Michel Goulart da Silva

Instituto Federal Catarinense, Blumenau, Brasil

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3281-3124

michelgsilva@yahoo.com.br

Abstract

This essay analyzes some elements discussed by Engels in his study "The Condition of the Working Class in England". To this

end, aspects related to the material conditions lived by workers and their employment situation are discussed. It seeks to relate both

to the broader economic and social process, mainly expressed in the industrial revolution, and to aspects that remain in the process

of proletarian exploitation even in the 21st century. The text draws on bibliography that dialogues with elements presented in

Michel Goulart da Silva

Reviewed by:

João Luis Binde

Waldenilson Teixeira Ramos

Citation:

Silva, M. G. da. (2026). City, work, and urban segregation: notes from Engels.

Scientia International Journal for Human Sciences, 1(1).

https://doi.org/10.56365/gsp8xq81

Revised: 28/01/2026

Accepted: 05/02/2026

Available: 09/02/2026

Considering a work such as The Condition of the Working Class in England, originally published in

1844, to be current may seem contradictory, insofar as it is a study by Friedrich Engels about a particular

social context that existed more than a century and a half ago. Considering the interpretation that the working

class no longer exists or that Marxism has failed as a method of explaining reality, this work from Engels'

youth would certainly be outdated. However, the relevance of this work is evident if capitalism is understood

as a mode of production that is still in force or if it is understood that the logic of worker exploitation, despite

changes in form, remains similar to that described by Engels in the 1840s.

This relevance can be pointed out from the fact that, although written at a time when Marx and Engels'

analyses were still in their early stages, the work points out, through its description of the concrete situation

[...] the analytical key to the conceptualization of the working class, whose starting

point is an understanding of the central role played by the proletariat in the production

and reproduction of social life, as well as its effective presence in the class struggle

that characterizes capitalist society (Antunes, 2021, p. 94).

Capitalism and the exploitation of workers continue to exist, but in this process, "it has been

complicating its instruments of domination, its forms of accumulation, causing profound changes both in the

forms of production and in the composition of social classes" (Antunes, 2021, p. 96). However, despite these

changes, which have occurred with greater intensity in recent decades,

various documents, press reports, among others—showing his concern with rigorous analysis of reality,

which is central to the development of historical materialism. Engels (2008, p. 41) stated in his study on the

the one hand, to provide a solid foundation for socialist theories and, on the other, to support judgments about

their legitimacy.”

The meaning of the term class has always generated considerable controversy, even though studies

such as Engels’ make this understanding quite obvious. In this sense, from a methodological point of view,

be studied when they themselves operate over a considerable historical period” (Thompson, 2018, p. 13).

Workers can be understood as the class exploited by the owners of the means of production, producing more

in the process of exploitation of the proletariat even in the 21st century.

One of the aspects Engels studies in his work is the cities that became large industrial centers,

undergoing economic, political, and social transformations. Engels understands that the industrial revolution

transformed society as a whole, with the organization of the economy shifting from small home workshops

to large industries. In the period prior to the introduction of machines, the spinning and weaving of raw

materials was carried out in the workers' own homes. According to Engels (2008, p. 45-6)

[...] these weaving families generally lived in the countryside near the cities, and what

they earned was perfectly sufficient for their livelihood because the domestic

were grouped into large industrial plants, gradually reducing the number of artisan workers. Engels (2008, p.

48) points out that "it became possible to produce much more yarn: if before a weaver always employed three

spinners, never had enough yarn, and had to wait to be supplied, now there was more yarn than the number

of workers employed could process." Faced with the establishment of large industries, workers were forced

to work for others, selling their labor in the large factories that were emerging. According to Engels (2008,

manual labor, and its entire recent history reveals how manual workers were successively displaced from

their positions by machines.”

In this process of capitalist production dynamics, capital and production are centralized, that is,

industry concentrated ownership in a few hands. This new form of production required enormous amounts

this process of transformation in the organization and division of labor was the emergence of large urban

who work together in the same building; they must live close together—and, therefore, where a medium-

"direct producers into wage workers" (Marx, 2013, p. 786). In this analysis, he points out that “the

entire process” (Marx, 2013, p. 787). This led to the formation of a mass of unemployed workers, many of

whom found themselves in poverty, forced into begging, or even theft. Marx (2013, p. 805-6) describes the

situation of the proletariat as follows:

Expelled by the dissolution of feudal retinues and by the violent and intermittent

expropriation of their lands, this entirely free proletariat could not be absorbed by

emerging manufacturing as quickly as it had been brought into the world. On the

other hand, those who were suddenly torn from their customary way of life could not

adjust to the discipline of the new situation either. They turned en masse to begging,

robbery, and vagrancy, partly out of predisposition, but in most cases out of necessity.

migrate to impoverished areas of large cities, where workers were concentrated. It can be observed that in

this process,

This process continues to unfold today, considering that perhaps the main feature of the contemporary

capitalist economies, precariousness affects countries that industrialized later and have a higher degree of

dependence on these central economies in different ways” (Mattos, 2019, p. 77). It is also observed that “there

are social sectors that are more affected, such as women and young people, and countries that industrialized

later are still fertile ground for the precariousness of labor relations” (Mattos, 2019, p. 82).

In Engels' book, the so-called "big cities," especially London, with its 2.5 million inhabitants, then

considered the "commercial capital of the world," are given great prominence. Engels (2008, p. 68-9) saw in

police will take care to ensure that your death is silent so as not to shock the bourgeoisie” (Engels, 2008, p.

69).

must get by, for better or worse, on their own” (Engels, 2008, p. 70). These neighborhoods had “the worst

houses in the ugliest part of the city; almost always, a long row of brick buildings, one or two stories high,

sometimes with inhabited basements and generally arranged in an irregular manner” (Engels, 2008, p. 70).

In these neighborhoods, “the streets are neither flat nor paved, they are dirty, littered with vegetable and

who had later served in the police, lived in poverty with her two children after her husband's death" (Engels,

archway, in any corner where the police or landlords let them rest in peace" (Engels, 2008, p. 75). Faced with

According to his description, the houses

exhaustion of workers is still an inherent feature of capitalism. In the 19th century, it was observed that, “with

the significant expansion of capitalism in its new industrial phase, the proletariat not only advanced

quantitatively, in exponential proportion, but also qualitatively” (Antunes, 2021, p. 92). These features of

capitalism have been analyzed by historiography produced after Engels' work. In the context of the early

development of industrialization, "cities and industrial areas grew rapidly, without planning or supervision,

work, that contingent will starve to death, because the bourgeoisie will only offer

This is a first attempt to present what would come to be called the industrial reserve army. Marx

(2013, p. 707) stated in Capital that this “surplus working population is a necessary product of the

This process of constituting a sector of the proletariat in search of employment remains a structuring

element in capitalism. In this reality, "the active stimulation of competition among workers across space has

also worked in favor of the capitalist advantage" (Harvey, 2006, p. 57). Thus, we observe the

[...] capacity of capital to fragment, divide, differentiate, absorb, transform, and even

exacerbate old cultural divisions, to produce spatial differentiations, to mobilize