Revolutionary Ideologies
HUM 2052: Civilization II
Summer 2010
Dr. Perdigao
June 10, 2010
Contextualizing Texts
1808—John Dalton formulated modern atomic theory
1831—Michael Farady discovered principle of electromagnetic induction
1847—Hermann von Helmholtz formulate law of conservation of energy
1848—Marx and Engels, Communist Manifesto
1859—Darwin, The Origin of Species
1861—Emancipation of Serfs in Russia; Louis Pasteur’s vaccines
1861-1865—American Civil War
1864—Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
1869—Dmitri Mendeleev constructed periodic table for the elements
1871—Darwin, The Descent of Man
1874—Impressionism launched with Monet’s painting
1876—Telephone
1884-1885—European Acquisition of African territory (by 1914 all Africa [except
Ethiopia and Liberia] succumbs to European rule)
1887—Heirncih Hertz discovered electromagnetic waves (radio, television, radar);
Eiffel Tower built for 1889 Paris World’s Fair; Daimler’s internal combustion
engine for automobile
1894—X rays discovered
1898—Radium discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie; Spanish-American War erupts
Industry, Empire, Revolution
• “Old order” of Europe deconstructed, Holy Roman Empire and Papal
States dissolved (997)
• Industrial Revolution—term coined in 1820s, parallel to French Revolution
shows change during the period
• Age of industry and empire, transforming Europe and the world, leads to
“social question”—concern about social and economic changes as a result of
industrialization and urbanization
• Global expansion of European culture—to new imperialism
• “Humanitarian commitment”—giving way to the “heart of darkness”?
• Attempts by workers for improved conditions yet new divisions and
breaks within society
• Racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic chauvinism
• “Liberty,” “science,” “progress,” and “evolution” as nineteenth century
concepts
That fish
• Charles Darwin (1809-1892)
• Erasmus Darwin—grandfather—published Zoonomia, or the Laws of Organic
Life, and evidence that earth exited for millions of years before people,
animal modifications (Perry 579)
• Naturalist, HMS Beagle (1831-36), surveyed South America and Pacific
islands
• “Darwin did for biology what Newton had done for physics: he made it an
objective science based on general principles” (Perry 578)
• “mutability of species,” “natural selection,” “survival of the fittest” (1370)
• “A natural selection acts by competition” (1372); “The natural system is a
genealogical arrangement, in which we have to discover the lines of
descent by the most permanent characters, however slight their vital
importance may be” (1374).
Creationism vs. Evolutionary Theory
• Completes “trend initiated by Galileo” and contributes to the “waning of
religious belief and to a growing secular attitude” (Perry 581)
• Rejection of literal interpretation of the Bible: “It is so easy to hide our
ignorance under such expressions as the ‘plan of creation,’ ‘unity of design,’
et cetera…” (1375)
• Backlash— “Genesis is a lie. . . The revelation of God to man, as we
Christians know it, is a delusion and a snare” (qtd. in Perry 580);
“practically destructive of the authority of divine revelation, and
subversive of the foundation of religion and morality” (qtd. in Perry 581)
• “In the distant future I see open fields for far more important research.
Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary
acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be
thrown on the origin of man and his history” (1375).
• Christianity more of an issue of faith than reason…. “Copernicanism had
deprived people of the comforting belief that the earth had been placed in
the center of the universe just for them; Darwinism deprived them of the
privilege of being God’s special creation” (Perry 580).
• http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/evolut.htm
Sigh
Social Sciences
• The Descent of Man
• “man is descended from some less highly organized form” (1376); “We thus
learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably
arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World” (1377)
• “Social Darwinism” as work of social science, applying Darwin’s theories
to social and economic issues: “struggle for existence” and “survival of the
fittest”
• Loose application leads to problematic uses—language of imperialism,
racism, nationalism, militarism, “doctrines that preached relentless
conflict” (Perry 581)
• Darwinian biology to promote belief in Anglo-Saxon (British and
American) and Teutonic (German) racial superiority (Perry 581)
• Growth of British Empire, expansion of United States to Pacific, and
extension of German power seen by Social Darwinists as issues of racial
superiority, domination of American Indians, Africans, Asians, Poles
(Perry 581)
Social Sciences
• “Whereas the philosophes emphasized human equality, Social Darwinists
divided humanity into racial superiors and inferiors” (Perry 582)
• Racial and national conflict as “biological necessity, law of history, and a
means of progress” and “distorted the image of progress” (Perry 582)
Reconfiguring Darwin
Creation Museum:
http://www.creationmuseum.org/about
Unicorn Museum:
http://www.unicornmuseum.org/
Inherit the Wind (1960):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtNdYsoool8
Planet of the Apes (1968):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvR2mCx-Jnc
Planet of the Apes (2001):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB2pSE6z_s
Defining the Revolution
• From “Revolutionary Principles” (1369-1370)
• Change in assumptions in science, philosophy, the structure of society,
human identity
• Nietzsche’s argument that Western culture is in decline—moral decay of
society and loss of individual freedom
• Marx and Engels—cultural decline—problems in capitalist free society that
produced the Crystal Palace was falling apart and would be overturned,
foreseeing revolutions in their times
• “Revolutions of the mind”: challenging accepted ideas in science,
philosophy, and society
• The “woman question” answered best in theory or in salons, their place in
history
• After Newton, questions of God’s role in world, Darwin’s theories in
relation to that center, creationism
Liberalism
• Roots in John Locke (17th century) and Enlightenment philosophy (18th
century); continuation of democratic practices and rational outlook of
ancient Greece; work of French philosophes (Montesquieu’s separations of
powers and checks and balances, religious toleration and freedom of
thought; American and French Revolutions; Bill of Rights; French
National Assembly of 1789 (Perry 534)
• Constitutional guarantees of personal liberty and free trade in economics,
leading to social improvement and economic growth; Adam Smith’s
laissez-faire theory
• Support of Industrial Revolution but opposing violence and state power
promoted by French Revolution, repudiated Jacobin radicalism; called for
end to legacy of Middle Ages and aristocracy
• Middle class—manufacturers, merchants, professionals support liberalism
Liberalists
• Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), Democracy in America (1835-1840),
advocated destruction of aristocracy (Perry 537)
• Thomas Paine (1748-1832), The Rights of Man (1791-1792) following Burke’s
Reflections on the Revolution in France
• Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), utility as reform, pain and pleasure,
philosophical radicals (Perry 539)
Socialism
• Following liberalism
• “liberties advocated by liberals benefited only the middle class—the owners
of factories and businesses—not the workers” (MW: 675)
• Sought to reorganize society
• Critique of Industrial Revolution for creating two classes: new middle class
(capitalists who own the wealth) and working class
• Early socialists as “romantics,” dreaming of a “New social order, a future
utopia, where each individual could find happiness and self-fulfillment”
(Perry 540), did not advocate class warfare
• Charles Fourier (1772-1837), phalansteries, communities; Robert Owen
(1771-1858)—Welsh—factory town in Scotland, then Indiana (New
Harmony, 1920s) (Florida?) (Perry 540-541)
• Emancipation of women
Collectivists and Communists
• After failed revolutions in 1848, Marxists and anarchists as “chief
proponents of revolution” (Perry 584); both liberalism and Marxist shared
principles derived from Enlightenment, social progress
• Differences as seizure of power by working class and destruction of
capitalism, violence and struggle as “essence of history,” “instruments of
progress” for Marxists while liberals upheld education and self-discipline
as means to “overcome inequality and poverty” (Perry 584)
• “emphasizing their desire to replace private property by communal,
collective ownership” (676)
• Marx (1818-1883) and Engels (1820-1895), German, Marx forced to leave
France in 1849, moved to London
• Communist League, 1848 Communist Manifesto
Marx’s Science
• Marx as “strict materialist” and “Young Hegelian,” belief that the
“Germany of their day” “had not attained a harmony between the
individual and society; it as not rationally organized and did not foster
freedom” (Perry 531); “dialectical conflict” between opposing forces, thesis
(force) and antithesis (adversary), not abstract natural rights but “true
freedom” attained “through the social group” (Perry 530), history as “not
an assortment of unrelated and disconnected events, but a progressive
development” (Perry 585)
• For Marx, clash of classes rather than opposing ideas—“dialectical
materialism” which accounts for change and progress (Perry 585); saw
Hegel as too metaphysical
Marxist Theory
• Marx and Engels—turn to economic relationships that influence society—
social, political, intellectual, and cultural—and change throughout history
with production change
• Revolutionizing instruments of production; great crises, according to Marx
and Engels, in production and production forces
• “capitalist free enterprise system that had created the crystal palace was
now on the verge of collapse and would soon be overturned by the very
class of laborers it had created to meet industrial demands” (1369)
• Bourgeoisie vs. proletariat
• Bourgeoisie (capitalist)
• Proletariat (working class)
• Embrace industrialization to bring about proletarian revolution and
“abolition of exploitation, private property, and class society” (676)
Rise of Marxism
• Marx: political theorist and labor organizer
• Scientific theory (like Darwin?): mathematical calculations of production
and profit
• Das Kapital
• Returns to John Locke (another influential text for Frankenstein) “that
human existence was defined by the necessity to work to fulfill basic needs
such as food, clothing, and shelter” (MW: 713).
• Materialism as class relationships developed around work the “mode of
production”
• Feudalism (serf and medieval lord); slavery (slave and master); capitalism
(worker [proletariat] and capitalist)
The Road to Revolution
• Rather than emphasize individual rights, focus on unequal class relations
and discards the “romantic views of the Utopian socialists” to focus on
struggle as means to bring change
• Marx “rejected the liberal Enlightenment view that society was basically
harmonious, maintaining instead that social progress could occur only
through conflict” (MW: 714)
• Anarchism as destruction of state power because “the existence of the state
was the root of social injustice” (713)
• Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), wanted all oppressed people to revolt, secret
societies rather than mass political parties, feared Marxists would become
new masters and exploiters , instead should destroy the state (Perry 588589)
Limits of Civilization
• “the epidemic of over production” that leads society into “momentary
barbarism” (return to Montaigne?)
• “Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too
much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal
of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of
bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for
these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome
these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society . . .”
(1386).