Transcript Liberalism and Conservatism - Mr. Crossen's History Site

Liberalism and
Conservatism
19th Century Europe
• Suppressed revolutions (especially 1848)
• Two party system
• Romanticism
• Industrial
revolution
Consequences of
Industrial Revolution
• Urbanization and working
poor
• Poor working conditions
– Child labor laws
– Labor unions
• Economic swings
• Skilled artisans lost jobs
• Division of labor by sex
Class Consciousness
• Owners – capitalists
• Non-landed middle class
and white collar workers
– bourgeoisie
• Factory and
trade
workers—
proletariat
Conservatism
• Reactionaries (Put it
back the way it was)
• Revolution of 1848
– Successful
revolutions in all
European countries
– Monarchies returned
after 6 months in all
countries
• Tories/conservatives
Liberalism
• Favored changing social
conditions
• Whigs
• Edmund Burke
– Opposite view of Nationalism
– Supported American Revolution
but decried the French Revolution
– Law of unintended consequences
• Example: Prussia forced to take over
the Ruhr Valley which, unknowingly,
has the coal reserves to allow Prussia
to conquer the rest of Germany
Liberalism
• Poets/novelists
• Natural life superior
(noble savage)
• Aimed at complacent
middle class
– Charles Dickens
• Social conditions
– Honorè de Balzac
• Stupid middle class
– Jane Austen
• Against classes
– The Bronte sisters
• Against male domination
Utilitarianism
• Jeremy Bentham/John
Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
– Greatest happiness for
greater population
– Epicurean
• Science and technology
should be used to solve
society’s problems
• Advocated activist
governments
"Bentham's advice was articulated in what he
called 'the calculus of felicity.' According to it,
there are seven categories into which pleasure
can be catalogued, and this catalogue provides a
rational analysis of pleasure. The seven
categories are:
Intensity – how intense?
Duration – how long?
Certainty – how sure?
Propinquity – how soon?
Fecundity – how many more?
Purity – how free from pain?
Extent – how many people are affected?"
– Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA:
Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 309.
Utilitarianism
• Problems:
– How do you know the long-term effects?
– Who is to decide?
•
•
•
•
Leaders?
Surveys?
Supreme Court?
Press?
– Is happiness the objective of this life?
• Animals seek pleasure and flee from pain
– What is God's objective for us in this life?
"In obedience there is joy and peace
unspotted, unalloyed; and as God
has designed our happiness He never
has – He never will – institute an
ordinance or give a commandment to
His people that is not calculated in its
nature to promote that happiness
which He has designed, and which
will not end in the greatest amount
of good and glory to those who
become the recipients of his laws
and ordinances."
– Joseph Smith
Economists
• Thomas Malthus
– Population growth will
decline through war
and/or famine as the
population becomes
uncontrollably large
• Rockefeller Foundation
• But: The most
powerful countries
have large populations
“Since 1798, when Thomas Malthus published his
famous Essay on the Principle of Population, it
has been commonly assumed that violent
conflicts must increase in frequency and intensity
as human populations grow in size and density.
Cross-cultural comparisons, however, do not
support this proposition...Groups with densities of
less than one person per square mile are just as
likely to engage in warfare each year as groups
whose densities are hundreds of times higher
....Homicide rates also bear no obvious
relationship to the density of humans...In the
broadest view, the frequency of warfare and
violence is simply not a consequence of human
density or crowding."
– Lawrence H. Keeley from War Before Civilization
"Malthus was correct in his analysis,
as far as it went, but he forgot to
consider one important difference
between humankind and bacteria or,
for that matter, between humankind
and any other animal. We evolve
and adjust to the environment
mainly through external means, and
at a very rapid rate. We innovate,
and Malthus failed to consider this.“
– Alcorn, Paul A., Social Issues in Technology, 3rd
Edition, p.101.
Karl Marx
• Born in Germany
• Radical movements
• Communist Manifesto
• Das Kapital
Communist Manifesto
Basic Premises
1.History of world is driven by class struggles
2.One class always exploits others
3.The Middle Class (bourgeoisie) triumphed
over the upper class in the 18th Century
4.The Worker Class (proletariat) will triumph
over the Middle Class
Das Kapital
Basic Premises
1.The value of a product is the amount of labor to produce it.
2.The fair wage for a worker is the value of his work (the value
of the product).
3.In capitalism, the owner must sell the product for more than
the worker is paid (profit).
4.The capitalist increases profits by increasing selling price or
reducing wages.
5.The lowest possible wage is the subsistence level and this is
the level paid (because of a surplus of labor)
6.Surplus labor is maintained by replacing workers with
machines.
Capitalism Inconsistencies
1.Competition leads to expansion which hires more workers
and then leads to machines on which additional profits
cannot be gained.
2.Concentration of economic power occurs because bigger
takes over smaller.
3.Economic depressions from excess labor and ruined
companies.
4.Army of unemployed seeks change but capitalism can't
change
5.Rebellion and victory by the workers which capitalism
cannot stop.
Marx's Plan for Change
1.Abolition of private property
2.Heavy graduated income tax
3.Abolition of inheritance rights
4.Confiscation of emigrant and rebel property
5.Centralization of credit in state hands
6.Centralization of communication and transportation in state hands
7.Extension of state control of factories
8.Obligation of all to work
9.Combination of agriculture and manufacturing
10.Free education for all children and abolition of child labor
"Famines have occurred in ancient
kingdoms and contemporary authoritarian
societies, in primitive tribal communities
and in modern technocratic dictatorships,
in colonial economies run by imperialists
from the north and in newly independent
countries of the south run by despotic
national leaders or by intolerant single
parties. But they have never materialized
in any country that is independent, that
goes to elections regularly, that has
opposition parties to voice criticisms and
that permits newspapers to report freely
and question the wisdom of government
policies without extensive censorship."
– Sen, Amartya, Development as Freedom, Anchor Books,
1999, p.152-153.
Marx Problems
1.Ignores imagination and entrepreneurship
2.Ignores technological improvements
3.Attacks natural self-interest
4.Leads to stagnation
5.Ignores human education, experience, talents and
work differences
6.Assumes that capitalism/government policy will not
adjust
Thank You
Liberalism and
Conservatism
“People demand freedom of speech to
make up for the freedom of thought
which they avoid.”
– Soren Aabye Kierkeggard
“In 1738, the Papers of the Imperial
Academy of Sciences in St.
Petersburg carried an essay with this
central theme: ‘The value of an item
must not be based on its price, but
rather on the utility that it yields.’”
–
Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods, 1996, 99
“His [Jeremy Bentham] major work, The
Principles of Morals and Legislation, published in
1789, was fully in the spirit of the Enlightenment:
‘Nature has placed mankind under the
governance of two sovereign masters, pain and
pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what
we ought to do, as well as to determine what we
shall do....The principle of utility recognizes this
subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of
that system, the object of which is to rear the
fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law.’
Bentham then explains what he means by utility:
‘...that property in any object whereby it tends to
produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or
happiness...when the tendency it has to augment
the happiness of the community is greater than
any it has to diminish it.”
– Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods, 1996, 189
Utilitarianism
• Thomas Carlyle
• John Stuart Mill
"For Kant, the act's moral worth is not
determined by its results, but by its
intention."
– Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA:
Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 329.
"Remember that, for Marx, religion is 'the
sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart
of a heartless world,... the spirit of an
unspiritual situation. It is the opium of
the people.' This is hardly an absolute
indictment of religion. Usually that last
line is quoted in isolation from its context,
in which case one thinks of opium as a
soporific that lulls one into a grinning,
drooling, undignified stupor. But Marx
had in mind opium's medicinal powers. It
kills the pain."
– Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA:
Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 211.
"Society was not merely the totality of
individuals; rather, it was an organic
whole that in certain ways created the
individual. Therefore for Marx, there could
be no question of individual rights that
somehow superseded social rights.
Everything that an individual does is a
result of the efforts of many people, living
and dead. Hence, all products were in
that sense social products and belonged to
society."
– Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA:
Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 409.
"It [forced labor] is not the satisfaction of a
need, but only a means for satisfying
other needs. Its alien character is clearly
shown by the fact that as soon as there is
no physical or other compulsion it is
avoided like the plague. External labor,
labor in which man alienates himself, is a
labor of self-sacrifice, of mortification.
Finally the external character of work for
the worker is shown by the fact that it is
not his own work but work for someone
else, that in work he does not belong to
himself but to another person."
– Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA:
Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 412.m
“Wise men make proverbs, but
fools repeat them.”
– Samuel Palmer