As the inventor of the separate-condenser steam engine--that Promethean symbol of technological innovation and industrial progress--James Watt has become synonymous with the spirit of invention, while his last name has long been immortalized as the very measurement of power. But contrary to popular belief, Watt did not single-handedly bring about the steam revolution. His "perfect engine" was as much a product of late-nineteenth-century Britain as it was of the inventor's imagination.

As one of the greatest technological developments in human history, the steam engine was a major...

In the 1790s, for the first time, reformers proposed bringing poverty to an end. Inspired by scientific progress, the promise of an international economy, and the revolutions in France and the United States, political thinkers such as Thomas Paine and Antoine-Nicolas Condorcet argued that all citizens could be protected against the hazards of economic insecurity. In An End to Poverty? Gareth Stedman Jones revisits this founding moment in the history of social democracy and examines how it was derailed by conservative as well as leftist thinkers. By tracing the historical evolution of...

This collection of essays by Gareth Stedman Jones proposes a different way of seeing both historians' analytical conceptions of 'class', and the actual manifestation of class in the history of English politics and English culture since the 1830s. As the progenitor of the first generally acknowledged working-class movement, the English working class provided the initial empirical basis for not only the original Marxist theory of modern industry and proletarian revolution, but also subsequent historians' reactions against, or adaptations of, the Marxist theory of class. In Languages of Class...

A collection of essays which offer a testimony of the dialogue between the present and the past.

This classic biography of Karl Marx, complete with Gareth Stedman Jones poignant introduction, is unlike any other account of its subject. Focusing as much on Marx s private life as on his public persona and work, this classic biography looks in detail at his relationship with his mother and father, wife and friends, and includes generous quotations from a wide range of correspondence in addition to virtually every photograph in existence of Marx and his closest associates.
Blumenberg examines Marx s early writing as a schoolboy and his romantic poetry whilst a student, as well as his...

In the 1790s, for the first time, reformers proposed bringing poverty to an end. Inspired by scientific progress, the promise of an international economy, and the revolutions in France and the United States, political thinkers such as Thomas Paine and Antoine-Nicolas Condorcet argued that all citizens could be protected against the hazards of economic insecurity. In An End to Poverty? Gareth Stedman Jones revisits this founding moment in the history of social democracy and examines how it was derailed by conservative as well as leftist thinkers. By tracing the historical evolution of...

In the 1790s there was a fundamental shift in attitudes to poverty (led by Condorcet and Tom Paine), one which believed that poverty could be alleviated or even eliminated. Such thinking was robustly countered by Christian evangelicals (such as Malthus). But it surfaced again from the late nineteenth century, forming the ideas of social reformers such as the Webbs and Edwardian thinkers about the welfare state. Conference on 'Wealth and Poverty'.

This collection is designed to answer the demands of students and socialists, teachers and interested readers, for a comprehensive critique of the major schools of European Marxism since the October Revolution. It is composed of a series of carefully documented essays setting out the theories of the major thinkers of the tradition, and submitting them to searching criticism.
Essays include critiques of Lukacs by Gareth Stedman Jones and Michael Lowy; a survey of the Frankfurt School by Goran Therborn; an assessment of the legacy of Gramsci, by John Merrington; exposition and criticism of...