Three Major Nineteenth-century Political Ideologies

1. Conservatism Liberalism Socialism Three Major Nineteenth-century Political Ideologies

2. What is an ideology? Coffin & Stacey: “[A] coherent system of thought regarding the social and political order, one that consciously competes with other views of how the world is or should be.” In short: A self-conscious worldview; a coherent set of principles that determine action or policy.

3. Movements inspiring 19th-century ideologies The Enlightenment – its ideals of reason, progress, secularism, and the liberty of the (male) individual. The French Revolution – experiments in social engineering, radical republicanism, critique of all established norms (including the family and private property); under Napoleon, state-building and the formation of national identity. Industrialization – the advent of a capitalist order of bourgeoisie -- with comfort, security, and ownership -- over laborers mired in poverty and a host of other social ills.

4. What should be the principles of political and social order? Equality or rank? The individual or the group? Reason or authority? Engineered or organic society? Tradition or innovation? Reform or revolution? Private interest or public interest? Weak state or strong state? Assimilation or diversity?

5. Conservatism: Authority, Tradition, and Legitimacy Conservatism was largely a political reaction to the intellectual upheaval of the Enlightenment and the political upheaval of the French Revolution. Legitimacy --Guiding principle of the RESTORATION achieved at the Congress of Vienna (1815). Crowned heads restored; including the Bourbon monarchy in France. Conservatives held that old established institutions were to be preserved: MONARCHY, ARISTOCRACY, and the CHURCH. Society more like a tree than a pocket-watch-- an organic whole to be carefully tended, not to be tinkered with even by the cleverest mechanic. If a part of the whole rebels against another part, this is sickness, not reform. The individual must know and respect his place in the traditional order; that order is more important than the individual. Human beings are not rational creatures and require adherence to tradition for their safety and security. A leading conservative theorist: EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797) in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).

6. Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859) -- Austrian foreign minister at the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). Directed the restoration of monarchy in FRANCE and elsewhere. -- Sickened by student support for the French Rev. at the University of Strasbourg; nursed a bitter hatred for all political change. -- Called all revolution a “sickness” and a “cancer.” -- Created at the Congress of a system of diplomacy (the “Concert of Europe”) based on notion of a balance of power. This diplomatic system prevented a major European war for almost a century. -- Instituted the CARLSBAD DECREES (1819) in the German Confederation. This abolished student political groups and forbade any expression or association by students or professors of political sentiments against established authorities. Spies and police were used to enforce the decrees. Metternich festooned with reactionary bling.

7. 19th-century Liberalism (Classical Liberalism) The direct legacy of the Enlightenment, especially of Lockean social contract theory and the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith. The core of liberalism: Individual liberty, especially liberty to own and acquire property. The greatest good results only through the free exercise of liberties by individuals acting rationally in their own self-interest. Truly legitimate government exists only to secure and protect these liberties. Classic statements of liberalism: Declaration of Independence, Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen.

8. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and Utilitarianism Many nineteenth-century liberals rejected the notion of natural rights in favor of a new principle: freedom from external restraint or compulsion, sometimes called “negative” liberty. Individual liberty, they held, is good not because it is natural (indeed it probably is not), but because it allows for the greatest happiness. This principle is called UTILITARIANISM. Bentham was a leading utilitarian thinker. He called talk of natural rights “nonsense upon stilts.” What politics should be about, Bentham thought, is rather legal rights. Bentham saw the comprehensive expansion of rights under law as a path to progress, prosperity, and ultimately the most happy society possible. Bentham’s liberalism was a pragmatic ideology of REFORM. Benthamite liberals advocated: -- separation of Church and State -- democracy -- abolition of capital and physical punishment -- right of divorce -- equal rights for women -- trade without restriction -- prison reform (with rehabilitation as the primary goal of imprisonment, not punishment)

9. Socialism The term socialism encompasses a diversity of 19th-century political movements that addressed the “social question” -- namely how to improve the miserable lot of the urban industrial working class. Various forms of socialism have in common the goal of subjecting property to the control by the community or the state at the expense of private or individual interest. More radical forms of socialism sought the abolition of private property. Like 19th-century conservatism, 19th-century socialism considered the community more important than the individual. Socialism questioned the individual right to property so cherished by liberals (whether Lockean or Benthamite). Indeed it questioned liberal individualism altogether. It affirmed that the individual could only be happy and healthy so far as he belongs to a happy, healthy group – and a happy, healthy group is one in which wealth is shared.

10. Early or “Utopian” Socialism Early socialists perceived that “a hierarchy based on rank and privilege had been... [merely] replaced by one based on social class.” (Coffin & Stacey). To break down economic inequality, early socialist thinkers sought a peaceful reorganization of industrial society, based on the principles of cooperation and common property, rather than competition and private property. Their attempts often took the form of experimental communities (sometimes called intentional communities) – which were supposed to be models for a better future world order.

11. The Social Question in Britain – “Capital and Labour,” Punch Magazine (1843) A cartoon illustration of the stark contrast between bourgeois prosperity and working-class poverty in industrial Britain. Socialism appealed to middle-class moral sensibility and working-class resentment.

12. Robert Owen (1771-1858) -- Wealthy industrialist turned reformer. -- Purchased a large cotton mill in New Lanark, Scotland in 1800. -- Organized the mill and town into a cooperative community that provided: -- decent housing and sanitation -- safe working conditions -- free child care and schooling -- social security for factory workers -- Despite shorter working hours (just 8 per diem) and the high expense of social welfare, the mill and cooperative did enjoy modest commercial success. Owen’s cotton mill in New Lanark, Scotland. This site of early British socialist experimentation is today a luxury hotel, serving the global capitalist elite.

13. New Harmony (1825-1829) Owen’s most ambitious utopian experiment was NEW HARMONY, Indiana – a site in the U.S. purchased by Owen from the Shaker religious sect. New Harmony was to be an INDUSTRIAL COMMUNE with its own currency, a common mess hall, and a common yard. Owen’s vision of the completed socialist paradise of New Harmony. The experiment of New Harmony failed due to in-fighting among its recruits. There was much talk of work and cooperation and little actual work or cooperation (a common problem in non-religious intentional communities). It offered free co-education, a free library, and free arts and athletic facilities. One of its founding principles was that the best environment will produce the most productive and happy people.

14. Karl Marx (1818-1883) Father of Modern (“Scientific”) Socialism -- Grew up in Trier, in western Germany -- Family was Jewish, but his father converted to Protestantism in order to practice law -- Marx studied philosophy and classics at the U. of Berlin; joined a group of rebellious students called the Young Hegelians (disciples of the German philosopher G.F. Hegel). Marx would use Hegel’s ideas (especially Hegel’s theory of history) to build his own philosophy. -- His political radicalism and atheism made it impossible for him to get a position as a professor in any university in ultra-conservative Prussia. -- Wrote for a radical newspaper, criticizing legal privilege. Exiled from Prussia in 1843. Spent the rest of his life in exile, mostly in London. Marx: Big ideas, big beard. His best friend and co-founder of modern socialism: George Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

15. Marx and Engels In Paris, Marx studied French socialist theory, economics, and the French revolution. He also met his lifelong friend, George Friedrich Engels. Engels was the son of a German textile manufacturer who owned mills in Manchester, England. Engels denounced the miserable working and living conditions of works in Manchester in The Condition of the Working Classes in England (1844). He blamed capitalism itself for their misery.

16. The Communist Manifesto (1848) Written by Marx & Engels as a statement of principles for an international group of political radicals, the Communist League. The Manifesto was Marx’ ideology – part philosophy, part economic theory, part prophecy -- in deceptively simple form. Its central point: The world is divided into two hostile camps – capital and labor, or, in Marx’ terms, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie are the oppressors (despite the best intentions of their reformers, liberal and socialist) and the proletariat the oppressed. The proletariat will inevitably rise in violent revolution against the bourgeoisie. The result – in time – will be COMMUNISM, namely the absence of social classes, private property, and even the state.

17. Essential Marxist Theory 1. All history is a matter of class conflict. 2. In each epoch of history, there is a ruling class which controls the means of production (i.e., whatever generates wealth). 3. All human culture and institutions – all art, religion, literature, government, law, even the family – is nothing more than the expression of class struggle. “Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.” – Communist Manifesto

18. Marx’ Historical Materialism History proceeds dialectically, i.e. by a process of conflict. It has an inner logic – and a logical endpoint (i.e. human freedom). G. F. Hegel thought that history was driven by the conflict of IDEAS. Marx thought rather that the conflict was over the control of material goods. Society and expression are determined by the material conditions of a given time and place. Marx called this teaching historical materialism.

19. The Necessary Stages of History According to Marx I. Primitive Communism– Prehistory: Tribal culture; no state, no private property. II. Slave Society– Classical civilization; masters and slaves III. Feudalism– Medieval civilization and the Old Regime; lords and serfs  ended in 1789 IV. Capitalism– Marx’ day; bourgeoisie and proletariat V. Socialism– “Dictatorship of the Proletariat”; Workers seize the state in violent revolution, reorganize production. VI. Communism-- No state, no classes, no property. Perfect world, END of HISTORY.

20. Marxism in the Later Nineteenth Century -- Working-class identity grew stronger in the second half of the nineteenth century. Large labor unions formed after 1848. (So did large corporations.) -- Socialist political parties emerged in western Europe after 1870.Most were Marxist, but sought power within existing parliamentary political systems. Still they anticipated the imminent, violent collapse of capitalism. Labor movements were understood to prepare the proletariat for that promised moment. -- Marx expanded and strengthened his critique of capitalism in the three volumes of his dense Das Kapital (1867, ’85, ‘94). He was also an active participant in various labor movements to his death in 1883. -- First Working Men’s Association (First International), 1864-1876. Formed to coordinate labor movements throughout Europe.

21. Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) and Anarchism Mikhail Bakunin: In coat, vest, and tie, and dreaming of smashing the state.