Lewis Wickes Hine, Power house mechanic working on steam pump, 1920.
A Marxist History of the World part 68: 1914: descent into barbarism | Counterfire
The First World War…was caused by military competition between opposing alliances of nation-states. And these nation-states represented the interests of rival blocs of imperialist capital.
The centralisation and concentration of capital – a long-term process which had accelerated rapidly after the mid 1870s – had created a world of global corporate rivals. The spread of industrialisation had also created major new centres of capitalist industry.
Traditional rivalries between the great powers of Europe were thus re-energised by competitive capital accumulation.
These were the deeper contradictions reflected in the arms races, alliances, and war plans which marked the countdown to war. These were the underlying tensions triggered by the July-August crisis.
But industrialised imperialism had not only given rise to conflicts that plunged Europe into war. It had also created means of destruction on a scale that would make the war the most terrible in history.
In 1914, capitalism tipped humanity into an abyss of barbarism.
Early cars were handmade and expensive. Only several hundred were sold between 1893 and 1901. In 1908, an American, Henry Ford, revolutionized the car industry by using an assembly line to mass-produce his Model T. The assembly line cut production costs, enabling Ford to lower prices. By 1916, Ford’s factories were producing 735,000 cars a year.
Children at work in Loray Mill, Gastonia, North Carolina (1908)
coffee and cigarettes are my only escape!
