6. The Industrial Revolution

Transcription

1 6. The Industrial Revolution Friedrich Engels The history of the proletariat in England begins with the invention of the steam engine and of machinery for working cotton. These inventions gave rise to an industrial revolution, a revolution which altered the whole of civil society. Friedrich Engels, 1845

2 Enlightenment : The Industrial Revolution In the 18th century, a series of inventions transformed the manufacturing of cotton in England and gave rise to a new mode or production -- the factory system. During these years, other branches of industry effected comparable advances, and all these together, mutually reinforcing one another, made possible further gains on an ever-widening front. The abundance and variety of these innovations almost defy compilation, but they may be subsumed under three principles: the substitution of machines -- rapid, regular, precise, tireless -- for human skill and effort; the substitution of inanimate for animate sources of power, in particular, the introduction of engines for converting heat into work, thereby opening to man a new and almost unlimited supply of energy; the use of new and far more abundant raw materials, in particular, the substitution btitti of mineral lfor vegetable tbl or animal substances. bt These improvements constitute the Industrial Revolution. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus, 1969

3 [audio] [text] Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Charles Darwin (1859) The Industrial Revolution and the Academy In the 19 th century, critical thought was extended into the domain of human social life by Comte and Spencer. Applied to the problems of capitalism, it produced the searching social and economic critique of Karl Marx. Applied to the history of human culture and the basis of biological life, it led to Darwin s Descent of Man. Applied to the unconscious mind, it is reflected in the works of Sigmund Freud. Applied to cultures it led to the establishment of the field of Anthropological studies. Applied to language, it led to the field of Linguistics. Paul, Elder and Bartell, 1997

4 The Emergence of the Social Sciences It has seemed wiser to me to follow the real truth of the matter rather than what we imagine it to be. For speculation has created many Principalities and Republics such as have never been known to have any real existence; for how we live is so different from how we ought to live that t he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation. A man striving in every way to be good will meet his ruin among so many who are evil. -Machiavelli : The Prince, Ch. 15. The social sciences were born toward the end of a century which most contemporaries understood as one of unprecedented change, instability and crisis in every dimension of European life. Because of the widespread sense of crisis, virtually all mid seventeenth century intellectuals were obsessed with restoring or creating foundations for social, economic, religious, and/or conceptual order in the face of perceived anarchic and chaotic tendencies. -Olson, p. 6. Thus, the first generation of early social scientists tended to ascribe the sources of almost all human actions to the vices of greed, ambition, and lust and to virtually ignore the existence of altruistic and charitable impulses. The major focus of their concern was thus on the need to offer strategies and structures to control, manage, or somehow counter the vices. -Olson, p. 14.

5 Critical Reason & Political Economy Men, in the social production which they carry on, enter into definite relations which are indispensable and independent of their wills; and these relations correspond to a definite stage in the development of their material powers of production. [ ] It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness. Marx, Das Kapital, p. xvi. Karl Marx The philosophical, religious, and moral values of each age could be plausibly comprehended d as determined d by economic and political variables [ ] class struggle, not civilized progress, was the program of the foreseeable future. -Tarnas, p. 389 The labourer, divorced from direct access to the land or other means of production, cannot realise directly the value of his productive power, but can only sell his labour-power to a capitalist in order to get the means of life. The existence of a working class, thus divorced d from the means of production, is essential to the existence of capitalism; and the genesis of this class is also the genesis of capitalist society. -Marx, p. xxii.

6 Scientism and Revolutionary Science Charles Darwin Charles Darwin The industrial and democratic revolutions, and the rise of the West to global hegemony, brought forth the concrete technological, economic, social, and political concomitants of that world view, which was thus further affirmed and elevated in its cultural sovereignty. And in modern science s culminating triumph over traditional religion, i Darwin s theory of evolution brought the origin of nature s species and man himself within the compass of natural science and the modern outlook. -Tarnas, p Science replaced religion as [the] preeminent intellectual authority, as definer, judge, and guardian of the cultural world view. Human reason and empirical observation replaced theological doctrine and scriptural revelation as the principle p means for comprehending the universe. The domains of religion and metaphysics became gradually compartmentalized, regarded as personal, subjective, speculative, and fundamentally distinct from public objective knowledge of the empirical world. -Tarnas, p. 286.

7 Where Science & Philosophy Meet Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science. -Charles Darwin, Introduction to The Descent of Man, 1871 Industrial revolutions constitute t those rare occasions in world history when the human species alters its framework of existence Like the Neolithic revolution, industrial revolutions bring fundamental changes in the ways people work, where they live, the potential economic surplus available, and the numbers of people who can be supported around the world. Hinshaw, p.vii-viii Thus too was Darwin liberating and diminishing. Man could now recognize that he rode forth at the crest of evolution s advance [ ] but he was also just an animal of no higher purpose. With Freud, the Darwinian struggle with nature took on new dimensions, as man was Constrained to live in eternal struggle with his own nature. -Tarnas, p. 329.

8 The Politics of Class & Power Structures By the nineteenth century, both organized religion and the religious impulse itself had been subjected by Karl Marx to a forceful and acute social-political critique- and prophetically redirected to embrace the revolutionary cause. In Marx s analysis, all ideas and cultural l forms reflected material motivations, specifically the dynamics of class struggle, and religion was no exception. Tarnas, pp Although it is granted that the political and ideological elements can influence the economic structure, it is the development of the latter which produces social change: at a certain stage of their evolution the forces of production develop as far as they can under the existing economic and political organization of society, which then becomes a barrier to their further development, and a period of social revolution starts in which new economic and political relationships [ ] are established. Bullock, Stallybrass & Trombley, p. 504.

9 Summary The two central features of industrialization revolutions in technology and in the organization of productionyielded one clear result: a great increase in the total output of goods and in individual worker output. Hinshaw, p. viii-ix. With the emergence of economies of scale and mass production techniques the Industrial Revolution would not only revolutionise the means of production but lead to a crisis in modern thought, characterised by alienation, angst, disillusionment and ultimately mass destruction.

10 Summary However, although Karl Marx argued: From each according to their means to each according to their needs this maxim would not immediately find solace in an era driven by mass production and class division, i i instead, only later would an attempt t be made to implement notions of class equality through revolution. The organizational facet of industrial revolution was initially symbolized by the factory, but the organizational principles spread beyond the factory itself. [ ] Even though many early industrial factories were small, they promoted the grouping of greater numbers of people for the production process. They also increased the amount of specialization; tasks were subdivided, which increased the total production even aside from new technology. -Hinshaw, p. viii

11 [module title: Macro-skills] That is the end of the Module 8 Content: The Industrial Revolution Follow the links below to commence the macro and micro skills training for this module Identifying, analysing and cultivating the critical-evaluative approach [link] Th di l i l h d d The dialectical method and texts as conversations [link]