Labor Systems and Economic Systems - AP World History: Modern

Adam Smith is widely held to be the 'father of modern capitalism'. His philosophical treatises on concepts such as the wealth of nations, personal self-interest, and trading laid the framework for the economic system that would become known as capitalism.

With the growth of factories and workhouses in the booming industrial cities, women and children were able to work, and were often prized above men by unethical employers because they could be treated less humanely, and their more delicate fingers were perfect for working the complicated machinery.

Largely due to its political independence, Japan was able to industrialize as early as some European countries. Subsaharan Africa was under the domination of the French and British, who orientated African economies towards the cultivation of natural resources for British and French industrial capital, rather than creating their own. Latin America, under the Spanish, was also barred from participating in the industrial revolution, as was Central Asia under Russian influence.

While corporations had existed in the past and had sold stock before, it had never been a widespread tool. It had also not been something available to the lower classes of society. Now, people had the chance to invest in stock with the hopes they could sell it later at a profit.

The factory system is where one central location houses the machinery of an industry and the workers come to the machinery to work it. This is the reason these places were called factories.

The Industrial Revolution originated in Great Britain in the late eighteenth century. The Industrial Revolution moved manufacturing from the home and into factories, where it became more efficient through the use of mass production and interchangeable parts. The revolution originated with textiles and food processing but soon moved to iron, steel, machine building, transportation, and communication.

The cotton gin was invented by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793. The machine allowed cotton to be much more efficiently separated from seeds and dramatically increased the productive capabilities of America’s cotton plantations in the south. It did, however, lead to a massive increase in the demand for slaves in the south of the United States. This is because cotton became immensely profitable in the early nineteenth century.

Labor unions emerged relatively quickly after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In many ways they were a continuation of guilds and peasant organizations from the pre-industrial era. However, the change they campaigned for came about very slowly. In the early years the efforts of labor unions were blocked by the government, which was almost exclusively controlled by people who benefited financially from holding unions back. The rate of change accelerated over the course of the nineteenth century and eventually labor unions were able to affect most of the changes they desired - such as child labor laws, limit on working hours, and the two-day weekend.

The so-called Congo Free State, under the initial personal control of King Leopold II of Belgium and later under the control of the Belgian government, was extremely profitable due to the lucrative rubber plantations and the use of forced native labor.

Tsar Alexander II reigned from 1855 until 1881. He is most often remembered for the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, and action for which he is often called Alexander the Liberator. He also enacted a series of reforms to try and modernize the Russian state, including the abolition of capital punishment and the promotion of devolution and local government.

The Industrial Revolution began in England in the second-half of the eighteenth century. There are many reasons why the Industrial Revolution began in England. To begin with England had just recently undergone a type of agricultural revolution that greatly increased food productivity and led to a decrease in the proportion of the population needed to work the fields to provide for the rest of the population. As such there was a surplus of available workers, as well as a growing population. Furthermore, England has an abundance of natural resources and relative ease of transportation. Finally, the government of England encouraged capitalism and free market innovation, leading to many industrial innovations. However, England’s public education system was not universally established until well after the Industrial Revolution was underway.

King Leopold was the king of Belgium when he established a personal colony in the Congo in the nineteenth century. Leopold’s Congo colony was extremely profitable due to the production of rubber, which was much in demand throughout the world. Under Belgian control the people of the Congo were heavily exploited and, according to many estimates, tens of millions of people died. The horrors and profits of Leopold’s Congo contributed to the convening of the Berlin Conference and the division of Africa among the various European imperial powers.

The social consequences of the Industrial Revolution are extremely complex. To begin with the Industrial Revolution actually worsened the quality of life for the majority of the population. Workers, who were used to a degree of autonomy and a reasonable work day, were suddenly forced into effective wage slavery and forced to work fourteen or sixteen hour shifts at factories. Eventually, working conditions got better, unions arose, and the quality of life for the population improved dramatically. But, it cannot be said that the wealthiest members of society became less relatively wealthy. Indeed the Industrial Revolution accelerated the income gap between the owners and the workers.

The emancipation of the serfs in 1861, under Russian Tsar Alexander II had numerous consequences for Russian society. It did not, however, improve agricultural production or cohesion within Russian society. If anything it further fractured Russian society as many interest groups has reason to be disenchanted by the emancipation. The emancipation of the serfs did provide much-needed workers for the blossoming Russian industrial revolution, however.

The Industrial Revolution contributed to the decline of slavery because it dramatically increased the profitability of businesses whilst allowing workers to be paid a tiny wage. Business owners realized that it was actually cheaper and less risky to pay workers than it was to buy and own slaves.

In the early years of the Industrial Revolution working conditions for the average individual were far worse than they had been before the revolution. Prior to the Industrial Revolution the average worker (in England) might have worked slightly less than eight hours a day tilling the fields and caring for crops and animals. In the early years of the Industrial Revolution workers were suddenly working fourteen or sixteen hour days, sometimes six or seven days a week, in horribly dangerous conditions. The relative autonomy of individuals also declined in the early years of the Industrial Revolution.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto, which outlines the key concepts of Marxism. According to Marx and Engels in order for the workers to form a classless society they need to seize control of the means of production from the capitalists. This is what Marx refers to as the Workers Revolution or the Proletarian Revolution.

According to Karl Marx, in The Communist Manifesto, the primary enemy of the proletariat (workers) is the bourgeoisie (business-owning middle class). In order for the proletariat to improve their condition and form a classless society the bourgeoise needs to be overthrown.

The United States was a nation born in a revolution against a powerful European nation and one might expect that America would have therefore welcomed and encouraged the Haitian revolution. But, instead the United States refused to recognize Haitian independence, primarily because the United States feared the spread of antislavery revolutions which might disrupt the American socioeconomic order.