The Surplus Approach of Engels and Marx and Its Contemporary Relevance

The 200th birth anniversary of Frederick Engels provides a fitting occasion to delve into an analysis of the conditions of working class under capitalism. An early study was offered by Engels in the book titled Conditions of the Working Class in England (1845), written on the basis of his observations in the then upcoming industrial town of Manchester in late nineteenth century England. Empirical details and the analysis offered in the study can be viewed as laying the groundwork for the surplus approach, to be developed by Karl Marx in the three volumes of Capital and followed up by subsequent research in the same tradition. We attempt to relate, in this paper, the analysis as above to the observed state of the working class under contemporary capitalism, marked by new channels of surplus expropriation and its utilisation, where finance has achieved a dominant position vis-a-vis the rest of the economy.