Reddit Reddit reviews The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848

We found 6 Reddit comments about The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

History
Books
European History
French History
The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848
Vintage
Check price on Amazon

6 Reddit comments about The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848:

u/itsallfolklore · 63 pointsr/AskHistorians

Marxism is obviously a cornerstone, but not for the reason normally considered - that is, economic determinism. While "ED" is important, I feel that the dialectic is much more important and valuable. I was profoundly impressed and influenced by the work of Eric Hobsbawm and his multi-volume history of the modern world because of his elegant use of the dialectic. He demonstrates an aspect of what a period of the past was like and then proceeds to prove its opposite. I used this approach in my first major book, and I cite Hobsbawm as the first person named in my acknowledgements. Economic determinism is extremely important, but if I had to pick between the two, I would teach Hegel and the dialectic.

I was trained in the French Annales School which in a way is the antithesis of Marxism because it is based on the idea of structuralism with its kinship shared by Talcot Parsons - while a Marists sees the seeds of change planted in the soil from which a plant emerges, Parsons sees change as occurring only when an existing structure can no longer serve. And much of the Annales historians attempt to demonstrate how fundamental shifts in the mentality of a period represent these structural shifts (consider Marc Bloch's famous Feudal Society). Although it contradicts the dialectic, the idea of shifting mentalities is extremely useful, and I regard it as yet another cornerstone of good history.

u/satanic_hamster · 4 pointsr/CapitalismVSocialism

Socialism/Communism

A People's History of the World

Main Currents of Marxism

The Socialist System

The Age of... (1, 2, 3, 4)

Marx for our Times

Essential Works of Socialism

Soviet Century

Self-Governing Socialism (Vols 1-2)

The Meaning of Marxism

The "S" Word (not that good in my opinion)

Of the People, by the People

Why Not Socialism

Socialism Betrayed

Democracy at Work

Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (again didn't like it very much)

The Socialist Party of America (absolute must read)

The American Socialist Movement

Socialism: Past and Future (very good book)

It Didn't Happen Here

Eugene V. Debs

The Enigma of Capital

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

A Companion to Marx's Capital (great book)

After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action

Capitalism

The Conservative Nanny State

The United States Since 1980

The End of Loser Liberalism

Capitalism and it's Economics (must read)

Economics: A New Introduction (must read)

U.S. Capitalist Development Since 1776 (must read)

Kicking Away the Ladder

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Traders, Guns and Money

Corporation Nation

Debunking Economics

How Rich Countries Got Rich

Super Imperialism

The Bubble and Beyond

Finance Capitalism and it's Discontents

Trade, Development and Foreign Debt

America's Protectionist Takeoff

How the Economy was Lost

Labor and Monopoly Capital

We Are Better Than This

Ancap/Libertarian

Spontaneous Order (disagree with it but found it interesting)

Man, State and Economy

The Machinery of Freedom

Currently Reading

This is the Zodiac Speaking (highly recommend)

u/karma_morghulis · 3 pointsr/TrueReddit

Humans, as a species, are predisposed towards authoritarians. Even in idealized, pastoral tribal societies, which often did have high degrees of egalitarianism, there was invariably a strong social order generally associated with a group of elders or single elder depending on the size of the group, somewhat counter-intuitively larger groups tended to have single executives whereas smaller ones can remain effective with larger authority councils.

One of the most "free" people in a historically large society were the Iroquois, who had a much stronger influence on the democratic drive in North America than in generally recognized in common histories. Even they had multiple levels of government, with an interesting gender-split authority structure and weren't strictly democratic.

I think a lot of people conflate the ideas of egalitarianism (fairness and equity) with democracy. Historically democracy was one of the concessions to equability, but they are not the same thing. People want fairness. Democracy got them some of that. But much of the modern fairness we have in the Western world was engendered from two centuries of violent struggle by various populist, socialist, and nationalist elements against the colonial and imperial power structures that emerged during Europe's post-renaissance period.

This was not voted for in so much as from about 1740 up until the WW1-WW2 period, people were literally murdering members of the feudal and imperial power structures, and in some cases overthrowing governments. The notion of modern democracy was a concession by the various imperial systems to that quest for more equality (liberté, égalité, fraternité ... not démocratie) and not some natural progression of governance. Even the American Revolution was significantly driven by a desire for "leveling" that is left out of most histories, the colonies wanted a bigger share of the pie more than they specifically wanted to vote for which guy in a wig was head cheese.

tl;dr not suprising, our notional of preference for democracy is debatably propaganda and fairly ahistorical. A large fraction of the population would likely prefer an authoritarian system as long as they thought the result was fair ... to them at least

Interesting Reading: Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution. amazon link

u/tenent808 · 3 pointsr/AskHistorians

Check out Eric Hobsbawm's trilogy of books: The Age of Revolution: 1789-1848, The Age of Capital: 1848-1875, and The Age of Empire: 1875-1914 where he makes the argument for the "long 19th century" spanning the years from 1789-1914. Hobsbawm is very much a Marxist historian, so keep that in mind reading his work, but he is a gifted writer and historian and lays out his arguments very convincingly and rigorously. As far as I'm aware, Hobsbawm is the scholar most credited with formatting the theory of the "long 19th century".

u/IvankaTrump2020 · 1 pointr/CapitalismVSocialism

Enlightenment:

Broadly speaking, the Enlightenment is the ideology that asserts all people should be set free, and so all progressive, humanist, and libertarian ideologies are implicitly Enlightenment ideologies. It's a good thing. In practice, the Enlightenment was the radical ideology espoused by the rising bourgeois as they toppled feudal regimes across Europe from 1789-1848. Socialism has its roots in the most radical forms of Enlightenment thought.

French Revolution:

The political revolution that united the French bourgeois with the starving peasantry against the Feudal aristocracy that had become obscenely slothful and decadent. It was a good thing. Many modern political ideologies, both left and right, can trace their roots back to the various factions vying for power during the turbulent years following the fall of the Bastille (speaking of which--happy belated Bastille day everyone).

Rise of capitalism:

It was a good thing for the rising middle class, a bad thing for the feudal aristocracy and the mass of peasantry. It was good for European nation-states, bad for most everyone else. In terms of historical significance, I agree with Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm--that the rise of capitalism is probably the most important event in human history, at least since the invention of agriculture and the establishment of the first cities (link):

> Some time in the 1780s, and for the first time in human history, the shackles were taken off the productive power of human societies, which henceforth became capable of the constant, rapid, and up to the present limitless multiplication of men, goods and services. This is now technically known to the economists as the 'take-off into self-sustained growth' ... for it was then that, so far as we can tell, all the relevant statistical indices took that sudden, sharp, almost vertical turn upwards. ... The economy became, as it were, airborne.