Realism, Positivism,
Marxism and Materialism.
Chapter 22: pages 900-911
The objectives for this slideshow
are:
• In what ways did the failed revolutions of
1848 foster the idea of MATERIALISM?
• In what ways was REALISM a sign of the
times in painting and literature?
• Identify what is Positivism—
• And, finally, you will learn the important
background that influence Karl Marx
beliefs and its future impact on Russian
History.
The revolutions of 1848 spread throughout Europe,
and what began with hope was quickly suppressed by
reactionary, conservative governments.
After the failure of the revolutions of 1830
and 1848, the dreams of many Europeans
ended.
There had been
some positive
outcomes of
1848—peasants
were freed in
Germany and
Austria, and
many moved to
America.
Many were bitter about government
reaction after the revolutions. This new
attitude was called materialism: an idea that
all things were a result of physiological or
physical forces.
In art and music it was called realism.
Realism included painters such as
Courbet, Millet, and Daumier…
Courbet’s paintings were of the peasants—
in the countryside, but they were displayed
in the salons of Paris, for the bourgeoisie to
observe.
Perhaps this was a way of saying that “we
may have been defeated in the revolutions,
but we are still here. Our needs are just.”
Realism found its way
into the writings of
authors such as
Flaubert. Flaubert’s
Madame Bovary is a
landmark novel that
mocked romantic
illusions about marriage
and family life.
Emma Bovary commits suicide after
many unhappy love affairs…
Both writers and painters broke away from
the traditions of romanticism and said they
wanted “real facts.”
Similar to realism was the idea of
positivism, which meant that one must
insist on verifiable facts and not on wishful
thinking.
In politics this became Real Politik--but we
will learn more about that later.
But no other ideas
came out of the postCongress of Vienna
era which would have
more influence than
those of Karl Marx.
Karl Marx
(1818-1883)
was the son of
a lawyer from
Prussia.
Marx associated with other German
radicals—similar to the radicals we saw in
our movie Les Miserables. This group was
called the “Young Hegelians.”
Marx met Friedrich Engels (18201893) who was the heir to a vast
fortune.
Marx and Engels met
in Paris in 1844. In
1847, they joined the
Communist league—
which was, at that
time, a tiny group of
revolutionaries.
In 1848—a momentous date in publishing
history, the Communist Manifesto was
published.
What was the Communist
Manifesto?
It was a “manifesto” that encouraged
workers to overthrow the systems that
oppressed them.
Marx wrote about the alienation of
labor…when work becomes so
mechanical that people become
estranged from the objects they produce.
This was something he observed as the
unregulated industrial revolution
continued in Britain and spread to
Europe.
A good example of this is factories where
people would be doing repetitive tasks for
very little pay.
Marx studied Hegel’s view of thesis,
antithesis and synthesis.
Marx echoed that
history was the
result of
impersonal
forces—
He wrote that conditions , mainly
economic, produce the change--
The Communist Manifesto was a
summons to revolution…
The famous
saying,
“Workers of the
world, unite.” is
one of the most
famous in
history.
So remember, this saying has its roots in
the unhappy conditions of France and other
countries prior and after the 1848
revolutions.
Karl Marx spent time in
London—where he spent
hours in the British Library
Reading Room. There he
began the research that led to
his great works of political
and economic analysis,
including the monumental
Das Kapital.
Marx was buried in Highgate cemetery.
Marxism’s message began to diminish
between 1848 and 1870—labor became
organized, most men got the vote, and there
were other increases to wages and benefits.
And in fact, Marxism should have died out…but
instead, he was read and re-read by a young man in the
Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 would be a
much later outcome of the writings of Karl
Marx—70 years after the revolutions of
1848.