Pasos para la elaboración de compromisos e instancias de revisión

With the Industrial Revolution, industrial manufacturing replaced agricultural produce.

The discovery of modern equipment enhanced productive capacity and, consequently, the factory system emerged with division of labour ensuring that productive tasks were appropriately distributed among workers. Although manufacturing production predates the modern era, it however reached its high-point with improved manufacturing activities occasioned by the use of advanced technology in modern period (Bilton et al, 2002). George Ritzer (1996) provides a concise but apt account of the instance of Industrial Revolution:

The Industrial Revolution was not a single event but many interrelated development that culminated in transformation of the Western world from a largely agricultural to an overwhelmingly industrial system. Large numbers of people left agricultural work for the industrial occupations offered in the bourgeoning factories. The factories themselves were transformed by a long series of technological improvements.

Large economic bureaucracies arose to provide the many services needed by industry and the emerging capitalist economic system _(6-7).

Thus, the factory system ensued as the most significant consequence of modernity. It led to the

‗‗invention of power driven machinery‘‘ which improved productive capacity and organised the workers in a better way compared to what obtained in traditional society.

Coming as an off-shoot of improved economic activity, capitalism became the new economic order. Consequently, an entrepreneur class emerged to engage in sustained and

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aggressive pursuit of profit, leaving the proletariat to wallow in abject poverty in the midst of plenty. To a capitalist, workers are not better than dummy that must be gagged and repressed so as to make the accumulation of wealth a fait accompli. In the ensuing free market economic system, goods and services were produced and exchanged for the benefit of the few who had the technological wherewithal to engage in mass production, while the workers were reduced to robot who had to endure long hours of tedious labour for a relatively low wage. Citing Henry Ford as instance, Bilton et al (2002:28) conclude that with capitalist economic order, ―increased output‖ is inevitable owing to the discovery of modern and highly sophisticated technology of manufacturing with low cost of production. Ironically, the gain embedded in ‗‗increased output‘‘ helps to sustain oppression with massive subjugation of workers in a desperate attempt to eliminate inefficiency.

This however gave rise to bickering and resistance from the oppressed class. Therefore to restore their dignity and guarantee survival, the modern period witnessed series of workers‘ disaffection and social upheavals all in a determined bid to alter or, at least, ameliorate the oppression and imbalance associated with modern capitalist society. Such reactions include sabotage, pilfering, protest, strike, work-to-rule, picketing, among others. The formation of trade unions became imperative and workers responded by organising themselves into groups to agitate for better wage, enhanced condition of service and other benefits in the capitalist industrial society.

Also with industrial development, a large numbers of people migrated en masse to the cities to earn a living from the industrial system created by the use of modern equipments. While this benefited the bourgeoisie significantly, at least it guaranteed availability of labour at low cost in the fast emerging urban centres, it however led to population explosion and its attendant urbanisation problems such as increase in crime-rate, people living in slum and squalor, pressure on infrastructure, environmental pollution and over-crowding, among others. It was the challenges posed by population explosion that geared Thomas Malthus to postulate on the danger of unchecked population growth (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008). It could be recalled that Malthus warned on the peril of population growing in geometric proportion while food supply is growing in arithmetic proportion. If this is left unaddressed, food crisis is imminent in the world.

Meanwhile with science and technology, man is liberated from hitherto restrictive tradition that limits his potential to tame, control and dominate the world. With the Enlightenment, tremendous social change and innovation were propelled by the use of logic in, and sustained pursuit of, the ideal towards a specified end. Man is believed to be endowed with the ‗secret‘ to

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unravel the cosmic misery. Therefore to be modern revolves around absolute conformity with

‗‗rational forms of thought and rational social organisation‘‘. This highly structured system gave rise to a complex institution of government and corporations with efficient control, calculation and evaluation of product, ability to predict product‘s uniqueness, and organised control of workers‘

skill to elicit their dispensability. Max Weber‘s theory of bureaucracy explains institutional control of human and material resources towards the attainment of corporate goal (George Ritzer, 1996;

Bilton et al, 2002; Labinjoh, 2002).

A major defining moment for modern period occurred from the early twentieth century. By this time, science and technology had transformed the world into an artificial construct whose control is subject to man‘s dictate. Science gained a preeminent status and technology took a driving seat towards progressive articulation of the society. Henceforth, medicine became capable of explaining the nature of man after a rigorous medical examination, unlike the pre-modern era when all misfortune was seen as ‗an act of God‘. Bilton et al (2002) attribute the tremendous social transformation of the twentieth century to science and technology:

During the twentieth century, science became a huge undertaking, and technology grew rapidly in pervasiveness, scale and power. Scientific knowledge and technological systems have played a pivotal role in transforming the natural world into a created environment subject to human coordination and control. The size and complexity of these systems means, however, that our ability as individuals to shape or even understand them is compromised (32).

Thus science and technology provided a rational explanation for human and society phenomenon.

Meanwhile, the nation-state emerged to assert authority and exercise control over man. In order to guide against lawlessness and chaos in a rational world, the ‗state‘ took over control of power over its citizens with its influence covering a clearly defined territory. Either in a totalitarian fashion or in a democratic/welfarist manner, the state is conspicuous in its regulatory task to achieve maximum loyalty and unalloyed obedience (Bilton et al, 2002; Pierson, 2004). Therefore in the name of nationalism, the state justifies the action of its citizens who engage in brutal killings and wanton destruction of properties during warfare! Bilton et al argue that the killing of about six million Jews by the Nazis during the World War 11 is a clear testimony of man‘s brutality during warfare, all in a bid to prove his unflinching loyalty to the cause of the state:

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There is no greater testimony to the potential power and destructiveness of the modern state than the millions who died at the hands of totalitarian governments during the twentieth century. The Holocaust- the attempt during the Second World War by the Nazis-controlled German state to eradicate the Jewish population of Europe is an horrific example of this _(35).

Thus, states engage in warfare against one another to protect their territory and related interest.

Towards maintaining their sovereignty, states employ man who, having been trained with modern equipment, has to kill and maim fellow men all in the name of nationalism and defence of territorial integrity.