Beau Idéal? Harriet Martineau e il ‘capitalist’ in “A Manchester Strike”

[Autom. eng. transl.] Was the project of using the refined and targeted tools of literary narrativity to proclaim the need for good employers - almost precursors of today's coveted social entrepreneurs - in the early decades of the nineteenth century? Was it an illusion to hope that a literary text could educate the public opinion of those years to limit the action of both the insatiable new capitalists and that of the many contemporary incarnations of Utilitarianism? Fu beau idéal - to quote an expression by Karl Marx - the search for "Harmony" and "perfect Union" between capitalists and laborers as an antidote to the class struggle? These are just some of the questions raised by Harriet Martineau in the econo-literary story A Manchester Strike. To such (1832) - one of the most significant in the large number of his Illustrations of Political Economy (1832-1834) - which is the subject of study in this volume.