Industrialisation and Karl Marx

6 APRIL 2026 · 1 HOUR 12 MINUTES · HISTORY OF IDEAS CLUB

A History of Ideas Club seminar on industrial transformation and Karl Marx’s attempt to explain modern society through economic forces, class conflict, and a materialist reinterpretation of the Hegelian dialectic.

Episode guide

• Mechanical textiles, iron, chemistry, steam power, and the growth of industrial cities
• The social consequences of moving labour from household production into factories
• How Marx transformed Hegel’s dialectic into a material account of historical change
• Literary representations of poverty and industrial modernity in Dickens and Hugo

Sources and further reading

• Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848).
• Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (1867).
• G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821).
• E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963).
• Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848 (1962).

Transcript

A full transcript is in preparation. This page provides an accessible summary and episode guide in the meantime.

Continue the conversation

• Read: Louis Althusser: Ideology, Institutions and the Politics of Philosophy
• Discuss: How Does a Social Order Reproduce Itself?
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