In the same vein of Don Boudreaux’s recent post at Cafe Hayek, I have always enjoyed this similar bit of correct historical observation from the Communist Manifesto: “The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization or rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground -- what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?”
Indeed, the time that I taught economics to a group of homeschoolers, the students remarked that it was quite instructive to read Marx’s Manifesto. The rise of living standards is not historically disputed, but it is easily forgotten how rich are our lives, especially in the modern world that often disdains the study of history.
how wealthy we are
