Liberalism and Conservatism

1
Liberalism and Conservatism
2
19th Century Europe

• Suppressed revolutions (especially 1848)
• Two party system

• Romanticism
• Industrial revolution

3
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

4
Class Consciousness

• Owners capitalists
• Non-landed middle class and white collar workers
  bourgeoisie

• Factory and trade workersproletariat

5
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

6
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

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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

8
Utilitarianism

• Jeremy Bentham/John Stuart Mill (On Liberty)
• Greatest happiness for greater population
• Epicurean
• Science and technology should be used to solve
  societys problems
• Advocated activist governments

9

• "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.

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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?

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• "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

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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

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• 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

14

• "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.

15
Karl Marx

• Born in Germany
• Radical movements
• Communist Manifesto
• Das Kapital

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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
17
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.
18
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.
19
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
20

• "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.

21
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
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Thank You
23
Liberalism and Conservatism
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• People demand freedom of speech to make up for
  the freedom of thought which they avoid.
• Soren Aabye Kierkeggard

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• 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

26

• 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

27
Utilitarianism

• Thomas Carlyle

• John Stuart Mill

28

• "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.

29

• "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.

30

• "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.

31

• "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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• Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them.
• Samuel Palmer