EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
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C O U R S E
A History of the World since 1300
Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E 19th Century Changing Concepts of Labor Notes taken on January 28, 2016 by Edward Tanguay |
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middle of 19th century
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world is recovering from the great upheavals of the age of revolution
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hadn't put an end to them
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had changed the cultural moorings of the world's systems
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new aspects are coming into being
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new regimes
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new identities
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new discourses of science and technology
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societies faced the challenge on how to stabilize this new order
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finding a way to channel the rights that people felt they enjoyed in this new order in a way that made these rights manageable
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create nations
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the political theaters in which people would exercise their newfound liberties
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1. franchise
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the right to vote
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the right to choose your representative
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channeled these rights into new and older, archaic institutions
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relocate people energies away from streets and aggregating into mobs
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like those that stormed the Bastille in Paris
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into political parties
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voting places
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new languages of republicanism
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2. technological changes
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the effects of the first industrial revolution
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new organizations of production and circulation
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this generated a new quest to locate principles that would guide the emerging new global order
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the international system
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once the old empires were made less relevant
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applied to the role of commerce
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away from the idea that companies chartered by states would enjoy privileges and monopolies
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away from an older model of protectionism and mercantilism
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to the idea of free trade
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all individuals now enjoyed a right to trade
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not just within internal markets but external markets
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the rise of the assault on the idea of coerced labor
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a violation of fundamental economic laws
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coerced labor was an affront to the moral principles of human beings
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for Darwin, slavery was a violation of natural laws
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slavery and all coerced labor system were seen as emblems of an old, archaic economic model
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Karl Marx
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articulate exponent of the move from coerced forms of labor to free forms of labor
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thought of himself as a scientific economist
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transition to free labor was one of the fundamental transformations of the age
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coerced labor was a system attributed to backward regimes
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capitalism was destiny
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was bound to spread
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would pervade the entire world
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societies around the world gradually transform themselves into economies of profit and accumulation
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free labor an important aspect
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freedom for businesses to accumulate
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free from intrusions from state and church
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freedom to trade across borders
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freedom to hire label
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the language of freedom was becoming important to the concept of the economy itself
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Marx calls this exploitation
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while he believes capitalism is destiny, he also thinks it is doomed
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has an idea of a revolution
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used in 1917 in Russia
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the owners of capital had an incentive to augment the productivity of workers
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invested in making the worker more productive
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the capitalist would earmark a share of his surplus into the investment of new technologies
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there was something new about this system
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rising productivities
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reinvestment in technological systems
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intrinsically dynamic
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a powerful system
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while dynamic, it was also unstable
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more and more workers get pulled into the system
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pulled away from their habitats where they produced for subsistence, what they needed for households
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now they sold their labor for wage
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now you get a wage
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but you don't make your own food, so you go to
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once you dismantle this self-sufficiency, the market place becomes a zone of interdependence
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these workers become more and more dependent on the market place
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dependence produces vulnerabilities
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Karl Marx admired Charles Darwin
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sent him a copy of Das Kapital
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Darwin never read it
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the new principles need to be scientific
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evolution
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capitalism