Customer Reviews
Awesome
Fabuous book. Engels wrote this when he was only 24- and what a tour de force.
The work is detailed, beautifully observed and elegantly written. Despite the depressing nature of the subject matter, the tone is always possible about a better world beyond the evils of capitalism.
Unfortunately 150 years after this masterpiece was written things dont seen to have gotten better under capitalism. Rather, the old evils of poverty, infectious diseases, starvation have been replaced by the modern evils of capitalism: obesity, alienation, mass materialism, depression, plunging fertility and marriage rates and so on...
A visit to the Dark Satanic Mills of England
Engels was the engine behind Karl Marx, one that gave him all the support he could, so to permit Marx to dedicate himself almost completely to the completion of his works. Judging himself many degrees bellow Marx in terms of intelect, Engels nonetheless is capable of writting a book such as this which describes all the impoverishment of the working class in the beginning of the industrialization in England, being helped by some well porputed factories labor fiscalization agents who allowed Engels to flip trough their reports. Strong terms like "the dark satanic mills" describe fully what were the working conditions of the time in a so rich country as England. An historical document lest no one forget what can happen again if the free hand of capitalism is allowed to run free of any barriers.
Engels
In this book, Karl Marx's friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels describes the lives of England's laboring classes in the worst days of the industrial revolution. This includes dangerous working conditions, meager pay, child labor and explotation. Being the son of the owner of a textile factory, Engels knew of these conditions first hand. In these days it was said that the fastest way out of Manchester was a bottle of gin. This book contains images that are pathetic in the true sense of word, one catches glimpes of life so wretched that they are scarely belivable. Writings such as this one eventually exposed the misery of the working classes and had a profound influence on socialists and labor movement leaders. The book is a tour-de-force and truly speaks for it's self.
