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In ancient times, the qualities of THE RISE OF THE MASSES 199 the lion—strength, vitality, and power—were the Nietzsche railed against the replacing of “life-affirming” most celebrated virtues. virtues with “life-denying” virtues —a historical change that he blamed on the development of monotheistic religions. In modern times, the qualities of the lamb—meekness and harmlessness—have become more honored as virtues. But in response to the morality of Thus Spake Zarathustra offers, sense, “beyond right or left,” the masters, the slaves themselves in place of the toppled deities of as French philosopher Georges developed their own moral system. organized religion, the figure of Bataille argued. Yet he has come to This new slave morality took the the “overman” (Übermensch in have a deep influence on political antitheses of the master morality, German). Humanity is merely a thinkers of the right and the left. and presented them as good in bridge between animals and the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, themselves. The values of the overman to come. But the overman in Nietzsche and Philosophy, master morality became inverted: is not a finished being, and still less emphasized Nietzsche’s concern where the master morality praised the literal, biological evolution from with the will to power. Deleuze strength, the slave morality praised humanity. An overman is a man placed the will to power as the weakness, and so on. This allowed who has mastered himself and can drive to differentiate, to make all slaves to live with their true seek his own truths, remaining things different, and the center position in life without being “faithful to the earth” and rejecting of an “empirical” rejection of all overwhelmed by self-hatred and those who offer “otherworldly transcendental or otherworldly resentment. By denying, for truths,” of whatever kind. claims about the existing world. example, the natural inequality Nietzsche became a philosopher of people in favor of a spurious, Antipolitical thinking of difference, in Deleuze’s ideal equality between slaves and Such intense individualism has led hands, and also of resistance masters, slave morality offered a some to suggest that Nietzsche to constraints. Conventional means for slaves to think as if they was an antipolitician. Although morality led only to “sad passions” were equal to their masters—when, political in tone, Nietzsche’s that “disparage life.” Nietzsche in simple reality, they were not. rejection of morality suggests has since come to occupy a critical Nietzsche associated this slave a nihilism that had little to do place among poststructuralist morality particularly with with understanding how a public thinkers concerned to overhaul Christianity and Judaism, which sphere operates. He wrote only of systems of domination—including he portrayed as offering illusory individuals, never of movements those purporting to liberate, solutions to the problems of life. or organizations. He was, in this such as Marxism. ■

200 IT IS THE MYTH THAT IS ALONE IMPORTANT GEORGES SOREL (1847–1922) IN CONTEXT Society is increasingly A t the turn of the 20th divided into two century, Europe had IDEOLOGY well-developed capitalist Syndicalism great classes: workers societies. Alongside the incredible and bosses. concentrations of industry and FOCUS wealth that capitalism had created, The heroic myth Parliamentary a great new social force had democracy fails the working emerged—the industrial working BEFORE class. Political parties laying claim 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich class and only supports the to the votes of the workers had Engels publish the Communist middle class. formed, and these became stable Manifesto, as revolutions organizations with increasing sweep across Europe. The working class electoral significance. However, as needs great myths to the parties became entangled in 1864 The International believe in, and putting these parliamentary politics, seeking Workingmen’s Association, myths into action through to eke out minor concessions from the “First International,” is the system, they appeared to many founded in London, uniting violence will make radicals to be merely another prop socialists and anarchists. them real. for existing society. 1872 A split between It is the myth Georges Sorel sought to anarchists and socialists that is alone challenge this bureaucratization leads to the collapse of the important. in what became a unique body of First International. work, synthesizing influences from Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and AFTER French philosopher Henri Bergson. 1911 Admirers of Sorel form In his major collection of essays, the Cercle Proudhon group to Reflections on Violence, he rejects promote anti-democratic ideas. objective science as simply a system of “fictions,” constructed to 1919 Novelist Enrico Corradini impose order on a reality that was claims Italy is a “proletarian inherently chaotic and irrational. nation,” seeking to unite Italian He believed that to treat human nationalism with syndicalism. society, the most chaotic of all parts of that reality, as if it were something

THE RISE OF THE MASSES 201 See also: Karl Marx 188–93 ■ Friedrich Nietzsche 196–99 ■ Eduard Bernstein 202–03 ■ Vladimir Lenin 226–33 ■ Rosa Luxemberg 234–35 It is to violence that overthrow existing society. The general strike—a mass Socialism owes those high Parliamentary democracy had stoppage of all work—was the ethical values by means of failed, since it merely provided pinnacle of syndicalist strategy, which it brings salvation the means for the “mediocre” and Sorel sees it as the modern new middle classes to rule over myth that will found a new society. to the modern world. the rest of society—including “Heroic violence” is to be welcomed Georges Sorel those socialists now committed to as the ethical and necessary route parliamentary politics. Rationality to establishing the new world. to be rationally understood, was and order had been substituted an insult to the power of human for freedom and action. Orthodox Sorel’s work is ambiguous. imagination and creativity. Marxism, too, contained the seeds He rejects political classifications, of middle-class rule, in that it and his thought does not sit easily The power of myth attempted to offer a “scientific” on either the political left or right, In place of objective science and understanding of society in which though it has been used by both. ■ theories about society, Sorel economics determines history. proposes that great myths could The miners’ strikes in the UK during be used to change reality. Indeed, To break the hold of bourgeois the 1980s were an example of mass by believing in heroic myths about rationality, a myth has to be both protests that came to be imbued with themselves and about the new believed and put into action. Sorel a heroic power, much in the vein of world to come, the masses could sees violence as the means through Sorel’s radical thinking. which myths can become real. He details examples of such myths and movements—from the Christian militants of the early Church, through the French Revolution, to the revolutionary syndicalists, or trade unionists, of his own day. Syndicalism was the most militant wing of the trade union movement, rejecting political maneuvering as a corruption of workers’ interests. Georges Sorel Born in Cherbourg, France, and turned to the far-right movement trained as an engineer, Georges Action Francaise, believing Sorel retired in his 50s to study an alliance of aristocrats and social problems. Self-taught as workers could overturn middle- a social theorist, he initially class French society. He later identified with the “revisionist” denounced World War I, and wing of Marxism associated with supported the Bolsheviks in Eduard Bernstein, before seeking Russia. By the end of his life, a more radical challenge to he was ambivalent about both parliamentary politics. His essays Bolshevism and fascism. won a growing readership across the French radical left. At first, Key works he supported revolutionary syndicalism and the foundation of 1908 Reflections on Violence the French union federation (CGT), 1908 The Illusions of Progress opposed to parliamentary politics. 1919 Matériaux d’une Thérie But he became disillusioned, and du Prolétariat

202 WE HAVE TO TAKE WORKING MEN AS THEY ARE EDUARD BERNSTEIN (1850–1932) IN CONTEXT B y the early 1890s, the left- movement operated. When it was wing German Social legalized in 1890, the SPD looked IDEOLOGY Democratic Party (SPD) to be set for power. Socialism had reasons for optimism. A decade of illegality from 1878 had merely Yet there was a problem, as FOCUS strengthened its support. As leading SPD member Eduard Revisionism the leading party of European Bernstein pointed out. The party socialism, its progress was followed was dedicated to a socialist future BEFORE by leftists across the continent, and and its policy was guided by 1848 Karl Marx and debates within its ranks set the Marxism. But as the party became Friedrich Engels publish intellectual framework in which the more established, and without the Communist Manifesto. the pressure-cooker conditions of 1871 The German Social Socialists expected Yet capitalism has Democratic Party (SPD) adopts capitalism to increased the wealth Marxism, voting to accept the Gotha Programme—a radical produce poverty. of workers. socialist manifesto. This means that Capitalism has proved to be AFTER workers accept capitalism. a stable, secure system. 1917 The October Revolution overthrows the capitalist We have to take Socialists should argue system in Russia. working men for piecemeal reforms as they are. 1919 A communist revolution under capitalism. in Germany is put down. 1945 A Labor government is elected in the UK on a platform of welfare reform to create a mixed economy. 1959 The SPD formally repudiates Marxism at the Bad Godesberg Conference.

THE RISE OF THE MASSES 203 See also: Karl Marx 188–93 ■ Vladimir Lenin 226–233 ■ Rosa Luxemburg 234–35 illegality, its day-to-day activities In all advanced countries Eduard Bernstein lacked direction. While SPD we see the privileges of the members still pronounced on Bernstein became a socialist the need for the transformation capitalist bourgeoisie at the age of 22, joining the of society, in practice it followed a yielding step by step to Marxist wing of Germany’s gradualist path, eking out changes democratic organizations. socialist movement. With the through parliamentary legislation. Eduard Bernstein passing of the Anti-Socialist Law in 1878, which banned Bernstein challenged this workers’ heads. For Marx, the socialist organizations, he contradiction head on. From the working class would lead society fled to Switzerland and then 1890s, he argued that many of into socialism once it realized its London. He joined other exiles Marx’s predictions—such as the potential to do so. But in reality, including Friedrich Engels, inevitable impoverishment of “class consciousness”—awareness with whom he developed a working people and their march of class—had led not to revolutionary close working relationship. toward revolution—had failed to conclusions, but to workers voting, come true. Rather, capitalism was in increasing numbers, for a party Bernstein returned to proving to be a stable system under that offered piecemeal reforms Zurich to become editor of which minor reforms could be won, within the capitalist system. the newspaper of the newly leading step by step to socialism. united Social Democratic Party Bernstein proposed abandoning (SPD). After the party was Gradual change the idea that workers would come legalized in 1890, he began to The publication of Bernstein’s to revolutionary conclusions. argue in the paper for a more Evolutionary Socialism in 1899 Instead, socialists should examine moderate, “revisionist” form fueled a battle within the SPD that workers’ existing beliefs about of socialism. He returned to would define the key argument for the world, and work outward Germany in 1901 and was socialist thinkers over the next from that point. This was the first elected a member of the century. Was capitalism to be theoretically robust case for a Reichstag the following year. accepted, and minor improvements “reformist,” or gradualist, socialism. His opposition to World War I won—or was it to be overthrown? led him to break with the At the heart of this debate was an Orthodox Marxists responded SPD in 1915, founding a argument over what happened in ferociously, and Bernstein’s views new organization, the USPD. were never formally adopted by the He was reelected as an Workers in Germany have won SPD in his lifetime. It was not until SPD member of parliament the right to strike for better pay and the Bad Godesburg conference from 1920 to 1928. conditions. Bernstein saw that the of 1959 that the party formally working class could win significant renounced Marxism. Nonetheless, Key works concessions within capitalism. its actual political activity had long been following the lines Bernstein 1896–98 Problems of Socialism had advocated, whatever its 1899 The Prerequisites for declared intentions. ■ Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy

204 THE DISDAIN OF OUR FORMIDABLE NEIGHBOR IS THE GREATEST DANGER FOR LATIN AMERICA JOSÉ MARTÍ (1853–1895) IN CONTEXT As a collection of colonies, Colonialism from Europe Latin America shared a has been defeated… IDEOLOGY common ancestry and Anti-imperialism political heritage. FOCUS In order to maintain …but colonialism of a United States interference national sovereignty new kind could arrive BEFORE and democracy… from the US. 1492 Partly financed by Spain, Christopher Columbus …it is necessary for Latin American countries explores the New World. to support each other against this new threat. 1803 Venezuela is the first B y the 19th century, Spain 1830s, most of these colonies had Latin American country to and Portugal’s ability to achieved formal independence. revolt against Spanish rule. defend their colonial Only Puerto Rico and Cuba possessions had weakened. remained under direct rule. AFTER The examples of the French and 1902 Cuba gains formal American Revolutions helped to José Martí became one of the independence from the US, promote a succession of uprisings leaders of the Cuban struggle for which retains the Guantanamo throughout colonial Latin America independence. But as the fight Bay naval base. against rule from Europe. By the against the Spanish empire wore on, through a series of uprisings 1959 Cuban dictator General Batista is ousted by Fidel Castro’s July 26 Movement. 1973 Chile’s elected ruler, Salvador Allende, is overthrown in a CIA-backed coup, and replaced by a military dictatorship or junta. By the 1980, juntas have seized control across Latin America.

THE RISE OF THE MASSES 205 See also: Simón Bolívar 162–63 ■ Emiliano Zapata 246 ■ Smedley D. Butler 247 ■ Che Guevara 312–13 ■ Fidel Castro 339 Rights are to be taken, In the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the north. In doing so, he helped not requested; seized, US president James Monroe had articulate a common theme of Latin affirmed that the United States American anti-imperialism for the not begged for. would remain opposed to European next century or more: that the US José Martí colonialism and would treat any would pursue its own economic further efforts by the Old World to and political interests, whatever and wars in the second half of the extend or establish colonies in the the impact on Latin America. 19th century, Martí became keenly Americas as an act of aggression. aware of a far bigger threat to the Critically, the Monroe Doctrine Martí died in 1895. Three years sovereignty of Latin America. identified both North and South later, the US won control of Cuba America as falling under the from Spain. Since World War II, To the north, the United States protection of the United States. the US has been blamed for had waged its own battle for supporting military coups and independence when the Thirteen A new colonial power dictatorships in the region. ■ States declared their freedom from Latin American revolutionaries at colonial rule in 1776 and won the first greeted the Monroe Doctrine In 1973, Chile’s presidential palace Revolutionary War by 1783. By the with enthusiasm. The Venezuelan was hit—and its socialist president end of the Civil War in 1865, the leader, Simón Bolívar, believed Salvador Allende killed—in a military unified republic controlled much of initially they now had a powerful coup, one of several in Latin America the northern continent, and was ally in their fight for freedom. But that have been backed by the US. looking outward. as it consolidated its power, the US increasingly used the Doctrine to assert its control over its own “sphere of influence.” Toward the end of his life, Martí argued for a common Latin American response in defense of their hard-won liberties. He saw a threat to democracy in the form of a new, potentially colonial power to José Martí José Martí was a Cuban formed the Cuban Revolutionary journalist, poet, essayist, and Party in 1892. During an revolutionary. Born in Havana, insurrection against the Spanish then under Spanish rule, he in 1895, Martí was killed at the became active in the movement Battle of Dos Ríos on May 19 for Cuban independence with the that year. Cuba finally broke outbreak of the Ten Years’ War free from Spain in 1898, when against Spain in 1868. Charged the US intervened during the with treason in 1869, he was Spanish-American War. sentenced to six years in prison. After falling ill, he was exiled to Key works Spain, where he was allowed to continue his studies. 1891 Our America (essay) 1891 Simple Verses (from which After graduating in law, Martí Cuba’s best-known patriotic toured the Americas, arguing song, Guantanamera, is adapted) the case for Latin American 1892 Patria newspaper independence and unity. He

206 IT IS NECESSARY TO DARE IN ORDER TO SUCCEED PETER KROPOTKIN (1842–1921) IN CONTEXT A t the end of the 19th Revolution of 1917, he denounced its century, Tsarist Russia authoritarianism in the subsequent IDEOLOGY was a hothouse for every civil war. Establishing a new world Anarcho-communism new social movement from fascism did not require fresh rules, but to radical communism. Peter anarchists able to act courageously FOCUS Kropotkin, who spurned his against all oppression. Compromise Political action privileged life as the son of a and political calculation were alien prince, was a product of his times, to anarchism; instead, its adherents BEFORE advocating the destruction of must act with moral fervor against 1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau authority. In The Conquest of Bread a corrupt world. Kropotkin, like writes The Social Contract, (1892), Kropotkin argued that the other anarchists, helped define the stating that “man is born free, best aspect of humanity—its “politics of the deed”—a belief that and is everywhere in chains.” ability to cooperate—could allow would recur in radical ideologies it to do away with all oppressive over the next century. ■ 1840 In What is Property?, structures. He saw in the Pierre-Joseph Proudhon developing labor movement the In place of the cowardly calls himself an anarchist. possibility to overthrow oppressors phrase, ‘Obey the law,’ —from priests to capitalists—and 1881 Tsar Alexander II is establish a new society based on our cry is, ‘Revolt assassinated in St Petersburg. mutual respect and cooperation. He against all laws!’ lay down the principles of what was Peter Kropotkin AFTER to become anarcho-communism: 1917 The Bolsheviks seize belief in a collaborative, egalitarian power in Russia. society, free of the state. 1960s Counterculture Call to action movements in Europe and the Anarchism is a theory of action, US squat in empty buildings and Kropotkin urged those who and form communities. would listen to always act. sympathetic to the Bolshevik 2011 The Occupy Movement protests against economic See also: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 183 ■ Mikhail Bakunin 184–85 ■ inequality by occupying Wall Henry David Thoreau 186–87 ■ Karl Marx 188 –93 ■ Vladimir Lenin 226–33 Street during the global economic crisis.

THE RISE OF THE MASSES 207 EITHER WOMEN ARE TO BE KILLED, OR WOMEN ARE TO HAVE THE VOTE EMMELINE PANKHURST (1858–1928) IN CONTEXT B y the early 1900s, the right Activist Emmeline Pankhurst, with to vote was gaining others, established the Women’s IDEOLOGY acceptance around the Social and Political Union (WSPU) Feminism world, but the right for women to in Britain in 1903. Known as do so lagged behind. New Zealand “suffragettes,” their militant action FOCUS had been the first major country to and civil disobedience soon included Civil disobedience grant the vote to women, in 1893, window smashing, assaults, and but progress in Europe and arson. In 1913, campaigner Emily BEFORE North America was achingly slow, Davidson died after throwing 1792 Mary Wollstonecraft hindered by obstinate politicians, herself under the king’s horse at publishes A Vindication of the conservative public opinion, and the Derby race, and a hunger Rights of Woman, an early often vicious press campaigns. strike of imprisoned suffragettes defense of women’s equality. was met with force-feeding. Emmeline Pankhurst is arrested 1865 Liberal philosopher outside Buckingham Palace in May When Pankhurst, speaking later John Stuart Mill campaigns 1914. The WSPU strongly advocated in 1913, said, “either women are to successfully for parliament on direct action in pursuit of its goals. be killed or women are to have the a platform of women’s suffrage. vote,” she was laying claim both to the suffragettes’ moral authority 1893 New Zealand is the to act as they saw fit in furthering first major country to grant a just cause, and emphasizing women the vote. their apparently implacable determination to win it. However, AFTER this determination lasted only 1990 The Swiss canton of until World War I in 1914, when the Appenzell Innerhoden is forced WSPU dropped their campaign in to accept women’s suffrage order to support the war effort. (the other cantons had Women over the age of 30 were accepted it in 1971). granted the right to vote in Britain at the war’s end, with all adult 2005 Women are granted the women able to vote by 1928. ■ right to vote and stand for parliament in Kuwait. See also: Mary Wollstonecraft 154–55 ■ John Stuart Mill 174–81 ■ Simone de Beauvoir 284–89 ■ Shirin Ebadi 328

208 IT IS RIDICULOUS TO DENY THE EXISTENCE OF A JEWISH NATION THEODOR HERZL (1860–1904) IN CONTEXT Modern states promise T he French Third Republic, universal, equal founded at the end of IDEOLOGY rights for all… a century of revolutions, Zionism promised the guarantee of equal …yet anti-Semitism legal rights for all its citizens. FOCUS continues to exist, and is However, this constitutional A Jewish state equality was put severely to the endemic in society. test. In December 1894, Alfred BEFORE Dreyfus, a young artillery officer, 1783 In Jerusalem, or On Since anti-Semitism cannot was convicted of spying for Religious Power and Tolerance, be ended and assimilation Germany and sentenced to life German philosopher Moses imprisonment, despite clear Mendelssohn calls for religious cannot work… evidence that another man had tolerance in a secular state. been passing the secrets, and …the only alternative is that the evidence against 1843 German philosopher the establishment of a Dreyfus had been fabricated. Bruno Bauer’s book The His trial was covered by a young Jewish Question states that Jewish state. Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, Jews must give up religion to working for an Austrian newspaper. achieve political emancipation. Dreyfus was also Jewish, and AFTER his case exposed deep divisions in 1933 Adolf Hitler becomes French society. His supporters, chancellor of Germany, known as “Dreyfusards,” saw anti- promoting German nationalism Semitism as the central reason for and anti-Semitism. the framing of an innocent man. Their campaign for Dreyfus’s 1942 Plans for the Final release drew in intellectuals such Solution of the Jewish question as writer Émile Zola alongside are discussed by Nazi leaders politicians and trade unionists. at the Wannsee Conference. However, for the anti- 1948 The state of Israel Dreyfusards, his case revealed is established. something quite different: the need for vigilance against France’s enemies. Liberty, equality, and

THE RISE OF THE MASSES 209 See also: Johann Gottfrield Herder 142–43 ■ Marcus Garvey 252 ■ Hannah Arendt 282–83 ■ Adolf Hitler 337 fraternity were true French values, We have sincerely Theodor Herzl but not all those who lived in tried everywhere to merge France should be considered with the national communities Theodor Herzl was born in French, they claimed. Protests in in which we live, seeking only Pest in the Austro-Hungarian Dreyfus’s defense were met by to preserve the faith of our empire to strongly secular mobs chanting “Death to the Jews!” fathers. It is not permitted us. Jewish parents. He moved to Vienna at age 18 and began Anti-Semitism had a long and Theodor Herzl his studies in law. His first ugly history in Europe, where the political activity was with the official discrimination of Church Instead, Jews would have to borrow German nationalist student edicts had mingled with popular a totally different concept from the fraternity, Albia, from which prejudice, leading frequently to Enlightenment—nationalism. Herzl he later resigned in protest ethnic cleansing. Jews had been stated that Jews were “one people,” at their anti-Semitism. expelled from several countries, and that the diaspora population and denied full rights elsewhere. should be united in a single Jewish After a brief legal career, By the end of the 19th century, state, preserving their rights as Herzl turned to journalism, however, inspired by the rational Jews in the modern world. He set and it was while he was the ideals of the Enlightenment, many about campaigning for a Jewish Paris correspondent for the modern nation-states, including state, urging European powers to Neue Freie Presse that he France, had formally ended state- assist him in finding a place for began covering the Dreyfus sanctioned discrimination on it, and encouraging Jews to give Affair. The virulent and the grounds of religious belief. funds to the cause. He believed widespread racism the case Assimilation—the belief that that the new Jewish homeland revealed in French society minority groups could integrate would need to be outside Europe— pushed Herzl to break with his fully into wider society—became either in Argentina or Israel. earlier assimilationist beliefs. an increasingly accepted ideal. He became a skilled advocate Herzl’s ideas spread quickly, but and organizer for the Zionist Against assimilation met with stiff resistance from those cause, publishing The Jewish Despite these official changes at sections of Jewish society that still State in 1896 to considerable the state level, the Dreyfus case favored assimilation. His Zionist controversy. A year later, he convinced Herzl that anti-Semitism movement only really gained chaired the First Zionist was endemic in society, and that ground in the decades after his Congress in Basel, Switzerland, attempts to defeat it, or for Jews to death. The granting by the British seeing it as a symbolic assimilate, were doomed to fail. of a homeland for the Jews in parliament for the Zionist Palestine in 1917 helped pave the state. He died from a heart Creating a Jewish homeland where way, and in the aftermath of the attack, at the age of 44. Jews could be united was central to Holocaust, the state of Israel was their identity, according to Herzl. He created in 1948. Alfred Dreyfus Key works believed it was the only way that Jews was finally pardoned in 1906. ■ could avoid anti-Semitic attitudes. 1896 The Jewish State 1902 The Old New Land

210 NOTHING WILL AVAIL TO SAVE A NATION WHOSE WORKERS HAVE DECAYED BEATRICE WEBB (1858–1943) IN CONTEXT B y the late 19th century, with It is urgently necessary industrial capitalism firmly to ‘clean up the base IDEOLOGY entrenched in Britain, of society.’ Socialism public concern turned toward its Beatrice Webb consequences. Industrial towns FOCUS and cities were home to swathes of charity and self-help for the poor, Social welfare people deprived of work, cut loose the Webbs offered a new vision of from society, and living in squalor. an orderly society. However, like BEFORE many of their contemporaries, they 1848 In A General View of A Royal Commission was were eugenicists, believing the Positivism, French philosopher established in 1905 to address the “stock” of humanity could also be Auguste Comte argues for problem, but in 1909 its report improved by this kind of benevolent scientific social analysis. produced a weak set of proposals. planning. To Webb, the wishes of As a member of the commission, the poor, and their attempts to 1869 The English section of pioneering social researcher Beatrice alleviate their own conditions, the Charity Organization Webb produced a far more radical were insignificant. She believed Society is established to minority report, arguing for a welfare a rational society would emerge, promote charitable work state that would provide protection in which the majority would accept among the “deserving poor.” against unemployment and illness. the wise rule of the planners. ■ She and Sidney Webb, her husband 1889 Social reformer Charles and collaborator, opposed the view Booth finds a third of London’s that the poor produced their own population lives in poverty. poverty. They argued that social problems could be solved by AFTER benevolent planners, administering 1911 The National Insurance society in the best interests of all. Act expands UK insurance for unemployment and illness. Planned society Countering those who stressed the 1942 Economist William superiority of unregulated markets, Beveridge’s Social Insurance and a continuing reliance on and Allied Services lays the foundations for the welfare See also: Eduard Bernstein 202–03 ■ Jane Addams 211 ■ John Rawls 298–303 ■ state in the UK. Michel Foucault 310–11

THE RISE OF THE MASSES 211 PROTECTIVE LEGISLATION IN AMERICA IS SHAMEFULLY INADEQUATE JANE ADDAMS (1860–1935) IN CONTEXT T he frontier marking the Promoting education as key to limit of western settlement opportunity for all, Hull House ran a IDEOLOGY in the United States was kindergarten, clubs for older children, Progressive movement declared closed by the census of and evening classes for adults. 1890, but not before the notion of FOCUS America as a society defined by an good habits would be learned early Social reform entrepreneurial “frontier spirit” had on, and the costs of poverty in taken root. Challenging the myth of crime and disease lessened. BEFORE boundless growth and opportunity, 1880s Otto von Bismarck, social reformers pointed instead Addams wrote of America German Chancellor, introduces to the poverty and the absence lagging far behind other nations’ the first social insurance of meaningful opportunity faced legislation to protect women and programs. by America’s poor and working children in industry. She viewed classes. Radical change was due. direct charitable intervention with 1884 Toynbee Hall is opened individuals as ineffective: only in Whitechapel, East London, Jane Addams, pioneering concerted public action, backed up to provide amenities to the sociologist and campaigner for by legislation, could deal with poor. Jane Addams visits women’s suffrage, in 1889 social problems. In this she helped in 1887. established Hull House in Chicago, to define social work as an activity the first “settlement house” to concerned with changing society AFTER provide amenities and welfare as much as individuals. ■ 1912 The US Children’s services to the city’s poor—women Bureau is established to and children especially. Relying on administer the provision donations from wealthy benefactors of child welfare. and on volunteer labor, Addams wanted Hull House to show how 1931 Jane Addams becomes the different classes of society the first American woman could learn the practical benefits of to be awarded the Nobel cooperation. She was convinced Peace Prize. that by channeling the energies of the young into productive activity, 1935 National government insurance and social programs See also: Beatrice Webb 210 ■ Max Weber 214–15 ■ John Rawls 298–303 are started in the US.

212 LAND TO THE TILLERS! SUN YAT-SEN (1866–1925) IN CONTEXT C hina had been a single emperors, crippling development state since the founding of and impoverishing the people. IDEOLOGY the Qin dynasy in 222 BCE. The failure of the Chinese empire Nationalism But in the second half of the 19th to defend either itself, or the century, it was carved up among people it claimed to provide for, FOCUS the major Western powers, who provoked a prolonged crisis. Fair distribution of land pushed through the “Unequal As conditions worsened, the Treaties.” These were a series regime became deeply unpopular, BEFORE of agreements that were signed and successive uprisings became 1842 The Treaty of under duress by successive increasingly destructive. Nanjing grants Britain trade concessions with China and China is led by a weak and corrupt Imperial Court the port of Hong Kong. and is dominated by foreign powers. 1901 The Boxer Rebellion But respect for China as a great nation with a great history… against foreign rule fails, resulting in the capture …plus “Western” …plus economic of Beijing by the Eight democracy… development and fair Nation Alliance. distribution of land… AFTER …will lead to a modern republican China. 1925–26 The First Chinese Revolution is defeated by the KMT, leading to a Communist Party retreat— the “Long March.” 1932 Japan invades China. The KMT and the Communist Party lead the resistance. 1949 The defeat of Japan is followed by civil war, which is won by the Communist Party.

THE RISE OF THE MASSES 213 See also: Ito Hirobumi 195 ■ José Martí 204–05 ■ Emiliano Zapata 246 ■ Mustafa Kemal Atatürk 248–49 ■ Mao Zedong 260–65 The vast peasantry of China were development on the basis of the fair Sun Yat-Sen promised land to work under Sun’s distribution of China’s resources, Three Principles of the People. especially land for its peasantry— Sun Yat-Sen was born in the Economic progress would come from “the tillers.” A corrupt landlord village of Cuihen in southern a fair distribution of land, he believed. system would be overthrown, China. He moved to Honolulu, alongside the corrupt emperor Hawaii, at age 13 to continue A distinctive form of Chinese system it supported, clearing his education. There, he nationalism arose against this the way for a modern, republican, learned English and read backdrop of social strife and and democratic China. widely. After further study subjugation by Western powers— in Hong Kong, Sun converted and, later, by the Japanese. It Sun became a uniquely unifying to Christianity. He became a stressed the need to learn from the figure among China’s revolutionary doctor, but later abandoned West—transforming China into a movements. He founded the his medical practice to modern society, breaking with the republican Kuomintang (KMT), concentrate full-time on his failures of the empire and with the which rapidly came to dominance revolutionary activity. perceived backwardness of the in the chaotic period after the peasant rebellions. From the 1880s, collapse of the Qing dynasty in Sun became a campaigner Sun Yat-Sen was among those 1911. The KMT united with the for the renewal of China as forming nationalist groups and Communist Party in 1922, but with a modern state. Following a attempting an uprising against warlords fighting for territory, and series of failed revolts, he Beijing’s rule. Unlike many of his a series of new emperors, it proved was forced into exile. But contemporaries, he stressed the impossible to establish a central in October 1911, a military strengths of Chinese culture, fusing government. The KMT crushed uprising at Wuchang spread a respect for China’s history with an a communist-led uprising in across southern China. Sun appropriation of “Western” values. Shanghai in 1926, after which the Yat-Sen was elected president two groups separated. Communist of the “Provisional Republic” The Three Principles victory in the 1949 revolution forced but stepped down in a deal Sun organized his thought around the KMT into exile in Taiwan. with pro-Qing dynasty forces what became known as the Three in the north. In 1912, Sun Principles of the People: nationalism, In recent years, communist helped to establish the democracy, and “the people’s China has increasingly come to Kuomintang to continue the livelihood.” The last principle embrace Sun’s legacy, citing him fight for a unified republic as referred to economic development, as an inspiration behind its move the country descended but was understood by Sun to be to a market-led economy. ■ into civil war. Our society is not free Key works to develop and the common 1922 The International people do not have the Development of China means of living. 1927 San Min Chu I: Three Sun Yat-Sen Principles of the People

214 THE INDIVIDUAL IS A SINGLE COG IN AN EVER-MOVING MECHANISM MAX WEBER (1864–1920) IN CONTEXT C apitalism’s rise in the Max Weber provided a new 19th century prompted new approach to the study of society— IDEOLOGY ways to think about the in the new discipline of “sociology.” Liberalism world. Relations between people His incomplete work Economy and were transformed, with traditional Society is an attempt to describe FOCUS ways of life torn up. Scientific and the functioning of society, as well Society technical knowledge appeared to as a method by which such study be advancing relentlessly, and can be taken further. One of BEFORE society was seen as an object that Weber’s methods of study was 1705 Dutch philosopher could be studied and understood. to use abstract notions such as Bernard Mandeville writes The Fable of the Bees, An individual’s actions are Individuals operate demonstrating collective informed by their view of collectively in institutions arising from complex ways. individual behavior. the world. 1884 The final volume of Individual viewpoints coalesce into collective Marx’s Capital is published, understandings, such as religion. though it is unfinished. But the social structures created by these collective AFTER understandings can constrain individual freedoms. 1937 American sociologist Talcott Parsons publishes The individual is a single cog in The Structure of Social an ever-moving mechanism. Action, introducing Weber’s work to a new international audience. 1976 Capitalism and Social Theory by British sociologist Anthony Giddens criticizes Weber’s sociology, arguing instead for the primacy of structures in social action.

THE RISE OF THE MASSES 215 See also: Mikhail Bakunin 184–85 ■ Karl Marx 188–93 ■ Georges Sorel 200–01 ■ Beatrice Webb 210 Fire ants live in a complex community These views would emerge as Max Weber where the individual’s role is key to the collective understandings. Religion success of the nest. In a similar way, and political systems such as Max Weber was born in Weber saw the actions of individuals capitalism are examples of these Erfurt, Germany, and initially as part of a larger human society. understandings. Weber, in his studied law at the University earlier work The Protestant of Heidelberg. Working in a “ideal-types.” Like a caricature of a Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, time before the discipline of person, an ideal-type exaggerated claimed that it was the new “spirit” sociology existed, Weber’s key features and reduced the less of individualist Protestantism work covered legal theory, important ones—but to draw out that paved the way for capital history, and economics. the underlying truth, rather than to accumulation and the creation He eventually became an amuse. This approach was key to of a market society. Economy economics professor at Weber’s method, and allowed him and Society develops this idea, Freiburg University. Politically to understand complex parts of distinguishing between types of engaged from early in his society via a simplified version. religious belief, and analyzing the career, Weber made his name The role of the sociologist was to ways in which individuals may as a thinker in social policy, construct and analyze ideal-types perform social action using a wide writing on Polish immigration based on the observation of reality. variety of belief structures. in the 1890s and joining one This stood in contrast to Karl Marx of Germany’s movements for and earlier writers on social issues, Restraints to action social reform, the Evangelical who attempted to deduce the Once society’s collective structures Social Congress. After WWI, operations of society based on are in place, Weber notes, they may he cofounded the liberal its internal logic, rather than act not as enablers, expanding German Democratic Party. through direct observation. human freedom, but as constraints. This is why Weber speaks of people A tempestuous relationship as “cogs” in a “machine.” The with his father ended on his structures people create also father’s death in 1897. Weber restrain their actions, producing had a nervous breakdown, and further results: Protestants were never fully recovered. He was instructed to work, but also to unable to hold a permanent avoid consuming, and their teaching post again, and savings created capitalism. ■ suffered from insomnia and bouts of depression. Collective understandings For sociological Society, Weber argued, could only purposes, there is no such Key works be understood on the basis of its constituent parts—in the first thing as a collective 1905 The Protestant Ethic and instance, individuals. These personality which ‘acts.’ the Spirit of Capitalism individuals operated collectively in 1922 Economy and Society ways that were complex, but could Max Weber 1927 General Economic be understood by the sociologist. History Individuals possessed a capacity to act, and their actions would be informed by their view of the world.

THE CLA OF IDEOL 1910–1945

SH OGIES

218 INTRODUCTION Emiliano Zapata World War I begins with The Armistice ends Joseph Stalin becomes founds the Liberation the assasination of the fighting in World general secretary of the Army of the South Archduke Franz War I, but the war is formally ended the Communist Party (the “Zapatistas”) to Ferdinand at Sarajevo in following year with of the Soviet Union. fight in the Mexican present-day Bosnia. the signing of the Revolution. Treaty of Versailles. 1910 1914 1918 1922 1912 1917 1922 1923 Following the overthrow After the February Benito Mussolini After leading nationalist of the Qing dynasty, Revolution, Tsar Nicholas leads his Fascists forces in the Turkish Sun Yat-Sen becomes in the March on War of Independence, II of Russia abdicates; in the first president of the the October Revolution, Rome and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Republic of China. becomes prime becomes president of the Lenin establishes a minister of Italy. Bolshevik government. Republic of Turkey. T he first half of the 20th ideologies of fascism, communism, The optimism many felt at the end century saw the erosion and the social democracy of liberal, of World War I was short-lived. The of the old imperial powers free-market capitalism. formation of the League of Nations, and the establishment of new with its hope of ensuring an republics. The result was World revolutions enduring peace, did little to stem widespread political instability, The revolutions that sparked this the rising tensions in Europe. especially in Europe, which led to shake-up in political thought did Punitive war reparations and the two world wars that dominated not begin in Europe. In 1910, a postwar economic collapse were the period. In the process of decade-long armed struggle known a major factor in fostering the replacing the old European order, as the Mexican Revolution began, appeal of extremist movements. a wave of extreme nationalist, with the fall of the old regime of authoritarian parties emerged, Porfirio Díaz. In China, the ruling Dictatorship and resistance and in Russia the Bolshevik Qing dynasty was overthrown in Out of small extremist parties in Revolution of 1917 paved the the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and Italy and Germany arose the way for a totalitarian communist replaced with a republic founded by Fascist party of Benito Mussolini dictatorship. Meanwhile, the Sun Yat-Sen the following year. But and the Nazi party of Adolf Hitler. Great Depression of the early the most influential revolutionary In Spain, in reaction to the 1930s prompted a move to events of the period took place in formation of a second Spanish increased economic and social Russia. Political unrest had led to Republic, nationalists fought for liberalism in the United States. an unsuccessful revolution in 1905, power under Francisco Franco. which was rekindled in 1917 and And in Russia after the death of By the end of the 1930s, political led to the violent overthrow of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, Joseph thinking among the major powers Tsar Nicholas II by the Bolsheviks. Stalin became increasingly was polarized between the

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 219 Adolf Hitler sets out President Mao Zedong rises The United States his political ideas in Franklin D. Roosevelt to prominence as a enters World War II after the Japanese Mein Kampf. begins a program communist bombing of Pearl of government commander during Harbor in Hawaii. intervention known as the New Deal. the Second Sino-Japanese War. 1926 1933 1937–45 1941 1945 1930 1936 1939 Mahatma Gandhi begins A military coup led German troops War in Europe ends a campaign of civil by Francisco invade Poland, as Allied troops capture Berlin, Germany; Japan disobedience against Franco against the sparking British rule in India by Second Spanish the outbreak of surrenders after the World War II. Allies drop two leading the Dandi Republic triggers the atomic bombs. Salt March. Spanish Civil War. autocratic, eliminating opponents liberalism to American politics. War in 1936, with Germany and the and establishing the Soviet Union The United States prefered to Soviet Union supporting opposite as an industrial and military power. remain neutral in Europe’s unstable sides, Britain kept its distance. But affairs, but Nazi Germany’s anti- pressure was growing in Britain While totalitarian regimes grew Semitic policies led to the and the United States to stop in strength on continental Europe, migration of intellectuals from appeasing Hitler’s territorial Britain faced the breakup of its Europe to America, in particular demands. After war broke out in empire. Independence movements from the Marxist-inspired Frankfurt 1939, the alliance against Germany in the colonies threatened British School. These immigrants brought grew, with the United States rule, especially in India, with the a fresh thinking that challenged joining after the attack on Pearl campaign of non-violent civil some of Roosevelt’s policies. Harbor by the Japanese in 1941. disobedience led by Mahatma Gandhi, but also in Africa, where It was not only Europe that the Although Britain, the United activists such as Jomo Kenyatta of United States tried to ignore. Asia States, and the Soviet Union Kenya were mobilizing resistance. was also experiencing political collaborated successfully during turmoil as Japanase militarism World War II, once fascism was Entering the fray sparked the Sino-Japanese War defeated, the political lines were In the United States, the massive of 1937. As the war turned against redrawn. A standoff soon emerged, crash on the New York stock market China, Mao Zedong rose to with the communist East opposed in 1929 ended the boom years of prominence as a communist leader. to the capitalist West, and the rest the 1920s and ushered in the Great of Europe struggling to find its Depression. In 1933, President Britain, too, was reluctant to place in the middle. The scene was Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced become involved in any conflict, set for the Cold War, which would the New Deal, which brought a new despite the threat of fascism. Even dominate postwar politics. ■ with the onset of the Spanish Civil

NONVIOLENCE IS THE FIRST ARTICLE OF MY FAITH MAHATMA GANDHI (1869–1948)



222 MAHATMA GANDHI God is Truth and Love. Truth and Love contain no element of violence and IN CONTEXT Our courageous expression of Love and cannot harm. IDEOLOGY Truth brings our opponents Anti-colonial nationalism We should meet our into accord with the enemies with Truth FOCUS goodness and justice Non-violent resistance and Love. within themselves. BEFORE Nonviolence is 5th–6th centuries BCE In this way, warring the first article Jainist teachings stressing factions will agree and a nonviolence and self-discipline peaceful state emerges. of my faith. develop in India. 1849 Henry David Thoreau publishes Civil Disobedience, defending the morality of conscientious objection to unjust laws. AFTER 1963 In his “I have a dream” speech in Washington DC, civil rights leader Martin Luther King outlines his vision of black and white people living together in peace. 2011 Peaceful protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square lead to the overthrow of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. I n the worldwide empires that led many anticolonial movements of radical nonviolent resistance European powers built from to develop distinctly non-European and civil disobedience, which the 16th century onward, it modes of resistance. he named satyagraha (“adherence was the example of the imperialists to truth”), focused a lens of themselves that ultimately gave A spiritual weapon morality and conscience on the rise to the nationalist movements In India, the fight for independence tide of anticolonial nationalism that that sprang up in opposition to from the UK in the first half of the was transforming the political colonial rule. Witnessing the 20th century was characterized by landscape of the 20th century. colonizers’ strong sense of national the political and moral philosophy He described this method as a identity, based on European ideas of its spiritual leader, Mohandas “purely spiritual weapon.” about nations and the importance Gandhi, more commonly known of sovereignty within geographical by the honorific title “Mahatma,” Gandhi believed that the borders, eventually ignited a meaning “Great Soul.” Although universe was governed by a desire for nationhood and self- he believed in a strong democratic Supreme Principle, which he called determination in the colonized state, Gandhi held that such a state satya (“Truth”). For him, this was peoples. However, the lack of could never be won, forged, or held another name for God, the one God economic or military strength by any form of violence. His ethic of Love that he believed to be the basis of all the great world religions.

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 223 See also: Immanuel Kant 126–29 ■ Henry David Thoreau 186–87 ■ Peter Kropotkin 195 ■ Arne Naess 290–93 ■ Frantz Fanon 304–05 ■ Martin Luther King 316–21 Since all human beings were a spiritual one. This willing Gandhi was influenced by Jainism, emanations of this divine Being, sacrifice of the self would operate a religion whose central principle is Gandhi believed that love was the as a law of truth on human nature to avoid harming living things. Jain only true principle of relations to secure the reformation and monks wear masks so that they do not between humans. Love meant care cooperation of an opponent. It inadvertently breathe in insects. and respect for others and selfless, would act as an example to wider lifelong devotion to the cause of society—political friend and foe “wiping away every tear from every alike. Home rule for India would be, eye.” This enjoined ahimsa, or the for Gandhi, the inevitable outcome rule of harmlessness, on Gandhi’s of a mass revolution of behavior adherents. Although a Hindu based on a rich brew of peaceful himself, Gandhi drew on many transcendental principles. different religious traditions as he developed his moral philosophy, South African activist including Jainism and the pacifist Gandhi’s first experience of Christian teachings of Russian opposing British rule came not in novelist Leo Tolstoy, both of which India, but in South Africa. After stressed the importance of not training as a lawyer in London, causing hurt to any living creature. he worked for 21 years in South Africa—then another British Political ends colony—defending the civil rights Gandhi’s ideology was an attempt of migrant Indians. It was during to work out the rule of love in every these years that he developed his area of life. However, he believed sense of “Indianness,” which he that the endurance of suffering, saw as bridging every divide of or “turning the other cheek” to race, religion, and caste, and which abusive treatment at the hands of underpinned his later vision of a an individual or a state, as opposed united Indian nation. In South to violent resistance or reprisal, was Africa, he witnessed firsthand the a means to a political end as well as social injustice, racial violence, ❯❯ Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi Hindu self-discipline, beginning was born on October 2, 1869, a life of asceticism. In 1915, he to a prominent Hindu family in returned to India, where he took Porbandar, part of the Bombay a vow of poverty and founded Presidency in British India. an ashram. Four years later, he Gandhi’s father was a senior became head of the Indian government official and his National Congress. He was mother a devout Jain. killed on his way to prayer by a Hindu extremist who blamed Gandhi was married at the him for the Partition of India and age of just 13. Five years later, his the creation of Pakistan. father sent him to London to study law. He was called to the bar in Key works 1891 and set up a law practice in South Africa, defending the civil 1909 Hind Swaraj rights of Indian migrants. While 1929 The Story of My there, Gandhi embarked upon a Experiments with Truth strict course in brahmacharya, or

224 MAHATMA GANDHI and punitive government Gandhi believed that the If I pay for your exploitation of colonial rule. nonviolent means used to watch, it becomes His response was to develop his achieve his end were just my own property. pacifist ideals into a practical form as important as the end of opposition. He proved his gift for itself. He used the example If I plead for your leadership in 1906 when he led of procuring a person’s watch, it becomes thousands of poor Indian settlers watch to illustrate his point. in a campaign of disobedience a donation. against repressive new laws If I fight you for requiring them to register with the your watch, it picked up a handful of the salt state. After seven years of struggle becomes stolen that lay in great white sheets along and violent repression, the South the beach, and was promptly African leader, Jan Christiaan property. arrested. Gandhi was imprisoned, Smuts, negotiated a compromise but his act of defiance had with the protestors, demonstrating foreign industry and strengthen publicly demonstrated the unjust the power of nonviolent resistance. their own economy. He saw such nature of British rule in India It might take time, but it would win boycotts as a logical extension of to commentators around the world. out in the end, shaming opponents peaceful noncooperation and This carefully orchestrated act into doing the right thing. urged people to refuse to use of nonviolent disobedience began British schools and law courts, to shake the hold of the British In the years that followed, to resign from government empire on India. Gandhi had considerable success employment, and to eschew British in promoting his idea that titles and honors. Amid increasing nonviolent resistance was the most excitement and publicity, he effective resistance. He returned to learned to distinguish himself as India in 1915 with an international an astute political showman, reputation as an Indian nationalist, understanding the power of the and soon rose to a position of media to influence public opinion. prominence in the Indian National Congress, the political movement for Indian nationalism. Gandhi advocated the boycott of British- made goods, especially textiles, encouraging all Indians to spin and wear khadi, or homespun cloth, in order to reduce dependence on Public defiance A religion that takes In 1930, with the British no account of practical affairs government refusing to respond to Gandhi’s congressional and does not help to resolution calling for Indian solve them is no religion. dominion status, full independence was unilaterally declared by the Mahatma Gandhi Indian National Congress. Soon Thousands joined Gandhi’s protest after, Gandhi launched a new against the tax on salt imposed by the satyagraha against the British tax British. They marched to the coast at on salt, calling on thousands to join Dandi in Gujarat in May 1930 to gather him on the long march to the sea. salt water and make their own salt. As the world watched, Gandhi

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 225 Reports of Gandhi’s campaigns property class.” Meanwhile, British Christ gave us the goals and imprisonment appeared in prime minister Winston Churchill and Mahatma Gandhi newspapers all over the world. attempted to dismiss him as a German physicist Albert Einstein “half-naked fakir.” the tactics. said of him: “He has invented a Martin Luther King completely new and humane Whatever the limits of their means for the liberation war of application in other situations, a strong hold on Indian society. an oppressed country. The moral Gandhi’s methods were certainly However, India remains a secular, influence he had on the consciously successful in eventually winning democratic state, which still aligns thinking human being of the entire independence for India in 1947, with Gandhi’s fundamental belief civilized world will probably be although he bitterly opposed the that it is only through peaceful much more lasting than it seems Partition of India into two states means that a just state can in our time, with its overestimation split along religious lines— emerge. His example and of brutal violent forces.” predominantly Hindu India and methods have been taken up Muslim Pakistan,—which led to by activists around the world, Strict pacifism the displacement of millions of including civil rights leader Martin However, Gandhi’s absolute people. Soon after Partition, Gandhi Luther King, who credited Gandhi confidence in his doctrine of was assassinated by a Hindu as the inspiration for his peaceful nonviolence sometimes seemed nationalist who accused him of resistance to racially biased laws unbalanced when he applied it appeasing Muslims. in the US in the 1950s and 60s. ■ to the conflicts unfolding in the wider world, and this earned him Today’s rapidly industrializing criticism from many quarters. India is a far cry from the rural “Self-suffering endurance” romanticism and asceticism appeared sometimes to require of Gandhi’s political ideals. mass suicide, as shown by his Meanwhile, the ongoing tension weeping plea to the British Viceroy with neighbor Pakistan shows of India that the British give up that Gandhi’s belief in an Indian arms and oppose the Nazis with identity that transcended religion spiritual force only. Later, he has ultimately been unfulfilled. The criticized Jews who had tried to caste system, which Gandhi had escape the Holocaust or had fought steadfastly opposed, also maintains back against German repression saying, “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.” Criticism also came his way from the left, and British Marxist journalist Rajani Palme Dutt accused him of “using the most religious principles of humanity and love to disguise his support of the Forms of nonviolent protest, from blocking roads to boycotting goods, have become popular and powerful methods of civil disobedience in today’s political world.

POLITICS BEGIN WHERE THE MASSES ARE VLADIMIR LENIN (1870–1924)



228 VLADIMIR LENIN A t the turn of the 20th new industrial working class. century, the Russian Unprotected by social institutions IN CONTEXT empire was a lumbering or traditions such as unions, agrarian colossus that had fallen workers were particularly at risk IDEOLOGY far behind the industrializing of exploitation by their new Communism states of western Europe in employers. In response to their economic terms. The empire’s suffering, and believing that FOCUS population comprised many class conflict holds within it the Mass revolution different ethnic groups—including dynamics of social change, Karl Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Marx and Friedrich Engels BEFORE Belorussians, Jews, Finns, and proclaimed that an international 1793 During the Reign of Germans—only 40 percent of revolution against capitalism Terror following the French whom spoke Russian. The empire was inevitable. In the Communist Revolution, thousands are was ruled over by an absolutist, Manifesto of 1848, they called executed as “enemies of authoritarian tsar, Nicolas II, for an international merger of the the revolution.” and a strict social hierarchy was proletariat across Europe. ruthlessly enforced. There was no 1830s French political activist free press, no freedom of speech or However, Marx and Engels had Auguste Blanqui teaches association, no minority rights, and not foreseen that as workers in the that a small band of expert few political rights. Unsurprisingly, advanced industrialized societies conspirators can execute a in this atmosphere of repression, of western Europe became more revolutionary seizure of power. revolutionary forces were gaining secure and began to acquire better an ever-stronger foothold, and living standards, they would 1848 Karl Marx and they would finally be carried aspire to become the bourgeoisie Friedrich Engels publish to victory in the 1917 October (middle class), not revolt against it. the Communist Manifesto. Revolution by a political agitator Socialists began more and named Vladimir Lenin. more to work through legal and AFTER constitutional channels with 1921 The Communist Party of A law of history the aim of winning the vote for China (CPC) is organized as a During the 19th century, socialism working-class men and thereby Leninist vanguard party. had developed in Europe as a achieving change through the response to the hardship that democratic process. Socialist 1927 Stalin reverses Lenin’s characterized the lives of the opinion became increasingly New Economic Policy and divided between those who collectivizes agriculture. To be successful, an The aims and interests of insurrection must rely on the the vanguard party must be in tune with those of the masses actions of the masses. to carry the masses with them. To inspire the masses Politics begin where into action, a vanguard the masses are. party is needed.

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 229 See also: Karl Marx 188–93 ■ Joseph Stalin 240–41 ■ Leon Trotsky 242–45 ■ Mao Zedong 260–65 We have combined, by a any material benefits from Lenin initially attempted to garner freely adopted decision, industrialization. In the 1890s, support for the revolution from Russian growing numbers of political peasants. He concluded that peasants for the purpose of activists in Russia, including could not form the revolutionary class fighting the enemy. radical young law student because they aspired to own land. Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Lenin, plotted against the increasingly repressive state However, as the peasants aspired advocated reform through the and its secret police force, and in to own their own land, Lenin ballot box and those who sought 1905 a wave of unrest swept the realized they would not be the class reform through revolution. country. This first attempt at a to bring about a socialist revolution, revolution failed to overthrow one of whose central aims was Russian conditions the tsar, but it did win some the eventual ending of private Russia had come late to concessions to democracy. ownership. It was clear to industrialization and at the end Russian workers continued Lenin that the driving force of ❯❯ of the 19th century, its working to endure harsh conditions, class had still not won any real however, and revolutionaries concessions from their employers. continued to plot the total Unlike the citizens of western overthrow of the tsarist regime. Europe, the vast majority of Russia’s population had not seen Throughout his career, Lenin strove to translate Marxist theory Vladimir Lenin into practical politics. Analyzing Russia’s position through a Marxist lens, he saw that the country was moving in sudden leaps from feudalism to capitalism. Lenin viewed the peasant economy as another exploitative plank in the capitalist platform—judging that if it were pulled out, the whole capitalist economy would collapse. Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov, who later He was arrested, jailed, exiled adopted the surname Lenin, was to Siberia, and then traveled born in Simbirsk, Russia, now through Europe, writing and called Ulyanovsk. He received a organizing for the coming classical education and showed revolution. The October a gift for Latin and Greek. In Revolution of 1917 effectively 1887, his brother Aleksandr was made him ruler of all Russia. executed for the attempted Lenin survived an assassination assassination of Tsar Alexander attempt in 1918, but never fully III. That year, Lenin enrolled at regained his health. Kazan University to study law but was expelled for student protests. Key works Exiled to his grandfather’s estate, he steeped himself in the works of 1902 What Is To Be Done? Karl Marx. He received his law 1917 Imperialism, the degree and began his real career Highest Stage of Capitalism as a professional revolutionary. 1917 The State and Revolution

230 VLADIMIR LENIN the revolution would have to were educated individuals, such was a relatively small class. be the burgeoning industrial as Lenin himself, who viewed the To make matters trickier still, working class. exploitation of the proletariat by there were few revolutionaries the bourgeoisie as unjust, and within their number. Vanguard party agitated for change. Such In Marxist analysis, the bourgeoisie “revolutionary bourgeois” Lenin understood that a is the middle class—the social individuals had played a leading revolution required leadership and class that owns the means of role in past revolutions, including organization, and he championed production (such as the factories)— the French Revolution of 1789. Engels’ and Marx’s idea of a while the proletariat comprises However, the rapid industrialization “vanguard party”—a group of those who have no choice but of Russia was being financed “resolute individuals” of clear to live off the sale of their own largely by foreign capital, and this political understanding, mostly labor. Within the bourgeoisie meant that the Russian bourgeoisie recruited from the working class, who would spearhead the revolution. They were to inspire the proletariat to become a “class-for- itself,” which would then overthrow bourgeois supremacy and establish a democratic “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Lenin drew together his vanguard party under the name of the Bolsheviks; this party would ultimately become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. International revolution Like Marx, Lenin believed that a united proletariat would rise in a great revolutionary wave that would transcend borders and national identities, ethnocentrism, and religion, effectively becoming a borderless, classless state in itself. It would be an international expansion of “democracy for the poor,” and would occur alongside a forced suppression of the exploiting and oppressing class, who would be excluded from the new democracy. Lenin saw this transitory phase as an essential part of the shift from democracy to communism—the ultimate revolutionary state envisioned by Marx, which would follow the dictatorship of the proletariat. Rich bankers flee as the workers advance under the slogan “Long Live the International Socialist Revolution!,” a quote from Lenin emphasizing cross-border class allegiances.

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 231 A rebellious army, sick of the appalling casualties of World War I, played a crucial role in making the 1917 October Revolution a success. The old regime was discredited by the war. In this ultimate communist state, and now this was reinforced by One major factor in the success of class would be transcended and constant rhetoric from Lenin’s the revolution had been Russia’s private property abolished. Bolshevik lieutenants. For Lenin, role in World War I. By 1917, the the power of the masses was the war was causing the Russian Lenin declared that his political only effective revolutionary power. people intolerable hardship. Even ideas could take hold “not where death squads could not stop troop there are thousands, but where When Lenin delivered his mutinies and desertions, and the there are millions. That is where political report to the Extraordinary “imperialist” war was transformed serious politics begin.” In order to Seventh Congress of the Russian into civil war between the confront the might and force of the Communist Party on March 6, 1918, Bolshevik Red Army and the heavily armed imperialist state, a year after the successful 1917 anti-Bolshevik White Army. millions of disaffected workers, revolution, he provided them with Lenin wrote, “In this civil war, alienated by that state, were a review of the revolution that was the overwhelming majority of the needed to participate. Only in “a truly Marxist substantiation of population proved to be on our their united millions, organized by all our decisions.” His Bolshevik side, and that is why victory was professional revolutionaries, could party had seized power from achieved with such extraordinary they hope to destroy a well-armed the transitional government the ease.” Everywhere he saw the and well-financed capitalist regime. preceding October in what was fulfillment of Marx’s expectation Under the tsars, the working essentially a bloodless coup d’etat. that, as the proletariat learned classes and peasants had seen They were the first successful through harsh experience that their own interests as dependent communist revolutionaries in the there could be no collaboration upon the interests of the owners of world. Even though Russia was a with the bourgeois state, the production or the landowner, but poor country within the capitalist “fruit” of mass revolution would Lenin the Marxist urged them to finance system, with a relatively “ripen” spontaneously. see their rights and welfare as weak proletariat, its bourgeois state dependent only upon their own was even weaker, and the masses In reality, many other factors social class. The masses had been of working-class urban workers had played a part. As the events welded together into a single been mobilized to dispossess it, of 1917 had played out, the political body by their suffering, resulting in an “easy victory.” institutions of the old order ❯❯ Victory will belong only to those who have faith in the people, those who are immersed in the life-giving spring of popular creativity. Vladimir Lenin

232 VLADIMIR LENIN —the local administration, the of Russian peasants die of This struggle army, and the Church—lost their starvation as food produced in must be organized… authority. Both urban and rural the countryside was confiscated economies collapsed. Russia’s and brought to feed Bolshevik by people who are forced withdrawal from World War I, armies and cities, and to aid in professionally engaged and the subsequent civil war, took the civil war against the anti- in revolutionary activity. place against a backdrop of severe Bolshevik Whites. Conditions shortages, which brought about were so harsh that Lenin and Vladimir Lenin widespread suffering. Lenin had the Bolsheviks faced uprisings realized that only a dominant and from the same masses on whose Bolsheviks for diluting socialist coercive force could hope to create support Lenin had based his economics with capitalist a new order out of this chaos. The politics. Historian David Christian elements, succeeded in increasing Bolshevik party was the vanguard, writes that War Communism agricultural production, since but not the main substance of challenged the ideals of Lenin’s farmers were encouraged to revolutionary power. Thinking in new Communist party, as “the produce larger quantities of food terms of the Marxian categories government claiming to represent through appeal to their own self- of the masses and blocks of the working class now found itself interest. The policy was later workers and peasants, Lenin on the verge of being overthrown replaced by Stalin’s policy of forced saw the proletarian democracy by that same working class.” collectivism in the years after of the workers’ soviets (councils Lenin’s death, leading to more or groups) as the elementary While War Communism was widespread famines in the 1930s. substance of the new “commune” the improvised condition that state. These groups united into resulted from a revolution, what Proletarian power one under the cry: “All Power to replaced it at the end of the civil The extent to which Lenin’s the Soviets!” In October 1917, the war was a specific policy proposed October Revolution was an world’s first socialist state, the by Lenin. The New Economic authentically socialist revolution Russian Socialist Federative Policy, which Lenin referred to depends upon the extent to which Soviet Republic, was born. as state capitalism, allowed some “the masses” were actually in small businesses, such as farms, accord with and represented by War Communism to sell on their surpluses for the Bolsheviks. Was the suffering Economically, the revolution was personal gain. Large industries proletariat actually self-liberated followed by three years of War and banks remained in the hands “from below,” or did Bolshevik Communism, which saw millions of the state. The new policy, leaders ride to power on the which was reviled by many Marxist narrative of victory for the suffering masses? How real was this new proletarian During the civil war that followed the revolution, the Bolsheviks fought the anti-revolutionary “White Army.” Emergency measures were imposed, testing the support of the masses.

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 233 In China’s Cultural Revolution, young Red Guards formed a vanguard, rooting out anti-revolutionary attitudes. Lenin believed that vanguards were needed to lead a revolution. power—the power of the masses— and pounding people’s minds workers who had won significant which was brought into being and until they lose their will, until concessions and as a result had then constantly defined, explained, he enslaves them.” become detached from their true and eulogized by Lenin? class allegiance. For Lenin, the Labor aristocracy situation required a “revolutionary A contemporary of Lenin, Many critics have considered that socialist consciousness” that could Nikolay Sukhanov, a socialist when the Bolsheviks insisted that grasp Marxist principles of class activist and critic of the Bolshevik the dictatorship of the party was unification. This could only be revolution, was skeptical. Sukhanov synonymous with a true workers’ provided by a vanguard from wrote: “Lenin is an orator of a state, they were in reality justifying within the working class—and great power who is capable of their dominance over the workers. the Bolsheviks formed that simplifying a complicated matter… Lenin excused this dominance vanguard party. the one who is pounding, pounding, through his elitist belief that without the “professional Lenin held that the existence Lenin alone could have led revolutionaries,” workers on of absolute truth was unconditional, Russia into the enchanted their own could not rise higher and further that Marxism was quagmire; he alone could than a “trade union consciousness.” truth, which left no room for have found the way back By this, he meant that workers dissent. This absolutism gave would not see beyond alliances Bolshevism an authoritarian, to the causeway. with their immediate colleagues anti-democratic, and elitist Winston Churchill at work to a wider class alliance. nature that would seem to be at odds with a belief in bottom-up Compounding the problem, in democracy. His vanguard-party Lenin’s eyes, was the fact that the revolution has since been replicated concessions won by the working across the political spectrum, from classes in parts of western Europe the right-wing anti-communist had not lifted the working class as Kuomintang Party in Taiwan to a whole. Rather, these concessions the Communist Party of China. had created what Lenin called a Some intellectuals still describe “labor aristocracy”—a group of themselves as “Leninists,” including Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, who admires Lenin’s desire to apply Marxist theory in practice and his willingness “to dirty his hands” in order to achieve his aims. Contemporary Leninists see globalization as the continuation of the 19th-century imperialism that Lenin opposed, as capitalist interests turn toward poor countries in search of new labor forces to exploit. Their solution to this problem, like Lenin’s a century ago, is an international mass workers’ movement. ■

234 THE MASS STRIKE RESULTS FROM SOCIAL CONDITIONS WITH HISTORICAL INEVITABILITY ROSA LUXEMBURG (1871–1919) IN CONTEXT Inequality and T he Marxist theorist Rosa oppression exist in a Luxemburg articulated the IDEOLOGY idea of the mass strike in a Revolutionary socialism capitalist society. revolutionary way, emphasizing its organic nature. She identified both FOCUS The oppressed political and economic mass strikes The mass strike workers do not need as the most important tools in the external leaders... struggle for workers’ power. BEFORE 1826 The first General Strike ...since they will rise up Luxemburg’s ideas were formed in the UK is held in response spontaneously to throw off in response to widespread workers’ to mine owners attempting strikes and the Bloody Sunday to reduce miners’ pay. their oppressors. protest in St. Petersburg that mushroomed into the Russian 1848 Karl Marx theorizes in The mass strike Revolution of 1905. his Communist Manifesto results from that revolution and historical A social revolution change are the result of class social conditions Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels conflict between dominant with historical had imagined that a mass strike and subordinate classes. inevitability. of the proletariat would be led by a professional vanguard outside or AFTER “above” the working class, while to 1937–38 Stalin’s forcible anarchist theorists, revolution was transformation of the USSR sparked through extraordinary acts into an industrial power leads of destruction and propaganda. To to his Great Purge. Hundreds Luxemburg, neither idea was the of thousands are executed. right way to understand or facilitate the mass strike. Rather, she saw 1989 Solidarity, a Polish many different dynamics working trade union, defeats the together in a social revolution. Communist Party with a coalition government led In her work Dialectic of by Lech Walesa. Spontaneity and Organization, Luxemburg explained that political organization would develop naturally from within, as workers

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 235 See also: Karl Marx 188–93 ■ Eduard Bernstein 202–03 ■ Vladimir Lenin 226–33 ■ Joseph Stalin 240–41 ■ Leon Trotsky 242–45 socialism. The events of 1905 had The mass strike is shown Luxemburg that a general merely the form of the strike could not be decreed by an revolutionary struggle executive decision, nor could it reliably be incited by grass roots at a given moment. groups, but that it was a natural Rosa Luxemburg phenomenon of the proletarian consciousness. It was an inevitable result of social realities, particularly the hardship of working people forced, in order to survive, to carry out onerous, underpaid work in the new industrial workplaces of Central Europe and Russia. Lech Walesa founded Solidarity in The workers advance Vladimir Lenin objected that this Poland in 1980. The independent trade Luxemburg believed that the “revolutionary sponteneity” took union used mass strikes to improve the pressure of proletarian discontent away the benefits of the inherent lives of workers, and these strikes were against the military might and discipline and forward-planning the catalyst for political change. financial control of the state would of a revolution led by enlightened explode in unsuccessful and commanders. He assigned the learned by participating in strikes successful strikes, culminating in a leadership role to his Bolshevik for better wages and later for spontaneous mass strike. This would party. Luxemburg saw this as political ends. Revolution would bring about the workers’ objectives conducive to dictatorship and teach itself to the participating and transform the party leadership ultimately to “the brutalization of masses. She believed that leaders while advancing the revolution public life.” The horrors of Lenin’s should be nothing more than the against capitalism. During these Red Terror and Stalin’s murderous conscious embodiment of the developments, workers would trajectory were to prove her right. ■ feelings and ambitions of the advance intellectually, guaranteeing masses, and that mass strikes their further progress. would bring about a new form of Rosa Luxemburg Born in the Polish town of Zamosc, League), an underground Rosa Luxemburg was a gifted political organization. In January student and linguist, absorbed by 1919, during revolutionary age 16 in socialist politics. She activities in Berlin, Luxemburg became a German citizen in 1898 was seized by army officers and and moved to Berlin, where she shot. Her corpse was thrown into joined the international labor the Landwehr Canal and was movement and the Social recovered several months later. Democratic Party. She wrote on socialist issues, women’s suffrage, Key works and economics, and worked for a workers’ revolution. She met Lenin 1904 Organizational Questions in 1907 at a conference of Russian of the Russian Social Democracy Social Democrats in London. 1906 The Mass Strike 1913 The Accumulation After being imprisoned in of Capital Breslau in 1916, she formed 1915 The Junius Pamphlet the Spartakusbund (Spartacus

236 AN APPEASER IS ONE WHO FEEDS A CROCODILE, HOPING IT WILL EAT HIM LAST WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965) IN CONTEXT I n the mid-1930s the word Defense expenditure in Britain had “appeasement” had not yet been greatly constrained by the IDEOLOGY taken on the taint of cowardice economic slump. The need to rearm Conservatism and ignominy that later events against Hitler came at a time of would give it. Conciliatory policy extreme financial duress for a FOCUS making had become the norm after nation that was still struggling to Non-appeasement World War I, as European powers recover from the Great War and sought to ease what Winston deploying most of its military BEFORE Churchill had called “the fearful resources in the remote outposts c.350 BCE Statesman and hatreds and antagonisms which of the British empire. The idea of orator Demosthenes criticizes exist in Europe.” But as the Great confronting Germany again to his fellow Athenians for Depression took its toll around the contain Hitler was dismissed not anticipating Philip of world and Adolf Hitler rose to by conservative prime minister Macedon’s imperial goals. power in Germany, Churchill and Stanley Baldwin and his successor, a very few others saw that this fellow conservative Neville 1813 European powers try to policy was becoming dangerous. Chamberlain. Assuaging the settle with Napoleon, but his renewed military campaigns An appeaser believes he is not powerful enough to defeat a tyrant. drive a coalition of allies to defeat him at Leipzig. Therefore he makes concessions in order to avoid going to war. AFTER His concessions His concessions make 1982 British prime minister make him weaker. the tyrant stronger. Margaret Thatcher refers to Chamberlain when urged to compromise with Argentina during the Falklands War. 2003 US president George Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair invoke the dangers of appeasement in the run-up to the Iraq War.

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 237 See also: Mahatma Gandhi 220–25 ■ Napoleon Bonaparte 335 ■ Adolf Hitler 337 in the face of what he saw as complacency, only to be mocked as a warmonger and relegated to the back benches of Parliament. Churchill denounced the settlement The Munich Agreement You were given the that Chamberlain negotiated with The appeasement mindset in British choice between war and Hitler at Munich in 1938 as “a total, politics was firmly entrenched, and unmitigated defeat.” the British offered no resistance to dishonor. You chose Hitler’s systematic breach of the dishonor and you dictator’s mounting grievances conditions of the Versailles Treaty will have war. seemed to them the moderate, they had signed at the end of World practical approach. War I—including his remilitarization Winston Churchill of the Rhineland—or to his Churchill’s unofficial network legislation against the Jews. concessions would simply make it of military and government Emboldened, Hitler annexed more voracious. Other politicians intelligence kept him informed Austria into the Reich in 1938, and trusted Hitler, and Churchill stood about Nazi aims and movements in the same year, crudely coerced almost alone, among Conservatives and the unprepared state of British Chamberlain at Munich to trade at least, in condemning him. forces. He warned Parliament about Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland for He refused at all times to discuss Hitler’s intentions in 1933, and another false promise of peace. anything at all with Hitler or with continued to raise the alarm in his representatives. Radical but speeches of immense poetic power Hitler was bemused by his easy reasoned, this non-negotiable gains. He had planned to “smash” defiance of tyranny, to the death Czechoslovakia with a “shock and if need be, was the core idea that awe”-style entry into Prague and would bring down the Nazis. ■ instead found her “virtually served up to me on a plate by her friends.” Churchill denounced the Munich Agreement. He contended that to feed the Nazi monster with Winston Churchill The son of English lord Randolph as a Liberal and later as a Churchill and American heiress Conservative, spanned 60 years. Jennie Jerome, Sir Winston He took charge of a government Leonard Spencer-Churchill of national unity during World once described himself as “an War II, and served one further English-Speaking Union.” He was term as prime minister in 1951. educated at Harrow Public School Churchill was a prolific writer and Sandhurst Military Academy and received the Nobel Prize for and then served in India with Literature in 1953, largely for his a cavalry commission. During the six-part history of World War II. 1890s, he distinguished himself as a war correspondent covering Key works the Cuban Revolt against Spain, British campaigns in India and 1953 The Second World War the Sudan, and the Boer War 1958 A History of the English in South Africa. His career in Speaking Peoples the House of Commons, first 1974 The Complete Speeches

238 THE FASCIST CONCEPTION OF THE STATE IS ALL-EMBRACING GIOVANNI GENTILE (1875–1944) IN CONTEXT W hen World War I ended leadership of Benito Mussolini and in 1918, Italy was in a the philosophical guidance of IDEOLOGY state of social and Giovanni Gentile, used nationalist Fascism political unrest. The country had rhetoric to win over popular been forced to concede territory to support. They advocated a radical FOCUS Yugoslavia and was reeling from new form of social organization Philosophy of the state heavy losses in the war. At the based around the fascist state. same time, unemployment was BEFORE rising as the economy shrank. Unity through collectivism 27 BCE–476 CE The Roman Mainstream politicians appeared The guiding principles for the new empire quickly expands from unable to provide answers, and Italian state are laid out in The Europe to Africa and Asia. both left- and right-wing groups Doctrine of Fascism, a text that is were growing in popularity among thought to have been ghostwritten 1770–1831 Georg Hegel the struggling peasants and by Gentile for Mussolini. Gentile develops his philosophy of workers. The right-wing National rejected the idea of individualism unity and absolute idealism, Fascist Party, under the political and thought the answer to both the later used by Gentile to argue people’s need for purpose and for the all-embracing state. the state’s need for vitality and cohesiveness lay in collectivism. AFTER 1943–1945 Allied forces Gentile describes the fascist invade Italy at the end of conception of the state as an World War II, and the fascist attitude toward life in which regime surrenders. individuals and generations are bound together by a higher law and 1940s–1960s Neofascist will: specifically, the law and will movements become of the nation. Like communism, increasingly popular fascism sought to promote values in Latin America. beyond materialism, and like Marx, From 1960s Neofascist Mussolini visited the Exhibition of the philosophies become Fascist Revolution, Milan, in 1932. This incorporated into many vast and striking propaganda event was nationalist movements. designed by artists and intellectuals, including Gentile, to herald a new era.

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 239 See also: Georg Hegel 156–59 ■ Karl Marx 188–93 ■ Friedrich Nietzsche 196–99 ■ Vladimir Lenin 226–33 ■ Joseph Stalin 240–41 ■ Benito Mussolini 337 The Fascist State recognize the conflicting interests of different nations that make The law and All human and All individual conflict inevitable. will of the spiritual values action serves to nation take lie within the state. preserve and This new understanding of precedence over expand the state. the state was designed to appeal to individual will. a confident and victorious “Italian spirit” that could be traced back to The fascist conception of the Roman empire. With Mussolini the state is all-embracing. as “Il Duce” (“The Leader”), the fascist understanding of the state Gentile wanted his philosophy to will of the majority. Above all, would place Italy back on the world underlie the new form of the state. Gentile’s fascist state was map as a great power. In order However, he did not agree with defined in opposition to the to create the new fascist nation, the Marxist position, which saw prevailing doctrines of political it was necessary to mold all society as divided into social and economic liberalism, which individual wills into one. All forms classes and historical processes at that moment in history had of civil society outside the state as driven by class struggle. Gentile proved itself unable to maintain were repressed, and all spheres of also opposed the democratic idea of political stability. He thought that life—economic, social, cultural, majority rule, which sees the will the aspiration for permanent peace and religious—became subordinate of the nation as subordinate to the was absurd, because it failed to to the state. The state also aimed to grow through colonial expansion, which was mainly to be achieved through conquests in North Africa. Gentile was the foremost philosopher of fascism. He became Mussolini’s minister of education and chief organizer of cultural politics. In these roles, he played a key role in the construction of an all-embracing fascist Italian state. ■ Giovanni Gentile liberal philosopher Benedetto history. He later became Croce. Gentile and Croce would the fascist regime’s leading Giovanni Gentile was born in later fall out when Croce became ideologist. Gentile was made Castelvetrano, in western Sicily. increasingly critical of the fascist president of The Academy of After completing high school regime of Benito Mussolini, Italy in 1943, and supported the in Trapani, he received a in which Gentile had become puppet regime of the Republic scholarship to the prestigious a key figure. of Salò when the Kingdom of Scuola Normale Superiore Italy fell to the Allies. He was in Pisa, where he studied As Minister of Public killed the following year by a philosophy with Donato Jaja, Education in Mussolini’s first communist resistance group. focusing on the idealist tradition cabinet, Gentile implemented in Italy. Gentile later taught at the so-called Riforma Gentile: a Key works universities in Palermo, Pisa, radical reform of the secondary Rome, Milan, and Naples. school system that prioritized the 1897 Critique of Historical During his time in Naples, he study of history and philosophy. Materialism cofounded the influential He was the main force behind 1920 The Reform of Education journal La Critica with the the Enciclopedia Italiana, a 1928 The Philosophy of Fascism radical attempt to rewrite Italian

240 THE WEALTHY FARMERS MUST BE DEPRIVED OF THE SOURCES OF THEIR EXISTENCE JOSEPH STALIN (1878–1953) IN CONTEXT A fter the Russian Revolution In the name of modernizing the of 1917, Vladimir Lenin’s Soviet Union’s agricultural system, IDEOLOGY Bolsheviks set about Stalin amalgamated farms under State socialism creating a new socialist system state control as “socialist state through nationalization, taking property.” The class of relatively FOCUS privately held assets or enterprises wealthy farmers known as kulaks Collectivization into government ownership. Lenin’s were compelled to give up their successor as leader of the Soviet land and join collective farms. BEFORE Union, Joseph Stalin, accelerated Stalin’s police confiscated food 1566 In Russia, Ivan the this process in 1929, and over five and took it to the towns, and the Terrible’s efforts to create years the economy was rapidly peasants retaliated by burning a centralized state result in industrialized and collectivized their crops and killing their peasants fleeing and a drop by edict from the government. animals. A disastrous famine in food production. The kulaks (wealthy farmers) 1793–94 The Jacobins are an exploitative class. institute the Reign of Terror in France. They control They resist They are the others because collectivization. carriers of AFTER 1956 Nikita Krushchev they control capitalism. reveals that Stalin executed food production. thousands of loyal communists during the purges. The wealthy farmers must be deprived of the sources of their existence. 1962 Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, telling of life in a Russian labor camp, becomes a worldwide bestseller. 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev introduces glasnost (openness), saying, “I detest lies.”

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 241 See also: Karl Marx 188–93 ■ Vladimir Lenin 226–33 ■ Leon Trotsky 242–45 ensued, and in the area of Ukraine complained that the individual During the collectivization of known as the “breadbasket” peasant economy “generated farming, propaganda posters urged because of its rich farmland, five capitalism,” and that as long as it farmers to till every available acre. million people starved, or were shot did, capitalism would remain a However, the forced collectivization or deported. By 1934, seven million feature of the Soviet economy. led to a disastrous drop in production. kulaks had been “eliminated.” Those who survived were now Stalin framed the mass-murder of private farming was complete, living on state farms run by of millions of individuals as the he sustained the terror, claiming government officials. “liquidation” of a class, to be carried that the old “kulak mentality” was out by “depriving them of the lingering, and continued to threaten Revolution from above productive sources of existence.” the communist state. Stalin reasoned that collectivization However, when the destruction was an essential form of class war, As the terror of Stalin’s regime forming part of a “revolution from spread, it was not only the kulaks above.” This simple conflation gave who would suffer persecution. him the justification he needed to Opponents of Stalin’s rule, real and move away from Lenin’s policy of imagined, were killed, including using persuasion to organize the every single surviving member of peasants into cooperatives. Lenin’s politburo. Lenin’s revolution Stalin began by “restricting the was transformed into Stalin’s tendencies of the kulaks,” then dictatorship, and the Bolshevik moved on to “ousting” them from party, which Lenin had seen as the countryside, and finally a “vanguard party,” inspiring “eliminating” them as an entire the masses, became a hulking, class. Lenin had warned that as institutionalized state party that long as the Soviet Union remained performed the role of the instrument surrounded by capitalist countries, of terror in Stalin’s regime. Stalin the class struggle would need to had begun his persecution with continue. Stalin quoted this often the kulaks, but by the middle of the as collectivization advanced. He 1930s, few were safe from the state terror machine. ■ Joseph Stalin Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb the revolution of 1917, he had Besarionis dze Jughashvili in the become a leading figure in the village of Gori, Georgia. He was Bolshevik party. Stalin’s ruthless educated at the local church actions in the subsequent civil school, and later expelled from war were an early warning of Tiflis Theological Seminary, where the terrors that would come he had become a Marxist. As a when he succeeded Lenin as the young man, he was a noted poet. leader of the Soviet Union. He had a troubled private life, and Stalin’s political career took both his first son and second off in 1907 when he attended the wife committed suicide. 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in London Key works with Lenin. Active in the political underground, he was exiled to 1924 The Principles of Leninism Siberia several times, and in 1913, 1938 Dialectical and Historical he adopted the name Stalin from Materialism the Russian word stal (“steel”). By

242 IN CONTEXT IF THE END JUSTIFIES IDEOLOGY THE MEANS, WHAT Communism JUSTIFIES THE END? FOCUS LEON TROTSKY (1879–1940) Permanent revolution BEFORE 360 BCE Plato describes an ideal state in the Republic. 1794 French writer Francois Noel Babeuf proposes a communistic society with no private property and a guaranteed livelihood for all. AFTER 1932 President Roosevelt promises the American people a New Deal, initiating an era of government intervention and regulation of the economy. 2007 Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez declares himself to be a Trotskyist. 2012 Russian punk band Pussy Riot denounce Vladimir Putin’s “totalitarian system.” T hroughout his career, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky always sought to promote what he saw as a truly Marxist position. He worked closely with Vladimir Lenin to translate Karl Marx’s theories into practice as the two men led the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. According to Marx’s theory, the revolution was to be followed by a “dictatorship of the proletariat” as workers took control of the means of production. However, following Lenin’s death in 1924, Joseph Stalin’s absolutist bureaucracy soon crushed any hope of such a mass movement, imposing a dictatorship of one man instead.

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 243 See also: Karl Marx 188–93 ■ Vladimir Lenin 226–33 ■ Joseph Stalin 240–41 ■ Mao Zedong 260–65 If the end justifies the means, parties across the world. Within the what justifies the end? Soviet Union itself, Stalin’s doctrine of “Socialism in One Country” The end is itself Any end is justified if it is removed the wider aspiration for an a means to itself a means to achieve the international workers’ revolution. another end. increasing power of man over nature and the abolition of Dissidents were vilified as the power of man over man. Trotskyists and expelled from party ranks. When his Left Opposition faction against Stalin failed, Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled from the Soviet Union. By 1937, Stalin had jailed or killed all of the so-called Trotskyists of the Left Opposition, and Trotsky himself was in Mexico, hiding from assassins. Only actions that ultimately Against morality advance this end are “moral.” Many on the left reacted to Stalin’s excesses by moving to the Trotsky had hoped to safeguard followers have since argued that right and rejecting revolutionary the advances he believed had been this failure to achieve a critical Marxism, taking up what Trotsky made in the revolution through a mass of support internationally described as “moralistic” positions strategy of “permanent revolution,” was the reason that the Soviet that emphasized universal which would be guaranteed by the Union fell into Stalin’s hands. values. The suggestion was ongoing support of an international that Bolshevism—the centralist working class. Marx had warned Communism under Stalin system of Lenin and Trotsky— that socialism in one place could Within four years of Lenin’s death, had allowed the crimes of Stalin. not hope to succeed in isolation the inner party democracy and the from the global proletariat, stating soviet democratic system—the In Their Morals and Ours, that revolution must continue “until cornerstone of Bolshevism—had Trotsky describes this claim all the more or less propertied been dismantled within communist as a reactionary spasm of class classes have been driven from their conflict disguised as morality. ruling positions…not only in one One of the main criticisms leveled country but in all the leading at Bolshevism was that Lenin’s ❯❯ countries of the world.” Lenin had insisted that the socialist revolution in Russia could triumph only if supported by workers’ movements in one or several other economically advanced countries. Trotsky’s Stalin, Lenin, and Trotsky were all leading figures in the Bolshevik Revolution. After Lenin died, Stalin took power and Trotsky was a marked man.

244 LEON TROTSKY The Allies’ firebombing of Dresden, For Trotsky, there is no such thing Root out the counter- Germany, in World War II illustrated as morality if it is conceived as a revolutionaries without Trotsky’s contention that liberal set of eternal values that are not mercy, lock up suspicious capitalist governments will break their derived from sensory or material characters in concentration own rules of morality during wartime. evidence. Hence, any behavior camps. Shirkers will be shot, that is not motivated by the regardless of past service. belief that “the end justifies the existing social conditions or means” had led directly to the class conflict is illegitimate and Leon Trotsky “amorality” of treachery, brutality, inauthentic. Abstract moral and mass murder. To these critics, concepts that are not based on created a “new aristocracy.” morality protected against such empirical evidence are simply tools Trotsky saw the crimes of Stalin atrocities. Trotsky considered that, used by ruling-class institutions as the consequence of the most whether intended or not, this was to suppress the class struggle. brutal class struggle of all—that of simply a defense of capitalism, The ruling class imposes “moral” “the new aristocracy against the since he believed that capitalism obligations on society that its masses that raised it to power.” could not exist “through force alone. members do not observe He was scathing of self-declared It needs the cement of morality.” themselves and that serve Marxists who linked Bolshevism to perpetuate their power. with Stalinism by stressing the We must rid ourselves immorality of both. In Trotsky’s once and for all of the Trotsky gives the morality of war eyes, he and his followers had Quaker-Papist babble about as an example: “The most ‘humane’ opposed Stalin from the beginning, the sanctity of human life. governments, which in peaceful while his critics had only arrived times ‘detest’ war, proclaim during at their position after Stalin’s Leon Trotsky war that the highest duty of their atrocities had come to light. armies is the extermination of the greatest possible number of Critics of Marxism often claim people.” The insistence on the that the idea that “the end justifies prescribed behavioral norms of the means” is used to justify acts religion and philosophy was also of murder and barbarism, as well a tool of class deception. For as the deception of the masses, Trotsky, to expose this deceit purportedly for their own benefit. was the revolutionary’s first duty. Trotsky insisted that this was a misunderstanding, stating that The new aristocracy “the end justifies the means” Trotsky was keen to show simply signifies that there is that the centralizing tendencies an acceptable way to do a right of Bolshevism were not the “means” thing. For example, if it is whose “end” was Stalinism. Such permissible to eat fish then it is centralization was necessary to right to kill and cook them. The defeat the Bolsheviks’ enemies, but moral justification of any action its end was always intended to be must be linked to its “end” in this a decentralized dictatorship of the way. Killing a mad dog that is proletariat, ruling through the system of Soviets. For Trotsky, Stalinism was an “immense bureaucratic reaction” against what he saw as the advances of the 1917 revolution. Stalinism reinstated the worst of absolutist entitlements, “regenerating the fetishism of power” beyond the dreams even of the tsars; it had

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 245 threatening a child is a virtue, and false. Harry Haywood, an Leon Trotsky but killing a dog gratuitously, or African-American Marxist-Leninist perversely for no “end,” is a crime. who was in the Soviet Union during Lev Davidovich Bronshtein the 1920s and 30s, believed that was born in 1879 in the small The ultimate end “Trotsky was doomed to defeat village of Yanovka in what is So what is the answer to the because his ideas were incorrect now Ukraine. Schooled in question “what may we, and what and failed to conform to objective cosmopolitan Odessa, he was may we not do”? What end justifies conditions, as well as the needs involved in revolutionary the means needed to achieve it? and interests of the Soviet people.” activities and took up Marxism For Trotsky, the end is justified if it During the Russian Civil War of after initially opposing it. He “leads to the increasing power of 1917–22, Trotsky had centralized was arrested, imprisoned, man over nature and to the command structures in what was and exiled to Siberia by the abolition of the power of man over known as “War Communism.” This time he was just 18. man.” In other words, the end can centralizing tendency has been itself be seen as a means to this criticized by disillusioned former In Siberia, he took his ultimate end. But did Trotsky mean followers as closed to critical prison guard’s name, Trotsky, that the liberation of the working reflection, convinced of the and escaped to London where classes was an end for which any absolute rightness of its own he met and worked with Lenin destructiveness was permissible? analysis, and allowing no dissent. on the revolutionary journal He will only consider this question In addition, such structures Iskra. In 1905, he returned to in relation to the class struggle, necessarily restrict power to a Russia to support the thinking it a meaningless small group of leaders, since they revolution. Arrested and sent abstraction to do otherwise. Thus, are too demanding of workers’ time back to Siberia, his bravery the only meaningful good is that and effort for a wide-based system earned him popularity. He which unites the revolutionary of mass participation to develop. escaped from Siberia again, proletariat, strengthening it as a Writing in the 1940s, US Marxist joining Lenin in the successful class for the ongoing struggle. Paul Mattick asserted that the revolution of 1917. He led the Russian Revolution had itself been Red Army during the Russian Trotsky’s reasoning has been as totalitarian as Stalinism, and Civil War and held other key seen by some notable Marxists as that the legacy of Bolshevism, posts, but after Lenin’s death, dangerous, counter-revolutionary, Leninism, and Trotskyism served he was forced out of power by “as a mere ideology to justify the Stalin and into exile. He was Slaughter on a grand scale was rise of modified capitalist (state- assassinated on Stalin’s orders perpetrated by Trotsky’s Red Army in capitalist) systems… controlled by by Ramón Mercader in Mexico the Russian Civil War, leading critics to way of an authoritarian state.” ■ City in 1940. compare Bolshevism to Stalin’s purges. Key works 1937 The Stalin School of Falsification 1938 Their Morals and Ours

246 WE WILL UNITE MEXICANS BY GIVING GUARANTEES TO THE PEASANT AND THE BUSINESSMAN EMILIANO ZAPATA (1879–1919) IN CONTEXT T he struggle for land and The troops who fought for Zapata in social rights lay at the core the Mexican Revolution were mostly IDEOLOGY of the Mexican Revolution indigenous peasants, and included Anarchy between 1910 and 1920. A peasant all-female divisions. by birth, Emiliano Zapata was a FOCUS key figure in the revolutionary of the hacendados, and the transfer Land reform movement, leading forces in the of property rights to towns and south. He aimed to resolve the individual citizens. BEFORE conflict through a mixture of rights, 1876 Porfirio Díaz takes guarantees, and armed struggle. Like most of the leaders in the power in Mexico, reinforcing revolution, Zapata was killed before inequalities in social status Zapata’s ideas chimed with the end of the conflict. Although and land ownership. much of the Mexican anarchist land reform was enacted in the tradition and its core principle of 1920s, huge inequalities persisted. 1878 In Russia, a revolutionary communal land ownership, which Yet Zapata’s ideas left an enduring party adopts the name “Land was based on indigenous traditions. legacy in Mexico, and inspired the and Liberty”—the same slogan To ensure Mexico’s political and recent Zapatista movement among will be used by the Zapatistas economic development, Zapata indigenous peasants in Chiapas, in the 1990s. wanted to break the monopoly of the which has created a quasi- hacendados, or plantation owners, autonomous state in the south. ■ AFTER and unite the country—peasants 1920 A degree of land reform and businessmen alike—behind is granted in the south of an agenda of government reform. Mexico as the revolution Harnessing the nation’s resources comes to an end. of labor and production would also secure its independence on 1994 The Zapatista Army the international stage. of National Liberation begins an armed uprising in the Zapata’s vision was crystallized southern state of Chiapas, in in his 1911 Plan of Ayala. This protest against the Mexican blueprint for reform demanded free government’s mistreatment elections, an end to the dominance of indigenous people. See also: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon 183 ■ Peter Kropotkin 206 ■ Antonio Gramsci 259 ■ José Carlos Mariátegui 338

THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 247 WAR IS A RACKET SMEDLEY D. BUTLER (1881–1940) IN CONTEXT I ndustrialization in the Western in Central America. Drawing on his world has radically altered the own experiences, especially during IDEOLOGY nature of both trade and the “Banana Wars,” Butler felt that Non-interventionism warfare. The relationship between much of his military career had economic interests and foreign served to secure US business FOCUS affairs has raised questions about interests overseas, with him War profiteering the motives and benefits of armed acting as “a racketeer, a gangster conflict, leading many people, for capitalism.” BEFORE including Smedley D. Butler, to 1898–1934 The “Banana highlight the role of the military Redefining a just war Wars” in Central America and in driving foreign policy. Concerned that the main benefits the Caribbean aim to protect of military action were the profits US business interests, notably Butler was a highly decorated made by industrialists through for the United Fruit Company. US Marine Corps general who securing foreign sites for trade and served for 34 years in numerous investment, Butler suggested 1904 The US government overseas campaigns, particularly limiting the justification for war funds the new Panama Canal to self-defense and the protection and declares sovereignty over War is conducted for the of civil rights. the Panama Canal Zone. benefit of the very few, at the On retiring from the Marines, AFTER expense of the very many. Butler voiced his concerns in a 1934 President Franklin D. Smedley D. Butler series of talks, and in War is a Roosevelt institutes the Good Racket, published in 1935, he set Neighbor Policy, limiting US out his agenda for limiting the intervention in Latin America. profitability of war and restricting governments’ capacity to engage 1981 Contra rebels backed by in offensive action overseas. the US oppose the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Although Butler’s impact at the time was limited, his views on war 2003 The US-led invasion of profiteering and US foreign policy Iraq leads to the granting of have remained influential. ■ concessions to US businesses. See also: José Martí 204–05 ■ Hannah Arendt 282–83 ■ Noam Chomsky 314–15

248 SOVEREIGNTY IS NOT GIVEN, IT IS TAKEN MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATÜRK (1881–1938) IN CONTEXT A state must have the unconditional power IDEOLOGY Nationalism to govern itself. FOCUS This can only be This sovereignty Representative democracy achieved through must be won by democratic self-rule, or force, rather than by BEFORE “the sovereignty of debate or other means. 1453 Mehmed II attacks Constantinople, and the city the people.” becomes the capital of the growing Ottoman empire. Sovereignty is not given, it is taken. 1908 The Young Turk Revolution reestablishes the F ollowing the Ottoman caliphate army of the Ottoman parliament, which the sultan empire’s defeat in World sultan and the occupying forces had suspended in 1878. War I, the 1920 Treaty of that were supporting it. The war for Sèvres dispossessed it of its Arab Turkish independence had begun. 1918 The Ottoman empire is provinces, set up an independent defeated in World War I. Armenia, made the Kurds self With the help of Russian governing, and put Greece in Bolshevik weapons and money, AFTER control of western parts of Turkey. Atatürk defeated the foreign 1952 Turkey joins NATO and A rebel Turkish army, under the occupiers, and the sultan fled to aligns itself with the West in command of Mustafa Kemal Malta on a British battleship. Just the Cold War. Atatürk, rose up to challenge the three years after the Treaty of Sèvres, the Treaty of Lausanne 1987 Turkey applies for full membership of the European Economic Community. 2011 Turkey’s top military command resigns, ceding political control to the prime minister for the first time.