The Cartists

Abstract

While the Tories, the Whigs and the Peelites – in practice, all the parties discussed so far – belong more or less to the past, the Free Traders (men of the Manchester School, parliamentary and financial reformers) are the official representatives of modern English society, of England that controls the world market. They represent the party of the self-conscious bourgeoisie, of industrial capital which strives to convert its social power into political power as well as to eradicate the last arrogant remnants of feudal society. It is a party led by the most energetic and active part of the English bourgeoisie, the industrial entrepreneurs, who demand the complete and undisguised rise of the bourgeoisie, the open and formal submission of society as a whole to the laws of modern industrial production and the exercise of power by men who direct that production.