4.2 Industrial Revolution and the Age of Industrialism

The industrial period is most often equated with Industrial Revolution. But industry has existed throughout history. The very first hewn stone was an instance of industry. The discovery of agriculture was an industrial revolution specific to itself. Craftsmanship is also an industry and each new tool, knowledge, and method related to production constitutes a development in industry. The human species is the only entity to produce its food, clothing, and shelter through the use of tools. Industry, production with the help of tools, is unique to human beings.

The phenomenon led by England, the hegemonic country in Europe at the end of eighteenth century, was an important part of the ongoing innovations. The rotation of an engine through the energy obtained from steam has become symbolic of the industrial period, but in fact the power of steam and engines had been known and used long before this time. The leading position in agriculture and manufacture had already been seized by the Netherlands and England. Cheap, mass production (that in fact can also be regarded as an industrial revolution) had already been achieved. Initially, France and Italy were industrially quite advanced. But the huge advantage of low cost and mass production laid the foundations for England’s hegemony. The importance of industry which took off with the onset of the nineteenth century was due to the profits (that is, the gain from the invested capital) that put it in the lead. What made it revolutionary was the fact that the profit generated through industrial production was not only much higher than the profit obtained from trade and agriculture but also had exponential growth. Industrial production took the lead for the first time in history. This is essentially why the Industrial Period constitutes a revolution. Previously, agriculture and the textile industry were the traditional areas of production. Trade was seen as commodity exchange of the excess production in these two areas, and it was the essence of economic activity.

If viewed solely from a production perspective, we cannot really understand the Industrial Revolution. Humanity has always known periods of diverse and abundant production. One could even say that no revolution has yet matched the agricultural and social revolutions either in terms of significance or in terms of duration.

Therefore, the importance of the Industrial Revolution lies elsewhere; indeed, it may lie in multiple places.

For the very first time, urban production was bigger than rural production. For many thousands of years, the craftsman, as a city-based producer, was a subsidiary producer to the rural. While the city was dependent on rural production, the rural area could sustain itself without urban production. The nineteenth century’s Industrial Revolution reversed this process. If we consider the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries as a period of equilibrium between rural and urban production, then we can say that the nineteenth century turned the balance completely in favor of the city. This was an innovation that would bear many important consequences.

A more important innovation relates to the societal area. From now on, urban society moved ahead of the rural society. While previously cities were merely supplementing the rural society, the Industrial Revolution increased the power of the urban society extraordinarily. From now on rural society, with all its infra- and superstructures, would be dominated by urban society-in some way, the establishment of colonial dialectics of the city over the village. The colonization of village society by urban society had begun. An indisputable colonial domination of the village by the city was established, visible in the ideological area, production tools, morality and arts. The revolution of the mindset rapidly paved the way for the superiority of the city.

There were also historical transformations with regard to social classes. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution the bourgeoisie attained a position where it could declare its superiority over all other social classes and layers. It turned the working class into its reserve force and presented itself as the most progressive, as the only ones to posses the truth, to live in a modern way, and with a paradigm. They imposed themselves against those sections still representing the feudal era and craftsmanship. Through the use of mythology, religion, philosophy, and science it became the society, nation, and history. The rest belonged to the past.

During the Industrial Revolution, for the first time, there was a planned participation of science in production. Formerly, science and production techniques developed separately via their own channels. Now for the first time they joined forces. Science itself was no longer the aim: it was reduced to being an instrument. The instrumentalization of science would play a significant role in the downfall of society.

Industrial profit was much larger than the profit obtained from all the other areas. The new actors of society were the industrialists. Industry meant a strategic superiority in all areas. Those utilizing this weapon most effectively could never be defeated. Even trade lost its superiority. Those who made a living through agriculture were reduced to being pariahs.

The political consequences of the Industrial Revolution are even more significant. While internally it paved the way for the nation-state, externally it initiated the process of imperialism. Compared with colonialism, imperialism meant a more systematic domination of the world. The key industrial nations were now in a position to impose the second biggest move for global hegemony, across the world. Capitalism’s initial move towards world domination was colonialism, but the inherent difficulties meant that it was not a very productive method of domination. Colonialism could only be reinforced with capital outflow and with the help of local collaborators. The imperialism capitalism needed only became possible due to the Industrial Revolution.

Clearly, the consequences of the Industrial Revolution are profound. The social and political consequences of the revolution had as much effect as the economic consequences. The nineteenth century industrial moves finalized the triumph of the European civilization. It is, however, important to criticize some approaches in this respect.

First, the Industrial Revolution cannot be equated to capitalism. It is generally viewed as a direct result of capitalism. This is a view that needs to be shattered. Just like the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution also has an historical and societal process unique to itself. It is the result of a long historical and social accumulation.

In general, state monopolies, but especially capitalist monopolies, are institutions that focus on surplus product and values. They immediately identify the places where surplus accumulation is gathered. It is inconceivable that they would not have noticed the existence of energy and self-operating machines and that their effect on production would lead to tremendous source of profits. What capital managed to do with regard to industry was to connect these two (energy and machines) to the most profitable area.

Energy, for the first time, was not dependent on manual labor. Machines possessed an engine design that removed most of the need for manual labor. Energy sources underwent a real revolution when, in addition to steam coal, petrol, electricity, and water were transformed into new sources of power. The production boom resulted from the design of the self-operating machine combined with the new forms of energy. The consequences for both nature and society of these new forms of energy and machinery, with millions of different varieties, are not yet fully known, but are mostly negative. Already nature and society were disintegrating, shattered and disrupted. Capital, on the other hand, viewed this as the greatest opportunity in its history, and hence constructed and implemented forms of power in society and nature unmatched in any other time. Society and nature were facing unprecedented attacks from capital. Therefore, the defense of society and nature was no longer a class or even a social struggle: it became an ontological question. I will now give some concrete examples to support my hypothesis.

The towns have become cancerous and the countryside is collapsing. In the towns and countryside as well as between them, life is no longer balanced between society and nature. We hence face a situation of a diseased society and an unsustainable ecology. Society is being turned into an extension or component of the machinery of the tyrannical and exploitative system, instead of being a form of existence that one lives in. For the first time in civilizational history society, the individual, and nature have been made to confront one another. This in turn has put individualism and nature (with a deteriorated ecological balance) into such a situation that it takes revenge on the society and environment. The society is no longer the framework for life.

The biggest threat of industrialism (the view that regards industry only as a source of profit) is that it has reached anti-social dimensions. Marxism views the industrial society as an ideal phenomenon due to its positivist structure. It even deifies it. This is due to Marxism’s supposition that the working class cannot be formed and cannot continue to exist in the absence of the industrial society. This is the essence of its theoretical content. A case can be made that Marxism’s contribution to the formation of the religion called industrialism is as effective as that of the capitalist: since, while there is no criticism of the industry. the factory assembly is highly glorified. The truth is that industrialism has long since become a global Leviathan comparable to that of the nation-state Leviathan.

The town constitutes the core of societal carcinogenicity. Although I have often remarked on the history of its establishment and its function, there is also a need to discuss its relationship with societal development. The town is not only a form of society; it is also the setting where class division is created and the headquarters for state formation. It is generally accepted that these three phenomena are fundamental to becoming civilized (class, urban, and state societies). The Arabic equivalent of civilized means “unique to towns, town-like or town life.” The literary meaning of the word civilization is close to this.

On the other hand, it may be a very narrow perspective to view the town only as a civilizational phenomenon. The town does not have to be the location of becoming civilized. Just as the establishment of villages is a historical phenomenon of social life, the town can also be interpreted as such. There is no reason why society should not have progressed beyond living in caves or villages. When the need developed for a way of life and a setting that surpassed cave and village life, the town took up this position. The role of the town is quite important in the development of analytical intelligence. The town, which is the location of a society that has become complex, requires intelligence to work analytically. It forces this development. The increase in social problems compels the brain to search for answers and solutions. Hence, the mind develops in a way conducive to analytical thought. Though the nature of the society itself requires this kind of intelligence, the town pushes this development to a higher level. Besides, the town can also be seen as the location where the mutual needs of different village groups are centered.

This is an important point. The reason for establishing the town lies in this phenomenon. The establishment of towns cannot be envisaged without villages. This widespread view, which has not been pronounced, but can be called urbanization in fact positions the village in opposition to the town. This is where the disaster begins. It is more than just a point of view: it is a well-known tendency seen throughout the historiography of development that the town is regarded to be in opposition to the village and countryside. In fact. this trend cannot be seen in the founding philosophy and historical basis of the town, but reflects a narrow class and statist point of view. This position, much to the detriment of the village (which means more surplus product and power), has kept its ground in the depths of civilization. The belittlement and vilification of the village and countryside originate from this archaic attitude. It seems as if the state and town have established a historical alliance against the countryside and village, hence against the tribes and clans that mostly live there. The conflict between the village and town societies has unjustly distorted and distanced the town from its true founding philosophy and has channeled this wrong understanding of the town to the present day. But, of course, town and village-countryside could have been seen as locations that nurture one another (symbiotic) and, thus, as the societal life’s living quarters, can be built in a balanced and coherent manner. The most ideal thing would have been to find an ecological equilibrium or a ratio between the population of the village and town. This would have been the ideal way of living. One of the most serious damages caused by civilization is the enlargement of the town as against the countryside and using it as a location of domination and exploitation. The town’s role has been distorted and they have lost their original functions. The restoration of the real founding philosophy of this area alone will require serious societal acts. Another conclusion that can be drawn from the history of the town is that its excessive growth happened without any regard to its relationship with the environment. There is no answer to the question as to where its borders should lie. The distorted city logic and the civilizations that have developed according to this logic are not monuments of intelligence, but the work of analytical intelligence that has lost all ties with the emotions and life. The dimensions of the disasters and the irrevocable damage they have done can now be understood better. The towns were magnificent structures in Antiquity. Common sense was still prevalent. During the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations, the conflict between nature and village-countryside was not that deep-rooted and the equilibrium was still in favor of the countryside. The towns growing inside and outside of the castles were still in harmony with agriculture: their population seldom more than a few hundred thousand, with possibly only a few capital cities reaching this mark. Environmental pollution had not reached problematic levels. The architecture was substantive and all together they formed an organic whole. The temples, markets and forums, the arenas and gymnasiums of the Greco-Roman civilization were all based on a proportional and magnificent architecture. The terraces and gardens combined with the layout of the houses to form a unified, organic whole.

Their remnants are still breathtaking. These were places with a certain philosophical meaning and a sanctity attached to them.

This wholeness constituted between town and countryside continued –though deteriorating considerably as trade increased– during the Middle Ages. Although the growing influence of the immaterial culture led to an increase in religious architecture, towns never reached threatening dimensions-they were more in balance with the countryside. Constituting a whole was still more likely. The importance of the agricultural sector stimulated development in the sector of urban craftsmanship: the craftsman needed the peasant and the peasant needed the craftsman. Far from being in conflict they were an organic whole. The only risks they faced were natural disasters and wars. The city walls and castles were magnificent. Large trade had not yet reached the dimensions needed to absorb the craftsman and village. Trade functioned normally as a sector of economy. The Italian towns of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries were the last representatives of this era to be influenced by the Renaissance. Venice, Genoa, and Florence were in a position to unite the classical civilization with that of the Modern Age.

Urbanization began to take on different meanings with the onset of the Modern Age. Market domination appeared on the horizon with trade beginning to outweigh all else. The historical equilibrium began to deteriorate, with the countryside and village being the losers. A town architecture based on the needs of the merchant began to emerge. The connection between life and environment was being lost and the mentality of profit-making began to shape everything. Some towns –especially Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Hamburg-carried the mark of the new period, that of mercantilism. The towns of the trade era opened a gulf between themselves and the classical towns, and very soon showed themselves to be in conflict with rural society and nature. The town, which is the home base of the Leviathan, had begun to extend its claws into the entire society and environment around it. The Industrial Age would be the death of the town. Interestingly, biological cancer is also mostly an illness of the town. Cancer is most definitely related to the town turning its society into a sick society.

The Industrial Revolution, growing rapidly with the onset of nineteenth century, first struck society in its places of birth. The rapid growth of the industrial establishments in the cities did not originate from the requirements of life, but that of profit. The shanty houses and suburbs that the modern slaves, the proletariat, were placed in were not something the towns were familiar with. They represented the colonization of the countryside. These shanty houses and suburbs were developed as an internal colonization movement worse than the colonization movement of the trade era. These areas were a depot of labor for industry. Shanty houses and slums mean to industry what a depot means to trade. This had many additional side effects. For sustaining factories, many smaller factories were invading the town. No one could remember the model of the Classical Age any longer. The towns became the centers where society was absorbed. By the end of the nineteenth century, the towns were barely alive under the town policies of industrialism. For the first time in history towns were emerging with the population of millions. It is clear that a town that surpasses the half million mark cannot be functional. More than a million shows the critical dimensions of its sickness.

The phenomenon of being cancerous is the growth of a cell in such a manner that it covers the entire body. Under such conditions, because the other organs cannot function, the patient dies. The growth of the town means similar consequences for the society. There are several dimensions to the historical and societal phenomena. If only one of these dimensions has excessively grown, then cancerous growth has begun. Once a town has a population that numbers more than a million or, worse, ten million, its inhabitants can no longer be classified as a society: it has become a herd society, constituting the masses. Just as herds are put into barns, the humans are turned into herds and placed in towns. There, long ago, they were convinced to become mere consumers. This is no different from the herd placed in the barn. In addition. there is a herd of unemployed placed in there. They are appeased by the unemployed. On the other hand, the government centers, villas, or houses with gardens do not require the town either: they can be built anywhere.

So, what is left of the town? The temple, theater, parliament, gymnasium, and the market place have long ago become mere copies of the original. It is more accurate to call them places of artificial life. The future of the city, in a position like this, is ambiguous. To feed a city with ten million people is the death of a region as an ecological society and would require the massacre of the society and the environment. In order to eradicate a country, it is enough to have a couple of cities with a population of five to ten million. The traffic pollution alone is enough for the death of a city. The town has lost its meaning by growing way out of proportion. In the absence of meaning there can be no life-that is, of course, if living is not defined to be merely breathing.

Towns were places where the truth was discovered and philosophy constructed. But now, in the collapsing towns of industrialism, we can only talk about stock farms where herd-like behavior is made possible through the usage of sex, sports, and arts that are drained of their contents. If this is not the death of the town, what is?

Another destructive dimension of industrialism is its attack on the relationship between life and environment. Where the town makes society cancerous internally, industrialism attacks the living environment as a whole. Industrialism, the policy of the nation-state that has not yet lost its significance, requires all the resources of the nation and society to be subordinated to the industry. The nation-state views this as a development path. However, this policy has really nothing to do with the nation’s wealth and development or, indeed, with growing stronger. The fundamental reason for this policy is that the industry achieves its highest “profit” in this area. Industrialism is an operation to manage profit. Concepts such as investment or development are covers disguising the real aim. If there is profit to be gained there will be investment and development, otherwise they do not apply. Industrialism is a bigger theft than ownership of property: it is theft from the people as a whole and from nature.

Let me just say that i am not condemning investment or production based on factories per se. There can also be appropriate models of investment and factories based on the well being of society and environment. They are not harmful on their own. However, in the service of profit they become cancerous. Industry is for profits, not for social needs. The rule of maximum profits does not stem from needs. It has its own logic. If the needy areas bring profits, then industry will be interested in them. If not, they will be left to die. If the present technologies are developed and implemented properly, unemployment, poverty, disease, and education will no longer be social problems and, more importantly, there will be no need to destroy the environment for extracting resources.

Many areas that are not seen as profitable but are able to provide many vital necessities are left inactive just because there will be no profit made. On the other hand, just for the sake of profit, resources resulting from millions of years of evolution are consumed in a very short time without any regard as to the consequences. Petrol, sea, forest, and mine policies have devastated the environment for the sake of high profit. The brutal aspect of profit can best be seen in the environmental genocide. If this rate is kept up for a few more decades, not millennia, the environmental disaster will be irreversible.

Industrialism is a super victory for analytical intelligence but a disastrous defeat for emotional intelligence. Industrialism is the renewed rise of the ancient divine revelation that has put all living beings of the world at the services of the human. It may be wrong to say “at the service of the humans,” as all living beings are sacrificed to the aspirations of a handful of greedy profiteers, the capitalists. Therefore, it is just a matter of time before the human being will be offered as a sacrifice. All the examples of evil given in the Sacred Books do not represent evil as purely as industrialism does. Industrialism should not be seen as a production related problem. Its true meaning will be better understood if viewed as the monopoly of profit or capital built upon production. Having production (and thus an investment policy) based on social needs, as well as scientific and technological resources, is quite feasible provided that industry is not in the service of the profit monopolists. Essentially, it does not really matter whether there are machines involved or not. the one method of production is just faster than the other. The determinant factor should be compatibility with social needs, the environment, and ecology. Fast or slow production is not an end in itself and thus automation cannot be considered good or bad in itself. But if the only intention of production is profit-and this has been the mark left on the phenomenon of industrialism since the nineteenth century-it is inevitable that every aspect thereof, all investment, production, and consumption processes, becomes a problem and gangrenous whether automated or not, fast or slow. This is why towns have grown abnormally big, why horrific weapons have been developed, and gigantic armies are constructed. Dreadful world-wide wars have occurred. Environmental massacres are being committed. The nation state monster has been invented. Life has been drained of all substance. Politics has been totally destroyed. When capitalism as a monopoly made its mark on automated production the industrialist monster was created. This is the crucial issue.

The state monopoly first seized the surplus-product in agriculture and then in trade. With the discoveries of energy and machinery in the nineteenth century a monopoly on industrial production was established. This led to unprecedented profits or capital in return for surplus-product. When profit is imposed on industrialization everything gets out of hand. Therefore, industry and industrialism (which is based on making profit), are two different concepts. Industrialism also cannot be considered economy-it is an economic monopoly imposed on the industrial production. It does not really matter whether it is a state or private monopoly. I am not talking about areas of production or economic activity that society carried out for thousands of years such as manufacture, agriculture, shops, and factories running on their own labor. The source of the problem is not the production attained from these areas. It is also not due to their exchange in the market. Serious economic and social problems arise when these areas, which are there for the needs of the people, are controlled externally either directly by the state or in its name in order to steal the surplus by means of taxation, plunder, and other profit-making methods. Production has become an area of abnormal profits after the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. “1th has resulted in terrible class and national wars; the imposition of monopolies has led to the deepening of conflict between communities within a society, between societies, and with nature. Society is placed under the domination of the rulers like never before. Everyone is fighting with everyone else. In a way Hobbes’ monster, the Leviathan, is not ending “the war of everyone against everybody else.” On the contrary, it is turning the war against society and against oneself. This is the final phase to which the monster has brought society. The concept industrial society is not really meaningful seen in isolation. When industrial monopolies are established, society is put under control of commodification and production, whereas production is put under control of industry. Monopolist industrial capitalism is the stage where the other production areas become dependent on the monopolist industry. Hence, it may be meaningful to view the industrial society as a different phase of the civilization. Saying that such a civilizational phase left its mark on the nineteenth century will be more realistic. We may call it the “magnificent age of capitalism” as it allowed for the highest profits of all times. The entire society was immersed in a passion for profit. Becoming a capitalist was held to be a goal in its own right and a natural way of living. Because of this the industrial society is a first: it is the utmost capitalist society. This is how the king became naked: that is, now, for the first time, prominent capitalists turned into a group of kings that represented themselves as normal citizens with normal clothes. The kings have multiplied and can only exist if they are stripped off their old pompous, decorated clothes. The industrial society can hence be called “the society of the naked kings.” The situation of the worker that is dependent on wages became widespread in this society. In this sense, this represents a class severed from society. The only difference with classical slavery is that this slavery bounds with wages. Ethically, judging which of the two is better would be wrong. One of the most serious mistakes made by the Marxists was declaring the industrial bourgeoisie and working class as progressive and the rest of the society as backward. The opposite is true. The co-occurrence of industry and the working class may be a characteristic of modernity, but from the perspective of equality, freedom, and democratization they are part of the monopolist state. Their position is closer to that of anti-socialism. The engagement of intellectuals with this class alliance is the most unfortunate deviation for socialism. The society of industrial monopolies are essentially societies of continuous war. It is not for nothing that the nation-state has become the state form of this period.

The politics and state form of industrial monopolism is the nation-state, which is the product of combining the national society with the most intense nationalism and state. Idealization of the nation-state reached its peak during the Age of Industrialism and most instances of realizing this ideal occurred in this period. The fundamental reason for this is the widespread and excessive profit of capital. Such an increase in profit requires the dependency of the entire society on the industrial monopolies; this, in turn, means civil war. This civil war can only be suppressed through intense nationalism and the nation-state, where power is most strongly concentrated. This is how you secure a scheme that ensures maximum profits. During this period the gradual development of fascism as a system is not a unique event. A herd-like society and the spread of power in all its layers is possible only through the religionization of nationalism.

Western modernity has acquired its quality of being the bloodiest civilization in history because it consists of industrialism, nation-statism, and capitalism. This modernity, that is based on this intertwined trilogy, constitutes a state of civil war (fascism), and amongst states national, regional, and world wars. I know I keep repeating this, but the factor underlying these wars is the way in which profit is created and shared. When the nation state declares industrialization as its main goal, it is really stating its capitalist character or desire. When capitalists name the formation of a nation-state as their political aim, they know that the nation-state is possible only by gluing nationalism with that of nation, and that this is the most required state form for setting up their profit scheme. When industry became the main goal both of the state and capitalism the fate of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were determined. Industry, just as it was for agriculture and manufacture, is a production era. It rests on the heritage of the civilization. But none of the other production eras has given the state and capitalist monopoly the power to multiply profits and power. This is the reason why both the state and the capitalists compete to industrialize. They are not driven by concern for society or the individual or by respect for the nation, but by “the chance of a lifetime” for a historic profit.

The industrial society is historically and closely related to the ideals of war and hegemony. As the alliance of England and the Netherlands was hard pressed by France, they found refuge in cheap production so as not to lose their hegemonic position. History indicates that had England not taken the lead in the Industrial Revolution, it probably would have lost its hegemony at the beginning of the nineteenth century, specifically to Napoleon. It is said that the United States and czarist Russia also had a chance for hegemony. Later, Germany would also enter the race. England’s chance, and maybe it’s only way out, was the Industrial Revolution. This once again proves that necessity compels creativity. Steam engines and weaving machines turned the wheels of history to England’s advantage –once again. Political and military inventions gained speed and power with the new industrial production. This in turn brought about military success.

Once this chain reaction is established it is very difficult to break up. In addition to all the other factors, the real reason for Napoleon’s defeat is most probably the Industrial Revolution. The English hegemony progressed to the nineteenth century world empire due to the Industrial Revolution. The nineteenth century was England’s most spectacular century. England was the first to win the label of “an empire on which the sun never sets.” This is not a classical empire organized, for example, like that of Rome or the Ottomans. The existence of many political formations represented at state level does not harm its empire. Although it has become quite weak as a model of empire with multiple political formations, it still lives in the form of the Commonwealth of Nations, formerly the British Commonwealth.

The way in which England exported the Industrial Revolution to the world was similar to all the other forms of civilization. Once it had proven itself, it first completed its expansion into Western Europe and then continued its expansion into Europe at the end of nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, its expansion into the world accelerated. At this time, England and Germany were the front runners in the competition between industrial monopolies. The imbalance caused by this development meant two big world wars and many regional and local wars. Once again we are faced with the fact that industrial profits mean monopoly, monopoly means the nation-state, and the nation-state means war. If we consider that no nation-state has ever been established without war, we will soon understand the bloodied and profiteering history of seizing regions for industrialization and industry export through these wars. Clearly, profit is the factor underlying all wars and nation-states.

The reason why the industrial period is equated with imperialism lies in these external exports. The limited degree of industrialization in colonies, semi-colonies, and dependent territories-as expected-would mean the start of internal and external wars. The national liberation struggles, a prominent feature of the twentieth century, were related to the industrialization programs of the colonized and semi-colonized regions. Regardless of the leadership position of these national liberation movements they all adopted the nation state as priority. But the nation-state prioritizes industrialization. This constituted the cornerstone of the establishment of world capitalism. In this respect, the Russian and Chinese Revolutions were, in the final analysis, nation-state and industrial revolutions, as confirmed by later developments. Thus, the twentieth century was the era when industrialization outside of Europe was secured through national liberation wars or other methods.

This era continued until the last quarter of the twentieth century. Europe then began exporting to the world the industry that no longer brought in high profits and was a burden to itself (in terms of environmental pollution and high costs). Thus, the goods were first exported; then, in the nineteenth century, the goods and the capital; and in the twentieth century, the goods, capital, and industry were conveyed to the world. We now have a situation where there is no longer any region that has not met industrialization. Hence, we can conclude that the Industrial Age has lost its true significance, or rather, industry has been replaced with financial capital. The European civilization that began its initial age with trade and its second age with the Industrial Revolution is now in its third and last phase, which is the global age of finance. The age of finance took up the leading role after the 1970’s. This will be my topic of discussion in the next section.

An ago don not erase its predecessor but relegates it to a position of secondary importance. Thus, trade continued in the nineteenth century, but in comparison to the profits made by industry it lost its former position of strength and became of secondary importance. The age of finance laid its foundations a long time ago. The Italian city republics were actually closer to being finance republics. They made many kingdoms dependent on themselves by handing out finance. During the Age of Trade, they also quite busily borrowed and handed out money. In this age, credit became a serious means of profit. But this sector yielded only the third highest profits.

The number of those critical of industry started to increase as the dangers of environmental destruction began to threaten our planet. Methods of combating the disasters caused by industrialism are a hot topic of debate: it’s irresponsible use of science and technology is predicted to result in a doomsday situation.

The relationship between profit and industry is the underlying factor of all these problems. An unrestricted combining of the two has created a web of problems instead of development. The industrial domination of all social areas, the fact that all social areas have been turned into commodities, has escalated the social problems to unprecedented levels. Many developments based on industry are not only a threat to the society’s nature, but also to the environment. We have just begun to face the problems resulting from urban areas being engulfed by the town. The consequences of towns being turned into what they were not intended to be are also just starting to surface. We have not progressed any further than mere discussion of what the alternatives should be. Clearly, society cannot survive without industry, but it cannot be expected to agree with what is being done in the name of industry. Anti-industrialism may gradually become stronger. Urban and environmental work has embraced many such tendencies. Slowly, they are being represented in the political arena as well. These efforts cannot be more than reforms, and expecting them to re-achieve the equilibrium between the two natures is nothing but being naive. As long as we remain in the present paradigm of the civilization we cannot expect substantial changes.

The view agreed upon by all observers is that the problems of the five thousand year old civilization have been multiplied by the Industrial Age. Climate warming is only one such example. The destruction is more profound and comprehensive than we can imagine. Therefore. there Is a need for a comprehensive critique of the entire civilization. not only of the Industrial Age in isolation. There are benefits resulting from the attempts by Marxists and other oppositional groups, although they categorize the problems into narrow class economism, environmentalism, culturalism or feminism. But the fact that they have not been able to arrive at nor to implement a serious political program must be related to their fundamental failures.

The more I focus on the option of democratic civilization, the clearer it becomes to me that this is the best option of all. However, the choices that we will have to make to build a profoundly democratic civilization will require comprehensive critique and programs. Moreover, implementing these choices will require an organization and a course of action. This is the only way to view nature and life from the paradigm of a free, egalitarian, and democratic society; our only hope for making headway.