Project Worldseizer

Karl Marx was an influential political theorist of the 19th century. His ideas were the building blocks upon which many communist countries were built. While his works are very influential they are quite flawed. For instance, Marx stated that in a communist society people would be able to do whatever job they wanted, and could drift from job to job as they pleased. However, in a communist society, the production of goods is completely planned out. It would be impossible for people to do whatever they wanted and planned production to succeed. Therefore people would have much less autonomy under communism than they would under a free market economy. He came up with Historical Materialism, which is the idea that what kind of tools for production you have, dictates what kind of ideas you are going to have. His phrase, “The hand mill makes feudalism and steam power makes capitalism,” exemplifies this idea. However, someone had to have the idea to make the tools and the production of the tools first. Therefore Historical Materialism seems to have the process of ideas backward.

Herbert Spencer is often categorized as a Social Darwinist. That Spencer supported the poor dying off for, “Might makes right”, is what is commonly stated. This, however, is very far from the truth. Herbert Spencer was against colonialism and militant types of society. He was against government welfare programs but he was an enthusiastic advocate for voluntary charity. He derived a law of equal freedom in which, “Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.” That his ideas led to the eugenics movement is the opposite of what he actually believed and almost no political thinker has been misrepresented like Herbert Spencer.

After Louis XVIII, the restored king of France died, his younger brother Charles X ascended the throne. Whereas Louis XVIII had tried to walk a middle course between the Ultras (People who wanted an absolutist king such as before the revolution) and the classical liberals (People who favored freedom and limited government), Charles X did not attempt to do this. He instituted the death penalty for anyone profaning the Eucharist which violated religious freedom and supported other such unpopular legislation. He dissolved the National Gaurd of Paris, and when the Chamber of Deputies passed a motion of no confidence Charles dissolved the parliament. In July 1830 he dissolved the Chamber of deputies and suspended the liberty of the press. July 27 started three days in which Paris rebelled and took over important buildings, while Charles X raised little opposition. In a day and a half, four-thousand barricades sprung up in Paris, and the people of Paris declared Charles X deposed and Louis Philippe I declared king. Louis Philippe supported the interests of the middle class and the bourgeoise and exemplified this by wearing business suits instead of royal regalia.

1848 brought on another round of revolution. By this time Louis Philippe I popularity in France had waned. For the socialists, he was doing nothing and for the classical liberals, he was not doing enough. Political gatherings were outlawed in France, so to avoid this, people would throw banquets at which people would get up and deliver political speeches. After the government found out about this they banned a banquet from being held in Paris. This led Paris to revolt and Louis Philippe abdicated as king and left France. During this time Bastiat’s pamphlets were plastered throughout Paris and published in both Conservative and Socialist newspapers. After the monarchy was abolished The Second Republic was formed. This had mostly classical liberal and conservative influences, with socialist interests being pushed aside, although national workshops were formed where anyone could go and get work. The national workshops were deeply unpopular by the middle class and in the first parliamentary elections, conservatives and moderates were in the majority. They closed down the workshops which made some of the working-class rebel, though this was quickly clamped down on. The first presidential election appointed Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon I, as president. He became so powerful, however, that in 1852 he declared himself emperor, rendering the revolution for democracy unsuccessful.

In Germany, Nationalist sentiments were high, and in 1848, the parliament of Frankfurt was formed to try and form a unified Germany. They decided to not include Austria because there were too many different nationalities there, vying for independence. They approached the King of Prussia and asked if he would accept the role of King of Germany. He refused as he only wanted to be king of Germany on his terms, not tied down by a charter or what the revolutionaries wanted. So German unification was unsuccessful for the present but would come eventually in 1871.

Neoclassicism was a school of thought that developed in the 18th century. Its main attributes were reason, order, and serenity. They wanted to move away from the extravagant and over-the-top Baroque period that had come before and move into more orderly and rational styles of art. They took great inspiration from the Classical period of Greece, hence the name Neoclassicism. They disparaged the Medieval way of art as barbaric and something not to be replicated. Neoclassical architecture is common in the United States, such as the Capitol Building and the First Bank.

In this painting, by one of the most famous and influential painters of the Neoclassical style, Jacques Louis David, you can see some of the key elements of Neoclassicism. The emphasis is on horizontal and vertical lines with the subject in the center. The subject has order and composure, and there is no visible emotion.

To contrast Neoclassicism is Romanticisim. Romanticism gained influence in the early nineteenth century. Romanticism was not against reason but said that life should not only be made up of reason. There was an emphasis on spirituality, sometimes through traditional ways but often through nature, and through nature, you would get a feeling that God was the creator. Romanticists would have an interest in things far away, either in the past or geographically. The Romanticists celebrated Gothic architecture as seen in the Houses of Parliament in London.

In this painting, you can see that the emphasis is not on straight lines but more on emotion and feeling. The landscape has a feeling of mystery about it. Some Romantic writers include Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, and Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables. In these books, the emphasis is not on order but more on the way the characters feel.

The common belief is that before compulsory education the average person was illiterate and uneducated. This, however, is not the case. The amount of income in England spent on education was about 1%, whereas in 1920 after compulsory education had been in place for several decades the amount of money spent on education had dropped to 0.7%. This proves that parents were willing to spend money to have their children educated. In 1880, the year education became mandatory, over 95% of fifteen-year-olds were literate. The process of compulsory education in England started in 1870 with the government building schools to “Fill in the gaps,” or build schools where there was supposedly little or no education before. The fact that it was a “Fill in the gaps,” policy proves that the government did not think that England had a big education problem where everyone was ignorant, but merely wanted to give education to the few who did not have it before. However, once the schools were built they were only about half full. This caused the government schools to lower their fees in order to attract more students since they could pay for them with tax money. Eventually, this lead to, in 1880, education becoming compulsory and in 1891 government schools becoming “free”. This greatly damaged the business of the private schools who could not afford to have free education.

Liberalism today often brings to mind people like Barack Obama or progressives. This, however, is quite the opposite of what liberalism meant classically. Classical Liberalism favors private property rights, limited government, freedom of speech and of the press, and religious freedom. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were examples of classical liberalists and helped to establish the Virginia statute establishing religious freedom especially for the Baptists there who were regularly brutalized by the Anglicans. Some classical liberal writers were Frederic Bastiat who wrote, “The Law” and Benjamin Constant who was an advocate against the rising sentiment that society should revert back to the liberty of the ancients, and give up their individual rights for a voice in the community.

The Congress of Viena took place from 1814 to 1815 and was conducted between the powers of Europe to decide what to do in a post-Napolean Europe. They had three main principles in the congress, the first being that they did not want France to feel isolated or wronged by the proceedings. They did not want France to be able to nurse bitter resentments that would only lead to more war. France was able to send representatives to the Congress and it was able to keep all its land from before Napolean. After several years France was able to join as one of the leading powers of Europe. This is contrasted with the Treaty of Versailles after World War 1 where Germany was not allowed to the proceedings and kept isolated from Europe. The leaders of the Treaty even studied the Congress of Viena to do the opposite of what they did. The Congress placed an emphasis on legitimate rulers, meaning that Louis XVIII was restored to power as king of France, though he was held back from full power by a constitutional charter. Balance of power was another key principle of the Congress of Viena. This was to make sure no one country held all the power, so often smaller countries would have to give up some territory of move borders in order to balance power, especially the power of the four main countries governing the proceedings, Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia. The Congress of Vienna was able to successfully reintegrate France into Europe after the turmoil of Napolean.

In response to the revolutionary ideas and revolts, particularly in France but in other places as well, in the post-Napoleonic era, there was something called the Conservative Reaction. This was a tendency to suppress any revolutionary ideas and uprisings and to get things back to the way they were before the French Revolution. Many governments limited the freedom of speech and press in order to do this. One example of this is the Carlsbad decrees from the states in the German confederation. They were originally set in place because a deranged university fraternity member murdered a conservative writer. In response the Austrian Klemens Wenzel von Metternich drew up the Carlsbad decrees. The decrees had three sections. The first was for universities. All university fraternities were disbanded and teachers had to be approved by the government. A government or government-approved censor would reside at universities to make sure no dangerous ideas were being spread. The second area was the press. No daily publication exceeding twenty sheets could be published without the approval of the government. The government could suppress any publication and no appeal could be made from these decisions. The final area was an investigating committee. An investigating committee was to be made to find the origins and facts about any revolutionary plots.