The author of this article is himself a worker in one of London’s 
tailoring shops.* We ask the German bourgeoisie how many authors 
it numbers capable of grasping the real movement in a similar 
manner? 

Before the proletariat fights out its victories on the barricades and 
in the battle lines it gives notice of its impending rule with a series of 
intellectual victories. 

The reader will note how here, instead of the sentimental, moral 
and psychological criticism employed against existing conditions by 
Weitling and other workers who engage in authorship, a purely 
materialist understanding and a freer one, unspoilt by sentimental 
whims, confronts bourgeois society and its movement. Whereas 
craftsmen resist the collapse of their semi-medieval position and 
would like to unite as craftsmen, particularly in Germany and to a 
great extent also in France, the subjection of craft labour to 
large-scale industry is comprehended here as a step forward and 
celebrated, while at the same time, in the results and productions of 
large-scale industry, the real preconditions of the proletarian 
revolution, generated by history itself and daily generating them- 
selves anew, are recognised and revealed. 

1850, marked by the editors “Editorial 

Comment” 

* The word Schneidershop used in the original is a mixture of the German Schneider 
and the English “shop” .— Ed. 

486 

Frederick Engels