Looking for good articles/ essays/insights on Industry and Humankind

Can anyone recommend any good books, authors, websites for me?

Being intentionally vague, I wanna get diverse responses. :-)

Thanks very much.

Do you mean union struggles against corporations? The impact of the industrial revolution? In Europe or the U.S.A.? 18th, 19th or 20th century? I'll help ya if I can.

If you have anything you'd recommend, on any of those subjects, that would be great.

I am looking particularly for philosophical musings on the subject though, from any perspective -- luddite or pro- industry baron, and anywhere in between.

Thanks! How's it going today?

...explore the Homestead steelworkers strike of 1892, which is a classic and very relevant (to this day) tragedy involving American workers and their desire to form a union--- a desire that was thwarted by the rich men who owned the works (Henry Frick and Andrew Carnegie being the main players), and which led to the deaths of many men. Look up "Homestead 1892" on any search engine. Also, don't forget the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of, I think, 1912, which happend two blocks from my home in Greenwich Village, in which over a hundred women (and girls) died needlessly.

Thanks though.

Can you recommend any books or essays which take a philosophical look at the whole broad concept of industrialism? Not necessarily Marxism/worker's issues -- though that is welcome -- but industrialism, looking at its as good and evil, or necessary evil, etcetera... I know there was once a lot of very flowery praise of the magic of industrialism, and then came the march of the critics.

I haven't read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson yet, something I feel stupid about. It's a classic and is next on my list.

You bastard, you live in GREENWICH VILLAGE?? My Lord, I have a feeling you do well for yourself. :wow:

And I'm looking for your name in the bylines of art mags, by the way. ;-)

http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/courses/geog100/WhyCorpsSubvert.htm

. Corporate Rules of Behavior

Jerry Mander, a successful advertising executive suggests 11 rules that describe corporate behavior, and which inherently degrade our environment and capitalist societies. In essence these rules are (after Montague, 1995):

1. The Profit Imperative: Profit is the ultimate measure of all corporate decisions. It takes precedence over community well-being, worker health, public health, peace, environmental preservation or national security. The profit imperative and the growth imperative are the most fundamental corporate drives; together they represent the corporation's instinct to "live."

2. The Growth Imperative: Corporations live or die by whether they can sustain growth. This fuels the corporate desire to find and develop scarce resources in obscure parts of the world.

3. Competition and Aggression: Corporations place every person in management in fierce competition with each other. Anyone interested in a corporate career must hone his or her abilities to seize the moment. Corporate ideology holds that competition improves worker incentive and corporate performances and therefore benefits society.

4. Amorality: Not being human, corporations do not have morals or altruistic goals. So decisions that may be antithetical to community goals or environmental health are made without misgivings. Corporations, however, seek to hide their amorality and attempt to act as if they were altruistic. Corporations tend to advertise the very qualities they do not have in order to allay negative public perceptions. When corporations say "we care," it is almost always in response to the widespread perception that they do not care. And they don't. How could they? They don't have feelings or morals.

5. Hierarchy: Corporate law requires that corporations be structured into classes of superiors and subordinates within a centralized pyramidal structure. This hierarchical form also characterizes the military, the government and most institutions in our society. The effect on society is to make it seem natural that we have all been placed within a national pecking order. Some jobs are better than others, some lifestyles are better than others, some neighborhoods, some races, some kinds of knowledge. Men over women. Westerners over non-Westerners. Humans over nature. That effective, non-hierarchical modes of organization exist on the planet, and have been successful for millennia, is barely known to most Americans.

Interesting stuff there, I'll bookmark it!