Utopianism - Essay Example

Question The years between 1815-1830 saw the rise of a number of related and competing ideologies, each holding a powerful influence in their own time, often merging into each other or giving rise to other similar ideologies. Nationalism was the most powerful ideology in this period. The political condition of France and Great Britain gave the impression of strong nation-states to the rest of Europe which had inspired intrigue and even jealousy throughout the rest of Europe. This bred a desire to unify among the other nations. German intellectuals living in (and hating) the loosely organized Bund provided much of the vocabulary for nationalism, stating that each nation had a particular Volksgeist, or national spirit. They strongly advocated a fierce wave of patriotism. Soon, almost every European language group wanted to have their own nation. Quickly outlawed by reactionary forces, nationalist groups formed secret societies such as the Italian Carbonari and German Buschenschaft. These societies distributed propaganda leaflets and plotted rebellions which later formed a very important part of literature. Often, nationalism combined with other ideological issues, from liberalism to socialism. A natural outcome of Nationalism was Radicalism. Radicalism appeared almost simultaneously in the 1820s in England as the "Philosophical Radicals". They were a principled and unconventional group and consisted partially of workers and partially of industrialists. Their greatest leader was Jeremy Bentham. The Radicals were against the church and anti-monarchy. They were generally opposed to traditional ways. They were a force by themselves until 1832, after which they merged with the British Liberals. The European counterpart to Radicalism was usually referred to as Republicanism, which grew out of the French Revolutionary tradition. Republicanism sought complete political equality in the form of universal suffrage. Republicanism also opposed monarchy and the Catholic Church. Congress System  was the term used to the Reactionary method for maintaining political control. Prince Metternich of Austria was a Reactionary who desperately tried to turn back the hands of the clock of History. He tried in vain to ensure the old order prevailed and to prevent its breakup he called a series of congresses between conservative leaders during the years from 1815 and 1848. These congresses included the Congress of Vienna, the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, the Congress of Troppau, and the Congress of Verona. Prince Metternich however failed to realize that History can never be turned back and it would be better to flow with the tide of time. The most important weakness of the Congress System was that it turned a blind eye to the growing tidal wave of new ideologies. This system completely ignored the real sentiment of the people who felt completely oppressed by the Church and the Monarchy. It would only be a matter of time before the old order would be washed away by the New Order and its rising ideologies. Question 2 - Socialism, which sought economic equality for all, was very much against the Laissez Faire ideal of liberalism. Socialism was born at a time when free-market economies of Western Europe were the order of the age in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. At that time exploited workers were leading miserable existences while manufacturers made enormous profits. Socialists felt that while the rich made more than adequate profits, the poor should be given some of the benefits. After all, according to Socialism it was the labour and incessant toil of the workers that provided the very back bone of the entire system. Socialists wanted to nationalization of parts of the economy, such as industrial and financial sectors. They wanted these areas of the economy directly under government control. According to them it was only by this means that the benefits could be distributed more equally to the various members of society. Robert Owen, a manufacturer in Manchester, appalled at the living conditions of his worker began paying higher wages than other manufacturers did at that time. He treated his workers well, and even gave them advice against drinking and other vices. He advised them on better living in improved conditions. Owen did fairly well in business despite giving his workers a higher than ordinary wage. Owen wanted to continue this reform. Since the pace of change was rather slow in Britain, in 1825, he founded New Harmony, Indiana, an experimental socialist community in the United States. The socialist experiments of Owen (New Harmony, Indiana) and Fourier (his "phalansteries") in the United States were too marginal to have very much effect on events in Europe. Isolated and comprised of very committed socialists, these socialist experiments ended up, essentially, as dead ends. However, socialism itself helped give rise to one of the most powerful ideological forces of the twentieth century. Some German exiles in France, especially Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, combined the socialist ideas of Owen, Fourier, and Saint-Simon with Republicanism in the 1840s to give rise to "Communism", an ideology aimed against the power of the liberal bourgeoisie. The Enlightenment is usually associated with France and especially its philosophers of the 18th century like Rousseau and Voltaire. It actually began about a century earlier with figures like Descartes and Spinoza, and first coalesced in England around figures like Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton. The new thinking however spread quickly affecting every thinker in Europe and indeed the whole world.The Enlightenment was, a genuinely international phenomenon with a political and ideological dynamic whose core values derived from the burgeoning liberalism of the 17th century. Along with other ideologies which took shape at that time Utopian Socialism was also an outgrowth of Enlightenment. Utopian socialism is a term used to define the first waves of modern socialist thoughts. The term is most often applied to those utopian socialists who lived in the first quarter of the 19th century. From the mid-19th century onwards, the other branches of socialism overtook the utopian version in terms of intellectual development and number of supporters. Utopian socialists were important in the formation of modern movements for intentional community and cooperatives. The term "utopian socialism" was introduced by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (in The Communist Manifesto) The ambiguity at the heart of the concept of Utopia was evident in the text that inaugurated the modern tradition of envisaging ideal societies, Thomas Mores Utopia (1516). For More, Utopia was both "no-place" and "good place." Utopia was the good place that nowhere existed, but it was also the good place that can never exist. Utopia was both a real critical ideal and a wildly impossible fantasy. To be "utopian" was either to be a radical visionary or a romantic naif. The ambiguousness of the term Utopia has long affected thinking about the socialist tradition, and its foremost "utopian" version, Marxism. Marx and Engels differed from the utopian socialists not in terms of their visionary goals, but on the basis of theoretical paradigms about how such goals might be achieved. The socialists were "utopian". In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels points out that early socialists were Enlightenment rationalists who sought not "to emancipate a particular class, but all humanity at once." Question 3 George Sand was a remarkable author far ahead of her own times. She was a complete woman with an incredible personality. She earned as much notoriety for her Bohemian lifestyle as for her written work. Born as Aurore Dupin, she was the most famous woman writer in 19th- century France. A prolific and iconoclastic author of novels, stories, plays, essays, and memoirs, she represented the epitome of French romantic idealism. She demanded for women the freedom in living that was a matter of course to the men of her day. Georges first independent novel, Indiana, the story of an unhappy wife who struggles to free herself from the imprisonment of marriage (explicitly called a form of slavery), made her an overnight celebrity. Subsequent novels, such as Valentine and Lélia, astounded readers with their frank exploration of womens sexual feelings and their passionate call for womens freedom to find emotional satisfaction. In the eyes of many critics, Georges masterpiece is her autobiography. She was a French Romantic writer. Almost al of her writing is inspired by Romanticism, Liberalism and the other thoughts of Enlightenemt which had shaken the very roots of European society. Widespread critical attention accompanied the publication of most of Sands novels from INDIANA (1832), a story of a naive woman, starved for love and adoration, abused by her much older husband and deceived by a selfish seducer. Sands works influenced among others Fedor Dostoevskii, Lev Tolstoi, Gustave Flaubert, and Marcel Proust. In 1842, the English critic George Henry Lewes wrote that Sand was the most remarkable writer of the present century. Perhaps Sand got involved with so many men of her times essentially to reconcile the necessity of pleasing a dominant male reading public with her own integrity as a woman whose ultimate goal was subversion of gender norms. In her early works Sands writings show the influence of the writers with whom she was associated. In the 1830s several artists responded to the call of the Comte de Saint-Simon of cure the evils of the new industrial society, and Sand was one of them. From the 1840s Sand found her own voice in novels, which had roots in her childhoods peasant milieu. For the rest of her life, Sand was committed to ideal of Socialism. When the 1848 revolution in France failed, Sand was extremely disappointed. Sand spend the rest of her life writing and travelling. "Work is not mans punishment. It is his reward and his strength, his glory and his pleasure." During her career she played an important, although underestimated, role in the evolution of the novel. Her books were very popular but invoked incredible controversy. The French Senate recognized its opposition to the presence of Sands works in public libraries. In her novels Sand questioned the sexual identity and gender destinies in fiction. Sand herself was accused of lesbianism and nymphomania, partly because of affairs with well-known celebrities. In CONSUELO (1843) the musically gifted heroine defies the tragic destiny depicted in Madame de Staëls Corinne (1807). In her mid-life autobiography, HISTOIRE DE MA VIE (1854-55, Story of My Life), Sand displaces conventional distinctions separating male from female, fact from fiction, and public from private life. "Life in common among people who love each other is the ideal of happiness." Among Sands best works are her countryside novels LA MARE AU DIABLE (1846), in which Germain, a young widower, must choose between a rich woman and a poor girl, FRANÇOIS LE CHAMPI (1847-48), LA PETITE FADETTE (1849), and LES MAÎTRES SONNEURS (1853). HORACE (1842) was an examination of the young generation enthused by the ideals of Romanticism. She also wrote memoirs, short stories, essays and fairy tales. Sands literary reputation started to decline after her death, and in the beginning of the 20th century, her work did not attract much attention. "The world will know and understand me someday," Sand once wrote to her critics. "But if that day does not arrive, it does not greatly matter. I shall have opened the way for other women." Read More