Marx

Abstract

W E are left through the writing of men like Kay, Hetherington and Carlyle with a sense of great and disruptive change taking place, which cannot be eliminated merely by showing the inadequacies of the three class, neo-Ricardian model, and of the notion of ‘the birth of class’. How else can these changes be described and analysed? Karl Marx is a major social historian in his own right, and it is reasonable to expect considerable assistance from ideas developed as a result of close study of the industrial revolution. For the social historian, the writings of Marx should be approached as a massive workbench for social history rather than as a contentious document of political philosophy.