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> My view is that the industrial revolution devised machines which, whilst increasing the efficiency of production, helped to increase the efficiency by which s

> My view is that the industrial revolution devised machines which, whilst increasing the efficiency of production, helped to increase the efficiency by which states and key individuals were able to extract wealth from others... as time progressed, the people started to become aware of the inequality. Your armchair version of economic history seems a little squishy. What of the earlier inequality? What of the landed nobility, kings and barons and knights, the historical elites which we had before the entrepreneurial ones? Were the people simply blind to the inequality at the time? And if the result of the industrial revolution is construed as a better way to extract wealth from human beings, then why were both elites and commoners materially better off than they were as serfs? <editorializing on> Heaven forbid that we should respect capital investment for being able to generate wealth better and more efficiently. Surely this would be a betrayal of class solidarity and the dignity of labor.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
>And if the result of the industrial revolution is construed as a better way to extract wealth from human beings, then why were both elites and commoners materially better off than they were as serfs? Simply put: they weren't. The very first labor movements were formed precisely because the landless proletarians of the Industrial Revolution were actually worse off (in terms of objectively measurable things like disease rates, nutrition, sanitation, average height) than their parents and grandparents had been as peasants (mind, this is at least partially because the period just before the Industrial Revolution was, in many countries, unusually prosperous for the peasantry).
- fennecfoxen 12y ago
  > mind, this is at least partially because the period just before the Industrial Revolution was, in many countries, unusually prosperous for the peasantry That much is fair enough, as a short-term matter then.
- crazy1van 12y ago
  > Simply put: they weren't. Not sure this can truly be "simply put". On the one hand there was manual labor on the farm with very simple amenities like an outhouse and well water and no ability to advance as you're literally doing the same job your ancestors have done for centuries, but work ended at sun down and people had substantial control over their daily lives. On the other hand, in industry there was less physically demanding labor for (relatively) more money and living in conditions with heat and water, but your work day might be 14 hours, you could easily be gravely injured at work, and your apartment was shared with a dozen people. Both seem to have pluses and minuses to me. For whatever reason, people chose to leave the farm and enter industry.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago

>And if the result of the industrial revolution is construed as a better way to extract wealth from human beings, then why were both elites and commoners materially better off than they were as serfs? Simply put: they weren't. The very first labor movements were formed precisely because the landless proletarians of the Industrial Revolution were actually worse off (in terms of objectively measurable things like disease rates, nutrition, sanitation, average height) than their parents and grandparents had been as peasants (mind, this is at least partially because the period just before the Industrial Revolution was, in many countries, unusually prosperous for the peasantry).

fennecfoxen 12y ago
> mind, this is at least partially because the period just before the Industrial Revolution was, in many countries, unusually prosperous for the peasantry That much is fair enough, as a short-term matter then.
crazy1van 12y ago
> Simply put: they weren't. Not sure this can truly be "simply put". On the one hand there was manual labor on the farm with very simple amenities like an outhouse and well water and no ability to advance as you're literally doing the same job your ancestors have done for centuries, but work ended at sun down and people had substantial control over their daily lives. On the other hand, in industry there was less physically demanding labor for (relatively) more money and living in conditions with heat and water, but your work day might be 14 hours, you could easily be gravely injured at work, and your apartment was shared with a dozen people. Both seem to have pluses and minuses to me. For whatever reason, people chose to leave the farm and enter industry.