Socialism 101

by Kathleen Sears

  Reactions to the French Revolution

  The French Revolution brought the march toward reform to a halt. Alarmed by the French example, and the enthusiasm with which it was greeted by some British radicals, the landed classes and manufacturers joined together against the radicals. Existing legislation related to apprenticeship, wage regulation, and conditions in industry were repealed. Existing laws against conspiracy were re-enforced by the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800, which made it illegal for workingmen to “combine” to ask for higher wages or shorter work hours, or to incite other men to leave work.

  PEACE AND POVERTY

  England suffered a severe depression at the end of the Napoleonic Wars as a result of the transition to a peacetime economy. The sudden drop in government spending and the loss of wartime markets for British grain and manufactured goods brought with them falling prices, unstable currency, and widespread unemployment.

  Dominated by landowners in both the House of Lords and the House of Commons, Parliament passed protective tariffs on grain as a way of solving the country’s economic woes. The new Corn Laws protected landowners’ incomes but forced urban laborers to pay a higher price for bread when times were already hard.

  Workers reacted with strikes and bread riots across England. Moderate and radical reformers called for the repeal of the Corn Laws and for parliamentary reform in large public meetings. In 1817 the government attempted to defang the reform societies by temporarily forbidding all public meetings, suppressing all societies not licensed by the government, and suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, so that prisoners could be held without trial.

  These severe measures brought only a temporary lull in popular demonstrations. In 1819 Britain’s economic problems worsened. Reformers once again held mass meetings in the larger industrial cities. The most famous of these became known as the Peterloo Massacre. In August 1819 sixty thousand men, women, and children gathered on St. Peter’s Field in Manchester to hear radical orator Henry Hunt speak. Fearful that a large group of reformers would turn into a large group of rioters, the local magistrate ordered a squadron of cavalry into the peaceful crowd to arrest Hunt. Eleven people were killed and several hundred were injured.

  The government moved quickly to deter future demonstrations. Hunt and eight other organizers of the Manchester meeting were arrested and charged with holding “an unlawful and seditious assembling [sic] for the purpose of exciting discontent.” Parliament passed the Six Acts: a series of drastic restrictions intended to eliminate unauthorized public meetings, suppress the radical press, and make it easier to convict popular leaders.

  The Working-Class Movement Takes Another Path

  The radical movement subsided after 1820, thanks to increased government repression and an economic upturn. For the next decade the working-class movement focused less on reform and more on building cooperative institutions: trade unions, friendly societies, mutual aid societies, and Working Men’s Clubs. By 1832, when Parliament passed the Great Reform Act that gave the vote to much of the middle class, strong, self-consciously working-class institutions were in place to take up the battle.

  THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN CONTINENTAL EUROPE

  At first the Industrial Revolution was a British phenomenon. Britain was determined to hold on to its manufacturing lead and made it illegal to export machinery and manufacturing technology. Skilled workers were not allowed to emigrate. It took a full generation for the Industrial Revolution to spread from Great Britain to other countries, such as Belgium, France, and the United States.

  Other European powers lagged even further behind. Some parts of Germany, for example, did not begin industrial expansion until unification in 1871.

  FOURIER, SAINT-SIMON, AND UTOPIAN SOCIALISM

  The Moral Case

  For many in France and abroad, the French Revolution followed the American Revolution in promising a brighter future for the lower classes, who had been trampled by the aristocracy. However, the egalitarian dreams, and nightmares, of the French Revolution did not last. Elements within the new French regime launched a Reign of Terror against actual and perceived enemies of the revolution. Thousands met their fate on the guillotine, a newly invented device for beheading. Gradually the regime began to devour itself. By 1795 the leaders of the revolution (termed the Directory) had turned conservative and did not welcome dissent against their rule. In 1799 they yielded the state to a military figure: Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821).

  Bonaparte ruled France with greater and greater arbitrariness, and in 1804 he crowned himself emperor of France. This would have been concerning enough to other European powers, but the new emperor showed he was intent on expanding France’s power and territories. For the next decade Europe was wracked by the Napoleonic Wars. They ended, finally, in 1815 with Napoleon’s defeat by a coalition of nations on the field of Waterloo in Belgium. Napoleon was sent into distant exile, and the rest of Europe breathed a sigh of relief. Louis XVIII, fat and unimaginative, was placed on the throne as a puppet king.

  However, a series of revolutionary uprisings against the king and his successors left France in a state of permanent instability. And against this background two of the most influential utopian socialists put forth their ideas of social reorganization.

  HENRI DE SAINT-SIMON AND THE SCIENTIFIC ELITE

  Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) was a French aristocrat whose family claimed descent from the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne. Brought up to believe that he was destined for great things, Saint-Simon spent his early years in search of the next big idea. He fought on the side of the colonies in the American Revolution, winning the Order of Cincinnatus. At the end of the war he traveled to Mexico, where he tried to convince the Spanish viceroy to build a transoceanic canal through Lake Nicaragua. He became involved in an unsuccessful Dutch plot to drive the British out of India, then traveled to Spain with a plan for linking Madrid to the sea via canal.

  Back in France he flung himself into the Revolution. He renounced his title, refused the office of mayor in his hometown in favor of a non-aristocratic candidate, ran revolutionary meetings, captained the local unit of the National Guard, and successfully speculated in real estate that the government seized from the Catholic Church.

  In 1793 Saint-Simon was arrested as a result of a mistaken identity. While in prison, he had a vision. Charlemagne appeared and told him that it was his destiny to be as great a philosopher as Charlemagne was a warrior.

  Once out of jail, Saint-Simon set out to turn himself into a great thinker. When his self-designed education was at an end, he began to write. He published his books himself and sent them to influential thinkers of the day, hoping to interest them in his views. When he ran out of money, he took a clerical job and relied on the kindness of a former servant for his room and board. He copied his books by hand when he could no longer afford to have them printed.

  Saint-Simon Diagnoses Society’s Problems

  While much early socialist thought was a reaction against the miseries caused by the Industrial Revolution, Saint-Simon embraced science and industry as the keys to human progress. He believed that the laws of social development could be discovered by studying history. He came to the conclusion that history alternates between periods of equilibrium and imbalance. Societies change as a result of struggle between the productive and unproductive classes: slaves and masters, serfs and lords, plebeians and patricians. The Middle Ages was a period of equilibrium, followed by the social disruption of the Reformation and the Revolution. Now society was poised for another period of equilibrium based on science and industry. The only thing that stood in the way was the semi-feudal power relationships that persisted in French society.

  Unlike other socialist thinkers, Saint-Simon did not describe class struggle in terms of haves and have-nots. For him the conflict was between the productive classes and the parasites. Saint-Simon identified the vast majority of society in his own time as part of the productive “industrial/scientific” class, in
which he included both workers and factory owners. Only the nobility and the clergy, who represented the last vestiges of feudal privilege, were unproductive. As long as the unproductive classes remained in power, they were a barrier to economic and social progress. For society to change, the modern productive classes had to recognize their common interests and band together.

  Rule by the Scientific Elite

  In his vision of the ideal society, Saint-Simon was still going for the big idea. Unlike other utopian socialists, who based their transformation of society on small groups, Saint-Simon envisioned a universal association that would incorporate the developed world. He wanted to organize society for the benefit of the poor, but he distrusted democracy. Instead, he proposed a cooperative commonwealth in which scientists, leaders of industry, and artists would replace the aristocracy and the military as the rulers of society.

  “From Each According to His Ability…”

  * * *

  Saint-Simon wrote the famous dictum “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” to describe the distribution of wealth in his proposed society. Often attributed to Karl Marx, the phrase later became one of the distinguishing marks between socialism and communism.

  * * *

  Saint-Simon divided mankind into three classes: the savants, the propertied, and the unpropertied. The savants, including artists of all kinds as well as scholars, would be responsible for the moral and spiritual well-being of society, the role formerly held by the church. Actual governing and administration would be done by the propertied classes, specifically the captains of industry. The primary goal of society would be the material and intellectual improvement of the unpropertied, who would remain at the bottom of society until their own talents allowed them to rise.

  Late in his life Saint-Simon decided his perfect society needed an ethical component. His first suggestion was a scientific religion. He later turned to what he called the New Christianity.

  FOURIERISM

  Charles Fourier (1772–1837) was the son of a cloth merchant. He lost his inheritance during the French Revolution and narrowly escaped the guillotine when the revolutionary troops besieged Lyon. During his career as a traveling salesman in the silk industry he saw firsthand the misery suffered by the silk workers in the first steps toward the Industrial Revolution.

  Phalanx

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  The original meaning of phalanx was an infantry formation developed by Philip II of Macedonia, in which soldiers stood in close order with shields touching and spears overlapping. In the seventeenth century the word came to mean “any small, closely knit group of people.” Fourier combined the word phalanx with monastery to get phalanstery.

  * * *

  Fourier did not believe social or economic inequalities were the source of human misery. Instead, he thought that most problems were the result of the society’s misuse of people’s “passions.” Everyone has something they like to do. Every passion is good for something. If each passion could be put to its proper use, the “reign of Harmony” would prevail.

  Fourier proposed the establishment of small communes, called phalanxes or phalansteries, which would allow society to make the best use of all human passions. Based on the number of personality types he believed existed, Fourier calculated that the optimum size of each phalanx would be about 1,600 people, a number that would get all necessary work done by assigning every passion to its proper job. (For instance, since small boys love dirt, they would have the job of disposing of the community’s garbage.)

  Despite the communal nature of the phalanxes, Fourier did not propose to abolish private property. Instead, each phalanx would be organized as a joint-stock company, in which individuals could invest. Everyone in the phalanx would be guaranteed a minimum subsistence and would have the opportunity to become an investor. Beyond their minimum subsistence, members would be paid based on the worth of their contribution to the community. Unpleasant work would pay a higher rate than work that was pleasant but useful. Useful work would pay more than work that produced luxuries. Any profits that the phalanx made would be distributed based on relative value, with five-twelfths going to labor, four-twelfths to capital, and three-twelfths to talent.

  Brook Farm

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  The most famous Fourierist phalanstery was Brook Farm, which was founded outside of Boston in 1841 by a circle of transcendentalist ministers, reformers, and writers, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller, and the Alcott Family, including Bronson and Louisa May Alcott. Hawthorne wrote a novel based on the experience, The Blithedale Romance (1852).

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  Fourierism in Practice

  After Fourier’s death his ideas found two champions who did a better job of promoting Harmonism than Fourier ever did: Victor-Prosper Considérant and Albert Brisbane. Considérant established a single phalanx in France, which failed, and a second in Texas, La Reunion, which flourished for several years.

  Brisbane was more successful. He brought Fourierism to the United States from France in 1840. With the help of Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the New York Tribune, Brisbane was able to introduce Fourier’s theories to thousands of households across the northern states. His articles inspired the creation of more than forty phalansteries in the United States. Many of the communities combined Fourierism with transcendentalism, Swedenborgianism, perfectionism, or Spiritualism. Most lasted only a few years. The longest-lived of the Fourierist communities was the North American Phalanx, which existed from 1843 to 1855.

  Horace Greeley

  * * *

  Horace Greeley (1811–1872) was the opinionated founder and editor of the New York Tribune. He supported a wide and eclectic range of causes, on and off the page, including free public schools, producer cooperatives, free speech, the emancipation of slaves, civil rights for freedmen, and westward expansion.

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  MARX AND SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM

  The Basics

  Together, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels produced the most significant theory in the history of socialism. They were the first socialist thinkers to present the possibility of a socialist state as a realizable goal rather than a utopian dream. Instead of creating a detailed prescription for a future society, they used the disciplines of German philosophy, French political thought, and English economics to understand how capitalism works. They came to the conclusion that the fall of capitalism would result from its internal contradictions.

  THE “ODD COUPLE” OF SOCIALISM

  From 1844 to Marx’s death in 1883, Marx and Engels were political and intellectual collaborators. By Engels’s own account, Marx was the originator and Engels was the popularizer. Engels always played second fiddle and was “happy to have had such a wonderful first violin as Marx.”

  It was an enormously productive and unlikely partnership. The two men came from very different backgrounds and had very different personal styles. Engels was well organized, well dressed, and charming. Marx was sloppy, careless about his appearance, often surly, and given to feuds with former associates. Marx wrote about social changes in terms of abstract social developments; Engels created detailed and compassionate pictures of how the working class lived.

  KARL MARX

  Karl Marx (1818–1883) was born into a middle-class Jewish family in the city of Trier, on the border between Germany and France. Both of Marx’s parents came from distinguished rabbinical families.

  University Years

  Marx spent a year at the University of Bonn, where he indulged in the typical beer-swilling and saber-rattling behavior of a German university student of the time. He was soon in trouble with the university authorities for drunkenness and riotous behavior and with the police for subversive ideas. In the fall of 1836, with his father’s wholehearted approval, he transferred from the party-school atmosphere of Bonn to the more serious University of Berlin. In order to please his father, Marx officially studied the law, but he soon neglected it in favor of the hottest
subject of the day: philosophy. For a time he became a member of a group of German intellectuals who called themselves the “Young Hegelians” after the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). When he graduated in 1841 with a doctorate in philosophy, Marx was considered the ablest philosophy scholar of his generation.

  Old and Young Hegelians

  * * *

  After Georg Hegel’s death in 1831, his followers split into two groups. The “Old Hegelians” defended his conservative belief that Prussia represented the apogee of historical development. The “Young Hegelians” used the revolutionary possibilities of Hegel’s dialectic to critique religion, state, and society.

  * * *

  Marx As Editor, Husband, and Socialist Thinker

  Denied an academic job because of his political views, Marx moved to Cologne, the center of the industrialized Rhineland, where he became the editor of the liberal newspaper the Rheinische Zeitung. At the newspaper he was exposed to problems for which Hegel provided no solutions, beginning with the debate over a bill designed to abolish the centuries-old communal privilege of picking up fallen wood in the forest. Marx had a new task: applying German philosophical thought to the realities of contemporary Germany.