Theology – Lenin’s Theological Contributions to Marxism

Some years after the origins of Marxist theology, V.I. Lenin affirmed the conclusions of Marx and Engels: “The philosophical basis of Marxism, as Marx and Engels repeatedly declared, is . . . a materialism which is absolutely atheistic and positively hostile to all religion.” Elsewhere, Lenin made it clear that fighting religion was an essential ingredient in a materialistic reality. “We must combat religion;” he said, “that is the ABC of all materialism, and consequently of Marxism.

Marxist Theology – Socialism and Religion

In his “Socialism and Religion” address, Lenin insists that the communist program is based on a scientific, materialistic world outlook and therefore “our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism.” Lenin went on to urge his fellow communists to follow Engels’ advice and translate and widely disseminate the atheistic literature of the eighteenth-century French Enlightenment.

Lenin made it clear that any idea of God was taboo, claiming, “Every religious idea, every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of God, is unutterable vileness . . . vileness of the most dangerous kind, ‘contagion’ of the most abominable kind. Millions of sins, filthy deeds, acts of violence and physical contagions . . . are far less dangerous than the subtle, spiritual idea of a God decked out in the smartest ‘ideological’ costumes. . . . Every defense or justification of the idea of God, even the most refined, the best intentioned, is a justification of reaction.” Clearly, Lenin’s theology unerringly corresponds with that of Marx and Engels. Together they established the foundations for future communist declarations of atheism.

Marxist Law

Karl Marx views the notion of Marxist Law from the following perspective, “Law, morality, religion, are to [the proletariat] so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

The assumptions basic to Marxist legal theory—first, that God does not exist; and second, that humans are evolving animals—deny both the possibility of an absolute moral code and the existence of any law grounded in any authority other than human authority. V. I. Lenin says, “In what sense do we repudiate ethics and morality? . . . In the sense in which it was preached by the bourgeoisie, who derived ethics from God’s commandments. We, of course, say that we do not believe in God.”

L.S. Jawitsch, a modern-day Marxist legal theorist, maintains Lenin’s denial of anything supernatural, saying, “There are no eternal, immutable principles of law.”³ Therefore, Marxist law cannot be based on anything other than human rationality. In Lenin’s words, “We repudiate all morality taken apart from human society and classes.”

Marxist Law – The Origin of Law

Marxists explain that law and human rights arise from the interactions of human beings within social structures that contain economic class distinctions. Class divisions within societies create conflict and disorder and therefore law (and the state) comes into existence to deal with this conflict. According to Engels, “In order that these . . . classes with conflicting economic interests, may not annihilate themselves and society in a useless struggle, a power becomes necessary that stands apparently above society and has the function of keeping down the conflicts and maintaining ‘order.’ And this power, the outgrowth of society, but assuming supremacy over it and becoming more and more divorced from it, is the State.”

The state that rises to maintain order within society perpetuates the conflict as a dominant class wielding power over classes with less power. Lenin explains, “The State is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class by another; its aim is the creation of ‘order’ which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the collisions between the classes.” Laws are thus imposed by the state to quell these disturbances.

Marxist Law – The Origin of Law

In the Marxist view of law, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are the two classes involved in the struggle for power. Societies that allow the bourgeoisie to make moral decisions and formulate laws are unjust societies.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx denounces bourgeois law as nothing more than a reflection of the desires of that class. Speaking to the bourgeois, he says, “[Y]our jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economic conditions of existence of your class.”

Bourgeois law is oppressive because it is based on the concept of private property, and thus laws are created that promote unequal rights. Capitalism cannot create equal rights for all because the very nature of the economic system creates haves and have-nots. Cornforth states, “There cannot be equality between exploiters and exploited.”

A capitalist society that creates unequal rights based on property and class leads those with fewer rights to protest in the form of lawlessness. Engels explains, “The contempt for the existing social order is most conspicuous in its extreme form -- that of offences against the law.”Society, therefore, is more responsible than the individual for lawlessness. Indeed, criminals need not feel remorse for their actions because the unjust bourgeois society leaves them no alternative but to lash out against it.

The Marxist solution to the unjust society and lawlessness is to overthrow the bourgeoisie, thus allowing the proletariat to make the laws. The legal system that promotes the interests of the working class is called proletariat law. Jawitsch believes, “Complete success in the masses’ struggle for their democratic rights and liberties can only be achieved by overcoming monopoly capital’s economic and political domination and establishing a state authority that expresses the interests of the working people.”

According to Marxist legal theory, the working class may break capitalistic law if such an action is in pursuit of equality. According to Lenin, “The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws.”


Marxist Law – Law and Socialist Economics

Once the revolution of the proletariat has succeeded, the new Marxist law (socialistic law) will reflect the desires of the working people rather than those of the bourgeoisie. Law based on the will of the proletariat will create a society that is less exploitative than that based on capitalist bourgeois law. According to Jawitsch, “An anti-exploiter tendency is what characterizes the special features of all the principles of the law of socialist society in most concentrated form.”

The will of the proletariat becomes the basis for all rights, laws, and judgments, thereby negating natural law, God, or any absolute moral code. Howard Selsem explains, “Marxism, which has been so often accused of seeking to eliminate moral considerations from human life and history emphasizes rather the moral issues involved in every situation. It does so, however, not by standing on a false platform of absolute right, but by identifying itself with the real needs and interests of the workers and farmers.”

Marxists see law based on the will of the proletariat as flexible rather than inconsistent, a flexibility that denies a need for a comprehensive legal system. Pashukanis writes, “We require that our legislation possess maximum elasticity. We cannot fetter ourselves by any sort of system.”

Marxist Law – Law Withers Away

Because Marxists believe law arises from class conflicts caused by property, the need for law itself will dissolve once a communist society is established. Since only one class (the proletariat) will then exist, the need to promote order between classes will no longer remain—in effect law will have become unnecessary.

Marxists believe that when classes are abolished, all people will create and live in an environment that promotes harmony. Criminal activity will be almost nonexistent since the catalysts for anti-social activity—injustice and inequality—will no longer exist. Plamenatz says that in a communist society crime will be “virtually unknown” because “motives will be less urgent and frequent, and the offender will be more easily brought to his senses by the need to regain the good opinion of his neighbors.”Unfortunately, more than 5,000 years of recorded history disproves the probability of such a utopian plan working.

Marxist Law – Conclusion

Both Marxist law and Secular Humanist law are grounded in a denial of the existence of God and a belief that we and our social systems are evolving. These assumptions require Marxists and Secular Humanists to rely on legal positivism as the basis for law. The Marxist version of legal positivism adds the unique feature of class-consciousness to the state’s role as the will of the ruling proletarian class. Furthermore, the working class must rule under the guidance of the Marxist-Leninist political party, giving the party final authority on morality and law.

When those adhering to a specific ideology arbitrarily determine a system of law, laws will be created that are prejudiced against those with opposing views. In such a society, freedom disappears, as each citizen is held hostage by the arbitrary laws of the state.

Humanism: Some Thoughts from the Humanist Manifesto

Humanism was “codified” by 34 of its leaders in 1933. Although many other versions of humanism have appeared before and since, here are some excerpts from the original Humanist Manifesto I:

FIRST: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created. SECOND: Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that he has emerged as a result of a continuous process. THIRD: Holding an organic view of life, humanists find that the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected. FOURTH: Humanism recognizes that man's religious culture and civilization, as clearly depicted by anthropology and history, are the product of a gradual development due to his interaction with his natural environment and with his social heritage. The individual born into a particular culture is largely molded by that culture. FIFTH:Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. Obviously humanism does not deny the possibility of realities as yet undiscovered, but it does insist that the way to determine the existence and value of any and all realities is by means of intelligent inquiry and by the assessment of their relations to human needs. Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method. EIGHTH: Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man's life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. This is the explanation of the humanist's social passion. NINTH: In the place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being. TENTH: It follows that there will be no uniquely religious emotions and attitudes of the kind hitherto associated with belief in the supernatural. FINAL PARAGRAPH: So stand the theses of religious humanism. Though we consider the religious forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind. Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set intelligence and will to the task.

Humanism: A Belief with no Purpose or Objective Values
Humanism holds that the universe exists for no purpose. We are the result of a blind and random process that does not necessitate any kind of meaning. Humanism differs from the more extreme philosophy of nihilism, in that life can have a meaning if we assign a meaning to it. Life is only worth living if we ourselves make it worthwhile and enjoyable. Humanism maintains that no objective or universal values exist. A person may be moral if he or she creates a system of values and lives according them. A humanist would maintain that no one is obligated to be moral. Therefore, humanism fails to provide moral objections to immoral behavior. Obviously, if no moral absolutes exist, you can't demonstrate that anything is wrong or evil. Thus, in a humanist society, no one can really judge or condemn the choices or actions of others.

Humanism: Life Without Real Meaning
Humanism is fostered by the teaching of evolutionary science, materialism and moral relativism in our popular media and public school system. We’ve removed God from the equations. Without God, we lose any transcendent purpose for the universe in which we live. Without God, we lose any transcendent purpose to give meaning to our individual lives. We are nothing more than bugs struggling with survival until we die. All the achievements, the sacrifices, the good and beautiful acts of some people, the ugly and dark acts of others, are ultimately futile efforts of life. Without God, we lose any possibility for life after death When you remove the hope of heaven, you remove the ultimate value and purpose of life. What difference would it really make whether we lived like a Billy Graham or an Osama Bin Laden? Everyone's fate would be the same anyway. This is the ultimate outlook of those who base their belief system on humanism. Eat, drink and be merry – for tomorrow we die. Rather bleak, we think. Investigate for yourself.

HISTORY OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Humanity's twin revolutions
Human society has passed through two huge and lasting changes which deserve the name revolution. The first, theNeolithic Revolution, begins in 8000 BC and continues through thousands of years. Its effect is to settle people on the land. It makes peasant agriculture the standard everyday activity of the human species.

The second, the Industrial Revolution, gathers pace in the 18th century and is still developing today. It moves people from the countryside into rapidly expanding towns. It turns labour into a disciplined and mainly indoor activity, with an increasing distinction between owners, employers and managers on one side and workers on the other.  

Elements characteristic of industrial society can be seen in isolated examples long before the 18th century. In 1378 the workers inFlorence's cloth trade win temporary advantages through standing together in what would now be called industrial action. A knitting machineinvented in England in 1589 is so far ahead of its time that it can play a profitable role in factories two and three centuries later. And the development ofcloth mills in the late Middle Ages foreshadows the search for new sources of power in the Industrial Revolution.

Nevertheless there is one place and one time - England in the 18th century - in which these threads coalesce into a process of undeniable change.  


Industrialization brings preliminary evils of exploitation, pollution and urban squalor, together with longer-term benefits in a general rise of living standards.

There are certain clear reasons why this process occurs first in 18th-century Britain. But once the pattern is established, and cheap manufactured goods begin to prevail in world markets, other regions become eager to follow suit when their own circumstances make it possible to do so. Just as the habit of settling and farming gradually permeated all regions of the world, so now - and much more rapidly - does an international tendency to crowd into cities and produce cheap manufactured goods.  

Britain's industrial advantages: 18th century AD
The conditions enabling Britain to pioneer the Industrial Revolution during the 18th century can be divided into two categories, natural and political.

On the natural side the country has in abundance three important commodities - water, iron and coal. Water in Britain's numerous hilly districts provides the power to drive mills in the early stages of industrializaton; the rivers, amplified from 1761 by a developing network ofcanals, facilitate inland transport in an age where roads are only rough tracks; and the sea, never far from any part of Britain, makes transport of heavy goods easy between coastal cities.  

The ability to make effective use of Britain's iron ore is greatly enhanced by technical advances in the early 18th century, associated particularly with the Darby family. And the abundant supplies of coal become of crucial importance in the second half of the century when steam power is successively applied to every branch of industry thanks to the efforts ofWatt and Boulton.

On the political front, the contribution of entrepreneurs such as Abraham Darby and Matthew Boulton is made possible by the changes resulting from therevolution of 1688.  

With royal power greatly reduced after 1688, and the nobility enjoying none of the privileges associated with France's ancien régime, a new middle class emerges more forcefully in Britain than elsewhere. There is money to be made, and members of this class are willing to back new inventions and mechanical improvements.

In this atmosphere exceptional men such as RichardArkwright can rise through their own endeavours from low beginnings to exceptional wealth and prestige (though the duke ofBridgewater may justifiably insist that such flair is not limited to the middle classes).  

As a final ingredient in this promising blend of circumstances, Britain can offer its budding entrepreneurs an unusually large market. Theunion in 1707 of Scotland and England removes internal tariff barriers. The developing British empire provides trading opportunities for much of the century in the American colonies - and when these are lost, begins to replace them with others in India.

And British control of the seas, increasingly established during the century, contributes to a general prosperity which supports the Industrial Revolution. Much of the profitable carrying trade in the world's commerce can be secured for British merchant vessels.  


Ironmasters of Coalbrookdale: 18th century AD
Until the early 18th century the working of iron has been restricted by a practical consideration. The smelting of iron requires large quantities of charcoal, with the result that ironworks are usually sited inaccessibly in the middle of forests. And charcoal is expensive.

In 1709 Abraham Darby, an ironmaster with a furnace at Coalbrookdale on the river Severn, discovers that coke can be used instead of charcoal for the smelting of pig iron (used for cast-iron products). This Severn region becomes Britain's centre of iron production in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution. Its pre-eminence is seen in the Darby family's own construction of the first iron bridge, and in the achievements of JohnWilkinson.  

Lancashire and cotton: 18th century AD
Just as theSevern gorge in Shropshire emerges as the centre of the iron industry, so Lancashire dominates in cotton goods. And textiles are the natural product to lead developments in the new Industrial Revolution.

Food and clothing are the two basic requirements for any population. Unlike food, cotton goods are sufficiently light and long-lasting to be easily transported to any market. The immediate purchasers are the rapidly growing population of Britain itself. But as soon as machines are developed which can slash the cost of production, it even becomes feasible to ship manufactured cotton goods for sale in regions such as India where the raw material has been produced.  

Lancashire has certain natural advantages in cornering this lucrative trade. A moist climate makes it easier to work cotton threads, which become brittle if dry (the first reference to cotton goods being produced in the region is in 1641). Plentiful fast-flowing streams make it easy to provide water power formills. The area has a long textile tradition in the production of woollen goods (there is a mill for fulling wool in Manchester as early as 1282).

And above all Lancashire has, in Liverpool, one of Britain's two main 18th-century ports. It is rivalled only by Bristol as a base for the great East and WestIndiamen which now ply regularly across the oceans.  


The rapid growth of the textile industry during the 18th century results from these advantages combined with a succession of mechanical inventions which speed up the processes of manufacture. Spinning and weaving, the two very ancient crafts involved in the production of textiles, are both well suited to relatively simple mechanization.

Weaving leads the way, withKay's flying shuttle of 1733. Spinning at first struggles to keep up, and then does so very effectively with the innovations of Hargreaves in about 1764 andCrompton in 1779. Spinning wins the race in the application ofwater power, in 1771. By 1787 there are some forty cotton mills in Lancashire deriving their power from mill races.  





Kay's flying shuttle: AD 1733
In 1733 John Kay, son of the owner of a Lancashire woollen factory, patents the first of the devices which revolutionize the textile industry. He has devised a method for the shuttle to be thrown mechanically back and forth across the loom. This greatly speeds up the previous hand process, and it halves the labour force. Where a broad-cloth loom previously required a weaver on each side, it can now be worked by a single operator.

Until this point the textile industry has required four spinners to service one weaver. Kay's innovation, in wide use by the 1750s, greatly increases this disparity. Either there must now be many more spinners, orspinning machines must achieve a similar increase in productivity.
Bridgewater Canal: AD 1759-1761
In 1759 a young self-taught engineer, James Brindley, is invited to visit the duke of Bridgewater. The duke is interested in improving the market for the coal from a local mine which he owns. He believes his coal will find customers if he can get it more cheaply into Manchester. He wants Brindley to build him a canal with a series of locks to get barges down to the river Irwell, about three miles from the mine.

Brindley proposes a much bolder scheme, declared by some to be impossible but accepted by the duke. He will construct a more level canal, with less need for time-wasting locks. He will carry it on an aqudeuct over the Irwell on a straight line to the heart of Manchester, ten miles away.  

On 17 July 1761 the first bargeload of coal is pulled along the completed canal. Brindley's aqueduct (replaced in 1894 by the present swing aqueduct) crosses the Irwell at Barton. The strange sight of a barge floating in a gutter high up in the air becomes one of the first great tourist attractions of the Industrial Revolution. The investment in this private canal rapidly pays off. The price of the duke's coal is halved in the Manchester market.

The Bridgewater canal is the first in Britain to run its entire length independently of any river. It is the start of the country's inland waterway systerm, for which Brindley himself will construct another 300 miles of canals.  

James Watt and the condenser: AD 1764-1769
In 1764 a model of a Newcomen steam engine is brought for repair to the young James Watt, who is responsible for looking after the instruments in the physics department of the university of Glasgow. In restoring it to working order, he is astonished at how much steam it uses and wastes.

The reason, he realizes, is that the machine's single cylinder is required to perform two opposing functions. It must receive the incoming steam at maximum pressure to force the piston up (for which it needs to be as hot as possible), and it must then condense the steam to form a vacuum to pull the cylinder down (for which it needs to be as cool as possible). 


The solution occurs to Watt when he is walking near Glasgow one Sunday in May 1765. The two functions could be separated by providing a chamber, outside the cylinder but connecting with it, in which a jet of cold water will condense the steam and cause the vacuum.

This chamber is the condenser, for which Watt registers a patent in 1769. The principle has remained an essential part of all subsequent steam engines. It is the first of three major improvements which Watt makes in the basic design of steam-driven machinery. The other two are thedouble-acting engine and thegovernor, developed in the 1780s.  

Early in the 1770s Watt goes into business with Matthew Boulton, an entrepreneur with a large factory at Soho near Birmingham. Boulton has the capacity to manufacture steam engines to Watt's patented design, and the first two are delivered to customers in 1776.

One of them, installed by Watt himself at JohnWilkinson's ironworks at Broseley in Shropshire, is of special significance. Wilkinson is the only ironmaster in the country capable of producing cylinders of sufficiently accurate dimensions to deliver the potential benefits of Watt's improved engine. 


Hargreaves' jenny and Crompton's mule: AD 1764-1779
An accident is said to have given a Lancashire spinner, James Hargreaves, the idea for the first mechanical improvement of the spinning process. In about 1764 he notices an overturned spinning wheel which continues to turn with the spindle vertical rather than horizontal. This gives him the idea that several spindles could be worked simultaneously from a wheel in this position.

He develops a version with eight spindles for use by his own family, thus immediately raising their output eight times. News of this causes jealous local spinners to invade his house and smash his machines.  


Hargreaves moves to Nottingham, where he sets up a small cotton-mill using his invention. It acquires the name of spinning jenny, traditionally explained as being the name of the daughter who gave Hargreaves the idea when she knocked over her spinning wheel. He patents his device in 1770. By the time of his death, in 1778, the latest versions of his machine work eighty spindles each - and there are said 20,000 jennies in use in the cottages and small factories of Britain.

This is still an entirely hand-operated mechanism. The next essential development is the application of power. This is solved by Richard Arkwright, who takes out a patent for his machine in 1769.  


Arkwright's innovation is in drawing out the cotton by means of rollers before it is twisted into yarn. He succeeds first with a machine worked by a horse, but two years later - in 1771 - he successfully applies water power, with the result that his invention becomes known as the water frame. It is in place just in time for an immense new expansion of the cotton industry after a high tax on pure-cotton fabrics (aimed at calicoes imported from India) is reduced in 1774.

Arkwright's machines are suitable for spinning the strong yarn required for the warp of thewoven cloth. They are less good at the finer material needed for the weft. Yet conversely, Hargreaves' spinning jenny is only suitable for the weft.  


The technologies of Arkwright and Hargreaves therefore complement each other for a few years until the merits of each are combined by Samuel Crompton, a worker in a Lancashire spinning mill. In doing so he takes the final step in the spinning technology of the early Industrial Revolution.

Crompton observes the tendency of the spinning jenny to break the yarn, and he resolves to improve this aspect of the process. He does so in a machine which he perfects in 1779.  




Crompton's machine combines the principles of Hargreaves' jenny and of Arkwright's water frame. The name which it acquires - Crompton's mule - is a pun on that fact. As the offspring of a jenny (a female donkey) and of another creature, the new arrival is clearly a mule.

Crompton's machine is capable of spinning almost every kind of yarn at considerable speed. The flying shuttle in the 1750s put pressure on the spinners to catch up. Now the mule challenges the weavers. They respond in 1785 with the first water-driven power loom, invented by Edmund Cartwright after visiting Arkwright's mills at Cromford. With all this technology in place, the pressure is now on the suppliers of raw cotton in America.  


Ironbridge: AD 1779
In the space of a few months in 1779 the world's first iron bridge, with a single span of over 100 feet, is erected for Abraham Darby (the third of that name) over the Severn just downstream from Coalbrookdale. Work has gone on for some time in building the foundations and casting the huge curving ribs. But in this new technology little time need be spent in assembling the parts - which amount, it is proudly announced, to 378 tons 10 cwt. of metal.

The lightness of the structure strikes all observers. An early visitor comments: 'though it seems like network wrought in iron, it will be uninjured for ages.' It is uninjured still. A great tradition, bringing marvels such as theCrystal Palace, begins in this industrial valley.  


Machine tools, gun barrels and cylinders: AD 1774-1800
John Wilkinson, an ironmaster in Staffordshire and Shropshire, has been building up a lucrative arms trade. In 1774 he invents a machine, powered by a water wheel, which can drill with unprecedented accuracy through the length of a cast-iron cylinder to create the barrel of a cannon. It is a turning point in the development of machine tools.

James Watt realizes that Wilkinson's new machine is capable of the precision required for an efficient steam-engine cylinder. In 1775 Wilkinson delivers to Birmingham the first of the thousands of cylinders he will bore for the firm of Boulton andWatt. Boulton finds them 'almost without error; that of 50 inches diameter doth not err the thickness of an old shilling' in any part.  


The Boulton and Watt engine delivered to Wilkinson in the following year is intended for a new purpose. Instead of the usual pumping of water, it is to undertake a more sophisticated role - working the bellows which pump air into one of Wilkinson's blast furnaces of molten iron.

The owners of the mills and mines of the young Industrial Revolution have many tasks to which a source of mechanical power, other than the traditional water of a mill race, could be usefully applied. They await with interest reports of this new type of engine. And the reports are good. By the time Watt's patent expires, in 1800, more than 500 Boulton and Watt engines have been installed around the country and abroad.  


The increased efficiency of the new engines, compared with the previousNewcomenversion, enables Boulton and Watt to charge by a novel and very profitable method. The machines are provided and installed free, and customers pay a royalty of one-third of the amount saved on fuel. One group of merchants interested in the Boulton and Watt machines, the London brewers, have no previous machine use for comparison. They present Watt with an interesting billing problem which results in the concept ofHorsepower.

From 1783 the saving (and the royalty) is even greater, because in that year Watt puts on the market another major innovation - his double-acting engine.  



Richard Arkwright, entrepreneur: AD 1767-1792
By the 1780s, on the eve of the French Revolution, Britain is a society profoundly changed from a century earlier. The form of monarchy characterized by the Stuarts, and still practised by the Bourbon rulers in France, has given way to different structures. There is now political power in middle-class hands. And new opportunities are available in the developing Industrial Revolution.

There is no more striking example of this flexible society, in which merit can find its own rewards, than the career of Richard Arkwright. Born the youngest of seven children of a barber and wigmaker, he dies sixty years later immensely wealthy and a knight of the realm.  


Arkwright begins his career travelling the country in his father's trade, buying hair for wigs and dying it by his own secret process. But soon he becomes interested in spinning. In 1767 he begins to construct a spinning machine. In 1769 he patents it and sets up a mill in Nottingham where his machine is worked by a horse.

Two years later Arkwright takes several steps of great significance. He raises capital to build an entirely new mill at Cromford, on the river Derwent in Derbyshire. He successfully adapts his spinning machine, making it work by the much greater power of the river and a mill wheel. And he builds cottages to house workers in the immediate vicinity.  


Arkwright thus creates the factory environment. His industrial workers are a community centred on the factory - in strong contrast to the traditional working life of peasants, dependent on the fields and the seasons.

Within the factory, Arkwright's employees specialize in different tasks, each providing his or her own particular service for the relentlessly demanding machines. Discipline is essential if this system is to work, for the machines cannot be left untended. But it is no longer the variable discipline of sunrise and harvest. It is the inflexible and potentially harsh pressure of clock and overseer.  


Arkwright's factory system works brilliantly - and in its early small-scale river-based form the environment of industry has considerable picturesque appeal, as Arkwright's surviving mill at Cromford still demonstrates.

Arkwright builds cotton mills on suitable rivers elsewhere in the country, as far away as Scotland. By 1782, just fifteen years after his first attempt to build a spinning machine, the great entrepreneur has a capital of some £200,000 and is employing 5000 workers. And British society welcomes this rapidly self-made man. In 1786 he receives a knighthood. In the following year he is appointed High Sheriff of Derbyshire.  


Derby's great painter of the period, Joseph Wright, records features of this impressive story. In 1783 he paints a view of Cromford Mill by moonlight, contributing to a growing perception that industry and its processes provide a romantic subject. In 1789 Wright provides a portrait of the great industrialist. He sits alone, appearing prosperous but slightly gross, in a room decorated only by a model of his spinning machine.

In the following year Joseph Wright paints Arkwright's son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren in three group portraits. They look like the most elegant and refined of aristocrats, to the manner born - compelling evidence of the new flexibility of English society when William Pitt becomes prime minister.  



Double-acting engine and governor: AD 1782-1787
Just as James Watt applied a rational approach to improve the efficiency of the steam engine with thecondenser, so now he takes a logical step forward in a modification patented in 1782. His new improvement is the double-acting engine.

Watt observes that the steam is idle for half of each cycle. During the downward stroke, when the vacuum is exerting atmospheric force on the piston, the valve between boiler and cylinder is closed. Watt takes the simple step of diverting the steam during this part of the cycle to the upper part of the cylinder, where it joins with the atmospheric pressure in forcing the cylinder down - and thus doubles its effective action.  


The most elegant contraption devised by Watt is in use from 1787. It is the governor - the first example of the type of controlling device required in industrial automation, and a feature of all steam engines since Watt's time.

Watt's governor consists of two arms, hinged on a central pivot and rotated by the action of the steam engine. Each arm has a heavy ball at the end. As the speed increases, centrifugal force moves the balls and the arms outwards. This action narrows the aperture of a valve controlling the flow of steam to the engine. As the power is slowly cut off, the speed of the engine reduces and the balls subside nearer to the central column - thus slightly opening the valve again in a permanent process of adjustment.  


Watt's many improvements to the steam engine leave it poised to undertake a whole new range of tasks. Its new efficiency means that it can become mobile. Each engine can now generate more power than is required merely to move itself.

By the time of his death in 1819, in quiet retirement near Birmingham, Watt has seen the introduction of commercially successful steam boats and the dawn of the railway age. In each case the vehicles are powered by engines of the type which he has developed.  

Puddling and rolling: AD 1783-1784
In successive years Henry Cort, an ironmaster with a mill near Fareham in Hampshire, patents two processes of lasting significance in the story of metallurgy.

One is the technique which becomes known as puddling, for which Cort patents a machine in 1784. Cort's innovation is a furnace which shakes the molten iron so that air mingles with it. Oxygen combines with carbon in the metallic compond, leaving almost pure iron. Unlike the brittle pig iron (or cast iron), this purer metal is malleable. Capable of being hammered and shaped, it is a much more useful metal in industrial processes than cast iron.  

In the previous year Cort has also patented a machine for drawing out red-hot lumps of purefied metal between grooved rollers, turning them into manageable bars without the laborious process of hammering. His device is the origin of the rolling mills which subsequently become the standard factories of the steel industry.

Cort's subsequent career exemplifies the risks involved in the entrepreneurial excitements of the Industrial Revolution. After spending all his own money on his inventions, he raises further capital from the deputy-paymaster of the navy. It turns out to have been embezzled. Cort is ruined before his inventions bring him a profit. 


Cotton gin: AD 1793
The mechanization of spinning and weaving in England, between 1733 and 1785, greatly speeds up the industrial process and rapidly leads to a shortage of cotton. During most of the century the bulk of raw cotton arriving at Liverpool for the Lancashire mills is from India. The cotton grown in the southern states ofAmerica is commercially less viable because it is short-fibred.

The cotton fibres, which will be spun into cotton, have to be separated from the seeds which they protect and enmesh. This process, known as cotton picking, is done entirely by hand. The short fibres make it a slow and expensive task.  


In 1793 Eli Whitney, a graduate of Yale, invents a machine which solves this problem. It consists of a hand-turned roller with projecting spikes. Each spike passes through a slot in a grid, wide enough to allow the spike to drag the cotton fibres through but too narrow for the cotton seeds to pass. They fall out into a separate container, while a revolving brush cleans the fibres, or lint, off the spikes.

Whitney's machine immediately trebles the speed at which cotton can be ginned, with major effects on the economy of the southern states of America. About forty times as much cotton (now established as 'king cotton') is produced in 1810 as in 1793. Vast new areas are taken in hand as plantations. The demand for slaves increases accordingly.

more details please check this site :- http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=145&HistoryID=aa37&gtrack=pthc

No opinion, only stats: India vs Pakistan

Everybody and their mother-in-law is doing a blog post on the big cricket match on Wednesday. It does take superhuman effort or an utter dislike/extreme disinterest in the game of cricket for someone from the sub-continent to avoid expressing their opinion on the second semi-finals of the 2011 Cricket World Cup. I intend to do something different. No opinions, only facts.

Here's the biggest dope of India versus Pakistan One Day cricket statistics that I could conjure. Most of them, you know. Some could be revelations.

Matches played: 119

India won: 46

Pakistan won: 69

No result: 4

Matches played in the World Cup: 4

India won: 4

Pakistan won: 0

Matched played in India: 26

India won: 9

Pakistan won: 17

The first India versus Pakistan ODI was played at Quetta on October 1, 1978. India won the 40 over match by 4 runs. India scored 170/7 and Pakistan could only muster 166/8. Mohinder Amarnath with 51 runs and 38/2 was the man of the match.

The last India-Pakistan ODI (prior to the upcoming Mohali Word Cup clash) was played at Dambulla, Sri Lanka. India won by 3 wickets. Pakistan scored 267 and India replied with 271/7. Gautam Gambhir got the man of the match award for his 81 runs.

As mentioned above, India met Pakistan four times in the World Cup and won all. A brief stats on the four landmark matches:

1. 1992 Benson & Hedges World Cup (India won by 43 runs)

Sydney Cricket Ground. March 4, 1992

India 216/7

Sachin Tendulkar 54, Ajay Jadeja 46

Manoj Prabhakar 2/22, Kapil Dev 2/30

Pakistan 173

Aamer Sohail 62, Javed Miandad 40

Mushtaq Ahmed 3/59, Aaqib Javed 2/28

2. 1996 Wills World Cup - Quarter-finals (India won by 39 runs)

Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore. March 9, 1996

India 287/8

Navjot Sidhu 92, Ajay Jadeja 45

Venkatesh Prasad 3/45, Anil Kumble 3/48

Pakistan 248/9

Aamer Sohail 55, Saeed Anwar 48

Mushtaq Ahmed 2/56, Waqar Younis 2/67

3. 1999 ICC World Cup (India won by 47 runs)

Old Trafford, Manchester. June 8, 1999

India 227/6

Rahul Dravid 61, Md Azharuddin 59

Venkatesh Prasad 5/27, Javagal Srinath 3/37

Pakistan 180

Inzamam-ul-Haq 41, Saeed Anwar 36

Wasim Akram 2/27, Azhar Mahmood 2/35

4. 2003 ICC World Cup (India won by 6 wickets)

SuperSport Park, Centurion. March 1, 2003

Pakistan 273/7

Saeed Anwar 101, Younis Khan 32

Waqar Younis 2/71, Shahid Afridi 1/45

India 276/4

Sachin Tendulkar 98, Yuvraj Singh 50

Zaheer Khan 2/46, Ashish Nehra 2/74

There has been only one century scored in the four India-Pakistan World Cup matches, by Saeed Anwar in 2003. Sachin missed out on one by just 2 runs in the same match.

While it is popularly believed that Javed Miandad's last ball six off Chetan Sharma at the Austral-Asia Cup final in Sharjah tilted the One Day equations in favour of Pakistan, something which India dominated previously, is actually not totally correct. India did dominate (a bit), but Pakistan were no pushovers. Both countries played 16 ODIs. India won 8 and Pakistan 7. One match played on October 31, 1984 was abandoned when the news of the assassination of Indira Gandhi arrived. The series was also called off.

India's highest score against Pakistan is 356/9 at Visakhapatnam on April 5, 2005.

Pakistan's highest is 344/8 at Karachi on March 13, 2004. But Pakistan lost the match as India overhauled their score putting together 349/7. That match yielded 693 runs in all making it the highest ever for any India-Pakistan ODI.

India's lowest score against Pakistan is a measly 79 at Sialkot on October 13, 1978. India's highest scorer in the match was Mohiner Amarnath who hit 34 and Kapil Dev was the only other player to reach double digits at 11. Needless to say, India lost.

Pakistan's lowest was only a wee bit better. They were all out for 87 at Sharjah on March 22, 1985 responding to India's not-to-be-very-proud-of score 125. Kapil Dev took 3 for 17 (in 6.5 overs) and the miserly Ravi Shastri gave away only 17 runs in his 10 overs (that included 5 maidens) while scalping 2 wickets. Gavaskar held four catches in the match.

When it comes to the margin of victories, Pakistan have an overwhelming edge. Of the 10 biggest margin of victories (by runs) 9 are Pakistan wins. In wicket victories 6 are in Pakistan's favour and 4 are for India.

Pakistan's biggest margin of win (by runs) was when they beat India by 159 runs at Delhi on April 17, 2005. Pakistan had scored 303/8 and India were all out for 144. India's biggest win was in Dhaka when Pakistan were bowled out for 190 in response to India's 330/8.

Pakistan's biggest wicket victory was at Lahore, October 2, 1987 when they won by 9 wickets. India had put together 216 runs and Pakistan, led by Ijaz Ahmed's 139 scored 219 in only 26.2 overs losing only 1 wicket at a run rate of 8.31.

A lot is being said about Sohaib Akhtar versus Sachin Tendulkar encounter. Akhtar famously bowled out Sachin in the very first ball he delivered to the master in Calcutta Test (February 16-20, 1999).

The first Sohaib-Sachin One Day encounter happened at Old Trafford during the 1999 World Cup but it wasn't that dramatic. The first ball he delivered to Sachin was a wide down the leg side. Sohaib bowled 13 balls to Sachin and gave away 10 runs including 1 wide and a 4.

When it comes to India-Pakistan encounters, Inzamam-ul-Haq is the most prolific run getter scoring 2403 runs, Sachin Tendulkar is only a little behind with 2389.

I still remember Saeed Anwar's mammoth 194 against India at Chennai on May 21, 1997. He got a standing ovation. This remains the highest individual score in Indo-Pak ODIs. For India the highest was by MS Dhoni when he blasted through the Pakistani bowling attack to score 148 of India's 356 runs at Visakhapatnam on April 5, 2005.

The current Indian captain Dhoni has the best average (54.22) against the Pakistanis. For the Pakistanis it is Salman Butt with 52.21. The current Pakistani captain also has a record to his name (except for being forever young). Afridi has a strike rate of 108.67 against India, while India's Virender Sehwag has punished Pakistani bowlers at the rate of 103.41 (runs per 100 balls).

Afridi may be the fastest scorer, but he also has the most number of ducks (6) to his credit in Indo-Pak matches that is only matched by Javagal Srinath for India.

For the maximum number of centuries against the opposition (India or Pakistan) Sachin and Salman Butt are tied with 5 centuries each. Only that Butt has scored them in fewer matches (21 matches against India) compared to Sachin (67 matches against Pakistan). Sachin has also scored the most 50s (19) against Pakistan than any other Indian. Amongst the Pakistanis it is Inzamam with 16 50s against India.

Wasim Akram had spearheaded Pakistan's bowling assault against India and it shows in the damages done. Akram in his career against India took 60 Indian wickets. Anil Kumble gathered the most Pakistani scalps for India (54). Aaqib Javed's 7/37 at Sharjah on October 25, 1991 remains the best bowling figures in any India-Pakistan ODI. Sourav Ganguly's 5/16 at Toronto on September 18, 1997 was the best by an Indian.

In bowling averages Imran Khan was the most lethal at 22.25, followed by Anil Kumble at 24.25. Wasim Akram was the stingiest of them all giving away only 3.73 runs an over. Amongst Indians it was Kapil Dev at 4.21 runs per over. Waqar Younis took an Indian wicket every 31.7 balls and Anil Kumble responded with one every 33.8 balls. Aaqib Javed has 3 five-wicket hauls against India, amongst Indians Ganguly, Sachin and Venkatesh Prasad have one each to their credit. Prasad's was in the 1999 World Cup.

In terms of the most runs conceded in an innings, Pakistani bowlers are as large-hearted as Indians. If Sohail Tanvir gave away 87 runs in 10 overs at Karachi on July 2, 2008, India's T Kumaran conceded 86 runs to the Pakistanis at Dhaka on June 3, 2000.

Behind the stumps Moin Khan was responsible for 71 Indian dismissals and MS Dhoni is a distant second with 30 dismissals. Azharuddin's 44 catches against Pakistan would have surely won us many matches. For the Pakistanis Afridi clasped 28.

Cricket is also about partnerships. The best opening partnership in any India-Pakistan match is of 159 runs between Sachin and Sourav at Dhaka on January 14, 1998. The biggest partnership for any wicket was between Sachin and Navjot Singh Sidhu who scored 231 runs at Sharjah on April 15, 1996. The highest Pakistani partnership was only a run lesser, 230 between Saeed Anwar and Ijaz Ahmed at Dhaka on January 18, 1998. India had won that edge-of-the seat match. Pakistan powered by the Anwar-Ijaz partnership posted a very formidable 314/5. In response India lead by Ganguly's 124 and Robin Singh's 82 scored 316/7 with a ball to spare. It was at that time a record for the biggest successful chase in ODIs. It was the third of the three finals of Bangladesh's Independence Cup. India won 2-1.

That result was also historically apt. India had defeated Pakistan in a war to give Bangladesh its Independence and India beat Pakistan to lift the Silver Jubilee Independence Cup. Coincidentally, today, 26 March, is Bangladesh's Independence Day (though the actual liberation happened on December 16, 1971).

Of the 199 matches played between India and Pakistan, Sachin and Inzamam played in 67 of them and Azharuddin lead India in 25 matches (winning only 9). Imran Khan, on the other hand, led Pakistan in 24 matches against India winning 19. Under Dhoni's leadership India played 11 matches against Pakistan winning 6.

Statistics can only predict possibilities, they cannot predict results. But statistics do make the match more interesting. Here's to a thriller of an encounter that could very well change much of what has been written above.