American republics
The independent republics that emerged in Spanish America after the wars of liberation reflected Bolívar’s vision in their size if not in their freedoms, as political power came to be monopolized by small elites. In this, they perhaps reflected Bolívar’s own elitist instincts and ambivalence towards full democracy.
The revolutionary vision of “El Libertador” is still revered in Latin America, though Bolívar’s name has been misappropriated by politicians to sanction actions he would have deplored.
SIMÓN BOLÍVAR
Born to aristocratic parents in Venezuela, Simón Bolívar was tutored by renowned scholar Simón Rodríguez, who introduced him to the ideals of the European Enlightenment. At age 16, after completing his military training, Bolívar travelled through Mexico and France, then on to Spain, where he married, though his wife died eight months later.
In 1804, Bolívar witnessed Napoleon Bonaparte become emperor of France. He was inspired by the nationalist ideas he encountered in Europe and vowed not to rest until South America gained independence from Spain. Bolívar led the liberation of modern-day Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, northern Peru, and northwest Brazil from Spain. Retreating from his earlier idealism, Bolívar felt forced to declare himself dictator of the new state of Gran Colombia in 1828. He died two years later, disillusioned with the results of the revolutions he had inspired.
Key works
1812 The Cartagena Manifesto
1815 The Jamaica Letter
See also: Niccolò Machiavelli • Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Jeremy Bentham • Che Guevara
IN CONTEXT
IDEOLOGY
Liberalism
FOCUS
Modernization
BEFORE
1776 The leaders of the American Revolution declare that they are reorganizing the political system to the benefit of the human condition.
1788 Immanuel Kant argues that progress is not automatic, but must be fostered through education.
AFTER
1848 Auguste Comte suggests that society progresses through three stages to an enlightened rational age of science.
1971 Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez writes A Theology of Liberation, arguing that Christians must lead a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions.
Mexico in the 1830s was a turbulent place. The protracted War of Independence had left the country bitter and divided. Despite finally becoming independent from Spain in 1821, Mexico was to have 75 presidents in the next 55 years, and the power of the rich landowners, the army, and the Church remained as solid as ever. Strongly influenced by the Enlightenment philosophers of the 18th century, and also by political developments in France and the United States, Latin American liberals believed that this entrenched power was blocking the progress of society. Young Mexican liberal José María Luis Mora challenged the obstinate conservatism he found in his country. He argued that a society has to move forward or it will die. Just as a child needs nurturing by its parents as it grows, so “a wise government recognizes the developmental needs of its society”.
Mora’s call for modernization fell on deaf ears. He was jailed for opposing the elevation of Maximilian to emperor, and exiled to Paris after upsetting President Santa Anna. Fifty years after independence, Mexico was poorer, per capita, than ever.
Emperor Maximilian was installed as monarch of Mexico in 1864, to strong opposition from liberals such as Mora. Three years later, Maximilian was overthrown and executed.
See also: Plato • Immanuel Kant • Auguste Comte • Karl Marx • Antonio Gramsci
IN CONTEXT
IDEOLOGY
Positivism
FOCUS
The family
BEFORE
14th century Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah uses scientific reasoning to examine social cohesion and conflict.
1821 In France, early socialist Henri de Saint-Simon argues that the new industrial society will bring forth a new Utopia, with a new kind of politics led by men of science.
1835 Belgian philosopher Adolphe Quetelet puts forward the idea of a social science to study the average man.
AFTER
1848 Karl Marx argues for the abolition of the family in the Communist Manifesto.
1962 Michael Oakeshott argues that society cannot be understood rationally.
French philosopher Auguste Comte’s defence of the family in his Course in Positive Philosophy (1830–48) is based on more than mere sentimental attachment. Comte’s “positivist” philosophy takes the view that in any true understanding of society, the only valid data comes from the senses, and from the logical analysis of this data. Society, he argues, operates according to laws, just like the physical world of natural science. It is the task of the scientist of society to study it and tease out these laws.
"Families become tribes and tribes become nations."
Auguste Comte
Family is the social unit
It is crucial, believes Comte, to look at general laws and not become obsessed by idiosyncratic individual views. “The scientific spirit forbids us to regard society as composed of individuals. The true social unit is the family.” It is on the basis of families that society is constructed – a social science that starts with the demands of individuals is doomed to failure. It is also within the family that individual whims are harnessed for the good of society. Humans are driven by both personal instinct and social instincts. “In a family, the social and the personal instincts are blended and reconciled; in a family, too, the principle of subordination and mutual cooperation is exemplified.” Comte’s position stresses social bonds, but is in conflict with socialism – Marxists who argue for the abolition of the family are, in Comte’s view, arguing for the very destruction of human society.
See also: Ibn Khaldun • Karl Marx • Max Weber • Michael Oakeshott • Ayn Rand
INTRODUCTION
The revolutions and wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries left an uncertain legacy in Europe. The Treaty of Paris in 1815 ended the Napoleonic Wars, and for almost a century there were few conflicts between the European powers. The world economy continued to grow, driven by industrialization and the rapid growth of railways and telecommunications. It was just about possible to believe that the political settlements enacted in the first part of the 19th century would provide a stable institutional framework for humanity. German philosopher Georg Hegel thought the most perfect form of the state had been achieved in Prussia in the 1830s, while European colonialism was presented by many as a civilizing mission for the rest of the world. Once political and civil rights had been secured, a just society would emerge.
Communist thoughts
Two young scholars of Hegel, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, violently disagreed with his conclusions. They pointed to the creation – through industrialization – of a new class of propertyless workers, who enjoyed increased political freedom, but suffered a form of economic slavery. Using the tools of analysis developed by Hegel, they believed they could show how this class had the potential to push civil and political rights into the realm of economics.
Marx and Engels wrote their Communist Manifesto as revolutionary movements were gathering momentum across Europe. They attempted to provide a radical template through which a new kind of mass politics would come into existence. New workers’ parties, such as Germany’s SPD, adopted the manifesto as their guiding light and looked with confidence to a future in which the great mass of the people would exercise political and economic power. Politics was shifted from the concern of the elites to a mass activity, with millions joining political organizations and – as the right to vote spread – millions more participating in elections.
The old order in retreat
In the US, differences over the place of slavery in the new territories led to civil war. Victory for the Union saw an end to slavery across the country and provided new vigour to the nation, marking the start of its rise in economic and political
power. To the south, the new republics of Latin America struggled to achieve the political stability that their constitutions had promised, and power passed back and forth between sections of a narrow elite. Much of the region stagnated, but demands for reform would lead to the outbreak of revolution in Mexico in 1910.
In Asia, the first anti-colonial organizations were set up to fight for political rights, and a section of Japan’s traditional rulers instituted a thoroughgoing modernization that swept away the old feudal order. Across the world, the old regimes appeared to be in retreat.
However, whatever some Marxists may have believed, progress towards political power for the masses was not guaranteed. Friedrich Nietzsche was prominent among those who expressed a profound cynicism about the ability of society to be reformed by the masses. His ideas were adapted later by Max Weber, who attempted to reimagine society not as a place of class struggle, as in Marxist thinking, but as a battle for power between competing belief systems.
Reform movements
Liberals and conservatives adapted themselves to a changed world by forming mass membership parties of their own, and sought to manage the growing demands for welfare and economic justice from the left. Liberal philosophy had been given a firm theoretical base by thinkers such as Britain’s John Stuart Mill, who held that the rights of the individual should be the basis for a just society, rather than the class struggle of the Marxists.
Increasingly, socialists seeking social ownership of production also began to see the possibilities for reform from within the capitalist system. Eduard Bernstein argued for reform through the ballot box, taking advantage of the universal male suffrage now established in the newly unified Germany. In Britain, reformist socialists such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb advocated a comprehensive system of welfare to protect the poor.
Meanwhile, in Russia, Vladimir Lenin and others agitated tirelessly for a socialist revolution. Tensions between Europe’s old elites were also starting to grow. The stage was set for the tumultuous changes that were about to sweep the world.
IN CONTEXT
IDEOLOGY
Liberalism
FOCUS
Classless society
BEFORE
380 BCE Plato argues that democracy is inferior to other forms of government.
1798 The French Revolution begins, leading to the establishment of a republic.
1817 Socialist theorist Henri de Saint-Simon argues for a new type of society based entirely on socialist principles.
AFTER
1922 The Soviet Union is established, bringing communist rule to much of Eastern Europe.
1989 The Berlin Wall falls, heralding the end of socialism throughout Eastern Europe and the increased expansion of capitalist, democratic systems of government.
In September 1848, Alexis de Tocqueville made an impassioned speech in France’s Constituent Assembly, which had been elected after the overthrow of King Louis-Philippe that February. He argued that the ideals of the French Revolution of 1789 implied a democratic future for France and a rejection of socialism.
De Tocqueville attacked socialism on three counts. First, he argued that socialism plays on “men’s material passions” – its aim is the generation of wealth. It ignores the loftiest human ideals of generosity and virtue, which were the seeds of the revolution. Second, socialism undermines the principle of private property, which he saw as vital to liberty. Even if socialist states do not seize property, they weaken it. Finally, his strongest criticism was that socialism is contemptuous of the individual.
Under socialism, de Tocqueville believed, individual initiative is snuffed out by an overbearing state. The state directs society as a whole, but increasingly becomes the “master of each man”. While democracy enhances personal autonomy, socialism reduces it. Socialism and democracy can never go together – they are opposites.
A classless society
De Tocqueville believed that the ideals of the French Revolution had been betrayed. The revolution of 1789 was about liberty for all, which meant the abolition of class divisions. But since then, the upper classes had become more privileged and corrupt. The lower classes burned with anger and disaffection, and were therefore more easily seduced by socialist ideas.
"Democracy aims at equality in liberty. Socialism desires equality in constraint and in servitude."
Alexis de Tocqueville
The solution, de Tocqueville claimed, was not to be found in socialism, but in a reassertion of the original revolutionary ideal of a free, classless society. Socialism, by pitting property owners against the proletariat, would reinstate social divisions, betraying this vision. The establishment of a socialist system would be like reverting to the pre-revolutionary monarchy. The domineering socialist state was, for de Tocqueville, incompatible with freedom and competition.
De Tocqueville espoused a democratic society in which individual enterprise could flourish, but the poor and vulnerable would be protected through the Christian ideal of charity. As a model for this he pointed to the US, which he believed had achieved the most advanced version of democracy.
De Tocqueville’s contrast between democracy-as-freedom and socialism-as-confinement became a recurring motif in 19th- and 20th-century debates. His speech was made in a year in which revolutions and uprisings spread across Europe, fomented in part by socialist ideas. However, after 1848, the uprisings fizzled out, and for a time, socialism failed to take root in the way he had feared.
Under socialism, de Tocqueville argued, workers would be mere cogs in the overbearing machinery of the state.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
De Tocqueville was born in Paris to aristocratic parents. When Louis-Philippe d’Orléans came to the throne in 1830, de Tocqueville took up a post in the new government, but political changes made his position precarious so he left France for the US. The result was his most famous work, Democracy in America, in which he argued that democracy and equality had progressed furthest in the US. He also warned of the dangers of democracy – materialism and excessive individualism.
After the 1848 revolution de Tocqueville became a member of the Constituent Assembly in France, which was responsible for devising the constitution of the Second Republic. He withdrew from politics after his opposition to Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte’s coup of 1851 led to a night in prison. Dogged by ill health for much of his life, he died of tuberculosis eight years later aged 53.
Key works
1835, 1840 Democracy in America
1856 The Old Regime and the Revolution
See also: Plato • Aristotle • Montesquieu • Jean-Jacques Rousseau • John Stuart Mill • Max Weber
IN CONTEXT
IDEOLOGY
Nationalism
FOCUS
Rights and duties
BEFORE
1789 The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, issued during the French Revolution, defines the universal rights of citizens.
1793 German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder argues for the importance of the nation.
AFTER
1859 In On Liberty, John Stuart Mill argues for the rights of the individual.
1861 Italy is unified.
1950s Nationalist movements rise around the world as colonies gain independence.
1957 The Treaty of Rome, signed by six European nations, founds the European Economic Community.
The Italian political thinker and activist Giuseppe Mazzini called on people to unite around the idea of the nation state. In his Essay on the Duties of Man: Addressed to Workingmen, he asked for people to place duty to their country above individual interests. Mazzini’s nationalism arose from a critique of the political changes that had taken place in Europe over the previous century. The animating idea behind these upheavals had been liberty, which was to be obtained through the pursuit of individual rights. The working masses hoped that rights would deliver material wellbeing.
Mazzini believed that the advancement of liberty had not been matc
hed by progress in the condition of the workers, despite the overall expansion of wealth and commerce. Economic development had benefited the privileged few, but not the many. For Mazzini, the narrow pursuit of individual rights raised two problems. First, liberty was an “illusion and a bitter irony” for most people, who were in no position to exercise it: the right to education, for example, meant nothing to those who didn’t have the resources or time to pursue it. Second, striving for individual material interests led people to trample on each other, weakening mankind’s common bonds.
Duty before rights
Mazzini argued that the pursuit of rights came second to a higher call of duty towards humanity. This duty required individuals to cooperate towards common aims. However, it would be hard for an individual acting alone to directly serve humanity in all its vastness. Instead, according to Mazzini, God had created separate countries, dividing humanity into branches. A country was the “workshop” through which the individual could serve mankind. Duty to country – thinking in terms of “we”, not “I” – would connect individuals to the broader collective of humanity. For Mazzini, a country was much more than a group of individuals in a geographical area: it was an association of people united by brotherhood. Mazzini’s ideas inspired revolutionaries in Europe’s 1848 uprisings at a time when Italy was emerging as a unified state. In the 20th century, they roused nationalists during the struggles against colonial rule. Mazzini’s dream of cooperation between European nations was realized with the creation of the European Economic Community in 1957.
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