Modern Ideologies: Romanticism, Nationalism,

Socialism, Marxism

Characteristics of Modernity

• idea of progress “Change is good”• rationalism and value placed on the individual• high value placed on science and scientific proof• secular rather than religious• increase in people’s participation in politics• social status by merit rather than birth• increased social mobility• religion becomes “private” and “purely religious”• national identity is created

Feelings

Romanticism

Reaction to the Enlightenment

vs. Reason

Wordsworth, “Let nature be your teacher” – See RGH # 10, p. 45

Moonlight Sonata Mozart

de Loutherborg, 1803

“Avalanche in the Alps”

Nature as “ living world spirit” –See RGH # 9, p. 41

Beethoven

John Constable, Hadleigh Castle Love of Gothic, Fantasy, Nature

The artist as solitary, rebellious, visionary, in touch with nature, a special creative vision—a “hero”

“Byronic Hero”

The first hippies? The first “me-too” generation?

“universecreating imagination”

Ingres, Jean-Auguste-DominiqueLa Grand Odalisque1814

Beauty for its own sake

Mystical Understanding of God and Religion

William Blake, 1794Francesco Goya, 1798

Fear of Technology

The individual, the Nonconformist is glorified

Victor Hugo, Hunchback of Notre Dame

Fairy tales were the most authentic, identified with the “Folk” or the “spirit” of a people

What specific characteristics of Romanticism influenced Nationalism?

Nations and Nationalism

• “Nation” a type of community, especially prominent in 19th century (ethnic group).

• Usually based on shared language, customs, values, historical experience.

• Origins with the French Revolution and Napoleon’s armies spread it throughout Europe.

Does any group that can identify itself as unique have a right to its own nation?

If you were to create a nation where none existed (like the Sims game) what would you do? Is nation-building possible?

Nationalism: A Definition

Nationalism is a state of mind, in which the supreme loyalty of the individual is felt to be due the national-state. . .RGH # 11, p. 48

Types of Nationalism: (RGH #12, p. 49)

1. Traditional (Civil Nationalism)

2. Striving Nationalism

3. Protective Nationalism

4. Imperialistic Nationalism

A Definition of Nationalism “imagined communities”

“Nationalism, of course, is intrinsically absurd. Why should the accident—fortune or misfortune—of birth as an American, Albanian, Scott, or Fiji Islander impose loyalties that dominate an individual life and structure a society so as to place it in formal conflict with others?

In the past there were local loyalties to place and clan or tribe, obligations to lord or landlord, dynastic or territorial wars, but primary loyalties were to God or God-king, possibly to emperor, to a civilization as such. There was no nation.

William Pfaff

Types of Nationalism“Tell me where you’re from and

I’ll tell you who you are.”

• Cultural nationalism = ethnic identity=linked with Romanticism, with its focus on the unique ethnic makeup of each people.

– Literature, folklore, music as expressions of Volksgeist: “FOLK SPIRIT”

• Political (Civic) nationalism = political identity

– Movement for political independence of nation from other authorities – “Each nationality should have its own political house.”

ARE PATRIOTISM AND NATIONALISM THE SAME?

• “By patriotism, I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.”

• “Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally.”

• “Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power.”

George Orwell, 1945.

The Congress of Vienna (1814-1815)

• Meeting after defeat of Napoleon

• von Metternich (Austria, 1773-1859) supervises dismantling of Napoleon’s empire

• Established balance of power

• Worked to suppress development of nationalism among multi-national empires like the Austrian

National Rebellions

• Greeks in Balkan peninsula seek independence from Ottoman Turks, 1821– With European help, Greece achieves

independence in 1830

• Rebellions all over Europe, especially in 1848– Rebels take Vienna, Metternich resigns and flees– But rebellions put down by 1849– Cultural Nationalism fails to unite

Unification of Italy and Germany• Italy and Germany formerly disunited groups of

regional kingdoms, city-states, ecclesiastical states– Germany: over three hundred semiautonomous

jurisdictions• Nationalist sentiment develops idea of unification• Cavour (1810-1861) and Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-

1882) unify Italy under King Vitttore Emmanuele II• Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898) advances Realpolitik

(“the politics of reality”), uses wars with neighbors to unify Germany

• Second Reich proclaimed in 1871 (Holy Roman Empire the first), King Wilhelm I named Emperor

Unification of Germany and Italy“REALPOLITIK”: USE OF POWER POLITICS AND WAR

Reactions to early industrialization

• Union movements

• Socialist movements

• Marxism

Utopian Socialism• Charles Fourier (1772-

1837) and Robert Owen (1771-1858)

• The Phalanx, one of the agricultural cooperatives started in France but spreading to the U.S. existed for about 20 years and gave its name to Phalanx Road.

•Opposed competition of market system•Attempted to create cooperative model communities

What all Socialists Believed

• Optimists – believed society could be reformed, including the economic system.

• Social activists-as individuals and that government should guarantee basic needs.

• Cooperative—Humans were cooperative by nature, but society forced them to compete.

• Property was the key to equitable distribution of resources.

• Economic Democracy – popular sovereignty in the economic sphere.

• Industrialism is good.

The Question of Equality:

“the myth that ANYONE can make it is confused with the notion that EVERYONE can

make it.”

Japanese CEO-average Japanese worker = 10X

US CEO – average American worker = 531X

Stats on Inequality:• Richest 1% of Americans held 32% of nation’s wealth

in 2001.• Income inequality in America has increased-from

1980-2005, income for white men has declined by 20%.

• Between 1970’s and today, the % of income of the middle class rose by 15%, the upper middle class, by 23%, and of wealth, 63% = growing income inequality.

• Why hasn’t economic growth led to greater equality?

Marx and Engels

• “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-mastery and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin or the contending classes…” (RGH #16, p. 67)

Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels

(1820-1895): “Scientific” Socialism

• Two major classes, always in conflict: – Capitalists, who control means of production– Proletariat, wageworkers who sell labor

• Economic Determinism – your economic situation influences everything you do, think, eat, say, believe.

• Exploitative nature of capitalist system• Argued for an overthrow of capitalists in favor of

a “dictatorship of the proletariat”• Religion: “opiate of the masses”• Marx’s chief contribution: A society cannot be

understood without an analysis of its economic system.

Social Reform and Trade Unions

• Socialism had major impact on 19th century reformers– Reduced property requirements for male suffrage– Addressed issues of medical insurance,

unemployment compensation, retirement benefits– Evolutionary Socialism: workers and their

political representatives get the right to vote by the end of the 19th century and are elected to office to change existing wrongs.

• Trade unions form for collective bargaining– Strikes to address workers’ concerns

Darwin: Biological Evolution and Natural Selection

• Traditional beliefs:– Idea of evolution not new– Geology—age of earth believed to be no

more than 4000 years old, but scientists like Lyell suggest erosion and natural forces suggested earth far, far older.

– All species created by God as they presently existed.

Darwin’s Ideas: Origin of Species (1859) and The Descent

of Man (1871)• Natural Selection

– Variations exist within species.– Variations are inherited.– Nature is a scene of struggle for resources.– Species best able to survive (through adaptation) will

survive this struggle.– Process of natural selection operates randomly,

without God’s intervention.

Darwin did not know how natural selection took place (Mendel’s genetic research would later provide the answer)

Social Darwinism

•Sociologists like Herbert Spencer applied Darwin’s ideas to human societies.

•Spencer coined the term, “survival of the fittest”-but what constitutes “the fittest” in humans?

“The fiercely competitive environments is cruel for weak individuals but promotes the overall good of the species by strengthening the fittest and stimulates overall enterprise; too much government holds back the strong and gives unnatural advantages to the weak. “

Racism

• Theories of Race developed by anthropologists.

• “Scientific” Racism developed– Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (1816-

1882)– Combines with theories of Charles Darwin

(1809-1882) to form pernicious doctrine of Social Darwinism

Romanticism Links

• “The Romantic Spirit” 8:48

• “The Romantic Poets” 8:17

• “The Romanticism Period” 8:22

• “Romantic Era Powerpoint” 4:58