Engels: The Industrial Revolution

The industrial revolution began in the 17th century and made significant change in the world. An era was over and the new one was beginning. The revolution has advantages and disadvantages. Rising of living standards, improving of health, lifetime and trade system are its advantages. On the other hand, manufacturing has caused major problems such as deforestation, excessive use of fossil fuel sources, irresponsible industrialisation and agricultural development. These changes have increased world’s atmospheric concentration of water vapour, CO2, CH4 and other gases (Stocker, 2013). These gases capture part of energy receiving from sun and trap this heat inside atmosphere that causes rising temperatures on the earth’s surface. Naturally, for continuation of life these gases are necessary, but result of the human events these gases has produced more than plants and environment need (Robins, 2016). Also, we call them Green Houses Gases because they have the similar effect like the ‘greenhouses’ utilised to increase condition of vegetables.

In the excerpt from Anti-Dühring titled “Theoretical” Friedrich Engels criticizes capitalism through an historical materialist approach. Through declaration of a fundamental contradiction within the capitalist mode of production, Engels characterizes a cascade of economic conflicts that inevitably paralyze capitalist society. Following critique of contemporary capitalist thought, Engels envisions a future for capitalism in which the fundamental contradiction will lead to a revolution in capitalism.

During the Industrial Revolution pollution was a major problem. For example, in Document 3 the image shows a factory near a river with smoke erupting out of

Another negative effect of the Industrial Revolution was the poor sanitary conditions in cities. When Friedrich Engels visited an English industrial city he stated in “The Conditions of the Working Class in England” that the streets are usually unpaved, full of holes, filthy and strewn with refuse due to the lack of gutters or drains. This caused the main river of Manchester to look coal black and be packed with stinking filth. The factories also led to pollution and poor air quality due to the open air vents and chimneys which released the pollution from the factory into the air. Many people who lived in these poor cities or slums were either the working class or the poor that had to struggle through these unsanitary conditions.

The Industrial Revolution was a revolution in every sense of the word, as it altered almost every aspect of live in the nineteenth century including technology, government, communication, environment and eventually society as a whole.1 Although industrialisation created many positives for modern society, for people in Britain up to the end of the nineteenth century it had many significantly negative consequences. With the long term advances made for society came the then current development of overcrowding cities abundant with pollution, health problems and poor living conditions for the working class. These poor conditions continued into the work place with young children exploited as workers as young as the age of four or five.2 There were consequences of the Industrial Revolution for people outside of the core of Britain. India, being the periphery in the model were exploited for their raw materials which were exported to Britain.

The factories in the industrial revolution were bad for the environment. An excerpt from document #11, The Conditions Of The Working Class In England, states that there was smelly puddles, unpaved roads, and filth and garbage everywhere. These things are bad for the environment and they all were created by the factories during the industrial revolution. In the photo of the outside of a factory, from document #7, you can see that there was a ton of pollution coming from the factories. There was also gunk

The Industrial Revolution is the name given to the movement in which machines changed people's way of life as well as their methods of manufacturer. It brought three important changes: inventions of machines that simplify and speed up the work of hand tools, use of steam (and other power) versus human power, adoption of a factory system. Workers were brought together under one roof and were supplied machines. The Industrial Revolution began throughout the world relatively during the same time period, and although it had its beginning in remote times, it is still continuing in some places.

The Industrial Revolution set people away from farms and small villages and moved them to cities and towns because of the job opportunities that arose in the cities. The Industrial Revolution not only helped people move along in the late 1700s and early 1800s but also it has made the people what they are today. During the Industrial Revolution, the movement from an agrarian society to an industrial one reshaped the roles of families, widen the gap between classes, and led to the developments in communication, transportation, and other scientific fields that completely changed humanity.

By the mid 1800’s, thousands of slaves had poured into free states. Denmark Vesey was one of the thousand but, he became free a different way. He purchased his freedom with the money he won in the lottery. Another slave that became free is Frederick Douglass. He became a writer and wrote articles about his past and how he became the man he was after being a slave. In the Industrial Revolution, slaves became, escaped, and became free.

The Industrial Revolution, which began in England, brought on many advancements in the production of textiles. This revolution that improved the manufacturing industry’s ability to produce goods in mass quantity with less labor should have been a way that the industrial worker’s lives improved. However, the opposite occurred. Engels describes a competitive working environment where workers competed to make enough money to survive with their families. Their survival only led to more suffering of neglect, poverty, and squalor. Engels book, Condtion of the Working Class in England, 1845, is a detailed account of the proletariat who were oppressed by the bourgeoisie. Engels wrote a dismally detailed account of the working class place during the Industrial Revolution in England, placing the workers in the cities as subhuman, expendable, and economically less expensive to maintain than a slave.

The primary source "Conditions of the Working Class in England in 1844" by Friedrich Engels showed the pollution caused by Industrial Revolution. The quote "At the bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of debris and refuse..." (p. 2) shows the water system were polluted by factories. People were unable to take water from the rivers for any purpose. Hence, by the 1830's and 1840's, workers formed unions to demand social and political reforms. Fighting for equality among all people, dignity of labor, and perniciousness of unrestrained capitalism. (Merriman,

Think about your life for one second: you communicate with people, travel, make purchases, and utilize those commodities. But have you ever wondered what made those things possible? After all, you go to the store to buy things you need. You drive a car to work and to visit your friends. If you need to talk to someone, you simply pick up your phone or computer. However, none of this would be possible without a means of communication, factories to manufacture the products you need, places to work, and ways to travel and transport goods. And what made these possible? The answer is the Industrial Revolution, which started in Europe around the year 1730. A revolution is a major change or turning point in something. The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution in Europe changed Europe to this day. This began in the United Kingdom in the 1700s and expanded to Western Europe in the 1800s. During the Industrial Revolution, this provided new technology, a surplus of food, trading and different ways of producing goods for countries. The women and children in Europe had to work hard and work in the mills. They did this to give enough money for their family to live on. Politics also changed during the Industrial Revolution. Thus, the Industrial Revolution affected many people and to discover new technology and ways of thriving life.

The Industrial Revolution was the quintessence of capitalistic ideals; it bred controversy that led to Karl Marx’s idea of communism as a massive grass roots reaction to the revolution’s social abuses. Firstly, the Industrial Revolution featured the construction of machines, systems and factories that allowed goods to be manufactured at a faster rate with a lower cost. The seed drill made it so there could be “a semi-automated, controlled distribution and plantation of wheat seed”(Jones 2013). Secondly, there was a great social and economic divide between the wealthy owners and the poor workers, which gave rise to the mass’s vulnerability to the advent of extreme socialism. Figures of authority severely oppressed their employees by giving them insufficient pay, a treacherous work environment, and even making some children work more than 12 hours per day (Cranny 150). Finally, far right capitalism created a brutal boom and bust cycle of economics that made, for the multitude at the bottom, a perpetual nightmare of poverty and death. People responded to this social situation by taking part in violent protests; oppression sires rebellion. The Industrial Revolution was the chassis of great imagination and progress of political, economic, and social force that still affects this world today.

We are standing at the precipice of what some call the 4th Industrial Revolution. The 4th Industrial Revolution is being described as a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. We are rapidly moving to an era where billions of people will be connected by mobile devices with unprecedented processing power and storage capacity. Our access to knowledge will be unlimited.