Industrialization, Class Struggle, and Technological Advance
The Spread of Industrialization
Industrialization in Europe
At the beginning of the 19th century, Great Britain was the only country in the world with significant industrial development, caused by the Industrial Revolution. In other parts of Europe, the survival of the Old Regime’s economic, political, and social institutions did not allow for the new technological and organizational advances to spread. Furthermore, British goods flooded the markets, and it was almost impossible for local producers to compete.
During the first half of the 19th century, however, revolutions brought about liberal ideas in politics, society, and the economy, making it possible for some regions to start their own industrialization. These regions (Northern France, Belgium, the Rhine region in Germany) had a tradition in manufacturing, easy access to raw materials such as coal, and easy transport by rivers. They started importing British machinery and technology, and the liberal states brought down internal frontiers and eased internal trade. Agricultural production improved, demographics changed, and people started flocking to cities (rural exodus) to work in the new factories built on the outskirts. The textile industry flourished, as well as the iron and steel blast furnaces. Railway networks started to be built, demanding more products from the industries and attracting even more population, which would, in turn, demand these new industrial goods. The industrialization was set in motion, and by the mid-19th century, these regions had reached the levels of industrialization of Britain, which, nevertheless, continued to be the main industrial power.
A third wave of industrialization, the so-called “latecomers,” started in the second half of the 19th century, when some regions in “peripheral” countries began their own process of industrialization. Spain (textiles in Catalonia and the iron industry in the Basque Country), Italy (Piedmont and Lombardy), Portugal, Austria (Bohemia and Moravia), and Russia started, very slowly, to develop these industries. Industrialization was slow in these countries where agriculture was still underdeveloped, and social, economic, and political barriers from the Old Regime were not yet removed, creating significant regional imbalances that still exist today.
Outside Europe, the United States and Japan (Meiji Revolution) also started their own industrialization processes, which would make them industrial powers by the end of the century.
The Appearance of Class Society
The spread of industrialization meant that the population grew very quickly. In urban areas, the population that migrated from the countryside could not be quickly absorbed, so new neighborhoods sprang up on the outskirts of cities. This urban growth was uncontrolled and unchecked, creating poor conditions for the workers, who usually built their own houses (shacks) in huge neighborhoods with no access to basic services (drinking water, sewage systems, street lighting, schools, etc.), which we call slums. In most cities, entire families had to live in just one room, sharing their kitchens and latrines with other families. Sanitation was poor, so diseases like cholera were frequent.
Workers had only their hands and physical strength to depend on. Factory workers lived in miserable conditions, with shifts that usually went between 12 and 15 hours a day, 6 days a week. Children had to start working very early (6-8 years old) as the wages from factory jobs were not enough to sustain a family, despite men earning twice as much as children or women for doing the same job.
Insecurity dominated workers’ lives, as there was not any kind of subsidy for those who had an accident, lost their job, or were too old to work.
On the other hand, the disappearance of the society of the Old Regime meant that a new elite was created, based only on their wealth. In the higher classes, the nobility of the old regime, which had lost their privileges but not their lands and wealth, were joined by the more prominent members of the bourgeoisie, owners of banks, industries, railways, etc. This new elite would dominate the new liberal states and make them work to their advantage.
Alongside the higher classes, a new middle class appeared, composed of skilled artisans, local merchants, and mainly professionals (lawyers, engineers, teachers, doctors, etc.) who had access to education and lived comfortable lives.
For these new elites, and to control the sprawl of the cities, urban planning was created. Ensanches were urban plans where new neighborhoods were created. These new neighborhoods separated the classes, with different planning, services, transport, and buildings for the bourgeois and workers’ areas.
The Rise of Labor Movements
Some members of society, especially those in the educated middle class, took notice of the blatant inequalities of this new society and of the miserable conditions of the workers, and started to develop new ideologies that would address the problem.
In the early 19th century, there were some attempts at creating new communities where economic and social equality and solidarity were priorities, such as New Lanark in Glasgow, founded by Robert Owen. These were called Utopian Socialists, but their attempts were unsuccessful in the long term.
By the mid-19th century, a young German philosopher named Karl Marx had developed new theories on socialism. In 1848, he published the Communist Manifesto, a very influential work. In that work and his book The Capital (Das Kapital, 1867), Marx and his partner, Friedrich Engels, developed their ideas. They had studied the process of industrialization and its social and economic consequences and stated that history is not a sequence of political events, but a struggle between social classes based on economic relations and the ownership of the means of production. They stated that industrialization would continue and create a mass of workers (proletariat) who were exploited by the elites (bourgeoisie) and that the proletariat, when it became fully conscious of their exploitation and united, they would, through a revolutionary process, take control of the state and the means of production, and progressively create a classless and egalitarian society, where the state would no longer be needed. This theory is called Marxism or Scientific Socialism.
These theories had a huge influence on the masses of industrial workers, who started to organize what is known as the Labor Movement.
It took several decades to develop class consciousness. The first actions against the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution were the destruction of machines (because they destroyed jobs) by Luddites in Great Britain at the beginning of the century. But in general, extreme working conditions did not leave workers enough time to organize even the most minimal resistance to the abuses of those in charge of industrial production. Thanks to a number of skilled leaders and thinkers, who were able to disseminate socialist ideas in easily understandable terms, and the governments’ assumption that the situation would never change, trade unions, working-class parties, and international organizations were formed.
The first trade unions were mutual aid associations. The membership fees paid by workers were used to support those who were unemployed, ill, or whose relatives had died. Later, trade unions began to use strikes to demand that business owners provide better working conditions for their employees. The first English trade unions were established in the 1820s. Other European countries did not have trade unions until the second half of the 19th century. This was the result of delayed industrialization and repression of the labor revolts in 1848.
Proletarian internationalism emerged in the 1860s. In 1864, the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) was founded in London. It was later called the First International. The most important thinkers of the period, Marx and Bakunin, were the organization’s leaders, but they clashed over their different stances on the proletariat’s involvement in politics.
Bakunin was the leader of another branch of workers’ ideology, anarchism. Anarchism was the political philosophy that advocated for a society without classes, a state, or private property. Anarchists did not recognize any kind of authority and stated that society should be organized into communes managed by the workers themselves. They awarded peasants a leading role in the revolution (Marxists thought that peasants were less educated and more subject to reactionary forces such as religion, so the revolution would come from the urban industrial workers). They opposed participation in the system (elections, parliaments), and their demands were to be brought upon by direct action (strikes, demonstrations, or even violence such as sabotage and terrorist actions).
The differences of opinion in the First International were so great that it was dissolved in 1876. During the 1870s, socialist parties were founded in various European countries. These working-class parties came together in 1889 to create the Second International. There were disagreements between more purist Marxist revolutionaries and the revisionists, who supported participation in liberal politics and gradual change from within (these are called social democrats).
The Second Industrial Revolution
In the second half of the 19th century, the spread of industrialization made markets overcrowded with goods, so investments were made in new branches of industrial production, made possible by advances in scientific development. This process changed the industry: the steam engine era ended, and the Second Industrial Revolution began.
Between 1870 and 1914, the new model underwent spectacular growth. New technologies began to be used in almost all of Europe and beyond. New pioneering countries included Germany, the United States, and Japan.
During this period, several important advances were made:
- Oil began to be used as a new source of energy. The first oil well had been drilled in the United States in 1859. Although oil did not completely replace coal, which continued to be widely used, the new fuel was soon used in industry, transport, and lighting.
- Electricity replaced the mechanical energy produced by the steam engine. This new form of energy benefited industrial areas where no coal was available. In 1879, Thomas Alva Edison perfected the incandescent lamp or bulb. His bulbs began to be used to light cities. The first electric tram lines were also opened.
- From 1856, the iron and steel industry underwent spectacular growth thanks to the Bessemer converter, which could transform large amounts of iron into steel with fewer impurities, very quickly. Steel also made it easier to build boats, railways, bridges, and buildings. Stainless steel and aluminum also began to be obtained during this period.
- The chemical industry specialized in synthetic products that replaced natural ones. New industries developed: the first plastics, fertilizers, dyes, explosives, condiments, drugs, and perfumes. Germany became the world’s leading producer of chemical products.
- There were huge advances in transport and communications:
- Railways connected more and more territories. Between 1850 and 1914, more than 400,000 km of railways were constructed in Europe. In the United States, the transcontinental railway connected the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. This 3,069-kilometer line was used to colonize the American West.
- Fast steel-hulled boats helped the expansion of world trade of products from the crop, livestock farming, and industrial sectors. Propellers began to be used in maritime transport. Later, sailing boats were replaced by steamboats.
- Benz developed the first petrol-powered automobile in 1886. Improvements such as tires and gears were gradually made, and the new cars became widespread in the 20th century. In the United States, the automobile industry, based in Detroit, played an important role.
- Communications underwent a revolution with the invention of the telegraph and the telephone, which allowed almost instantaneous communications over great distances. The first interoceanic cables were already in place by the 1870s.
- Work reorganization helped increase industrial productivity. In the late 19th century, F.W. Taylor developed a new method of work organization in the United States. According to Taylorism, each worker should be assigned a single task in the manufacture of an industrial product. The division of labor was therefore implemented as a model of production. Several decades later, Henry Ford applied this principle to the assembly lines in his automobile factories.
- Capitalism adapted to the needs of industrialization. Banks were opened to store savers’ money and provide loans to industrial and railway companies. Banking families such as the Péreire and Rothschild were particularly important.
- Companies began to form corporations, creating cartels, trusts, and holding companies. The aim of these mergers was to prevent competition between sellers in order to completely control the market. In this way, major businessmen were able to monopolize various economic sectors: Rockefeller (United States), oil; Krupp (Germany), armaments; Nobel (Sweden), explosives, etc.