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The Prospects of Industrial Civilisation (Bertrand Russell Paperbacks) Paperback – October 12, 1996

by Bertrand Russell (Author)

1 customer review

ISBN-13: 978-0415131339 ISBN-10: 0415131332 Edition: 2^nd

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The Prospects of Industrial Civilization provides a rare glimpse into areas of Russell's political thought which are often ignored. Written with Dora Black (who became Russell's second wife) on a trip to China in 1920, it is revealing both as a period piece and as a book for our times. Russell criticises his own age, and demonstrates how humanity perpetually struggles against the centralising forces of industrialism and nationalism.
He views industrialism as a threat to human freedom, as it creates large populations which have to be subject to controls and he likens Bolshevik Russia to Cromwell's England, asserting that both were dictatorships designed to force an essentially feudal society to adopt industrialism. He sees industrialism and nationalism as fundamentally linked and proposes one government for the whole world as a solution.
Russell is not blind to the positive side of industrialism; without machines an economy of subsistence would be the best for which society could hope, but argues that the global village and prevailing political democracy should be its eventual results.

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About the Author

Bertrand Russell's many books include The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Logic and Knowledge, and Sceptical Essays, all available from Routledge.

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Product Details

Series: Bertrand Russell Paperbacks
Paperback: 258 pages
Publisher: Routledge; 2 edition (October 12, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0415131332
ISBN-13: 978-0415131339
Product Dimensions: 0.8 x 5.2 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,793,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15694 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Economic Conditions
- #35636 in Books > Textbooks > Business & Finance > Economics
- #39769 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Philosophy

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2 of 5 people found the following review helpful

Inconclusive Brew - 'Great War', USSR under Jews, Chinese Civilization, Factories...

By Rerevisionist on November 27, 2011

Format: Paperback

Bertrand Russell and Dora Russell 1923 - The Prospects of Industrial Civilization

Not a popular book by Russell. A second edition was published in 1959, with a preface attributed to Dora Russell (they married in 1921, for a while). It's not clear what differences were made from the first edition - the preface is worthless trivia and amusingly comments on the 'communist blaock' and 'spirit of free enterprise' despite the fact that book shows that even in 1918 there were huge American trusts. I'm pretty sure I once read the first edition - I remember a phrase something like 'men desire sexual intercourse with all women', which is missing from this version. Unfortunately, Russell was not averse to a bit of editing of his own past - his book 'Which Way To Peace?' published just before 1939 was never reprinted. Dora Black, 'daughter of a senior civil servant', studied Greek, Latin and German, before going to Cambridge where she got a first in Modern Languages. The details seem hard to find - but anyway after her degree she researched in France, so one assumes French was one of her languages. It's not clear to me whether she knew Russian. One has to assume she had something like zero awareness of science, technology, and industry, and I'll assume in what follows that Russell wrote most of the book, despite the claims that it was a joint effort. It seems she loved the Bolsheviks, but, with almost insane hypocrisy, disliked the 'machine age'.

First, the title and presentation. It's necessary to spend a little time on these. The title in fact is misleading. The book is in two parts, roughly speaking (1) a retrospective view of industrialism so far, and (2) a theoretical look at ethics and what a good society should be. There's a certain amount on prospects, but not much.Read more ›

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