Understanding the Impact of the Industrial Revolution on Work
3 The Industrial Revolution was transforming the concept of work. Some of the consequences were:
- Emergence of a new area of work, the factory: Allows many operators to work together in a coordinated way. Multiply the functions, activities, and levels.
- The organization of the distribution of time in a different way: workers spend time governed by the clock and the siren of the factory.
- Localization of production in cities, which produces planning. Develops a family structure that is smaller and more distant, leading to the emergence of an anonymous owner.
- Bourgeois capitalism: Different from the traditional land-based system: the actions and the birth of bonds.
- Proletariat: Result of the harsh working and living conditions in the urban environment.
- Top-linking of women to the production process, starting the long march toward their liberation.
Marx analyzed these changes. According to Marxist materialism: The employee loses their essence at work. In selling their labor power, they are considered a commodity, losing value as an active subject. They are also expropriated of the fruits of their work, which go to swell the capital of the owner. This is what is known as the alienation of the worker. This split between workers and owners is transmitted to society as opposing social classes, creating a tension that at certain moments in history, such as during a revolution, breaks out. 4 The society that emerged from the Industrial Revolution went into crisis in the first third of the twentieth century, characterized by social revolutions. World War II marks the end of an era and the emergence of a new society based on political democracy, sustained economic growth, and educational equality. The project had, in principle, unprecedented success in developed countries, resulting in the welfare state. To achieve this, it was necessary for people to become citizens and consumers. Consumption is the engine of the economy, and work is the means to access and obtain true social status. At the same time, the increase in consumption was a constant process of providing technical training and production automation for the incorporation of new technologies. New technologies invade all areas of the new society (the economy, politics, human relations, etc.). For some, new technologies improve working conditions (eliminating tedious and repetitive tasks). They are a constant source of new jobs and the extension of wealth. Others argue that only a few jobs in developed countries improve their conditions, while for most, work is insecure, unstable, and gradually ceases to exist. It’s hard to know what will happen, but some facts seem clear. The old classification scheme for productive sectors must be abandoned. Today, the work structure is more complex. Without a clear delineation of the profile of work, individuals feel disoriented and disheartened. Except for some who have a satisfactory job, increasingly, people work and live in denial of life. Life is consumed; it does not work, and work time is not life.
1.1 For their intelligence, human beings feel the need to act upon different alternatives. Action is also the possibility to react in various ways to the changing situations of life, the ability to imagine, organize, plan, and realize desires, projects, plans, and features that define human illusions. Three aspects of human action:
- Intentionality: Aristotle understood this as the way we act while moving into the external reality. The subject is directed towards the object in two ways: theoretical intentionality (expresses human desire to know) and practical intentionality (addresses human needs).
- Purpose: The means define an action. It brings to an end the means to choose and carry them into practice.
- Flexibility: The same purpose can be achieved by different means. Neither the ends nor the means are fixed.
2 Knowing and acting are inextricably linked. It is not that one knows and then acts, nor does the opposite occur. The reason has several uses. Kant distinguishes between theoretical reason (which knows why), practical reason (the reason that guides action), and aesthetic reason (which includes practice, dealing with fine actions). These distinctions were already present in Aristotle, who, in the intentionality of practice, differentiated between moral and technical policy and action. These applications can set the practical reason: instrumental reason (and technical work), moral and political reason, and aesthetics.
2.1 The work has not always had the same meaning ascribed to it, nor the same social, political, or religious implications. In general: Work is the action by which the human being seeks to respond. Thus, it discovers its ability for invention and the power to transform nature. Greek philosophy conceived the human being as one who knows, who yearns to contemplate the truth. When someone is forced to engage in some activity to survive, they are seen as leading a servile life (e.g., slaves). Aristotle denied the designation of <> to such individuals. The Greeks distinguished two types of life:
- Private: Addressing the needs of life, which must remain hidden.
- Public: Relating to human affairs, which is the only one worth living. It is a life without work. Work is reserved for slaves and women, subject to the idealization of private life. This contemplative life in the Greek world was reinforced in the medieval Christian world.
2 Hannah Arendt makes a detailed analysis of the differences between the concepts of work and labor.
- Work-oriented: Activity that obtains immediate consumer goods.
- Labor: Activity aimed at producing things of a more durable and artificial nature.
In addition, labor has these characteristics:
- It is a violence against nature.
- Labor is governed by a model that guides production, precedes the work process, and persists after it.
- It converts the human designer.
- The worker receives remuneration (salary) for a limited time and predefined work.