Modern society’s most incredible feats and most gruesome cessations of social justice have come as we, the people, strive for an ideal life for ourselves and those closest to us. Sir Thomas More, through Utopia, and Friedrich Engels, through The Condition of the Working Class in England, give us firsthand perspectives into the inception and development of the capitalist society we know today. Our graduation from communal property to private property has torn through the Cottage Industry, the need for factory workers in the developed world, and now is on a path to eliminating a need for the “99%”. Using the ideas from the More and Engels, we are able to compare and contrast their separation of class and property as well as how social “wrongdoing”
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As Engels describes it, “the necessity of living upon wages from hand to mouth, that in short which makes a proletarian of him” (pg. 146). The sheer numbers that compose this class feed a cycle of demand that, by economic law, will reduce the cost of labor. More goes further when describing this kind of person, saying that when a member of the laboring class has no employment they will inevitably turn to stealing as a means to support themselves. So easily might we acquire the life’s necessities if not that cursed money, which is supposed to provide access to them, were not in fact the primary barrier to getting what we need to …show more content…
More describes a scene where land formerly used for agricultural purposes, allowing a village to be self-sufficient, is divided by the ruling class and consolidated by the ownership class. Farmers are driven off of their former land, which is now used for the more profitable practice of raising livestock, and are forced to either work for the new owners of the land to earn a wage or to resort to stealing. More effectively juxtaposes the idea of privatization of land, which he is critical of, against the perfectly communal land in the Utopia he creates. This issue has increased in magnitude by the time of Engels, who goes so far as to say that a serf, or slave, is in a better circumstance that a proletariat, “The slave is assured of a bare livelihood by the self-interest of his master, the serf has at least a scrap of land on which to live; each has at worst a guarantee for life itself.” (pg.
As Engels describes it, “the necessity of living upon wages from hand to mouth, that in short which makes a proletarian of him” (pg. 146). The sheer numbers that compose this class feed a cycle of demand that, by economic law, will reduce the cost of labor. More goes further when describing this kind of person, saying that when a member of the laboring class has no employment they will inevitably turn to stealing as a means to support themselves. So easily might we acquire the life’s necessities if not that cursed money, which is supposed to provide access to them, were not in fact the primary barrier to getting what we need to …show more content…
More describes a scene where land formerly used for agricultural purposes, allowing a village to be self-sufficient, is divided by the ruling class and consolidated by the ownership class. Farmers are driven off of their former land, which is now used for the more profitable practice of raising livestock, and are forced to either work for the new owners of the land to earn a wage or to resort to stealing. More effectively juxtaposes the idea of privatization of land, which he is critical of, against the perfectly communal land in the Utopia he creates. This issue has increased in magnitude by the time of Engels, who goes so far as to say that a serf, or slave, is in a better circumstance that a proletariat, “The slave is assured of a bare livelihood by the self-interest of his master, the serf has at least a scrap of land on which to live; each has at worst a guarantee for life itself.” (pg.