The Rise of Socialism and the Labor Movement in the 19th Century
-Some of the members of society, especially those in the educated middle class,
took notice of the blatant inequalities of this new society, and of the miserable conditions of the workers and started to develop new ideologies that would address the problem. In the early 19th century there was some attempts at creating new communities where economic and social equality and solidarity were priorities, such as New Lanark in Glasgow, founded by Robert Owen. These were called utopian socialist but their attempts were unsuccessful on the long term. By mid 19th century a young German philosopher, named Karl Marx, had developed new theories on socialism. In 1848 he published the Communist Manifesto, a very influential work. There, and in the book The Capital (Das Kapital, 1867), Marx and his partner, Friedrich Engels, developed their ideas. They had studied the process of industrialization and its social and economic consequences and stated that history is not a sequence of political events, but a struggle between social classes based on economic relations and the ownership of means of production. They stated that the industrialization would continue and create a mass of workers (proletariat) that were exploited by the elites (bourgeoisie) and that the proletariat, when it became fully conscious of their exploitation and unite, would, through a revolutionary process, take control of the state and the means of production, and progressively create a classless and equalitarian society, where state would no longer be needed. This theory is called Marxism or Scientific socialism. These theories had a huge influence in the masses of industrial workers, that started to organize what is known as the Labour movement. It took several decades to develop class consciousness. The first actions against the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution were the destruction of machines by Luddites in Great Britain, at the beginning of the century. But in general, extreme working conditions and lack of education did not leave workers enough time to organize even the most minimal resistance to the abuses of those in charge of industrial production. Thanks to a number of skilled leaders and thinkers, who were able to spread socialist ideas in easily understandable terms, trade unions and working-class parties and international organizations were formed. The first trade unions were mutual aid associations. The membership fees paid by workers were used to support those who were unemployed, ill or whose relatives had died. Later, trade unions began to use strikes to demand that business owners provide better working conditions for their employees. The first English trade unions were established in the 1820s. Other European countries did not have trade unions until the second half of the 19th century. This was the result of delayed industrialization and repression of the labour revolts in 1848. Proletarian internationalism emerged in the 1860s. In 1864, the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) was founded in London. It was later called the First International. The most important thinkers of the period, Marx and Bakunin, were the organization’s leaders, but they clashed over their different stances on the proletariat’s involvement in politics. Bakunin was the leader of another branch of workers’ ideology, Anarchism. Anarchism was the political philosophy that advocated for a society without classes, state or private property. Anarchists didn’t recognize any kind of authority and stated that society should be organized into communes managed by the workers themselves. They awarded peasants a leading role in the revolution (Marxism thought that peasants were less educated and more subject to reactionary forces such as religion, so revolution would come from the urban industrial workers). They opposed participation in the system (elections, parliaments) and their demands should be brought upon direct action (strikes, demonstrations or even violence such as sabotage and terrorist actions). The difference of opinions within the First International were so great that it was dissolved in 1876. During the 1870s, socialist (Marxist) parties were founded in various European countries. These working-class parties came together in 1889 to create the Second International. There were disagreements between more purist Marxist revolutionaries and the revisionists, who supported participation in the liberal politics and gradual change from within the political system (these are called social democrats).