From: yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu (victor yodaiken)
Newsgroups: ne.politics
Subject: Re: Industrialization
Date: 5 Jan 93 06:32:29 GMT
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst

In article <20631@ksr.com> cher@ksr.com (Mike Cherepov) writes:
>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

A mischaracterization of my position. Mike, can't you get it through your
head that it is possible to reject the demon theory of communism without
being an apologist for Stalin? One of the most damaging legacies of the
cold war is this belief that it is necessary to
pledge allegience to one of the state ideologies and to demonize the
other. 

>ignore the absolutely crucial point that your thesis requires
>showing an increase in misery and crimes, not just that crimes

I assert  
         Industrializing  is associated with a pattern of behavior
This is not the same as
         Industrializing is the only cause of this behavior

>> [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.

Aside from the dubious moral calculus of your argument, I must object
to your attempt to pass over the role of Carribean slaves in the 
development of the US industrial economy. I specifically mentioned the
well known key role of the sugar/rum economy in the development of
the new england maritime industries and US industry in general. 
In any event, I nowhere claimed that slavery reached a peak of evil
during the industrialization of the US. I did say that US industry
profited from the unpaid labor of the slaves and I suggest that this
profit was a key aspect of US industrial development. Try reading
Genovese on slavery for a more scholarly account than you will find
in Sowell.

>>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.

 9 of those countries were either humorous examples or insignificant.
the 10th is terra incognito for both of us. 

>
>>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

These are the authors of the Columbia volume?  Cite a work and I will
look it up. If you are attempting to use a popular survey to refute
my citation of the scholarly literaturet(, I suggest that you need to
do some more reading.



>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.

Normative indeed. I cited the standard work on the period, and you
dismiss it without comment. Talk about chutzpah. 

>
>>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.

Can we stick to historians here?  Johnson is a polemnicist with no
interest in scholarship. Your reliance on him for guidance is poor
judgement. In anycase, you claimed that tolerance of dissent was
a hallmark of British industrialization. But, in the real world,
the advocacy of unions was a hanging offence, and people were hanged for
advocating universal sufferage during the late 1700's and early-mid
1800's --- the exact period in question.

>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.

You repeat your previous logical error. If you argue that Stalin was
a bad guy, it is not reasonable for me to object that Genghiz Kahn was
worse. Similarly, if I argue that British industrialization emiserated
and skinned a large chunk of the english lower classes, it is not
reasonable for you to object on the grounds that there was a civil 
war that caused much distress in the 1600's. 


>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.

 The Luddite movement was precisely a rebellion
against the denial of customary rights and the enclosure movement
abrogated customary legal rights of the peasantry.  furthermoe
you repeatedly seek to conflate later periods of the industrial
revolution with the early stages. Human rights improved under Kruscheve
too.


>
>>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.

Again you jump between historical eras to evade the point. And, Marx
is a poor exemplar as his political activity within the UK was minimal.
Look, you claimed that political rights were dropping on the happy
workers of industrializing England. I point out that during the critical
early period of industrial development there were armed insurrections,
troops guarding factories, draconian bans on union activity, and 
censorship of political tracts. I realize that this conflicts with
your scenario of capitalism lifting the benighted peasantry from 
poverty into nice apartments; But what can I do? That's how it happened.



-- 


yodaiken@chelm.cs.umass.edu

Newsgroups: ne.politics