Chartism’s Transitional Character

Abstract

Towards the close of the 1840s, it became evident that industrial capitalism had irreversibly established itself as the dominant mode of production. Within the working class, coming to terms with the new conditions therefore began to take precedence over the wholesale rejection of the factory system and of its concomitants. This rejection had been at the heart of the Chartist project. In this movement, whole communities, men and women alike, had responded to the threat that industrialisation posed, albeit differently, to all their members.