Download or read book The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy 1815-1848 written by Maxine Berg and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1982-02-04 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr Berg argues that technical change was one of the foremost theoretical concerns of Ricardo and his successors, and the foundation for their distinctly optimistic view of the future. She shows how the Machinery Question fostered the social conditions in which the status of Political Economy as a discipline was established, and concludes that by the 1840s the divisions over machinery were firmly embedded in the great rival creeds of the future, liberalism and socialism.