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Shirley Bassey

Dame Shirley Veronica Bassey (born 8 January 1937) is a Welsh singer. Known for her career longevity, powerful voice and recording the theme songs to three James Bond films, the only artist to perform more than one, Bassey is one of the most popular vocalists in Britain.

Born in Cardiff, Bassey began performing as a teenager in 1953. In 1959, she became the first Welsh person to gain a number-one single on the UK Singles Chart. In the following decades, Bassey amassed 27 Top 40 hits in the UK, including two number ones (As I Love You and AA: Climb Ev'ry Mountain/Reach For The Stars) plus a number one on the Dance Chart (History Repeating). She became well known for recording theme songs of the James Bond films Goldfinger (1964), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), and Moonraker (1979).

Bassey has had numerous BBC television specials, and hosted her own variety series, Shirley Bassey. In 2011, BBC aired the television film Shirley, based on Bassey's life and career. Since making her first appearance at the Royal Albert Hall in 1971, she has performed at the venue 45 times. Bassey received the first award for Best British Female Solo Artist at the 1st Brit Awards in 1977. She was appointed a Dame in 1999 for services to the performing arts. In 2003, she was ranked among the "100 Great Black Britons". Her song "Goldfinger" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. She has influenced many other singers, including Aretha Franklin.

In a career spanning over 70 years, Bassey has sold over 140 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling female artists of all time. She is the first woman in history to claim a Top 40 album in seven consecutive decades in the United Kingdom.

Early life
Shirley Veronica Bassey was born the sixth and youngest child of Henry Bassey and Eliza Jane Start on Bute Street in Tiger Bay, Cardiff. She grew up in the nearby community of Splott. Her father was Nigerian, and her English mother came from New Marske, North Yorkshire.

Two of her mother's four children from previous relationships lived in the Bassey household. Bassey's mother listed her first husband, Alfred Metcalfe, as her own father in the registry of her marriage to Henry Bassey, giving rise to speculation that this marriage was bigamous in the absence of a prior divorce. Eliza and Henry's second child died in infancy, so Shirley was born into a household of three sisters, two half-sisters, and one brother.

Teachers and students alike at Moorland Road School noticed Bassey's strong voice, but gave the pre-teen little encouragement: "everyone told me to shut up. Even in the school choir the teacher kept telling me to back off till I was singing in the corridor!" A classmate recalled her singing the refrain "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from Show Boat with such feeling that she made their teacher uncomfortable. She left Splott secondary modern school at age 14 to work at Curran Steels and, in the evenings and weekends, to sing in local pubs and clubs.

1950s
In 1953, Bassey signed her first professional contract, touring with the variety show Memories of Jolson, a musical based on the life of Al Jolson. On 17 December 1953, Bassey signed a contract with Columbia Productions for two performances at the salary of £10. Her next professional engagement was in the touring show Hot from Harlem, in which she and other mixed-race Cardiff performers played Black Americans in 1954. A review of the show in March 1954 included: "Shirley Bassey, an attractive young singer, is an asset to the show." Later that year, Bassey gave birth to her daughter Sharon, while staying with her sister Ella in London.

While performing in Jersey, Bassey met her first manager, Mike Sullivan. In 1955, Bassey toured various theatres until she was noticed by the impresario Jack Hylton at the Astor Club in September 1955. He invited her to feature in Al Read's Such Is Life, which opened on 14 December 1955 at the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End. In the show, which ran until 3 November 1956, she featured the song "Burn My Candle", leading one reviewer to say that she had nearly stopped the show with the song "which brought outraged mutters, then roars of shamefaced applause." During the show's run, Philips record producer Johnny Franz spotted her on television, was impressed, and offered her a recording deal. Bassey recorded her first single, "Burn My Candle", the song she had featured in Such is Life, and this was released in February 1956. The cabaret-style song was banned by the BBC because the lyrics were considered too suggestive. More singles followed, and in February 1957, Bassey had her first hit with "The Banana Boat Song", which reached No. 8 in the UK Singles Chart.

Following a successful run at the Café de Paris, London, Bassey made her American stage début in Las Vegas at El Rancho Vegas in February 1957. Following on from Las Vegas, Bassey opened at Ciro's on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood on 15 February 1957. She also recorded under the direction of American producer Mitch Miller in New York City for the Columbia Records label (which at the time had a distribution deal with Philips), producing the single "If I Had a Needle and Thread" b/w "Tonight My Heart She Is Crying". On her return to the UK in April 1957, she starred in "Sunday Night at the London Palladium" for the first time on 28 April 1957.

In mid-1958, Bassey recorded two singles that would become classics in the Bassey catalogue. "As I Love You" was released as the B-side of another ballad, "Hands Across the Sea"; it did not sell well at first but, after another appearance at the London Palladium on 30 November, sales began to pick up. In January 1959, "As I Love You" reached number-one and stayed there for four weeks; it was the first number-one single by a Welsh artist. While "As I Love You" climbed the charts, so did Bassey's recording of "Kiss Me, Honey Honey, Kiss Me" and both records would end up occupying the top 3 at the same time. Having been with Decca Records for four years, Bassey then signed to EMI's Columbia label on 20 April 1959. Her first album for Columbia, The Fabulous Shirley Bassey, was later released and reached. No. 12 on the UK Albums Chart.

1960s
Between 1960 and 1961, Bassey had four Top 10 hits in the UK. Her 1960 recording of "As Long As He Needs Me" from Lionel Bart's Oliver! peaked at No. 2, and had a chart run of 30 weeks. She made her American television début on 13 November 1960, when she performed on The Ed Sullivan Show. In 1961, the double A-side "Reach for the Stars"/"Climb Ev'ry Mountain" reached number-one. Bassey's version of "As Long as He Needs Me" reached No. 2. Her single "I'll Get By" peaked at No. 10. Bassey's rendition of "You'll Never Know" was one of the UK's top hits in 1961, reaching No. 6 on the charts. She began to gain recognition in the American market and signed to United Artists Records in August 1961. The following month she began a five-week engagement at the Persian Room inside New York's Plaza Hotel

Bassey's collaboration with Nelson Riddle and his orchestra, the album Let's Face the Music (1962), reached No. 12 in the UK album chart; and the single, "What Now My Love" made it to No. 5 in 1962. Her cover version of the Ben E. King hit "I (Who Have Nothing)" reached No. 6 in 1963. In January 1963, Bassey performed at a gala commemorating the second anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's inauguration in Washington, D.C. In March 1963, she appeared on the cover of Ebony magazine. Bassey made her Carnegie Hall debut on 15 February 1964. The complete concert recording was not released until it was included in the EMI compilation The EMU/UA Years 1959–1979 in 1994.

In 1965, Bassey enjoyed her only Top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with the title song of the James Bond film, Goldfinger. The single "Goldfinger" was released in the US in January 1965, peaking at No 8. The original soundtrack for Goldfinger hit number-one in the US that year. The "Goldfinger" theme song had a lasting impact on her career. In the sleeve notes for Bassey's 25th Anniversary Album (1978), Peter Clayton noted that: "Acceptance in America was considerably helped by the enormous popularity of ("Goldfinger")...But she had actually established herself there as early as 1961, in cabaret in New York. She was also a success in Las Vegas...'I suppose I should feel hurt that I've never been really big in America on record since "Goldfinger"...But, concertwise, I always sell out.'..."

Her live 1965 album Shirley Bassey at the Pigalle, recorded during a sold-out run at the Pigalle in London, peaked at No. 15 on the UK album chart. Also in 1965, she sang the title song for the James Bond spoof The Liquidator. Bassey recorded a song for the next Bond film, Thunderball (1965). "Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" was not used in the movie, although the film's score follows its melodic theme. Written by John Barry and Leslie Bricusse, "Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" was re-recorded by American singer Dionne Warwick, and then rejected in favor of a new song, "Thunderball", hastily written by Barry and given to Welsh singer Tom Jones after the film's producers decided the song over the opening credits must feature the film's title.

In the aftermath of "Goldfinger" her UK sales started to falter as well: only two of her singles would enter the UK top 40 from 1966 to 1970. Her first album on United Artists, "I've Got a Song for You" (1966), spent one week on the chart. From 1966 to 1970, only two albums would chart, one of those a compilation. One of her best-known singles, "Big Spender" was released in 1967, charting just short of the UK top 20.

Bassey began to live as a tax exile in 1968, during a period of very high income tax, and was unable to work in Britain for almost two years. In 1969, she appeared in NBC's The Spring Thing, a musical television special hosted by Bobbie Gentry and Noel Harrison. Guests included were Goldie Hawn, Meredith MacRae, Irwin C. Watson, Rod McKuen, and Harpers Bizarre.

1970s
Bassey's UK comeback came in 1970 leading to one of the most successful periods of her career. Starting the year with a BBC Television 'Special', The Young Generation Meet Shirley Bassey, recorded in Sweden and shown on BBC1 on 18 March. She returned to the UK with a record-breaking run of performances at the Talk of the Town nightclub. Also that year, her album Something was released, and showcased a new Bassey style, a shift from traditional pop to more contemporary songs and arrangements (the eponymous single was more successful in the UK charts than the original recording by The Beatles) – although Bassey would never completely abandon that which had been her forte: standards, show tunes, and torch songs.

Her song "Something" was also a top 10 US hit on the Adult Contemporary chart. Other singles of this period included the hit "Never Never Never", an English version of the Italian "Grande grande grande", reaching the top 10 in the US Adult Contemporary Chart, the UK top 10 and number one in Australia and South Africa.

Returning to the James Bond franchise, she recorded the theme song for Diamonds Are Forever (1971). Bassey appeared on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show, broadcast on Christmas Day in 1971.

Bassey was the subject of This Is Your Life on two occasions: firstly, in November 1972 when she was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at Heathrow Airport, and then in January 1993, when Michael Aspel surprised her at the curtain call of a sell-out concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

Bassey recorded a series of successful albums on the United Artists label, including: Something Else (1971); And I Love You So (1972); I Capricorn (1972); Never Never Never (1973); Good, Bad but Beautiful (1975); Love, Life and Feelings (1976); You Take My Heart Away (1977) and Yesterdays (1978). Additionally, two of Bassey's earlier LPs also entered the charts in the '70s: And We Were Lovers (1967, re-issued as Big Spender), and Let's Face the Music (1962, re-issued as What Now My Love). Two compilations, The Shirley Bassey Singles Album (1975) and 25th Anniversary Album (1978), both made the top three of the UK charts: The Shirley Bassey Singles Album, her highest-charting album, reached number two and earned a gold disc, and the 25th Anniversary Album eventually went platinum.

Between 1970 and 1979, Bassey had 18 hit albums in the UK Albums Chart. Her album The Magic Is You (1979) featured a portrait by the photographer Francesco Scavullo. In 1973, her sold-out concerts at New York's Carnegie Hall were recorded and released as a two-LP set, Shirley Bassey: Live at Carnegie Hall; this album reached No. 20 on the Billboard R&B album chart.

In 1976, Bassey starred in the six-episode Shirley Bassey show, the first of her television programmes for the BBC, followed by a second series of six episodes in 1979. The final show of the first series was nominated for the Golden Rose of Montreux in 1977. The series featured guests including Neil Diamond, Michel Legrand, The Three Degrees and Dusty Springfield and featured Bassey in various international locations as well as in the television studio. In 1978, Bassey pleaded guilty to being drunk and disorderly "after shouting abuse in the street and pushing a policeman". In 1979, Bassey recorded the title theme song for the Bond film, Moonraker.

1980s
Throughout most of the 1980s, Bassey focused on charitable work and performing occasional concert tours throughout Europe, Australia, and the United States. She had ended her contract with United Artists, whose former record division was now part of EMI, and began what she referred to as "semi-retirement". Bassey recorded an album entitled All by Myself (1982) and made a TV special for Thames Television called A Special Lady with guest Robert Goulet. Around this time she recorded a duet with the French film actor Alain Delon, "Thought I'd Ring You" (1983). Bassey was now recording far less often but an album of her most famous songs, I Am What I Am (1984), was recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) conducted by Carl Davis. This was followed by a single and video to support the London Tourist Board, "There's No Place Like London" (1986), which was co-written by Lynsey de Paul and Gerard Kenny. She recorded an album of James Bond themes, The Bond Collection in 1987, but was apparently unhappy with the results so she declined to release it. (Five years later it was released anyway, Bassey sued in court, and all unsold copies were withdrawn.)

Bassey provided vocals for Swiss artists Yello on "The Rhythm Divine" (1987), a song co-written by Scottish singer Billy Mackenzie. An album sung entirely in Spanish, La Mujer was released in 1989.

1990s
Bassey had started working with a vocal coach, a former opera singer, and her album Keep the Music Playing (1991) displayed a grand, operatic pop style on several songs (perhaps also influenced by her album with the LSO seven years earlier).

EMI released the five-CD box set Bassey – The EMI/UA Years 1959–1979 in 1994. The accompanying booklet opened with a poem by Marc Almond. Bassey collaborated with Chris Rea in the film La Passione (1996), appearing in the film as herself and releasing the single "'Disco' La Passione". The remix of this single charted just outside the UK top 40. Bassey's "History Repeating" (1997), written for her by the Propellerheads, reached number one on the UK Dance Chart, and number 10 on the US Dance Chart. The liner notes of the Propellerheads' album Decksandrumsandrockandroll included the lines: "We would like to extend our maximum respect to Shirley Bassey for honouring us with her performance. We are still in shock...." Bassey celebrated her 60th birthday in 1997 with two open-air concerts, at Castle Howard and Althorp Park, and another TV special. The resulting live album The Birthday Concert received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance. On 7 October 1998 in Egypt, Bassey performed for a benefit at an open-air concert close to the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid. Bassey played the Friday night at Henley Festival in 1984.

Bassey was sued in a breach of contract case in 1998 by her former personal assistant, who also accused Bassey of hitting her and making an ethnic slur. Bassey won the case. The episode was lampooned by Alexander Baron in his one-act play The Trial of Shirley Bassey. The following year, she performed the official song for the rugby World Cup, "World in Union", with Bryn Terfel at the opening ceremony at The Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, wearing a gown based on the Welsh flag. Their single made the top 40, and Bassey contributed two more songs to the official album Land of My Fathers, which reached number one on the UK compilations chart, and went silver.

2000s
Bassey continued to perform at various high profile events. In 2001, she was principal artiste at the Duke of Edinburgh's 80th birthday celebration. On 3 June 2002, she was one of a line-up of artists including Elton John, Paul McCartney and Tom Jones who performed at the Queen's 50th Jubilee Party at Buckingham Palace.

Bassey celebrated 50 years in show business in 2003 with the release of the CD Thank You for the Years, which was another top 20 album. A gala charity auction of her stage costumes at Christie's, "Dame Shirley Bassey: 50 Years of Glittering Gowns", raised £250,000 (US$500,000) for the Dame Shirley Bassey Scholarship at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and the Noah's Ark Children's Hospital Appeal. Bassey topped the bill at the 2005 Royal Variety Performance, introducing her new song "The Living Tree".

Two popular Audiences with Shirley Bassey have aired on British television: one in 1995, which attracted more than 10 million viewers in the UK, and a second, broadcast in 2006. Bassey returned to perform in five arenas around the UK in June the same year, culminating at Wembley. She also performed a concert in front of 10,000 people at the Bryn Terfel Faenol Festival in North Wales broadcast by BBC Wales. Marks & Spencer signed her for their Christmas 2006 James Bond–style television advertising campaign. Bassey was seen in a glamorous ice palace singing a cover version of Pink's song "Get the Party Started", wearing an M&S gown.

"The Living Tree", written, produced, and originally recorded by the group Never the Bride, was released as a single on 23 April 2007, marking Bassey's 50th anniversary in the UK Singles Chart, and the record for the longest span of top-40 hits in UK chart history. Bassey performed a 45-minute set at the 2007 Glastonbury Festival wearing a pink Julien Macdonald dress, and customised Wellington boots. A new album, Get the Party Started, was subsequently released on 25 June 2007 and entered the UK Albums Chart at number six. The single of the title song reached number 3 on the US Dance Chart. The same year, Bassey performed "Big Spender" with Elton John at his annual White Tie and Tiara Ball to raise money for The Elton John AIDS Foundation. In 2007, Bassey performed in Fashion Rocks in aid of The Prince's Trust at the Royal Albert Hall.

Bassey was rushed to hospital in Monaco on 23 May 2008 to have an emergency operation on her stomach after complaining of abdominal pains. She was forced to pull out of the Nelson Mandela 90th Birthday Tribute concert because of her illness. A biography of Bassey, Diamond Diva, was published in 2008.

Bassey recorded the album The Performance (2009), with James Bond composer David Arnold as producer. A number of artists wrote songs expressly for her, including Manic Street Preachers, Gary Barlow, Tom Baxter, KT Tunstall, Pet Shop Boys, Nick Hodgson of the Kaiser Chiefs, John Barry and Don Black. Bassey headlined at the BBC Electric Proms on 23 October 2009, in her only full live set of 2009. She performed several of the new songs from The Performance in November 2009 on various TV shows: The Graham Norton Show, The Paul O'Grady Show and as the guest singer on Strictly Come Dancing.

2010s
Bassey performed at a gala celebrating the 80th birthday of Mikhail Gorbachev on 30 March 2011. She also performed at the Classical Brit Awards in 2011, singing "Goldfinger" in tribute to John Barry.

The BBC broadcast a 70-minute drama entitled Shirley on 29 September 2011, depicting Bassey's early life and career. Ruth Negga played the title role. Bassey was one of the line-up of artists on 4 June 2012 who performed at the Queen's 60th Jubilee Party at Buckingham Palace, singing "Diamonds Are Forever". She performed at the 2013 Academy Awards on 24 February 2013 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the James Bond movie franchise. It was her first appearance at an Oscars ceremony as a performer. She sang "Goldfinger" to a standing ovation.

Bassey performed "I'm Still Here" and "The Lady Is A Tramp" on 13 November 2014 at the Royal Variety Performance in the presence of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Bassey released another album, Hello Like Before, on 17 November 2014. It included a 50th-anniversary re-recording of "Goldfinger" (recreating the original orchestration) and a duet of "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" with Paloma Faith, produced and conducted by Stuart Barr.

In December 2016, Bassey starred in a 60-minute BBC broadcast hosted by David Walliams.

On 11 March 2018, Bassey performed "Almost Like Being In Love" in a tribute to Bruce Forsyth at the London Palladium. At a gala for AmfAR (The Foundation for Aids Research) in Los Angeles on 18 October 2018, Bassey sang "Goldfinger", "Diamonds Are Forever", "Almost Like Being In Love" and "I Am What I Am".

On 9 August 2019, Bassey performed at UNICEF's Summer Gala in Porto Cervo, Sardinia, singing "Goldfinger", "Diamonds Are Forever" and "S'Wonderful". Bassey appeared on the Ball & Boe TV Christmas Special on Friday 20 December 2019, singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" with Michael Ball and Alfie Boe.

2020s
In 2020, with the release of her most recent album, I Owe It All To You, Bassey became the first female artist to chart an album in the top 40 of the UK Albums Chart in seven consecutive decades. On 4 October 2022, Bassey performed in The Sound of 007: Live from the Royal Albert Hall, which commemorated the 60th Anniversary of the James Bond films. She sang the two opening songs, "Diamonds Are Forever" and "Goldfinger". In 2023, Dame Shirley was awarded The Order of Saint Charles by Prince Albert II of Monaco.

In May, 2024, Bassey announced the charity auction of her 80 pieces jewellery and watches, Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels including an Elton John diamond ring at the October 10 Sotheby’s Fine Jewels sale, Nikita Binani, Head of Jewellery said.

Marriages
Bassey's first marriage was to Kenneth Hume in 1961. The couple separated in 1964 and divorced in 1965 in the wake of Bassey's affair with actor Peter Finch. She then announced to the press that she and Finch would not be marrying, telling the press: "It simply wouldn't work out. Just know I am not ready for marriage to anyone. I feel I have to be free." A year later, Hume sued Finch and another man, John McAuliffe, for being "indiscreet" with Bassey. Both Finch and McAuliffe were cited as co-respondents in the Hume–Bassey divorce. For her part, Bassey was named as co-respondent in 1965 when Finch's wife, South African actress Yolande Turner, divorced him.

From 1968 until they divorced in 1979, Bassey was married to Sergio Novak, the assistant manager of the Excelsior Hotel in Venice. During this time, Novak was Bassey's manager, and they adopted Mark, her grand-nephew.

Children
The fathers of Bassey's two daughters, Sharon Bassey (a.k.a. Sharon Novak, born 1954) and Samantha Bassey (a.k.a. Samantha Novak, born 1963), are unknown. Bassey had Sharon at the age of 17 and her sister Ella raised her as her own daughter until the 1960s. Bassey's first husband suggested that Samantha, born during the couple's marriage, was the result of an affair between Bassey and Peter Finch.

In 1985, Samantha, age 21, was found dead in the River Avon in Bristol. Bassey has always maintained that the death of her daughter was not a suicide. On 24 March 2010, Avon and Somerset Police confirmed they were undertaking fresh inquiries into the death and specifically claimed that the convicted killer Michael Moffat was involved in her death. However, in October 2010 it was reported that the investigation had come to an end, concluding that there was "no evidence of any criminal act involved" in Novak's death. The ordeal of losing her daughter caused Bassey to temporarily lose her voice.

In a 2009 interview, Bassey stated that she and her son, Mark, had reconciled. Bassey has four grandsons through her surviving daughter, Sharon Novak. Bassey resides in Monaco.

In 2018, Bassey reported that she had a great-granddaughter.

Honours and accolades
Bassey was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1994 New Year Honours and promoted to Dame Commander of the same Order (DBE) in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to entertainment. She was invited to perform in 2002 at the Party at the Palace, a public celebration of the Queen's Golden Jubilee. Bassey also performed at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace on 4 June 2012, singing "Diamonds Are Forever". She was invited to perform at the Queen's 90th Birthday celebrations at Windsor Castle on 15 May 2016. She was appointed Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2024 New Year Honours for services to music.

In 2012, Bassey was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork – the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover – to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life that he most admires. In 2016, she was named as one of "the 50 greatest Welsh men and women of all time". In November 2016 the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama announced the naming of the Shirley Bassey Studio in celebration of Bassey's long-standing support for young Welsh singers studying at the College. She was made a Knight of France's Legion of Honour in 2003, to signify her popularity and importance in the culture of France. Bassey was awarded the freedom of her hometown, Cardiff, in a ceremony at City Hall on 17 May 2019.

Bassey received the following honours:

 * 1993: Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama
 * 1994: Commander of the Order of the British Empire (United Kingdom)
 * 1999: Madam Tussaud's waxwork unveiled in London (second model in Las Vegas)
 * 2000: Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (United Kingdom)
 * 2003: Knight of the National Order of the Legion of Honour (France)
 * 2004: Ranked No. 8 on the list of "100 Great Black Britons"
 * 2005: Avenue of Stars – plaque unveiled in London
 * 2018: She unveiled a carriage on the Snowdon Mountain Railway, named in her honour
 * 2019: Freedom of the City of Cardiff
 * 2019: Square of Fame – plaque of Bassey's handprints unveiled at the SSE Arena, Wembley Park, London
 * 2020: Official UK Chart Record – First female artist to claim a top 40 album in seven consecutive decades
 * 2023: Grand Officer of the Order of Saint Charles (Monaco)
 * 2024: Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (United Kingdom)
 * 2024: Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (United Kingdom)

Awards and nominations
Grammy Awards

 * 1999
 * The Birthday Concert
 * Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album
 * Nominated
 * 2008
 * "Goldfinger"
 * Grammy Hall of Fame (Single)
 * Inducted
 * Grammy Hall of Fame (Single)
 * Inducted

NME Awards
 * 1959
 * Shirley Bassey
 * Favourite British Singer
 * Won
 * 1960
 * Shirley Bassey
 * Favourite British Singer
 * Won
 * Favourite British Singer
 * Won

Bassey has also received the following awards and nominations:
 * 2014: Lifetime Achievement Award – World Music Awards
 * 2023: Commemorative coins released by The Royal Mint (UK)
 * 2023: Commemorative postage stamps released by The Royal Mail (UK)
 * 2014: Lifetime Achievement Award – World Music Awards
 * 2023: Commemorative coins released by The Royal Mint (UK)
 * 2023: Commemorative postage stamps released by The Royal Mail (UK)
 * 2014: Lifetime Achievement Award – World Music Awards
 * 2023: Commemorative coins released by The Royal Mint (UK)
 * 2023: Commemorative postage stamps released by The Royal Mail (UK)
 * 2014: Lifetime Achievement Award – World Music Awards
 * 2023: Commemorative coins released by The Royal Mint (UK)
 * 2023: Commemorative postage stamps released by The Royal Mail (UK)
 * 2014: Lifetime Achievement Award – World Music Awards
 * 2023: Commemorative coins released by The Royal Mint (UK)
 * 2023: Commemorative postage stamps released by The Royal Mail (UK)
 * 2023: Commemorative coins released by The Royal Mint (UK)
 * 2023: Commemorative postage stamps released by The Royal Mail (UK)
 * 2023: Commemorative coins released by The Royal Mint (UK)
 * 2023: Commemorative postage stamps released by The Royal Mail (UK)

title: Shirley Bassey


text:
User:AxelBoldt/Todo

A couple of things that I want to do soon:
 * polyhedron definition, Euler's formula
 * relationship between negative binomial distribution and Poisson distribution
 * Ramsey theory
 * Euclid's fifth postulate and equivalent statements (Pythagorean theorem!)
 * PDE's
 * mathematical treatment of singularity
 * formal math project (mixar)
 * information entropy of probability distributions
 * Ford-Fulkerson algorithm
 * logistic map, bifurcation diagram: explain where bifurcation comes from, hidden chaos
 * logistic curve, logistic equation etc.
 * elliptic integral, elliptic functions, connection to elliptic curves

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:AxelBoldt/Todo


text:
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (born March 28, 1941, as Jeffrey Lloyd Masson) is an American author. Masson is best known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. In his The Assault on Truth (1984), Masson argues that Freud may have abandoned his seduction theory because he feared that granting the truth of his female patients' claims (that they had been sexually abused) would hinder the acceptance of his psychoanalytic methods. Masson is a veganism advocate and has written about animal rights.

Early life
Jeffrey Masson is the son of Jacques Masson, a Frenchman of Bukharian Jewish ancestry, and Diana (Dina) Zeiger from an Ashkenazi strict Orthodox Jewish family. Both of his parents were followers of the guru Paul Brunton. Masson's mother later became a follower of mystic and philosopher John Levy. During the 1940s and 1950s, Brunton often lived with them, eventually designating Masson as his heir apparent. In 1956, Diana and Jacques Masson moved to Uruguay because Brunton believed that a third world war was imminent. Jeffrey and his sister Linda followed in 1959.

Studies
At Brunton's urging, Masson went to Harvard University to study Sanskrit. While at Harvard, Masson became disillusioned with Brunton. Brunton and his influence on the Masson family form the subject of Masson's autobiographical book My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion. Harvard University granted Masson a B.A. in 1964 and a PhD with Honors in 1970. His degrees were in Sanskrit and Indian Studies. While undertaking his PhD, Masson also studied, supported by fellowships, at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the University of Calcutta, and the University of Poona.

Career
Masson taught Sanskrit and Indian Studies at the University of Toronto, 1969–80, reaching the rank of Professor. He has also held short term appointments at Brown University, the University of California, and the University of Michigan. From 1981 to 1992, he was a Research Associate, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently an Honorary Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Views on Freud's seduction theory
In 1970, Masson began studying to become a psychoanalyst at the Toronto Psychoanalytic Institute, completing a full clinical training course in 1978. His training analyst was Irvine Schiffer, a well-known Toronto analyst and author of books on the unconscious aspects of charisma and time. In 1990 Masson published an autobiographical book in which he accused Schiffer of cursing, being constantly late for sessions, and intimidating Masson when the latter complained about this issue. Schiffer denied it and debated Masson on the Canadian television program The Fifth Estate.

During this time, Masson befriended the psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler and became acquainted with Sigmund Freud's daughter Anna Freud. Eissler designated Masson to succeed him as Director of the Sigmund Freud Archives after his and Anna Freud's deaths. Masson learned German and studied the history of psychoanalysis. In 1980 Masson was appointed Projects Director of the Freud Archives, with full access to Freud's correspondence and other unpublished papers. While perusing this material, Masson concluded that Freud might have rejected the seduction theory in order to advance the cause of psychoanalysis and to maintain his own place within the psychoanalytic inner circle, after a hostile response from the renowned sex-pathologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing and the rest of the Vienna Psychiatric Society in 1896 — "an icy reception from the jackasses," was the way Freud described it later to Fliess.

In 1981, Masson's controversial conclusions were discussed in a series of New York Times articles by Ralph Blumenthal, to the dismay of the psychoanalytic establishment. Masson was subsequently dismissed from his position as project director of the Freud Archives and stripped of his membership in psychoanalytic professional societies. Masson was defended by Alice Miller and Muriel Gardiner ("While striving not to take sides," Gardiner said, "I consider him a good and energetic worker and a worthwhile scholar").

Masson later wrote several books critical of psychoanalysis, including The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. In the introduction to The Assault on Truth, Masson challenged his critics to address his arguments: "My pessimistic conclusions may possibly be wrong. The documents may in fact allow a very different reading." Janet Malcolm interviewed Masson at length when writing her long New Yorker article on this controversy, which she later expanded into In the Freud Archives, a book that also dealt with Eissler and with Peter Swales.

In 1984 Masson sued The New Yorker, Janet Malcolm and the publisher Alfred A. Knopf for defamation, claiming that Malcolm had misquoted him. The ensuing trial drew considerable attention. The U.S. district court ruled against Masson. In 1989 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco upheld the lower court's decision. “The Court of Appeals affirmed [...] that Malcolm had deliberately altered each quotation not found on the tape recordings, but nevertheless held that petitioner failed to raise a jury question of actual malice.” Masson petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the Court of Appeals decision and sent the case back to trial by jury. The decade-long ten-million-dollar federal lawsuit came to a close in 1994 when the jury and the court again ruled in The New Yorker‘s favor. Subsequent to the case, Janet Malcolm claimed to have found her handwritten notes indicating that Masson had lied in relation to the remaining disputed quotations, as he had lied in relation to quotations where there were recordings.

Meanwhile, in 1985, Masson edited and translated Freud's complete correspondence with Wilhelm Fliess after having convinced Anna Freud to make it available in full. He also looked up the original places and documents in La Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, where Freud had studied with Charcot. Masson writes that the scientific community has been largely silent about his views, and that he suffered personal attacks once he deviated from the traditional views on the seduction theory and the history of psychoanalysis. Both the traditional view and Masson's case against it are built on the account that Freud's seduction theory patients reported having been sexually abused in early childhood; several Freud scholars have disputed this account.

Later work
Since the early 1990s, Masson has written a number of books on the emotional life of animals, one of which, When Elephants Weep, has been translated into 20 languages. He has explained this radical change in the subject of his writings as follows:

"I'd written a whole series of books about psychiatry, and nobody bought them. Nobody liked them. Nobody. Psychiatrists hated them, and they were much too abstruse for the general public. It was very hard to make a living, and I thought, As long as I'm not making a living, I may as well write about something I really love: animals."

In 2008, Masson became a Director of Voiceless, the animal protection institute. "We are not encouraged, on a daily basis, to pay careful attention to the animals we eat. On the contrary, the meat, dairy, and egg industries all actively encourage us to give thought to our own immediate interest (taste, for example, or cheap food) but not to the real suffering involved ... The animals involved suffer agony because of our ignorance. The least we owe them is to lessen that ignorance".

Masson also wrote a book about living in New Zealand, including an interview with Sir Edmund Hillary.

Personal life
Masson is married to Leila Masson, a German pediatrician. They have two sons. He also has a daughter by a previous marriage with Therese Claire Masson. In the early 1990s, Masson had been engaged to University of Michigan feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, who wrote the preface to his A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality, and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century.

Masson became a vegan in 2004. He is an animal rights activist.

Name
Masson's great-grandfather Shlomo Moussaieff was a kabbalist and founder of the Bukharian Quarter in Jerusalem. His grandfather Henry Mousaieff changed his family name from Moussaieff to Masson. Masson changed his middle name from Lloyd to Moussaieff.

Works

 * 1974. "India and the Unconscious: Erik Erikson on Gandhi," International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 55: 519-26. Discussion by T. C. Sinha: 527.
 * 1974. "Sex and Yoga: Psychoanalysis and the Indian Religious Experience", Journal of Indian Philosophy 2: 307–320. Reprinted in Vishnu on Freud's Desk: A Reader in Psychoanalysis and Hinduism, T.G. Vaidyanathan and Jeffrey J. Kripal eds. Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-565835-3, Paperback (Edition: 2003)
 * 1976. "Perversions — some observations", Israel Ann. Psychiat. rel. Disc., (1976b), 14, 354–61.
 * 1976. (with Terri C. Masson) "The Navel of Neurosis: Trauma, Memory and Denial", paper presented to the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society
 * 1978. (with Terri C. Masson) "Buried Memories on the Acropolis. Freud's Relation to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism", International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 59: 199-208.
 * 1980. The Oceanic Feeling: The Origins of Religious Sentiment in Ancient India.
 * 1981. The Peacock's Egg: Love Poems from Ancient India, W. S. Merwin and J. Moussaieff Masson, eds. ISBN 0-86547-059-6
 * 1984. The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory. Farrar Straus & Giroux. ISBN 0-374-10642-8
 * 1984. "Freud and the Seduction Theory: A challenge to the foundations of psychoanalysis," The Atlantic Monthly, February 1984.
 * 1985. (editor and translator) The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904. ISBN 0-674-15420-7
 * 1986. A Dark Science: Women, Sexuality and Psychiatry in the Nineteenth Century. ISBN 0-374-13501-0
 * 1988. Against Therapy: Emotional Tyranny and the Myth of Psychological Healing. ISBN 0-689-11929-1
 * 1990. Final Analysis: The Making and Unmaking of A Psychoanalyst. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-52368-X
 * 1993. My Father's Guru: A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion, Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-56778-4
 * 1994. (with Susan McCarthy) When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Life of Animals, Jonathan Cape.
 * 1995. "A Note on U.G. Krishnamurti"
 * 1996. Lost Prince: The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser.
 * 1997. Dogs Never Lie About Love: Reflections on the Emotional World of Dogs.
 * 1999. The Emperor's Embrace: Reflections on Animal Families and Fatherhood.
 * 2003. The Pig Who Sang to the Moon: The Emotional World of Farm Animals.
 * 2002. The Nine Emotional Lives of Cats: A Journey Into the Feline Heart. ISBN 0-345-44882-0
 * 2004. The Evolution of Fatherhood: A Celebration of Animal and Human Families.
 * 2004. Slipping into Paradise: Why I Live in New Zealand. ISBN 0-345-46634-9
 * 2004. The Cat Who Came in from the Cold. Wheeler. ISBN 1-58724-914-6
 * 2005. Raising the Peaceable Kingdom: What Animals Can Teach Us about the Social Origins of Tolerance and Friendship.
 * 2006. Altruistic Armadillos - Zen-Like Zebras: A Menagerie of 100 Favorite Animals. ISBN 978-0-345-47881-8
 * 2009. The Face on Your Plate: The Truth about Food. ISBN 978-0-393-06595-4
 * 2010. "On Alice Miller"
 * 2010. The Dog Who Couldn't Stop Loving: How Dogs Have Captured Our Hearts for Thousands of Years. ISBN 978-0-06-177109-5
 * 2010. (editor) Sigmund Freud: The Interpretation of Dreams: The Illustrated Edition. ISBN 978-1-4027-6388-5
 * 2010 Altruistic Armadillos, Zenlike Zebras-Understanding the World's Most Intriguing Animals. Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 1602397384
 * 2010 The Wild Child: The Unsolved Mystery of Kaspar Hauser. ISBN 0-684-83096-5
 * 2011 "Pornography and Animals", in
 * 2014 Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Origins of Good and Evil. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1608196159
 * 2020 Lost Companions: Reflections on the Death of Pets. Murdoch Books. ISBN 9781922351159

Reviews of his books

 * The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, 1887-1904 : By William McGrath.
 * Against Therapy :
 * By Jeanne Stubbs.
 * By Wray Herbert.
 * Final Analysis : By Michael Sacks.
 * Breaking Away From the Cult : By Carol Tavris.

title: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson


text:
1905 World Series

The 1905 World Series was the championship series in Major League Baseball for the 1905 season. The National League (NL) champion New York Giants defeated the American League (AL) champion Philadelphia Athletics, with the Giants winning 4 games to 1, now in a best-4-of-7 format. Four of the five games featured duels between future Hall of Fame pitchers. The games were the second edition of the World Series after the initial meeting in 1903, since the 1904 season ended with no Series held.

Games 1 and 3 were played in Philadelphia; games 2, 4, 5 in New York.

Each of the five games was a shutout. Three of those, over a six-day span, were pitched and won by Christy Mathewson.

Summary
Before the Series began, the Athletics were already at a major disadvantage. For the Series, they were without the services of Rube Waddell, who was arguably their best pitcher that year. The reason for Waddell's absence was listed as a shoulder injury from some sort of 'wrestling match' with teammate Andy Coakley, though in years since some have speculated that Waddell was actually bribed or 'paid off' to fake the injury and thus not play in the Series. Philadelphia manager Connie Mack, however, refused to believe this theory, finding it ridiculous.

John McGraw, the Giants' manager, had previously referred to the Athletics as a "white elephant", which the club defiantly adopted as a symbolic mascot. At the conference at home plate before Game 1, A's team captain Lave Cross gave McGraw a wrapped package, which turned out to contain a toy white elephant. McGraw responded with a big grin, and the crowd laughed.[Philadelphia Inquirer, October 10, 2005, p. 10] McGraw and the Giants would have the last laugh, easily defeating the A's in the Series.

Game 1

The opening game was a pitchers' duel between Christy Mathewson and Eddie Plank. Both got out of jams, shutting the opposing offense down. In the Giants' top of the fifth, Mathewson singled, but was forced by Roger Bresnahan, who stole second shortly afterwards. After George Browne popped out, Mike Donlin singled to left, scoring Bresnahan and advancing Donlin to second. After Dan McGann walked, Sam Mertes doubled, bringing home Donlin. In the Athletics' half of the sixth, Ossee Schreckengost doubled and advanced to third on a wild pitch, but did not score, and was the lone runner to reach third base against Mathewson in the entire series. The Giants added an insurance run in the ninth, when Billy Gilbert scored on Bresnahan's single. This was the first of Mathewson's three complete-game shutouts, a World Series record that may never be matched.

Game 2

The A's called on Chief Bender to turn the tables on the Giants. His opponent was 21-game winner "Iron Man" Joe McGinnity. The game was scoreless until the top of the third. Ossee Schreckengost, leading off, reached on a Dan McGann's error. Bender sacrificed, moving Schreckengost to second. After a groundout by Topsy Hartsel moved Schreckengost to third, Bris Lord singled to left and drove Ossee home with an unearned run. The slim margin held until the top of the eighth, when the A's scored multiple times. With one out, Schreckengost was once again the catalyst, singling to center. After Bender flied out to right field, Hartsel's double scored Schreckengost all the way from first (helped by an error from Bresnahan), and a single by Lord brought Hartsel home, making it 3–0 in favor of the A's with all three runs unearned. Bender continued to cruise, got out of late-inning jams and ended up with a complete-game shutout that tied the series at one game each.

Game 3

Christy Mathewson once again took the mound for the Giants in Game 3. Opposing him this time was Andy Coakley, who hit the first batter he faced, Roger Bresnahan, with a pitch. A single to right by Mike Donlin moved Bresnahan to third with one out. Dan McGann singled to right, bringing Bresnahan home. An error by Danny Murphy scored Donlin and put Sam Mertes on base. Bill Dahlen walked, loading the bases with one out, but Art Devlin hit into a double play to end the rally. The Giants put the game away in the top of the fifth. Bresnahan walked with one out. George Browne singled and went to second on the throw to third base. Donlin was walked intentionally, setting up a possible inning-ending double play, but things continued to crumble for Coakley and the A's. McGann reached on another error by Danny Murphy, reloading the bases and scoring a run. Mertes singled, reloading the bases and driving in another run. Bill Dahlen hit into a force play at second, scoring Donlin. After Dahlen stole second, Devlin singled, bringing home McGann and sending Dahlen to third. Devlin then stole second and Dahlen stole home on a double steal, scoring the fifth and last run of the Giants' fifth. They scored two more runs in the top of the ninth, when McGann doubled home Browne and Donlin. Mathewson pitched his second complete-game shutout, giving the Giants a 2–1 lead in the series. This was the first 9–0 World Series game—the next one occurred when the Cubs shut out the Tigers by that lopsided score in Game 1 in, although Detroit ended up taking that series four games to three.

Game 4

Eddie Plank returned for the A's against Joe McGinnity for the Giants in Game 4. Both left men on base in scoring position early on, and kept the game scoreless until the bottom of the fourth, when Sam Mertes led off the inning by reaching on an error by Monte Cross. After Bill Dahlen flied to right Art Devlin grounded out, moving Mertes to second. With two outs, Billy Gilbert singled to left, bringing Mertes home for the only run of the game, McGinnity outdueling Plank 1–0 and giving the Giants a three-games-to-one lead.

Game 5

The Giants looked to wrap up the series behind the perennial Christy Mathewson, who faced Chief Bender this time. The game was scoreless until the bottom of the fifth, when Sam Mertes scored during a bizarre double play involving Bill Dahlen and Billy Gilbert; with one out, Mertes on third, and Dahlen on second, Gilbert hit a sacrifice fly that scored Mertes, but Dahlen was out attempting to advance to third, and this third out was recorded after Mertes had scored. In the eighth, the Giants got an insurance run when Mathewson scored on George Browne's ground out after Roger Bresnahan's double had sent him to third with less than two out. Mathewson then took the mound for the top of the ninth and induced three ground outs, thereby completing arguably the single greatest performance by any player in World Series history with his third complete-game shutout of the series.

Composite line score
1905 World Series (4–1): New York Giants (N.L.) over Philadelphia Athletics (A.L.)

Firsts and records

 * This was the first best-of-seven World Series, as opposed to the best-of-nine 1903 World Series.
 * The Philadelphia Athletics became the first team to lose a World Series game 1–0 on an unearned run.
 * It was the only World Series consisting entirely of complete-game shutouts. Only one reliever was used in the entire Series, Red Ames for Joe McGinnity in the ninth inning of Game 2.
 * The New York Giants did not yield a single earned run in this Series, thereby setting a postseason record for lowest team ERA of 0.00 that was not matched until the Atlanta Braves had a team ERA of 0.00 during the 2020 National League Wild Card Series against the Cincinnati Reds.
 * The first steal of home during the World Series occurred during the fifth inning of Game 3, by New York's Bill Dahlen on the front end of a double steal.
 * Both managers and four of the five starting pitchers are now in the Hall of Fame. The exception is Andy Coakley, who started Game 3 for Philadelphia.

title: 1905 World Series


text:
Louis the German

Louis the German (c. 806/810 – 28 August 876), also known as Louis II of Germany, was the first king of East Francia, and ruled from 843 to 876 AD. Grandson of emperor Charlemagne and the third son of Louis the Pious, emperor of Francia, and his first wife, Ermengarde of Hesbaye, he received the appellation Germanicus shortly after his death, when East Francia became known as the kingdom of Germany.

After protracted clashes with his father and his brothers, Louis received the East Frankish kingdom in the Treaty of Verdun (843). His attempts to conquer his half-brother Charles the Bald's West Frankish kingdom in 858–59 were unsuccessful. The 860s were marked by a severe crisis, with the East Frankish rebellions of the sons, as well as struggles to maintain supremacy over his realm. In the Treaty of Meerssen he acquired Lotharingia for the East Frankish kingdom in 870. On the other hand, he tried and failed to claim both the title of Emperor and Italy. In the East, Louis was able to reach a longer-term peace agreement in 874 after decades of conflict with the Moravians. His rule shows a marked decline in creation of written administration and government documents, a trend that would continue into Ottonian times.

Early life
His early years were partly spent at the court of his grandfather, Charlemagne, whose special affection he is said to have won. When the emperor Louis the Pious divided his dominions between his sons in 817, Louis was made the ruler of the Duchy of Bavaria, following the practice of emperor Charlemagne of bestowing a local kingdom to a close family member who then would serve as his lieutenant and local governor. Louis ruled from Regensburg, the old capital of the Bavarii. In 825 he became involved in wars with the Wends and Sorbs on his eastern frontier. In 827, he married Hemma, sister of his stepmother Judith of Bavaria, both daughters of Welf, whose possessions ranged from Alsace to Bavaria.

It was not until 826 that Louis first came to rule Bavaria. In 828 and 829 he undertook two campaigns against the Bulgarians who wanted to penetrate into Pannonia without great success. During his time as Unterkönig, he tried to extend his rule to the Rhine-Main area.

Rebellious son
His involvement in the first civil war against his father's reign was limited, but in the second his elder brothers, Lothair I, then King of Italy, and Pepin I, Duke of Aquitaine, persuaded him to invade Alamannia which their father had given to their young half-brother Charles the Bald, by promising to give him the land in the new partition they would make after a victory. In 832 he led an army of Slavs into Alamannia, but was driven back by his father. Louis the Pious disinherited him, but to no effect; the emperor was soon captured by his own rebellious sons and deposed. Upon his swift reinstatement, however, the emperor Louis made peace with his son Louis and legally restored Bavaria (never actually lost) to him in 836.

Louis was the instigator of the third civil war, which began in 839. A strip of his land having been given to the young half-brother Charles, Louis invaded Alamannia again. This time emperor Louis responded quickly, and soon the younger Louis was forced into the far southeastern corner of his realm, the March of Pannonia. Peace was then made by force of arms.

Civil war and aftermath, 840–844

When the emperor Louis died in 840, and Lothair I claimed the whole Empire, Louis allied with Charles the Bald, and defeated Lothair I and their nephew Pepin II of Aquitaine, son of Pepin I of Aquitaine, at the Battle of Fontenoy in June 841. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. According to the Annals of Fulda, it was the biggest bloodbath the Franks had experienced since time immemorial. At the same time, it was Louis's last battle in the struggle for the unification of the kingdom.

In June 842 the three brothers met on an island in the river Saône to negotiate a peace and each appointed forty representatives to arrange the boundaries of their respective kingdoms. This developed into the Treaty of Verdun, concluded by 10 August 843, by which Louis received the bulk of the lands lying east of the Rhine (East Francia), together with a district around Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, on the left bank of the river (see also Oaths of Strasbourg 842). His territories included Bavaria (where he made Regensburg the centre of his government), Thuringia, Franconia, and Saxony.

Louis may be called the founder of the German kingdom, though his attempts to maintain the unity of the Empire proved futile. Having in 842 crushed the Stellinga rising in Saxony, in 844 he compelled the Obotrites to accept his authority and put their prince, Gozzmovil, to death. Thachulf, Duke of Thuringia, then undertook campaigns against the Bohemians, Moravians, and other tribes, but was not very successful in resisting the ravaging Vikings.

Conflicts with Charles the Bald
In 852 Louis sent his son Louis the Younger to Aquitaine, where nobles had grown resentful of Charles the Bald's rule. The younger Louis did not set out until 854, and returned the following year.

Starting from 853 Louis made repeated attempts to gain the throne of West Francia, which, according to the Annals of Fulda (Annales Fuldenses), the people of that country offered him in their disgust with the cruel misrule of Charles the Bald. Encouraged by his nephews Peppin II and Charles of Provence, Louis invaded in West Francia in 858. Charles the Bald could not even raise an army to resist the invasion and fled to Burgundy. Later that year Louis issued a charter dated "the first year of the reign in West Francia." However, treachery and desertion in his army, and the continued loyalty of the Aquitanian bishops to Charles the Bald, brought about the failure of the whole enterprise. As such on 7 June 860 at Koblenz, both Louis and Charles made public vows to uphold the peace.

After the emperor Lothair I died in 855, Louis and Charles for a time cooperated in plans to divide Lothair's possessions between themselves, the only impediments to this being Lothair's sons and heirs—Lothair II (who received Lotharingia), Louis II of Italy (who held the imperial title and the Iron Crown of Lombardy) and Charles of Provence. In 868 at Metz Louis and Charles agreed to partition Lotharingia. When Lothair II died in 869, Louis was lying seriously ill, and his armies were engaged in a war with the Moravians. Charles the Bald quickly seized Lothair's lands, but Louis, having recovered, compelled him by threat of war to agree to the Treaty of Meerssen, which divided Lothair's lands among all the claimants.

Divisio regni among the sons

The later years of Louis the German were troubled by rebellions of his sons. The eldest, Carloman of Bavaria, revolted in 861 and again two years later. This was followed by the second son Louis the Younger, who was joined by his brother Charles the Fat. In 864 Louis was forced to grant Carloman the kingdom of Bavaria, which he himself had once held under his father. In 865 he divided the remainder of his lands—Saxony with Franconia and Thuringia went to Louis the Younger and Swabia with Raetia to Charles the Fat.

In May 868, Louis convoked a synod at Worms to deal with the aftermath of the Photian schism and to get the church's support against Moravia.

A report that the Emperor Louis II had died in Italy led to a peace between father and sons and attempts by Louis the German to gain the imperial crown for his oldest son Carloman. These efforts were thwarted by Louis II, who was in fact not dead, and Louis' old adversary, Charles the Bald.

Later life
In the years 872 and 873, ambassadors of the Eastern Roman Emperor Basil I came to Louis in Regensburg and showed that his rule was perceived as far as Constantinople. After the death of Emperor Louis II in August 875, Louis tried to win the emperorship for himself and his descendants. For this purpose, Abbot Sigihard von Fulda undertook a trip to Rome to Pope John VIII. On 18 May 876 he returned to Ingelheim and reported to Louis that, in December 875, Charles the Bald had been able to obtain the title of emperor by a swift move to Rome.

His wife Hemma visited Louis for the last time in May 875. In 874 she had lost her voice as a result of a stroke. During his stay, he donated the Berg im Donaugau Abbey to the Marienkapelle, which he built. Hemma died at the end of January 876 in Regensburg. Louis then died after a short illness on 28 August 876 in his palace in Frankfurt. The following day he was buried by his son Louis in Lorsch Abbey. However, according to Wilfried Hartmann, it cannot be determined with certainty whether the dead man in his sarcophagus is the Carolingian king. After Louis' death, Charles the Bald tried to win over the Eastern kingdom as well. However, Louis the Younger defeated him on 8 October 876 at Andernach with a squad of Franks, Saxons and Thuringians. One year later, Charles the Bald died as well.

Louis' Rule
As there exist only 172 royal documents from 50 years of reign, it is impossible to create a detailed picture of Louis' whereabouts in the East Frankish kingdom. By comparison, Louis the Pious had 18 certificates created per year, and his half-brother Charles the Bald had 12 produced annually. This pattern of not producing many documents lasts for several months at certain times. For example, it is completely uncertain where the East Frankish king stayed between June 849 and July 850. At least 52 documents are addressed to Bavarian beneficiaries. However, the intensity of the documentary production for Bavarian recipients steadily decreased during his reign.

As former stem duchy, the Rhine-Main area contained Frankfurt, Mainz and Worms, and had plenty of Imperial Palaces and treasuries. Since it was located in the geographic centre of the East Frankish kingdom, it was easily accessible by road. As a result, it was the region in which most East Frankish synods and imperial assemblies were hosted.

Nickname "the German"
Louis was only nicknamed "the German" in the 18th century. Contemporary West Frankish sources called Louis rex Germaniae ("King of Germania") or rex Germanorum ("King of the Teutons"). However, in this context, Germania or Germani does not mean "Germany" or "the Germans", but, as in ancient Latin, the area on the right bank of the Rhine outside the former Roman Empire and its inhabitants. Contemporaries gave Louis the epithet pius (pious) or piissimus (very pious). The contemporary coinage called him HLUDOVICUS PIUS REX.

Marriage and children
Louis was married to Hemma (died 31 January 876), and they had:
 * Hildegard (828–856), abbess of Fraumunster
 * Carloman of Bavaria (829–880), King of Bavaria
 * Irmgard of Chiemsee also known as Ermengard (died 866) (Louis, having established two of his other daughters as abbesses of convents, appointed Irmgard (also known as Ermengard) to govern first the monastery of Buchau and then the royal abbey of Chiemsee in Bavaria. She is commemorated as a saint on 17 July.)
 * Gisela, possibly died in childhood
 * Louis the Younger (835–882)
 * Bertha (died 877)
 * Charles the Fat (839–888)

title: Louis the German


text:
Ivor Novello

Ivor Novello (born David Ivor Davies; 15 January 1893 – 6 March 1951) was a Welsh actor, dramatist, singer and composer who became one of the most popular British entertainers of the first half of the 20th century.

He was born into a musical family, and his first successes were as a songwriter. His first big hit was "Keep the Home Fires Burning" (1914), which was enormously popular during the First World War. His 1917 show, Theodore & Co, was a wartime hit. After the war, Novello contributed numbers to several successful musical comedies and was eventually commissioned to write the scores of complete shows. He wrote his musicals in the style of operetta and often composed his music to the libretti of Christopher Hassall.

In the 1920s he turned to acting, first in British films and then on stage, with considerable success in both. He starred in two silent films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, The Lodger and Downhill (both 1927). On stage, he played the title character in the first London production of Liliom (1926). Novello briefly went to Hollywood but soon returned to Britain, where he had more successes, especially on stage, appearing in his own lavish West End productions of musicals. The best-known of these were Glamorous Night (1935) and The Dancing Years (1939).

From the 1930s he often performed with Zena Dare, writing parts for her in his works. He continued to write for film, but in his later career his biggest successes were with stage musicals: Perchance to Dream (1945), King's Rhapsody (1949) and Gay's the Word (1951).

The Ivor Novello Awards were named after him in 1955.

Early years
Novello was born David Ivor Davies in Cardiff, Wales, to David Davies (c. 1852–1931), a rent collector for the city council, and his wife, Clara Novello Davies, an internationally known singing teacher and choral conductor. As a boy, Novello was a successful singer in the Welsh Eisteddfod. His mother set up as a voice teacher in London, where he met leading performers, including members of George Edwardes's Gaiety Theatre company, classical musicians such as Landon Ronald, and singers such as Adelina Patti. Another of his mother's associates was Clara Butt, who taught him to sing "Abide with Me" when he was a boy of six.

Novello was educated privately in Cardiff and then in Gloucester, where he studied harmony and counterpoint with Herbert Brewer, the cathedral organist. From there he won a scholarship to Magdalen College School in Oxford, where he was a solo treble in the college choir. He later said that this prolonged youthful exposure to early sacred choral music had turned his tastes, in reaction, to lush romantic music. Although Brewer had told him he would not have a career in music, Novello from his early youth showed a facility for writing songs, and when he was only 15, one of his songs was published. After leaving school, he gave piano lessons in Cardiff, and then moved to London in 1913 with his mother. They took a flat above the Strand Theatre, which became his London home for the rest of his life.

In London he found a mentor in Sir Edward Marsh, a well-known patron of the arts and Winston Churchill's secretary. Marsh encouraged him to compose and introduced him to people who could help his career. He adopted his mother's middle name, "Novello", as his professional surname, although he did not change it legally until 1927.

In 1914, at the start of the First World War, Novello wrote "Keep the Home Fires Burning", a song that expressed the feelings of innumerable families sundered by the war. Novello composed the music for the song to a lyric by the American Lena Guilbert Ford, and it became a huge popular success, bringing Novello money and fame at the age of 21. In other respects, the war had less impact on Novello than on many young men of his age. He avoided enlistment until June 1916, when he reported to a Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) training depot as a probationary flight sub-lieutenant. After Novello twice crashed aeroplanes, Marsh arranged his move to the Admiralty office in central London for the rest of the war.

Composer and actor
Novello continued to write songs while serving in the RNAS. He had his first stage success with Theodore & Co in 1916, a production by George Grossmith Jr. and Edward Laurillard with a score composed by Novello and the young Jerome Kern. In the same year, Novello contributed to André Charlot's revue See-Saw. In 1917 he wrote for another Grossmith and Laurillard production, the operetta Arlette, for which he contributed additional numbers to an existing French score by Jane Vieu and Guy le Feuvre. In the same year, Marsh introduced him to the actor Bobbie Andrews, who became Novello's life partner. Andrews introduced Novello to the young Noël Coward. Coward, six years Novello's junior, was deeply envious of Novello's effortless glamour. He wrote, "I just felt suddenly conscious of the long way I had to go before I could break into the magic atmosphere in which he moved and breathed with such nonchalance".

In 1918 and after the war, Novello continued to write successfully for musical comedy and revue. The former included Who's Hooper? (1919), an adaptation of a Pinero play, with a book by Fred Thompson, lyrics by Clifford Grey, and music by Howard Talbot and Novello, and The Golden Moth by Thompson and P. G. Wodehouse (1921), for which Novello provided the entire score. For Charlot, he contributed numbers to the revues Tabs (1918), A to Z (1921) and Puppets (1924). For the second of these, his songs included one of his few well-known comedy numbers, "And Her Mother Came Too", with lyrics by Dion Titheradge, written for Jack Buchanan.

At the same time as his successes as a composer, Novello was making a career as an actor. With "a classic profile that gained him matinee idol status amongst the film-going public", he was sought out, on the strength of a publicity photograph, by the Swiss film director Louis Mercanton. Mercanton offered him a silent-film role as the romantic lead in The Call of the Blood (1920). In the same year, he made another film for Mercanton, Miarka. Novello made his first British film, Carnival, the following year.

Novello made his stage debut in 1921 in Deburau by Sacha Guitry, and, among other stage engagements in the next years, he played Bingley in a charity adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. At about this time, Novello had an affair with the writer Siegfried Sassoon; it was short-lived, but in the words of Sassoon's biographer John Stuart Roberts, Novello "was a consummate flirt who collected lovers as he gathered lilacs".

In 1923, Novello made his American movie debut in D. W. Griffith's The White Rose, and the same year he starred in The Man Without Desire, among other British films. He next co-wrote, produced and starred in the successful 1924 play The Rat. The play was made into a film in 1925, which was so successful that two sequels followed in 1926 and 1928. His dramatic roles in the West End included the title character in the first London production of Ferenc Molnár's Liliom (1926).

Other films in which Novello starred included Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger, where he played the title character, and Downhill (both in 1927). The British film company Gainsborough Pictures offered Novello a lucrative contract, which enabled him to buy a country house in Littlewick Green, near Maidenhead. He renamed the property 'Redroofs', and he entertained there famously and with little regard for convention. Cecil Beaton, noting the frequent homosexual excesses, coined the phrase, "the Ivor – Noel naughty set". Coward had by now caught up to Novello professionally, despite a joint disaster when Novello starred in Coward's play Sirocco in 1927, which was a débâcle, and closed within a month of opening. In 1928 Novello starred in the silent adaptation of Coward's much more successful The Vortex, and made his last silent film, A South Sea Bubble. During the late 1920s Novello was the most popular male British film star, and was often dubbed Britain's "handsomest screen actor".

Novello returned to composing for the lyric stage in 1929, writing eight numbers for the revue The House that Jack Built. In the same year, he presented his own play Symphony in Two Flats, which he took to New York the following year. It was followed by a successful Broadway production of his The Truth Game, which brought him to the attention of Hollywood studios. He accepted a contract to write for and appear in MGM films. He found little to do in Hollywood, however, beyond writing the dialogue for Tarzan the Ape Man. Returning to London, he starred in the sound remake of The Lodger (1932).

1930s musicals
After beginning the 1930s with a series of non-musical plays – I Lived with You (1932), Fresh Fields, Proscenium, Sunshine Sisters, Flies in the Sun (all 1933) and Murder in Mayfair (1934) – Novello returned to composition in 1935 with Glamorous Night, which was the first of a series of enormously popular musicals. The Times considered that it was for these that Novello would be popularly remembered. Paul Webb, in the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, writes that Novello's show saved the fortunes of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane: "Dominating the British musical theatre from the mid-1930s to the early 1950s, his shows were heavily influenced by the operettas that he had grown up with (he saw Die lustige Witwe 27 times), but had a highly individual style of their own. Blending musicals with opera, operetta and both modern and classical dance, these shows were considered something of an anachronism in their own time, but that was part of their appeal." Another model was Coward's 1929 musical Bitter Sweet, which Novello called "a lovely, lovely thing ... sheer joy from beginning to end". That, too, was an old-fashioned musical, "so full of regret ... for a vanished kindly silly darling age".

For all his four 1930s musicals, Novello wrote the book and music, Christopher Hassall wrote the lyrics, and the orchestrations were by Charles Prentice. Glamorous Night starred Novello and Mary Ellis, with a cast including Zena Dare, Olive Gilbert and Elizabeth Welch, and ran from 2 May 1935 to 18 July 1936, at Drury Lane and then the London Coliseum. Careless Rapture ran from 11 September 1936 for 296 performances, with Novello, Dorothy Dickson and Zena Dare in the leading roles. Crest of the Wave starred Novello, Dickson and Gilbert, and ran from 1 September 1937 for 203 performances. The last of Novello's prewar musicals was The Dancing Years, which starred Novello, Ellis and Gilbert, opened at Drury Lane, closed on the outbreak of the Second World War, toured and then reopened at the Adelphi Theatre, running in the West End for a combined total of 696 performances and closing on 8 July 1944. This show was the closest Novello came to fulfilling his mother's early ambitions for him to write operas; he played an Austrian composer-conductor at the Wiener Hofoper.

Second World War and last years
Novello presented only two new shows during the Second World War. Arc de Triomphe (1943), a musical vehicle for Mary Ellis, was only a modest success, but Perchance to Dream (1945) was immensely successful, running for 1,022 performances. In between the two shows, Novello had been in serious legal trouble and served four weeks in prison for misuse of petrol coupons, a serious offence under rationing laws in wartime Britain. An admiring fan had stolen the coupons from her employer, but the court found that Novello was also culpable. The prison term, though short, came as a severe shock to Novello, both mentally and physically, and had serious lasting effects. Not everybody was supportive; Coward's sympathy was limited: "He's been fighting like a steer to keep going as before the war and hasn't done a thing for the general effort", but when Novello returned to The Dancing Years after his release, he received "a rapturous ovation" on his first entrance.

Novello's last full-scale production in this style, King's Rhapsody (1949), was, in Webb's words, "a self-consciously romantic counter-blast to the modern musical: crown princes, ballrooms, royal yachts, beautiful princesses and a full-scale coronation". After the rigours of war, this escapist entertainment had strong box-office appeal and ran for 841 performances. The show starred Novello and the cast included Phyllis Dare, Zena Dare, Olive Gilbert and Bobbie Andrews. It was still running, at the Palace Theatre, when Novello's last show opened. This was Gay's the Word (1951). Novello had written no role for himself; the show starred the comedy actress Cicely Courtneidge and was a departure from his established pattern, balancing the contrasting styles of European operetta and post-war American musicals. The Times commented that the show "cheerfully parodied the very Ruritanian romances to which he owed his most triumphant successes".

Death and legacy
Novello died suddenly from a coronary thrombosis at the age of 58, a few hours after completing a performance of King's Rhapsody. He was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium, and his ashes are buried beneath a lilac bush and marked with a plaque that reads "Ivor Novello 6th March 1951 'Till you are home once more'." He left an estate worth £160,000 (£million in ).

Only a few weeks before Novello's death, Coward had written of him: "Theatre – good, bad and indifferent – is the love of his life. For him, other human endeavours are mere shadows. ... The reward of his work lies in the indisputable fact that whenever and wherever he appears the vast majority of the British public flock to see him." The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians writes of Novello that he was "until the advent of Andrew Lloyd Webber, the 20th century's most consistently successful composer of British musicals".

The Ivor Novello Awards for songwriting, established in 1955 in Novello's memory, are awarded each year by The Ivors Academy (formerly the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA)) to British songwriters and composers as well as to an outstanding international music writer. A scholarship in memory of Novello was established at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and in 1952 a bronze bust of him by Clemence Dane was unveiled at Drury Lane. In St. Paul's, Covent Garden, known as the actors' church, a panel was installed to commemorate Novello, and in 1972, to mark the 21st anniversary of his death, a memorial stone was unveiled in St. Paul's Cathedral.

In 1993, the centenary of Novello's birth was marked by several celebratory shows around the UK, including one at the Players Theatre in London. In 2005, the Strand Theatre, above which Novello lived for many years, was renamed the Novello Theatre, with a plaque in his honour set at the entrance. On 27 June 2009, a statue of Novello was unveiled outside the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. Plaques detailing some of his best-known songs are fitted to the pedestal, along with a dedication to Novello. Novello's memory is promoted by The Ivor Novello Appreciation Bureau, which holds annual events around Britain, including an annual pilgrimage to Redroofs each June. Redroofs was sold after Novello's death, and is now a theatre training school.

Novello was portrayed in Robert Altman's 2001 film Gosford Park by Jeremy Northam, and several of his songs were used for the film's soundtrack, including "Waltz of My Heart", "And Her Mother Came Too", "I Can Give You the Starlight", "What a Duke Should Be", "Why Isn't It You?" and "The Land of Might-Have-Been". Jeremy Irvine played Novello in the 2021 Terence Davies film Benediction, about the life of his one-time lover, the war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Songs
Among Novello's well-known songs are "Keep the Home Fires Burning", "Fold Your Wings", "Shine Through My Dreams", "Rose of England", "I Can Give You the Starlight", "And Her Mother Came Too", "My Dearest Dear", "The Land of Might-Have-Been", "When I Curtsied to the King", "We'll Gather Lilacs", "Someday My Heart Will Awake", "Yesterday", "Waltz of My Heart", "Why Isn't It You", "My Life Belongs to You", "Fly Home Little Heart", "Take Your Girl" and "Primrose".

In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Webb writes that although Novello's oeuvre is generally thought of as "romantic" and "Ruritanian", his music "was far more varied than his current reputation suggests". Webb contends that such romantic hits as "Someday My Heart Will Awake" were balanced by "rousing operetta choruses ... and jazz age numbers" while Rose of England' is a stately patriotic piece that stands comparison with Elgar or Walton".

title: Ivor Novello


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Means of production

In political philosophy, the means of production refers to the generally necessary assets and resources that enable a society to engage in production. While the exact resources encompassed in the term may vary, it is widely agreed to include the classical factors of production (land, labour, and capital) as well as the general infrastructure and capital goods necessary to reproduce stable levels of productivity. It can also be used as an abbreviation of the "means of production and distribution" which additionally includes the logistical distribution and delivery of products, generally through distributors; or as an abbreviation of the "means of production, distribution, and exchange" which further includes the exchange of distributed products, generally to consumers.

The concept of "means of production" is used by researchers in various fields of study — including politics, economics, and sociology — to discuss, broadly, the relationship between anything that can have productive use, its ownership, and the constituent social parts needed to produce it.

Industrial production
From the perspective of a firm, a firm uses its capital goods, which are also known as tangible assets as they are physical in nature. Unfinished goods are transformed into products and services in the production process. Even if capital goods are not traded on the market as consumer goods, they can be valued as long as capital goods are produced commodities, which are required for production. The total values of capital goods constitute the capital value.

The social means of production are capital goods and assets that require organized collective labor effort, as opposed to individual effort, to operate on. The ownership and organization of the social means of production is a key factor in categorizing and defining different types of economic systems.

The means of production includes two broad categories of objects: instruments of labor (tools, factories, infrastructure, etc.) and subjects of labor (natural resources and raw materials). People operate on the subjects of labor using the instruments of labor to create a product; or stated another way, labor acting on the means of production creates a good. In an agrarian society the principal means of production is the soil and the shovel. In an industrial society the means of production become social means of production and include factories and mines.

Knowledge production
In a knowledge economy, learning, research, development, innovation, ideas and creativity are the means of [knowledge] production; communication such as books, articles, videos disseminated both physically and digitally over the Internet are a means of [knowledge] distribution. In a broad sense, the "means of production" also includes the "means of distribution" such as stores, the internet and railroads (Infrastructural capital).

Depreciation
The means of production of the firm may depreciate, which means there is a loss in the economic value of capital goods or tangible assets (e.g. machinery, factory equipment) due to wear and tear, and aging. This is known as the depreciation of capital goods.

Marxism and Marxist theory of class
The analysis of the technological sophistication of the means of production and how they are owned is a central component in the Marxist theoretical framework of historical materialism and in Marx's critique of political economy, and later in Marxian economics.

In Marx's work and subsequent developments in Marxist theory, the process of socioeconomic evolution is based on the premise of technological improvements in the means of production. As the level of technology improves with respect to productive capabilities, existing forms of social relations become superfluous and unnecessary as the advancement of technology integrated within the means of production contradicts the established organization of society and its economy.

The increasing efficiency of the means of production via the creation and adaptation of new technologies over time has a tendency to rearrange local and global market structures, leading to the disruption of existing profit pools, creating the possibility of massive economic impact. Disruptive technologies can lead to the devaluation of various forms of labor power, up to the point of making human labor power economically noncompetitive in certain applications, potentially widening income inequality.

According to Marx, escalating tension between the upper and lower class is a major consequence of technology decreasing the value of labor force and the contradictory effect an evolving means of production has on established social and economic systems. Marx believed increasing inequality between the upper and lower classes acts as a major catalyst of class conflicts, which develop to a point where the existing mode of production inevitably becomes unsustainable, either collapsing or being overthrown in a social revolution, at which point the contradictory relationship between technological advancement and the value of labor force is resolved by the emergence of a new mode of production based on a different set of social relations including, most notably, different patterns of ownership for the means of production.

Ownership of the means of production and control over the surplus product generated by their operation is the fundamental factor in delineating different modes of production. Capitalism is defined as private ownership and control over the means of production, where the surplus product becomes a source of unearned income for its owners. Under this system, profit-seeking individuals or organizations undertake a majority of economic activities. However, capitalism does not indicate all material means of production are privately owned as partial economies are publicly owned.

By contrast, socialism is defined as social ownership of the means of production so that the surplus product accrues to society at large.

Determinant of class
Marx's theory of class defines classes in their relation to their ownership and control of the means of production. In a capitalist society, the bourgeoisie, or the capitalist class, is the class that owns the means of production and derives a passive income from their operation. Examples of the capitalist class include business owners, shareholders and the minority of people who own factories, machinery and lands. Countries considered as the capitalist countries include Australia, Canada and other nations which hold a free market economy. In modern society, small business owners, minority shareholders and other smaller capitalists are considered as Petite bourgeoisie according to Marx's theory, which is distinct from bourgeoisie and proletariat as they can buy the labour of others but also work along with employees.

In contrast, the proletariat, or working class, comprises the majority of the population that lacks access to the means of production and are therefore induced to sell their labour power for a wage or salary to gain access to necessities, goods and services.

According to Marx, wages and salaries are considered as the price of labour power, related to working hours or outputs produced by the labour force. At the company level, an employee does not control and own the means of production in a capitalist mode of production. Instead, an employee is performing specific duties under a contract of employment, working for wages or salaries. As for firms and profit-seeking organizations, from a personnel economics perspective, to maximize efficiency and productivity there must be an equilibrium between labour markets and product markets. In human resource practices, compensation structure tends to shift towards pay-for-performance bonus or incentive pay rather than base salary to attract the right workers, even if conflicts of interest exist in an employer-worker relationship.

To the question of why classes exist in human societies in the first place, Karl Marx offered a historical and scientific explanation that it was the cultural practice of ownership of the means of production that gives rise to them. This explanation differs dramatically from other explanations based on "differences in ability" between individuals or on religious or political affiliations giving rise to castes. This explanation is consistent with the bulk of Marxist theory in which Politics and Religion are seen as mere outgrowths (superstructures) of the basic underlying economic reality of a people.

Related terms
Factors of production are defined by German philosopher Karl Marx in his book Das Kapital as labor, subjects of labor, and instruments of labor: the term is equivalent to means of production plus labor. The factors of production are often listed in economic writings derived from the classical school as "land, labour and capital". Marx sometimes used the term "productive forces" equivalently with "factors of production"; in Kapital, he uses "factors of production", in his famous Preface to his Critique of Political Economy: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, he uses "productive forces" (that may depend on the translation).

Production relations (German: Produktionsverhältnis) are the relations humans enter into with each other in using the means of production to produce. Examples of such relations are employer/employee, buyer/seller, the technical division of labour in a factory, and property relations.

Mode of production (German: Produktionsweise) means the dominant way in which production is organised in society. For instance, "capitalism" is the name for the capitalist mode of production in which the means of production are owned privately by a small class (the bourgeoisie) who profits off the labor of the working class (the proletariat). Communism is a mode of production in which the means of production are not owned by anyone, but shared in common, without class-based exploitation. Besides capitalism and communism, there is another mode of production which is called a Mixed Economic System. In a mixed economy, private ownership of capital goods are protected and a certain level of the market economy is allowed. However, the government has the right to intervene in the market and economic activities for social objectives. Different from the pure capitalism, the government regulation exists to control particular means of production over the private business sector. Different from communism, the majority of means of production are privately owned rather than shared in common.

title: Means of production


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Talk:Means of production

Untitled
Marx's analysis is mostly of historical interest now, but many of those who follow him in feminist, green, and labor circles are of increasing influence.

Therefore I treat this article as a bit of a guide to those newer theories, and make clear the way that a "means" employed by the individual worker or work team must be differentiated from a "factor" in an abstract analysis of a proces from the top down. That assumption is everywhere in Marx's analysis, and it's linguistically determined by the careful differentiation of 'means' from 'factors' by every Marxist I've ever met. Even the phrase 'factors of production' tends to get Marxists angry so they might not like the way that I have characterized means *as* factors. But that's the most neutral way to go, since the wikipedia will be read by rabid greens, rabid libertarians, rabid feminists, etc. Damn hard even to *explain* Marx to these people... sigh.

There's another page that handles "factors of production". There's no need to define "means of production" as "factors of production" and then describe "factors of productdion" here on the "means of production" page. That only makes the task of explaining Marxism that much harder. --Cplot 16:02, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Saying that Marx "considered it immoral" is a serious distortion of Marxism, which is not based (or supposedly not based, and I certainly think not really in this area) on moral factors. This is hardly NPOV. First say what Marxism 'claims', then you might say that people disagree with it and what Marxism says are extra-moral factors are viewed by Marxism's opponents as really moral, and what is the basis of the anti-Marxists' argument. Furthermore, saying that "Marx's analysis is mostly of historical interest now" is at least controversial, and I would argue blatantly false. Read the 18th Brumaire! Read almost anything Marx ever wrote! Because a lot of state-capitalist, anti-Marxist bureaucracies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe collapsed, what does that have to do with anything, and if it does, isn't it exactly what Marx says would happen in the 18th Brumaire?

Daniel C. Boyer

 * Personally I suspect that Marx really did consider it immoral, but I agree that saying so raises POV issues. Mark Foskey 17:51, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

"Because a lot of state-capitalist, anti-Marxist bureaucracies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe collapsed"

Why do you consider them to be "state-capitalist and anti-marxist bureaucracies"? Just because they collapsed and Marx said his system wouldn't collapse? please, every respectable economist in the world recognizes Eastern Europe and the USSR as marxist economies.

Read something, PLEASE! 200.74.67.242 (talk) 09:37, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

"But that's the most neutral way to go, since the wikipedia will be read by rabid greens, rabid libertarians, rabid feminists, etc. Damn hard even to *explain* Marx to these people... sigh."

Try to explain the austrian business cycle, capital theory, the subjective theory of value and the economic calculation problem to a rabid marxist.... now THATS HARD! 200.74.67.242 (talk) 09:37, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

"Fat ladies must be remembered as a thing of the past, look forward to skinny ladies."

I was having a serious time here reading, from the proletarian page to here, and then I saw this, it makes me laugh. Wikipedia is a horrible place for learning, really, in all.

I added a sentence mentioning the term's link to Marxism at the end of the first paragraph, just to provide context for the reference to Marx in the next paragraph. Mark Foskey 17:51, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it's fair to say (as the article does) that this is a term largely drawn from Marxist writings. Unfortunately the article then changes into a discussion of 'factors of production" when there is already a page for that. And since "factors of production" have a specific meaning across various stands of political economy -- and one very different than "means of production" -- much of this should be moved to the "factors of production" page.

Marxism defines means of production in a rather straightforward manner as literally the means to produce. This includes the instruments of labor such as tools, machinery and the power-plants that drive that machinery. It also includes principal and accessory raw materials used to produce a finished product.

Marx also carefully distinguishes means of production from Capital. Means of production only become capital within a capital process: i.e., a process of self expanding value. In the case of means of production participating in a capital process that most liekly means an industrial capitalist class process.

"Factors of production" should be at most a footnote in this discussion but instead are the central theme of the article.

Proudhon and the anarchists
I'll need to check, but I'm sure Proudhon used a version of this phrase (in French, obviously) before Marx and Engels developed their theories. It's also a term that's been used by anarchists ever since. This really needs to be properly reflected in the article (the term "factors of production" is rarely, if ever, used IIRC). Donnacha 17:26, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

 * I looked at some Proudhon and he does use the phrase. It looks as though Marx learned the phrase from French Sociaism. Though I didn't see Proudhon using it in a systematic and analysitical manner that Marx does. --Cplot 20:32, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Means of (social or biological) production
The "means of production" can also refer to producing and raising children. (unsigned)

 * I'm fairly certain that would be termed the means of reproduction, and frankly anyone describing reproduction while using the term production is probably not a biologist. Darkmagine (talk) 04:14, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Unclear
This was an extremely helpful article. However, the more I pondered this section, the less sense it made:

Means of production is sometimes confused with factors of production. The term factors of production is typically understood as an explanation for income as duly paid to owners of each means of production and also to the workers themselves within capitalism.

I think it needs to be rewritten to enhance clarity! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.108.18.51 (talk) 07:40, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. --causa sui talk 17:06, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

 * Yes, it needs work; I will try to get to it if noone else does. 72.228.150.44 (talk) 00:20, 16 February 2009 (UTC) Yea

This page really needs an austrian or neoclassic approach
It would be really helpful to have the definition of the Austrian School or the Neoclassical School about the means of production. Agrofelipe (talk) 10:06, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

digital economy
And in digital economy human attention is a mean of production. Not easy to externalize or proceduralize, but Google's CEO could tell you about processes of conditioning their employees. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.11.95.119 (talk) 10:58, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

definition issue
'where the surplus product becomes a source of unearned income for its owners.'

What do you mean 'unearned'? Where does this definition come from? Not Marx because he never argued that surplus value comes from thievery or robbery or from 'buying cheap and selling dear.' That is what 'unearned' implies. Under capitalist private property relations, it is legally considered EARNED income for the owners, board of directors and shareholders even if they were not involved in the actual physical process of producing that surplus-value. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 19:33, 1 August 2014 (UTC)

title: Talk:Means of production