From: cher@ksr.com (Mike Cherepov)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: Industrialization
Date: 4 Jan 93 20:45:14 EST
Organization: Kendall Square Research Corp.

In article <58186@dime.cs.umass.edu> yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken) writes:
>Self-serving? I don't gain anything from abominations of the past.

But your claim that Stalinist-type crimes were unexceptional at
industrialization stage does.  For the rest of your message you
ignore the absolutely crucial point that your thesis requires
showing an increase in misery and crimes, not just that crimes
and misery existed.

> [the worst of US slavery]

The importation of new slaves to the US was over by early 1800.  The
Atlantic slave trade was by far the most brutal aspect of slavery
(eg, see Curtin's data or Sowell's books), so industrialization was
accompanied by a decrease in horrible crimes, not the other way
around.  Life expectancy for slaves in the industrializing US was
decades higher than for slaves in the less-developed Carribean.
Industrialization again coincided with a lessening, not increase,
in crimes.

>Switzerland and Iceland indeed. I am not well informed on the
>hsitory of German industrialization, I suspect that you are less so.
>Try harder.

It is you who made a general claim.  It is you who must prove it.
 - You issue a challenge claiming that no countries industrialized
without horrible crimes.
 - I name about 10 countries, vitiating your claim.
 - You dismissed them simply because, admittedly, you are ignorant about
their history.
That is gem of chutzpah, even by anything-goes ne.politics' standards.

>What other historians? I'm fascinated.
> [tons of verbiage on misery, poverty, disease during industrialization..]

The historians I referred to (J. Garraty, P. Gay) state that for a large
period of British Industrialization one can NOT claim (as you did) that
misery of working classes increased, for another large period the well-
being undeniably improved (even worse for your claim).  This view seems
to be normative in contemporary scholarship.  Is squarely opposes yours.

>It may be hazy to you, but I was referencing well known historical
>facts. Look up Chartism, Peterloo, and the combination acts before you
>speak further.

Look up the writeup on Peterloo from Johnson's Birth of the Modern.
Then again, don't bother, because there is no way pre-industrial
Henry VIII, Elizabeth and Cromwell (that Leveller-basher) were
better, human rights-wise, than Pitt, Liverpool or Gladstone.

Again, showing that there were some restrictions on rights does nothing
for your thesis.  You have to show that they were worse than those
before them.  You can not do so, as religious, political, legal, etc
rights improved tremendously during the Industrial revolution.  For
most people, they hardly existed before industrialization.

>Luddites and why they believed that their rights were being curtailed
>by the rise of the industrial system. Tom Paine's book, The Rights
>of Man was contraband in 19th century England and that alone should
>tell you something about the validity of your analysis.

Marx, subversive extraordinaire, labored unmolested in Britain.  That
age provided freedom of dissent unprecedented in earlier, pre-industrial
centuries.  Most of the Chartists' demands came true in the second half
of 19th century with industrialization going full-steam.  You have no case.
	Mike Cherepov
		own opinions, etc
Newsgroups: ne.politics