Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud

77. Another of his ideas was the so-called ‘Owenite communities’ (in London, Birmingham, Norwich and Sheffield) where he brought craftsmen together to manufacture their own wares without the involvement of capitalist employers. Owen always remained convinced that capitalism was ‘an inherently evil system’ and he wanted others to share his vision. This is the main reason why he was such a passionate advocate of trades unionism. It was Owen who had the idea of labour exchanges, a system whereby craftsmen were able to exchange their own products for ‘labour notes’ that, in turn, could be exchanged for goods (another device to sideline the capitalist system). Most of these other ideas failed too, at least in the form that Owen conceived them. But, as R. W. Harris has pointed out, Owen was a visionary rather than an organiser. Many of his ideas would eventually become important elements in labour politics in the latter half of the nineteenth century and throughout most of the twentieth. Harris, Op. cit., page 84.

78. Landes, Unbound Prometheus, Op. cit., pages 298–299, for the importance of lubrication in the industrial revolution.

79. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, Op. cit., page 69.

80. Ibid., page 72.

81. Ibid., page 73.

82. See also Engels’ conversation on the subject with a Mancunian. Hobsbawm, Op. cit., page 182.

83. David McLellan, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought, London: Macmillan, 1973, page 130.

84. Galbraith, Op. cit., page 127.

85. Ibid., page 128. Hawthorn, Op. cit., page 53, for Marx’s relations with Hegel.

86. Jews in France were hopeful of a better future. Hobsbawm, Op. cit., page 197.

87. Terrell Carver (editor), The Cambridge Companion to Marx, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991, page 56.

88. Roger Smith, Op. cit., page 435.

89. Ibid., page 436.

90. McLellan, Op. cit., page 299ff.

91. Ibid., page 334.

92. Galbraith, Op. cit., pages 128–129.

93. McLellan, Op. cit., pages 299–300 and 349–350.

94. Ibid., pages 433–442.

95. Roger Smith, Op. cit., pages 433–442.

96. Karl Marx, Capital, volume 2, Chicago: E. Untermann, 1907, page 763. Hawthorn, Op. cit., page 54.

97. McLellan, Op. cit., page 447. The International lasted until 1972.

98. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, 1780–1950, London: Chatto & Windus, 1958, Penguin, 1963.

99. In fact, Adam Smith was one of the first to use the word in this new way, in The Wealth of Nations.

100. Williams, Op. cit., pages 13–14.

101. Ibid., page 14.

102. Ibid., page 15.

103. Ibid., pages 15–16.

104. Ibid., page 16.

105. Ibid., page 124. See also: Nicholas Murray, A Life of Matthew Arnold, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1996, pages 243–245.

106. Williams, Op. cit., page 130; and Murray, Op. cit., page 245.

107. Williams, Op. cit., page 136 and Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, London: John Murray, 1869, page 28.

108. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton, New Jersey, and London: Princeton University Press, 2000, passim.

109. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, Boston: Beacon Press, 1944/2001, pages 3ff.

110. Ibid., pages 5 and 7.

111. Ibid., page 15. See also: Niall Ferguson, The Cash Nexus, London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2001/2002, pages 28–29; and 295–296. See here for a table on the growth of democracy. The irony, and paradox, that this period was also the high point of imperialism is not often explored.

CHAPTER 28: THE INVENTION OF AMERICA

1. Elliott, The Old World and the New, Op. cit., pages 54–55.

2. Ibid., page 56.

3. Ibid., page 57.

4. Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry Steel Commager and William E. Leuchtenberg, The Growth of the American Republic, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1980, volume 2, pages 4–5.

5. Elliott, Op. cit., pages 58–59.

6. Ibid., page 65.

7. See Greene, The Intellectual Construction of America, Op. cit., pages 21–22, for the respect for antiquity in Europe at the time.

8. Elliott, Op. cit., page 81.

9. Ibid., page 82.

10. Greene, Op. cit., pages 39–42.

11. Ibid., page 84; and see Greene, Op. cit., pages 28–29, for ideas about Paradise and utopia in early America.

12. Elliott, Op. cit., page 86.