Pre-Marital Sex
The Introduction to the narrative is really a textbook case in the art of irony. In this case, irony of the type that could well be confused with utter sincerity. Or, in other words, the most perfect irony of them all. In this Introduction, Engels lays out a portrait of pre-Industrial Revolution non-urbanite English society that is only dripping with irony to the reader armed with the power that comes from not believing in fairy tales masquerading as reality. For instance, on the subject of sexual relations amongst this society:
“The young people grew up in idyllic simplicity and intimacy with their playmates until they married; and even though sexual intercourse before marriage almost unfailingly took place, this happened only when the moral obligation of marriage was recognized on both sides, and a subsequent wedding made everything good.”
Decent Folk
Expanding outward from the base motivations of sexual urges, the irony digs in even deeper as Engels summarizes the entire character of the pre-Industrial Revolution English villager. The remarkable thing is that even in 2022, you can still find fans of The Andy Griffith Show who argue that their favorite sitcom presents exactly this sort of non-existent fairy tale as the idealization of small-town people:
“They could rarely read and far more rarely write; went regularly to church, never talked politics, never conspired, never thought, delighted in physical exercises, listened with inherited reverence when the Bible was read, and were, in their unquestioning humility, exceedingly well-disposed towards the `superior” classes.”
Game Laws
Engels examines the nature of Game Laws as they relate to poaching by the poor in England veritably wades into a cesspool of almost absurdist irony. After patiently explaining the processes by which this ironic framework operates, he succinctly winds things up with his own satirically laced summation:
“Whether one or two more or less of the `surplus’ live or die matters nothing, and even if in consequence of the Game Laws half the surplus population could be put out of the way, it would be all the better for the other half – according to the philanthropy of the English landlords.”
Malthus Was an Idiot
Thomas Malthus formulated the idea that population grows exponentially while the production of food will never keep up with that rate. Thus, there will never be enough food to feed the population and that is why war, famine, and everything else that curtains population growth is actually a good thing. Apparently, Malthus was an idiot and Engels delights in using irony to undermine his idiocy:
“If, then, the problem is not to make the `surplus population’ useful, to transform it into available population, but merely to let it starve to death in the least objectionable way and to prevent its having too many children, this, of course, is simple enough, provided the surplus population perceives its own superfluousness and takes kindly to starvation.”
Sources
Much critique of the book since its publication has been quick to point out an irony connected to its very existence. The information that Engels relies upon in his argument is dependent to a certain extent upon Parliamentary investigations into labor reform already undertaken. Of special note is that two of those charged with officiating over these reform efforts were Robert Peel and Robert Owen. In addition to politicians, both men were owners of the very type of factories Parliament was investigating for the wrongdoing outlined by Engels.
