I. Finishing the sociopolitical developments of the 19th
C: Socialism and Anarchy
- But first: The
political spectrum explained:
- Liberalism and how it
changes.
- Conservativism
as a defensive reaction to change: To Repress or Not?
- Liberalism sees the need for
change; Conservativism fights it.
- Features of Conservativism:
- Historical Tradition
- Patriarchalism.
- *Edmund Burke
- The State is part of an
organic body; rationalist/liberalist writings are irrelevant because they
fail to consider local historical tradition, says Burke. The State
is more than a contract that one can opt out of.
- Frederick Wilhelm IV of Prussia:
"No piece of paper is going to come between me and my country."
- Differences of Conservativism from Liberalism:
- Authority figures
(kings down to employers) should be like fathers.
- MONARCHY!!
- Agriculture is the
primary basis of society, as it always has been.
- Social problems
should be dealt with privately like they always have been; charity
organizations, religious realms. No state welfare!
- They oppose
laissez-faire in industry: the state is their household,
they have every right to say what goes on in it.
- Essentially a
defensive mode, reacting against incipient change in the face of the
industrial revolution.
- Conservativism
is most deeply rooted in multi-national Empires like Prussia,
Russia, Austria-Hungary.
Why? Cultural tradition with emphasis on loyalty to the monarch;
maintenance of feudalism; less concept of Nationalism.
- Socialism: As
liberalism is to free trade, socialism is to the negation of private
property (more or less).
- Henri de
Saint-Simon: Baseline standard of living.
- Charles Fourier:
Commune, rotating jobs (essentially, communism w/o the tinge of
Marx/Lenin).
- Flora Tristan:
Social welfare, early feminism: Equal pay for = work means
solidarity for all workers.
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: The Communist Manifesto (1848)
and Das Kapital
(three volumes, last one in 1894)
- Hegelian
dialectic: thesis -» antithesis -> synthesis.
- Marx revises this to
include historical law.
- Marx ties together economy
as the basis of all politics and social class; "haves + have
nots"; all based on access/lack of access
to the "mode of production"
- Historical
inevitability leads to conflict between classes (thesis and antithesis),
creating new class (synthesis). In the old age, this was feudalism
(haves = lords, have nots = peasants/serfs)
>> creation of a middle/merchant class. In the Industrial
Revolution age, the new urban working class ("Proletariat") is
the synthesis.
- Through Revolution,
class will be eliminated, thus so will Capitalism; and without Capitalism
as a basis for the State defending private property and the rights of
property owners, therefore the State will also die out after the
Revolution.
- The First
International in 1964, London.
- The difference between
socialists and radicals: The rate of change, the use of violence.
- The next step down the
line: Anarchists.
- More dominant in the
East (Prussia,
Austria, Russia)
because of repressive (autocratic) govts and
pre-existing social hierarchy (semi-feudalism still exists); result is
that anarchy must be more "radical" than in the west.
- You have to yell
louder to be heard; conversely, govt will
repress more strongly than if "radicals" were allowed a forum
for expression.
- Bakunin,
Kropotkin: combining anarchism with communism
(prelude to Lenin)
- As Marxism spreads,
it divides into factions, largely along class lines: Trade unions
grow; where repression is met more strongly, violence is more prevalent.
- Assassinations and
bomb-throwing radicals: Killed in a span of ten years by anarchists
who claim no other avenue for change is available, include:
President of France 1893; Prime Minister of Spain (1897); Empress of
Austria 1898; King of Italy 1900; President of United States 1901.
- The only rule of
anarchism: No rules. Get rid of the State.
- Primary
audience: Working classes (urban). But they must be brought
up to the level of proper revolutionary class.