes
to go out must ask permission, which is granted or not, according
to his behaviour or the inspector's whim; tobacco is forbidden, also
the receipt of gifts from relatives or friends outside the house;
the paupers wear a workhouse uniform, and are handed over helpless
and without redress, to the caprice of the inspectors. To prevent
their labour from competing with that of outside concerns, they are
set to rather useless tasks: the men break stones, "as much as
the strong man can accomplish with effort in a day"; the women,
children and aged men pick oakum, for I know not what insignificant
use.
(2)
Friedrich
Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England (1844)
Manchester itself is peculiarly built, so that a person may live in
it for years, and go in and out daily without coming into
contact with a working-people's quarter or even with workers, that
is, so long as he confines himself to his business or to pleasure
walks. This arises chiefly from the fact, that by unconscious tacit
agreement, as well as with out-spoken conscious determination, the
working-people's quarters are sharply separated from the sections
of the city reserved for
the middle-class; or, if this does not succeed, they are concealed
with the cloak of charity.
The finest part of the
arrangement is this, that the members of this money aristocracy can
take the shortest road through the middle of all the labouring districts
to their places of business, without ever seeing that they are in
the midst of the grimy misery that lurks to the right and the left.
For the thoroughfares leading from the Exchange in all directions
out of the city are lined, on both sides, with an almost unbroken
series of shops, and are so kept in the hands of the middle and lower
bourgeoisie, which, out of self-interest, cares for a decent and cleanly
external appearance and can care for it. True, these shops bear some
relation to the districts which lie behind them, and are more elegant
in the commercial and residential quarters than when they hide grimy
working-men's dwellings; but they suffice to conceal from the eyes
of the wealthy men and women of strong stomachs and weak nerves the
misery and grime which form the complement of their wealth.
In this way any one who
knows Manchester can infer the adjoining districts, from the appearance
of the thoroughfare, but one is seldom in a position to catch from
the street a glimpse of the real labouring districts. I know very
well that this hypocritical plan is more or less common to all great
cities; I know, too, that the retail dealers are forced by the nature
of their business to take possession of the great highways: I know
that there are more good buildings than bad ones upon such streets
everywhere, and that the value of land is greater near them than in
remoter districts; but at the same time I have never seen so systematic
a shutting out of the working-class from the thoroughfares, so tender
a concealment of everything which might affront the eye and the nerves
of the bourgeoisie, as in Manchester. And yet, in other respects,
Manchester is less built according to a plan, after official regulations,
is more an outgrowth of accident than any other city; and when I consider
in this connection the eager assurances of the middle-class, that
the working-class is doing famously, I cannot help feeling that the
liberal manufacturers, the 'Big Wigs' of Manchester, are not so innocent
after all, in the matter of this sensitive method of construction.
(3)
Friedrich
Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England (1844)
When, on the other hand, the working-men received in 1824 the right
of free association, these combinations 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 workingman against the tyranny and neglect of the bourgeoisie.
The objects were: to fix wages and 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 workingmen financially.
This they do either directly or by means of a card to legitimate the
bearer as a 'society man', and with which the workingman 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 organization for each
trade. These associations, however, never held together long, and
were seldom realized 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 workingmen, you see,
know how to recognize the absolute power of the lord of the factor
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 bourgeoisie. Especially
in the case of partial strikes can the manufacture 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 workingmen, 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. In a commercial
crisis the Union itself must reduce wages or dissolve wholly; and
in a time of considerable increase in the demand for labour, it cannot
fix the rate of wages higher than would be reached spontaneously by
the competition of the capitalists among themselves. But in dealing
with minor, single influences they are powerful If the employer had
no concentrated, collective opposition to expect, he would in his
own interest gradually reduce wages to a lower and lower point: indeed,
the battle of competition which he has to wage against his fellow-manufacturers
would force him to do so, and wages would soon reach the minimum.
But this competition of the manufacturers among themselves is, under
average conditions, somewhat restricted by the opposition of the workingmen
(4)
Friedrich
Engels, Origin
of the Family, Private Property and the State
(1884)
When monogamous marriage
first makes its appearance history, it is not as the reconciliation
of man and woman, still less as the highest form of such a reconciliation.
Quite the contrary. Monogamous marriage comes on the scene as the
subjugation of the one sex by the other; it announces a struggle between
the sexes unknown throughout the whole previous prehistoric period.
In an old unpublished manuscript, written by Marx and myself in 1846,
I find the words: "The
first division of labour is that between man and woman for the propagation
of children." And today I can add: "The first class opposition
that appears in history coincides with the development of the antagonism
between man and woman in monogamous marriage, and the first class
oppression coincides with that of the female sex by the male.
In the great majority
of cases today, at least in the possessing classes, the husband is
obliged to earn a living and support his family, and that in itself
gives him a position of supremacy, without any need for special legal
titles and privileges. Within the family he is the bourgeois and the
wife represents the proletariat. In the industrial world, the specific
character of the economic oppression burdening the proletariat is
visible in all its sharpness only when all special legal privileges
of the capitalist class have been abolished and complete legal equality
of both classes established. The democratic republic does not do away
with the opposition of the two classes; on the contrary, it provides
the clear field on which the fight can be fought out. And in the same
way, the peculiar character of the supremacy of the husband over the
wife in the modern family, the necessity of creating real social equality
between them, and the way to do it, will only be seen in the clear
light of day when both possess legally complete equality of rights.
Then it will be plain that the first condition for the liberation
of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry,
and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family
as the economic unit of society.
(5) Karl
Marx and Friedrich
Engels,
The Communist Manifesto (1848)
The history of all hitherto
existing society is the history of
class struggles.
Freeman and slave, patrician
and plebian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word,
oppressor and oppressed,
stood in constant opposition to one another, carried
on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight
that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution
of society at large, or in the common ruin of the
contending classes.
The modern bourgeois society
that has sprouted from the ruins
of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms.
It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression,
new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.
Let the ruling classes tremble at
a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but
their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries,
unite!
(6) Karl
Marx and Friedrich
Engels,
The Communist Manifesto (1848)
You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property.
But in your existing society, private property is already done away
with for nine tenths of the population; its existence for the few
is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine tenths.
You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form
of property, the necessary condition of whose existence is the nonexistence
of any property for the immense majority of society.
In one word, you reproach
us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that
is just what we intend.
From the moment when labour
can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social
power capable of being monopolized, i.e., from the moment when individual
property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into
capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.
You must, therefore, confess
that by "individual" you mean no other person than the bourgeois,
than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed,
be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
Communism deprives no
man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that
it does is to deprive him of the power.
(7) Karl
Marx and Friedrich
Engels,
The Communist Manifesto (1848)
All objections urged against
the communistic mode of producing and
appropriating material products have, in the same way, been urged
against the communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual
products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property
is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of
class culture is
to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.
That culture whose loss
he laments is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as
a machine.
But don't wrangle with
us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property,
the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, etc.
Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois
production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but
the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential
character and direction are determined by the economic conditions
of existence of your class.
The selfish misconception
that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason
the social forms springing from your present mode of production and
form of property - historical relations that rise and disappear in
the progress of production - this misconception you share with every
ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case
of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property,
you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois
form of property.
Does it require deep intuition
to comprehend that man's ideas, views and conceptions, in one word,
man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of
his material existence, in his social relations and in his social
life?
What else does the history
of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character
in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas
of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.
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