Friedrich Engels: Principles of Communism

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

Looking through one of the secondhand bookshops in Cheltenham last wee, I found a copy of Friedrich Engels’ Principles of Communism, published by Pluto Press. It was written in 1847, and is a very short introduction to Marx and Engels’ ideas of what constituted Communism. It’s 20 pages in length, and is written in the form of a catechism, Engels presenting their ideas as answers to the following questions: What is Communism? What is the proletariat? Proletarians, then, have not always existed? How did the proletariat originate? Under what conditions does this sale of the labour of the proletarians to the bourgeoisie take place? What working classes were there before the industrial revolution? In what way do proletarians differ from slaves? In what way do proletarians differ from serfs? In what way do proletarians differ from handicraftsmen? In what way do proletarians differ from manufacturing workers? What were the…

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Tory Anti-Immigrant Cartoon from 1906

Beastrabban\'s Weblog

I was finally able to track down a history textbook containing a Tory anti-immigration cartoon aimed at the working class for the 1906 election. It’s reproduced in Martin Pugh, The Making of Modern British Politics 1867-1939 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1982) p. 84. Here it is:

As you can see, it’s set in a factory, Schmidt & Co, Clothing & Boot Manufacturers, and shows a stout, upright British workman being shown the door by his fat foreign employer, while coming in the back way is a dishevelled foreigner, whose bags are marked ‘To England’, and ‘Steerage to England’.

The caption reads:

THE ALIEN EMPLOYER (to British workman): You can go now: Mine friend, who has just arrived, will do your work for half your wages.

The caption also notes that it came from the 1906 Tory protectionist pamphlet, Topical Tips for Typical Tykes.

I’ve discussed this cartoon before, when one…

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