William Cobbett: Rural Rides

Rural Rides by Willaim Cobett:

William Cobbett a journalist, agriculturist and reformer is best known for his political efforts, namely those against the Corn Laws.

He began publishing a weekly newsletter, the Political Register in 1802 and ‘Rural Rides’ was published from 1822-1826 in the Political Register before being published as 2 volumes in 1830.

At the beginning of the book his journey begins and he remarks how Britain has some of the best and worst lands in the world and he is currently enjoying the latter. Throughout his travels he remarks on the quality of the land and its upkeep by the inhabitants quick to pass judgement from his own agricultural expertise. He remarks about the state of political affairs, that it is a time of confusion, debt and selfish interests in the political sphere.

He comments on the various sights he sees, the state of labourers, the price of goods. Entering the such as the prices of livestock and crop which are considerably low, compared to earlier years. And the considerable difference of the price of same goods between towns due to the middle class which he seems to detest.

He exclaims upon the fact that ‘farmers unable to pay the men working for them and yet compelled to pay them for working in doing that which is really of no use to any human being.’ Despite the disrepair of various places, that despite there is a large amount of necessary work to be done, these men are reduced to an avenue of worthless physical effort such as creating smoother roads which are of benefit only to the wealthy giving nothing back to the town or labourers themselves.

Upon crossing into a new town and on the journey itself he remarks upon the beauty or troubling lack that the country presents giving the reader a very visceral and sometimes evocative image and showing his deep love for the country and how invested and passionate he is about his cause.

Cobbet is a very knowledgeable man and from his descriptions of the features of the country he will sometimes go on to explain the benifits and uses of e.g. the soil type or type of tree. For example: ‘This hazle is a thing of great utility here. It furnishes rods wherewith to make fences.’

He remarks upon the fact that an effort to further decrease the wages of a labourer will make the man no more than a slave, ‘a walking skeleton.’

He talks about the hypocrisy of a nation which concerns itself with lambasting the 6 million poor whilst turning a willingly ignorant blind eye to the other 67 million people who make use of public spending.

Instead of taking more from the working man he instead suggests that more money be taken from the church. He also suggests that to avoid further taxation of the poor the cutting of public pay and salaries would be an appropriate avenue to explore.

He enjoys making observations of the land, the work done to it and speculating how it can often be improved if he was ever afforded the opportunity and the money to do so.

As you read of his travels  he writes of his own thoughts and speculations and you can hear the sheer horror in his voice for the continued and worsening plight of the agricultural workers: ‘The wages of labourers brought down to six shillings a week! a horrible thing to think of; but, I hear, it is still worse in Wiltshire.’

A view throughout the book is that England is declining, a view held by many throughout history  where the time before the Inclosure Act is romanticised. A rural ideal of community, cooperation and living off the land.

His travels as dictated in his journal are often littered with anecdotes related to the place he has arrived at. It shows his deep connection with the country as he relates to the reader all these childhood memories, experiences which built him into the man he is today and seemingly such experiences and way of life he is trying to preserve in his efforts to save the labourers.

The historical context of Rural Rides and relevance in the 21^st Century:

Rural Rides was written in the time of the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws were taxes on imported grain to allow homegrown grain to make a profit. In such a scenario homegrown grain is very expensive and imported grain even moreso. This is good for the British farmers who have an assured profit yet terrible for the peasents and workers who are forced to buy bread at hugely inflated prices despite an often lowered wage. However in the long term the Corn Laws allowed the Industrial Revolution to occur, they allowed for the maximum exploitation of workers who would work longer and for less money for food at abnormally high prices.

In the 21^st Century we can see the same exploitation and its effects in China which does not have a minimum wage, this allows them to sell goods at very low prices and still make a large profit. If China did instill a minimum wage, Britain and the USA etc would be damaged economically as the price of common goods would increase and thus the standard of living would decrease as workers would demand higher wages to keep up with the price of goods. A wage raise would unlikely be immediate as it would cut into the profit of likely already suffering business.

This is why the Corn Laws were eventually repealed, workers on already low wages needed to be able to afford the most basic foodstuffs i.e. bread. If they cannot then workers wages have to be increased otherwise you inevitably starve your entire workforce which isn’t sustainable in the long term.

The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto

The manifesto begins by examining the history of divisions within society drawing parallels between the classes of Rome etc and those of today in which the lower classes are oppressed by those above them.

It then goes on to discuss the rise of the bourgeois, linking their rise to the discovery of new land and the rapid development of commerce and industry. Industrial production increased substantially and was ruled over by the bourgeois who profited greatly from each expansion both economically and politically and secured their place in the world.

The Bourgeois due to their continued advancement of industrial production and the need of expanding markets have been driven to spread around the world. With such practices the self sufficiency of nations becomes obsolete as all nations are linked in inter-dependency through trade and subsequent manufacture. Through such means the manifesto argues the bourgeois bring ‘even the most barbarian nations into civilisation.’  

On a national scale the country has become subservient to the towns which have expanded into great cities and interdependency is not only established between nations but between towns, cities and the country.

According to the manifesto the bourgeois having created a society with huge means of production and trade, loses control of it resulting in over-production, a collapse of trade and famine. The bourgeois eventually solve these problems but in doing so lay the foundations for an even bigger crisis to follow.

In this society the proletariat is treated as a commodity, only valuable if they can work and there is profit to be made from their hiring. 

Due to the extensive use of machinery in production as well as the division of labour the manifesto argues that the proletarians have lost all individuality and are now no longer a man but simply part of the machine doing a single monotonous job repeatedly. The manifesto states that the labourer will suffer decreased wages and more work if production becomes more efficient never rewarded for the part they play.

The labourer is treated like a slave turned soldier. The workers are effectively enslaved to the machines they work with and the officials they work under. The workplace is organised into a hierarchy of rank, the labourers overseen by a supervisor who are in turn watched by someone else going on until the very top of hierarchy at the top of the corporate structure.

The manifesto portrays the proletariat as having no divisions between age and gender as the workplace cares for neither and as being set upon on all sides by the bourgeois.

Because of such oppression the proletariat seeks to rise above it through various destructive acts which can be seen to have taken place during the industrial revolution in Britain where time honoured skills honed by years of practice are rendered obsolete by more efficient and cheaper machines.

However such limited revolution is incoherent and would only prove to be truly effective if the workers unite. Having done so they eliminate the monarchy and upper class not realising their victories play perfectly into the hands of the bourgeois.

However with industrialisation and the growth of cities comes a more concentrated mass of labourers who through concerted effort form unions to protect their wages. With advances in communication technologies unions are able to stay in contact with one another.

The proletarian movement is an independent movement of a large majority and in the interests of it. 

War breaks out and a revolution which overthrows the bourgeoisie occurs laying the foundations for the rule of proletariat.

Proletariats and Communists

According to the manifesto the Communists have no separate interests of the proletariat, they do not wish to control the development of the proletarian movement and are only distinguished from other working class parties by the fact they are the only party to call attention to all the interests of the proletariat and through the revolution the Communists were always there to represent the interests of the movement.

The Communists seek the formation of a proletariat class and the demise of the bourgeois.

The Communists show how history is progressing towards communism already.

The theory of the Communists can be simply stated as the ‘Abolition of private property.’

The manifesto explains how the communists wish to abolish all private property, that capital is a social power which does not free man to strive towards independence but shackles him to his work.

The manifesto assumes, probably quite rightly that the reader is horrified by this notion that the Communists wish to take away their private property including inheritance and land. To this end the manifesto explains how private property does not free a man but allows him to remain subject to the whim of the bourgeois.

The manifesto argues for the abolition of family, that the bourgeois family is based on private gain and thus will vanish with the abolition of capital.

The manifesto argues for the abolition of countries and thus nationality on the grounds that workers have no country and what is not owned cannot be lost.

Communism abolishes religion and morality and instead bases such notions on historical experience.

And thus the manifesto argues for the abolition of private property and the centralisation of all business and commerce, communication etc including banks, agriculture and trade.

‘If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.’

The manifesto asserts then that if the proletariat were to take this manifesto to heart, to act upon it and unite as a force against the bourgeoisie then they shall establish themselves as the dominant class in a classless society which in theory means all will be equal in status, wealth and life.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx was born May 5^th 1818 in Trier and lived until the age of 64 dying on March 14^th 1883. Originally of Jewish ancestry his father converted to Lutheranism in order to avoid the economic and political disadvantages associated with the faith. 

After schooling Marx attended Bonn University to study law. Yet he was not serious about his studies; he socialised often and consequently ran up large debts. In response to the downward spiral his son had taken, Hirschel Marx sent him to Berlin University. Here he would meet Bruno Bauer whose outspoken atheism and radical political opinions would influence and inspire Marx. Marx studied hard and hoped to become a lecturer at the university after his father’s death. 

This was not possible and thus began his foray into journalism. His radical writings meant few were willing to publish his work. Marx moved to the city of Cologne and secured a job as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung in 1842. This gave him a platform to push his more socialist views which resulted unsurprisingly in the closure and banning of the radical newspaper.

Moving to France in 1843 to study Socialism he met Fredrick Engels and they formed a partnership that was mutually beneficial to both. Marx had the ability to understand difficult economic and philosophical concepts Engels had the ability to write for a mass audience. Thus on February 21^st 1848 the ‘The Communist Manifesto’ was published, co-authored by Engels. This manuscript was a result of Marx’s forays into philosophy in university as well as his continued study of economies and religion in society. Marx was an empiricist, he studied documents incessantly basing his philosophy on fact rather than what one might call mere speculation.

Marx was a student of Hegel yet was not a purist and he tried to shape his own philosophy in a way that blended Hegelian principles with scientific empiricism. 

The publishing of the Communist Manifesto resulted in Marx being expelled from Belgium where he had originally fled to after the closure of his newspaper. He moved to England and worked on Das Kapital, surviving on donations from Engels before being able to support himself with work for the New York Daily Tribute and the New American Cyclopaedia in the USA and was able to move from absolute poverty with the inheritance of £120 from his wife’s mother. 

From then on he continued work on the second volume of Das Kapital which was published posthumously in 1885, 2 years after Marx’s death.