Negative Results of Industrialization
Engels presents industrialization as something negative, rather than as the positive and progressive time that it is believed to have been. He does not see it as something that furthers society. Its positives are many; transportation links improve, processes become more mechanized which in many cases make jobs easier - an example of this being the Spinning Jenny which enabled workers to weave larger textiles more quickly and in a less labor-intensive way - and it also offered more job opportunities. However. Engels disputes that any ot these things were actually progress. He sees the industrialization of England as a wholly negative occurrence, because of the way in which the working class are exploited. He views industry owners as exploitative "bad guys" who care about profits but not the workers' wellbeing. He also sees it as a negative because it has led to urbanization, which is detrimental to the health and living conditions of the working classes.
Negative Effects of Urbanization
This idea goes hand in hand with what Engels sees as the negative effects of industrialization, most likely because he believes the former has led to the latter. He sees only negatives when it comes to urbanization; the working class are drawn to the urban sprawl from the countryside, where the air is cleaner, living conditions more sanitary, and disease not as prevalent because there are fewer people living in such close quarters. His statistics show that those living in an urban environment have a shorter life expectancy than their ancestors, which is against the norm because typically each generation lives proportionally longer than the one before.
"Them" versus "Us"
Engels' work is the basis for communism, and in this book he is already laying the "them versus us" groundwork that is necessary in order to make the working class rise up against the people they come to see as their oppressors. He paints the industry owners and leader, and the city planners, as exploitative and generally lacking in principle, determined to maintain the wide gap between their living conditions and those of their workers, and he begins to put forward the notion that the only way for this to change is for the workers to withdraw their labor and refuse to work until their demands for better conditions are met. This is the foundation of the socialism that he promotes and that later becomes the first manifesto for the beginning of communism.
