Sample Reading Summary
George Boyer:
“The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto”
The Communist Manifest famously describes the development of capitalism as the economic
triumph of the bourgeoisie as a manufacturing class, and predicts that it will be supplanted by
the proletariat, as capitalism’s internal contradictions lead it to collapse. Engels had previously
written about those contradictions, which include worker impoverishment, the growth of monopolies, and a destructive business cycle. He based his description on Manchester’s cotton industry, though that city was an anomaly in Britain at the time. Other cities had less poverty,
more mid-level industries, and more labor peace.
Marx and Engels’ expected proletarian revolution did not come about, in part because the rest
of Britain did not follow Manchester’s path. Wages increased between 1820 and 1850, except
for during “the hungry [18]40s”, when the cotton industry was particularly hard hit. Economic
growth after 1850 raised even Manchester wages, negating the Manifesto’s prediction of capitalism’s economic decline.
Where were Marx and Engels wrong? First, the Manchester cotton industry was not the leading edge of capitalist development, though they were not the only observers who thought that
it was. Worker militancy waned with the formation of national unions, which negotiated better
wages with industry and provided insurance for their members. Parliament imposed a series of
laws protecting workers, particularly women and children, and ultimately extended voting
rights to the better-paid workers. Engels later recognized these developments, though he
thought that they depended on the relative weakness of Britain’s competitors, which let industry give workers more than would otherwise have been possible.
-- 250 word summary by J. Spickard