Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Changing attitudes to political economy in the working-class press 1816–34
- 2 The need for a working-class political economy
- 3 Charles Hall and Robert Owen: anti-capitalist and socialist political economy before the Ricardian socialists
- 4 Ricardian socialists/Smithian socialists: what's in a name?
- 5 The theory of labour exploitation and the working-class press 1816–30
- 6 The theory of labour exploitation and the working-class press 1830–34
- 7 Early socialist political economy and the theory of capitalist crisis
- 8 The popular political economy of crisis 1816-34
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - The popular political economy of crisis 1816-34
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Changing attitudes to political economy in the working-class press 1816–34
- 2 The need for a working-class political economy
- 3 Charles Hall and Robert Owen: anti-capitalist and socialist political economy before the Ricardian socialists
- 4 Ricardian socialists/Smithian socialists: what's in a name?
- 5 The theory of labour exploitation and the working-class press 1816–30
- 6 The theory of labour exploitation and the working-class press 1830–34
- 7 Early socialist political economy and the theory of capitalist crisis
- 8 The popular political economy of crisis 1816-34
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The radical and co-operative press 1816–24
Writers in the radical and co-operative press of the immediate post-Napoleonic War period did not provide a well-articulated theory of general economic depression. Yet many did highlight the existence of such a phenomenon and stress the truly general nature of the impoverishment which it caused among the labouring classes. Thus they dismissed the classical view that depression must be partial, the consequence of the rundown of a particular industry or trade. As an ‘Address and Petition of the Distressed Mechanics of Birmingham’ put it:
Upon all former occasions of distress in any Branch of Trade, it was always found that some other channels of industry existed, through which the honest labourer could obtain his bread; but now we find that all other Descriptions of labourers are equally distressed with ourselves. A general Calamity has fallen upon the whole Nation. We would indulge the hope that our sufferings are peculiar to ourselves and may have been occasioned by the cessation of War Expenditure, but on whatsoever side we turn our Eyes … we can perceive nothing but an universal scene of Poverty and Distress.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The People's ScienceThe Popular Political Economy of Exploitation and Crisis 1816–34, pp. 191 - 218Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985