Comment by EthanHeilman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EthanHeilman | Hacker News Reader

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>the most convincing evidence that it was very hard was that early mines and factories were easily able to recruit all the workers they needed, despite working conditions we know to have been harsh.

I don't find that evidence convincing for two reasons:

1. Many peasant farmers relied on a commons for food production which was being legislatively destroyed at that time ( See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure ). Factories got peasants who were being pushed off their land due to industrialization. Those peasants might not have opted to be factory workers if they had been able to live a traditional peasant life. Note that this same process was repeated when Mexico grew it's industrial base in the 1990's under NAFTA using Article 27 to destroy common land to create cheap factory labor( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Free_Trade_Agre... ).

2. People going to work in factories may not have be aware of how terrible the conditions were and once they found out they may not have been able to reverse the situation (starvation wages don't make for many options). In much the same way that sex-traffickers promise one job (working as a cleaner) and then once the person is under their power the traffickers force them to work as prostitutes.

The question of the degree to which enclosure was responsible for the supply of factory workers is one people have debated for a century. The idea that it was was as you can imagine very popular with Marxist historians. Which doesn't make it false of course. But it does have the same neatness that drives urban legends, and in a place like HN we should be wary of this.

There were in practice a bunch of forces that drove people to work in factories. The rise of international trade, which depressed agricultural prices in comparatively unproductive Europe, was another huge one.

> Which doesn't make it false of course. But it does have the same neatness that drives urban legends, and in a place like HN we should be wary of this.

Agreed. To restate in less argumentative terms, the claim made that:

>the most convincing evidence that it was very hard was that early mines and factories were easily able to recruit all the workers they needed, despite working conditions we know to have been harsh.

to be convincing must show that:

(1). there was a real alternative between peasant life and industrial life,

(2). that peasants made the choice with at least a decent understanding of what factory life was like.

1 is, as you state, debatable which weakens the claim (it certainly is not evidence in the affirmative). On 2 I don't have the expertise or the citations to state one way or the other, but I would love to see some evidence on either side before placing faith in the claim.

To generalize, I would say that any argument that "A is better than B, because lots of people from B prefer A" must at minimum meet the test that: it is a true choice, and that the people making the choice have enough information (informed consent). Additionally, I do not consider such arguments truly convincing, in and of themselves, even if they meet both tests because populations can make poor choices (cigarettes, electing bad politicians, buying an inferior product, etc).

There was also a steady increase in labor effecency and total agriculture output which reduced the demand for agricultural workers.

> The idea that it was was as you can imagine very popular with Marxist historians. Which doesn't make it false of course.

Then why do you make this quip? It reads as if you are only including it to sow doubt about the claim by association. Maybe I'm overly cynical, if so I apologize.

> The rise of international trade, which depressed agricultural prices in comparatively unproductive Europe, was another huge one.

The idea that productivity of Europe was challenged by international trade was/is also wildly popular with Marxist historians - the rise of well-developed international capitalism as a pre-requisite to reaching the productivity levels required for a socialist revolution to be successful is a key part of Marx ideas. The rising competition from increasingly efficient US agriculture and industrialization was even explicitly called out for its effects on Europe in at least one of the prefaces Marx and Engels wrote to translations of the Communist Manifesto.

I don't think it's a quip. That it fits a popular narrative is evidence that motivated cognition was going on when evidence for the claim was gathered.

People wearing Che Guevara shirts are rarely hired for important positions.

That'd might be so.

But if they're not hired for some idea that they're Marxist, whoever rejects them are looking for the wrong things. In years of associating with various marxists, I've never seen any of them wearing Che Guevara shirts. Most of the people I see wearing Che shirts seem to have little to no understanding of the political signal it might send.

Frankly, I'd think you'd be more likely to find a marxist wearing a suit than a Che t-shirt.

Agree that there were multiple forces driving people into the factories. But there is a period of time between medivial peasants and the industrial revolution, and during that time a lot of things changed, economicaly and social.

Factory workers were paid handsomely and competition for such jobs was fierce.

[citation needed]

Also, "handsomely" is relative: if the quality of life of peasants plummeted due to enclosure until it was far below the QOL for factory workers and enclosure happened because of the industrial revolution, it would be disingenuous to say that the industrial revolution provided a handsome alternative to peasant life.

The freedom of choice can be immensely powerful or worse than useless depending on circumstances -- a distinction often lost on or intentionally glossed over by free-market drum beaters. If I kidnap you and give you the choice between having your throat slit and your chest stabbed, am I not still a murderer once you lie dead on the floor? I'm not enough of a historian to provide an informed opinion on the situation at hand but I've seen this exact same excuse (the poor people chose X so X was actually good for them) used in so many completely inappropriate circumstances that I had to speak up.

The initial stages of the industrial revolution were not so good for the workers. However, the mass production phase, did increase the standard of living.

The best example is "The five-dollar workday": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford

That's the current wage in Mexico!

Isn't five dollars a day more than double the UN poverty line - even today??

That would suggest a surplus of labour competing for high wages. Are you sure about this? Economically it doesn't make sense and we also know that until legislation finally restricted the practice, the factories were employing kids wherever possible to keep wages down.

Certainly in the early industrial revolution the "paid handsomely" bit was not true. People took the jobs because it was that or starve, and many of them starved anyway. This was especially the case during deflationary periods, as wages fell.

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