Figure 1.-- |
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A Dutch reader has taken our discussion of the English speaking people, absolutism, and the Industrial Revolution a step further. He writes, "Without trying to get involved in the very interesting discussions, I would like to point out that all through the 19th century also in England the majority of the workers were forced to live in abject poverty. Dickens illustrated that so well in his books. However, I am surprised that you don't mention Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the authors of "The Communist Manifesto" (London, 1848). Both men had moved to England where they died. Engels, who's father owned a factory in Manchester, wrote "Condition of the working class in England" (1844), a critical work as the title suggests. Socialism and communism were inevitable political movements. Even an arch-conservative as the Prussian Bismarck adopted some socialist ideas like old-age pension for German factory workers. But on the whole the "proletarians" were being exploited without mercy. Of course, we all know where communism eventually led to, but it was a necessary development during the Industrial Revolution." I think this is a very important comment. Here our reader expresses a very commonly held theory that the Industrial Revolution created poverty. Here we disagree, but our reader concludes with a point that we do agree with--where socialism leads. We think is comment is very important because it leads to the key as to why the English speaking world has prevailed over time--opposition to absolutism. A reason also that helps explain why the Dutch have been so sucessful. This is an especially intriguing question. The English were as Europe emerged from the medieval era, a very small kingdom located on the perifery of Europe. England had a relatively small population, much smaller than Germany and France. It did not have the intelectual tradition of Italy or the wealth of Portugal and Spain. Scholars in the 15th century could not have imsgined that that the future could possibly evolve a world in which English would the international language and that the English speaking peoples would become such a dominany force in politics, military power, literature, and science.
The English were as Europe emerged from the medieval era, a very small kingdom located on the perifery of Europe. England had a relatively small population, much smaller than Germany and France. It did not have the intelectual tradition of Italy or the wealth of Portugal and Spain. Scholars in the 15th century could not have imsgined that that the future could possibly evolve a world in which English would the international language and that the English speaking peoples would become such a dominany force in politics, military power, literature, and science. So why did small, backward England become so important.
Surely one factor explaining the sucess of the English and the growth of the English speaking peoples was geography. England was an island country and on the western perifery of England. This meant that first it was naturak for Europe to develop a sefaring tradition. Second it mean that Britain was nor surrounded by hostile countries, a situation that impaired countries like France, Germany, and Oiland. Third, posed on the Atlanyic coast it was ideally situated to both colonize North ameruca, but also particupate in foreign commerce, including the trade routes to the East that the Portuguese opened. The Ottoman seizure of Constantinople helped end the ability of Venice and other Italian city states to participate in the trade with the East. This moved the balance of European poer west. Portugal and pain were the first to benefit, but in the end it was Britain which would benefit. Thus geography created the conditions in which England could benefit, but something was happening in England that allowed them to capitalize on the opportunities offered. After all France also had an tlantic coast and was a much larger country in population than England in the 16th century. And Iberia (Portugal and Spain) is virtually an island itself and like England, not surounded by competing powers.
We believe that what separated England apart from its European rivals was the struggle against absolutism. That struggle was conducted in both the political and religious realm. The history of England is the struggle against absolutism. First the domestic English struggle against the effort of successive dunasties (from the Plagtanfnents to the Stewarts) to convert divine right monarchy into absolutist rule. Second the international struggle against French and Spanish Catholic absolutism. And a by product of the struggle against absolutism was unlocking of the full capacity of the human mind and spirit that produced the greatest scientist od the age--Sir Issac Newton. The English had not monopoly on intelligent people. Gailleo was a towering figure in science, but compare how Galileo was tried as a heritic and how Newton was honored by the British Crown. The spread of the Reformation in England also resulted in an expansion of education and the weakening of Church controls on intellectual life. And the power of the crown was gradually weakened by the growing power of Parliament. This created even more diversity and free thought in England. Some of the same things were going on in other parts of Europe, but it was in Europe that relative stability, weakening influence of the Church, limits on state power, wealth from trade, free scientific inquiry, and ither factors all came together. The result was the Industrial Revolution. And this tradition of academic freedom continued in the 19th century. Note where Karl Marx came to write his monumental works.
The influence of Socialist acadenics and the appeal of Socilaist ideologuy (actually a form of theology) to aorld looking for a panacea has result in the idea that the Industrial Revolution created poverty. This is the absolute opposite of what the Industrial Revolution actuially did--it created wealth. The live of Europeans were transformed by the wealth created. Europeans by the end of the 19th century lived lives increadibly more prosperous than the ones they lived at the beginning of the 19th century. Now of course authors like Charles Dickens have left of literary masterpieces describing the terrible poverty of the mid-19th century industrial slums. But left unsaid is that the vast proportion of Europeans before the Industrial Revolution lived in poverty. In America read about what life was like before the Industrial Revolution. The childhood of Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln give excellent examples of rural poverty before the Industrial revolution. This can be see in the Third Workd today. Great poverty can be seen in virtually any Third World city. Huge numbers of people are migrating from the country side to the cities. As bad as the poverty is, the people come because conditions are even worse in frural areas. There are two primary reasons reason that we associate poverty with the Industrial Revolution. First it concentrated poverty into the new cities where it was easily observed. Second it created an expanding new prosperous class, the middle class and skilled workers, who for the first time were above the poverty level and could be horrified by poverty and, for example afford to purchase the Dickens books. Before the Indusyrial Revolution, poverty was the state in which most people lived and thus not perceived as a terrible social problem. The Industrial Revolutuion created such wealth that poverty for the first time was seen as a social problem by the prosperous moiddle class that had been lifted above poverty.
One byproduct of the wealth created by the Industrial Revolution was the very concept of childhood. This is a very modern concept one that emerged from Victorian England as the country was being transformed by the Industrial Revolution. Childhood is now seen as a ime of dependency when a young person should be afforded the opportunity to play and attend school to prepare homself for the future. Forcing a child to work is seen as a kind of child abuse. This concept did not exist before the Industrial Revolution. Most children in the 18th century began to work from a very early age and it was not seen as unusual or cruel. It was indeed often necessary to sustain the family. Children from affluent families began educating children at a very early age and play was often seen as whicked or at least slothful. This changed after the start of the industrial revolution. The Industrial Revolution created walth in unheard of quantities. Sudenly large numbers of people, and not just the elite, no longer needed theur children to work, And child labor began to be seen as wrong. There certainly child labor during the industrial revolution, but it was only with the Industrial Revolution that the campaign to end child labor began.
The Industrial Revolution transformed fashion as well. Elaborate fashions like the Fauntleroy suits of the late 19th century came about because the nouveal rich benefitting from the Industrial Revolution wanted to flaunt their success. And it is not accident that the Fauntleroy suit was so popular in America. Large numbers of Americans for the first time had achieved affluence as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Most came from humble backgrounds. And thus mothers had the opportunity to show off their success with fancy velvet suits and lace collars as well as some times ringlet curls. And because the Indistrial Revolution notonly created wealth, but reduced the cost of goods, even working class families could afford to dress their children well.
The image of the Industrial Revolution and poverty is also perpetrated in America by the conditions in the slums of the large industrial cities. The conditions have been widely described as well as chroniicled by photographers who dicumented conditions, in particulsr child labor. But as bad as conditions were, and they were bad, why then did millions of peopke come to America. The reason is simple. Most of the immigrants came from rural areas of Europe where conditions were even worse. In effect, the Industrial Revolution and America meant a substantial improvement in their lives. This can best be seen with the Italians. Large numbers came to America, worked for a few years and returned to Italy with enough money to buy a farm or small business.
There is no doubt that capitalists exploited workers. And thst many workers including children suffered as a result of that exploitation in the 19th century and eatly 20th century. Abnd there is also no doubt that a range of socialist reforms such as old age pensions and the labor movement have corrected many of the worst abuses. This should not disguise the fact that the high wages modern workers receive are geberated by the Indistrial Revolution and the free enterprise system. Socialism has proved to be not only a failed economic system, but also a system that perpetuated worker exploitation. Socialism has proven to be an economic system that destroyed rather than created wealth. All the socialist states of the 20th century (Soviet Union, Eastern European satellites, Cuba, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and North Korea) are defined by one common attribute--poverty. The Socialists states also proved sterile in cultural terms. Think for a monment, what great technological advance came from the Socialist states? What advances in meducine. What great books or famed works of art came from the Socialist woirld? And even worse the combination of combining political dictatorship with central economic planning proved lethal. Not only were workers denied basic rights, but the end result was mass murder. This occurred most horifically in the Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Korea, and Cambodia, but there were substantial killing in Eastern Europe and Cuba as well. The workerrs' paradises were forced to build a wall from Stetin to Trirste to keep their people from fleeing west. If you talk with Socialists, they claim for example, that Stalin was aberation and that the Soviet Union was not a true Socialist state. The poblem is that the same thing occurred in every Socialist state to varying degrees. Interestingly, Islamiists use the same argument. If you point out the backwardness, the poverty, and lack of education common in the Muslim world, they claim that this is because the Muslim countries are to secular and not Islamic states. The problem with this armument is that the more Islamic the countries are, the poorer they are. (Here to accurately assess the impact of Islam you have to leave out oil wealth.) Of course it is no accident that Socialists and Islamicists use the same basic argument. Both are theological systems that seek to impose absolutist controls on the human spirit.
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