FREDERICK ENGELS
ENGLAND IN 1845 AND IN 1885
Forty  years ago England stood
face to face with a crisis, solvable to all appearances by
force only. The immense  and rapid development of manu factures had outstripped the extension of foreign markets
and the increase of demand. Every ten years the march of
industry was violently interrupted by  a general commercial
crash, followed, after a long  period of chronic depression,
by  a few short years of prosperity, and always ending in
feverish over-production and consequent renewed collapse.
The capitalist class clamoured for Free Trade in corn, and
threatened to enforce it by  sending the starving population
of the towns  back to the country  districts, whence they
came: to invade them, as John  Bright said, not  as paupers
begging  for bread, but  as an army quartered upon  the
enemy. The working  masses of the towns  demanded their
share of political power — the People’s Charter; they were
supported by  the majority of the small trading class, and
the only  difference between the two  was whether the
Charter should be carried by  physical or by  moral force.
Then came the commercial crash of 1847 and the Irish
famine, and with both  the prospect of revolution.
The French Revolution  of 1848 saved the English middle
class. The socialistic pronunciamentos of the victorious
French workmen  frightened the small middle class of Eng land and disorganised the narrower, but  more  matter-of-
fact, movement  of the English working  class. At  the very
moment  Chartism was bound  to assert itself in its full
strength, it collapsed internally, before even it collapsed
externally on  the 10th of April 1848.209 The action of the

working  class was thrust into the background. The capitalist class triumphed along the whole  line.
The Reform  Bill of 1831 had been the victory of the
whole capitalist class over the landed aristocracy. The repeal of the Corn  Laws was the victory of the manufacturing capitalists not  only  over the landed aristocracy, but
over those sections of capitalists too  whose  interests were
more  or less bound  up  with the landed interest: bankers,
stock-jobbers, fundholders, etc. Free Trade meant the readjustment of the whole  home  and foreign commercial and
financial policy of England in accordance with the interests
of the manufacturing capitalists— the class which now  represented the nation. And they set about this task with a
will. Every obstacle to industrial production was mercilessly removed. The tariff and the whole  system  of taxation
were revolutionised. Everything was made subordinate to
one end, but  that end was of the utmost  importance to the
manufacturing capitalist: the cheapening of all raw produce,
and especially of the means of living of the working  class;
the reduction of the cost of raw material, and the keeping
down — if not  as yet the bringing down—of wages. England
was to become the “workshop  of the world” ; all other
countries were to become for England what Ireland already
was— markets for her manufactured goods, supplying  her in
return with  raw materials and food. England is the great manufacturing centre of an agricultural world, with an ever increasing number  of corn and cotton-growing  Irelands, revolving around her, the industrial sun. What a glorious prospect!
The manufacturing capitalists set about the realisation of
this their great object with that strong  common  sense and
that contempt for traditional principles which have ever
distinguished them from their more  narrow-minded com peers on  the Continent. Chartism was dying out. The revival
of commercial prosperity, natural after the revulsion of 1847
had spent itself, was put  down  altogether to the credit of
Free Trade. Both  these circumstances had turned the English
working  class, politically, into the tail of the great Liberal
Party, the party led by  the manufacturers. This advantage,
once gained, had to be perpetuated. And  the manufacturing
capitalists, from the Chartist opposition  not  to Free Trade,

but  to the transformation of Free Trade into the one vital
national question, had learnt and were learning more  and
more  that the middle class can never obtain full social and
political power  over the nation except by  the help of the
working  class. Thus  a gradual change came over the relations between both  classes. The Factory Acts, once the bug bear of all manufacturers, were not  only  willingly submitted
to, but  their expansion into acts regulating almost all trades,
was tolerated. Trades Unions,  lately considered inventions
of the devil himself, were now  petted and patronised as perfectly legitimate institutions and as useful means of spreading sound  economical doctrines amongst the workers. Even
strikes, than which nothing  had been more  nefarious up  to
1848, were now  gradually found out  to be occasionally very
useful, especially when  provoked  by  the masters themselves,
at their own  time. Of the legal enactments, placing the work man at a lower level or at a disadvantage with regard to
the master, at least the most  revolting were repealed. And,
practically, that horrid “People’s Charter” actually became
the political programme  of the very manufacturers who  had
opposed  it to the last. “The Abolition of the Property  Qualification” 210 and “Vote  by  Ballot” are now  the law of the
land. The Reform  Acts of 1867 and 1884211 make a near
approach to “universal suffrage” at least such as it now
exists in Germany; the Redistribution Bill now  before Parliament creates “equal electoral districts”—on  the whole  not
more  unequal than those of France or Germany; “payment
of members ” and shorter, if not  actually “annual parliaments ” are visibly looming  in the distance— and yet there
are people who  say that Chartism is dead.
The Revolution  of 1848, not  less than many of its predecessors, has had strange bedfellows and successors. The
very people who  put  it down,  have become, as Karl Marx
used to say, its testamentary executors. Louis  Napoleon  had
to create an independent and united Italy, Bismarck had to
revolutionise Germany and to restore Hungarian independence, and the English manufacturers had to enact the
People’s Charter.
For  England, the effects of this domination of the manu facturing capitalists were at first startling. Trade revived

and extended to a degree unheard-of even in this cradle of
modern  industry; the previous  astounding creations of steam
and machinery dwindled into nothing  compared with the
immense  mass of productions of the twenty  years from 1850
to 1870, with the overwhelming  figures of exports  and imports, or  wealth accumulated in the hands of capitalists and
of human working  power  concentrated in the large towns.
The progress  was indeed interrupted, as before, by  a crisis
every ten years, in 1857 as well as in 1868; but  these revulsions were now  considered as natural, inevitable events,
which must  be fatalistically submitted to, and which always
set themselves right in the end.
And  the condition of the working  class during this period?
There was temporary improvement  even for the great mass.
But  this improvement  always was reduced to the old level
by  the influx of the great body  of the unemployed  reserve,
by  the constant superseding of hands by  new  machinery, by
the immigration of the agricultural population, now,  too,
more  and more  superseded by  machines.
A  permanent improvement  can be recognised for two
“protected” sections only  of the working  class. Firstly, the
factory hands. The fixing by  Act of Parliament of their
working  day within relatively rational limits, has restored
their physical constitution and endowed them with a moral
superiority, enhanced by  their local concentration. They are
undoubtedly better off than before 1848. The best proof is
that out  of ten strikes they make, nine are provoked  by  the
manufacturers in their own  interests, as the only  means of
securing a reduced production. You  can never get the masters to agree to work  “short time” , let manufactured goods
be ever so  unsaleable; but  get the workpeople  to strike, and
the masters shut their factories to a man.
Secondly, the great Trades Unions. They are the organisations of those trades in which the labour of grown-up men
predominates, or is alone applicable. Here the competition neither of women  and children nor  of machinery has
so  far weakened their organised strength. The engineers,
the carpenters and joiners, the bricklayers are each of them
a power,  to that extent that, as in the case of the bricklayers and bricklayers’ labourers, they can even success
fully resist the introduction of machinery. That their condition has remarkably improved since 1848 there can be
no  doubt, and the best proof of this is in the fact that for
more  than fifteen years not  only  have their employers  been
with them, but  they with their employers, upon  exceedingly good  terms. They form an aristocracy among  the
working  class; they have succeeded in enforcing for themselves a relatively comfortable position, and they accept
it as final. They are the model working  men  of Messrs.
Leone Levi and Giffen, and they are very nice people
indeed nowadays to deal with, for any sensible capitalist in particular and for the whole capitalist class in
general.
But  as to the great mass of the working  people, the state
of misery and insecurity in which they live now  is as low
as ever, if not  lower. The East End of London  is an ever
spreading pool  of stagnant misery and desolation, of starvation when  out  of work,  and degradation, physical and
moral, when  in work. And so  in all other large towns —
abstraction made of the privileged minority  of the workers;
and so  in the smaller towns  and in the agricultural districts.
The law which reduces the value of labour-power to the
value of the necessary means of subsistence, and the other
law which reduces its average price as a rule to the minimum
of those means of subsistence: these laws act upon  them with
the irresistible force of an automatic engine, which crushes
them between its wheels.
This, then, was the position created by  the Free Trade
policy of 1847, and by  twenty  years of the rule of the manu facturing capitalists. But  then a change came. The crash of
1866  was, indeed, followed by  a slight and short revival
about 1873; but  that did not  last. We  did not, indeed, pass
through  the full crisis at the time it was due, in 1877 or
1878; but  we  have had, ever since 1876, a chronic state of
stagnation in all dominant branches of industry. Neither
will the full crash come; nor  will the period of longed-for
prosperity, to which we  used to be entitled before and after
it. A  dull depression, a chronic glut of all markets for all
trades, that is what we  have been living in for nearly ten
years. How  is this?

The Free Trade theory was based upon  the assumption:
that England was to be the one great manufacturing centre
of an agricultural world. And  the actual fact is that this assumption  has turned out  to be a pure delusion. The conditions of modern  industry, steam-power and machinery, can
be established wherever there is fuel, especially coals. And
other countries beside England, France, Belgium, Germany,
America, even Russia, have coals. And  the people over there
did not  see the advantage of being turned into Irish pauper
farmers merely for the greater wealth and glory  of English
capitalists. They set resolutely about manufacturing, not
only  for themselves but  for the rest of the world; and the
consequence is, that the manufacturing monopoly  enjoyed
by  England for nearly a century is irretrievably broken  up.
But  the manufacturing monopoly  of England is the pivot
of the present social system  of England. Even while that
monopoly  lasted the markets could not  keep pace with the
increasing productivity of English manufacturers; the decennial crises were the consequence. And  new  markets are getting scarce every day, so  much  so  that even the negroes of
the Congo  are now  to be forced into the civilisation attendant upon  Manchester calicoes, Staffordshire pottery, and
Birmingham hardware. How  will it be when  Continental,
and especially American goods, flow in the ever increasing
quantities— when  the predominating share, still held by
British manufactures, will become reduced from year to
year? Answer,  Free Trade, thou  universal panacea?
I am not  the first to point  this out. Already, in 1883, at
the Southport  meeting of the British Association, Mr. Inglis
Palgrave, the President of the Economical section, stated
plainly that
“the days of great trade profits in England were over, and there was
a pause in the progress  of several great branches of industrial labour.
The country might almost be said to be entering the non-progressive
state.”212
But  what is to be the consequence? Capitalist production
cannot stop. It must  go  on  increasing and expanding, or it
must  die. Even now,  the mere reduction of England’s lion’s
share in the supply  of the world’s markets means stagnation,
distress, excess of capital here, excess of unemployed  work 
people there. What will it be when  the increase of yearly
production is brought  to a complete stop?
Here is the vulnerable place, the heel of Achilles, for
capitalist production. Its very basis is the necessity of constant expansion, and this constant expansion now  becomes
impossible. It ends in a deadlock. Every year England is
brought  nearer face to face with the question: either the
country  must  go  to pieces, or capitalist production must.
Which is it to be?
And  the working  class? If even under the unparalleled
commercial and industrial expansion, from 1848 to 1868,
they have had to undergo such misery; if even then the
great bulk of them experienced at best a temporary improve ment  of their condition, while only  a small, privileged, “pro tected” minority  was permanently benefited, what will it be
when  this dazzling period is brought  finally to a close; when
the present dreary stagnation shall not  only  become intensified, but  this its intensified condition shall become the
permanent and normal state of English trade?
The truth is this: during the period of England’s industrial monopoly  the English working  class have to a certain
extent shared in the benefits of the monopoly.  These benefits were very unequally parcelled out  amongst them; the
privileged minority  pocketed most,  but  even the great mass
had at least a temporary share now  and then. And  that is
the reason why  since the dying-out of Owenism  there has
been no  Socialism in England. With  the breakdown of that
monopoly  the English working  class will lose that privileged
position; it will find itself generally— the privileged and
leading minority  not  excepted— on  a level with its fellowworkers  abroad. And  that is the reason why  there will be
Socialism again in England.
March 1, 1885 and the