N-Lighten Me

The Age of Capital: 1848–1875

- Eric Hobsbawm

Abstract:

This book analyzes the period 1848–1875, asserting that the global triumph of capitalism is the major historical theme. The era is defined by the massive advance of the world economy of industrial capitalism, predicated on the widespread belief in competitive private enterprise and continuous progress. The narrative begins with the universally failed Revolution of 1848, the "springtime of peoples," which effectively marked the retreat of political revolution and the advance of the Industrial Revolution. This transformation led to a spectacular economic boom, during which politics "went into hibernation," allowing the triumphant bourgeois order to consolidate its power. A central development was the extension of the capitalist economy to the entire world, achieved through railways, steamships, the telegraph, and mass migration, effectively forging the globe into a single operational reality. This period of unfettered liberal expansion concluded with the stock market collapse of 1873, which ushered in the era known to contemporaries as the "Great Depression." #AgeOfCapital #GlobalTriumphOfCapitalism #IndustrialCapitalism #RevolutionOf1848 #TheGreatBoom #TriumphantBourgeoisie #EconomicLiberalism #WorldEconomy #GreatDepression1873 #EricHobsbawm

Title: The Age of Revolution 1789–1848: Europe 1789–1848

Author: Eric Hobsbawm

Abstract: This book analyzes the transformation of the world between 1789 and 1848 as a result of the ‘dual revolution’: the French Revolution of 1789 and the contemporaneous (British) Industrial Revolution. This transformation constitutes the greatest change in human history since the invention of agriculture and metallurgy. The Industrial Revolution, centered in Britain, provided the economic explosive that established capitalist industry as triumphant and gave the world models for its factories and railways. The French Revolution, meanwhile, shaped the world's politics and ideology, providing the vocabulary and concepts for liberal, radical-democratic, and nationalist movements. This period marked the triumph of the middle class or ‘bourgeois’ liberal society. The narrative is broadly divided into two parts: the main developments of the period (such as the Revolutions, Industrial Revolution, and war) and the resulting society shaped by the dual revolution (including land reform, the rise of the industrial world, and new ideologies like socialism and nationalism). The book’s perspective is primarily Franco-British because the world was transformed from a Franco-British base during this era.----------------------------------------------------------------#DualRevolution #FrenchRevolution1789 #IndustrialRevolution #BourgeoisSociety #CapitalistIndustry #Liberalism #Nationalism #Transformation1789–1848 #EricHobsbawm

A Socialism for the Twenty-First Century: Towards the ‘Full and Free Development of Every Individual’

This book presents a detailed and comprehensive vision for republican socialism, arguing that a viable alternative world is urgently needed in the face of recurring economic crises, rapidly worsening environmental breakdown, increasing poverty, and inequality inherent in contemporary capitalism. The work critiques capitalism, asserting that it has reached its historical limits. The book rejects social democracy, arguing that an acceptable form of market capitalism cannot be implemented. It also rejects "state socialism" (as seen in the USSR or China) and market socialism, viewing the latter as internally incoherent because it results in "capital without capitalists." The guiding principle for this alternative is Marx’s dictum: "the full and free development of every individual." The proposed model outlines specific social institutions and policies across local, regional, national, and international levels, founded on democratic self-governance without domination and an economy organized via indicative planning for social needs.---------------------------------------------------------------- #RepublicanSocialism #FullAndFreeDevelopment #CapitalismCritique #StateSocialism #MarketSocialism #IndicativePlanning #SelfGovernance #EnvironmentalCrisis #TwentyFirstCenturySocialism

Introduces and discusses the book:

Frank, A. G., & Denemark, R. A. (2016). Reorienting the 19th Century: Global Economy in the Continuing Asian Age. London: Routledge.

This paper provides a sociological and historical analysis of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, focusing on the deep structural processes and global influences that led to its success, while contrasting these factors with the post-revolutionary context. It challenges fifteen common false beliefs about revolutions, arguing that the 1979 event was neither an irrational, emotional outburst nor a mere foreign conspiracy, but the result of an inevitable historical wave. The Shah’s regime collapsed due to deep structural contradictions, including a fundamental negligence of social equity, the aggressive importation of unbalanced modernization, and the failure to integrate the masses' dominant religious culture. This led to a collapse of legitimacy and the formation of a potent antisystemic coalition, particularly fueled by unexpected economic crises that amplified unfulfilled expectations. The analysis stresses that the revolution, rooted in century-long struggles for social justice and independence, provided a political opportunity to implement fundamental societal transformation.In contrast, the paper argues that a renewed revolution has been averted in the post-1979 era, despite ongoing economic issues, due to strategic shifts by the ruling establishment. These measures include a significant reduction in absolute poverty and income inequality, an expansion of basic services (like education and utilities) to the rural and poor majority, and the institutionalization of political dissent through elections, thereby channelling popular discontent and achieving a greater degree of popular participation and ideological cohesion. Understanding this ongoing structural transformation requires epistemic disobedience against prevalent popular and ideological fantasies about the nature of historical change. #IranianRevolution1979 #HistoricalWaves #SocialJustice #UnbalancedModernization #StatePower #AntisystemicMovements #EpistemicDisobedience #PoliticalParticipation

Reviews the book: Antisystemic Movements: Class, State Power, and the Transformation of Historical Capitalism

The collection of essays in Antisystemic Movements outlines the system-wide structural processes that produced movements challenging the world-system of historical capitalism. This global system, which emerged primarily in Europe during the "long" sixteenth century, generated movements that originally derived their self-description from 19th-century categories: Class and Status Group. The book aims to rethink these concepts from a world-systems perspective. Organized antisystemic movements arose around 1848, differentiating into the "social movement" (focused on the bourgeoisie versus the proletariat) and the "national movement" (focused on ethno-national oppression). Both varieties converged on a shared strategic objective: obtaining state power. Although these movements achieved impressive successes in gaining control of state apparatuses globally, this strategy ultimately resulted in a widespread sense of "unfulfilled revolution".

This strategic dilemma led to the emergence of new social movements in the 1960s. The year 1968 is analyzed as "The Great Rehearsal," a "world revolution" that, despite its political failures, irrevocably transformed the political ground-rules of the world-system by challenging the established, bureaucratic "old left" organizations. The analysis concludes that the struggles of these movements are continually shaped by the ongoing structural transformation of the capitalist world-economy, including the increasing centralization of capital (in financial and productive forms) and the widening and deepening of stateness across the globe. The authors argue that new, more world-scale organizational responses are urgently needed to cope with these structural dilemmas.#AntisystemicMovements #WorldSystem #HistoricalCapitalism #ClassStruggle #StatusGroups #StatePower #NationalLiberation #SocialMovements #1968Rehearsal #CentralizationOfCapital

Introduces and discusses the following book:

Arrighi, G. (2007). Adam Smith in Beijing : Lineages of the Twenty-First Century. London ; New York: Verso.

introduces and discusses the book:

Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber

by David Graeber.

introduces and discusses the book The End of the Megamachine: A Brief History of a Failing Civilization

This episode introduces and discusses the book "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" by the late David Graeber and David Wengrow.