The China Consumption Story in 1858

I spend most of my working day researching and talking to people about China’s consumption patterns. It’s not a bad gig, consumption has remained fairly robust and retail sales relatively strong – certainly compared to the West (I’m not going to tell you why here – you have to pay for that gold). Now the China consumption story is big with analysts around the world trying to figure it out, understand it and get in on it somehow. Can China save the West from prolonged recession etc?

China’s consumption has of course fascinated people for centuries. So I was interested to note while reading the excellent new biography of Frederich Engels by Tristram Hunt – The Frock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels – that Engels himself got annoyed with China’s rising consumption for a slightly different reason – it slowed down the inevitable collapse of capitalism and the rise of socialism in the 1850s. Hunt’s bio is, perhaps unsurprisingly, rather partial to Engels, at least compared to buddy Marx who comes out of the story with less appeal. I have a certain sympathy for this view as I think Engels lived the more interesting life and delved into the meat of his subject – the working classes – a little more deeply. Certainly Engels’s Condition of the Working Class in England (mostly Manchester of course) in 1844 is a more gripping story than Marx’s theoretical stuff.

Anyway, with the American crash of 1857 Engels was rapturous believing that the knock on effects would politicse the English working class and lead to a revolution – ‘a period of chronic pressure is needed to get people’s blood up’, he wrote to Marx in London from his home in Manchester.  But Engels was to be disappointed – working class demoralisation and subsequent revolutionary radicalisation didn’t happen and in spring 1858 he noted to Marx that demand for cotton was up again due largely to surging demand in the emerging markets of India and China. Ergo – China stopped England having a good bloodletting and a revolution. Engels wrote finally to Max on the subject declaring the booming consumption in China to be the end of the window of opportunity for a decent revolution.