Why is there even a "debate" about whether the industrial revolution was a good thing or not?Living standards for the working class(working hours, incomes, safety) was all radically improved from 1800 to 1900. All of this was a result of production becoming more efficient, less inputs being used to produce more outputs. It was the working class who was receiving the end stage output of this production. No, it had literally nothing to do with unions or government passing laws, the improvements happened mostly in non-union sectors.The people that deny this are sociopaths that want to block this poverty reducing process and deserve to be imprisoned or executed as traitors to the working class. I'm talking about socialists, fascists, central bank supporters and communists. They all deserve death.
>>18767239OK. Read Upton Sinclair's Jungle or Engels' Condition of the Working Class in England or the countless books that were pumped out in this period of time describing the poverty, despair, humiliation, and oppression that the working class faced. The Enclosure Acts in England, where a good amount of radical literature arose, described a brutal process of alienation and impoverishment. To be stripped of a more traditional and slow-paced form of life and thrown into a city to work for most of the day in hot, dark, and toxic environments, to make just enough to get products of subpar quality is not an improved form of life.
>>18767239>Why is there even a "debate" about whether the industrial revolution was a good thing or not?>Living standards for the working class(working hours, incomes, safety) was all radically improved from 1800 to 1900.>It was the working class who was receiving the end stage output of this productionThe average doohicky or tech innovation took around 75 to 80 years to actually have any meanginful impact on the quality of a persons life at the bottom. So, functionally: the luddites smashing spinny-jennies, burning tractors, etc.. Were completely rational in this response. They'd live their entire lives being redundant, useless, and unemployable - tons of people who were alive and made obsolete by the "revolution" spent their entire lives, their kids lives, and a little bit of their grandchildren's lives, living in miserable conditions worse than when they were tenants or peasants. Objectively most people living during any part of the Industrial Revolution experienced a period of constant humiliation, police-state suppression, non-existent labor and property rights, mass deportations, penal enslavement, disease, famine, environmental destruction, etc.. etc.. >The people that deny this are sociopathsIn "Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea, and Japan" - a book written by F.H. King documenting a science visit to East Asia in 1902 (he was the head of USDA Bureau of Soils sent to study organic agriculture); King notes several times how basically none of the people in China/Korea/Japan are missing their legs, hands, arms, and that being horribly maimed was fairly rare. Rare because they hadn't yet undergone massive industrialization, so no arms or hands to get caught in combines, threshers, etc..
The degrading conditions in the meantime happened for Malthusian reasons. In the period Englands population jumped from 7 to 30 million or something like that, Now, did people need to pump out babies like that for the industrial revolution to take place? No one really knows. And with society self immolating from zero non-migrant birth rates neither will there be any future historians to figure it out.
>>18767239>it had literally nothing to do with unions
>>18767266>Upton Sinclair's Jungle or Engels' Condition of the Working Class in EnglandSinclair has himself said his book is a work of fiction based on hearsay. Legislation it was used to push was supported by big business since they knew their smaller competitors couldn't afford the compliance costs.Engels based his relations on parliamentary hearings from the immediate post-napoleonic period that had bangers that sounded like "workers in factories can afford tea, which they couldn't afford as farmers, today tea, tomorrow tea with rum, next week alcoholism" or complaining that they can afford to dress their children better and are spoiling them while at the same time claiming that industrial work is worse for said children than farm work. That's your condition of the working class.
>>18767239>central bank supportersThey are pro-capitalist though what are you talking about
>>18767796Managerialists*The blindness to the managerial revolution and managerial class is what turned left into bobos.
>>18767266>Read Upton Sinclair's Jungle or Engels' Condition of the Working Class in EnglandlmaoThe jungle was literally a work of fiction.Also working conditions radically improved from engel's time until his death that he and marx had to admit conditions improved.None of this disproves the fact that living standards improved from 1800 to 1900.>Enclosure Acts in EnglandNecessary and radically increased production and reduced poverty and food scarcity.
>>18767280>worse than when they were tenants or peasants.This isn't true whatsoever. Peasant life on a farm was far far worse.Why do you people lie about how bad peasant life was?>>18767328>>it had literally nothing to do with unionsProve it then.They were only 5% of the workforce and constantly lost their battles. Why didn living standards increase anyway?
>>18767796>pro-capitalist thoughLMFAO WHAT?The golden age of capitalism in america had no central bank.Central banks are a socialist government intervention in the market used to benefit politicians and the elite.Marx himself supported central banks. Every socialist state in history had a central bank.It's Libertarians who want to abolish central banking.
>>18767939Capitalism but centralised under a state (a state dominated by the interests of capital one might add) is still capitalism, not a very hard concept to grasp.>every socialist state in historywas badly managed state capitalism>but marxHe did advocate for a state controlled central bank in the aftermath of a revolution but he didn't call that socialism.
>>18767959>capitalism is when the government does stuffThis is why everyone mocks marxist retards when they say insane shit like this.According to this retarded theory, you can have the most government controlled economy in history but it's still "capitalism" if marxists subjectively "feel" capitalists control the state.The actual argument is about how free/liberal an economy is. We're talking about free markets vs unfree markets.Central banking is a government intervention in the market, thus it's not capitalism.There's a reason why socialists love central banking.>not a very hard concept to graspNobody cares about what schizo flat earth marxists redefine things as.>was badly managed state capitalismlmao yeah pol pot and maoist china were capitalism, GOT IT>but he didn't call that socialism.He did actually, he advocated for it in the manifesto and claimed it was socialism.
>>18767239So what are some good books about this period?
>>18768196https://mises.org/library/book/transformation-american-economy-1865-1914
>>18767239>living standardswhat does this even mean?
>>18767280>missing their legs, hands, arms,That is all too apparent living and working in the breadbasket of the Americas, better in the last generation perhaps but it seems farmers and ranchers are more stressed than ever before. Not just losing body parts but the entire farm. There was no avoiding this pain when the ratio of people working on farms to living in cities was so radically altered through the industrial revolution. For better or worse it just is, there is no going back now without even more pain than getting here in the first place. Like mountain climbing really, it's always the descent that gets people.
>>18768009>maoist china was capitalism, GOT ITYes but unironically, same with Stalin's Soviet UnionThe emphasis might lay more heavily on the state part of state capitalism but state capitalism is still capitalism
>>18768600>this horror hellscape my ideology created is actually YOUR FAULT chudThis is why nobody takes marxists seriously, they aren't serious people.Is north korea state capitalism too even though the government literally owns everything?
>>18768609I don't give a fuck about ideology i am not talking about ideology. When I am talking about capitalism I am not talking about an ideology i am talking about an economic system. >even though the government owns everything Yes, even if the government owns everything. Socialism isn't just "the government does stuff" and capitalism isn't just "the government does nothing"
>>18768627>i am talking about an economic system.Me too? I was just referring to your marxist ideology, which is why you believe in retarded things like "state capitalism".>Yes, even if the government owns everything. LOL Okay. Please tell me why north korea is still "capitalism". This should be funny.>Socialism isn't just "the government does stuff" and capitalism isn't just "the government does nothing"I didn't say they simply do stuff. I said they own the means of production. They do this through a workers vanguard party. Capitalism and private property are not allowed. How is this magically "capitalism"?Try answering without being dishonest.
>>18768701>state capitalismis hardly an exclusively marxist concept.>They do this through a workers vanguard party. Capitalism and private property are not allowed. How is this magically "capitalism"?>Try answering without being dishonest.In marxist terminology what you describe would be called the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The DotP is not socialism, the primary features of capitalist production remain in place, but the state is now in the hands of a party which represents the class interests of the Proletariat. There you now have the actual marxist answer.>but private property-Property owned by the state rather than a single individual is still property. A business enterprise managed by state administrators is still a business enterprise.