1. The New Toughness of Mind: Realism, Positivism, Marxism
Section 12.61:

2. Key Terms to Know Toughness of Mind Materialism and Realism
Positivism
Realpolitik
Marxism
Communist Manifesto
“..let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”
Labor theory of value
Dialectical materialism
Class War Between Bourgeois and Proletariat
Opportunism

3. The End of the Springtime of Peoples
The springtime of peoples (Revolution of 1848) was followed by chilling blasts of winter
Major accomplishment of 1848 revolutions was emancipation of peasantry
Constitutional governments were secured in Denmark, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Piedmont
France had popular sovereignty but not democracy (really a popular dictatorship)
However, peasantry showed little concern for constitutional or bourgeois ideas
Result strengthened the forces of political counterrevolution
Most immediate result of Revolution of 1848 A new toughness of mind emerged
Idealism and romanticism are out
Revolutionaries became less optimistic
Conservatives became more willing to exercise repression
Realism becomes the watchword
Labor shifts to the organization of unions
Honore Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, ca oil on canvas. French.

4. Materialism, Realism Materialism
Was the new philosophy that came out of the New toughness of mind
Holds that every thing real is an outgrowth of physical or physiological forces
In the arts it was called realism
Realism
describe and reproduce life as it exists
Madame Bovary, by Flaubert
precise, unsentimental, literal
Gustave Flaubert, French writer, wrote meticulous descriptions of provincial woman’s tedious unhappy marriage in Madame Bovary (1857)
It mocked illusions of romantic literature
Trust in science and scientific knowledge grows
natural and social world
increased skepticism
role of religion is examined
because it is unscientific is shouldn’t be taken seriously and is necessary only to preserve social order
Flaubert, Gustave:
Madame Bovary
Gustave Courbet. The Stone Breakers, oil on canvas. French.

5. Positivism
Positivism (reaction to metaphysical abstractions of the revolutions)
Auguste Comte Positive Philosophy
he saw human history as a series of three stages, theological, metaphysical, scientific
revolutions in France suffered from empty words, high flying principles (excessive metaphysical abstractions)
to better society people must adopt a scientific outlook
study society he created sociology!!
Insistence on verifiable facts
Avoidance of wishful thinking
A questioning of all assumptions
A dislike of un-provable generalizations
Demands observational facts
Tests of ideas
Try to be humanly useful
Led to growth of social sciences
Auguste Comte

6. Realpolitik new tough mindedness created Realpolitik in politics
means “the politics of reality”
In domestic affairs
people should give up utopian ideals
people should be thankful of for orderly, hard working government
For radicals it meant use the tools of politics to reform rather than leaning on utopian ideals
In international affairs
Governments should follow their practical interests
Not be guided by ideology or by any system of natural enemies, allies
Make any alliances that seemed useful
Disregard ethical theories and scruples
Use any practical means to achieve their ends
War was accepted as a strategic option sometimes needed to achieve a political purpose
a tool of realistic statesmanship
Not confined to Germany

7. Early Marxism Karl Marx: (1818-1883)
Son of a lawyer in western Prussia
Disappointed revolutionary
Studied law and philosophy at several German universities and received a doctoral degree in 1841
Couldn’t find work, associated with radical German intellectuals, writing in a left-winged journals, moved to Paris
Frederick Engels ( )
Son of German textile manufacturer
Sent to England (Manchester) to manage family interests
Marx and Engels met in Paris in 1844 and began their collaboration

8. Communist League Joined the Communist League in 1847
League called for liberal reforms
free education, progressive income tax, state ownership of banks, railroads, canals, mines, collective agriculture
Some community ownership of major national resources
League was crushed by counter-revolutionary forces
1848 Communist Manifesto
but there still wasn’t Marxism and it played no role in 1848
Marx and Engels return to England after 1848 revolutions
1867 Marx publishes Capital

9. Sources of Content of Marxism
German philosophy
Believed that the course of history would lead to a free society (Hegel – Prussia)
French Revolutionism
Believed that The promise of the French Revolution had not yet been reached
Social and economic equality did not follow civil and legal equality
British Industrialism
Alienation of labor
Marx’s idea that workers become estranged from what their make in the mechanicalized world of Industrial Revolution (capitalism)
They don’t benefit from the products of their labor
True freedom would become possible when private property in capital goods was abolished

10. Engels The Condition of the Working Classes in England(1844)
Book based on his own first hand knowledge
Depressed condition of labor was an actual fact
Labor received a relatively small share of the national income
Much of the wealth was being reinvested in capital goods as private property of private persons but not labor
Government was in the hands of the well off
Religion was a tool to keep the masses in order
The family was disintegrating within the labor class
Women and children working
Overcrowding in living quarters

11. THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
A call for revolution
Class struggle in Paris seemed to confirm Marx and Engels’ beliefs
Believed the proletariat would rise against the bourgeoisie
Meant to be inflammatory
Workers are deprived of the wealth they created
State is a committee of the bourgeoisie for the exploitation of people
Religion was a drug to keep the worker quietly dreaming
Workers should be loyal to nothing except their own class
Workers every where had the same problem
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. Workers of the world unite!
“..let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

12. British political economy
Marx believed that revolution would be the result of coalescing historical forces – not made
Believed the subsistence or Iron Law of wages
Therefore, no future existed for labor
Labor theory of value
The value of any human made object depended ultimately on the amount of labor put into it
Therefore capital is stored up labor
Therefore workers never receive the full measure of the wealth they produce and can not afford the goods on the market
Therefore capitalism will fail from overproduction and cause economic down swings and the constant pursuit of new markets
With every economic down swing Marx believed revolution was nearer
Honore Daumier. "It's true you have lost your case... but you should have gotten a lot of pleasure hearing me plead [your case]." From the Series Les Gens de justice. Lithography

13. Dialectical materialism
Based on Hegelian idea that all things are in movement and in evolution
All change comes through the clash of antagonistic elements
Historical development is the result of conditions created by the interaction of such forces
History is not predetermined but is always shaped by impersonal forces and deep structural changes, not individuals or mere chance events
history is scientific
The resultant conditions give birth to ideas (Conditions are the roots; ideas are the trees)
Hegel had believed that ideas are roots, conditions of society are trees
All ideas are generated by economic and social conditions
Honore Daumier. The Insurrection. c

14. Historical development
Conditions/relations of production give rise to economic classes
Agrarian conditions produce a landholding class
Commercial conditions produce a merchant or bourgeois class
Each class develops an ideology suited to its needs
Religion, government, laws and morals reflect the outlook of the class in power
The two classes inevitably clash
Bourgeois revolutions against feudal interests break out
As the bourgeois (Capital) class asserts itself it calls into being its dialectical antithesis
The proletariat (Labor) emerges
Capital tends to consolidate into fewer hands (bourgeois devour each other)
Displaced members of the bourgeois transfer into the proletariat
Proletariat eventually expropriates the expropriators and abolishes private property in the means of production
A classless society is the result
The state and religion (bourgeois creations) wither
A dictatorship of the proletariat exists until the state withers

15. Class War Between Bourgeois and Proletariat
Class war is the struggle between the labor and capital
Labor needs the intellectual to recognize the ploys of the bourgeoisie
The government is an instrument of class power, religion is form of psychological warfare, the opium for the masses
Workers must not be fooled
Workers must maintain solidarity
To improve labor they must stick together
Individuals that seek to improve themselves are moving toward the bourgeoisie (betraying their class)
Individuals must lose themselves in the whole
Labor should not negotiate with capital
Labor should not put faith in existing government institutions that favor the bourgeoisie (law or the will of the strongest)

16. The appeal of Marxism: Its strength and weaknesses
Advantages
Claim to be scientific
Rested upon the study of actual facts and real processes
Socialism would not be a miraculous reversal but a historical continuation of what was already taking place
Did not speculate on the future socialist society
Disadvantages
The working people of Europe
Not in the frame of mind of an army in battle
Hesitated to subordinate all else to class revolution
Not exclusively class-people
Religion was still alive as well as “natural law” ideas
Didn’t believe that morality was a creation of class weapon
National loyalties to country (not workers of the world)

17. Opportunism
Marx’s word for the tendency of working people to better themselves by dealing with employers and by obtaining legislation through existing gov
this was most dangerous to Revolution to Marx
Cure for the 1848 revolutions was greater participation in existing processes
abolition of serfdom
rising wages
expansion of the vote
organization of labor unions to pressure employers
led to opportunism or dealing with employers and using existing state institutions
Opportunism led to diminished impact of Marx’s ideas
Lenin would breath new life into class conflict with Leninism