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Main Point - The process of modern economic growth has made the world wealthier and improved people's standard of living but has not ended economic, political and social conflict.
Main Point - The core reason for economic conflict is over how to divide the wealth created by modern economic growth.
Homework # 5 - Economic Conflict
Homework # 5 - Economic Conflict
Reading on Economic Conflict - Click Here
Class Discussion - Images of Capitalism and Socialism
Class Discussion - Images of Capitalism and Socialism
Source # 1 - Timeline of Industrial Revolutions & Major Economic Writings
Source # 2 - Cartoons about Capitalism - Progress of the Century (1876) and Capital and Labour (1843)
Source # 3 - Painting - The Strike by Robert Koehler (1886)
Source # 4 - Photographs from the Great Depression
Source # 5 - Global Shipping Density Map & Elephant Chart
Classwork # 5 - Perspective on Capitalism & Socialism
Classwork # 5 - Perspective on Capitalism & Socialism
A perspective diagram is a variation on the comparison diagram - the comparison being made is about how different people or groups see the same event. The differences between how people see the same event can be a source of conflict between people.
The economic growth of the Industrial Revolution was used by both capitalists and socialists to justify their arguments. Curiously, these groups could look at the same event or evidence and use it to support their ideas. In this activity, you will be making a perspective diagram based on the sources below to show how both groups had different perspectives on the transformation of the Industrial Revolution.
Source # 1 - Excerpt from An Impartial Representation of the Case of the Poor Cotton Spinners in Lancaster (1780) which detailed Arkwright’s new factory system:
"Arkwright's machines require so few hands, and those only children, with the assistance of an overlooker. A child can produce as much as would, and did upon an average, employ ten grown up persons. Jennies for spinning with one hundred or two hundred spindles, or more, going all at once, and requiring but one person to manage them. Within the space of ten years, from being a poor man worth £5, Richard Arkwright has purchased an estate of £20,000; while thousands of women, when they can get work, must make a long day to card, spin, and reel 5040 yards of cotton, and for this they have four-pence or five-pence and no more."
Source # 2 - Alexis de Tocqueville describing Manchester - “From this foul drain, the greatest stream of human industry flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish; here civilization works it miracles, and civilized man in turned back almost into a savage.”
Source # 3 - Excerpt from Condition of the Working Class in England by Fredrick Engels (who worked closely with Karl Marx) (1845) - I once went into Manchester with such a bourgeois [business man], and spoke to him of the bad, unwholesome method of building, the frightful condition of the working-peoples quarters, and asserted that I had never seen so ill-built a city. The man listened quietly to the end, and said at the corner where we parted: "And yet there is a great deal of money made here, good morning, sir."
Source # 4 - Excerpt from Letters from England by Voltaire (1733) - “Go into the London Stock Exchange – a more respectable place than many a court – and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Muslim and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt."
Source # 5 - Bono on Capitalism (2022) - I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism. I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa, and they’re like, Eh, we wouldn’t mind a little more globalization actually.
Source # 4 - Data on Productivity Growth of British Workers and Real Wages in Britain from 1800-1900 - Both data sets are indexes. An index sets a year as "100" and then tracks the change over time from that point. The amount in any year was less than the set year if the number is lower than "100" and it was more if the number is higher than "100". The index on wages is expressed in a "real" amount which means it is indexed for inflation.
Source # 5 - Change in British Social Structure (Click on Image for Larger View)
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