Comparing documents on capitalism and the Industrial Revolution

In order to better understand the crisis that it has spread over Europe now a day, we study the origin of capitalism. We started by reading about the industrial revolution and by analyzing the following four documents: The Chief Faetures of The Industrial Revolution by Arnold Toynbee, the book Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Janette Winterson, the article An A-Z business quotations taken from "The Economist" and last another article A crisis of capitalism by Riccardo Bellofiore. All of them, even if they belong to different genres and different times, present some analogies.
The most important, which could be easily found in all the texts, is the idea of the multiple-faces of capitalism. First of all, in the second chapter of the book by J.Winterson, the narrator provides this idea through the full of contrasts description of Manchester "the world's first industrial city". It is "untamed" and "unmetropolitan", "connected" and "wordly", "radical" and "repressive" in one word an "all mix", she says. The same idea is conveined by the article an A-Z business quotation where the intelligent reader may notice that the idea of capitalism changes depending on he or she who is speaking and the time when that person is speaking in. In addition, in Riccardo Bellofiore's article right from the start the double face of capitalism is established. He uses a Marx’s quote to underline how capitalism is both a tragedy, that could make people cry, and a farce, that could make people laugh. Last but not least,  a further confirm of what capitalism is and where it comes from is given by Arnold Toynbee. As the matter of fact capitalism is strictcly connected to the Industrial Revolution which is "is the substitution of competition for the mediaeval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of wealth". Its effects led to many contrasts for example north and south, wealth and poverty, which may be seen again as the double nature of capitalism.

However most of the analogies could be found between the second chapter of  Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?  and the extract from The Chief Faetures of The Industrial Revolution. 
Both texts provide an idea of what the Industrial Revolution is and what changes it brought. The difference is in the way the two authors tell us. Toynbee is more objective and general wether J.Winterson is more personal and detailed through the description of her city, Manchester.
From both texts we know that people, during the Industrial Revolution, were moving from the south to the north looking for jobs ( for example Winterson adoptive's family moved from Manchester to Accrington since her father was a labourer). In the North of England there were all the mines and industries. Mines provides fuel which makes machineries work. 
This process led to the growth of industries and the improvement of machineries like the steamed - powered which is the most important invention in the textile industry. It also promoted the development of the means of communication as J.Winterson asserts in the first paragraph of the second chapter: " Manchester had canals, easy acces to the great port of Liverpool, and railways that carried thinkers and doers up and down to London. Its influence affected the whole world." In the same way Toynbee writes about communication and its results: increase of commerce and substitution of factory system for domestic system.

Therefore, as a further confirm of the multiple-nature of capitalism, which creates both wealth and poverty, we may refer to all documents already analyzed. Janette Winterson provides a particular description of what a worker's life looked like: twelve hours working every day, six days a week, without seeing daylight,... underlining the weak face of capitalism. In the same way Schumpter, in an An A-Z business quotations defines capitalism as "creative destruction". Concluding, in the last paragraph of The Chief Faetures of The Industrial Revolution, Toynbee's confirms that "the new class of great capitalist employers made enormous fortunes" wether the working people "suffered likewise from the conditions of labour under the factory system.

By Ballarin Claudia and Rabino Eleonora