Poli 305

Marx and the History of Socialism

Socialism:

in other words

= communism

= egalitarianism

= equalitarainism

= social and economic equality

= democratic socialism

= social democracy

= collectivism

History of Socialism

Plato, Republic

Primitive Communism of Jesus’ Disciples

Thomas More, Utopia

Gerrard Winstanley and True Levellers or Diggers, 1640s

Francois Babeuf (1760--1797)

Robert Owen (1771--1858)

August Becker (1814--1871)

Louis Blanc (1811--1882)

Phillipe Buchez (1796--1865)

Filippo Buonarroti (1761--1837)

Etienne Cabet (1788--1856)

Theodore Dezamy (1803--1850)

Ernst Dronke (1822--1891)

Thomas Edmonds (1803--1889)

... list in England, France, and Germany goes on

Marx and Engels

Karl Kautsky

Eduard Bernstein

Rosa Luxemburg

V.I. Lenin (1870--1924)

Leon Trotsky (1879--1940)

Nikolai Bukharin

Mao Tse--Tung

John Stuart Mill

Oscar Wilde

George Bernard Shaw

Bertrand Russell

socialism

political theory that advocates public ownership and control of the means of production, distribution and exchange;

emphasis is upon achieving some sort of economic or material equality or redistributive justice with sharing of the burdens, responsibilities, and goodies of the community

equality

ranges from starting-point egalitarianism through equality of opportunity to develop own talents or social talents in contexts of political, and legal, but also social and economic advancement all the way to equality of condition or end—result egalitarianism

some shared notions with communitarianism

inasmuch as emphasis is placed on interdependence, collaboration, collective life and sharing in the name of the public.

the public

ranges from small worker level local cooperatives (social ownership), to giant

centralized state management (state socialism, perhaps state capitalism vis a vis external world)

control

ranges from minimal adminstrative coordination of people already disposed to cooperate to active and authoritative planning and direction for nation as a whole

critical

of capitalism (market, private property, profit), commodification, and individualism narrowly understood as immoral or inappropriate to human nature or dignity

moral justification

for equality ranges from absolute notions (eg primitive communism of early christians, God requires it),

through the claim that socialism best responds to the huma n condition, all

the way to the nihilist or skeptical insistence that since no grounds can be offered, the only fair thing to do is split it up evenly.

program of action

ranges from the incremental and reformist to the revolutionary and violent

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

What Hegel encountered, but now more manifest

industrialization, ind revolution, prussia catch up with eng

-- banks, mechanized ag

-- factories replace crafts

-- iron

-- steel

-- mechanized factories

1844

population and urbanization

-- urban working conditions, too many workers, child labor

-- poverty, hunger and food riots

-- atrocious living conditons

Breslau 1847 Labor unrest

enhanced social control

-- education

-- prisons

1823

prussian state conservatism

-- censorship

-- intellectual impotence

1819

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

marx3

Karl and Jenny

Marx and Engels

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

marx-fam

BIOGRAPHIES ON MARX AND ENGELS

MARX AND MARXISM AND MARXIST AND MARXIAN AND NEO--MARXIST

Marx and Engels as co-founders of the most influential statement of socialism, known as Marxism

-- Marx and Engels are two people, each contributed.

-- Early and Late Marx; we read the former, although see change with German Ideology on.

-- There is some confusion on the rest of the terms bc a distinction needs to be drawn between strict adherence to the letter of Marx & Engel's texts (marxism), and new analyses in the spirit or using the categories and theories, but correcting or revising the letter of M & E (marxian or neo-marxist)

Extremely influential not only in states that once bore the name socialist republics, and those that still are communist democracies in name, but also arguably on the shape that modern liberal democracies in the west took, in part in response to Marx and Marxist critiques, ie welfare state, unionism, etc.