Economic revolution

“ The theme throughout was plain: the world revolution is coming, by inescapable economic laws discovered by our theory. The world revolution, which will come, will remove the owning classes from control of the productive capital, and will put all capital in the hands of the workers. ”

“ As never since the first advent of production of commodities there has been such a fundamental revolution, it must necessarily be accompanied by an equally fundamental spiritual revolution. This economic revolution is the conclusion of the long period of class antagonisms and of production of commodities ”

“ EFFECT OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION UPON THE PROBLEM.—The Industrial Revolution greatly increased the importance of the problem of distribution. Indeed, the growth of the factory system, and the greater and greater complexity of the division of labor, have made the distribution of industrial income the basic problem in our economic and social life. ”

“ I expect to see a change throughout the world, which will take the great instruments of production which we call corporations and trusts, out of the hands of their present private owners, and make them the property, either of the entire community, or of those who do the work in them. This change is the "social revolution," and when it has completed itself, we shall have in that society an Industrial Republic, a form of business management which constitutes economic democracy. ”

“ Politicians, again, had little to do with the great 'industrial revolution' which marked the last half of the century. The main facts are now a familiar topic of economic historians; nor need I speak of them in detail. Though agriculture was still the main industry, and the landowners almost monopolised political power, an ever growing proportion of the people was being collected in towns; the artisans were congregating in large factories ”

“ First in England, and then in all of the important countries of Europe, the industrial revolution turned the simple grazing, farming, craft-industry life of the village topsy-turvy, by providing a new method of converting nature's bounty into goods and services calculated to meet the increasing needs and wants of mankind. So far-reaching was the change that it has compelled a reorganization of virtually all phases of social life, but for the present purpose, it has been felt chiefly in four fields: manufacturing, commerce, wealth-surplus and population. ”

“ And to be sure, these economic revolutions were bound to be followed by corresponding political upheavals whose aim and object it was to adapt the political institutions to meet the requirements of the new and changed economic conditions. ”

“ The so-called industrial revolution has accomplished sweeping and far-reaching changes in economic organization. It has resulted in a transfer of industrial power from the many to the few, who now exercise in all matters relating to production an authority as absolute and irresponsible as that which the ruling class exercised in the middle of the eighteenth century over the state itself. ”

“ The pinching of the economic shoe resulting from the concentration of wealth was naturally first felt by the class with least reserves, the wage-earners, and the Revolution may be said to have begun with their revolt. In 1869 the first great labor organization in America was formed to resist the power of capital. ”

“ At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the [91] property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed." [9]
This statement contains a whole Revolution in embryo. ”

“ Yet the greater part of the alienation of feeling which underlay the Revolution was due not to political causes, but to the economic policy already described, by which American commerce and industry were bent to the interests of England. ”

“ But {5} in the later Middle Ages, and more rapidly at their close, this system broke down under the necessity for larger capital in production and the possibility of supplying it by the increase of wealth and of banking technique that made possible investment, rapid turn-over of capital, and corporate partnership. The increase of wealth and the changed mode of its production has been in large part the cause of three developments which in their turn became causes of revolution: the rise of the bourgeoisie, of nationalism, and of individualism. ”

“ Over one hundred years ago, around the turn of the last century, the Industrial Revolution was beginning to take hold of America, creating unimaginable wealth in sprawling metropolises all across the country.
As factories multiplied and profits grew, the winnings of the new economy became more and more concentrated in the hands of a few robber barons, railroad tycoons and oil magnates. ”

“ Back of tariff and finance, therefore, back of transportation and labor, of new political parties and revolts in the old ones, of the great strikes and the increasing importance of some of the sections, lay the economic foundations of the new era. ”

“ As the farmers grew rich, the demand for manufactures quickened, wages advanced, discontent vanished, and though values never again reached the altitude of 1809, they at least attained that level of substantial prosperity which preceded the French Revolution. ”

“ With what exultation have we seen a free commerce delineating our wide-spreading canvass with all the representations of national prosperity! With what anguish do we behold commercial restrictions wrenching the pencil from this successful artist, and obliterating the work! Our commerce, both before and since the revolution, increased the national prosperity, with undeviating progress, and we are exchanging its solid benefits for restrictions, bounties, exclusive privileges, and monopolies, recommended by recondite and intricate speculations about the balance of trade. ”

“ Side by side with the wave of political revolution, strongest for France and America, came the industrial revolution; and the opening of the nineteenth century brought with it the myriad changes we are now to face. ”

“ In this field a central direction of production is not only unnecessary, but absolutely foolish. Here free production can rule without the necessity of production of commodities of value or of capitalist production.
Communism in material production, anarchism in the intellectual. This is the type of the socialist productive system which will arise from the dominion of the proletariat or, in other words, out of the social revolution by the logic of economic facts whatever may be the wishes, ideas and theories of the proletariat. ”

“ Not only in Great Britain but all over the world, the intensity of this new competition, the gravity of this readjustment to new and restricted conditions of economic life, will provide an excuse for agitators and revolutionaries who desire to overthrow the whole structure of our present system of Capital and Labour in the hope of obtaining greater prosperity for the labouring folk and a broader control of the sources of wealth. ”

“ Little money is circulating, and commerce languishes on every side. The country is not yet sufficiently settled to induce the enterprise of the capitalist. Since the revolution, the working classes have suffered severely from the depression of business. ”

“ In such a case it will rest with themselves which status of industry they prefer, the old state of individualism and competition or a new state of collectivism and industrial alliance. Though it is but dimly recognized, the world of industry is in the throes of a revolution, the final result of nineteenth century development, and it must be left for the twentieth century to decide what the outcome of this revolution is to be. ”

“ Can sufficient capital be accumulated? A brief résumé of the industrial history of the last one hundred years or so will be relevant at this stage of the discussion. Capitalistic production, in its modern significance, was born of the industrial revolution in England in the latter half of the eighteenth century. ”

“ A revolution, greater than the later change which is known as the Industrial Revolution, then happened. "The production of wealth, instead of being merely a means of subsistence, became an end in itself or a means to political influence." ”

“ The economy’s triumph as an independent power at the same time spells its own doom, because the forces it has unleashed have eliminated the economic necessity that was the unchanging basis of earlier societies. ”

“ The Industrial or English Revolution crystallized some principles that were contrary in many ways to the ideals of the French Revolution, Under the umbrella of the English Revolution, the human being was not the center of matters. Money, or more exactly the capitalist, was the gravity center of the system with few or no regard to workers” life. The changes brought by the Industrial Revolution subsequently spread throughout Europe and North America and, later, the world, a process that continued as industrialization. ”

“ Could any one suppose that in these respects industry, under the complete control of the State or of corporations representing large groups of wage earners and persons engaged in trade, could have produced a sufficiently elastic system to have permitted that progress to be made? In reply to this it may be said that though this was true during the industrial revolution, it does not apply to-day; that our industries have become organised ”

“ The spread of the modern industrial system has brought with it the modern state, with its millions of consumers, its vast area, its innumerable activities, its complicated code of industrial and commercial law. At the same time, the revolution in the means of transport and communication has destroyed, or is tending to destroy, local markets, and closely interwoven all the business of the world. ”

“ Seeing reflected in the life of the city the excesses, the injustice, and the unsoundness of laissez-faire capitalism, she spoke out fearlessly in The Revolution against its abuses, such as the fortunes made out of the low wages and long hours of labor, or the Wall Street speculation to corner the gold market, or the efforts to take over the public lands of the West through grants to the transcontinental railroads. ”

“ When the French revolution was brought on, the world knew nothing of the possibilities of combined wealth as an agency for the improvement of the condition of the human race. Now we are familiar with all of the wonders that can be accomplished by the combining of money into corporate form. ”

“ The new system was a system of closely aggregated wage-earners, producing goods for a common employer, who provided the machinery, the power, and the superintendence, and sold the product of their labour for his own profit. This feature of the Industrial Revolution was as important as its redistribution of industry. It meant a considerable loss of independence among the working class, and it meant the birth of an entirely new class, the employers of labour, whose wealth and importance were destined to rival and eventually to surpass that of the landed gentry. ”

“ Commerce and the growth of colonies, the extension of the middle class, the redistribution of wealth, the growth of cities, the dependence in relations of trade of one nation upon another, all these things shook the ancient organisation of society. The industrial system grew up upon the basis of a naturalistic theory of all economic relations. Unlimited freedom in labour and in the use of capital were claimed. ”

“ A milder revolution, entirely similar, is taking place in modern times; and an attentive spectator may find amusement in viewing the progress of it in many states of Europe. Trade and industry are in vogue; and their establishment is occasioning a wonderful fermentation with the remaining fierceness of the feudal constitution.
Trade and industry owed their establishment to war and to ambition; and perhaps mankind may hope to see the day when they will put an end to the first, by exposing the expensive folly of the latter. ”

“ Only after we have mastered the principles upon which American industry is based, shall we be in a position to solve the problems which arise directly from the nature of our economic organization.
46. INDUSTRIAL REFORM.—Our industrial life is so clearly based upon certain fundamental institutions, such as private property, free contract, and free competition, that an industrial "system" is said to exist. Certain great evils, notably poverty, have accompanied the development of this system. ”

“ In the hurry of the Industrial Revolution, invention proceeded at an accelerating pace, and the introduction of some new appliance into a single industry might reduce the demand for labour by a quarter, or a half, or even three-quarters, and almost depopulate a town at a single blow. ”

“ The American workers, as a part of the price of empire, will be compelled to produce surplus [Pg 265] wealth—wealth which they can never consume; wealth the control of which passes into the hands of the imperial ruling class, to be invested by them in the organization of the Empire and the exploitation of the resources and other economic opportunities of the dependent territory. ”

“ It was obviously necessary for the establishment of industrial society, that each man should own the product of his labor and the tools necessary for him to labor effectually. But the Industrial Revolution described in the third paper of this series has entirely changed the conditions under which men produce wealth, and the character of the tools with which they work, while the sanctions of law and conventional morality still cling to all that has been imported under the old definition of property. ”

“ To accomplish what is required in order that labor may rise to an equality with capital, the laboring classes must become enlightened 167upon the principles of political and social economy. Revolution, which is threatened from some quarters, would only lead away from justice and in the direction of anarchy. ”