The Bourgeois Epoch - by Richard F Hamilton (Paperback)

About the Book

Bourgeois Epoch: Marx and Engels on Britain, France, and Germany

Book Synopsis

Richard Hamilton provides an in-depth critique of the writngs of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on Britain, France, and Germany. Hamilton contends that the validity of their principal historical claims has been assumed more often than investigated, and he reviews the logic of their historical arguments, citing relevant sources that challenge many of the assertions they used to build their theory of inexorable historical change.

Although Marx emphasized the need for systematic empirical research into historical events, he and Engels in fact relied on impressionistic evidence to support their claims of how fault lines were forming in capitalist society. Marxist theory, Hamilton concludes, is poorly supported in the historical analysis supplied by its original formulators. In showing that the historical record points to alternative readings of the course of social, economic, and political development in Western society, Hamilton argues that class boundaries tend to be fluid and that major change is more often than not the product of evolutionary -- rather than revolutionary -- forces.

Originally published in 1991.

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Review Quotes

"A hard-hitting, well-written, informative and polemical work that will certainly command a respected place in what is now the mainstream specialty of sociological history."--James B. Rule, State University of New York at Stony Brook

"A significant book that with ingenuity and energy addresses the question of historical evidence for--but almost invariably against--many specific claims of Marx and Engels."--"Contemporary Sociology"