AHC: Socialist Industrial Revolution

The POD may be in 1600. The socialism philosophy is invented and the socialism replaces most European monarchies. The technology improves and the industrial revolution starts. How would the world be like nowadays if the industrial revolution had started in a socialist region? (The socialism appears before the industrialization)
 
The industrial revolution is unlikely to happen under a socialist system. The reason it happened in the UK was that it was one of the few places where the profit motive was intact, leading people to invest money in new technologies to get a greater reward.
 
Socialism as commonly understood, further, depends on industrialization I think.

Some sort of strange early communalism might come about but I don't see it taking off.
 
The POD may be in 1600. The socialism philosophy is invented and the socialism replaces most European monarchies. The technology improves and the industrial revolution starts. How would the world be like nowadays if the industrial revolution had started in a socialist region? (The socialism appears before the industrialization)
If you have socialism first, then evidently it's not OTL socialism, which was shaped by industrialism and grew on its problems.
You'd most likely have something Christian, uniting agrarian egalitarianism with guild syndicalism. That sounds nice, but no industrial revolution would begin there. You could have some innovations in the crafts and in agriculture, but there would be a low ceiling for investment volumes by, say, co-ops and a rather conservative culture in guild-flike structures.

Having state socialism first is very unlikely, at least in the European-dominated world.

If it begins elsewhere, your socialist soc iety would likely attempt to isolate itself at first. Only when that becomes unviable, changes might occur. But, unfortunately, they'd most likely come as being conquered or as system change.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
AHC: What if we come up with a hybrid which kind of works?

For example, in response to all the Catholic vs. Protestant wars, the country introduces straightforward religious liberty, where all citizens are equal as long as "acknowledge supreme being." And later, this can even be expanded to include Hindus, and considerably later on, even atheists and agnostics who have a 'philosophic' basis for morality.

And the society and country ramps up education to the best of their ability.
 
The industrial revolution is unlikely to happen under a socialist system. The reason it happened in the UK was that it was one of the few places where the profit motive was intact, leading people to invest money in new technologies to get a greater reward.

That's bull. The UK had the first industrial revolution because of the way coal was concentrated throughout the region. It could have just as easily have happened without capitalism being involved.
 
That's bull. The UK had the first industrial revolution because of the way coal was concentrated throughout the region. It could have just as easily have happened without capitalism being involved.
Maybe.
In a proto-socialist society, I´d imagine steam power, if it comes about at all, to be used to ease the hard work in mines, instead of making textile craftsmen unemployed. But without wild profit-driven investment, and surplus from colonial trades, industrialisation, if it happens, would proceed way slower. Which may be a good thing, but I don`t know if we`d still call the progress in productivity "industrial revolution" then.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
Or, look at Holland in the 1600s(?) which had both trade and comparative religious freedom (as part of a more tolerant, freer society).

As far as incentives, yes, there's all kind of incentives, including the incentive to be a big shot which in point of fact is what I think does drive a fair number of business people. And capitalists aren't real good at building up their human capital, despite their claims to the contrary. This was the case with factory workers in the 1800s, as well as Walmart and other big box employees today.
 
In such scenario socialism would be completely different from OTL of course, and instead of the rigid materialism that defines marxism, it would be certainly religious in its roots. An industrial revolution could happen, largely focusing of easing the burden imposed on humans by having the harder work done by machinery but it would certainly depend on which religion and which culture socialism develops. The islamic world would have had access to the oil but I do not think people would know how to properly use for industrial purposes.
 
Maybe.
In a proto-socialist society, I´d imagine steam power, if it comes about at all, to be used to ease the hard work in mines, instead of making textile craftsmen unemployed. But without wild profit-driven investment, and surplus from colonial trades, industrialisation, if it happens, would proceed way slower. Which may be a good thing, but I don`t know if we`d still call the progress in productivity "industrial revolution" then.

Not necessarily. This type of thing being funded by a monarch like the Sun King could work as well as capitalism. Or it couldn't.

But at the same time, there are plenty of situations where capitalism wouldn't work in development.
 
The motive of competition is a strong driving force behind industrialization. With a lot of alt-Industrial Revolutions that are proposed (sub-Saharan Africa, Song Dynasty, Romans, etc.), one of the main issues (to be fair, among many others) is that there was no competitive market that warranted a need to move out of traditional systems.
While recognizing the fact any form of socialism that develops out of TTL would be drastically different from OTL, it's a commonly held belief among Marxism and its offshoots that a capitalist society is necessary in the eventual transition to a socialist society, for it facilitates the invention of technologies/tools/etc. that provide greater ease to the lives of the working class.
As said by others, the form of socialism that would develop pre-IR would be significantly agrarian and religious in nature, and, turning away from competition and trade, would lack the impetus necessary to start an industrial revolution.
 
That's bull. The UK had the first industrial revolution because of the way coal was concentrated throughout the region. It could have just as easily have happened without capitalism being involved.

Coal had been concentrated in that region and many others throughout the world, but for some reason the industrial takeoff only happened there, then.

The financial and commercial structures that led to the first period of modern economic growth ever are possible to imagine emerging under some other system, but only on a broad, fantastic level. Once you get down into the details, you realize that there's no reason they would. Self-interest was the animating principle of the First Industrial Revolution, just as in the Second and every major economic advance since.

You can have a socialist industrial revolution: But only long after the path has been blazed by an open economy where commercial advance is rewarded on the level of the individual making advances. Even then there are dramatic costs in lives and treasure. See: Stalin's crash industrialization.
 
I think the main way this could come about would be religious fervor. Have there be a major social upheaval in Europe, followed by the enormous rise of a primitivist, communitarian religious movement that's strong enough to defeat the forces of the remaining authorities. Land would then be equally divided up between the peasants, and the nobles and gentry killed or forced to flee. I can't see this economic system lasting for hundreds of years, but with a big enough POD I think it would be possible, though very unlikely.

Of course, this wouldn't really be socialism, because socialism was so heavily shaped in its philosophy by the industrial revolution. Socialism is really a product of the industrial revolution, so you can't swap them around. And like Salvador says, this sort of economic system wouldn't be able to produce the industrial revolution. At most maybe the industrial revolution could happen at around the time this system starts falling.
 
Just spitballing here, but hypothetically if there was a theocracy formed from an offshoot of Islam or Christianity (or maybe even the Mazdakis or Khurramites), that places a big emphasis on equality (there are plenty of heresies to choose from that lend themselves to socialistic ideals), and who embraced the scientific revolution as being compatible with, or even demanded by, their doctrines (the Catholic church used to be quite into science before it started contradicting Aristotle, and many of the early enlightenment thinkers were radical protestants, to say nothing of Islam's earlier praising of knowledge and learning), then you might have a starting point for a proto-socialist society that could lead to some form of industrialisation. So for example, having the Diggers and Levellers gain more influence in the Commonwealth, which in turn might strengthen the Chartists further down the line.
 
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