Engels vividly documents the sordid conditions in the working class districts of the great towns the effect of competition (“the completest expression of the battle of all against all which rules in modern civil society”) the immigrant Irish workers willing to take even lower wages than the impoverished English working class the poor health and short lives that were the rule, and the drunkenness and depravity that were common the factory hands exploited long hours in filthy and often dangerous conditions, by day and night, women and children as well as men. In 1844 the Industrial Revolution was approaching its zenith. His hopes have not been realised, and today we may ask two questions: (1) in what ways and to what extent have the conditions of the working class changed since he wrote? And (2) is the call to abolish the capitalist system and replace it by socialism as valid today as it was then? He described in graphic detail the wretched lives that workers were forced to lead at that time, and he looked forward to the early ending of the capitalist system and its replacement by socialism.
It is 150 years since Friedrich Engels wrote his classic The Condition of the Working Class in 1844.
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