INDUSTRIALISMO. – That set of phenomena characterizing the formation of contemporary large-scale industry may be defined as industrialism. I. is therefore a complex fact, in the sense that, just as it originates in a series of facts and circumstances, so in turn it determines a series of phenomena, all of considerable importance in the formation of the economic and social structure of the world beginning in the second half of the eighteenth century.
The principal phenomena that comprise i. are the following:
I. DEVELOPMENT IN PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES
Nothing of this kind had ever occurred in earlier periods. Indeed, this is one of the elements in which the famous “Industrial Revolution” may be identified. It took place in England between 1780 and 1830, approximately half a century ahead of all the countries of continental Europe. Development in production techniques manifested itself in two ways: a) through the discovery of new machines (e.g., the discovery of the flying shuttle, the spinning machine, the water-powered loom and later the steam-powered loom, etc.), as well as through the adoption of new manufacturing processes (e.g., the introduction of coke for smelting iron ores); b) through the new scale on which machinery was employed (its appearance and first practical applications having occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries): a scale far greater than that characteristic of earlier periods. The content of point b), in particular, provides ample justification for another phenomenon in which i. is characterized, namely the following.II. INCREASE IN THE SIZE OF BUSINESS ORGANIZATIONS
Indeed, only an enterprise endowed with substantial capital and oriented toward mass rather than quality production could have been able to employ machines whose technical and, above all, economic obsolescence was at that time considerable. In turn, the greater size of the enterprise, often achieved through the concentration of several businesses within a single enterprise and increasingly embodied in that characteristic form of company known as the joint-stock company, leads—through the possibility of purchasing raw and auxiliary materials on a large scale, through the use of machines that replaces part of the labor force, through the development of an increasingly efficient sales organization, and especially through the reduction of overhead costs—to a decrease in costs and hence to ever greater sales and, ultimately, to the realization of substantial profits.III. DEMOGRAPHIC GROWTH AND MOVEMENT
The growth of the population is a phenomenon which, although it had already begun in the centuries preceding the eighteenth, but was rendered less evident by negative factors, including epidemics and wars which periodically cancelled the advantages produced by natural increase, assumed a very marked course toward the end of that century. It is in fact estimated that, from the end of the eighteenth century to approximately the middle of the nineteenth, the European population increased from 185 to 500 million. This increase is due in large part to the improvement of the hygienic and social conditions of the population, which brought about an ever greater difference between the birth rate and the death rate. The growth of the population causes an increase in consumption, thereby constituting one of the principal justifications for the increase in production and consequently for the emergence of large-scale industry. On the other hand, the increase in population produces a greater supply of labour, whose effects, in the form of a reduction in the cost of labour, are felt within the sphere of the new industrial organization. The movement of the population consists essentially in the shift from the countryside to the city, where the prospects of better-paid employment attract considerable masses of people. Although this phenomenon is not entirely new, since it accompanies every period of economic progress, in the eighteenth century, and even more so in the following centuries, it assumed a particular scale, causing a very considerable increase in the population of the great cities and the emergence of new urban centres, especially those where the largest industrial complexes became established.IV. IMPROVEMENT OF THE ROUTES AND MEANS OF COMMUNICATION AND TRANSPORT AND THE CONSEQUENT INCREASE IN INTERNATIONAL TRADE
This too is an important factor, instrumental in the development of large-scale industry, which is then in turn facilitated by the latter. Although the situation of the nineteenth century, and especially that of the twentieth, is still far off, the road network already expands and improves everywhere in the second half of the eighteenth century. Almost a genuine innovation, by contrast, is the network of navigable canals extending across Europe, while maritime navigation records a considerable increase in the number of ships and in their tonnage. Finally, the application of steam power both to land transport (railways) and to maritime transport provides the decisive impetus for the growth of trade, quantitatively and qualitatively, in the sense that, unlike in earlier periods, mass trade also develops in low-value, bulky goods.V. SVILUPPO DEL CREDITO
The emergence of numerous and powerful banking organizations makes it possible to gather substantial 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 founders, are constantly increasing.VI. THE ESTABLISHMENT OF PHYSIOCRATIC AND, AT A SECOND STAGE, FREE-MARKET CONCEPTIONS
These are founded on faith in the existence of laws functioning through man, stimulated by his personal interest, which impels him to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering. The predominance, also in the scientific sphere and in economic policy, of the principle of personal gain, as the best means of attaining the economic optimum both for the individual and for the community, constitutes an undoubted stimulus to the establishment of most of the phenomena that characterize i., particularly the development of production techniques, the increase in the size of enterprises, and the development of credit.The consequences of the establishment of i. are considerable. Indeed, it may be asserted that no sector of contemporary social life has in some way failed to be affected by this phenomenon. To limit ourselves to two principal sectors, it will suffice to recall the effects of i. in the political and social spheres.
With regard to the former, it is certain that i. facilitated the rise to power of the bourgeoisie in almost all States—that bourgeoisie which, in the large-scale industry it promoted and strengthened, found precisely the means to defeat the classes that had traditionally held the levers of the state. With the rise to power of the bourgeoisie, an economic policy based on free-market principles naturally also became established.
As regards the social sphere, the accumulation of enormous wealth and the consequent emergence of a strong concentration of incomes in favor of certain privileged, so-called capitalist categories, together with the growth of a mass increasingly rapidly subjected to the phenomenon of proletarianization, gave rise to those problems encompassed by the generic and concise designation of the social question, which would become one of the chief causes of disturbance in the contemporary world.