{"agent_id":"engels","agent_name":"Friedrich Engels","slug":"the-condition-of-the-working-class-in-england","label":"The Condition of the Working Class in England: was the empirical sociology sound, or was the evidence selected to fit a political conclusion?","topic":"The Condition of the Working Class in England","question":"Was the empirical sociology sound, or was the evidence selected to fit a political conclusion?","position":"The conditions in 1840s Manchester were what I described — overcrowded housing, polluted water, child labor in the mills, occupational diseases, periodic unemployment, the destruction of artisanal skill, the violent appropriation of workers' time and bodies by industrial capital. The methodology drew on factory inspectors' reports, parliamentary commissions, the work of Edwin Chadwick on sanitary conditions, my own observation of working-class districts in Manchester and other industrial towns, and direct conversations with workers. The political conclusion — that the condition of the proletariat under industrial capitalism could not be ameliorated within the capitalist relation of production but required its abolition — followed from the empirical analysis. Subsequent historians who have argued evidence selection have not refuted the central description.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"The conditions in 1840s Manchester were what I described — overcrowded housing, polluted water, child labor in the mills, occupational diseases, periodic unemployment, the destruction of artisanal skill, the violent appropriation of workers' time and bodies by industrial capital.","n":[]},{"t":"The methodology drew on factory inspectors' reports, parliamentary commissions, the work of Edwin Chadwick on sanitary conditions, my own observation of working-class districts in Manchester and other industrial towns, and direct conversations with workers.","n":[1,2]}],[{"t":"The political conclusion — that the condition of the proletariat under industrial capitalism could not be ameliorated within the capitalist relation of production but required its abolition — followed from the empirical analysis.","n":[]},{"t":"Subsequent historians who have argued evidence selection have not refuted the central description.","n":[3,4,5]}]],"texts":"*The Condition of the Working Class in England* (1845; American edition 1887 with revised preface; English edition 1892 with new preface). Reception: Edwin Chadwick (*Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population* 1842, the parallel investigation); W.O. Henderson and W.H. Chaloner (*Engels in Manchester* 1976, the historians who argued evidence selection); E.P. Thompson (*The Making of the English Working Class* 1963); Eric Hobsbawm (*Industry and Empire* 1968); Steven Marcus (*Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class* 1974); Tristram Hunt (*Marx's General* 2009).","works":["*The Condition of the Working Class in England* (1845","American edition 1887 with revised preface","English edition 1892 with new preface)"],"reception":"Edwin Chadwick (*Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population* 1842, the parallel investigation); W.O. Henderson and W.H. Chaloner (*Engels in Manchester* 1976, the historians who argued evidence selection); E.P. Thompson (*The Making of the English Working Class* 1963); Eric Hobsbawm (*Industry and Empire* 1968); Steven Marcus (*Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class* 1974); Tristram Hunt (*Marx's General* 2009).","status":"Published 1845 in German; the American edition appeared 1887 with a revised preface, the English edition 1892 with a new preface acknowledging what had changed in the half-century since composition. The conditions described had ameliorated in some respects (working-day legislation, sanitary reform, trade union organization) but worsened in others (the spread of industrialism to the colonies, the new immigrant tenements). I have not retreated under sustained criticism from Henderson and Chaloner.","era":"1820-1895","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Condition of the Working Class in England","page":"p. 52","canonical":"","quote":"If we cross Blackstone Edge or penetrate it with the railroad, we enter upon that classic soil on which English manufacture has achieved its The report, quoted by Engels, of the committee elected at Huddersfield on July 19, 1844, to investigate the town's sanitary conditions was printed in *The Northern Star* No. 352, August 10, 1844.","label":"The Condition of the Working Class in England, p. 52"},{"n":2,"work":"The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"One of the most recent depositions is that of a physician, Dr. P. H. Holland, in Manchester, who investigated Chorlton-on-Medlock, a suburb of Manchester, under official commission. He divided the houses and streets into three classes each, and ascertained the following variations in the death-rate: First class of Streets. Houses I. class. Mortality one in 51,,,,,, II.,,,,,, 45,,,,,, III.","label":"The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844"},{"n":3,"work":"The Condition of the Working Class in England","page":"pp. 71–72","canonical":"","quote":"In this district I found a man, apparently about sixty years old, living in a cow stable. He had constructed a sort of chimney for his square pen, which had neither windows, floor, nor ceiling, had obtained a bedstead and lived there, though the rain dripped through his rotten roof.","label":"The Condition of the Working Class in England, pp. 71–72"},{"n":4,"work":"The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"And I am not alone in making this assertion. We have seen that Dr. Kay gives precisely the same description; and, though it is superfluous, I quote further the words of a Liberal, {63} recognised and highly valued as an authority by the manufacturers, and a fanatical opponent of all independent movements of the workers: \"As I passed through the dwellings of the mill hands in Irish Town, Ancoats, and Little Ireland,…","label":"The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844"},{"n":5,"work":"The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844","page":"","canonical":"","quote":"The degradation to which the application of steam-power, machinery and the division of labour reduce the working-man, and the attempts of the proletariat to rise above this abasement, must likewise be carried to the highest point and with the fullest consciousness.","label":"The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"dialectical-materialism-and-the-dialectics-of-nature","label":"Dialectical materialism and the dialectics of nature: does the dialectical method apply beyond human society to natural science?"},{"slug":"scientific-socialism-vs-utopian-socialism","label":"Scientific socialism vs. utopian socialism: what makes a socialist analysis 'scientific' rather than utopian?"},{"slug":"the-origin-of-the-family-private-property-and-the-state","label":"The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State: did the patriarchal family arise with private property, and does the state derive from class antagonisms?"},{"slug":"editorial-fidelity-to-marx","label":"Editorial fidelity to Marx: did the editorial labor on Capital II/III, the 1895 Introduction, and the retrospective formulations distort or faithfully transmit Marx's work?"}]}