Political Ideologies Essay Research Paper The Industrial

Political Ideologies Essay, Research Paper

The Industrial Revolution marked the final and most predominate decline of Feudalism and Mercantilism in favor new political ideologies. In this politically and economically turbulent times, revolutions sprouted all over the colonized world against the institutions of the ‘old regime’. In Britain, The political stand points of Liberalism and Socialism (and the many sub-divisions thereof) developed and became practiced, while The Communist Manifesto was scribed in an underground club in London. In France, Conservatism became a largely practiced counterpart to the growing extremist Liberalism French Revolution

This large flux of ideas in the Industrial Revolution period was dubbed as the age of ideologies or “isms” by historians. The majority of these systems of thought attempted to describe a way in which an ideal (utopian) society would be created and maintained. This idealistic thought laid the foundation for the many revolutions around Europe and it’s various colonies.

In France, during it’s long and violent revolution against the then current Monarch, change was not welcomed by all people. Some believed that society was a natural hierarchical system where some were more qualified to lead then others. The part of society in France that was believed to be the natural political leaders was the wealthy upper class and the Clergy. This system of Conservatism supported the old system that had apparently worked for centuries. The violent overthrowing of a King, supposedly placed there by the will of God, seemed sacrilegious. The ideas of Individual equality seemed absurd to these supporters of the old regime. They saw the violence of the revolution as proof that no one could regulate equality. If change was to happen, the Conservatives thought it should be through a slow and evolutionary process.

The Revolutionary actions in France seemed not to dethrone a corrupt system, but unleash a violent reign of terror on the populace of France, further supporting the believes of Conservatism. To the Conservatives, The revolutionaries did not have the answers to the problems facing France and had no other plans but to keep themselves in power.

One such Conservative was Edmund Burke, an English man of state and author of ‘Reflections on The Revolution in France’ (1790), an indictment of the French revolutionary movement. In this writing, Burke commentated that the problem with the French Revolution was that it’s leaders had made promised that were impossible to keep. To an end, the revolutionary leaders offered little more then slogans. The revolutionaries’ own Constitution and Rights were ignored almost instantly after there installation in favor of self-interest. Also, the slogans and ideas the revolutionaries offered seemed to Burke redundant and unclear. No one could explain the “General Will” or “Total Equality” to a sound and specific reasoning.

In Burke’s opinion, The ideology sent out by the extremists was impractical at best. The idea that the goal of the individual and the aims of society coincide was preposterous. To Burke and all of the Conservatists in France, the stability in political power was with the knowledgeable upper class Nobles and the Clergy.

In 1848, in an underground meeting of German political refugees called the Young Communist League, The Communist Manifesto was written by Carl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In this document, a system of individual equality and public ownership was outlined. The general will of people was favored as a political leader as opposed to the will of one man. The ideology of Communism was that everyone within a society worked as hard as possible and receive as much as they needed. This was the final stage of civilization in Marx’s analysis of society. He observed that periods of political entities were broken by periods of strife. In each conflict, two classes of society clashed and the dominate class emerged. This emergence brought forth a new political structure, slightly advanced then the one before it. Marx predicted the final clash before a utopian society would be between the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie. In this conflict, the Proletariat would emerge victorious and thus creating a classless and econmically equal society.

What Marx did not realize was that not all workers wanted the same goal in life and that the natural human tendencies of greed and lust went against his “inevitable law of history”. The influence of Communism was basically not felt in Britain, France or the Americas during the Industrial Revolution. The Communist ideology made it’s way back to Germany, the country it was originally created for, and a more right-winged formed of Socialism emerged from the German revolution. The apithamy of Communist influence was in Russia. It was there that Engels’ revised editions of Marx’s The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital laid the groundwork for the Bolshevik revolution more then a decade after Marx’s death. The created revolution was successful in overthrowing the Tzar and creating the centralized control of the USSR. This event being the one of history’s few examples of Communism at work, the USSR fell and it’s centralized state collapsed nearly a hundred years later, perhaps showing that Communism is no more immune to human error and greed then Capitalism and Liberalism.

Communism is the most extremist, le