Industrialism

INDUSTRIALISM. - It can be defined as that complex of phenomena which characterize the formation of modern large-scale industry. I. is therefore a complex fact in the sense that, just as it finds its origin in a series of facts and circumstances, so in turn it determines a series of phenomena, all of notable importance in the formation of the economic-social structure of the world from the second half of the 18th century onward.

The principal phenomena in which i. is summed up are the following:

I. DEVELOPMENT IN PRODUCTION TECHNIQUE

Such a development as had never occurred in previous eras. This is in fact one of the elements in which the famous "industrial revolution" can be identified. It took place in England between 1780 and 1830, about half a century ahead of all the countries of the European continent. The development in production technique manifests itself in two ways: a) through the discovery of new machines (e.g., the discovery of the flying shuttle, of the spinning machine, of the water frame and then of the steam-powered one, etc.), as well as through the establishment of new manufacturing processes (e.g., the introduction of coke for smelting iron ores); b) through the new proportion in which the use of the machine (whose appearance and first practical applications had occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries) takes place: a proportion much greater than that which characterizes previous eras. Especially the content of point b) gives ample justification for another phenomenon in which industrialism is characterized, namely the following.

II. INCREASE IN THE SIZE OF BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS

In fact, only a firm endowed with substantial capital and tending toward mass production rather than quality production could be in a position to employ machines whose technical and, above all, economic obsolescence was at that time very considerable. In turn, the greater size of the enterprise, often achieved through the concentration of various firms into a single enterprise and increasingly embodied in that characteristic form of company which is the joint-stock company, brings about, with the possibility of purchasing raw and auxiliary materials on a large scale, with the use of machines that replaces part of the labor force, with the development of an ever more perfect sales organization and above all with the reduction of overhead costs, a decrease in costs and therefore an ever greater volume of sales and, ultimately, the realization of considerable profits.

III. DEMOGRAPHIC GROWTH AND MOVEMENT

The increase of the population is a phenomenon which, having already begun in the centuries preceding the 18th, but rendered less evident by those negative factors, among which the plagues and the wars that at intervals cancelled out the advantages determined by natural increase, takes on, toward the end of that century, a very decided course. It is calculated in fact that, from the end of the 18th century to about the middle of the 19th, the European population increased from 185 to 500 million units. This increase is due in large part to the improvement of the hygienic and social conditions of the population, which determines an ever greater difference between the birth rate and the death rate. The increase of the population brings about the increase of consumption, thus constituting one of the principal justifications for the increase of production and consequently for the establishment of large-scale industry. On the other hand, the increase of the population determines a greater supply of labor, whose effects, in the sense of a decrease in the cost of labor, make themselves felt within the framework of the new industrial organization. The movement of the population consists substantially of the shift that takes place within it between the countryside and the city, where the possibilities of better-paid work attract considerable masses. Even if this phenomenon is not completely new, inasmuch as it accompanies every period of economic progress, it takes on in the 18th century, and even more in the following ones, a particular extent, which determines the very notable increase of the population of the large cities and the rise of new urban centers, in particular those where the largest industrial complexes establish themselves.

IV. IMPROVEMENT OF ROADS AND MEANS OF COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORT AND THE RESULTING INCREASE IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE

This too is an important factor, a determining one in the development of large-scale industry, and it is in turn facilitated by that industry. Even though the situation that would obtain in the 19th century and above all in the 20th was still far off, the road network, already in the second half of the 18th century, was everywhere growing and improving. Almost a true novelty, by contrast, was the network of navigable canals extending across Europe, while maritime navigation registered a notable increase in the number of ships and in their tonnage. The application of steam power, finally, both to land transport (railways) and to sea transport, gave the decisive impulse to the growth of trade from both the quantitative and the qualitative point of view, in the sense that, contrary to earlier epochs, a mass trade developed even for cheap and bulky goods.

V. DEVELOPMENT OF CREDIT

The rise of numerous and powerful banking organizations makes it possible to gather large amounts of capital, including and above all from small savers, and to channel it to the new industrial bodies, whose financial needs, not sufficiently covered by the capital provided by their own founders, are continually increasing.

VI. RISE OF PHYSIOCRATIC AND, LATER, LIBERAL CONCEPTIONS

These are founded on faith in the existence of laws operating through man, stimulated by his personal interest, which drives him to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. The prevalence, even in the scientific field and in economic policy, of the principle of personal gain as the best means of achieving the economic optimum both for the individual and for the community, constitutes an undoubted spur to the establishment of most of the phenomena that characterize i[ndustrialism], particularly the development of production techniques, the increase in the size of the firm, and the development of credit.

The consequences of the establishment of i[ndustrialism] are considerable. Indeed, it may be asserted that no sector of contemporary social life has failed in some way to feel the effects of this phenomenon. To limit ourselves to two principal sectors, it will suffice to recall the effects of i[ndustrialism] in the political and in the social field.

With regard to the former, it is certain that i[ndustrialism] facilitated the rise to power of the bourgeoisie in almost all States — that bourgeoisie which, in the large-scale industry it promoted and strengthened, finds precisely the means to defeat the classes traditionally holding the levers of the State. With the rise to power of the bourgeoisie, an economic policy based on liberalist schemes naturally becomes established as well.

As regards the social field, the accumulation of enormous wealth, the consequent emergence of a strong concentration of incomes in favor of certain privileged categories, so-called capitalistic, against the growth of a mass increasingly rapidly subject to the phenomenon of proletarianization, gives rise to those problems that pass under the generic and synthetic heading of the social question, which would be one of the greatest causes of disturbance in the contemporary world.

Giuseppe Mira