I need help on my humanities paper. The topic is as follows: \"Analyze the impac

Question

I need help on my humanities paper. The topic is as follows: "Analyze the impact of the Industrial Age and the rise of of capitalism and discuss the key features of both and their influence on contemporary society." The highest points are conferred for originality, the locating and detailing of controversies, and for nuanced papers that sensitively explore topics. Annotations & Draft Paper: A draft of five-seven pages, impeccably presented with in-text citations and reference page. Final Paper: A final paper of nine to ten pages.

Explanation / Answer

Capitalism was the foundation for the Industrial Revolution. The idea behind the revolution was rampant consumerism. Capitalism and consumerism go hand in hand. People buy things from businesses that employ people who take their salaries and buy things from businesses. The cycle supports itself. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt"). The capitalist system is the most productive mode of production in the history of humankind. In the space of a few centuries the world has been transformed beyond all recognition. Average life expectancies have more than doubled. Technological developments occur at a rate that would have been previously unimaginable. More food, clothing and shelter can be produced using less labor than ever before. It would seem that the material problems of survival have finally been solved.

Yet capitalism is a system at odds with itself. The need for constant accumulation is the driving force of society, determining where and in what way human energies will be used. Instead of humankind controlling the fulfilment of its own development, humanity is at the mercy of an economic system which it has itself created. It is the conflict between the need to accumulate capital and the need to fulfil human want that is at the heart of all social problems today. Enough food could be produced to feed all of the world’s population, yet people go hungry.

Why? Because those in need of food do not have the money to pay for it. Industry pumps pollutants into the environment yet less destructive methods of production could easily be utilized. Why? Because more profit is to be made this way. Vast wealth co-exists with abject poverty leading to an ever-widening gap between rich and poor. Why? Because capitalist accumulation is dependent on the exploitation of the wage laborer. The transition from feudalism to capitalism is often viewed as the result of a gradual and rising progress of technology, urbanization, science and trade – inevitable because humans have always possessed “the propensity to truck, barter and exchange”. However, some have demonstrated, the rise of capitalism depended on very specific and localized conditions and was the result of a process that was far from automatic. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt").

The relatively recent change from a primarily agricultural society of petty producers to a society of commodity production and market dependence required a change in the social relations at the heart of society. The central relationship instead of being between landlords and un-free peasants became one between capital-owners and property less wage-laborers. Such a change could only be bought about by a complete rupture with the old relations of human interaction. By the 17th century trade, mercantilism and money lending had grown and developed in Europe but these by themselves did not undermine the foundations of feudal society. The mere existence of commodity production, merchants’ capital and money lenders capital are necessary but not sufficient conditions for the full development of capitalism. “Or else ancient Rome, Byzantium etc. would have ended their history with free labor and capital”. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt").

In order to maintain and improve their position as members of the ruling class and to defend it against their rivals, their underlings and moneylenders, the pressure was on feudal landlords to increase rents. In capitalism surplus wealth is extracted through economic means; it is because of the market-dependency of the wage-laborer that labor-power is sold. In feudal society, as the peasants have their own means of production, surplus must be extracted via ‘extra-economic’ methods through the real or ultimate threat of force, which explains their un-free status. In order to maintain and improve their position as members of the ruling class and to defend it against their rivals, their underlings and moneylenders, the pressure was on feudal landlords to increase rents. In capitalism surplus wealth is extracted through economic means; it is because of the market-dependency of the wage-laborer that labor-power is sold. In feudal society, as the peasants have their own means of production, surplus must be extracted via ‘extra-economic’ methods through the real or ultimate threat of force, which explains their un-free status. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt").

Peasants who were unable to keep up with fines or tenants that failed to compete successfully were pushed into a mere subsistence existence and eventually made landless. Some became vagabonds, wandering the roads looking for food or others became wage laborers on large farms. The landless became not only laborers but also consumers as they needed to buy goods in the market which they had previously been able to produce themselves. This was one of the reasons a healthy home market was able to develop in England. Until 1640 the state operated in the interest of the old feudal order, restricting the full development of capitalist relations in the countryside. During the turbulent events of the English civil war the commercial classes, favoring capitalist development against the traditional rights of peasants and monarchy, managed to take hold of Parliament. The rate of change now rapidly accelerated with the ‘improving’ capitalist tenant farmer becoming typical by 1660. State-sponsored enclosure of common lands increased and became commonplace, forcing more and more peasants into becoming landless wage-laborers.

The capitalist system that began during the Industrial Revolution is one of the most effective and efficient methods of production in human history. In the decades and centuries following the Industrial Revolution, the effects of tools, machinery and the ability to increase output and efficiency have spread worldwide. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, agriculture was the primary form of capitalism. Small markets and farms were economic drivers. These forms of commerce were ideal for supporting and sustaining small families and communities, but it was the introduction of sophisticated tools and equipment that enabled nations to create vibrant central economies. Among the key technological developments during the Industrial Revolution was the ability to mass-manufacture items, such as food, clothing and shelter, which were previously only produced on small scales, and used to support individual families rather than provide a source of revenue. The expansion of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution also planted the seeds for international trade and commerce. The emergence of the landlord/capitalist tenant/wage-laborer triad made the agricultural revolution possible and laid the groundwork for the industrial revolution. Growing agricultural production provided rising incomes for not only the middle but the lower classes, fuelling the growth of the home market. “Industry fed on agriculture and stimulated in turn further agricultural improvement – an upward spiral that extended into the industrial revolution”. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt")

Once English capitalism reached its industrial phase the world-wide market with its competitive pressures became the means for the spreading of capitalist social relations. Economies that depended on trade would be subject to the market imperatives of competition and increasing productivity. These market imperatives transformed social property relations leading to a new wave of dispossession and commodification of labor-power, both small agricultural and independent industrial producers faced the same fate. As more and more people were brought under the sphere of market dependence the strengths of these imperatives grew. Capital was able to remake the world in its own image. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt")

By studying capitalism we learn that human society is not the result of some eternal logic or divine laws but is created through our own actions as we produce the things we need and use every day. The historical conditions that set in motion the social changes that have transformed the world were in no way inevitable. We must fully understand the full power of market imperatives, of the need to accumulate capital and of the need to raise the productivity of labor. We must also have a clear idea of their origins. Once we can begin to answer how and why society works in the way it does we are already some way towards understanding what could be done to change it. The capitalist system that began during the Industrial Revolution is one of the most effective and efficient methods of production in human history. In the decades and centuries following the Industrial Revolution, the effects of tools, machinery and the ability to increase output and efficiency have spread worldwide. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt")

The Industrial Revolution allowed for an increase in jobs, improved means of transportation of goods, communication between people and an improved banking system. The industries greatly affected by the Industrial Revolution included the iron and textile industries. The invention of the steam engine allowed for a better means of transporting the goods to the desired location. A downfall of the Industrial Revolution was the lack of employment law, resulting in undesirable work environments and living conditions. Capitalism is not a product of some peculiarly European development. Since the first agriculture in the Middle East some 10,000 or so years ago there has been a cumulative, if sporadic, growth of new forces of production spreading right across the connected land masses of Europe, Asia and Africa. The rise of capitalism in Europe is just one passing phase in this whole process. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt")

Elements pushing for capitalism began to emerge in several different parts of the world. In practice these elements developed more slowly elsewhere than in Europe for contingent historical reasons (or rather, more slowly than western Europe, for things were much more like India than England in huge swathes of eastern and southern Europe)--and then arrived too late in the day to do so independently. It was not 'European values' that created capitalism, but rather capitalism that created what we think of as European values. And capitalism did not arise because of some unique European occurrence, but as a product of the development of the forces and relations of production on a global scale. Capitalism is not a product of some peculiarly European development. Since the first agriculture in the Middle East some 10,000 or so years ago there has been a cumulative, if sporadic, growth of new forces of production spreading right across the connected land masses of Europe, Asia and Africa. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt"). The rise of capitalism in Europe is just one passing phase in this whole process. Elements pushing for capitalism began to emerge in several different parts of the world. In practice these elements developed more slowly elsewhere than in Europe for contingent historical reasons (or rather, more slowly than western Europe, for things were much more like India than England in huge swathes of eastern and southern Europe)--and then arrived too late in the day to do so independently. It was not 'European values' that created capitalism, but rather capitalism that created what we think of as European values. And capitalism did not arise because of some unique European occurrence, but as a product of the development of the forces and relations of production on a global scale. Instead of dealing with this question seriously, Blaut has a tendency simply to dismiss those who raise it as 'Eurocentric'--as if it is somehow Eurocentric to recognise that parts of Europe, their rapid economic growth and their global empires were a dominant factor in world history from at least the mid-18th century onwards. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt"). This tendency is even more marked in the recent works of Gunder Frank, who claims 'Marx's entire "theory of capitalism" was vitiated' by 'Eurocentric' assumptions that 'Europe was different'. He replaces the notion of capitalism with that of a world system supposedly existing since the first emergence of a trading class, without there being any such thing as the 'rise of capitalism' separate from the industrial revolution. He sees a single dynamic to the productive system based upon 'long' or 'Kondratieff' waves going right back to 10th century China23 or even to the Bronze Age. Class societies began to emerge in various parts of the world from around 5,000 years ago onwards.

Over a period of several centuries, what had once been communal production fell under the control of ruling minorities who ensured it provided them with an increasingly luxurious and leisurely lifestyle. At first they tended to exploit the rest of society collectively, as temple priests or royal households, rather than through private property. On this basis civilizations as diverse as those in the Nile Valley, ancient Iraq, northern China, the Indus Valley, central America, the Andes, Crete, Ethiopia and west Africa developed.25 Over time central control tended to weaken and a class of 'aristocrats', 'gentry' or 'lords' to emerge which exploited direct cultivators in each locality. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt"). At the same time, the polarization of society into classes found its reflection in greater or lesser degrees of disintegration of the old communal forms of agricultural production and the emergence of peasant households as the main productive units. There would then be a continual tussle between the central state administration, with its corps of tax collectors, and the local rulers over who got the lion's share of the surplus which was taken from the peasants in the form of labor services, crops or, sometimes, cash. All these societies had one thing in common--the ruling class, whether made up of lords and aristocrats or of state administrators, took the surplus directly off the peasant producers, without any pretense of exchange of goods. There was some exchange long before the rise of classes. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt") Archaeologists have found artefacts that must have been made many hundreds of miles away among the remains of hunter-gatherer settlements of southern France more than 20,000 years ago, and the circulation of the products of human labor was even more widespread in the agricultural societies that began to emerge ten millennia later. There was no other way, for instance, that the villagers of the river plain of southern Iraq could get metal ores and even wood (since the lower valley of the Tigris and Euphrates was virtually treeless). But the circulation of products in pre-class societies was not trade in the sense that we know the term today. It was not carried out according to strict calculations of profit or loss, but according to traditions of gift-giving and gift-taking, based on customary rites, much as continued to happen in pre-class societies in places like Polynesia right into the 20th century. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt"). The Industrial Revolution transformed societies around the world. Machines made the production of goods faster and cheaper. Advances in steam engine technology saw a number of industries adopt mechanization. As demand for goods increased, transportation became more efficient. Farmers and peasants moved to the cities to take advantage of higher paid work in new factories. Workers were poorly paid and forced to live in cramped slums, while factory owners and industrialists made great profits and lived in luxury.

Against this background of economic and social change emerged a number of new philosophies and intellectual trends. Many of these theories began as a response to the changing world of the Industrial Revolution. Each of these theories had a profound impact on the world. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt"). Capitalism is a theory which describes the economic system of the industrial world, where the means of production (such as factories) are privately owned. Marxism is a set of theories developed by German philosopher Karl Marx which described historical change as the product of a number of class struggles and revolutions. Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement which began during the Industrial Revolution. Romanticism rejected the rationalism of modern thought and the constructs of modern society, preferring an 'organic' and 'natural' thought system.

Capitalism describes an economic system in which the means of production (such as factories) are privately owned. Individuals can rise from poverty to riches by investing in businesses. An individual who invests in a business venture is a capitalist. Individuals own and control factories or skills, the means of production. Businesses produce goods or services. Other people can purchase these goods or services. The prices of goods and services are determined by the value in a free market. People are free to purchase whatever items they want, independent of any government control. Capitalist economies were produced by the Industrial Revolution. Individual inventors and entrepreneurs invested in new products. By using their ingenuity and taking risks, they were able to build large companies and make great profits. The economy was dominated by a number of large corporations, privately owned, which competed to produce good quality products for low prices. Individuals accumulated great amounts of wealth.

Marx examined the other side of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, the gap between rich and poor. Marx believed that all historical and social change was caused by class struggles between the bourgeoisie 'haves' and the proletariat 'have-nots'. The bourgeoisie are the 'haves', the middle and upper classes. They have economic and political power. They own land and run businesses. They are capitalists. The proletariat is, according to Marx, exploited by the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie employ proletarians in their factories. The proletarians are paid money for their labor. The bourgeoisie then use the proletarian labor to produce goods that are sold for more money than the wage of the proletarian. The bourgeois businessman keeps the profit and becomes wealthy from the labor of the proletariat. The division of society into bourgeoisie and proletariat can be seen in the social changes which accompanied the Industrial Revolution. Workers were poorly paid, even exploited in some cases, by profit-driven factory owners. According to Marx, the proletarians would eventually tire of their exploitation and oppression and overthrow the capitalist bourgeoisie. The end result of the revolution would be the establishment of a communist society, a classless state where all means of production and property would be shared among all citizens.

The Romantic Movement affected all the arts, including literature, visual arts and music. There were distinct groups of Romantic artists. At the heart of the Romantic Movement was a call to return to nature. Nature and beauty were of the utmost importance. Strong emotion should be expressed, not restrained. Romantics believed the imagination, not rationality, was the most important part of the human mind. Imagination could be inspired by the divine or nature. The natural world featured prominently in Romantic works. Nature was a symbol of beauty, wisdom and perfection. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt").

The Romantics believed that the universe was not a machine which operated in a rational manner. They rejected systems and structures such as religion, literary constructs and politics. Although many Romantics were active members of society, they also distanced themselves from the structures of public life. The individual was important in the Romantic Movement, but not as a competitive profiteer. To the Romantics, the individual was a vehicle for divine intervention and artistic imagination. The individual was able to express thoughts about beauty and nature. The difficulty of defining socialism is apparent to anyone who attempts to study this protean doctrine, not least because what socialism is or is not is usually a matter of contentious debate. However, there is a general consensus that the various schools of socialism share some common features that can be summarized as follows. Socialism is above all concerned with the relationship between the individual, state, and society. For the socialist, the individual is never alone and thus must always define himself or herself in relation to others. Socialists believe that a well-ordered society cannot exist without a state apparatus, not least because the state is seen as the most effective vehicle for coordinating and administering to the needs of all.

Because they see material circumstances as being key to the well-being of individuals, socialists stress the importance of the economic system that operates in every society. It was their observations of the deleterious effects of industrial capitalism that caused socialist reformers to call for the development of new economic structures based on a completely different set of moral principles. The question of how the transition from capitalism to socialism would occur has been answered in different ways by different socialist theorists. 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. Contemporary socialists do not envisage the transition from capitalism to socialism as a sharp break, but as a process of economic reforms that takes into account the role of market forces. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt").

Socialists' views on human nature distinguish them from their principal political rivals, the liberals and conservatives. While the latter two groups tend to hold that all humans are inherently self-interested and materialistic, socialists contend that these traits are products of social conditioning under capitalism. On this view, individuals act selfishly and competitively, not because it is in their nature do so, but rather because they are encouraged and rewarded for such behavior. Socialists hold 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.

In these senses, socialism was used to distinguish the attitudes of those who laid stress on the social elements in human relations from those who emphasized the claims of the individual. In fact, to be a socialist was to be someone who promoted a social system in direct opposition to the highly individualistic order being advocated by the proponents of laissez faire economics. At one time, behind the debate was an ideological argument between the critics (especially Marxists) and the defenders of free markets. The critics, or pessimists, saw nineteenth-century England as Charles Dickens’s Coketown or poet William Blake’s “dark, satanic mills,” with capitalists squeezing more surplus value out of the working class with each passing year. The defenders, or optimists, saw nineteenth-century England as the birthplace of a consumer revolution that made more and more consumer goods available to ordinary people with each passing year. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt"). The ideological underpinnings of the debate eventually faded, probably because, as T. S. Ashton pointed out in 1948, the industrial revolution meant the difference between the grinding poverty that had characterized most of human history and the affluence of the modern industrialized nations. No economist today seriously disputes the fact that the industrial revolution began the transformation that has led to extraordinarily high (compared with the rest of human history) living standards for ordinary people throughout the market industrial economies. The most influential recent contribution to the optimist position (and the center of much of the subsequent standard-of-living debate) is a 1983 paper by Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson that produced new estimates of real wages in England for the years 1755 to 1851. These estimates are based on money wages for workers in several broad categories, including both blue-collar and white-collar occupations. The authors’ cost-of-living index attempted to represent actual working-class budgets. Lindert’s and Williamson’s analyses produced two striking results. First, they showed that real wages grew slowly between 1781 and 1819. Second, after 1819, real wages grew rapidly for all groups of workers. For all blue-collar workers a good stand-in for the working classes the Lindert-Williamson index number for real wages rose from 50 in 1819 to 100 in 1851. That is, real wages doubled in just thirty-two years. ("Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt")

Other economists challenged Lindert’s and Williamson’s optimistic findings. Charles Feinstein produced an alternative series of real wages based on a different price index. In the Feinstein series, real wages rose much more slowly than in the Lindert-Williamsons series. Other researchers have speculated that the largely unmeasured effects of environmental decay more than offset any gains in well-being attributable to rising wages. Wages were higher in English cities than in the countryside, but rents were higher and the quality of life was lower. What proportion of the rise in urban wages reflected compensation for worsening urban squalor rather than true increases in real incomes? Williamson—using methods developed to measure the ill effects of twentieth-century cities—found that between 8 and 30 percent of the higher urban wages could be attributed to compensation for the inferior quality of life in English cities. John Brown found that much of the rise in real wages in the factory districts could be explained as compensation for poor working and living conditions. Another criticism of Lindert’s and Williamson’s optimistic findings is that their results were for workers who earned wages. We do not know what happened to people who worked at home or were self-employed. Because the consumption per person of tea and sugar, thought of as luxury goods at the time, failed to rise along with real wages, Joel Mokyr has suggested that workers who were not in the Lindert-Williamson sample may have suffered sufficiently deteriorating real incomes to offset rising wage income; in other words, the average person was no better off. Mokyr’s explanation could also explain a lag between industrialization and the diffusion of its benefits.

The American Industrial Revolution announced the arrival and predominance of capitalism, an economic principle that Adam Smith theorized in “Wealth of Nations,” and that Karl Marx elaborated upon in his magnum opus, “Capital.” The factories that sprang up in the Industrial Revolution illustrated the capitalist principle of wage labor, in which workers disavowed ownership of the means of production in return for an hourly wage. This process concentrated wealth in the hands of industrialists, whose fortunes became tied to the fluctuations of a consumer market. During the Industrial Revolution, capitalist America, with its large population and vast natural resources, became an economic juggernaut that took advantage of a vast internal and international consumer market. The political implications of the American Industrial Revolution included the rise of the United States as a global economic power, the clash between traditional culture and modern progress, and the passage of labor-related legislation. The Civil War represented a conflict between an agrarian society, which relied upon slave labor, and an industrial society in which paid employees fueled a consumer economy. The expansion of the American economy had international repercussions, including the opening of relations with Japan and spurred rapid territorial growth. Urban workers also became a vocal political class, and encouraged the passage of legislation such as the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.

References:

www.coedu.usf.edu/main/departments/seced/webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.ppt. 2017. www.coedu.usf.edu/main/departments/seced/webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.ppt. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.coedu.usf.edu/main/departments/seced/webq/Powerpointpresentation.ppt. [Accessed 7 June 2017].

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"Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt". N.p., 2017. Web. 9 June 2017.

"Www.Coedu.Usf.Edu/Main/Departments/Seced/Webq/.../Powerpointpresentation.Ppt". N.p., 2017. Web. 9 June 2017.

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