At best, they're blind to it. Their education never really got into how awful it was to be a worker in the industrial revolution. Or they think it was all exaggerated for books.
At worst, they're entirely aware of it, but insist it was a better quality of life than what working-class people had before the industrial revolution, thereby justifying the horrifying conditions.
edit: same thing if you talk about labor conditions in the global south tbh
As someone that went to public school in New York before national standardized testing changed the curriculum, I remember being taught in middle school history class the following:
the industrial revolution was a time of great innovation
it allowed for people to move outside of the city and commute to work
pollution was rampant
child labor happened all the time
there were almost no safety regulations
there were many many monopolies and that caused a lot of issues
workers have collective bargaining power and unions fought to correct a lot of these issues.
The catch is, it’s usually presented as “well that was in the past, capitalism is perfectly fine now”. It’s like when libs who are actually familiar with Marx agree with what he says about capitalism, but then say the analysis is no longer relevant since we made capitalism a lot better since then. Or highlighting racism in the past but implying that racism stopped being a problem after 1965, when racism was defeated legislatively (hooray for liberalism!)
At best, they're blind to it. Their education never really got into how awful it was to be a worker in the industrial revolution. Or they think it was all exaggerated for books.
At worst, they're entirely aware of it, but insist it was a better quality of life than what working-class people had before the industrial revolution, thereby justifying the horrifying conditions.
edit: same thing if you talk about labor conditions in the global south tbh
As someone that went to public school in New York before national standardized testing changed the curriculum, I remember being taught in middle school history class the following:
Holy shit, based New York?
The catch is, it’s usually presented as “well that was in the past, capitalism is perfectly fine now”. It’s like when libs who are actually familiar with Marx agree with what he says about capitalism, but then say the analysis is no longer relevant since we made capitalism a lot better since then. Or highlighting racism in the past but implying that racism stopped being a problem after 1965, when racism was defeated legislatively (hooray for liberalism!)