POL 315 MODULE 1
number of people enjoying sumptuous lives while the vast majority of
people toiled and lived in inhumane conditions. Workers left their poor,
but relatively, wholesome lives in the countryside only to find
themselves confronted by the humiliation of depersonalised sweatshops
surrounded by utterly squalid urban slums.
Secondly, with the 1815 defeat of Napoleon, Europe's monarchs, hoping
to preserve their antiquated privileges, inflicted on their subjects the
most repressive political conditions experienced up to that time.
Attempting to reassemble Humpty Dumpty, they tried to return Europe
to its pre-Napoleonic status and restored the ancient regimes, ignoring
the goals of the French Revolution. Thirdly, previous advances in
science fostered in the nineteenth century's intellectual elite an
exaggerated confidence that science would lead to the solution of all
human problems. Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) and Charles Darwin
(1809-1882) had developed explanations of the laws governing the
physical universe and biological development, thus giving rational
explanations for things that previously could be explained only by
fables, myths, and fairy tales.
Reveling in this liberation from the darkness of irrationalism, many
nineteenth-century thinkers, including Jeremy Bentham, Herbert
Spencer, Auguste Comte, and Sigmund Freud, sought to discover the
laws governing human behavior, and to use that knowledge to improve
political and social conditions. Karl Marx, chafing under the heavy heel
of monarchical oppression, and bitterly offended by the greed and
exploitation he saw in capitalism, became a leading figure among these
"social scientists." Wretched as the social and political conditions had
become, Marx was still optimistic about the future of humanity.
Marx and Engels saw people in historical terms. Individuals, they
believed, were destined for freedom and creativity but had been
prevented from developing completely because they were slaves to their
own basic needs. Before the industrial Revolution, human productivity
had not been great enough to provide a sufficient supply of the
necessities of life to free people from compulsive toil.
For the Marxists the most common and durable source of factions
(political adversaries) has been the various and unequal distribution of
property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever
formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors and those
who are debtors, fall under similar discrimination. A landed interest, a
manufacturing interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests,
grow up of necessity in civilised nations, and divided them into different
classes, actuated by different sentiments and views.
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