英国工人阶级状况 (1845)

英国工人阶级状况是弗里德里希·恩格斯于1845年出版的一本关于维多利亚时代英国产业工人阶级的书籍。该著作也是恩格斯的第一本著作，原文为德文，英文译本于1887年出版。1842年至1844年期间，恩格斯在工业革命中心城市索尔福德和曼彻斯特定居，书的内容来自他自己的亲身经历、所见所闻以及同时代的其他资料。1844年，就在卡尔·马克思与恩格斯第二次见面后，恩格斯就把这本书推荐给马克思。马克思读了这本书后深受感动。 马克思因而相信，工人阶级是促成革命的重要推手。

恩格斯在书中批评了工业化。恩格斯认为工业革命让工人的境况变得更糟。例如在索尔福德、曼彻斯特和利物浦等大型工业城市，因疾病（如天花、麻疹、猩红热和百日咳）造成的死亡率是周边乡村的四倍，因抽搐造成的死亡率则是周边乡村的十倍。曼彻斯特和利物浦的总体死亡率明显高于英国全国平均水平。恩格斯还认为产业工人的收入比工业化前的同龄人的收入要更低，而且英国的现代化加剧了社会的两极分化与阶级对立。

The Condition of the Working Class in England (German: Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England) is an 1845 book by the German philosopher Friedrich Engels, a study of the industrial working class in Victorian England. It was Engels' first book and had originally been written in German, but an English translation was published in 1887. It was written during Engels' 1842–1844 stay in Salford and Manchester, the city at the heart of the Industrial Revolution, and compiled from Engels' own observations and detailed contemporary reports.

After their second meeting in 1844, Karl Marx read and was profoundly impressed by the book.

Summary

In Condition, Engels argues that the Industrial Revolution made workers worse off. He shows, for example, that in large industrial cities such as Salford, Manchester and Liverpool, mortality from disease (such as smallpox, measles, scarlet fever and whooping cough) was four times that in the surrounding countryside, and mortality from convulsions was ten times as high. The overall death rate in Manchester and Liverpool was significantly higher than the national average (1 in 32.72, 1 in 31.90 and even 1 in 29.90, compared with 1 in 45 or 46). An example highlights the increase in the overall death rates in the industrial town of Carlisle. Before the introduction of mills (1779–1787), 4,408 out of 10,000 children died before age five, while after the introduction of mills, the figure rose to 4,738. Before the introduction of mills, 1,006 out of 10,000 adults died before reaching 39 years old; after their introduction, the death rate rose to 1,261 out of 10,000.

Engels' interpretation was influential with British historians of the Industrial Revolution. He focused on both the workers' wages and their living conditions. He argued that the industrial workers had lower incomes than their pre-industrial peers and they lived in more unhealthy and unpleasant environments. This was a critique of industrialization that was echoed by many of the Marxist historians who studied the industrial revolution in the 20th century.

Originally addressed to a German audience, the book is considered by many to be a classic account of the universal condition of the industrial working class during its time. The eldest son of a successful German textile industrialist, Engels became involved in radical journalism in his youth. Sent to England, what he saw there made him even more radical.

In 1844, in Paris, Engels met and formed his lifelong intellectual partnership with Karl Marx. Engels showed Marx his book, convincing Marx that the working class could be the agent and instrument of the final revolution in history.

The German original

In the original German edition he said:

The condition of the working class is the real basis and point of departure of all social movements of the present because it is the highest and most unconcealed pinnacle of the social misery existing in our day. French and German working class Communism are its direct, Fourierism and English Socialism, as well as the Communism of the German educated bourgeoisie, are its indirect products. A knowledge of proletarian conditions is absolutely necessary to be able to provide solid ground for socialist theories, on the one hand, and for judgments about their right to exist, on the other; and to put an end to all sentimental dreams and fancies pro and con. But proletarian conditions exist in their classical form, in their perfection, only in the British Empire, particularly in England proper. Besides, only in England has the necessary material been so completely collected and put on record by official enquiries as is essential for any in the least exhaustive presentation of the subject.