"The alternative to escape or defeat was rebellion. And such was the situation of the labouring poor, and especially the industrial proletariat which became their nucleus, that rebellion was not merely possible, but virtually compulsory. Nothing was more inevitable in the first half of the nineteenth century than the appearance of labour and socialist movements, and indeed of mass social revolutionary unrest."
Eric Hobsbawm

January 1, 1970

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Original Language: English

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Chap. 11 : The Labouring Poor

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_Hobsbawm