Liberalism and Conservatism

Century Europe

• Suppressed revolutions (especially 1848)
• Two party system
• Romanticism
• Industrial

revolution

Consequences of

Industrial Revolution

• Urbanization and working

poor

• Poor working conditions

– Child labor laws
– Labor unions

• Economic swings
• Skilled artisans lost jobs
• Division of labor by sex

Class Consciousness

• Owners –

capitalists

• Non-landed middle class and

white collar workers –

bourgeoisie

• Factory and

trade
workers—

proletariat

Conservatism

• Reactionaries

(Put it

back the way it was)

• Revolution of 1848

– Successful

revolutions in all
European countries

– Monarchies returned

after 6 months in all
countries

• Tories/conservatives

Liberalism

• Favored changing social

conditions

• Whigs

• Edmund Burke

– Opposite view of Nationalism
– Supported American Revolution

but decried the French Revolution

– Law of unintended consequences

• Example: Prussia forced to take over

the Ruhr Valley which, unknowingly,
has the coal reserves to allow Prussia
to conquer the rest of Germany

Liberalism

• Poets/novelists

• Natural life superior

(noble savage)

• Aimed at complacent

middle class

– Charles Dickens

• Social conditions

– Honorè de Balzac

• Stupid middle class

– Jane Austen

• Against classes

– The Bronte sisters

• Against male domination

Utilitarianism

• Jeremy Bentham/John

Stuart Mill (On Liberty)

– Greatest happiness for

greater population

– Epicurean

• Science and technology

should be used to solve
society’s problems

• Advocated activist

governments

"Bentham's advice was articulated in what he

called 'the calculus of felicity.' According to it,

there are seven categories into which pleasure

can be catalogued, and this catalogue provides a

rational analysis of pleasure. The seven

categories are:

Intensity – how intense?
Duration – how long?
Certainty – how sure?
Propinquity – how soon?
Fecundity – how many more?
Purity – how free from pain?
Extent – how many people are affected?"

–

Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA:

Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 309.

Utilitarianism

• Problems:

– How do you know the long-term effects?
– Who is to decide?

• Leaders?
• Surveys?
• Supreme Court?
• Press?

– Is happiness the objective of this life?

• Animals seek pleasure and flee from pain

– What is God's objective for us in this life?

"In obedience there is joy and peace

unspotted, unalloyed; and as God has

designed our happiness He never has

– He never will – institute an ordinance

or give a commandment to His people

that is not calculated in its nature to

promote that happiness which He has

designed, and which will not end in

the greatest amount of good and glory

to those who become the recipients of

his laws and ordinances."

– Joseph Smith

Economists

• Thomas Malthus

– Population growth will

decline through war
and/or famine as the
population becomes
uncontrollably large

• Rockefeller Foundation
• But: The most

powerful countries
have large populations

“Since 1798, when Thomas Malthus published his

famous Essay on the Principle of Population, it

has been commonly assumed that violent

conflicts must increase in frequency and intensity

as human populations grow in size and density.

Cross-cultural comparisons, however, do not

support this proposition...Groups with densities of

less than one person per square mile are just as

likely to engage in warfare each year as groups

whose densities are hundreds of times higher

....Homicide rates also bear no obvious

relationship to the density of humans...In the

broadest view, the frequency of warfare and

violence is simply not a consequence of human

density or crowding."

– Lawrence H. Keeley from War Before Civilization

"Malthus was correct in his analysis,
as far as it went, but he forgot to
consider one important difference
between humankind and bacteria or,
for that matter, between humankind
and any other animal. We evolve
and adjust to the environment mainly
through external means, and at a
very rapid rate. We innovate, and
Malthus failed to consider this.“

–

Alcorn, Paul A., Social Issues in Technology, 3rd

Edition, p.101

Communist Manifesto

Basic Premises

1.History of world is driven by class struggles

2.One class always exploits others

3.The Middle Class (bourgeoisie) triumphed
over the upper class in the 18th Century

4.The Worker Class (proletariat) will triumph
over the Middle Class

Das Kapital

Basic Premises

1.The value of a product is the amount of labor to produce it.

2.The fair wage for a worker is the value of his work (the value
of the product).

3.In capitalism, the owner must sell the product for more than
the worker is paid (profit).

4.The capitalist increases profits by increasing selling price or
reducing wages.

5.The lowest possible wage is the subsistence level and this is
the level paid (because of a surplus of labor)

6.Surplus labor is maintained by replacing workers with
machines

Capitalism Inconsistencies

1.Competition leads to expansion which hires more workers
and then leads to machines on which additional profits
cannot be gained.

2.Concentration of economic power occurs because bigger
takes over smaller.

3.Economic depressions from excess labor and ruined
companies.

4.Army of unemployed seeks change but capitalism can't
change

5.Rebellion and victory by the workers which capitalism
cannot stop.

Marx's Plan for Change

1.Abolition of private property

2.Heavy graduated income tax

3.Abolition of inheritance rights

4.Confiscation of emigrant and rebel property

5.Centralization of credit in state hands

6.Centralization of communication and transportation in state hands

7.Extension of state control of factories

8.Obligation of all to work

9.Combination of agriculture and manufacturing

10.Free education for all children and abolition of child labor

"Famines have occurred in ancient

kingdoms and contemporary authoritarian

societies, in primitive tribal communities

and in modern technocratic dictatorships,

in colonial economies run by imperialists

from the north and in newly independent

countries of the south run by despotic

national leaders or by intolerant single

parties. But they have never materialized

in any country that is independent, that

goes to elections regularly, that has

opposition parties to voice criticisms and

that permits newspapers to report freely

and question the wisdom of government

policies without extensive censorship."

–

Sen, Amartya, Development as Freedom, Anchor Books,

1999, p.152-153.

Marx Problems

1.Ignores imagination and entrepreneurship

2.Ignores technological improvements

3.Attacks natural self-interest

4.Leads to stagnation

5.Ignores human education, experience, talents and
work differences

6.Assumes that capitalism/government policy will not
adjust

“In 1738, the Papers of the Imperial
Academy of Sciences in St.
Petersburg carried an essay with this
central theme: ‘The value of an item
must not be based on its price, but
rather on the utility that it yields.’”

–

Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods, 1996, 99

“His [Jeremy Bentham] major work, The Principles

of Morals and Legislation, published in 1789, was

fully in the spirit of the Enlightenment: ‘Nature

has placed mankind under the governance of two

sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for

them alone to point out what we ought to do, as

well as to determine what we shall do....The

principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and

assumes it for the foundation of that system, the

object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by

the hands of reason and law.’ Bentham then

explains what he means by utility: ‘...that

property in any object whereby it tends to

produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or

happiness...when the tendency it has to augment

the happiness of the community is greater than

any it has to diminish it.”

– Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods, 1996, 189

"For Kant, the act's moral worth is not

determined by its results, but by its
intention."

– Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA:

Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 329.

"Remember that, for Marx, religion is 'the

sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart

of a heartless world,... the spirit of an

unspiritual situation. It is the opium of the

people.' This is hardly an absolute

indictment of religion. Usually that last

line is quoted in isolation from its context,

in which case one thinks of opium as a

soporific that lulls one into a grinning,

drooling, undignified stupor. But Marx had

in mind opium's medicinal powers. It kills

the pain."

– Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA:

Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 211.

"Society was not merely the totality of

individuals; rather, it was an organic whole

that in certain ways created the individual.

Therefore for Marx, there could be no

question of individual rights that somehow

superseded social rights. Everything that

an individual does is a result of the efforts

of many people, living and dead. Hence,

all products were in that sense social

products and belonged to society."

–

Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA:

Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 409.

"It [forced labor] is not the satisfaction of a

need, but only a means for satisfying other

needs. Its alien character is clearly shown

by the fact that as soon as there is no

physical or other compulsion it is avoided

like the plague. External labor, labor in

which man alienates himself, is a labor of

self-sacrifice, of mortification. Finally the

external character of work for the worker

is shown by the fact that it is not his own

work but work for someone else, that in

work he does not belong to himself but to

another person."

–

Palmer, Donald, Does the Center Hold?, Mountain View, CA:

Mayfield Publishing Company, 1991, p. 412.m

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