Division of labor and class struggle

The great economic expansion that took place during the nineteenth century was bound to bring wide-ranging social change with it. On the one hand, the greatly increased production of goods and of all types of services allowed a constant rise in the standard of living for a population which, as we have seen, grew at an unprecedented pace. This is natural: if food and clothing production, the building rate, and transportation services grew as they had never grown before, the large part of the population who consumed these goods and services had to improve its standard of living: they ate better, had more and better quality clothing, had access to more and better dwellings, increased their mobility, etc. However, this happened at a slower speed than many wanted. Contributing to this relatively slow pace was the tremendous population increase, because in order for the standard of living to rise the production of goods and services had not only to expand, but to expand at a rate faster than the population’s growth. On the other hand, economic growth required an enormous geographical

and occupational redistribution of population, that is to say, a change in its structure. Some aspects of these changes have already been seen in previous chapters. The exodus from the country to the city and from some continents to others, in particular European migration to America and, on a smaller but still significant scale, to Australia and New Zealand, constituted another phenomenon without precedent, mainly because of its magnitude. Migration from Europe to America had been going on since the sixteenth century; but in its early stages the movement involved only several hundred individuals a year. The rate speeded up somewhat during the eighteenth century and became a flood, bringing over half a million people a year in the nineteenth century, particularly during its second half. During the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, there was also a considerable involuntary migration stream from Africa to America as well as to the Middle East and Asia. These migrations and the demographic growth forever changed the struc-

ture of populations in the European countries as much as in Africa and in the

American and Oceanic continents. In these latter, the receiving countries, the population of European origin increased considerably, as did the population of African origin, although to a lesser extent. This produced strong population growth and a movement towards the west and the interior lands in the American continent and similar movements in Oceania. This is what is known in the United States as the frontier economy, the social and economic organization based on a colonizing movement towards semi-empty territories. A major consequence of the exploitation of these virgin lands, in conjunction with improvements in transoceanic transportation, was increased exportation of raw materials and agricultural products from the new continents to the old. This brought about a cheapening of foodstuffs and other imported goods, but with a corresponding “great agrarian depression” in Europe, where the lowering of prices ruined many farmers during the second half of the nineteenth century. This became a self-perpetuating process. Many of the ruined farmers were forced to abandon agriculture and migrate to cities or new countries. After several decades, the peasant exodus had definitely altered both population groups, the one that migrated as well as the one which received the immigrants. We must reiterate, however, that the agricultural crisis benefited humble big-city dwellers the most because they were able to get foodstuffs at lower prices. In Africa in the eighteenth century the export of slaves and internal wars

provoked by the slave traffic caused a loss of population and profound changes in social and political structures. As a matter of fact, Africa had traditionally been a continent exporting slaves as well as gold and ivory, but after the discovery of America the demand for slaves exceeded by far the demand for any other merchandise. It must be made clear that in Africa the slave traffic had been practiced since time immemorial and that it had given way to the appearance of bellicose states specializing in the capture, sale, and exportation of this type of labor. With the discovery of America, and above all with the development of plantations in tropical and semitropical zones, the demand for slaves from those same latitudes rose tremendously. Some ports in the Gulf of Guinea (Elmina, Calabar) became exchange points where European traders acquired slaves from the local kinglets in order to sell them in America. But the plantation system also developed in the islands of the Indian Ocean, and a very similar type of traffic crossed its waters from eastern ports such as Mombasa, Mogadishu and others, and also from Madagascar. On the whole, the effects of this trade were harmful (but not for the kinglets who hunted slaves, and for their tribes) to the African economy, which became an exporter of labor and an importer of almost everything else, especially industrial products and arms. The arms served to strengthen the kinglets who, better armed, and enriched by the human trade, expanded their domains at the expense of their neighbors whom they subdued and enslaved. In the nineteenth century matters changed slowly. With the prohibition of

the slave trade early in the century, the draining export of human beings decreased gradually. This was followed by a renewed interest in African

goods, as much because plantations similar to the American ones could also be had in Africa as because the African subsoil was revealing itself rich in diamonds, precious metals, and other valued mineral products. European powers began at that point a period of direct colonization in Africa. The weak African political organizations (weak in comparison to those of the colonizing powers) were subjected to the tutelage and protection of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain. This situation lasted for approximately seventy years, from the Congress of Berlin in 1885, in which the division of Africa was the object of an international conference that legalized it, until approximately 1955, when a rapid process of decolonization began, leaving the continent in a situation not much better than was the case prior to the Congress of Berlin. In Europe, meanwhile, the number of farmers within the total population

diminished. In this, Britain was also ahead, since in 1850 the population employed in industry exceeded by far that employed in agriculture and in related activities (fishing and forestry exploitation). The other European countries that had followed the industrialization path experienced, although with considerable delay, a similar evolution: agricultural population diminished first in relative terms (it grew, but less than total population), later on in absolute terms. In comparison, urban population (that is, grosso modo, the population devoted to commerce and industry) increased, in both relative and absolute terms. In turn, this structural change had important consequences. Here again England showed the way, but because it had been the precursor, its experience was unrepeatable. The population exodus to the cities caused serious social problems. In the

first place, the cities were not ready to receive the huge influx of new inhabitants. London, with more than 1 million people in 1800 and 2.7 million in 1850, was the biggest city in the world. Smaller English cities grew more proportionally. Birmingham went from 74,000 inhabitants to 233,000, which means it multiplied by a bit more than three times. Manchester, the city of cotton, went from 90,000 inhabitants to 303,000; therefore, it multiplied by 3.4. Sheffield, the city of steel, went from 31,000 inhabitants to 135,000, multiplying by 4.35. It was impossible, with the techniques of the times, to accommodate the new inhabitants in minimally adequate circumstances. Housing conditions awaiting the new arrivals were dismal. Overcrowding was the norm during the first decades of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, even if in some respects living conditions in the cities were better than in the country, for example, in wages, transportation, social and cultural life, etc. (had it not been that way folk would not have migrated), there was another terribly negative element in the life of urban workers: insecurity. It is true that the life of the traditional agricultural worker was full of risks, mainly due to weather (in the Middle Ages and during most of the early modern period the other great sources of insecurity in the country were war, banditry, and pillage): hail or drought could lead to starvation for poor farmers. But the farmer blamed that meteorological fatality on God’s will, and it increased

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his religious faith, which served as consolation during difficult times. It was useless to rebel against that superior will, which the farmer accepted stoically; however, when he believed that there was human responsibility, the farmer did not always display such stoicism: in the history of agrarian societies, stories abound of peasant revolts and the plundering of seigneurial granaries. In the new industrial cities the source of insecurity was market instability. If

climate experiences cycles of approximately nine or ten years due to solar fluctuations, industrial growth is also subject to cycles as a result of oscillation in entrepreneurial perspectives, which in turn are a consequence of mass psychology. During prosperous periods, optimism is contagious and there is a tendency to overinvest; when, as a result of this overinvestment, profits decrease, pessimism takes over, and there is a tendency to cease investing. On occasion, meteorological factors or other exogenous agents (wars, catastrophes) aggravate, precipitate, or magnify crises and fluctuations. The outcome is that growth does not proceed in a gradual or linear manner. It proceeds in a series of ups and downs, with periods of growth interspersed with periodic interruptions. Historical experience is eloquent: in the nineteenth century, after the Napoleonic Wars, economic crises occurred at approximately ten-year intervals. The gravest ones were in 1845-48, 1866-68, 1873-75, 1883-86, and 1893-95. In the twentieth century there were serious crises as well, although the two World Wars and anticyclical Keynesian policies eliminated the almost inexorable periodicity of the previous century. All in all, the experience of the fourth decade, the Great Depression of 1929-40, constitutes the most conclusive example of an economic crisis in the contemporary world. We will discuss it later. The effects of all these crises were that urban workers found themselves at

the mercy of economic cycles. It did not help factory workers or textile laborers to know that in the long run, in a matter of years, the standard of living was going to improve. At present they were unemployed or working for a reduced wage because a business depression was taking its course. Besides, it is highly unlikely that they would have known or understood long-term perspectives: very few individuals are capable of perceiving historical tendencies. And, as opposed to the peasant, the industrial worker could not resort to butchering the lamb or the pig, nor could he depend on seed and expect better times to come. The same thing happened with illness and old age. These conditions were more tolerable in the country since agriculture and cattle-raising allowed fairly long work interruptions. Besides, the wife and children could replace the father’s labor. One of the incentives for country folk to bear offspring was to assure themselves of working hands that would till the soil when age or handicap took its toll of the older generation. This family cushion did not work as well among urban workers. In the first place, labor absenteeism due to illness usually brought about the dismissal of the worker; in the second place, if the offspring had a salaried job and his own family, he could not very well help the parents when they became sick or reached old age. In addition, given the dwelling problems and the nature of

urban life, the intergenerational ties became weaker: in opposition to what happened in the country, the rural experience of parents in the first generation had no relevance in an urban environment. This increased the distance between the generations. Later on, rapid social change also negatively affected the value of parental experience. Children’s independence was greater in the cities for all of these reasons, and it increased the isolation and helplessness of urban couples. Cyclical fluctuations were aggravated by technological change, whose main

effect was to replace human labor with machines and thereby lower wages and condemn many workers to unemployment. Of course, in the long run increased productivity made possible by technical progress was beneficial for society at large, and employment increased spectacularly: the British population, for example, went from 8.9 million inhabitants to 32.5 million from 1801 to 1901 without an increase in the rate of unemployment. But in the short run, and in certain sectors, work stoppages were felt without mitigation and caused fearful tragedies. The best known case is perhaps the one involving British hand weavers during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, when Richard Roberts’s automated loom left many of them without a job. Roberts’s self-acting machine, a totally automated spinner, had similar effects. Against these machines rose the destructive fury of the Luddites, workers who mutinied and destroyed machines because they considered them responsible for redundancies and low wages. The anguished situation of workers during the Industrial Revolution has

been the source of a debate concerning its detrimental or beneficial aspects for the working classes in Britain. (The well-being of working classes in other industrialization processes has received much less attention.) With our contemporary perspective, the debate may appear absurd. There is no doubt that industrialization and economic modernization in advanced countries has provided a standard of living much more satisfactory to the majority of the population than the one which traditional agricultural societies offered. However, the discussion, which has now lasted a century and a half, continues in specialist circles. Prior to addressing the heart of the matter, there are two questions that should be asked. First: what relevance does this matter have in the twenty-first century? And second: why has consideration of this matter been limited to Britain? To the first question we must answer that today the problem is posed

almost exclusively in academic circles; the masses concluded a long time ago that industrialization and economic modernization are the path to well-being, and the debate is centered on how to achieve them. However, the controversy among specialists has been passionate, among other reasons because those who affirmed that industrialization harmed the workers were almost unanimous in their condemnation of capitalism and the market economy. Today, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and communism in Europe, this question is almost forgotten, but during the twentieth century it was an important part of

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confrontations between those who favored a capitalist economy and those who favored a communist one. The answer to the second question is that, as we have said many times, the

British case, the object of so much emulation, is unique because it is the pioneer. For a series of reasons, industrialization did not cause as much turmoil in other countries. One of the reasons is that other nations learned from the British model: thus, for example, during the nineteenth century, cities (English cities first) were provided with a series of advancements that improved their inhabitants’ standard of living extraordinarily. Among these we can mention street paving, public lighting (first gas and later electric lighting), sewer systems, running water, etc. All of these innovations were introduced in England gradually during the Industrial Revolution; therefore, the first immigrant generations scarcely had access to them. In other countries, on the contrary, such improvements were introduced when they could already benefit the first waves of immigrants. The same can be said about elementary hygiene practices such as vaccines, or about the advances in transportation, which enabled cities to be better supplied. All of these explain why, in spite of the very real welfare problems faced by working classes in almost every country during industrialization, their respective situations were never as dramatic as they were in Britain during the first half of the nineteenth century.