[joarxpablo]

I also don't think that autocracy is more productive than democracy, but the industrial revolution is absolutely not dependent on democracy.

Imperial Germany was a practically feudal political system and yet it still managed to drive some of the most important inventions of its time and rivaled the UK and US in its economy. France under Napoleon III was by no means democratic, but had no trouble growing its economy.

More recently China has moved from an almost purely agricultural society to a fully industrialized country entirely under the auspices of an authoritarian communist party. Opening up and reform still happened under autocracy, it did not lead to any further political freedoms. The Soviet Union actually did have tremendous growth during the Great Depression but of course also stagnated after WW2 (perhaps due to its very high military spending trying to keep up with the US).

I think in general there is just a correlation between economic growth and democracy, but that they are not causally related (democracy might rather be caused by economic growth, but that is still debatable).