Preface
The book prefaced by the following pages treats of a subject which I originally intended to deal with in a single chapter of a more comprehensive work on the social history of England.[118]
However, the importance of that subject soon made it necessary for me to investigate it separately.
The condition of the working-class is the real basis and point of departure of all social movements of the present because it is the highest and most unconcealed pinnacle of the social misery existing in our day. French and German working-class Communism are its direct, Fourierism and English Socialism, as well as the Communism of the German educated bourgeoisie, are its indirect products. A knowledge of proletarian conditions is absolutely necessary to be able to provide solid ground for socialist theories, on the one hand, and for judgments about their right to exist, on the other; and to put an end to all sentimental dreams and fancies pro and con. But proletarian conditions exist in their classical form, in their perfection, only in the British Empire, particularly in England proper. Besides, only in England has the necessary material been so completely collected and put on record by official enquiries as is essential for any in the least exhaustive presentation of the subject.
Twenty-one months I had the opportunity to become acquainted with the English proletariat, its strivings, its sorrows and its joys, to see them from near, from personal observation and personal intercourse, and at the same time to supplement my observations by recourse to the requisite authentic sources. What I have seen, heard and read has been worked up in the present book. I am prepared to see not only my standpoint attacked in many quarters but also the facts I have cited, particularly when the book gets into the hands of the English. I know equally well that here and there I may be proved wrong in some particular of no importance, something that in view of the comprehensive nature of the subject and its far-reaching assumptions even an Englishman might be unable to avoid; so much the more so since even in England there exists as yet not a single piece of writing which, like mine, takes up all the workers. But without a moment's hesitation I challenge the English bourgeoisie to prove that even in a single instance of any consequence for the exposition of my point of view as a whole I have been guilty of any inaccuracy, and to prove it by data as authentic as mine.
A description of the classical form which the conditions of existence of the proletariat have assumed in Britain is very important, particularly for Germany and precisely at the present moment. German Socialism and Communism have proceeded, more than any other, from theoretical premises; we German theoreticians still knew much too little of the real world to be driven directly by the real relations to reforms of this "bad reality". At any rate almost none of the avowed champions of such reforms arrived at Communism otherwise than by way of the Feuerbachian dissolution of Hegelian speculation. The real conditions of the life of the proletariat are so little known among us that even the well-meaning "societies for the uplift of the working-classes",[119] in which our bourgeoisie is now mistreating the social question, constantly start out from the most ridiculous and preposterous judgments concerning the condition of the workers. We Germans more than anybody else stand in need of a knowledge of the facts concerning this question. And while the conditions of existence of Germany's proletariat have not assumed the classical form that they have in England, we nevertheless have, at bottom, the same social order, which sooner or later must necessarily reach the same degree of acuteness as it has already attained across the North Sea, unless the intelligence of the nation brings about in time the adoption of measures that will provide a new basis for the whole social system. The root-causes whose effect in England has been the misery and oppression of the proletariat exist also in Germany and in the long run must engender the same results. In the meantime, however, the established fact of wretched conditions in England will impel us to establish also the fact of wretched conditions in Germany and will provide us with a yardstick wherewith to measure their extent and the magnitude of the danger — brought to light by the Silesian and Bohemian disturbances[120]—which directly threatens the tranquillity of Germany from that quarter.
Finally, there are still two remarks I wish to make. Firstly, that I have used the word Mittelklasse all along in the sense of the English word middle-class (or middle-classes, as is said almost always). Like the French word bourgeoisie it means the possessing class, specifically that possessing class which is differentiated from the so-called aristocracy — the class which in France and England is directly and in Germany, figuring as "public opinion", indirectly in possession of political power. Similarly, I have continually used the expressions working-men (Arbeiter) and proletarians, working-class, propertyless class and proletariat as equivalents. Secondly, that in the case of most of the quotations I have indicated the party to which the respective authors belong, because in nearly every instance the Liberals try to emphasise the distress in the rural areas and to argue away that which exists in the factory districts, while the Conservatives, conversely, acknowledge the misery in the factory districts but disclaim any knowledge of it in the agricultural areas. For the same reason, whenever I lacked official documents for describing the condition of the industrial workers, I always preferred to present proof from Liberal sources in order to defeat the liberal bourgeoisie by casting their own words in their teeth. I cited Tories or Chartists in my support only when I could confirm their correctness from personal observation or was convinced of the truthfulness of the facts quoted because of the personal or literary reputation of the authorities I referred to.
Barmen, March 15, 1845
F. Engels TO THE WORKING CLASSES
OF
Working Menl
To you I dedicate a work, in which I have tried to lay before
my German Countrymen a faithful picture of your condition, of
your sufferings and struggles, of your hopes and prospects. I have
lived long enough amidst you to know something about your circumstances ; I have devoted to their knowledge my most serious attention, I have studied the various official and non-official documents
as far as I was able to get hold of them — I have not been satisfied
with this, I wanted more than a mere abstract knowledge of my
subject, I wanted to see you in your own homes, to observe you in
your every-day life, to chat with you on your condition and grievances, to witness your struggles against the social and political
power of your oppressors. I have done so: I forsook the company
and the dinner-parties, the port-wine and champaign of the middle -classes, and devoted my leisure-hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain Working Men ; I am both glad and proud of having
done so. Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy
hour in obtaining a knowledge of the realities of life — many an hour,
First page of Engels' address To the Working-Classes of Great-Britain
Endnotes
[118] This intention was not carried out, although in the ensuing years, up to the beginning of the 1848 Revolution, Engels several times returned to it. During his stay in Brussels from April 1845 to August 1846, and in the following months, which he spent in Paris, Engels continued collecting material on England in addition to what he had collected in the preceding years. In July and August 1845, during trips to London and Manchester with Marx, he researched on this subject in the libraries of those cities. Three notebooks are extant, full of bibliographical notes and excerpts from originals (G. R. Porter, The Progress of the Nation, Vol. Ill, London, 1843; N. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth of England, Vol. I, London, 1824; T. Tooke, A History of Prices, Vol. II, London, 1838; F. M. Eden, The State of the Poor, Vols. I-III, London, 1797; [J. Aikin], A Description of the Country from thirty to forty Miles round Manchester, London, 1795; J. Butterworth, The Antiquities of the Town, and a Complete History of the Trade of Manchester, Manchester, 1822; J. W. Gilbart, The History and Principles of Banking, London, 1834, etc. For greater detail see Marx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe, Abt. 1, Bd. 4, S. 503-15). By the end of 1847 Engels' work had apparently made considerable headway; a short article printed on November 14 that year in the Deutsche Brüsseler Zeitung, with which Engels and Marx collaborated, mentioned his intention to put out a book under the title On the History of the English Bourgeoise. But this plan was not carried out. Nevertheless, in his articles and reports of those years Engels constantly touched upon various aspects of the social and political history of England.
[119] See Note 83.
[120] See Note 79.