Industrial Revolution and Political Systems Justify Your

Industrial Revolution and Political Systems

Justify your choice of the two most significant social consequences of the Industrial Revolution.

The industrial revolution brought with it a mix of influences, some of which were good and yet others were negative to the society. The major consequences of industrialization that are of interest here are the change in the social structure of the society and the heightening of social unrest around Europe.

As Gregory Clark (2007) indicates, the industrial revolution brought about the development of small centers around the industries where the workers would report on a daily basis with ease. These centers later developed into towns and cities with majority of the dwellers being the people working in the industries and having migrated from their rural homes. This changed the social structure of the European community as many moved from the rural areas leaving the young and the old to stay back there and the energetic men and women convened at the town centers in search of employment. This meant that the social and moral influence that the parents had over their children went down, the social connection between the people living in the urban areas became more and more superficial and less meaningful.

On the other hand, the society grew more turbulent as the industrial revolution continued to take root in Europe. According to William S. Camanor (2012) the unskilled laborers and those who did the manual work in the industries felt largely underpaid and marginalized. This led to rise in grievances and when not well handled led to bloody riots that saw thousands of people killed in the 19 century across Europe and vast number of property majority being industries burnt down. This further led to other social injustices like stringent employment rules that suppressed the poor, favoritism during employment, and discrimination on whom to employ in a given firm and such like social ills. These were the two most noticeable consequences of industrial revolution; change of the social structure and the shift from peaceful coexistence to violent relationships within the society.

B. Discuss the relationship between the Industrial Revolution and the development of capitalism.

Capitalism is the economic system where the central factors of production are privately owned and the cash is invested in various business ventures to ensure profit comes in. It is a system where the owner of the goods and the buyer agree on the prices of the goods being transacted between them, the individuals own means of production as well as property, there is progress in business when individuals follow their own interests and by this compete for the consumers' money by trying to produce goods that are cheaper that of the competitor.

Capitalism and industrial revolution have therefore gone hand in hand over the years from the 1700s in Europe to date. Capitalism led people to invest in individual or group owned factories, in a bid to meet the demands of the client there was increased production to beat competitors. Capitalism also led to world wide trade with a view to reach the maximum number of clients, there were new inventions and al these helped propagate industrial revolution. With the increased number of industries, there was increased wealth ownership and control of property (including labor) and the means of production (the industries) by a few. This therefore led to more capitalism taking root in England and elsewhere in the world.

C. Discuss how the rise of capitalism led to the development of communism.

Communism is an ideology propagating the communal ownership of property and a society that is classless. One of the earliest propagators of this ideology was Karl Marx who advocated fro an authoritative economic plan that would see the distribution of wealth within the community with the interests of the community at heart (Paul M. Johnson, 2005).

With the rise in capitalism, which means there are few people who own the property and means of production, there rose the resistance to such a system and a communist system came up to counter the idea since majority of the people who worked the hardest got paid the least and continued living in deplorable condition yet they were the greatest numbers in every system. This made them push for the government controlled capitalism aka communism (Progressive Living, 2012).