The Advent of the “Isms”
Section 11.53
The Age of Isms
Congress of
Vienna
1815
Congress
of Aix-laChapelle,
1818
Decembrist
revolt
Liberalism,
Romanticism,
Nationalism,
Conservativism,
1820
1825
1830
1838
1842
1846
Socialism,
&
Marxism
July
Revolution
Congress of
Verona, 1822
Burschenschaft
formed
Carlsbad Decrees
issued (1817)
Mines Act
Peterloo
Massacre
(1819)
Congress of
Troppau (1820)
Corn Laws
Repealed
Chartists
Movement
-Reform Bill
of 1832
-Factory Act
1833
-Poor Law of
1834
Ten
Hours
Act
(1847)
February
Revolution
(France)
1848 (Springtime of
Peoples)
-March Days
(Austria)
-Frankfurt
Assembly
Introduction
•
From the period of 1815 to 1848 the use of new
words to describe economic, social, and political
ideas grew
Liberalism(1819), radicalism (1820), socialism
(1832), conservatism (1835), nationalism and
communism (1840s)
Suggests that ideas were being made more
systematic
•
•
–
–
–
•
Development of the social sciences
Analyze society as a whole
Competing with other ideologies
Leading to the conscious espousal of a doctrine
in competition with other doctrines
Conservatism
•
Basic Tenets
–
A reaction against liberalism
–
Alternative to the violence and terror of French
Revolution
–
Supporter of restoration of “legitimate” monarchs
–
Support came from nobility , peasants, early
romantics
–
Loved order, stability, tradition, and religion
–
Hated notion of a Revolution (change)
–
Society is organic
• Reject idea of social contract
• History and God were sole sources of legitimate
power
–
Rejected idea of natural rights
–
Every people is different
–
Believed in hierarchical society
–
Some were born to rule
–
Hero
•
Edmund Burke- Reflections of the Revolution in
France
Reflections of the Revolution in France
• "I cannot [...] give praise or blame to anything which relates to human
actions, and human concerns, on a simple view of the object, as it
stands stripped of every relation, in all the nakedness and solitude of
metaphysical abstraction. Circumstances [...] are what render every
civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.
Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet
could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her
enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without
inquiring what the nature of that government was? [...] Can I now
congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in
the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I
am seriously to felicitate a madman, who has escaped from the
protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his
restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? [...] I should,
therefore, suspend my congratulations on the new liberty of France
until I was informed how it had been combined with government, with
public force, with the discipline and obedience of armies, with the
collection of an effective and well-distributed revenue, with morality
and religion, with the solidity of property, with peace and order, with
civil and social manners. All these (in their way) are good things, too,
and without them liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, and is not likely
to continue long.
Isms Roundtable Activity
• In groups of 4 create a chart that lists the
roots, key characteristics, and heroes of
each ism.
Conservativism
Liberalism
Romanticism
French
Socialism
Marxist
Socialism
“Classic” Liberalism
• Rooted in Enlightenment
• Believed that the individual is a selfsufficient being
• The ism of the middle class &
bourgeoisie
• Favored written constitution
• Reject republicanism (universal male
suffrage)
• Love Lockean notions of the right of
rebellion, and natural rights
• Favored Smithian Laissez-faire
economics
• Favored balance of power, free trade,
Education
• Heroes: Locke, Smith, Philosophes,
Ricardo, Malthus
Romanticism
• Rooted in Plato, Rousseau and Kant
– Plato-innate ideas
– Rousseau- Emile’s praise of childhood, and
nature
– Kant- rejected Locke’s notion of tabula rasa in
favor of categorical imperative
• Innate subjective sense of what is good and
beautiful
Salisbury Cathedral from
• A reaction against the Enlightenment, rationalism,
the Meadows, John
classicalism, & liberalism
Constable
• Favored imagination & spontaneity over classical
rules (art & literature)
• Highpoint from 1780s-1848
• Feeling & emotion over reason
• Mucho amour for the medieval times & nature
• Rejected notion of “progress” & universal laws
– said each historical period & people were
unique, organic, and different
• At the forefront in fighting slavery, industrial evils
Neuschwanstein Castle
Wanderer Looking over a Sea of Fog (1815
• Caspar David
Friedrich 1774 –
1840) century
German Romantic
painter
French Utopian Socialism
• Rooted in a reaction to the evils of the Industrial Revolution,
Renaissance (Sir Thomas More) & French Rev (Convention)
• Believed in government economic planning
• Hated cutthroat, selfish, individualistic and chaotic capitalism
• Private property should be regulated or abolished
• Count Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825)
– Proposed that the “Doers” or Captains of Industry
(scientists, engineers, industrialists) should plan the
economy
– Public should own the means of production
– Public works projects, investment banking
– Parasites (monarchs, aristocracy, Church) should step
aside
• Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
– Proposed small units (phalansteries) containing 1,620
people
– communal societies where people worked at what they
were interested in
– Total emancipation for women
• Saw marriage as another form of prostitution
French Utopian Socialism
• Louis Blanc (1811-1882)
– Organization of Work (1839)
– proposed social workshops (state
supported manufacturing centers) where
workers labor for themselves without the
intervention of private capitalists
• Robert Owen (1771-1858)
• Industrialist and cotton lord of Manchester
• Appalled by conditions of mill-workers
• Created a model community
– High wages
– Reduced hours
– Corrective against vice (drunkenness)
– Schools
– Housing
– Stores
• paternalistic capitalism turned him into a
social reformer
Nationalism
• A raised level of consciousness of a particular
peoples’ traditions, history, land, language,
culture that say they should be joined together in
a nation
• Glued mostly by a “fixed” language &
Romanticism
– Linguists & scholars had begun to fix national
languages through journals, books,
newspapers
• Rejected Congress of Vienna and its principle of
“legitimacy”
• Favor idea of popular sovereignty
– Although certain minorities came to dominate
national character (Hungary)
• Proponents promoted
– idea of nationalisms economic and
administrative efficiency
– A nation, like a person, is free & a creation of
God
– Religious figure
• Poland as the crucified Christ
Nationalism Continued
• Most influential in Germany
• Herder –Father of German Nationalism
– Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind
(1784)
– Volksgeist – “Spirit of the People”
– common people is where national character existed
– Rejected Enlightenment idea of progress
– said each nation should develop their own way and
avoid distortions by outside influence
– didn’t think that German culture was better but different
• J. G. Fichte
– Closed Commercial state (1800)
• outlined a totalitarian system in which the state
planned and operated whole economy in isolationist
fashion, thus protecting national character
– Address To The German Nation, 1807
• there was an ineradicable German spirit, primordial,
to be kept pure at all costs, inner moral universe
• German spirit is better than others
Nationalism Continued
• Father Jahn:
– known as Turnvater Jahn, or the "father
of gymnastics"
– organized a youth movement (political
gymnastics clubs)
– did calisthenics for Fatherland, made
fun of aristocrats in French costumes,
suspicion of foreigners (Jews,
internationalists), IE things that might
corrupt the purity of German Volk
– 1810- "Poles, French, priests, aristocrats
and Jews are Germany's misfortune."
– Organized book burnings
• Grimm’s Fairy Tales
•
In search of the Volk
• Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel
• Friedrick List
– Advocated Zollverein (free trade zones
within German states
Scientific “Marxist” Socialism
• Based on philosophy of Karl Marx (1818-1883) &
Friedrich Engles (1820-1895)
• Brutal and militant revolutionary vision of how the
working class would defeat bourgeiosie
• Based inversely on Wilhelm Hegel’s philosophy
• German nationalistic philosophy who said history is
the story of Dialectic Ideals
– irrespirable tendency for human mind to move
forward by the creation of opposites (dialectic
• Dialectic Materialism –explains all human history
• All change comes through the clash of antagonistic
elements
– Historical development is the result of conditions
created by the interaction of such forces
• Economic causation to all human history/Class
struggle
– All human history is a story of a struggle over
material (resources) between haves and have nots
– Monarch v. Nobility
– Nobility v. Bourgeoisie
– Bourgeoisie v. Proletariat
Scientific “Marxist” Socialism
• Theory of Surplus Value
– the “stolen” portion of the value of the product the
proletariat labored over
• The profit of the capitalist
• Inevitability of Communist State
– Believed that history is scientific (predictable)
– Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction
– Bourgeoisie will exploit the proletariat until class
consciousness rises & workers destroy capitalism in
favor of a Dictatorship of the Proletariat
– A classless society
• Work according to one’s ability, take according to
one’s needs
• Communist Manifesto (1848)
– A call for revolution
– The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
chains. Workers of the world unite!
– “..let the ruling classes tremble at a communist
revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but
their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen
of all countries, unite!”
Congress of Vienna
•
•
•
–
–
–
–
Napoleon Defeated by 1814
many questions remained unanswered..
Quadruple Alliance
Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Great Britain
“First Treaty of Vienna”
•
restored the French boundaries of 1792
•
Restored the Bourbon dynasty
•
No indemnity
Defensive Measures
•
established Prussia as a "sentinel on
the Rhine"
– Prussia got land on Rhine
•
created Kingdom of the Netherlands
– a new kingdom out of Belgium and
Holland.
balance of power•
believed that an international
equilibrium of political and military
forces would preserve peace in
Europe.
Congress of Vienna
• Sticky Points
– Polish-Saxon Question
• Prussians and the
Russians demanded
Saxony and Poland
• compensation
threatened the balance.
– Castlereagh, Metternich, and
Talleyrand forced Russia
and Prussia into a
compromise whereby
Russia got part of Poland
and Prussia received twofifths of Saxony
Congress or Metternich System
•
Intervention and repression
– Under Metternich, Austria, Prussia, and
Russia led a crusade against liberalism.
• They formed a Holy Alliance to
check future liberal and
revolutionary activity.
• When liberals succeeded in Spain
and in the Two Sicilies, these
powers intervened to restore
conservatism.
• Metternich's policies also dominated
the German Confederation--through
which the Carlsbad Decrees were
issued in 1819.
–
These decrees repressed
subversive ideas and organizations
in the 38 German states
» Read German Gynasium
Metternich and Conservatism
• Metternich represented the view that
the best state blended monarchy,
bureaucracy, and aristocracy.
• He hated liberalism, which he claimed
stirred up the lower classes and
caused war and bloodshed.
– Liberalism also stirred up national
aspirations in central Europe, which
could lead to war and the breakup of the
Austrian Empire.
– The empire, which was dominated by the
minority Germans, contained many ethnic
groups, including Hungarians and
Czechs, which was a potential source of
weakness and dissatisfaction.