Postwar historians rejected the contemporary pessimistic verdict on industrialization’s costs

Evidence

“It is today heterodox to believe that early industrialization was a catastrophe for the labouring poor … let alone that their standard of living declined. This article proposes to show that the currently accepted view is based on insufficient evidence… . It is dangerous to reject the consensus of informed and intelligent contemporaries of industrialization, a majority of whom, as even critics admit, took the dark view… . For the sake of convenience the classical (Ricardo-Malthus-Marx-Toynbee-Hammond) view will be called the pessimistic, the modern (Clapham-Ashton-Hayek) view the optimistic school.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1552

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Hobsbawm’s side in the standard-of-living debate contextualizes one pillar of Western Marxism Robinson critiques — its optimism about industrial progress.