Liberalism and Conservatism

1. Liberalism and Conservatism

2. 19th Century Europe • Suppressed revolutions (especially 1848) • Two party system • Romanticism • Industrial revolution

3. Consequences of Industrial Revolution • Urbanization and working poor • Poor working conditions • Child labor laws • Labor unions • Economic swings • Skilled artisans lost jobs • Division of labor by sex

4. Class Consciousness • Owners – capitalists • Non-landed middle class and white collar workers – bourgeoisie • Factory and trade workers—proletariat

5. Conservatism • Reactionaries (Put it back the way it was) • Revolution of 1848 • Successful revolutions in all European countries • Monarchies returned after 6 months in all countries • Tories/conservatives

6. Liberalism • Favored changing social conditions • Whigs • Edmund Burke • Opposite view of Nationalism • Supported American Revolution but decried the French Revolution • Law of unintended consequences • Example: Prussia forced to take over the Ruhr Valley which, unknowingly, has the coal reserves to allow Prussia to conquer the rest of Germany

7. Liberalism • Poets/novelists • Natural life superior (noble savage) • Aimed at complacent middle class • Charles Dickens • Social conditions • Honorè de Balzac • Stupid middle class • Jane Austen • Against classes • The Bronte sisters • Against male domination

8. Utilitarianism • Jeremy Bentham/John Stuart Mill (On Liberty) • Greatest happiness for greater population • Epicurean • Science and technology should be used to solve society’s problems • Advocated activist governments

9. "Bentham's advice was articulated in what he called 'the calculus of felicity.' According to it, there are seven categories into which pleasure can be catalogued, and this catalogue provides a rational analysis of pleasure. The seven categories are: Intensity – how intense? Duration – how long? Certainty – how sure? Propinquity – how soon? Fecundity – how many more? Purity – how free from pain? Extent – how many people are affected?" – Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 309.

10. Utilitarianism • Problems: • How do you know the long-term effects? • Who is to decide? • Leaders? • Surveys? • Supreme Court? • Press? • Is happiness the objective of this life? • Animals seek pleasure and flee from pain • What is God's objective for us in this life?

11. "In obedience there is joy and peace unspotted, unalloyed; and as God has designed our happiness He never has – He never will – institute an ordinance or give a commandment to His people that is not calculated in its nature to promote that happiness which He has designed, and which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory to those who become the recipients of his laws and ordinances." – Joseph Smith

12. Economists • Thomas Malthus • Population growth will decline through war and/or famine as the population becomes uncontrollably large • Rockefeller Foundation • But: The most powerful countries have large populations

13. “Since 1798, when Thomas Malthus published his famous Essay on the Principle of Population, it has been commonly assumed that violent conflicts must increase in frequency and intensity as human populations grow in size and density. Cross-cultural comparisons, however, do not support this proposition...Groups with densities of less than one person per square mile are just as likely to engage in warfare each year as groups whose densities are hundreds of times higher ....Homicide rates also bear no obvious relationship to the density of humans...In the broadest view, the frequency of warfare and violence is simply not a consequence of human density or crowding." – Lawrence H. Keeley from War Before Civilization

14. "Malthus was correct in his analysis, as far as it went, but he forgot to consider one important difference between humankind and bacteria or, for that matter, between humankind and any other animal. We evolve and adjust to the environment mainly through external means, and at a very rapid rate. We innovate, and Malthus failed to consider this.“ – Alcorn, Paul A., Social Issues in Technology, 3rd Edition, p.101.

15. Karl Marx • Born in Germany • Radical movements • Communist Manifesto • Das Kapital

16. Communist Manifesto Basic Premises 1.History of world is driven by class struggles 2.One class always exploits others 3.The Middle Class (bourgeoisie) triumphed over the upper class in the 18th Century 4.The Worker Class (proletariat) will triumph over the Middle Class

17. Das Kapital Basic Premises 1.The value of a product is the amount of labor to produce it. 2.The fair wage for a worker is the value of his work (the value of the product). 3.In capitalism, the owner must sell the product for more than the worker is paid (profit). 4.The capitalist increases profits by increasing selling price or reducing wages. 5.The lowest possible wage is the subsistence level and this is the level paid (because of a surplus of labor) 6.Surplus labor is maintained by replacing workers with machines.

18. Capitalism Inconsistencies 1.Competition leads to expansion which hires more workers and then leads to machines on which additional profits cannot be gained. 2.Concentration of economic power occurs because bigger takes over smaller. 3.Economic depressions from excess labor and ruined companies. 4.Army of unemployed seeks change but capitalism can't change 5.Rebellion and victory by the workers which capitalism cannot stop.

19. Marx's Plan for Change 1.Abolition of private property 2.Heavy graduated income tax 3.Abolition of inheritance rights 4.Confiscation of emigrant and rebel property 5.Centralization of credit in state hands 6.Centralization of communication and transportation in state hands 7.Extension of state control of factories 8.Obligation of all to work 9.Combination of agriculture and manufacturing 10.Free education for all children and abolition of child labor

20. "Famines have occurred in ancient kingdoms and contemporary authoritarian societies, in primitive tribal communities and in modern technocratic dictatorships, in colonial economies run by imperialists from the north and in newly independent countries of the south run by despotic national leaders or by intolerant single parties. But they have never materialized in any country that is independent, that goes to elections regularly, that has opposition parties to voice criticisms and that permits newspapers to report freely and question the wisdom of government policies without extensive censorship." – Sen, Amartya, Development as Freedom, Anchor Books, 1999, p.152-153.

21. Marx Problems 1.Ignores imagination and entrepreneurship 2.Ignores technological improvements 3.Attacks natural self-interest 4.Leads to stagnation 5.Ignores human education, experience, talents and work differences 6.Assumes that capitalism/government policy will not adjust

22. Thank You

23. Liberalism and Conservatism

24. “People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.” • Soren Aabye Kierkeggard

25. “In 1738, the Papers of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg carried an essay with this central theme: ‘The value of an item must not be based on its price, but rather on the utility that it yields.’” – Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods, 1996, 99

26. “His [Jeremy Bentham] major work, The Principles of Morals and Legislation, published in 1789, was fully in the spirit of the Enlightenment: ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do....The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law.’ Bentham then explains what he means by utility: ‘...that property in any object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness...when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it.” – Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods, 1996, 189

27. Thomas Carlyle John Stuart Mill Utilitarianism

28. "For Kant, the act's moral worth is not determined by its results, but by its intention." – Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 329.

29. "Remember that, for Marx, religion is 'the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world,... the spirit of an unspiritual situation. It is the opium of the people.' This is hardly an absolute indictment of religion. Usually that last line is quoted in isolation from its context, in which case one thinks of opium as a soporific that lulls one into a grinning, drooling, undignified stupor. But Marx had in mind opium's medicinal powers. It kills the pain." – Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 211.

30. "Society was not merely the totality of individuals; rather, it was an organic whole that in certain ways created the individual. Therefore for Marx, there could be no question of individual rights that somehow superseded social rights. Everything that an individual does is a result of the efforts of many people, living and dead. Hence, all products were in that sense social products and belonged to society." – Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 409.

31. "It [forced labor] is not the satisfaction of a need, but only a means for satisfying other needs. Its alien character is clearly shown by the fact that as soon as there is no physical or other compulsion it is avoided like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification. Finally the external character of work for the worker is shown by the fact that it is not his own work but work for someone else, that in work he does not belong to himself but to another person." – Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 412.m

32. “Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them.” • Samuel Palmer