Engels Working Class
Extract 1: Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845, Penguin edn, pp.284-287)
The document chosen for analysis is a famous work from one of the most prominent political-theorists of the nineteenth-century. The Condition of the Working Class in England can be regarded as the foundation for contemporary left-wing political theory and the inspiration for later Marxist thinking that produced the subsequent works; The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.
The Condition of the Working Class in England was authored during the years 1842-1844 whilst Friedrich Engels was staying at his father’s Manchester textile factory during the height of the Industrial Revolution. During this time, the city and the rest of the country …show more content…
The issue raised is largely accurate: there is well documented evidence to suggest that the typical workhouse followed a segregation policy. Driver suggests that:“In 1842, the Commissioners’ Workhouse Rules Order specified a minimum classification of workhouse inmates into seven classes: aged and infirm men, able-bodied men over fifteen years of age, boys between seven and fifteen, aged and infirm women, able-bodied women over fifteen, girls between seven and fifteen and children under seven.” To add to this system, the different categories of pauper were to be assigned “a ward or separate building and yard… ‘without communication with those of any other class’ ” So, the claims made by Engels can be verified but the reasons for the separation may not be for the reasons he suggests. Driver continues to highlight that “The spatial separation of workhouse populations was intended to function in at least three ways: as a basis for appropriate treatment; as a deterrent to pauperism; and as a barrier against contagion, moral as well as physical.” What we learn from the last quotation is that the typical workhouse was separated for reasons other than what Engels suggests; risk factors such as the spread of disease had to be taken into account as well as separation for the moral and physical reasons put forward by
The document chosen for analysis is a famous work from one of the most prominent political-theorists of the nineteenth-century. The Condition of the Working Class in England can be regarded as the foundation for contemporary left-wing political theory and the inspiration for later Marxist thinking that produced the subsequent works; The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.
The Condition of the Working Class in England was authored during the years 1842-1844 whilst Friedrich Engels was staying at his father’s Manchester textile factory during the height of the Industrial Revolution. During this time, the city and the rest of the country …show more content…
The issue raised is largely accurate: there is well documented evidence to suggest that the typical workhouse followed a segregation policy. Driver suggests that:“In 1842, the Commissioners’ Workhouse Rules Order specified a minimum classification of workhouse inmates into seven classes: aged and infirm men, able-bodied men over fifteen years of age, boys between seven and fifteen, aged and infirm women, able-bodied women over fifteen, girls between seven and fifteen and children under seven.” To add to this system, the different categories of pauper were to be assigned “a ward or separate building and yard… ‘without communication with those of any other class’ ” So, the claims made by Engels can be verified but the reasons for the separation may not be for the reasons he suggests. Driver continues to highlight that “The spatial separation of workhouse populations was intended to function in at least three ways: as a basis for appropriate treatment; as a deterrent to pauperism; and as a barrier against contagion, moral as well as physical.” What we learn from the last quotation is that the typical workhouse was separated for reasons other than what Engels suggests; risk factors such as the spread of disease had to be taken into account as well as separation for the moral and physical reasons put forward by