Chapter 21

Choice: Friedrich Engels Denounces Capitalist Exploitation

This activity corresponds to the “Friedrich Engels Denounces Capitalist Exploitation” feature in your textbook. The following questions are designed to help you understand the origins of Friedrich Engels’ critique of capitalism. Once you have answered the questions in the Comprehension section, submit your answers and move on to the questions in the Analysis and Outside Sources sections. Each section is designed to build upon the one before it, taking you deeper into the subject you are studying. After you have answered all of the questions, you will have the option of emailing your responses to your instructor.

Introduction

Karl Marx is usually the individual one cites when referring to the advent of communism and the critique of capitalism. However, his German comrade, Friedrich Engels was as important for his investigative work in the slums of Manchester and elsewhere, discerning the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon the poor and working classes. The effects of Engels’ work led to a number of reactions. But for Engels himself, the solution was not to renounce the industrial underpinnings of society, but rather to harness it for the good of the laborers. It was his destiny not only to critique capitalism, but also to earn his income through his business so that he could finance his efforts to undermine and eventually dismantle the capitalist bulwark of society.

Comprehension

1. How did the young Engels come to realize the negative underside of the Industrial Revolution? In what kind of environment did his workers live?

2. What was the paradox of Engels life and work in Manchester?

3. What was the impact of Engels’ The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844 upon radicals in Europe after its publication?

Analysis

1. In your opinion, what was the effect of Engels’ strict Protestant background upon his dual livelihood as businessman and critic of capitalist society?

2. What strategy of action do you think Engels would have advocated by European radicals of his time? Was Engels an advocate of a retreat from the Industrial Revolution?

3. What kind of political manifesto did Engels advocate in his writings? Did he advocate revolution or was he trying to avoid it?

Outside Sources

1. Read excerpts from Engels’ work, The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844, at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition- working-class/index.htm.

2. In his appendix for the 1887 American edition of The Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844, Engels cites his belief that American workers were in solidarity with workers who immigrated to the United States from the workhouses and factories of Europe. Read the preface for Engels’ observations at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/02/25.htm and discuss whether he was accurate or idealistic.

3. In the preface for the 1887 American edition, Engels cites the American reformer, Henry George. Read about Henry George at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1887/01/26.htm and discuss his efforts to bring a peculiarly American form of socialism into the mainstream workforce here in the United States.