Origins of Socialism and Anarchism: 19th century thinkers By Ryan Daum The purpose of this document is to give a summary of the major socialist thinkers of the 19th century. In the future, I may follow up with a summary of 20th century socialism.... Origins: Socialism owes its origins to a huge variety of influences, and for the first half a century its manifestation as a philosophy was extremely vague and often extremely contradictory. It was the effort of a few men, some of working class origin, and others not, who took the ideologies of the utopian socialists and applied them to the realities of daily living. Utopian socialism was a strange intellectual crossbreeding of Christian communalism, feudalism, and liberal capitalism. It manifested itself as an intellectual current in France after the revolution. This stage of socialism recognized in the workers an exploited and manipulated set of individuals who were freed from the slavery of feudalism only to be pushed and herded into the cities where they were forced into work which was unnecessarily extreme and harsh. However, the undeveloped nature of the working class of the period, and the fact that capitalism, which they were attempting to critique, was still in an undeveloped stage, limited them from making truly revolutionary attacks on the system. We owe the utopian socialists credit, however, for starting an intellectual spark. That spark was the recognition of exploitation, and, in some cases, the recognition of the origin of that exploitation in what the bourgeoisie called "private property." The Saint-Simonians: "... Freedom was proclaimed in order to destroy a social order that was no longer feasible, and no idea could have been more powerful against hierarchies that were, in the estimation of the peoples, _justly torn apart_. But when the aim became, in Europe or in America, to apply this idea to the construction of a new social order, the state of things that we have just depicted was produced. People seemed to believe that the solution of the problem consisted in placing the word less in front of all the terms of the formula of the Middle Ages, and this strange solution engendered only anarchy; the publicists of our own century have merely echoed the philosophers of the eighteenth century, without realizing they have an inverse mission to perform." (from "Exposition of the doctrine of Saint-Simon") Charles Fourier: Fourier wished to create what we would now call communes for the purpose of the organization and betterment of labor. In a sense his propositions were quite feudal. He wished the association of laborers (1,500 to 1,600 people) to purchase a section of land and organize themselves in a "Phalanx" -- a heavily organized "labor army." His writings are extremely specific about how he would wish to set up these communes, to the point of ridiculousness, at times. His attitude was, in many ways, both conservative and paternalistic, and although he insisted on making labor more pleasurable and fulfilling on his commune, he tended, in his writings, to reduce the worker to a member of this "labor army." Fourier was not terribly interested in transforming capitalist structure from within, that is, collectivizing existing factories. He concentrated more on drawing up elaborate and mathematical plans for his phalanxes. Robert Owen: In many ways Owen is the father of two threads related to socialism. The "humanitarian workplace" -- that is, a business which provides to its workers medical care, clean conditions, encourages daily excercise, etc. as we see in, for example, Japan or in some European companies. He also helped begin the cooperative movement, non-profit and consumer and worker owned businesses. However, like Fourier, he rested his ideology on stepping out of the system and attempting to produce alternative communities. His ideas did not last, therefore, as capitalism and industry increased in intensity and power. As a wealthy man, Owen tried to influence parliament of his time, but found little response among the leaders. Emergence of the Proletariat As capitalist investment and industry exploded, so did the earlier vague ideas of socialism. With this explosion came, however, a new flood of socialists who attacked the system in a more vigorous and resourceful way. The main exponents of these ideas were Joseph Proudhon, Louis Blanqui, and Louis Blanc. As before the ideological debates within socialism happened within France and only rarely did they transfer in any meaningful way to the surrounding countries. Louis Blanqui: "A few individuals have seized upon the common earth by ruse or by violence and, by claiming possession of it, have established by laws that it is to be their property forever, and that this right of property is to be the basis of the social constitution, that is, in other words, to suppress and if necessary absorb all human rights, even the right to live, if any of these should be so unfortune as to come into conflict with the privileges of the few." "There can be no society without labor! By the same token, there can be no idlers who have no need of laborers. But why do the laborers need the idlers? Is capital productive in the hands of the workers only on condition that it not belong to them? Suppose the proletariat were to desert en masse, and transplant its homes and its working capacity to some distant clime. Would it perchance die from the absence of its masters? Would the new society be able to get started only by setting up lords of the soil and of capital, by delivering over the possession of all the instruments of labor to a caste of idlers?" "Axiom: the nation is impoverished by the loss of a worker; it is enriched by the loss of an idler. The death of a rich man is a benefaction." "Only association, substituted for individual property ownership, will bring about the reign of justice through equality." (from "The man who makes the soup should get to eat it.") Joseph Proudhon: Proudhon's ideas laid the basis for Marxism, and were, perhaps the most advanced attack against the exploitation of his time. He, like Blanqui, attacked property, but did so in a much more thorough and violent way. In his "What is Property?" Proudhon answers his own question by crying, "Property is Theft!" Attacking the concept that property is a universal and basic right of man, he declares that the bourgeois notion of property is in itself exploitative and destroys the basic rights of man. "The Declaration of Rights has placed property in its list of the natural and inalienable rights of man, four in all: liberty, equality, property, security. What rule did the legislators of '93 follow in compiling this list? None. They laid down principles, just as they discussed sovereignty and the laws; from a general point of view, and according to their own opinion. They did everything in their own blind way." "All have an equal right of occupancy. The amount occupied being measured, not by the will, but by the variable conditions of space and number, property cannot exist." "Communism is oppression and slavery." "Individual possession is the condition of social life; five thousand years of property demonstrated it. _Property_ is the suicide of society. Possession is a right; property is against right. Suppress property while maintaining possession, and tby this simple modification of the principle you will revolutionize law, government, economy, and institutions; you will drive evil from the face of the earth." Louis Blanc: "But the poor man, you say, has the _right_ to better his position? So! and what difference does it make, if has not the _power_ to do so? What does the _right_ to be cured matter to a sick man whom no man is curing?" "Let us say it then for once and for all: freedom consists, not only in the RIGHTS that have been accorded, but also in the POWER given men to develop and excercise their faculties, under the reign of justice and the safeguard of law." "It is not a question of taking wealth away; it is a question of fertilizing it so that it becomes universal. It is a question of raising the level of humanity for the good of all, without exception." (from "The Organization of Labor") German Socialism Germany, at the time that Proudhon and Blanc were making their violent attacks against privilage and exploitation, was still under the authoritarian semi-feudal government of the Prussian State. The German socialists, beginning with the Young Hegelians, attacked capitalism and feudalism not from a working class revolutionary viewpoint like the French, but from a philosophical and dialectical viewpoint. Thus the German socialists began as a philosophical movement -- sometimes verging on mysticism -- and stayed that way through Marx and Engels. Moses Hess: "What did the revolution achieve after all? Its freedom and equality, its abstract rights of man, turned out to be just another form of slavery. The other side of the scheme of opposition, the abstract indidivudal, achieved domination, but the scheme itself, the opposition between domination and slavery, had not been overcome and discarded at all." "It is now the task of the philosophy of the spirit to become the philosophy of the act. Not only thought, but all human activity, must be brought to th epoint at which all oppositions fade away. The heavenly egoism, that is, the theological conscioussness against which German philosophy is now so zealously crusading, has thus far hindered us from stepping forth into the act." "Anarchy, upon which both atheism and communism are based, the negation of all domination in both spiritual and social life, seems at first to be the absolute anniliation of all definition, and thus of all reality. But it is only the process of the act becoming fixed by something outside itself, the domination of one thing over another, that anarchy strips away. So far is _self_-determination from being negated here, that it is rather the negation of it (brought about by the process of determination from the outside) that is being transcended. The anarchy created through the spirit is only a negation of limitation, not of freedom." Early Marxism: "...The worker is related to the product of his labor as to an alien object. For on his premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful the alien objective world becomes which he creates over-against himself, the poorer he himself--his inner world-- becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is the same as in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to himb ut the object." (from Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844) "...Social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which mislead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice." "...The standpoint of old materialism is `civil' society; the standpoint of the new is _human_ society, or socialized humanity." "The philosophers have only _interpreted_ the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to _change_ it." (from "11th theses on Feuerbach.") Engels on Marx: "In tracing the development of capital, Marx starts out from the simple, notoriously obvious fact that the capitalist increase the value of their capital through exchange; they buy commodities for their money and afterwards sell them for more money than they cost them..." "The capitalist finds on the commodity market under present social conditions a commodity which has the peculiar property that its use is a source of new value, is a creation of new value, and this commodity is _labor_ power." "The value of the labor power is paid for, but this value is far less than that which the capitalist manages to extract from the labor power, and it is just the difference, the UNPAID LABOR, which constitutes the share of the capitalist, or, more accurately, the capitalist class... In general it is this unpaid labor which maintains all the non-working members of society." (from "Engel's explanation of Capital") On the natural tendency of capitalist crisis: "A state of things whereby supply and demand balance each other on the commodities market, in which consequently a complete equilibrium between production and consumption exists, in which the commodities produced find buyers with just as little difficulty as the demand for commodities can be satisfied -- this appears to be teh economic ideal... If this is not the case, either too many or too fiew commodities will be produced, or else commodities other than those required; and the result will be a disturbance of the market..." (Paul Mombert) "If a rupture of the equilibrium is to be prevented, not only must the baker furnish exactly the amount of bread needed by the consumers, but also the factories must supply the precise number of ovens necessary for the purpose of baking, the mines the precise amount of coal, iron, etc..." ".. the capitalists see themselves compelled to increase the quantity of their produciton with out any regard for the wants of the cunsumers. The aim of production is, so to speak, henceforth within itself. Originally, of course, the increase of production was due to the increasing requirements of the consumers, and the new mechanism of production was created in view of satisfying this growing demand. Once in existence the new mechanism leads and independent life and has to function with absolute disregard to the question as to whether its activity merely satisfied the requirements of the consumers, or whether it exceeds them." "Thus, for the first time, excessive production is rendered possible. Such `overproduction' is here to be understood in the rational sense of the word, as implying production over and above the requirements [or purchasing ability -- Ed.] of the consumers." (from "The Theory of Crises" by Julian Borchardt) Anarchism A body of socialist thought which extended the attack against privilage in property into the fight against the privilage of power in general, anarchism had extensive influence on many movements, but never rose into prominence as a "pure" movement of its own. Anarchism declared its intention to abolish the State and the Church along with private ownership of the means of production. The modern anarchist movement stems from Proudhon, who was the first leader of a mass movement to declare his hatred the State, the Church, and property, and to openly call himself an Anarchist. Following him, Bakunin, and after Bakunin, Kropotkin, became the spokesmen for a system of thought which attempted to break down and destroy _all_ hierarchies, economic or political. The essence of anarchism can be summed up in the belief that all domination of one individual over another is evil, and that a reconciliation between individual and community could only be achieved after the creation of anarchy -- that is, absence of hierarchy. The anarchists claimed that the ideal community was one where individualism and collectivism had lost their meaning -- that citizens were now able to function both as a whole and as an individual without exploitation arising on either side. Bakunin: "The State is, a I have said, by its very principle an immense cemetery in which all manifestations of the parts that together constitute local life, all the interests of the parts that together constitute society, come to sacrifice themselves, to die and be buried. It is the altar upon which real liberty and the well-being of peoples are immolated for the sake of political grandeur; and the more complete this immolation, the more perfect is thte State." Peter Kropotkin: ".. man is apealed to be guided in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being. In practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can ffirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support--not mutual struggle-- has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race."