The socialist response

I. Defined

II. Utopian Socialism

III. Marxism

defined:

  • Conservatives and socialists were terrified by the world changing by classical liberalism and industrial capitalist. (Violent revolution) Socialism is all about equality but they define equality as equality of outcome meaning it doesn’t matter that you are a Brian surgeon or a fry cook you will earn roughly the same income and enjoy the same lifestyle (same king of car, house, similar vacations, etc) Socialists wanted to eliminate the distinguishing between owners and workers by letting workers control the means of production and all the owners were at work. Only when they achieve true equality then they would have liberty and fraternity. But, until this day comes socialists were all about class which is the defining characteristic of everyone (if you know what class they are from they know everything about you; your hopes, dreams, despairs, etc)

Utopian Socialism:

  • They believed that we can establish socialism peacefully by arguing them into the means of production and utopian socialists loved planning utopian communities where they would prove all their ideas correct. Charles Fourier believed that the Industrial Revolution was not necessarily a good thing, sure he conceded that thanks tom the Industrial Revolution marking could now produce stuff faster and cheaper than ever before but he believed that the purpose of humanity was to live in harmony. Ultimately he believed that the Industrial Revolution was causing people to split a part so it was contrary to this whole learning to live together in harmony plan. Long story short he believed that humanity should go back to agriculture, he envisioned small agricultural communities. He believed that each community should start with exactly 1620 people. He pulled this number from his belief of 810 distinct species of human beings and every community should start should start with atleast 2 of each. One of these communities started in brook farm, Massachusetts it was a miserable failure and only lasted 5 years. It became famous because intellectuals hung out there.

  • Robert Owen- Unlike most utopian socialists he was not an academic he owned cotton mills and he decided to put his socialist ideas to the test by picking one of his cotton mills and double the wages of the workers and cut their working hours in half, opened a school for the workers to get education if they wanted and all of his friends thought he was crazy and his factory would quickly go out of business. This mill ended up making record profits and Owen decided to do a whole factory community a town to test these theories on a larger scale. Owen decided to start his European community in Indiana and it was even more of a failure than brook farm and only lasted 2 years.

Marxism:

  • When people talk about socialism typically they are talking about Marxism which is based on the ideas and work of Karl Marx (1818- 83) and Friedrich Engles (1820-95) together they developed a social theory to explain the industrializing world essentially how it transformed society. The class system was created by them and they explained it as people’s relationship to the economy. All you had to do was answer two questions “oO you own property? And how do you make money?” if you owned land and rented it you are in the upper class, If you owned mills, mines, factories and made money buy selling and making profit through capital you are in middle class and if you owned nothing and worked to get your pay check you are working class. Marx and Engles claimed to have used the scientific method which meant they are not utopian socialists they are scientific socialists which meant they were giving people science meaning truth and facts. How societies makes stuff is the most important things bout them it is so important that it determines everything else about that society its social structure, government, religion, culture, everything. Marx and Engles called this economic determinism.

  • Marx and Engles claimed there were 5 stages to history stage #1 was called primitive communism which was back in cave men times where people were just fighting to survive, stage 2 was called slavery, stage 3 was called feudalism which was based from manorialism this is when the rich owned huge tracks of land and this land was worked by… above this is the feudal society when you had a small elite of land owners at the top and they rule everybody else this in turn gives of the religion of feudalism Marx and Engles believed that feudalism was the religious of Catholicism. The law of feudalism was about privilege and then the politics of the feudalism was absolute monarchy which ruled everybody else. According to Marx and Engles the French Revolution would destroy manorilism.

  • This brought capitalism based on owner operator capitalism, the social structure of capitalism was the class system, the religion of capitalism was Protestantism, law in capitalism was all about individual rights and politics of capitalism they said was classical liberalism. They also said capitalism is due to fail which they called the labor theory of value long story short they said raw materials were inherently worthless but a worked putting his skill and talent can make raw material is into something of value but the workers don get to enjoy it, it is taken away by a capitalists who sells it as a profit. Capitalists are only able to make profit by exploiting workers. Another reason why capitalism was doomed to fail because they tend towards monopolies (big factories buying out small factories) they believed every time a factory was bought out the owner would have no choice but to fall into the working class. This means overtime the middle class is getting smaller and smaller while the working class is getting bigger and bigger (this is called Proletarianization) This meant more competitions for jobs. They called this the immiseration of the masses this would go on until he workers finally each their breaking point as they lowered wages. This was hen the revolution begins Marx and Engles believed once this began it would become a global phenomenon.

  • Stateless and classless society- workers would produce things only for need and not profit and socialism quickly became a powerful source.

Mass Politics:

  • The middle and upper classes do two things they first enact social reforms to give workers unemployment insurance which meant if they lost their job the government would pay a portion of your wages until you get a new job , sickness and accident insurance and give workers old age pensions (social security) taking a little out of your check every week until you retire and the next thing they gave them was the vote which lead to universal manhood suffrage no property requirement at all as a corollary to that you get education which meant all little girl and boys had to go to school until it ends because politicians know they will become voters one day they wanted to make sure they can read and write. Long story short why would you want to overthrow a society that gives you all this cool stuff.