How does Engel's description of different parts of London and Manchester in the key reading illustrate his critical arguments about modern capitalism?

How does Engel’s description of different parts of London and Manchester in the key reading illustrate his critical arguments about modern capitalism?

In his book ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ Engels makes a critical observation of poverty within both London and Manchester. His account of social relations and spatial divisions in these cities in the middle of the nineteenth century provide a useful account of modern social processes. As Steven Marcus argues ‘he managed to read the illegible industrial city by showing that it’s apparently unsystematic and possible incoherent form could be perceived as a total and imaginative structure’ (1973:258). Engels shared Marx’s views on capitalism and began collaborating with him after they met in 1842. England was significant to them both as it was the birthplace of contemporary industrial capitalism. They noted how England was different before technological change and saw how a new type of social class was emerging and wanted to understand what had made it change.

This essay will look at how Engels describes Manchester and London and how he represents his interpretation. I will also outline his arguments about modern capitalism and describe a social interaction that is characteristic of the modern city.

Engels uses a first person observation and urban ethnography to explore areas of working class within the two cities. As a result of working in his Father’s factory in Manchester he combined both real experience of the city, with a strong social conscience. He also did textual research into parliamentary reports, newspapers and periodicals, therefore using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Engels always used the sources and texts of the middle class as he wanted to use the very people he was criticising as witnesses. He did not see a contradiction with siding with the working class and thought this was the only way to understand what was happening, although he maintained a middle class facade himself.

Engels rejected the ideas of the virtues of capitalism and providential social order and did not see the city as a natural system. His description of Manchester begins by mapping out the overall shape of the city. In doing so, he outlines an interpretation of the relation between districts in terms of social dynamic. He describes how ‘Manchester’s commercial heart with its offices and warehouses is linked by new and efficient roads to its prosperous suburbs’ (Donald, 1992:432). Engels points out how in Manchester the Bourgeoisie are isolated from their own social bases:

‘The town itself is peculiarly built, so ...

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‘The town 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 the working-people’s quarter or even with workers; that is so long as he confines himself to his business or to pleasure walks. ...the working-people’s quarters are sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved for the middle class; or, if this does no succeed, they are concealed with the cloak of clarity.’ (Engels, 1996: 49).

He notes how the working class slums are hidden from view of others; however Engels does not see poverty as a sickness that needs to be cured. He argues that it is a necessary consequence of the forms of production. ‘It is what makes the display of wealth possible’ (Donald, 1992: 432). Having identified this coherence at a level of the city’s macro structure, he goes on to explore its micro structures and explains why conditions exist. Engels does not come up with ideas for change as he sees the improvements proposed as part of the same dynamic structure that produced the problems of industrialisation and urbanisation in the first place. In comparison to today, we have the welfare state which is supposed to take primary responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. However, we still have inequalities as nobody seems to look at the structural issues that need to be solved. Instead, the government is indolent and just hands out benefits.

The start of the production of machinery had fundamental social consequences. The cotton industry led to the wealth of England as a state and the formation of the British Empire. There was prosperity of commerce and manufacture and a rapid fall in the price of manufactured commodities. The Industrial revolution had led to a total revolution.

As Elizabeth Wilson mentions; ‘Under the impact of the industrial revolution, the cities of Europe entered a period of explosive growth. Victorian Britain became the world’s first urbanised society’ (1991:26). Engels focused on a particular sub-group of working-class weavers in order to look at the making of the English Proletariat. Prior to the Industrial revolution, weavers lived ‘righteous and peaceful’ lives, devoid of excessive change or transformation. However, after the invention of the spinning jenny in 1764, the demand for woven goods increased as it allowed for the production of yarn in far greater volume. Consequently more weavers were needed and weaver’s wages rose, leading to a process driven by competition. Engels argues that this competition is produced by capitalism, which generates the proletariat in its working sense. As Steven Marcus notes; ‘with the increased mechanization of the spinning processes, the work of spinning was further rationalized by having the machines driven by mechanical rather than human power’ (1974: 9). This power creates a de-humanising effect as workers lose their independence and just become ‘cogs’ in the factory. The workers are no different to slaves as they have to sell their livelihood. Although there is the appearance of acting from free choice, the individuals have to work to live as they depend on the cash economy. As a result, Engels noted that the proletariat becomes a permanent class when large capital is needed for production.

Engels noted that the social effects of capitalism produced three tendencies; centralisation, polarisation and atomisation. These explain the way that traditional socialisation had broken up and individuals existed as separate from one another. He notes; ‘the brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are crowed together, within a limited space...the dissolution of mankind into monads, of which each one has a separate essence and a separate purpose...’ (Engels, 1996, 54). Engels argues that social organisation is to blame for the lack of connection between individuals. Society exerts a constant violence which no one sees until a social critique makes it visable.

In conclusion, Engel’s description of different parts of London and Manchester illustrate his critical arguments about modern capitalism. Engel’s interest in how technology impacted on political changes led him to regard England as advanced in the arena of political study. The changes that were taking place in society at that time caused a divide in society and Engels saw this as capitalism in its classic form. Engels chronicled how the seemingly chaotic Manchester was in fact a carefully planned expression of middle class power. He noticed how ‘the members of this money aristocracy can take the shortest road...without ever seeing that they are in the midst of the grimy misery...’ (Engels, 1996:49).

However I feel that Engel’s description of England in the 1840s resembles the chasm between rich and poor seen in London today. An article printed in the Guardian in 2007 illustrates this comparison as Tristram Hunt notes; ‘such patterns have long been the case in developing and postcolonial nations’ (2007:1). Similarly, in her book World City, the geographer Doreen Massey describes Ken Livingstone’s London as ‘the most unequal place in the country, and the effects of this wealth reverberate throughout the capital’ (2007:47). Today’s extremities of greed and need appear to have created a bigger gap between neighbourhoods that were once a mixture of professionals, students, working-class communities and migrants.

Bibliography

Bocock, R. and Thompson, K., (1992) Social and Cultural Forms of Modernity. London: Polity

Engels, F., ‘The Great Towns’ in The Conditions of the Working Class in England (1845). Re-printed in LeGgates, R. & Stoud, F. (eds) (1996) The City Reader. London: Routledge.

Hunt, T., (2007) ‘Urban Britain is heading for Victorian levels of inequality’ The Guardian, July 2007.

Marcus, S., (1974), Engels, Manchester and the Working Class. New York: Random House.

Massey, D., (2007) World City. London: Polity

Roberts, R., (1976) A Ragged Schooling. Manchester: University Press.

Wilson, E., (1991) The Sphinx in the City. London: Virago.