Russian Revolution Ethics

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Russian Revolution Ethics



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At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution India, China and regions of Iraq and elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East produced most of the world's cotton cloth while Europeans produced wool and linen goods. In Britain by the 16th century the putting-out system , by which farmers and townspeople produced goods for market in their homes, often described as cottage industry , was being practised. Typical putting out system goods included spinning and weaving. Merchant capitalists typically provided the raw materials, paid workers by the piece , and were responsible for the sale of the goods. Embezzlement of supplies by workers and poor quality were common problems. The logistical effort in procuring and distributing raw materials and picking up finished goods were also limitations of the putting out system.

Some early spinning and weaving machinery, such as a 40 spindle jenny for about six pounds in , was affordable for cottagers. The majority of textile factory workers during the Industrial Revolution were unmarried women and children, including many orphans. They typically worked for 12 to 14 hours per day with only Sundays off. It was common for women take factory jobs seasonally during slack periods of farm work. Lack of adequate transportation, long hours and poor pay made it difficult to recruit and maintain workers. See: British Agricultural Revolution , Threshing machine. The change in the social relationship of the factory worker compared to farmers and cottagers was viewed unfavourably by Karl Marx ; however, he recognized the increase in productivity made possible by technology.

Some economists, such as Robert E. Lucas, Jr. Nothing remotely like this economic behaviour is mentioned by the classical economists, even as a theoretical possibility. Real wages were not keeping up with the price of food. During the Industrial Revolution, the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. The percentage of the children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from The effects on living conditions of the industrial revolution have been very controversial, and were hotly debated by economic and social historians from the s to the s.

Hopkins later set the academic consensus that the bulk of the population, that was at the bottom of the social ladder, suffered severe reductions in their living standards. Chronic hunger and malnutrition were the norm for the majority of the population of the world including Britain and France, until the late 19th century. Until about , in large part due to malnutrition, life expectancy in France was about 35 years and about 40 years in Britain. The United States population of the time was adequately fed, much taller on average and had life expectancy of 45—50 years although U. Food consumption per capita also declined during an episode known as the Antebellum Puzzle. Food supply in Great Britain was adversely affected by the Corn Laws — The Corn Laws, which imposed tariffs on imported grain, were enacted to keep prices high in order to benefit domestic producers.

The initial technologies of the Industrial Revolution, such as mechanized textiles, iron and coal, did little, if anything, to lower food prices. The rapid population growth in the 19th century included the new industrial and manufacturing cities, as well as service centers such as Edinburgh and London. Kemp says this was usually of advantage to tenants. Clean water, sanitation, and public health facilities were inadequate; the death rate was high, especially infant mortality, and tuberculosis among young adults.

Cholera from polluted water and typhoid were endemic. Unlike rural areas, there were no famines such as the one that devastated Ireland in the s. By far the most famous publication was by one of the founders of the Socialist movement, The Condition of the Working Class in England in Friedrich Engels described backstreet sections of Manchester and other mill towns, where people lived in crude shanties and shacks, some not completely enclosed, some with dirt floors.

These shanty towns had narrow walkways between irregularly shaped lots and dwellings. There were no sanitary facilities. Population density was extremely high. The Industrial Revolution also created a middle class of businessmen, clerks, foremen and engineers who lived in much better conditions. Conditions improved over the course of the 19th century due to new public health acts regulating things such as sewage, hygiene and home construction. In the introduction of his edition, Engels notes that most of the conditions he wrote about in had been greatly improved. For example, the Public Health Act led to the more sanitary byelaw terraced house. In The Condition of the Working Class in England in Friedrich Engels described how untreated sewage created awful odours and turned the rivers green in industrial cities.

In John Snow traced a cholera outbreak in Soho in London to faecal contamination of a public water well by a home cesspit. Snow's findings that cholera could be spread by contaminated water took some years to be accepted, but his work led to fundamental changes in the design of public water and waste systems. Pre-industrial water supply relied on gravity systems and pumping of water was done by water wheels. Pipes were typically made of wood. Steam powered pumps and iron pipes allowed the widespread piping of water to horse watering troughs and households.

Modern industrialization began in England and Scotland in the 18th century, where there were relatively high levels of literacy among farmers, especially in Scotland. This permitted the recruitment of literate craftsman, skilled workers, foremen and managers who supervised the emerging textile factories and coal mines. Much of a labor was unskilled, and especially in textile mills children as young as eight proved useful in handling chores and adding to the family income.

Indeed, children were taken out of school to work alongside their parents in the factories. However, by the mid-nineteenth century, unskilled labor forces were common in Western Europe, and British industry moved upscale, needing many more engineers and skilled workers who could handle technical instructions and handle complex situations. Literacy was essential to be hired. The invention of the paper machine and the application of steam power to the industrial processes of printing supported a massive expansion of newspaper and pamphlet publishing, which contributed to rising literacy and demands for mass political participation.

Consumers benefited from falling prices for clothing and household articles such as cast iron cooking utensils, and in the following decades, stoves for cooking and space heating. Coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco and chocolate became affordable to many in Europe. The consumer revolution in England from the early s to roughly had seen a marked increase in the consumption and variety of luxury goods and products by individuals from different economic and social backgrounds.

The expanding textile trade in the north of England meant the three-piece suit became affordable to the masses. With the rapid growth of towns and cities, shopping became an important part of everyday life. Window shopping and the purchase of goods became a cultural activity in its own right, and many exclusive shops were opened in elegant urban districts: in the Strand and Piccadilly in London, for example, and in spa towns such as Bath and Harrogate. Prosperity and expansion in manufacturing industries such as pottery and metalwares increased consumer choice dramatically. Where once labourers ate from metal platters with wooden implements, ordinary workers now dined on Wedgwood porcelain.

Consumers came to demand an array of new household goods and furnishings: metal knives and forks, for example, as well as rugs, carpets, mirrors, cooking ranges, pots, pans, watches, clocks and a dizzying array of furniture. The age of mass consumption had arrived. New businesses in various industries appeared in towns and cities throughout Britain. Confectionery was one such industry that saw rapid expansion. According to food historian Polly Russell , "chocolate and biscuits became products for the masses, thanks to the Industrial Revolution and the consumers it created. By the midth century, sweet biscuits were an affordable indulgence and business was booming.

Increased literacy rates, industrialisation, and the invention of railway created a new market for cheap popular literature for the masses and the ability for it to be circulated on a large scale. Penny dreadfuls were created in the s to meet this demand. In , Welsh entrepreneur Pryce Pryce-Jones formed the first mail order business, an idea which would change the nature of retail. The Industrial Revolution was the first period in history during which there was a simultaneous increase in both population and per capita income. According to Robert Hughes in The Fatal Shore , the population of England and Wales, which had remained steady at six million from to , rose dramatically after The population of England had more than doubled from 8.

The growth of modern industry since the late 18th century led to massive urbanisation and the rise of new great cities, first in Europe and then in other regions, as new opportunities brought huge numbers of migrants from rural communities into urban areas. Women's historians have debated the effect of the Industrial Revolution and capitalism generally on the status of women. Clark argues that in 16th-century England, women were engaged in many aspects of industry and agriculture. The home was a central unit of production and women played a vital role in running farms, and in some trades and landed estates. Their useful economic roles gave them a sort of equality with their husbands. However, Clark argues, as capitalism expanded in the 17th century, there was more and more division of labour with the husband taking paid labour jobs outside the home, and the wife reduced to unpaid household work.

Middle- and upper-class women were confined to an idle domestic existence, supervising servants; lower-class women were forced to take poorly paid jobs. Capitalism, therefore, had a negative effect on powerful women. In a more positive interpretation, Ivy Pinchbeck argues that capitalism created the conditions for women's emancipation. In the pre-industrial era, production was mostly for home use and women produce much of the needs of the households. The second stage was the "family wage economy" of early industrialisation; the entire family depended on the collective wages of its members, including husband, wife and older children.

The third or modern stage is the "family consumer economy," in which the family is the site of consumption, and women are employed in large numbers in retail and clerical jobs to support rising standards of consumption. Ideas of thrift and hard work characterized middle-class families as the Industrial Revolution swept Europe. These values were displayed in Samuel Smiles' book Self-Help , in which he states that the misery of the poorer classes was "voluntary and self-imposed — the results of idleness, thriftlessness, intemperance, and misconduct. In terms of social structure, the Industrial Revolution witnessed the triumph of a middle class of industrialists and businessmen over a landed class of nobility and gentry.

Ordinary working people found increased opportunities for employment in the new mills and factories, but these were often under strict working conditions with long hours of labour dominated by a pace set by machines. Pre-industrial society was very static and often cruel — child labour , dirty living conditions, and long working hours were just as prevalent before the Industrial Revolution.

Industrialisation led to the creation of the factory. The factory system contributed to the growth of urban areas, as large numbers of workers migrated into the cities in search of work in the factories. Nowhere was this better illustrated than the mills and associated industries of Manchester, nicknamed " Cottonopolis ", and the world's first industrial city. In addition, between and , 20 percent of Europe's population left home, pushed by poverty, a rapidly growing population, and the displacement of peasant farming and artisan manufacturing. They were pulled abroad by the enormous demand for labour overseas, the ready availability of land, and cheap transportation. Still, many did not find a satisfactory life in their new homes, leading 7 million of them to return to Europe.

For much of the 19th century, production was done in small mills, which were typically water-powered and built to serve local needs. Later, each factory would have its own steam engine and a chimney to give an efficient draft through its boiler. In other industries, the transition to factory production was not so divisive. Some industrialists themselves tried to improve factory and living conditions for their workers. One of the earliest such reformers was Robert Owen , known for his pioneering efforts in improving conditions for workers at the New Lanark mills , and often regarded as one of the key thinkers of the early socialist movement. By an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol. Raw material went in at one end, was smelted into brass and was turned into pans, pins, wire, and other goods.

Housing was provided for workers on site. Josiah Wedgwood and Matthew Boulton whose Soho Manufactory was completed in were other prominent early industrialists, who employed the factory system. The Industrial Revolution led to a population increase but the chances of surviving childhood did not improve throughout the Industrial Revolution, although infant mortality rates were reduced markedly. Employers could pay a child less than an adult even though their productivity was comparable; there was no need for strength to operate an industrial machine, and since the industrial system was completely new, there were no experienced adult labourers.

This made child labour the labour of choice for manufacturing in the early phases of the Industrial Revolution between the 18th and 19th centuries. In England and Scotland in , two-thirds of the workers in water-powered cotton mills were described as children. Child labour existed before the Industrial Revolution but with the increase in population and education it became more visible. Reports were written detailing some of the abuses, particularly in the coal mines [] and textile factories, [] and these helped to popularise the children's plight. The public outcry, especially among the upper and middle classes, helped stir change in the young workers' welfare. Politicians and the government tried to limit child labour by law but factory owners resisted; some felt that they were aiding the poor by giving their children money to buy food to avoid starvation , and others simply welcomed the cheap labour.

In and , the first general laws against child labour, the Factory Acts , were passed in Britain: Children younger than nine were not allowed to work, children were not permitted to work at night, and the work day of youth under the age of 18 was limited to twelve hours. Factory inspectors supervised the execution of the law, however, their scarcity made enforcement difficult. Although laws such as these decreased the number of child labourers, child labour remained significantly present in Europe and the United States until the 20th century.

The Industrial Revolution concentrated labour into mills, factories and mines, thus facilitating the organisation of combinations or trade unions to help advance the interests of working people. The power of a union could demand better terms by withdrawing all labour and causing a consequent cessation of production. Employers had to decide between giving in to the union demands at a cost to themselves or suffering the cost of the lost production.

Skilled workers were hard to replace, and these were the first groups to successfully advance their conditions through this kind of bargaining. The main method the unions used to effect change was strike action. Many strikes were painful events for both sides, the unions and the management. In Britain, the Combination Act forbade workers to form any kind of trade union until its repeal in Even after this, unions were still severely restricted.

One British newspaper in described unions as "the most dangerous institutions that were ever permitted to take root, under shelter of law, in any country In , the Reform Act extended the vote in Britain but did not grant universal suffrage. That year six men from Tolpuddle in Dorset founded the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers to protest against the gradual lowering of wages in the s.

They refused to work for less than ten shillings a week, although by this time wages had been reduced to seven shillings a week and were due to be further reduced to six. In James Frampton, a local landowner, wrote to the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne , to complain about the union, invoking an obscure law from prohibiting people from swearing oaths to each other, which the members of the Friendly Society had done. They became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs. In the s and s, the Chartist movement was the first large-scale organised working class political movement which campaigned for political equality and social justice.

Its Charter of reforms received over three million signatures but was rejected by Parliament without consideration. Working people also formed friendly societies and co-operative societies as mutual support groups against times of economic hardship. Enlightened industrialists, such as Robert Owen also supported these organisations to improve the conditions of the working class. Unions slowly overcame the legal restrictions on the right to strike. In , a general strike involving cotton workers and colliers was organised through the Chartist movement which stopped production across Great Britain.

Eventually, effective political organisation for working people was achieved through the trades unions who, after the extensions of the franchise in and , began to support socialist political parties that later merged to become the British Labour Party. The rapid industrialisation of the English economy cost many craft workers their jobs. The movement started first with lace and hosiery workers near Nottingham and spread to other areas of the textile industry owing to early industrialisation. Many weavers also found themselves suddenly unemployed since they could no longer compete with machines which only required relatively limited and unskilled labour to produce more cloth than a single weaver.

Many such unemployed workers, weavers, and others, turned their animosity towards the machines that had taken their jobs and began destroying factories and machinery. These attackers became known as Luddites, supposedly followers of Ned Ludd , a folklore figure. The Luddites rapidly gained popularity, and the British government took drastic measures, using the militia or army to protect industry.

Those rioters who were caught were tried and hanged, or transported for life. Unrest continued in other sectors as they industrialised, such as with agricultural labourers in the s when large parts of southern Britain were affected by the Captain Swing disturbances. Threshing machines were a particular target, and hayrick burning was a popular activity. However, the riots led to the first formation of trade unions , and further pressure for reform.

The traditional centers of hand textile production such as India, parts of the Middle East and later China could not withstand the competition from machine-made textiles, which over a period of decades destroyed the hand made textile industries and left millions of people without work, many of whom starved. The Industrial Revolution also generated an enormous and unprecedented economic division in the world, as measured by the share of manufacturing output. Cheap cotton textiles increased the demand for raw cotton; previously, it had primarily been consumed in subtropical regions where it was grown, with little raw cotton available for export. Consequently, prices of raw cotton rose. British production grew from 2 million pounds in to 5 million pounds in to 56 million in It allowed green-seeded cotton to become profitable, leading to the widespread growth of the large slave plantation in the United States, Brazil and the West Indies.

In American cotton production was about 2 million pounds, soaring to 35 million by , half of which was exported. America's cotton plantations were highly efficient and profitable, and able to keep up with demand. Civil War created a "cotton famine" that led to increased production in other areas of the world, including European colonies in Africa. The origins of the environmental movement lay in the response to increasing levels of smoke pollution in the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution.

The emergence of great factories and the concomitant immense growth in coal consumption gave rise to an unprecedented level of air pollution in industrial centers; after the large volume of industrial chemical discharges added to the growing load of untreated human waste. An Alkali inspector and four sub-inspectors were appointed to curb this pollution. The responsibilities of the inspectorate were gradually expanded, culminating in the Alkali Order which placed all major heavy industries that emitted smoke , grit, dust and fumes under supervision.

The manufactured gas industry began in British cities in — The technique used produced highly toxic effluent that was dumped into sewers and rivers. The gas companies were repeatedly sued in nuisance lawsuits. They usually lost and modified the worst practices. The City of London repeatedly indicted gas companies in the s for polluting the Thames and poisoning its fish. Finally, Parliament wrote company charters to regulate toxicity. In industrial cities local experts and reformers, especially after , took the lead in identifying environmental degradation and pollution, and initiating grass-roots movements to demand and achieve reforms.

It was founded by artist Sir William Blake Richmond , frustrated with the pall cast by coal smoke. Although there were earlier pieces of legislation, the Public Health Act required all furnaces and fireplaces to consume their own smoke. It also provided for sanctions against factories that emitted large amounts of black smoke. The provisions of this law were extended in with the Smoke Abatement Act to include other emissions, such as soot, ash, and gritty particles and to empower local authorities to impose their own regulations. In his book Nations and Nationalism , philosopher Ernest Gellner argues that the industrial revolution and economic modernization spurred the creation of nations.

It started in Belgium and France, then spread to the German states by the middle of the 19th century. In many industries, this involved the application of technology developed in Britain in new places. Typically the technology was purchased from Britain or British engineers and entrepreneurs moved abroad in search of new opportunities. By , part of the Ruhr Valley in Westphalia was called 'Miniature England' because of its similarities to the industrial areas of Britain.

Most European governments provided state funding to the new industries. In some cases such as iron , the different availability of resources locally meant that only some aspects of the British technology were adopted. The Habsburg realms which became Austria-Hungary in included 23 million inhabitants in , growing to 36 million by However, there were strong regional differences. The railway system was built in the period.

Before they arrived transportation was very slow and expensive. In the Alpine and Bohemian modern-day Czech Republic regions, proto-industrialization began by and became the center of the first phases of the industrial revolution after The textile industry was the main factor, utilizing mechanization, steam engines, and the factory system. In the Czech lands , the "first mechanical loom followed in Varnsdorf in ," [] with the first steam engines appearing in Bohemia and Moravia just a few years later. The iron industry had developed in the Alpine regions after , with smaller centers in Bohemia and Moravia.

Hungary—the eastern half of the Dual Monarchy, was heavily rural with little industry before The first industrial exhibition was on the occasion of the coronation of Leopold II as a king of Bohemia, which took place in Clementinum , and therefore celebrated the considerable sophistication of manufacturing methods in the Czech lands during that time period. Technological change accelerated industrialization and urbanization. The GNP per capita grew roughly 1. Belgium was the second country in which the Industrial Revolution took place and the first in continental Europe: Wallonia French-speaking southern Belgium took the lead.

The leader was a transplanted Englishman John Cockerill. His factories at Seraing integrated all stages of production, from engineering to the supply of raw materials, as early as Wallonia exemplified the radical evolution of industrial expansion. Thanks to coal the French word "houille" was coined in Wallonia , [] the region geared up to become the 2nd industrial power in the world after Britain. Wallonia was also the birthplace of a strong Socialist party and strong trade-unions in a particular sociological landscape. At the left, the Sillon industriel , which runs from Mons in the west, to Verviers in the east except part of North Flanders, in another period of the industrial revolution, after Even if Belgium is the second industrial country after Britain, the effect of the industrial revolution there was very different.

The industrial revolution changed a mainly rural society into an urban one, but with a strong contrast between northern and southern Belgium. During the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, Flanders was characterised by the presence of large urban centres [ By comparison, this proportion reached only 17 per cent in Wallonia, barely 10 per cent in most West European countries, 16 per cent in France and 25 per cent in Britain. Nineteenth century industrialisation did not affect the traditional urban infrastructure, except in Ghent Also, in Wallonia the traditional urban network was largely unaffected by the industrialisation process, even though the proportion of city-dwellers rose from 17 to 45 per cent between and During these eighty years the number of municipalities with more than 5, inhabitants increased from only 21 to more than one hundred, concentrating nearly half of the Walloon population in this region.

Nevertheless, industrialisation remained quite traditional in the sense that it did not lead to the growth of modern and large urban centres, but to a conurbation of industrial villages and towns developed around a coal-mine or a factory. The industrial revolution in France followed a particular course as it did not correspond to the main model followed by other countries. Notably, most French historians argue France did not go through a clear take-off. Based on its leadership in chemical research in the universities and industrial laboratories, Germany, which was unified in , became dominant in the world's chemical industry in the late 19th century.

At first the production of dyes based on aniline was critical. Germany's political disunity—with three dozen states—and a pervasive conservatism made it difficult to build railways in the s. However, by the s, trunk lines linked the major cities; each German state was responsible for the lines within its own borders. Lacking a technological base at first, the Germans imported their engineering and hardware from Britain, but quickly learned the skills needed to operate and expand the railways. In many cities, the new railway shops were the centres of technological awareness and training, so that by , Germany was self-sufficient in meeting the demands of railroad construction, and the railways were a major impetus for the growth of the new steel industry. Observers found that even as late as , their engineering was inferior to Britain's.

However, German unification in stimulated consolidation, nationalisation into state-owned companies, and further rapid growth. Unlike the situation in France, the goal was support of industrialisation, and so heavy lines crisscrossed the Ruhr and other industrial districts, and provided good connections to the major ports of Hamburg and Bremen. By , Germany had 9, locomotives pulling 43, passengers and 30, tons of freight, and pulled ahead of France.

During the period — Sweden experienced two parallel economic movements: an agricultural revolution with larger agricultural estates, new crops and farming tools and a commercialisation of farming, and a protoindustrialisation , with small industries being established in the countryside and with workers switching between agricultural work in summer and industrial production in winter. This led to economic growth benefiting large sections of the population and leading up to a consumption revolution starting in the s. Between and , the protoindustries developed into more specialised and larger industries.

Several important institutional changes took place in this period, such as free and mandatory schooling introduced in as the first country in the world , the abolition of the national monopoly on trade in handicrafts in , and a stock company law in From to , Sweden experienced its "first" Industrial Revolution with a veritable explosion in export, dominated by crops, wood and steel. Sweden abolished most tariffs and other barriers to free trade in the s and joined the gold standard in Large infrastructural investments were made during this period, mainly in the expanding rail road network, which was financed in part by the government and in part by private enterprises.

The industrial revolution began about as Meiji period leaders decided to catch up with the West. The government built railroads, improved roads, and inaugurated a land reform programme to prepare the country for further development. It inaugurated a new Western-based education system for all young people, sent thousands of students to the United States and Europe, and hired more than 3, Westerners to teach modern science, mathematics, technology, and foreign languages in Japan Foreign government advisors in Meiji Japan.

In , a group of Japanese politicians known as the Iwakura Mission toured Europe and the United States to learn western ways. The result was a deliberate state-led industrialisation policy to enable Japan to quickly catch up. The Bank of Japan , founded in , [] used taxes to fund model steel and textile factories. Education was expanded and Japanese students were sent to study in the west. Modern industry first appeared in textiles, including cotton and especially silk, which was based in home workshops in rural areas. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries when the UK and parts of Western Europe began to industrialise, the US was primarily an agricultural and natural resource producing and processing economy.

Important American technological contributions during the period of the Industrial Revolution were the cotton gin and the development of a system for making interchangeable parts , the latter aided by the development of the milling machine in the US. The development of machine tools and the system of interchangeable parts were the basis for the rise of the US as the world's leading industrial nation in the late 19th century.

Oliver Evans invented an automated flour mill in the mids that used control mechanisms and conveyors so that no labour was needed from the time grain was loaded into the elevator buckets until flour was discharged into a wagon. This is considered to be the first modern materials handling system an important advance in the progress toward mass production. The United States originally used horse-powered machinery for small scale applications such as grain milling, but eventually switched to water power after textile factories began being built in the s.

As a result, industrialisation was concentrated in New England and the Northeastern United States , which has fast-moving rivers. The newer water-powered production lines proved more economical than horse-drawn production. In the late 19th century steam-powered manufacturing overtook water-powered manufacturing, allowing the industry to spread to the Midwest.

Thomas Somers and the Cabot Brothers founded the Beverly Cotton Manufactory in , the first cotton mill in America, the largest cotton mill of its era, [] and a significant milestone in the research and development of cotton mills in the future. This mill was designed to use horse power, but the operators quickly learned that the horse-drawn platform was economically unstable, and had economic losses for years. Subjectivism is the smuggled premise at the root of both variants of the question under discussion. Superficially, the two variants may appear to come from opposite motives. Actually, they are two sides of the same subjectivist coin.

He has no better grasp of objectivity than the first man; he is a subjectivist who sees reality as a contest of whims and wants it to be ruled by his whims — which he proposes to accomplish by discarding as false everything discovered by others. On such a premise, he would have to make fire by rubbing sticks together if he discovers that much , since he is not Edison and cannot accept electric light. He would have to maintain that the earth is flat, since Columbus beat him to the demonstration of its shape. He would have to advocate statism, since he is not Adam Smith. And he would have to discard the laws of logic, since he is obviously not Aristotle. It is also possible that the motive of such a mentality is the wish not to discard the ideas of others, but to appropriate them.

But this has nothing to do with a legitimate, rational process of learning. The truth of an idea and its authorship are two separate issues, which are not difficult to keep apart. It is an illustration of the extent to which the concept of objectivity is still alien to a great many men, and of the extent to which mankind needs it. Observe that most modern collectivists — the alleged advocates of human brotherhood, benevolence, and cooperation — are committed to subjectivism in the humanities.

Yet reason — and, therefore, objectivity — is the only common bond among men, the only means of communication, the only universal frame of reference and criterion of justice. Who determines which theory is true? Any man who can prove it. Theories, ideas, discoveries are not created collectively; they are the products of individual men. In politics, as in every other field of human endeavor, a group can only accept or reject a product or a theory ; it cannot, qua group, participate in its creation. The participants are those who choose that particular field of activity, each to the extent of his ability and ambition. And when men are free, irrational theories can win only temporarily and only through the errors or the default of the thinkers, i.

In politics, as in every other field, the men who do not care to think are merely ballast: they accept, by default, whatever the intellectual leaders of the moment have to offer. To the extent to which men do think, they follow the man who offers the best i. The best proof of the power of ideas — the power of reason for men of all levels of intelligence — is the fact that no dictatorship was ever able to last without establishing censorship. The number of its adherents is irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of an idea.

A majority is as fallible as a minority or as an individual man. A majority vote is not an epistemological validation of an idea. October] After that, we think about the historiography of the Russian Revolution, focusing in particular on four different schools of thought among historians writing about the Revolution. In the third module, we look more closely at the role of the Bolsheviks in the Revolution — where they came from, what they believed in, and how they came to power — before turning in the fourth model to consider the extent to which the Russian Revolution was a feminist revolution.

To what extent, in other words, did it concern itself with improving the lives of women? Finally, in the fifth module, we consider the cultural foundations and impact of the Russian Revolution, focusing in particular on the various cultural campaigns launched by the Bolsheviks, and the importance of culture in galvanising revolutionary energy in the s. He has a particular interest in the formation and popular experience of revolution, radical discourse, and utopian models. Willimott, A. Russia: The Revolution of - Who were the Bolsheviks? Willimott, Andy.