The Revolution of Transportation: Impacts and Social Classes

The Revolution of Transportation

Navigation:

1. Warships with steam engines (Fulton)
2. Iron vessels and propeller propulsion
3. Refrigeration
4. New infrastructure such as the Suez Canal (1869)

Railways:

Stephenson: 1830 - 1st steam locomotive passenger line between Liverpool and Manchester.

Implications:

1. Specialization in the global economy
2. Growth of trade
3. Diversification of diet
4. Facilitation of national and international migration
5. Integration and broader knowledge of the world

New Energy and Industry

1. New energy sources: electricity and oil
2. Key sectors: Steel, electricity, and chemicals
3. New transportation: automobile and aircraft
4. United States and Germany as new industrial powers

New Business Practices

1. New business structures: creation of the SA (Société Anonyme) and the stock market
2. Banks: a key element of the new economy
3. New systems of production: Fordism and Taylorism
4. Business Concentration: Cartels, Trusts, and Holdings

Effects of Population Changes

Population increase despite mortality.

1. Increased fertility
2. Increased life expectancy
3. Intense urbanization process
4. Major migratory movements from Europe to America, Australia, and New Zealand (60 million)

Social Classes

Differentiation by Wealth

1. High Class: Decline of the aristocracy and increased bourgeoisie
2. Middle Class: Heterogeneous group with moderate political views
3. Low Class: Workers and peasants with very difficult living conditions

Labor Movements

1. Joint initiatives undertaken by industrial workers to improve their living conditions
2. Luddites: destruction of machinery
3. Rights Association: Britain (1824)
4. Chartists: 1st attempt at political participation of the workers (1838)
5. Emergence of first unions to improve working conditions, reduce working hours, and advocate for social rights. Key instrument: strike
6. New ideologies: Marxism and Anarchism

Marxism

Theory of Socialist Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

1. Class struggle (bourgeoisie and proletariat)
2. Workers' revolution to destroy capitalism and achieve power to establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat" to create a communist society without social classes and where private property disappears.
3. Marx also advocated the political participation of workers with the creation of socialist parties.

Anarchism

Ideology: Bakunin and Kropotkin

1. Workers' revolution
2. Elimination of the state
3. Rejection of participation in politics, political parties, and elections
4. Liberty
5. Two trends:
   • Anarcho-syndicalism: Action via union workers.
   • Àcrats: Removal of any authority through violence.