The industrial society it is the result of workers' struggles in search of reforms that humanize capitalism. The industrial society was, little by little, transforming itself in search of improvements in the workers' living conditions.
During the first half of the 19th century, thanks to the industrialization process, the population of workers in the main cities of Europe showed a significant growth, which widened the contrast between wealth and poverty.
Paris was the city that had the biggest population increase, although industrialization in France was not as intense as in England. Workers, tired of overwork and a miserable life, flocked to the neighborhoods of the main industrial centers.
In London, the pioneer of industrialization, human agglomeration in precarious housing was a matter of concern even to the bourgeois, as the epidemic of cholera and typhoid fever spread through the city.
The fear of a revolt by this oppressed crowd frightened the richest.
Read about the English Industrial Revolution.
The Trade Union Organization
In the early years of the 19th century, workers began to organize themselves into unions, despite not being admitted by legislation. In the second half of the century, several labor rights had already been conquered thanks to the strength of union movements and the adhesion of some segments of society.
The trade union movement brought together groups of different tendencies, from those who fought in favor of the demands of the working class, to those who used the movement as a political activity, which could trigger a social revolution. Many believed that the workers' struggle was embedded in a broader social and political context.
In the second half of the 19th century, revolutionary syndicalism advocated the strike as an instrument of demand for the transformation of society.
Socialism
One of the first experiences to seek improvements to the living and working conditions for its employees took place in Scotland, where industrialist Robert Owem (1771-1868) created in his factory in New Lamarck , a colony that provided housing, education and food for workers, in addition to limiting the working day to ten and a half hours.
Owem he created a project that organized society into villages to offer better conditions to the poorest. He applied the same ideas on his farm in Indiana in the United States. His experiments, however, failed, as capitalist society did not spontaneously adjust to eliminate social injustices.
In France Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and Charles Fourier (1772-1837) planned a harmonious society for all human beings, where everyone worked at what gave them pleasure. They were later called utopian socialists; their projects were ineffective to eliminate social differences and workers remained destitute of political power, while the bourgeoisie would continue to control everything and never share its wealth.
Understand better in Socialism.
Anarchism
The capitalist system was targeted by anarchists, who advocated the end of private property and any form of government.
Anarchist ideas were based on freedom and the absence of authority. The work should be based on the system of cooperatives, with small communities with self-management, including the system of exchange between them.
Some anarchist theorists, among them Bakunin (1824-1876) and Proudhon (1809-1865) differed in their strategies to combat capitalist exploitation.
Anarchist thought reached the unions and, at the end of the 19th century, in France, Italy and mainly in Spain, where the anarcho-syndicalists created the National Confederation of Workers.
Finally, the anarchist tendencies were defeated by the Marxist and social democratic currents in the international scenario of the working class struggle.
Learn more at Anarchism.
Marxism
Several projects emerged in Europe to transform industrialized society, among them Marxism. The German philosopher and revolutionary, Karl Marx (1818-1883), together with the German philosopher Fredrich Engels (1820-1895) created Marxist socialism, called scientific, which idealized ending social inequalities by breaking with the capitalist order.
The "Communist Manifesto", published in 1848, in France, called the workers to the revolution.
For Marx and Engels history was governed by laws that had to be understood and explained rationally. For them, the way each society organizes the production and distribution of wealth would define the social order, the political structure and cultural values. The economic factor would be the last resort; in order to establish an egalitarian society it was necessary to transform production through a radical revolution.
The Christian Reformers
The injustices created by industrial society also raised concerns for the Catholic Church, which tried to find solutions to the problem.
One of the first Catholics to preach the need for Christian reforms that humanize capitalism was the French priest Robert Lamennais , who considered that the incorporation of Christian teachings into modern society would install social justice.
Pope Leo XIII, in 1891, in the Encyclical Rerum Novarum , gave impetus to the reform movement of the Church. In it, he rejected socialist proposals and defended private property, as well as demanding that the treatment given to the worker obeyed the principles of Christianity. For Pope Leo XIII, the worker had the right to protection at work, the limitation of working hours and union organization, but he denied the right to strike and the structural changes advocated by revolutionary socialism.
The Christian social movement continued into the 20th century, joining moderate factions of the socialist movement.
Read more:
- Labor Day
- Industry
- Fordism
- Taylorism
- Toyotism
- Questions about the Industrial Revolution
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