80,000 visits

Congratulations everybody!!

I write this post because we have reached 80,000 visits!! Can you believe it? We should be proud of it and we have to continue writing interesting posts on this blog because there are many many people around the world who like this and this is very helpful for them, I'm sure!!
We would also like these people to write comments on the posts to add interesting things or, only their opinion. We would be very grateful.
I recommend to my classmates to read the posts Paqui has added about Marxism and utoian socialism, because she has added new things which are not in the unit and are also very interesting!
And finally, I'd like to say to Paqui that don't get nervous, in very little time you'll come to the lessons again. I hope you liked the biscuits and the visit yesterday. I couldn't go, I suppose they told you. So get well soon Paqui! See you very very soon!

Something more about Marxism

Marx and Engels working together

Source: http://www.brothersoft.com/marx-and-engels-at-work-together-wallpaper-391351.html

Karl Marx studied Law and later Philosophy and he was also interested in Economics and History. He worked as a journalist temporarily, but he spent most of the time writing books, where he explained his ideas.

Friedrich Engels´s father owned a textile factory in Manchester and Engels worked there, although he didn´t like the job. In Manchester Engels knew about the workers´ poverty and suffering and this caused  a strong  impression on him. Engels often helped Marx economically, lending him money, so that he could maintain his family. 

In 1848 Marx and Engels, who were members of the Communist League, were in charge of writing one of the most influencial books in history: the Communist Manifesto. This book started with the following words: "A spectre is haunting Europe- the spectre of communism". 

Marx wrote many other books. His major work was The Capital. Marx only finished the first of its three volumes. When he died, Engels completed and edited the two other volumes. 

Marx read a lot of books and drew inspiration from several thinkers: 

- The German Philosophers Hegel and Feuerbach.

- The British theorists of Economic Liberalism: Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

- The French socialists Blanqui, Proudhon and Blanc.

Here you have some of the conclusions Marx reached from his studies:

- Dialectical Materialism was the instrument used by Marx to analyze history. "Dialectical" comes from "dialogue" and it means reaching conclusions through debate, discussion. "Materialism" comes from "matter" and it means a scientific explanation of the world, letting divine explanations apart. According to Marx, humanity had moved forward due to a continuous fight between opposites. This confrontation (struggle) made change possible and gave birth to new situations.

Dialectical Materialism

Source: http://islamophobic.tumblr.com/

Marx observed that human history had been a continuous confrontation between oppressors and oppressed. Social harmony was impossible, because the domination of one social group was based on oppressing and exploiting other groups. For him class struggle was necessary for human progress. In the 19th century the two confronted groups were the bourgeois and the proletarians (workers) and their struggle would result into a proletarian revolution and lead to a communist society after a transition stage (dictatorship of the proletariat).

Dialectical Materialist analysis on history

Source: https://www2.bc.edu/~heineman/QuestionsSoc.html

- During the French Revolution the bourgeois had fought to defend freedom and private property. They had succeeded and then the citizens were free in theory. But for most of the population (those who didn´t own properties) the only freedom they had was the freedom of selling themselves, the freedom of selling their labour force to survive. Marx considered private property as the maximum form of alienation, because  it obliged people to sell themselves in order to get things. The more things one had, the less of himself he had. And he also considered that much of the evil things of the world came from the defense of private property: wars, misery, crimes, discrimination, slavery... That´s why he predicted that in the future a revolution would end with private property and change it into collective.

- Marx was convinced of the fact that the internal contradictions of capitalism would lead to its destruction, because the workers wouldn´t stand the way they lived and they would start a revolution. Marx considered that workers had to be ready for revolution and they had to unite and form unions and political parties. However, Marx considered that labour parties could help workers get some concessions from the capitalists, but that wouldn´t modify the exploitation situation and revolution would be unavoidable.

- Marx also studied women´s condition and was a defender of women´s emancipation. He considered that in the family women were as proletarians and their husbands were as the bourgeois.

Marx´s works were read and interpreted by many people. Sometimes his ideas were misinterpreted to such a degree that Marx said "I´m not a Marxist". This means that he didn´t feel identified with many of the ideas considered to be Marxist. You don´t have to forget that Marx´s ideas were predictions, conclusions extracted from his studies, but not recipes or instructions about how to make a revolution. 

The Communist Manifesto: 

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

The Marx and Engels Internet Archive:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/

Charles Fourier´s phalanstère

Source: http://www.upf.edu/materials/fhuma/hmod/imatges8.html

Charles Fourier was a French utopian socialist who rejected industrialization and free market economy and was very critical with capitalism, because he considered that they contributed to workers´ exploitation. He promoted the return to the land and agriculture and he proposed the creation of an ideal community called phalanstère. This word comes from the Greek “phalanx” and it referred to a community located in the countryside formed by around 1,600-1,800 people (400 families of around 4 members). He considered that this was the ideal size to freely develop desires and passions. It should be 400 hectares long and concentrate agricultural and industrial activities. A phalanstère would have the structure of a public limited society, whose members would receive shares in relation with the capital they provided to the community, and it would be ruled in a democratic way. Three parts of the activity would be devoted to agriculture and one part to manufacturing. The members could choose the work they wanted to do. In order to avoid monotony, Fourier proposed that workers changed activity 8 times a day. The profits would be distributed according to the following scheme: profits would be divided into 12 parts and 4/12 would be distributed according to the capital invested, 5/12 according to the work done and 3/12 would be for the technical and scientific experts.

Fourier also thought about the distribution of space in the phalanstères:


- the central part, destined to quiet activities, with meeting rooms, dining rooms and libraries.

- one of the lateral wings for work and the noisy activities. Children would also be hosted in this side,    because they were noisy 

- the other lateral wing would be destined to the external visits. The visitors would pay a fee, which would be used to finance the community. 

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phalanst%C3%A8re.jpg

In 1832 Fourier put his ideas into practice at Condé-sur-Vesgre, 75 kilometres West Paris, but the project failed in 1834 due to the lack of capital and inexperience of the members. He didn´t create any more phalanstères in Europe, because he didn´t find financing to do it, but there were experiences based on his ideas in the U.S.A (around 40-50 phalanstères) and other places. These projects failed for the difficulties of reaching agreements and the lack of commitment of some of their members.

There is not much information about phalanstères in English (apart from the one provided by Wikipedia). But if you want to learn something more, you can go to the following links in French:

- The first phalanstère:

http://www.universutopia.net/note.asp?L=EN&note_id=36

- More information about phalanstères:

http://www.creslr.org/fr/imgdyn/Charles_Fourier.pdf

   

Robert Owen, New Lanark and New Harmony

Robert Owen

Source: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen 

Robert Owen was the owner of a cotton factory that worked with water power in New Lanark, Scotland. He was strongly influenced by the ideas of Enlightenment and he decided to improve the lives of his workers and show that it was possible to get profits without exploiting workers. In New Lanark Owen created a community where the rights of workers were respected, they had access to cooperative shops, decent housing, free medical care and children could go to school (New Lanark´s school was the first infants´ school created in Great Britain). Children under 10 years were not allowed to work, there were also evening lessons for adults and all type of activities for the workers´ leisure time (concerts, dancing, music).

New Lanark at present

 Source: http://www.newlanark.org/trust-press.shtml

In 1825 he left New Lanark and tried to extend his ideas of improving the life of workers through common property and cooperation to the U.S.A. He founded a new community called New Harmony in Indiana. Private property and money were abolished and they created a system similar to time banks. Workers received banknotes equivalent to the time they had worked and they could exchange them for different goods. Owen worked hard to make New Harmony a model society, but this experience failed due to different factors: the most important one was the lack of commitment of many of the individuals who joined the community. 

New Harmony, painted by F. Bate

Source: http://utopies.skynetblogs.be/archive/2008/11/17/robert-owen-1771-1858-et-new-harmony.html

In 1828 Robert Owen left the project and came back to Great Britain. He dedicated his efforts to workers´ organization and his role was fundamental in the creation of the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union, a group that included all the British unions. After this, Owen continued to promote co-operative movement, although some of his projects failed. That´s why Owen has been included among utopian socialists. These thinkers had the idea that human beings are willing to co-operate and work for the community wellbeing. The fact is that these experiences failed due to individualism.

If you want to learn more about Robert Owen´s experiences, here you have some links: 

- Robert Owen and New Lanark:

http://www.robert-owen.com/

- New Harmony:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/cities/newharmony.html

- Robert Owen Museum:

http://robert-owen-museum.org.uk/

If you go to Scotland, you can visit New Lanark: 

http://www.newlanark.org/index2.shtml

30th January 2012

Today in Social Sciences, Mª Ángeles, the mathematical teacher, has been with us. She has given us a sheet of paper to write the names to know who has not assisted. Then we have done the exercises that Paqui wrote on the blog to do today, and they were about Socialism and Anarchism. The socialists were some thinkers who started criticizing wealth concentration in the hands of a few and workers' misery and proposed new ways of organizing society and distributing wealth. Utopian socialism appeared. It was a proposition of a transformation of society based on collective property which failed. The firts proposition were made by Robert Owen, the Count of Saint- Simon and Charles Fourier, who were utopians. Here we can see them:

After that, we have had to explain the main ideas of Marxims/scientific socialism. It started by two German thinkers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who studied capitalism and reached some conclusions, published in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. The ideas were:

-The history of humanity has always been a continuous struggle between oppressors and oppressed.

-In the 19th century there was a class struglle between the bourgeois (oppressors) and the workers (oppressed).

-The hard living conditions of workers and their exploitation by the capitalists would lead to a workers' revolution, in 2 stages:

· 1st stage: Dictatorship of the proletariat: workers would take power and use the State to transform society, changing private properties into collective.

· 2nd stage: When the class differences had disappeared, the State wouldn't be necessary and a communist society would appear: a society without social classes, private property and State.

Marx and Engels considered that workers had to organize themselves and get ready for the moment of the revolution, but also to participate and influence in politics. Here we can also see them:

Finally, we have seen the main ideas of anarchism. It means "without government". Bakunin, Kropotkin and Proudhon were the main anarchist thinkers which their ideas were:

- People are born free, but institutions such as the school, the army, the State snatch their freedom and prevent people from developing all their capabilities.

- The only way of recovering freedom is to end with everything that limits people's capabilities and let people decide how to organize their life: they can choose between associating with other people or staying apart.

They were the following:

That's all for today, I hope you were better Paqui.

Economic cycles and cyclical crises

Cyclical crises are one of the features of capitalism. These cyclical crises are related to economic cycles, which are the fluctuations observed in economic activities. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, several experts studied the evolution of economy and they observed some kind of cycles or events that repeated from time to time. The typical economic cycle (also called business cycle) includes the following stages: expansion, crisis, recession and recovery.

Source: http://peakwatch.typepad.com/decline_of_the_empire/2010/03/understanding-the-business-cycle.html

These are the most important facts in the history of study of cyclical crises:

-      In 1819 Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi was the first to tell that there were periodic economic crises related to overproduction and underconsumption.

-        In 1860 Clement Juglar observed economic cycles of 7-11 years.

-      Joseph Schumpeter systematized the studies of different economists about cyclical crises and their explanations. Apart from Juglar´s cycles, Schumpeter added  Kitchin´s inventory cycle (3-5 years), Kuznets´s infrastructural investment cycle (15-25 years) and Kondratiev´s waves(45-60 years)

Source:  http://www.liberatedstocktrader.com/stock-market-cycles-business-economic/

Karl Marx, the most important theorist of scientific socialism, dedicated a lot of time to study capitalist crises and he concluded that they would be more and more serious, working conditions would get worse would  and this would lead to a proletarian revolution. 

Activities for this week

Source: http://globetribune.info/2011/09/05/labor-day-vs-may-day/

This is the work you will have to do this week in the classroom and at home: 


MONDAY, 30th

- Student in charge of the journal: Ana de la Fuente.

- Read point 3 ("Socialism and anarchism") on pages 29 and 30 and do activities 13, 14 and 15 of page 31

WEDNESDAY, 1st FEBRUARY

- Student in charge of the journal: Juan Carlos Huertas

- Check with Cristina Blanco the activities you did at home and on Monday. She will use the PowerPoint presentation to show you images and schemes to help you complete the information of the activities.

- Read the point "The International Workingmen´s Association" on page 30 and do exercise 16 of page 31. If you don´t have time during the lesson, do this exercise for homework. 

THURSDAY, 2nd FEBRUARY

- Student in charge of the journal: Mari Luz Ortiz

- Check the exercises left.

- Do the crossword of page 32 to review the unit. Don´t check your notes or the book. Try to do it with what you remember about the unit. When you finish it, check it with Cristina.

You should also start thinking about a date to do the exam of this unit and the last contents of Unit 3 (Restoration, Ferdinand VII´s reign, the Regencies and the Moderate Decade in Spain). 

26th of January

https://dpeal.wikispaces.com/Industrial+revolution

Today Cristina has been with us,she has shown us a power point to chek the exercises.
We have checked, six questions about the Development of the first industrial revolution.
New energy sources appeared hydroelectric power and coal,new organization fo industrial work: factory system: concentration fo workers and machines in big factories and division of work. The industries that developed during the frist industrial revolution were Textile industry and Iron and steel industry. Development of textile and iron and steel industry due to the production process was mechanized withi some inventions, use of coke in blas furnances, the bessemer that transformer iron into steel etc. Improvements in transport due to ameliration of traditional infrastructures, speed increased and the duration and travel duration and expenses travels reduced.
Then we have checked 3 exercises about the Development of industrial capitalism.
Principles of economic liberalism
-Economy based on self interest.
-The different interests of the people meet in the market and they interact according to the law of supply and demand.
-The means of production ar private property of a reduced group of people
-The state doesn´t have to intervene in economy.
Banks in industrial capitalism provided enterprises with capital through loans, they invested directly in eterprises buying their shares and they facilitate payments by check.
Companies divided their capital into stocks because companies needed more money and it was difficult to find investors.
After that we have checked the last three exercises about the Second industrial revolution. The main sources used were electricity and oil the invention of the dynamo which made the production of electricity in hydroelectirc power stations possible. The invention of the alternator and the transformer allowed electricity transport. Oil was used as fuel, many inventions transformed it in the main energy source. The consequences were:
- Mass production allowed more people to get acces to product.
- Massive explotation of resources
- Beginning of massive emigration from the countryside to the cities.
- Cyclical crises appeared.
Society was divided into two parts.
- Bourgeoisie: Owner of industries and enterprises.
- High bourgeoisie
- Middle bourgeoisie
- Petty bourgeoisie
- Working class:( Ploretariat) They were the majority of the society. They have to work for a salary.
At the end of the class Cristina has given us some homework for next wee: page 31 exercises 10,11,12.

2011-2012 Challenges. Number 17

Here you have some questions about the Second Industrial Revolution inventions:  

QUESTION 1

Who were the inventors of the following crucial inventions: first electric battery, first electric motor, telegraph, incandescent light bulb, four-stroke engine, radio?

QUESTION 2

What was the first electrical telegraph line? When did it start working?

QUESTION 3

What was Menlo Park? Who was the "Wizard of Menlo Park" and why was he called this way?

QUESTION 4

What was the so called "War of currents"? Who were its main protagonists? What lethal invention was related to this war?

QUESTION 5

There are thousands of women inventors, but their achievements remain mainly unknown. Here you have some important women inventors who contributed to make life easier: Margaret Knight, Mary Anderson, Josephine Cochran and Katherine Blodgett. What did they invent?

QUESTION 6

Some inventions soon became consumer goods and are present almost in every house in the developed countries. Who were the inventors of the sewing machine and the washing machine?

P.S: I´m not including the sources of the pictures until someone answers the questions. 

Antonio Meucci, the true inventor of the telephone

Antonio Meucci

Source: http://italyculturemonth.org/programs_palladio.htm

You may have studied at school that Alexander Graham Bell was the inventor of the telephone. But this was not exactly true. The true inventor of the telephone was an Italian-American called Antonio Meucci. In 1854 Meucci built the first telephone to communicate some rooms of his house, beacuse his wife suffered from rheumatism. In 1860 he presented his invention in New York, but he didn´t have enough money to pay the patent expenses. He called  his invention "Telettrofono". Some years later he had an accident and his wife had to sell many of his prototypes in a pawnshop. Once recovered, Meucci tried to redeem his prototype from the pawnshop, but it had been sold to an unidentified young man. Meucci worked hard to rebuild his telephone and get money enough to pay the patent, but he couldn´t pay a definitive patent. In 1874 he sent his material and an explanation of his invention to the Western Union Telegraph Company, but he couldn´t get a meeting with the executives of the company. As he didn´t receive any answer from the company, he decided to ask for his invention to be returned, but they told him that the telephone had been lost. Two years later, Alexander Graham Bell, who shared a laboratory with Meucci at the Western Union, registered the patent of the telephone with his name and became very rich and famous. Bell apparently stole Meucci´s invention. Meucci went to the court and tried to be recognized as the real inventor of the telephone, but he died before the trial finished. In 2002 the Congress of the USA definitively recognized Meucci as the true inventor of the telephone. 

Source: http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/scientific-american/sup4/Meucci-s-Claims-To-The-Telephone.html

More information: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/jun/17/humanities.internationaleducationnews