Peter Hume,

We have been here before - but just for old time's sake, could you tell me what you think would have become of the British workforce over the period of the 19th century if the government of the time hadn't enforced the Factory Acts to prevent the barbaric treatment in the mills, factories and mines?

I mean, until the Factory and Education Acts were instituted, it was pretty well a laissez faire "free"-for-all enjoyed by the entrepreneurs of the day...and the men, women and children were treated abominably.

Human's usually learn by referring back to past experience - and sometimes they have enough sense not to go down the same road again.

Squeers
> I think your synopsis of my posts is exaggerated and unfair

It quotes you, and you made no other substantive answer to my questions for me to quote, so perhaps it was you who were exaggerated and unfair?

> I responded to your posts thoughtfully, if critically.

That’s your idea of critical thought? A stream of name-calling and wild misrepresentation?

I would have thought that answering my questions would have been more to the point.

>I'm not comfortable with an utterly governed existence either

It’s just that your posts call for total government control of everything in the world while simultaneously being aggressively ignorant of the definitive demonstrations that this is worse than futile?

> but I don't see your opposite minimal administration via free markets as an alternative.

Well coming from a Marxist perspective, why would you?

I also have tried in good faith to elaborate, but please understand my frustration in running always into a wall of circular reasoning, personal disparagement, imputations of bad faith, and wild misrepresentation. For example I have shown in an earlier thread that “neoliberal” does not describe me, but without refuting that, here you are again throwing the term in my face.

If you don’t really want to understand a theoretical approach that proves you wrong, then don’t ask.

But if you do, then you need to understand that there is a body of theory which explodes and refutes the very premises of your entire intellectual method and belief system: that’s why you keep losing the argument. Your circular argument and infantile rage might convince you, but it only exhibits what intellectual standard you consider acceptable.

If you really want to move beyond that, you need to a) understand, b) be able to accurately represent, theory opposed to yours.

So your real answer to my questions is…?

Poirot
How do you know that the Factories Acts didn’t exacerbate the hardship faced by the unemployed?

Spare me an emotive diatribe larded with angry presumptuous slogans. *How do you know* that they didn’t force more people into unemployment and greater hardship?

Peter Hume,

"Spare me the emotive diatribe."

You're not a character from Dickens, are you?

""How do you know" that they didn't force more people into unemployment and hardship?"

If you'd ever take the time to read transcripts of the original human documents pertaining to the time in question, you'd soon be aware that is was barely possible to exacerbate the misery commonly inflicted on the labouring population, especially of the northern shires of Britain.
Read some of the documents, Mr Hume, and then tell me that the practice of laissez faire which was unleashed at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution didn't grossly debase the social and moral fabric and the physical health of the population at large.

"A stream of name calling...."

"....infantile rage...."

That's pretty rich coming from you

.

Dear Peter,

.

Just a few comments on your point: "... democracy, which is highly redistributionist ...".

It is interesting to compare the evolution of the GINI coefficients of economic inequality over the period 2000 to 2007 in respect of the USA, India and China - the USA as the hallmark of modern democracy, India as the largest democracy in the world and China as the largest non-democratic country in the world.

Inequality in India retrograded from 32.5 to 36.8
Inequality in the USA remained stable at 40.8
Inequality in China improved from 44.7 to 41.5

Note: The Gini index lies between 0 and 100. A value of 0 represents absolute equality and 100 absolute inequality.

Another country worth looking at is Russia. There appears to be no general consensus as to how to classify Russia's political regime. On paper, I would say it is democratic. In reality, I would say it is non-democratic.

Russia's GINI coefficient for the same ten year period improved from 45.6 to 37.5

I leave you to meditate these indications which, I think you will agree, reveal contrasting evolutions of greater complexity and lesser certainty that one may imagine.

.

.

Oops !

The Gini coefficients indicated for Russia are for the same period from 2000 to 2007 as for the other countries indicated.

Also, the Gini coefficients indicated are those of The World Bank and not those of the CIA which are slightly different.

.

Poirot
You haven't answered the question, and you are adopting the same intellectual method as Squeers, namely, not entertaining the possibility that you may be wrong, and simply meeting every challenge by re-assuming what is in issue.

Over the period of the Industrial Revolution, the population of Great Britain doubled. This demographic fact was not known to Marx at the time of his writing. He wrongly assumed that the poverty of the working classes was caused by capitalism. However before modern capitalism came along, such population increase didn't take place. In other words, those people would have died, usually in infancy, as they still do in countries where modern capitalism have not raised the living standards of the working class to the highest in the history of the world.

So you have not entertained the possibility that the effect of the industrial revolution was not to reduce the living standard of the relevant increased population to penury, but to elevate it from death.

This issue cannot be proved or disproved by the method you have chosen - checking historical documents to see how poor were the conditions of the working class - because it doesn't prove whether that poverty was *because of* or *despite* the operations of industrial capitalism. So, like Squeers, you're circularly assuming what is to be proved, and then when challenged, just re-assuming it all over again.

(Besides, you're against "consumerism", remember? So are you blaming capitalism for raising the living standards of the masses too much, or not enough? Make up your mind!)

Your argument is, in deep structure, this:
You: "It is so."
I: "How do you know?"
You: "It is because it is."

So how about you answer my questions instead of just chasing your tail?