A christmas carol

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offguardian:https://off-guardian.org/2017/12/24/dickens-christmas-carol/

Dickens’ A Christmas Carol: cosy seasonal tale or passionate condemnation of unfettered capitalism?

Today we think of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol as a cosy piece of traditional seasonal fare, replete with steaming puds and roasted goose and comfortably easy lessons about not being stingy at Crimbo. But when Dickens wrote his novella in 1843 he was delivering a far more serious – and possibly freshly relevant – warning about the moral bankruptcy of a society that destroys human lives in pursuit of profit
t’s a fact not much considered, but Das Kapital and A Christmas Carol were both written in the same city, in the same decade – just five years apart.

To those familiar only with the numerous adaptations of Dickens’ tale it might seem absurd to look for any point of connection between these two books. What can a feel-good tale of middle class redemption have to do with a study of the class struggle? But this question only begs to be asked because a lot of the real meaning behind the writing of A Christmas Carol has always been missing from the general perception of this work.

As conceived in 1843, Dickens’ short novel was not simply a personal morality tale. It was a raw and impassioned warning to his fellow bourgeois Victorians of the collective responsibility human beings have for one another and the potential danger existing in exactly the social forces Marx would soon be dissecting. Dickens was worried about the rampant injustices in his society, not simply out of a sense of empathy and outrage, but out of fear. He was convinced the grotesque imbalances of wealth and power that endured at the time of his writing might end up tearing the fabric of society apart.

The 1840s, known as the “hungry forties” were years of financial confusion, recession, poverty and unrest throughout much of the developed world. In the USA the boom of 1836 was followed by the “panic of 1837”. The United Kingdom adopted free trade, abolishing most duties & tariffs. There was a railway boom and bust, the Bank Charter Act of 1844, and then a panic in 1847. There was the Irish “potato famine” or “Great Hunger”, when people died of starvation while Anglo-Irish landowners exported the food that would have saved them. In 1846, after heavy lobbying, the Corn Laws were repealed, signalling the end of any protection for domestic producers.

Social injustice was becoming unhinged and self-defeating in its extremity. In 1834 the Malthusian New Poor Law had dehumanised and institutionalised poverty. The law forced anyone needing welfare to enter a workhouse and refusal to do so meant starvation. The new wave of workhouses produced as a result of the Act were places of nightmare, more closely resembling concentration camps than refuges for the needy. Families were forcibly separated, parents assumed to have relinquished all rights over and responsibilities for their children. Segregation by age and gender was enforced. Personal belongings and clothing was confiscated until discharge.

As the financial instability and periods of recession increased social unrest grew. In 1842 things began to go critical. There were “starvation riots” in Galway, Ireland. Millworkers in Salford were fired upon while protesting outside their place of work. In Preston two “rioters” were shot by soldiers before the regiment “restored the peace” (the Illustrated London News described this as an “attack on the military” – a bit of soulless sophistry worthy of today’s Guardian). A workhouse in Stockport was attacked by a “mob of 20,000 unemployed”. In Manchester the same year the Home Secretary sent troops and artillery to deal with “considerable labour unrest” in the area. The Illustrated London News a few days later reported insurrection in Liverpool, Manchester and other northern towns…. see link