Product Description

The Condition of the Working Class in England is the best known work of Engels, and still in many ways the best study of the working class in Victorian England. What Cobbett had done for agricultural poverty in his Rural Rides, Engels did - and more - in this work on the plight of industrial workers in England in the 1840s.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #339441 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Review
"This is a very nicely-produced edition at a price practical for course use. David McClellan's introduction is clear and useful."--J. Boyden, Tulane University

About the Author
David McLellan is a leading scholar of Marx and Marxism, and the editor of Marxism: Essential Writings (#10.95) and Selected Writings (#14.95).

Customer Reviews

A disturbing observation on the nature of capitalism
This was the first book written to describe the lives of the working people in Victorian Britain. It paints a shocking picture of poverty, exploitation and the utter despair of the working class as they work themselves slowly to death without any reward, in a society where those in power do everything they can to make as much profit from the workers while denying them the most basic principles of human rights and dignity.

I had always been aware that Victorian Britain was well known for the poverty of its masses, but nothing prepared me for the detailed, horrifying descriptions of living and working conditions, starvation, disease and a stagnant existence of poverty in which there was literally no way out of except suicide.

For all its justified power, I do feel that Engels does tend to drift from being a critical and detatched observer in favour of spectacular tirades championing the case of the working class. Though this is clearly understandable as a result of what he saw and experienced in the numerous cities of England and Scotland in the twenty-two months he spent in Britian for the material of the book.

The first book to give the working class a voice in a society which entirely suppressed it, and a damning study of the cruel and exploitative nature of capitalism, which proves to be as relevant now (with the imergance of globalisation) as it was when first written in 1844.

Fascinating, impassioned reporting
This book is interesting as an historical peice of journalism and scientific investigation. It is equally interesting because it provides such a fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary, working class people living in and around Manchester, Stockport and Stoke in the mid-Nineteenth Century.
It's often cited in modern discussions of complex systems as the book also gives an idea of the interactions between social, political and economic factors and their results in the real world. The origins of these much more modern ideas, how social and economic conditions interact, taking the holistic view etc. are all visible here.
It gives some ideas of what Engels must have been like and his compassion for the suffering of the people described is clear throughout the book.

one of the best social reports about the working class
When Friedrich Engels came to England in the 1830's, his father asked him to look at his factories and report back to him, by the time he had seen the factories for himself he was shocked at the level of poverty the workers were living and working in. This book was one of the first to document the consequences of early capitalism on the work force. It is recognised as one of the classic books of the victorian era.