It must be admitted, even if I had not proved it so often in detail, that
the English workers cannot feel happy in this condition; that theirs is
not a state in which a man or a whole class of men can think, feel, and
live as human beings. The workers must therefore strive to escape from
this brutalizing condition, to secure for themselves a better, more human
position; and this they cannot do without attacking the interest of the
bourgeoisie which consists in exploiting them. But the bourgeoisie
defends its interests with all the power placed at its disposal by wealth
and the might of the State. In proportion as the working-man determines
to alter the present state of things, the bourgeois becomes his avowed
enemy.
Moreover, the working-man is made to feel at every moment that the
bourgeoisie treats him as a chattel, as its property, and for this
reason, if for no other, he must come forward as its enemy. I have shown
in a hundred ways in the foregoing pages, and could have shown in a
hundred others, that, in our present society, he can save his manhood
only in hatred and rebellion against the bourgeoisie. And he can protest
with most violent passion against the tyranny of the propertied class,
thanks to his education, or rather want of education, and to the
abundance of hot Irish blood that flows in the veins of the English
working-class. The English working-man is no Englishman nowadays; no
calculating money-grabber like his wealthy neighbour. He possesses more
fully developed feelings, his native northern coldness is overborne by
the unrestrained development of his passions and their control over him.
The cultivation of the understanding which so greatly strengthens the
selfish tendency of the English bourgeois, which has made selfishness his
predominant trait and concentrated all his emotional power upon the
single point of money-greed, is wanting in the working-man, whose
passions are therefore strong and mighty as those of the foreigner.
English nationality is annihilated in the working-man.
Since, as we have seen, no single field for the exercise of his manhood
is left him, save his opposition to the whole conditions of his life, it
is natural that exactly in this opposition he should be most manly,
noblest, most worthy of sympathy. We shall see that all the energy, all
the activity of the working-men is directed to this point, and that even
their attempts to attain general education all stand in direct connection
with this. True, we shall have single acts of violence and even of
brutality to report, but it must always be kept in mind that the social
war is avowedly raging in England; and that, whereas it is in the
interest of the bourgeoisie to conduct this war hypocritically, under the
disguise of peace and even of philanthropy, the only help for the working-
men consists in laying bare the true state of things and destroying this
hypocrisy; that the most violent attacks of the workers upon the
bourgeoisie and its servants are only the open, undisguised expression of
that which the bourgeoisie perpetrates secretly, treacherously against
the workers.
The revolt of the workers began soon after the first industrial
development, and has passed through several phases. The investigation of
their importance in the history of the English people I must reserve for
separate treatment, limiting myself meanwhile to such bare facts as serve
to characterise the condition of the English proletariat.
The earliest, crudest, and least fruitful form of this rebellion was that
of crime. The working-man lived in poverty and want, and saw that others
were better off than he. It was not clear to his mind why he, who did
more for society than the rich idler, should be the one to suffer under
these conditions. Want conquered his inherited respect for the
sacredness of property, and he stole. We have seen how crime increased
with the extension of manufacture; how the yearly number of arrests bore
a constant relation to the number of bales of cotton annually consumed.
The workers soon realised that crime did not help matters. The criminal
could protest against the existing order of society only singly, as one
individual; the whole might of society was brought to bear upon each
criminal, and crushed him with its immense superiority. Besides, theft
was the most primitive form of protest, and for this reason, if for no
other, it never became the universal expression of the public opinion of
the working-men, however much they might approve of it in silence. As a
class, they first manifested opposition to the bourgeoisie when they
resisted the introduction of machinery at the very beginning of the
industrial period. The first inventors, Arkwright and others, were
persecuted in this way and their machines destroyed. Later, there took
place a number of revolts against machinery, in which the occurrences
were almost precisely the same as those of the printers' disturbances in
Bohemia in 1844; factories were demolished and machinery destroyed.
This form of opposition also was isolated, restricted to certain
localities, and directed against one feature only of our present social
arrangements. When the momentary end was attained, the whole weight of
social power fell upon the unprotected evil-doers and punished them to
its heart's content, while the machinery was introduced none the less. A
new form of opposition had to be found.
At this point help came in the shape of a law enacted by the old,
unreformed, oligarchic-Tory parliament, a law which never could have
passed the House of Commons later, when the Reform Bill had legally
sanctioned the distinction between bourgeoisie and proletariat, and made
the bourgeoisie the ruling class. This was enacted in 1824, and repealed
all laws by which coalitions between working-men for labour purposes had
hitherto been forbidden. The working-men obtained a right previously
restricted to the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, the right of free
association. Secret coalitions had, it is true, previously existed, but
could never achieve great results. In Glasgow, as Symonds {214} relates,
a general strike of weavers had taken place in 1812, which was brought
about by a secret association. It was repeated in 1822, and on this
occasion vitriol was thrown into the faces of the two working-men who
would not join the association, and were therefore regarded by the
members as traitors to their class. Both the assaulted lost the use of
their eyes in consequence of the injury. So, too, in 1818, the
association of Scottish miners was powerful enough to carry on a general
strike. These associations required their members to take an oath of
fidelity and secrecy, had regular lists, treasurers, bookkeepers, and
local branches. But the secrecy with which everything was conducted
crippled their growth. When, on the other hand, the working-man received
in 1824 the right of free association, these combinations were very soon
spread over all England and attained great power. In all branches of
industry Trades Unions were formed with the outspoken intention of
protecting the single working-man against the tyranny and neglect of the
bourgeoisie. Their objects were to deal, _en masse_, as a power, with
the employers; to regulate the rate of wages according to the profit of
the latter, to raise it when opportunity offered, and to keep it uniform
in each trade throughout the country. Hence they tried to settle with
the capitalists a scale of wages to be universally adhered to, and
ordered out on strike the employees of such individuals as refused to
accept the scale. They aimed further to keep up the demand for labour by
limiting the number of apprentices, and so to keep wages high; to
counteract, as far as possible, the indirect wages reductions which the
manufacturers brought about by means of new tools and machinery; and
finally, to assist unemployed working-men financially. This they do
either directly or by means of a card to legitimate the bearer as a
"society man," and with which the working-man wanders from place to
place, supported by his fellow-workers, and instructed as to the best
opportunity for finding employment. This is tramping, and the wanderer a
tramp. To attain these ends, a President and Secretary are engaged at a
salary (since it is to be expected that no manufacturer will employ such
persons), and a committee collects the weekly contributions and watches
over their expenditure for the purposes of the association. When it
proved possible and advantageous, the various trades of single districts
united in a federation and held delegate conventions at set times. The
attempt has been made in single cases to unite the workers of one branch
over all England in one great Union; and several times (in 1830 for the
first time) to form one universal trades association for the whole United
Kingdom, with a separate organisation for each trade. These
associations, however, never held together long, and were seldom realised
even for the moment, since an exceptionally universal excitement is
necessary to make such a federation possible and effective.
The means usually employed by these Unions for attaining their ends are
the following: If one or more employers refuse to pay the wage specified
by the Union, a deputation is sent or a petition forwarded (the working-
men, you see, know how to recognise the absolute power of the lord of the
factory in his little State); if this proves unavailing, the Union
commands the employees to stop work, and all hands go home. This strike
is either partial when one or several, or general when all employers in
the trade refuse to regulate wages according to the proposals of the
Union. So far go the lawful means of the Union, assuming the strike to
take effect after the expiration of the legal notice, which is not always
the case. But these lawful means are very weak when there are workers
outside the Union, or when members separate from it for the sake of the
momentary advantage offered by the bourgeoisie. Especially in the case
of partial strikes can the manufacturer readily secure recruits from
these black sheep (who are known as knobsticks), and render fruitless the
efforts of the united workers. Knobsticks are usually threatened,
insulted, beaten, or otherwise maltreated by the members of the Union;
intimidated, in short, in every way. Prosecution follows, and as the law-
abiding bourgeoisie has the power in its own hands, the force of the
Union is broken almost every time by the first unlawful act, the first
judicial procedure against its members.
The history of these Unions is a long series of defeats of the working-
men, interrupted by a few isolated victories. All these efforts
naturally cannot alter the economic law according to which wages are
determined by the relation between supply and demand in the labour
market. Hence the Unions remain powerless against all _great_ forces
which influence this relation. In a commercial crisis the Union itself
must reduce wages or dissolve wholly; and in a time of considerable
increase in the demand for labour, it cannot fix the rate of wages higher
than would be reached spontaneously by the competition of the capitalists
among themselves. But in dealing with minor, single influences they are
powerful. If the employer had no concentrated, collective opposition to
expect, he would in his own interest gradually reduce wages to a lower
and lower point; indeed, the battle of competition which he has to wage
against his fellow-manufacturers would force him to do so, and wages
would soon reach the minimum. But this competition of the manufacturers
among themselves is, _under average conditions_, somewhat restricted by
the opposition of the working-men.
Every manufacturer knows that the consequence of a reduction not
justified by conditions to which his competitors also are subjected,
would be a strike, which would most certainly injure him, because his
capital would be idle as long as the strike lasted, and his machinery
would be rusting, whereas it is very doubtful whether he could, in such a
case, enforce his reduction. Then he has the certainty that if he should
succeed, his competitors would follow him, reducing the price of the
goods so produced, and thus depriving him of the benefit of his policy.
Then, too, the Unions often bring about a more rapid increase of wages
after a crisis than would otherwise follow. For the manufacturer's
interest is to delay raising wages until forced by competition, but now
the working-men demand an increased wage as soon as the market improves,
and they can carry their point by reason of the smaller supply of workers
at his command under such circumstances. But, for resistance to more
considerable forces which influence the labour market, the Unions are
powerless. In such cases hunger gradually drives the strikers to resume
work on any terms, and when once a few have begun; the force of the Union
is broken, because these few knobsticks, with the reserve supplies of
goods in the market, enable the bourgeoisie to overcome the worst effects
of the interruption of business. The funds of the Union are soon
exhausted by the great numbers requiring relief, the credit which the
shopkeepers give at high interest is withdrawn after a time, and want
compels the working-man to place himself once more under the yoke of the
bourgeoisie. But strikes end disastrously for the workers mostly,
because the manufacturers, in their own interest (which has, be it said,
become their interest only through the resistance of the workers), are
obliged to avoid all useless reductions, while the workers feel in every
reduction imposed by the state of trade a deterioration of their
condition, against which they must defend themselves as far as in them
lies.
It will be asked, "Why, then, do the workers strike in such cases, when
the uselessness of such measures is so evident?" Simply because they
_must_ protest against every reduction, even if dictated by necessity;
because they feel bound to proclaim that they, as human beings, shall not
be made to bow to social circumstances, but social conditions ought to
yield to them as human beings; because silence on their part would be a
recognition of these social conditions, an admission of the right of the
bourgeoisie to exploit the workers in good times and let them starve in
bad ones. Against this the working-men must rebel so long as they have
not lost all human feeling, and that they protest in this way and no
other, comes of their being practical English people, who express
themselves in _action_, and do not, like German theorists, go to sleep as
soon as their protest is properly registered and placed _ad acta_, there
to sleep as quietly as the protesters themselves. The active resistance
of the English working-men has its effect in holding the money greed of
the bourgeoisie within certain limits, and keeping alive the opposition
of the workers to the social and political omnipotence of the
bourgeoisie, while it compels the admission that something more is needed
than Trades Unions and strikes to break the power of the ruling class.
But what gives these Unions and the strikes arising from them their real
importance is this, that they are the first attempt of the workers to
abolish competition. They imply the recognition of the fact that the
supremacy of the bourgeoisie is based wholly upon the competition of the
workers among themselves; _i.e_., upon their want of cohesion. And
precisely because the Unions direct themselves against the vital nerve of
the present social order, however one-sidedly, in however narrow a way,
are they so dangerous to this social order. The working-men cannot
attack the bourgeoisie, and with it the whole existing order of society,
at any sorer point than this. If the competition of the workers among
themselves is destroyed, if all determine not to be further exploited by
the bourgeoisie, the rule of property is at an end. Wages depend upon
the relation of demand to supply, upon the accidental state of the labour
market, simply because the workers have hitherto been content to be
treated as chattels, to be bought and sold. The moment the workers
resolve to be bought and sold no longer, when in the determination of the
value of labour, they take the part of men possessed of a will as well as
of working-power, at that moment the whole Political Economy of to-day is
at an end.
The laws determining the rate of wages would, indeed, come into force
again in the long run, if the working-men did not go beyond this step of
abolishing competition among themselves. But they must go beyond that
unless they are prepared to recede again and to allow competition among
themselves to reappear. Thus once advanced so far, necessity compels
them to go farther; to abolish not only one kind of competition, but
competition itself altogether, and that they will do.
The workers are coming to perceive more clearly with every day how
competition affects them; they see far more clearly than the bourgeois
that competition of the capitalists among themselves presses upon the
workers too, by bringing on commercial crises, and that this kind of
competition; too, must be abolished. They will soon learn _how_ they
have to go about it.
That these Unions contribute greatly to nourish the bitter hatred of the
workers against the property-holding class need hardly be said. From
them proceed, therefore, with or without the connivance of the leading
members, in times of unusual excitement, individual actions which can be
explained only by hatred wrought to the pitch of despair, by a wild
passion overwhelming all restraints. Of this sort are the attacks with
vitriol mentioned in the foregoing pages, and a series of others, of
which I shall cite several. In 1831, during a violent labour movement,
young Ashton, a manufacturer in Hyde, near Manchester, was shot one
evening when crossing a field, and no trace of the assassin discovered.
There is no doubt that this was a deed of vengeance of the working-men.
Incendiarisms and attempted explosions are very common. On Friday,
September 29th, 1843, an attempt was made to blow up the saw-works of
Padgin, in Howard Street, Sheffield. A closed iron tube filled with
powder was the means employed, and the damage was considerable. On the
following day, a similar attempt was made in Ibbetson's knife and file
works at Shales Moor, near Sheffield. Mr. Ibbetson had made himself
obnoxious by an active participation in bourgeois movements, by low
wages, the exclusive employment of knobsticks, and the exploitation of
the Poor Law for his own benefit. He had reported, during the crisis of
1842, such operatives as refused to accept reduced wages, as persons who
could find work but would not take it, and were, therefore, not deserving
of relief, so compelling the acceptance of a reduction. Considerable
damage was inflicted by the explosion, and all the working-men who came
to view it regretted only "that the whole concern was not blown into the
air." On Friday, October 6th, 1844, an attempt to set fire to the
factory of Ainsworth and Crompton, at Bolton, did no damage; it was the
third or fourth attempt in the same factory within a very short time. In
the meeting of the Town Council of Sheffield, on Wednesday, January 10th,
1844, the Commissioner of Police exhibited a cast-iron machine, made for
the express purpose of producing an explosion, and found filled with four
pounds of powder, and a fuse which had been lighted but had not taken
effect, in the works of Mr. Kitchen, Earl Street, Sheffield. On Sunday,
January 20th, 1844, an explosion caused by a package of powder took place
in the sawmill of Bently & White, at Bury, in Lancashire, and produced
considerable damage. On Thursday, February 1st, 1844, the Soho Wheel
Works, in Sheffield, were set on fire and burnt up.
Here are six such cases in four months, all of which have their sole
origin in the embitterment of the working-men against the employers. What
sort of a social state it must be in which such things are possible I
need hardly say. These facts are proof enough that in England, even in
good business years, such as 1843, the social war is avowed and openly
carried on, and still the English bourgeoisie does not stop to reflect!
But the case which speaks most loudly is that of the Glasgow Thugs,
{221a} which came up before the Assizes from the 3rd to the 11th of
January, 1838. It appears from the proceedings that the Cotton-Spinners'
Union, which existed here from the year 1816, possessed rare organisation
and power. The members were bound by an oath to adhere to the decision
of the majority, and had during every turnout a secret committee which
was unknown to the mass of the members, and controlled the funds of the
Union absolutely. This committee fixed a price upon the heads of
knobsticks and obnoxious manufacturers and upon incendiarisms in mills. A
mill was thus set on fire in which female knobsticks were employed in
spinning in the place of men; a Mrs. M'Pherson, mother of one of these
girls, was murdered, and both murderers sent to America at the expense of
the association. As early as 1820, a knobstick named M'Quarry was shot
at and wounded, for which deed the doer received twenty pounds from the
Union, but was discovered and transported for life. Finally, in 1837, in
May, disturbances occurred in consequence of a turnout in the Oatbank and
Mile End factories, in which perhaps a dozen knobsticks were maltreated.
In July, of the same year, the disturbances still continued, and a
certain Smith, a knobstick, was so maltreated that he died. The
committee was now arrested, an investigation begun, and the leading
members found guilty of participation in conspiracies, maltreatment of
knobsticks, and incendiarism in the mill of James and Francis Wood, and
they were transported for seven years. What do our good Germans say to
this story? {221b}
The property-holding class, and especially the manufacturing portion of
it which comes into direct contact with the working-men, declaims with
the greatest violence against these Unions, and is constantly trying to
prove their uselessness to the working-men upon grounds which are
economically perfectly correct, but for that very reason partially
mistaken, and for the working-man's understanding totally without effect.
The very zeal of the bourgeoisie shows that it is not disinterested in
the matter; and apart from the indirect loss involved in a turnout, the
state of the case is such that whatever goes into the pockets of the
manufacturers comes of necessity out of those of the worker. So that
even if the working-men did not know that the Unions hold the emulation
of their masters in the reduction of wages, at least in a measure, in
check, they would still stand by the Unions, simply to the injury of
their enemies, the manufacturers. In war the injury of one party is the
benefit of the other, and since the working-men are on a war-footing
towards their employers, they do merely what the great potentates do when
they get into a quarrel. Beyond all other bourgeois is our friend Dr.
Ure, the most furious enemy of the Unions. He foams with indignation at
the "secret tribunals" of the cotton-spinners, the most powerful section
of the workers, tribunals which boast their ability to paralyse every
disobedient manufacturer, {222a} "and so bring ruin on the man who had
given them profitable employment for many a year." He speaks of a time
{222b} "when the inventive head and the sustaining heart of trade were
held in bondage by the unruly lower members." A pity that the English
working-men will not let themselves be pacified so easily with thy fable
as the Roman Plebs, thou modern Menenius Agrippa! Finally, he relates
the following: At one time the coarse mule-spinners had misused their
power beyond all endurance. High wages, instead of awakening
thankfulness towards the manufacturers and leading to intellectual
improvement (in harmless study of sciences useful to the bourgeoisie, of
course), in many cases produced pride and supplied funds for supporting
rebellious spirits in strikes, with which a number of manufacturers were
visited one after the other in a purely arbitrary manner. During an
unhappy disturbance of this sort in Hyde, Dukinfield, and the surrounding
neighbourhood, the manufacturers of the district, anxious lest they
should be driven from the market by the French, Belgians, and Americans,
addressed themselves to the machine-works of Sharp, Roberts & Co., and
requested Mr. Sharp to turn his inventive mind to the construction of an
automatic mule in order "to emancipate the trade from galling slavery and
impending ruin." {223a}
"He produced in the course of a few months a machine apparently instinct
with the thought, feeling, and tact of the experienced workman--which
even in its infancy displayed a new principle of regulation, ready in its
mature state to fulfil the functions of a finished spinner. Thus the
Iron Man, as the operatives fitly call it, sprung out of the hands of our
modern Prometheus at the bidding of Minerva--a creation destined to
restore order among the industrious classes, and to confirm to Great
Britain the empire of art. The news of this Herculean prodigy spread
dismay through the Union, and even long before it left its cradle, so to
speak, it strangled the Hydra of misrule." {223b}
Ure proves further that the invention of the machine, with which four and
five colours are printed at once, was a result of the disturbances among
the calico printers; that the refractoriness of the yarn-dressers in the
power-loom weaving mills gave rise to a new and perfected machine for
warp-dressing, and mentions several other such cases. A few pages
earlier this same Ure gives himself a great deal of trouble to prove in
detail that machinery is beneficial to the workers! But Ure is not the
only one; in the Factory Report, Mr. Ashworth, the manufacturer, and many
another, lose no opportunity to express their wrath against the Unions.
These wise bourgeois, like certain governments, trace every movement
which they do not understand, to the influence of ill-intentioned
agitators, demagogues, traitors, spouting idiots, and ill-balanced youth.
They declare that the paid agents of the Unions are interested in the
agitation because they live upon it, as though the necessity for this
payment were not forced upon them by the bourgeois, who will give such
men no employment!
The incredible frequency of these strikes proves best of all to what
extent the social war has broken out all over England. No week passes,
scarcely a day, indeed, in which there is not a strike in some direction,
now against a reduction, then against a refusal to raise the rate of
wages, again by reason of the employment of knobsticks or the continuance
of abuses, sometimes against new machinery, or for a hundred other
reasons. These strikes, at first skirmishes, sometimes result in weighty
struggles; they decide nothing, it is true, but they are the strongest
proof that the decisive battle between bourgeoisie and proletariat is
approaching. They are the military school of the working-men in which
they prepare themselves for the great struggle which cannot be avoided;
they are the pronunciamentos of single branches of industry that these
too have joined the labour movement. And when one examines a year's file
of the _Northern Star_, the only sheet which reports all the movements of
the proletariat, one finds that all the proletarians of the towns and of
country manufacture have united in associations, and have protested from
time to time, by means of a general strike, against the supremacy of the
bourgeoisie. And as schools of war, the Unions are unexcelled. In them
is developed the peculiar courage of the English. It is said on the
Continent that the English, and especially the working-men, are cowardly,
that they cannot carry out a revolution because, unlike the French, they
do not riot at intervals, because they apparently accept the bourgeois
_regime_ so quietly. This is a complete mistake. The English working-
men are second to none in courage; they are quite as restless as the
French, but they fight differently. The French, who are by nature
political, struggle against social evils with political weapons; the
English, for whom politics exist only as a matter of interest, solely in
the interest of bourgeois society, fight, not against the Government, but
directly against the bourgeoisie; and for the time, this can be done only
in a peaceful manner. Stagnation in business, and the want consequent
upon it, engendered the revolt at Lyons, in 1834, in favour of the
Republic: in 1842, at Manchester, a similar cause gave rise to a
universal turnout for the Charter and higher wages. That courage is
required for a turnout, often indeed much loftier courage, much bolder,
firmer determination than for an insurrection, is self-evident. It is,
in truth, no trifle for a working-man who knows want from experience, to
face it with wife and children, to endure hunger and wretchedness for
months together, and stand firm and unshaken through it all. What is
death, what the galleys which await the French revolutionist, in
comparison with gradual starvation, with the daily sight of a starving
family, with the certainty of future revenge on the part of the
bourgeoisie, all of which the English working-man chooses in preference
to subjection under the yoke of the property-holding class? We shall
meet later an example of this obstinate, unconquerable courage of men who
surrender to force only when all resistance would be aimless and
unmeaning. And precisely in this quiet perseverance, in this lasting
determination which undergoes a hundred tests every day, the English
working-man develops that side of his character which commands most
respect. People who endure so much to bend one single bourgeois will be
able to break the power of the whole bourgeoisie.
But apart from that, the English working-man has proved his courage often
enough. That the turnout of 1842 had no further results came from the
fact that the men were in part forced into it by the bourgeoisie, in part
neither clear nor united as to its object. But aside from this, they
have shown their courage often enough when the matter in question was a
specific social one. Not to mention the Welsh insurrection of 1839, a
complete battle was waged in Manchester in May, 1843, during my residence
there. Pauling & Henfrey, a brick firm, had increased the size of the
bricks without raising wages, and sold the bricks, of course, at a higher
price. The workers, to whom higher wages were refused, struck work, and
the Brickmakers' Union declared war upon the firm. The firm, meanwhile,
succeeded with great difficulty in securing hands from the neighbourhood,
and among the knobsticks, against whom in the beginning intimidation was
used, the proprietors set twelve men to guard the yard, all ex-soldiers
and policemen, armed with guns. When intimidation proved unavailing, the
brick-yard, which lay scarcely a hundred paces from an infantry barracks,
was stormed at ten o'clock one night by a crowd of brickmakers, who
advanced in military order, the first ranks armed with guns. They forced
their way in, fired upon the watchmen as soon as they saw them, stamped
out the wet bricks spread out to dry, tore down the piled-up rows of
those already dry, demolished everything which came in their way, pressed
into a building, where they destroyed the furniture and maltreated the
wife of the overlooker who was living there. The watchmen, meanwhile,
had placed themselves behind a hedge, whence they could fire safely and
without interruption. The assailants stood before a burning brick-kiln,
which threw a bright light upon them, so that every ball of their enemies
struck home, while every one of their own shots missed its mark.
Nevertheless, the firing lasted half-an-hour, until the ammunition was
exhausted, and the object of the visit--the demolition of all the
destructible objects in the yard--was attained. Then the military
approached, and the brickmakers withdrew to Eccles, three miles from
Manchester. A short time before reaching Eccles they held roll-call, and
each man was called according to his number in the section when they
separated, only to fall the more certainly into the hands of the police,
who were approaching from all sides. The number of the wounded must have
been very considerable, but those only could be counted who were
arrested. One of these had received three bullets (in the thigh, the
calf, and the shoulder), and had travelled in spite of them more than
four miles on foot. These people have proved that they, too, possess
revolutionary courage, and do not shun a rain of bullets. And when an
unarmed multitude, without a precise aim common to them all, are held in
check in a shut-off market-place, whose outlets are guarded by a couple
of policemen and dragoons, as happened in 1842, this by no means proves a
want of courage. On the contrary, the multitude would have stirred quite
as little if the servants of public (_i.e_., of the bourgeois) order had
not been present. Where the working-people have a specific end in view,
they show courage enough; as, for instance, in the attack upon Birley's
mill, which had later to be protected by artillery.
In this connection, a word or two as to the respect for the law in
England. True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own
composition, enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and
protection. He knows that, even if an individual law should injure him,
the whole fabric protects his interests; and more than all, the sanctity
of the law, the sacredness of order as established by the active will of
one part of society, and the passive acceptance of the other, is the
strongest support of his social position. Because the English bourgeois
finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does in his God, the
policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has
for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite
otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too
oft-repeated experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has
prepared for him; and when he is not compelled to do so, he never appeals
to the law. It is ridiculous to assert that the English working-man
fears the police, when every week in Manchester policemen are beaten, and
last year an attempt was made to storm a station-house secured by iron
doors and shutters. The power of the police in the turnout of 1842 lay,
as I have already said, in the want of a clearly defined object on the
part of the working-men themselves.
Since the working-men do not respect the law, but simply submit to its
power when they cannot change it, it is most natural that they should at
least propose alterations in it, that they should wish to put a
proletarian law in the place of the legal fabric of the bourgeoisie. This
proposed law is the People's Charter, which in form is purely political,
and demands a democratic basis for the House of Commons. Chartism is the
compact form of their opposition to the bourgeoisie. In the Unions and
turnouts opposition always remained isolated: it was single working-men
or sections who fought a single bourgeois. If the fight became general,
this was scarcely by the intention of the working-men; or, when it did
happen intentionally, Chartism was at the bottom of it. But in Chartism
it is the whole working class which arises against the bourgeoisie, and
attacks, first of all, the political power, the legislative rampart with
which the bourgeoisie has surrounded itself. Chartism has proceeded from
the Democratic party which arose between 1780 and 1790 with and in the
proletariat, gained strength during the French Revolution, and came forth
after the peace as the Radical party. It had its headquarters then in
Birmingham and Manchester, and later in London; extorted the Reform Bill
from the Oligarchs of the old Parliament by a union with the Liberal
bourgeoisie, and has steadily consolidated itself, since then, as a more
and more pronounced working-men's party in opposition to the bourgeoisie.
In 1835 a committee of the General Working-men's Association of London,
with William Lovett at its head, drew up the People's Charter, whose six
points are as follows: (1) Universal suffrage for every man who is of
age, sane and unconvicted of crime; (2) Annual Parliaments; (3) Payment
of members of Parliament, to enable poor men to stand for election; (4)
Voting by ballot to prevent bribery and intimidation by the bourgeoisie;
(5) Equal electoral districts to secure equal representation; and (6)
Abolition of the even now merely nominal property qualification of 300
pounds in land for candidates in order to make every voter eligible.
These six points, which are all limited to the reconstitution of the
House of Commons, harmless as they seem, are sufficient to overthrow the
whole English Constitution, Queen and Lords included. The so-called
monarchical and aristocratic elements of the Constitution can maintain
themselves only because the bourgeoisie has an interest in the
continuance of their sham existence; and more than a sham existence
neither possesses to-day. But as soon as real public opinion in its
totality backs the House of Commons, as soon as the House of Commons
incorporates the will, not of the bourgeoisie alone, but of the whole
nation, it will absorb the whole power so completely that the last halo
must fall from the head of the monarch and the aristocracy. The English
working-man respects neither Lords nor Queen. The bourgeois, while in
reality allowing them but little influence, yet offers to them personally
a sham worship. The English Chartist is politically a republican, though
he rarely or never mentions the word, while he sympathises with the
republican parties of all countries, and calls himself in preference a
democrat. But he is more than a mere republican, his democracy is not
simply political.
Chartism was from the beginning in 1835 chiefly a movement among the
working-men, though not yet sharply separated from the bourgeoisie. The
Radicalism of the workers went hand in hand with the Radicalism of the
bourgeoisie; the Charter was the shibboleth of both. They held their
National Convention every year in common, seeming to be one party. The
lower middle-class was just then in a very bellicose and violent state of
mind in consequence of the disappointment over the Reform Bill and of the
bad business years of 1837-1839, and viewed the boisterous Chartist
agitation with a very favourable eye. Of the vehemence of this agitation
no one in Germany has any idea. The people were called upon to arm
themselves, were frequently urged to revolt; pikes were got ready, as in
the French Revolution, and in 1838, one Stephens, a Methodist parson,
said to the assembled working-people of Manchester:
"You have no need to fear the power of Government, the soldiers,
bayonets, and cannon that are at the disposal of your oppressors; you
have a weapon that is far mightier than all these, a weapon against
which bayonets and cannon are powerless, and a child of ten years can
wield it. You have only to take a couple of matches and a bundle of
straw dipped in pitch, and I will see what the Government and its
hundreds of thousands of soldiers will do against this one weapon if
it is used boldly."
As early as that year the peculiarly social character of the
working-men's Chartism manifested itself. The same Stephens said, in a
meeting of 200,000 men on Kersall Moor, the Mons Sacer of Manchester:
"Chartism, my friends, is no political movement, where the main point
is your getting the ballot. Chartism is a knife and fork question:
the Charter means a good house, good food and drink, prosperity, and
short working-hours."
The movements against the new Poor Law and for the Ten Hours' Bill were
already in the closest relation to Chartism. In all the meetings of that
time the Tory Oastler was active, and hundreds of petitions for
improvements of the social condition of the workers were circulated along
with the national petition for the People's Charter adopted in
Birmingham. In 1839 the agitation continued as vigorously as ever, and
when it began to relax somewhat at the end of the year, Bussey, Taylor,
and Frost hastened to call forth uprisings simultaneously in the North of
England, in Yorkshire, and Wales. Frost's plan being betrayed, he was
obliged to open hostilities prematurely. Those in the North heard of the
failure of his attempt in time to withdraw. Two months later, in
January, 1840, several so-called spy outbreaks took place in Sheffield
and Bradford, in Yorkshire, and the excitement gradually subsided.
Meanwhile the bourgeoisie turned its attention to more practical
projects, more profitable for itself, namely the Corn Laws. The Anti-
Corn Law Association was formed in Manchester, and the consequence was a
relaxation of the tie between the Radical bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. The working-men soon perceived that for them the abolition
of the Corn Laws could be of little use, while very advantageous to the
bourgeoisie; and they could therefore not be won for the project.
The crisis of 1842 came on. Agitation was once more as vigorous as in
1839. But this time the rich manufacturing bourgeoisie, which was
suffering severely under this particular crisis, took part in it. The
Anti-Corn Law League, as it was now called, assumed a decidedly
revolutionary tone. Its journals and agitators used undisguisedly
revolutionary language, one very good reason for which was the fact that
the Conservative party had been in power since 1841. As the Chartists
had previously done, these bourgeois leaders called upon the people to
rebel; and the working-men who had most to suffer from the crisis were
not inactive, as the year's national petition for the charter with its
three and a half million signatures proves. In short, if the two Radical
parties had been somewhat estranged, they allied themselves once more. At
a meeting of Liberals and Chartists held in Manchester, February 15th,
1842, a petition urging the repeal of the Corn Laws and the adoption of
the Charter was drawn up. The next day it was adopted by both parties.
The spring and summer passed amidst violent agitation and increasing
distress. The bourgeoisie was determined to carry the repeal of the Corn
Laws with the help of the crisis, the want which it entailed, and the
general excitement. At this time, the Conservatives being in power, the
Liberal bourgeoisie half abandoned their law-abiding habits; they wished
to bring about a revolution with the help of the workers. The working-
men were to take the chestnuts from the fire to save the bourgeoisie from
burning their own fingers. The old idea of a "holy month," a general
strike, broached in 1839 by the Chartists, was revived. This time,
however, it was not the working-men who wished to quit work, but the
manufacturers who wished to close their mills and send the operatives
into the country parishes upon the property of the aristocracy, thus
forcing the Tory Parliament and the Tory Ministry to repeal the Corn
Laws. A revolt would naturally have followed, but the bourgeoisie stood
safely in the background and could await the result without compromising
itself if the worst came to the worst. At the end of July business began
to improve; it was high time. In order not to lose the opportunity,
three firms in Staleybridge reduced wages in spite of the improvement.
{232} Whether they did so of their own motion or in agreement with other
manufacturers, especially those of the League, I do not know. Two
withdrew after a time, but the third, William Bailey & Brothers, stood
firm, and told the objecting operatives that "if this did not please
them, they had better go and play a bit." This contemptuous answer the
hands received with cheers. They left the mill, paraded through the
town, and called upon all their fellows to quit work. In a few hours
every mill stood idle, and the operatives marched to Mottram Moor to hold
a meeting. This was on August 5th. August 8th they proceeded to Ashton
and Hyde five thousand strong, closed all the mills and coal-pits, and
held meetings, in which, however, the question discussed was not, as the
bourgeoisie had hoped, the repeal of the Corn Laws, but, "a fair day's
wages for a fair day's work." August 9th they proceeded to Manchester,
unresisted by the authorities (all Liberals), and closed the mills; on
the 11th they were in Stockport, where they met with the first resistance
as they were storming the workhouse, the favourite child of the
bourgeoisie. On the same day there was a general strike and disturbance
in Bolton, to which the authorities here, too, made no resistance. Soon
the uprising spread throughout the whole manufacturing district, and all
employments, except harvesting and the production of food, came to a
standstill. But the rebellious operatives were quiet. They were driven
into this revolt without wishing it. The manufacturers, with the single
exception of the Tory Birley, in Manchester, had, _contrary to their
custom_, not opposed it. The thing had begun without the working-men's
having any distinct end in view, for which reason they were all united in
the determination not to be shot at for the benefit of the Corn Law
repealing bourgeoisie. For the rest, some wanted to carry the Charter,
others who thought this premature wished merely to secure the wages rate
of 1840. On this point the whole insurrection was wrecked. If it had
been from the beginning an intentional, determined working-men's
insurrection, it would surely have carried its point; but these crowds
who had been driven into the streets by their masters, against their own
will, and with no definite purpose, could do nothing. Meanwhile the
bourgeoisie, which had not moved a finger to carry the alliance of
February 10th into effect, soon perceived that the working-men did not
propose to become its tools, and that the illogical manner in which it
had abandoned its law-abiding standpoint threatened danger. It therefore
resumed its law-abiding attitude, and placed itself upon the side of
Government as against the working-men.
It swore in trusty retainers as special constables (the German merchants
in Manchester took part in this ceremony, and marched in an entirely
superfluous manner through the city with their cigars in their mouths and
thick truncheons in their hands). It gave the command to fire upon the
crowd in Preston, so that the unintentional revolt of the people stood
all at once face to face, not only with the whole military power of the
Government, but with the whole property-holding class as well. The
working-men, who had no especial aim, separated gradually, and the
insurrection came to an end without evil results. Later, the bourgeoisie
was guilty of one shameful act after another, tried to whitewash itself
by expressing a horror of popular violence by no means consistent with
its own revolutionary language of the spring; laid the blame of
insurrection upon Chartist instigators, whereas it had itself done more
than all of them together to bring about the uprising; and resumed its
old attitude of sanctifying the name of the law with a shamelessness
perfectly unequalled. The Chartists, who were all but innocent of
bringing about this uprising, who simply did what the bourgeoisie meant
to do when they made the most of their opportunity, were prosecuted and
convicted, while the bourgeoisie escaped without loss, and had, besides,
sold off its old stock of goods with advantage during the pause in work.
The fruit of the uprising was the decisive separation of the proletariat
from the bourgeoisie. The Chartists had not hitherto concealed their
determination to carry the Charter at all costs, even that of a
revolution; the bourgeoisie, which now perceived, all at once, the danger
with which any violent change threatened its position, refused to hear
anything further of physical force, and proposed to attain its end by
moral force, as though this were anything else than the direct or
indirect threat of physical force. This was one point of dissension,
though even this was removed later by the assertion of the Chartists (who
are at least as worthy of being believed as the bourgeoisie) that they,
too, refrained from appealing to physical force. The second point of
dissension and the main one, which brought Chartism to light in its
purity, was the repeal of the Corn Laws. In this the bourgeoisie was
directly interested, the proletariat not. The Chartists therefore
divided into two parties whose political programmes agreed literally, but
which were nevertheless thoroughly different and incapable of union. At
the Birmingham National Convention, in January, 1843, Sturge, the
representative of the Radical bourgeoisie, proposed that the name of the
Charter be omitted from the rules of the Chartist Association, nominally
because this name had become connected with recollections of violence
during the insurrection, a connection, by the way, which had existed for
years, and against which Mr. Sturge had hitherto advanced no objection.
The working-men refused to drop the name, and when Mr. Sturge was
outvoted, that worthy Quaker suddenly became loyal, betook himself out of
the hall, and founded a "Complete Suffrage Association" within the
Radical bourgeoisie. So repugnant had these recollections become to the
Jacobinical bourgeoisie, that he altered even the name Universal Suffrage
into the ridiculous title, Complete Suffrage. The working-men laughed at
him and quietly went their way.
From this moment Chartism was purely a working-man's cause freed from all
bourgeois elements. The "Complete" journals, the _Weekly Dispatch_,
_Weekly Chronicle_, _Examiner_, etc., fell gradually into the sleepy tone
of the other Liberal sheets, espoused the cause of Free Trade, attacked
the Ten Hours' Bill and all exclusively working-men's demands, and let
their Radicalism as a whole fall rather into the background. The Radical
bourgeoisie joined hands with the Liberals against the working-men in
every collision, and in general made the Corn Law question, which for the
English is the Free Trade question, their main business. They thereby
fell under the dominion of the Liberal bourgeoisie, and now play a most
pitiful role.
The Chartist working-men, on the contrary, espoused with redoubled zeal
all the struggles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Free
competition has caused the workers suffering enough to be hated by them;
its apostles, the bourgeoisie, are their declared enemies. The working-
man has only disadvantages to await from the complete freedom of
competition. The demands hitherto made by him, the Ten Hours' Bill,
protection of the workers against the capitalist, good wages, a
guaranteed position, repeal of the new Poor Law, all of the things which
belong to Chartism quite as essentially as the "Six Points," are directly
opposed to free competition and Free Trade. No wonder, then, that the
working-men will not hear of Free Trade and the repeal of the Corn Laws
(a fact incomprehensible to the whole English bourgeoisie), and while at
least wholly indifferent to the Corn Law question, are most deeply
embittered against its advocates. This question is precisely the point
at which the proletariat separates from the bourgeoisie, Chartism from
Radicalism; and the bourgeois understanding cannot comprehend this,
because it cannot comprehend the proletariat.
Therein lies the difference between Chartist democracy and all previous
political bourgeois democracy. Chartism is of an essentially social
nature, a class movement. The "Six Points" which for the Radical
bourgeois are the beginning and end of the matter, which are meant, at
the utmost, to call forth certain further reforms of the Constitution,
are for the proletarian a mere means to further ends. "Political power
our means, social happiness our end," is now the clearly formulated war-
cry of the Chartists. The "knife and fork question" of the preacher
Stephens was a truth for a part of the Chartists only, in 1838, it is a
truth for all of them in 1845. There is no longer a mere politician
among the Chartists, and even though their Socialism is very little
developed, though their chief remedy for poverty has hitherto consisted
in the land-allotment system, which was superseded {235} by the
introduction of manufacture, though their chief practical propositions
are apparently of a reactionary nature, yet these very measures involve
the alternative that they must either succumb to the power of competition
once more and restore the old state of things, or they must themselves
entirely overcome competition and abolish it. On the other hand, the
present indefinite state of Chartism, the separation from the purely
political party, involves that precisely the characteristic feature, its
social aspect, will have to be further developed. The approach to
Socialism cannot fail, especially when the next crisis directs the
working-men by force of sheer want to social instead of political
remedies. And a crisis must follow the present active state of industry
and commerce in 1847 at the latest, and probably in 1846; one, too, which
will far exceed in extent and violence all former crises. The working-
men will carry their Charter, naturally; but meanwhile they will learn to
see clearly with regard to many points which they can make by means of it
and of which they now know very little.
Meanwhile the socialist agitation also goes forward. English Socialism
comes under our consideration so far only as it affects the
working-class. The English Socialists demand the gradual introduction of
possession in common in home colonies embracing two to three thousand
persons who shall carry on both agriculture and manufacture and enjoy
equal rights and equal education. They demand greater facility of
obtaining divorce, the establishment of a rational government, with
complete freedom of conscience and the abolition of punishment, the same
to be replaced by a rational treatment of the offender. These are their
practical measures, their theoretical principles do not concern us here.
English Socialism arose with Owen, a manufacturer, and proceeds therefore
with great consideration toward the bourgeoisie and great injustice
toward the proletariat in its methods, although it culminates in
demanding the abolition of the class antagonism between bourgeoisie and
proletariat.
The Socialists are thoroughly tame and peaceable, accept our existing
order, bad as it is, so far as to reject all other methods but that of
winning public opinion. Yet they are so dogmatic that success by this
method is for them, and for their principles as at present formulated,
utterly hopeless. While bemoaning the demoralisation of the lower
classes, they are blind to the element of progress in this dissolution of
the old social order, and refuse to acknowledge that the corruption
wrought by private interests and hypocrisy in the property-holding class
is much greater. They acknowledge no historic development, and wish to
place the nation in a state of Communism at once, overnight, not by the
unavoidable march of its political development up to the point at which
this transition becomes both possible and necessary. They understand, it
is true, why the working-man is resentful against the bourgeois, but
regard as unfruitful this class hatred, which is, after all, the only
moral incentive by which the worker can be brought nearer the goal. They
preach instead, a philanthropy and universal love far more unfruitful for
the present state of England. They acknowledge only a psychological
development, a development of man in the abstract, out of all relation to
the Past, whereas the whole world rests upon that Past, the individual
man included. Hence they are too abstract, too metaphysical, and
accomplish little. They are recruited in part from the working-class, of
which they have enlisted but a very small fraction representing, however,
its most educated and solid elements. In its present form, Socialism can
never become the common creed of the working-class; it must condescend to
return for a moment to the Chartist standpoint. But the true proletarian
Socialism having passed through Chartism, purified of its bourgeois
elements, assuming the form which it has already reached in the minds of
many Socialists and Chartist leaders (who are nearly all Socialists),
must, within a short time, play a weighty part in the history of the
development of the English people. English Socialism, the basis of which
is much more ample than that of the French, is behind it in theoretical
development, will have to recede for a moment to the French standpoint in
order to proceed beyond it later. Meanwhile the French, too, will
develop farther. English Socialism affords the most pronounced
expression of the prevailing absence of religion among the working-men,
an expression so pronounced indeed that the mass of the working-men,
being unconsciously and merely practically irreligious, often draw back
before it. But here, too, necessity will force the working-men to
abandon the remnants of a belief which, as they will more and more
clearly perceive, serves only to make them weak and resigned to their
fate, obedient and faithful to the vampire property-holding class.
Hence it is evident that the working-men's movement is divided into two
sections, the Chartists and the Socialists. The Chartists are
theoretically the more backward, the less developed, but they are genuine
proletarians all over, the representatives of their class. The
Socialists are more far-seeing, propose practical remedies against
distress, but, proceeding originally from the bourgeoisie, are for this
reason unable to amalgamate completely with the working-class. The union
of Socialism with Chartism, the reproduction of French Communism in an
English manner, will be the next step, and has already begun. Then only,
when this has been achieved, will the working-class be the true
intellectual leader of England. Meanwhile, political and social
development will proceed, and will foster this new party, this new
departure of Chartism.
These different sections of working-men, often united, often separated,
Trades Unionists, Chartists, and Socialists, have founded on their own
hook numbers of schools and reading-rooms for the advancement of
education. Every Socialist, and almost every Chartist institution, has
such a place, and so too have many trades. Here the children receive a
purely proletarian education, free from all the influences of the
bourgeoisie; and, in the reading-rooms, proletarian journals and books
alone, or almost alone, are to be found. These arrangements are very
dangerous for the bourgeoisie, which has succeeded in withdrawing several
such institutes, "Mechanics' Institutes," from proletarian influences,
and making them organs for the dissemination of the sciences useful to
the bourgeoisie. Here the natural sciences are now taught, which may
draw the working-men away from the opposition to the bourgeoisie, and
perhaps place in their hands the means of making inventions which bring
in money for the bourgeoisie; while for the working-man the acquaintance
with the natural sciences is utterly useless _now_ when it too often
happens that he never gets the slightest glimpse of Nature in his large
town with his long working-hours. Here Political Economy is preached,
whose idol is free competition, and whose sum and substance for the
working-man is this, that he cannot do anything more rational than resign
himself to starvation. Here all education is tame, flabby, subservient
to the ruling politics and religion, so that for the working-man it is
merely a constant sermon upon quiet obedience, passivity, and resignation
to his fate.
The mass of working-men naturally have nothing to do with these
institutes, and betake themselves to the proletarian reading-rooms and to
the discussion of matters which directly concern their own interests,
whereupon the self-sufficient bourgeoisie says its _Dixi et Salvavi_, and
turns with contempt from a class which "prefers the angry ranting of ill-
meaning demagogues to the advantages of solid education." That, however,
the working-men appreciate solid education when they can get it unmixed
with the interested cant of the bourgeoisie, the frequent lectures upon
scientific, aesthetic, and economic subjects prove which are delivered
especially in the Socialist institutes, and very well attended. I have
often heard working-men, whose fustian jackets scarcely held together,
speak upon geological, astronomical, and other subjects, with more
knowledge than most "cultivated" bourgeois in Germany possess. And in
how great a measure the English proletariat has succeeded in attaining
independent education is shown especially by the fact that the
epoch-making products of modern philosophical, political, and poetical
literature are read by working-men almost exclusively. The bourgeois,
enslaved by social conditions and the prejudices involved in them,
trembles, blesses, and crosses himself before everything which really
paves the way for progress; the proletarian has open eyes for it, and
studies it with pleasure and success. In this respect the Socialists,
especially, have done wonders for the education of the proletariat. They
have translated the French materialists, Helvetius, Holbach, Diderot,
etc., and disseminated them, with the best English works, in cheap
editions. Strauss' "Life of Jesus" and Proudhon's "Property" also
circulate among the working-men only. Shelley, the genius, the prophet,
Shelley, and Byron, with his glowing sensuality and his bitter satire
upon our existing society, find most of their readers in the proletariat;
the bourgeoisie owns only castrated editions, family editions, cut down
in accordance with the hypocritical morality of to-day. The two great
practical philosophers of latest date, Bentham and Godwin, are,
especially the latter, almost exclusively the property of the
proletariat; for though Bentham has a school within the Radical
bourgeoisie, it is only the proletariat and the Socialists who have
succeeded in developing his teachings a step forward. The proletariat
has formed upon this basis a literature, which consists chiefly of
journals and pamphlets, and is far in advance of the whole bourgeois
literature in intrinsic worth. On this point more later.
One more point remains to be noticed. The factory operatives, and
especially those of the cotton district, form the nucleus of the labour
movement. Lancashire, and especially Manchester, is the seat of the most
powerful Unions, the central point of Chartism, the place which numbers
most Socialists. The more the factory system has taken possession of a
branch of industry, the more the working-men employed in it participate
in the labour movement; the sharper the opposition between working-men
and capitalists, the clearer the proletarian consciousness in the working-
men. The small masters of Birmingham, though they suffer from the
crises, still stand upon an unhappy middle ground between proletarian
Chartism and shopkeepers' Radicalism. But, in general, all the workers
employed in manufacture are won for one form or the other of resistance
to capital and bourgeoisie; and all are united upon this point, that
they, as working-men, a title of which they are proud, and which is the
usual form of address in Chartist meetings, form a separate class, with
separate interests and principles, with a separate way of looking at
things in contrast with that of all property owners; and that in this
class reposes the strength and the capacity of development of the nation.