The Naked Socialist
Page 30
After America’s break from England, a spirit of individual freedom spread throughout Europe. People saw an opening to finally unshackle themselves from the lingering remains of the dying feudal system. They demanded a say in political affairs. They looked to throw off the tyranny of kings and lords. They sought ways to apply their own ideas to politics and economics, to create, invent, invest, and expand the freedom to exercise and protect their individual rights. It was a renaissance of liberty, of self-rule, of creativity, of inventiveness. It was the dawning of the Age of the Machine.
Industrial Revolution Changes the World
The so-called Industrial Revolution was really an industrial evolution that spanned more than 100 years. It was a time of opportunity, invention, investment and creativity.
This revolution had roots back to the age of the guilds when governments were sponsoring and protecting certain industries. By the 1700s, major advancements appeared in England, most of them in the textile industry. Assorted innovations in weaving and thread-making gave birth to new jobs, new machines and new industries.
Steam engines contributed to every aspect of society where traditional manufacturing processes suffered for want of some kind of power to run large machines.
New construction materials, iron and cement, were invented for better performance and cheaper production. This led to improvements in building construction, mining, machinery, mills, housing, and all of the related employment.
Like a giant vortex pulling in ideas from all directions and combining them into things never before thought of, this new creativity began churning and splitting and fusing and overlapping to advance engineering, metallurgy, chemistry, and medicine, to build inventions, discoveries and ideas, one atop another, until the tide toward a whole new age had swelled beyond imagination: automated looms, spinning wheels, flyer-and-bobbins, steam engines, steam power, spinning mills, rotary machinery, power tools, glass making, paper manufacturing, food productions, pharmaceuticals, ploughs, harvesting equipment, steamboats, steam locomotives, steel manufacturing, weaponry, and so much more.
Genius on Parade: As these discoveries, inventions and breakthroughs were put to market, many of them were proudly shared with the world, and sent on tour to be displayed and paraded around at symposiums and fairs and international expositions. Details and descriptions of the achievements were printed in books, encyclopedias, and periodicals. The means to spread this amazing knowledge was improved by the very act of spreading such knowledge.
It was a wonderful time of enlightenment and progress for the world, and Europe in particular.
Making Do on the Continent: For the European nations, the joys of actual freedom remained largely just headlines boasting the fantastic prosperity taking off in America. Could Europe follow suit, or would socialism get in the way?
Unfortunately for Europe, the march toward liberty became side-tracked by individuals and ideas that fell short of the necessary principles of freedom. It was an unsettled time, a vulnerable time, it was the rise of the revolutionaries.
Chapter 54: Revolutionary: Ned Ludd
He attacked a machine with a hammer and became a legend.
Not a lot is known about Ned Ludd but his legacy lives on as the lad who fought the machine and launched a revolution.
The Industrial Revolution had a worrisome impact on craftsmen who believed their handmade skills were put to flight by the machines. It was a love-hate relationship. Craftsmen boasted of their high quality handmade goods and their ability to manufacture products with careful attention to detail and patient processes. But the machines! They magnified everything. Those amazing technologies could do it faster and better than humans, thus increasing profits for manufacturers, and putting the craftsmen out of work.
Ned Ludd was born in England, and hailed from the little village of Anstey on the outskirts of Leicester. He was a weaver who, in 1799, exploded “in a fit of insane rage,” and took a hammer and broke two stocking frames (knitting machines). Such machines had been putting knitters out of work for 200 years before the Industrial Revolution, so Ned’s outburst doesn’t seem motivated by resentment of the newness of the machines per se’. He remains a puzzle. Some records called him a half-wit, dull, etc.
Nevertheless, Ned’s vigorous and single-handed attack on the machine was admired by others of similar concern, and gave birth to the 1812 movement of machine busters in England called the Luddites.
The Luddites were anonymous, masked, and well organized men. They went about destroying machinery, mostly in the textile industry, to keep the demand for handmade goods high. The conspirators’ loyalty was to no one but the now mythical “King Ludd,” and the preservation of jobs. As with the guildsmen of old, and the trade unions of the future, the Luddites learned that they could destroy the property of other people as a means of propping up their own sources of income. It was by force that they prevented the competition from getting a leg up on them in the hosiery business.352
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352 English Historical Documents, XI, Oxford University Press, 1959, pp. 532-33.
Chapter 55: Revolutionary: Unions and the King
Circa 1795-1825
The king giveth and the king taketh away—anything more or less than that meant death.
The problem of the Luddites was not new. Other groups were forming, in particular the trade unions that were striking for more pay, fewer hours, and other demands.
As a step to stop this breakout of free assembly and action, England’s king declared in 1795 that 50 was the maximum number of people allowed to gather for any purpose outside of his official decrees—especially if they met for political reform. If the number exceeded 50, the local sheriff could force the crowd to disburse. After an hour, if 12 or more remained, they could be arrested. If any were found guilty of seditious talk, they could be hanged.
These draconian measures against the freedom to associate were lumped together in the Seditious Assembling Act of 1795.
By 1799, a similar proclamation against seditious assembling, the Combination Act of 1799 and 1800, prevented workers from forming trade unions and collective bargaining. They were not allowed to strike “for obtaining an advance on wages ... or altering their usual hours of working ... or decreasing the quantity of work.”353
The anti-union laws remained in force until 1824. Sympathy for the problems that workers faced, and the necessity of resolving them outside the view of the king’s guards, brought about a repeal in 1824 of the Combination Act. Almost immediately a series of strikes broke out by workers wanting to settle old and festering grievances. A short time later, the Combination Act of 1825 was passed, making labor unions legal.354
And so began the complex era of unions that would slowly erode the property rights of business owners. It was a power given teeth by the iron fist of law and government. This brand of socialism had already spread to America by the early 1800s.
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353 Combination Act of 1800, Part I
354 Ibid., Vol. XI, pp. 749-52; and Statutes at Large, XL.
Chapter 56: Revolutionary: Napoleon Bonaparte
Circa 1799-1815
In a strange contradiction of goals, Napoleon used force and Ruler’s Law to impose onto his conquered European subordinates many of the freedoms gained from the French Revolution.
The failure of France to figure out permanent freedom with its first revolution in 1789 continued to haunt the country for sixty more years. The first decade was a topsy-turvy confusion of competing forces that sought to de-throne the king, or at least sharply curtail his powers. Several versions of constitutions and declarations rose and fell until France found herself embroiled in despotism, war, runaway inflation, tyranny, and confusion.
By 1799 the country was tired of the revolutions and turmoil, and submitted almost with relief to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. The brilliant strate
gist, who already had led France’s armed forces through several decisive victories, participated in a coup d’Etat on November 9-10, 1799 and overthrew the government.
For 15 Years, Napoleon expanded French dominion into Italy and most of Europe. He created a vast empire of states, threatening to dominate them militarily if they refused to accept the monarchs he gave them.
Most of Europe was already under the rule of kings with their confusing patchwork of feudal laws. As Napoleon’s troops swept across the landscape, he gave the sitting monarchs the option to capitulate or die. Many stepped down, others fled. In this way, Napoleon was able to put loyal friends on the various thrones and extend France’s new-found freedoms across the continent—these new-found freedoms became known as the Napoleonic Code.
Napoleon’s Code abolished the old feudal ways of ancient monarchs, serfs, and lords, and replaced them with a code of relatively broad-based freedoms such as—
No special privileges based on birth.
Freedom of religion but not of the press. Emperor Napoleon insisted he be spoken of in kindly and positive terms.
Freedom to vote and run for office.
Freedom to own and control private property, and unrestricted access to the marketplace.
No more secret laws—all laws had to be properly examined, well defined, clearly described, and published for the public to review before they could be put in force. No ex post facto laws (laws created after a crime was committed just so a court could convict a person).
Judges could not be activists and make up laws to suit their own personal desires or pursuits for power.
The criminally accused were innocent until proven guilty, and were promised a defense attorney.
Trial by jury.
Husbands were made legal heads of family, although divorce was allowed.
In Spain, Napoleon abolished the Inquisition, feudal dues, internal customs fees, and closed 2/3rds of the Catholic cloisters. The cloisters were walled-off living places that separated monks from serfs and workmen who performed their labors outside the high walls. These church-owned compounds encompassed thousands of acres throughout Europe.
Freedoms to try, buy, sell, and fail were guaranteed.
Peasants who were once locked to the land as serfs were freed to buy those lands, or to work or sell them—even move away if they pleased.Other Nations Copy Napoleon
As that spirit of newly-found freedom spread, the Napoleonic Code was adopted by many other European countries including Poland, Holland, Portugal, Spain, England, Russia, Prussia, the lands of Germany, and Italy. Leaders saw how well such freedoms were working and decided that the best way to retain strength and national harmony was to adopt those same principles. Even to this day the Napoleonic Code remains the foundation for many European nations’ jurisprudence.
As resistance to Napoleon’s march through Europe grew, his power began to fade. He was finally deposed in 1814. He managed to escape his prison island and rebuild an army, but he was re-conquered in 1815—this time permanently.
Cleaning up the Mess
Napoleon’s demise left Europe in a mess. It took the Congress of Vienna, with delegates from the largest countries, to sort things out. They labored for more than a year (1814-15) to carefully re-draw European borders so that no single nation could grow strong enough to rise up and dominate the others, as had Napoleon’s France.
Backward is Their Idea of Going Forward
When the dust settled, many of European borders were returned to their pre-Napoleon boundaries and rulers.
France returned to its 1789 borders, and its old line of Bourbon kings was put back in power. Most nations took back their own kings and re-instituted the old ways, dissolving natural rights as if they were some form of contagious plague. And, in just a matter of a few years, Europe was back in the grip of the seven pillars of socialism.
The taste of freedom, however, was hard to erase—it lingered in the memories of millions for a long time afterward.
Chapter 57: Revolutionary: Robert Owen
They call him the father of modern socialism. His capitalistic experiments helped him build a fortune, and then his socialistic experiments took it all away in just a few years.
SOCIALIST: Robert Owen (1771-1858
STORY: Born in Wales, sixth of seven children, became famous for buying textile mills in Scotland and giving his paid workers and their families good educational and living opportunities. He encouraged self sufficiency within the whole.
When Owen tried his utopian schemes in New Harmony, Indiana in 1824, he abandoned what he called “private property, irrational religion, and marriage” for the hollow ideals of socialism. His experiment was an expensive failure, costing him 4/5ths of the fortune he had built with capitalism back in Scotland.
Impact: Considered the “father” of modern-day socialism, Owen pioneered the “cooperative movement” in Great Britain where villagers jointly owned and operated the town’s businesses.
Famous Words: “Man is the creature of circumstances.”355
It’s the old nature vs. nurture argument. Owen taught that no one was “responsible for his will and his own actions” because “his whole character is formed independently of himself” by his nurturing.356 The better the environment, the better the person becomes in all aspects. Owen said no one was “responsible for his will and his own actions” because “his whole character—physical, mental and moral—is formed independently of himself.”357
History teaches otherwise. Throughout all ages in all places, men and women resist slavery and stagnation. They bristle against tyranny. Whether they ultimately escape or not, nurture can only go so far. Built-in human nature always demands the freedom to choose.
Famous Words: “[Religions] have made man the most inconsistent, and the most miserable being in existence. By the errors of these systems he has been made a weak, imbecile animal; a furious bigot and fanatic or a miserable hypocrite...”358
Believing that to be true, Owen tried to make the ideal workplace at his textile mills. He invested heavily to provide nice homes for workers and a school for the children. He insisted there be no child labor, created shorter work days, and, instead of punishing poor performers, he rewarded excellence. Like all good capitalists, Owen believed proper incentive would encourage better performance. He was right, of course, and he made millions.
Inspired Marx and Engels: Owen’s ideas helped lay the philosophical groundwork for Marx and Engels that human nature has no pre-disposed or built-in tendencies. He believed that human nature was the product of interaction with others, and that such nature is under constant revision and change.
Owen was convinced that people are not born with certain attributes and proclivities, but they develop these according to the world in which they are born. And that’s just what Marx and Engels concluded just a few decades later.359
Changing Into a Socialist: Then a strange thing happened. Owen turned from a capitalist into a socialist. He believed that planning and regulation could create the same prosperity without the capitalistic principles of incentive and ownership that had worked so well for him before. Owen thought the incentive of working together for the common good would be sufficient motivation for people to work hard.
Infecting America: In 1824, Owen sailed to America to launch his idea. He was welcomed everywhere as a great reforming hero—he spoke to Congress, the president, and justices of the Supreme Court. His socialist ideas spread about into many rural areas where people seeking a better way in “the land of the free” decided to give it a try.
Seeking Harmony in Indiana: Owen’s own choice for his blissful experiment in socialism was New Harmony, Indiana in 1825. Here he invested his treasure to create the perfect utopian society with everyone happily working for the benefit of everyone else. All things were tightly regulated and there was no private ownership—all was in common.
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br /> About 900 families joined Owen in his enterprise. They sold their properties, invested with the commune, and took their place in Owen’s new socialist village. It took only two years for the commune to fall apart.
According to Josiah Warren, an original participant at New Harmony, Owen lured them all with the same old false promises:
“[Owen] showed us that in Communism, instead of working against each other as in competition, we should all work for each other while working for ourselves.360 ...It appeared that it was nature’s own inherent law of diversity that had conquered us ...our ‘united interests’ were directly at war with the individualities of persons and circumstances and the instinct of self-preservation...”361
Warren elegantly summarized the failure of socialism everywhere and anywhere, from New Harmony to Jamestown, Plymouth, Sumer, China, Greece, Sparta, the USSR, today’s European Union and the United States, when he said, simply, “Nature’s law conquered us.”362
Learning to Recognize Socialism
According the Fabian Socialists in 1895, what monumental obstacle stood between freedom and socialism in the United States? What did they say had to be done with “our Constitution”?
What do you think the Fabians meant when they said they would change the Constitution by “the raising of great new issues”? Can you name a few “new issues” that have threatened or abolished a few freedoms and liberties in recent decades?
What did Franklin tell Mrs. Powel about the new government? Did he express some concern or doubt? Explain.
What is a “progressive”?
Who was the first progressive in the U.S.? Name three changes he called for in the new Constitution. Why were these bad ideas?
Whom did Alexander Hamilton want as king of the U.S.? What office did Hamilton want under that king?