Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, second edition, 1892.
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p. xx. An “aristocracy among the working class”—a “privileged minority of the workers” in contrast to the “great mass of the working people” (from the article of March 1, 1885). |
N.B. |
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The competition of other countries shattered England’s “industrial monopoly” (xxi). “A small privileged, protected minority” (xxii) (of the working class)—was alone “permanently benefited” in 1848-68, whereas “the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary im- provement” |
N.B. S S |
(See p. 14[1] of this Notebook)
p. xxiv: the growth of the “new unionism”, of unions of unskilled workers:
| N.B. |
“They [these new unionists] had this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entire- ly free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated ‘old’ unionists.” |
And on the elections of 1892:
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“Among the former so-called workers’ represen- tatives, that is, those people who are forgiven their being members of the working class because they themselves would like to drown their quality of being workers in the ocean of their liberalism, Henry Broadhurst, the most important representative of the old unionism, was completely snowed under because he came out against the eight-hour day”. |
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| N.B. | ||||
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After 1847: “Both these circumstances [1) the death of Chartism; 2) industrial prosperity] had turned the English working class, politically, into the tail of the ‘great Liberal Party’, the party led by the manufactur- ers” (xvii).[4] |
Correspondence with Sorge.
Marx on the leaders of the English workers:
Fr. Engels to Sorge (September 21, 1872): ...“Hales kicked up a big row in the Federal Council and secured a vote of censure on Marx for saying that the English labour leaders had sold themselves—but one of the English sections here and an Irish section have already protested and said that Marx was right”....
Engels to Sorge, October 5, 1872: “Hales has begun here a gigantic war of calumny against Marx and myself, but it is already turning against Hales himself.... The excuse was Marx’s statement regarding the corruption of the English labour leaders”....
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Marx to Sorge, April 4, 1874[5]: ... “As to the urban workers here [in England], it is a pity that the whole pack of leaders did not get into Parliament. This would be the surest way of getting rid of the whole lot”.... |
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| ⋕ ↓N.B. |
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| cf. here 40-41[2] still stronger | ||
see the continuation p. 36[3]:
K. Marx to Kugelmann, May 18, 1874:
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“In England at the moment only the rural labour movement shows any advance; the indus- trial workers have first of all to get rid of their present leaders. When I denounced these fellows at the Hague Congress, I knew that I was letting myself in for unpopularity, calumny, etc. But such consequences have always been a matter of indifference to me. Here and there it is begin- ning to be realised that in making that denuncia- tion I was only doing my duty”. (Die Neue Zeit, XX, 2, 1901-02, p. 800.) |
↓ ⋕ N.B. |
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Jaeckh, The International, p. 191: Marx said in The Hague: “It is only an honour if someone in England is not a recognised labour leader; for every ‘recognised labour leader’ in London is in the pay of Gladstone, Morley, Dilke and Co.”.... |
(the Hague Congress, September 1872) |
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on the same subject, cf. Jäckh in Die Neue Zeit, XXIII, 2, p. 28. |
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[1] See p. 588 of this volume.—Ed.
[2] See pp. 625-26 of this volume.—Ed.
[3] Extracts from Engels’s correspondence with Sorge are on pp. 36 and 37 of the Notebook (see p. 621 of this volume).—Ed.
[4] See Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Moscow, 1962, Vol. II, pp. 406-19.
[5] The date given for Marx’s letter in Die Neue Zeit is wrong; it should be August 4, 1874.
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