This paper examines the profound shift in work organization brought by the Industrial Revolution, tracing how the move from individual craft production to coordinated factory labor required workers to adopt new habits and attitudes. The paper analyzes the control systems factories employed to manage workers, explores why factory work was widely resisted, and discusses competing ideological responses—from capitalist justification to socialist and utopian critiques—that emerged in response to industrial inequality and harsh conditions.
The Industrial Revolution dramatically transformed the way people conducted work. Before the specialization of labor that factories introduced, people would complete a whole range of different tasks related to the production of a good or service. For example, a farmer would do everything from prepare the ground for seeding, to watering, to trimming, and finally to harvesting. During this process, no one was really dependent upon the speed or the manner in which they completed tasks. If the farmer wanted to take a fifteen-minute break or an entire day off, they could do this at their sole discretion.
However, once the completion of tasks was distributed to a team of workers in a factory setting, their work had to be coordinated to be most effective. If a worker on a factory line took a fifteen-minute break or an entire day off, this would affect the total output and disrupt the work of others. This requirement demanded that people's work habits be completely changed and that they adopt a more monotonous way of working. Not only did this require a shift in habits; it required that an individual adopt an entirely new attitude towards work in general.
The work in the factories was not highly regarded. In fact, the very recruitment to uncongenial work was difficult, and many factories were perceived as similar in design to prisons (Pollard, 1963). The work was hard and boring, and people simply did not want to do it. Thus, many different kinds of systems were devised to coerce people into doing the necessary work. Different forms of discipline were used to attempt to control workers' behavior. Paying wages were one form of control, but there were many others.
The systems of control of the workers were so brutal that many individuals tried to devise new systems of organizing society. The owners of capital used labor to promote their own self-interest, and there were enormous amounts of inequality in the system that was easy to perceive. Some argued that such a system promoted individuals to act selfishly and competitively, not because it is in their nature to do so, but rather because they are encouraged and rewarded for such behavior (JRANK, N.d.).
By contrast, socialists held that the values and beliefs promoted in a socialist society would enhance our capacity for acting cooperatively and collectively in pursuit of mutually reinforcing material and spiritual goals. Robert Owen (1771–1858), Charles Fourier (1772–1837), and other early socialist thinkers saw the need to reform rather than destroy capitalism, while followers of Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) insisted that capitalism had to be completely overturned in order for society to advance to a state of socialism (JRANK, N.d.).
"Workers and owners interpreted industrial society based on their economic interests"
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