MODERN INDUSTRY AND THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS

MODERN INDUSTRY AND
MASS POLITICS, 1870–1914
Chapter 23

Introduction
O my brother Futurists! All of you, look at yourselves! … …In the name of
that Human Pride we so adore, I proclaim that the hour is nigh when men
with broad temples and steel chins will give birth magnificently, with a single
trust of their bulging will, to giants with flawless gestures. Marinetti, Edizione futuriste
di Poesia, Milan 1915; as quoted in “Futurism”, ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents
Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 21.

Introduction
 F.T. Marinetti 1909
 Futurist Manifesto called for radical renewal of
civilization through “courage, audacity, and revolt”
 The radicalism of the early 20th century
 Second industrial revolution
 New demands in the political arena
 Socialist mobilization of industrial workers
 White suffragists demand the franchise

F.T. Marinetti: Futurism &
Fascism

What is Fascism?
 Fascism is not a single ideology but encompasses some or all of the
following elements:
 Radical, authoritarian, nationalist
 Rejuvenation of the nation based on a commitment to organic national unity of
one people based on
 Ancestry
 Culture
 Blood
 Embraces discipline, indoctrination of the young;
 Purify the nation of foreign influences that are causing degeneration
 Fascism opposes conservatives as compromising
 Fascism characterizes liberalism, socialism and communism as polluting
the national resolve and vigor
 Fascists consider their party to be a Vanguard Party
 Embracing revolution from above; strong authority under a strong national leader,
and authoritarian democracy based on most qualified
 Qualifications based on race, birthright nationalism and commitment to the cause

20th Century Technologies and
Global Transformations
 New technologies
 Steel
 Between the 1850s and 1870s, the cost of producing
steel decreased
 Steel industry dominated by Germany and the United
States

Annual Output of Steel (in Millions of Metric Tons)

Electricity
 By the 1880s, alternators and transformers produce
high-voltage alternating current
 Edison invented the incandescent filament lamp in
1879

 Chemicals
 Efficient production of alkali and sulfuric acid
 Transformed manufacture of paper, soaps, textiles, and
fertilizer
 British led the way in soaps and cleaners and in mass
marketing
 German production focused on industrial uses—
synthetic dyes and refining petroleum

New Technologies and
 The liquid-fuel internal combustion engine
 By 1914, most navies had converted from coal to
oil
 Discovering the potential for worldwide
industrialization

The Second Industrial Revolution

 Changes in scope and scale
 Technological changes created changes in scope
and scale of industry
 National mass cultures
 Changes
 Population grew constantly
 Food shortages declined
 Populations in Western Europe and North America
less susceptible to illness, lower infant mortality
 Advances in medicine, nutrition, and personal hygiene

 Changes in scope and scale
 Consumption
 Consumption as a center of economic activity and theory
 The appearance of the department store
 Modern advertising
 Credit payments
 Consumer debt = outstanding debt of consumers, as opposed to
businesses or governments.
 In macroeconomics terms: debt used to fund consumption rather than
investment; includes debts incurred on purchase of goods (cars,
refrigerators) that are consumable and/or do not appreciate.
 Some economists view consumer debt as a way to increase domestic
production, on the grounds that if credit is easily available, the increased
demand for consumer goods should cause an increase of overall
domestic production.
 Milton Freidman suggests that consumers take debt to smooth
consumption throughout their lives, borrowing to finance expenditures
(particularly housing and schooling) earlier in their lives and paying
down debt during higher-earning periods.

The Industrial Regions of Europe

 The rise of the corporation
 Economic growth and demands of mass
consumption spurred the reorganization of
capitalist institutions
 The modern corporation appeared
 Limited-liability laws
 Stockholders would only lose their share value in the
event of bankruptcy

 Size and control
 Larger corporations became necessary for survival
 Control shifted from the family to distant bankers and
financiers
 An ethos of impersonal finance capital
 Demand for technical expertise
 The white-collar class: middle-level salaried
managers, neither owners nor laborers

 Consolidation would protect industries from
cyclical fluctuations and unbridled competition
 Vertical integration
 Industries controlled every step of production
 From acquisition of raw materials to distribution of finished
goods

Population Growth in Major States between
1871 and 1911 (Population in Millions)

 Horizontal integration
 Organized into cartels
 Companies in the same industry would band together
 Fixing prices and controlling competition
 Coal, oil, and steel were particularly well adapted
 Dominant trend: increased cooperation between
government and industry
 Appearance of businessmen and financiers as
officers of state

 International economics
 Search for markets, goods, and influence fueled
imperial expansion
 Trade barriers arose to protect home markets
 An interlocking, worldwide system of
manufacturing, trade, and finance
 Near-universal adoption of the gold standard

 International economics
 Most European countries imported more than
they exported
 Relied on “invisible” exports: shipping, insurance, and
banking
 London as money market of the world
 Mass manufacturing and commodity production
changed patterns of consumption and production

20th Century Labor Politics,
Mass Movements
 Changes in the European working class
 In general, workers resented corporate power
 The “new unionism”
 Labor unions evolved into mass centralized national
organizations
 Organization across whole industries
 Brought unskilled workers into the ranks

20th Century Labor Politics,
Mass Movements
 Changes in national political structure
 Political process opened to new participants
 Efforts to expand the franchise (1860s–1870s) created
new constituencies of working-class men
 Socialist organizations abandoned their
insurrectionary radicalism and opted for reform

Labor Politics,
Mass Movements
 Karl Marx
 Published first volume of Das Kapital in 1867)
 Attacked capitalism in terms of political economy
 The Marxist appeal in the 20th century
 Provided a crucial foundation for building a democratic
mass politics
 Made powerful claims for gender equality
 The promise of a better future

Das Capital: Critique of Political
Economy (1867), by Karl Marx
 The motivating force of capitalism is the exploitation of
labor
 Unpaid work is the ultimate source of profit and
surplus value
 The employer can claim right to the profits of
employee’s labor because he owns the means of
production
 Legally protected by the State through property rights
 Producing money rather than commodities (goods and
services), the workers continually reproduce the economic
conditions by which they labor.
 "Laws of motion" of the capitalist economic system
describe the dynamics of the accumulation of capital; the
growth of wage labor, the transformation of the workplace,
the concentration of capital, commercial competition, the
banking system.

Marxist Critique of Capitalism
 Commerce, as a human activity, implies no morality
beyond that required to buy and sell goods and
services;
 Growth of the market system made discrete entities of
the economic, the moral, and the legal spheres of
human activity in society
 subjective moral value is separate from objective economic
value.
 political economy – the just distribution of wealth and
"political arithmetic" about taxes — became three discrete
fields of human activity
 Economics, Law, Ethics, Politics divorced from
morality because the use of money voided religious and
political illusions about its economic value

Labor Politics,
Mass Movements
 The spread of socialist parties—and alternatives
 Marxist socialism spread to social democratic parties
in Germany, Belgium, France, Austria, and Russia
 Disciplined, politicized workers’ organizations
 The model of all socialist parties was the German
Social Democratic Party (SPD, founded 1875)
 Strove for political change within Germany’s parliamentary
system
 Before World War I, the Social Democrats were
the best-organized workers’ party in the world
because:
 Rapid expansion of industrialization in Germany
 Large urban working class in Germany
 A new parliamentary constitution in Germany

Socialist Party Pamphlet, c. 1895

Labor Politics,
Mass Movements
 Britain
 Labour Party (1901)
 Remained moderate and committed to incremental
reform

Labor Politics,
Mass Movements
 The spread of socialist parties—and
alternatives
 Anarchism
 Opposed to centrally organized economics and politics
 Advocated small-scale, localized democracy
 Similar foundations as Marxism, but different
approaches to change
 Conspiratorial vanguard violence

The Internationale
 Arise, ye workers from your slumber,
Arise, ye prisoners of want.
For reason in revolt now thunders,
and at last ends the age of cant!
Away with all your superstitions,
Servile masses, arise, arise!
We'll change henceforth the old
tradition,
And spurn the dust to win the prize!
So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally,
And the last fight let us face.
The Internationale,
Unites the human race.
 Arise, you prisoners of starvation!
Arise, you wretched of the earth!
For justice thunders condemnation:
A better world's in birth!
No more tradition's chains shall bind
us,
Arise you slaves, no more in thrall!
The earth shall rise on new
foundations:
We have been nought, we shall be
all!
'Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place.
The international soviet
Shall be the human race
'Tis the final conflict,
Let each stand in his place.
The international working class
Shall be the human race
British Translation American Version

Labor Politics,
Mass Movements
 The spread of socialist parties—and
alternatives
 Syndicalism
 Demanded that workers share ownership and control
of the means of production
 The capitalist state must be replaced by workers’
syndicates or trade associations

Labor Politics,
Mass Movements
 The limits of success
 Socialist parties never gained full worker support
 Some workers retained loyalty to liberal traditions or
religious affiliation
 Others were excluded
 German revisionism
 Eduard Bernstein (1850–1932) called for a shift to
moderate reform

Labor Politics,
Mass Movements
 The limits of success
 German radicals
 Rosa Luxembourg (1870–1919) called for mass
strikes, hoping to ignite a proletarian revolution
 Conflict over strategy and tactics reached its
climax in the years before World War I

Demanding Equality: Suffrage and
the Women’s Movement
 Women’s rights
 By 1884, Germany, France, and Britain had
enfranchised most men
 Women relegated to status as second-class citizens
 Women pressed their interests through independent
organizations and forms of direct action
 Women’s organizations
 Votes became the symbol for women’s ability to attain
full personhood
 Middle-class women founded clubs, published
journals, organized petitions

 British women’s suffrage campaigns
 Exploded in violence
 Millicent Fawcett (1847–1929)
 National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (1897)
 Composed of sixteen different organizations
 Her movement lacked political and economic clout

 Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928)
 Founded the Women’s Social and Political Union
(1903)
 Adopted tactics of militancy and civil disobedience
 Women chained themselves to the visitor’s gallery in the
House of Commons
 Slashed paintings in museums
 The British government countered this violence with
repression

 The martyrdom of Emily Wilding Davison (1913)
 Threw herself in the path of the race horse of the
Prince of Wales to draw attention to suffrage
for women

 Redefining womanhood
 Campaign for women’s suffrage helped redefine
Victorian gender roles
 The increasing visibility of women
 Middle-class women and work
 Worked as social workers, clerks, nurses, and
teachers
 Women, politics, and reform
 Poor relief, prison reform, temperance movements,
abolition of slavery, education

 Redefining womanhood
 The “new” woman
 Demanded education and a job
 Claimed the right to be physically and intellectually
active
 Opposition
 Never exclusively male opposition
 Christian commentators criticized suffragists for moral
decay
 Others argued that feminism would dissolve the family

Liberalism and Its Discontents
 Late-nineteenth-century liberalism
 Mass politics upset the balance between middle-
class interests and traditional elites
 Trade unions, socialists, and feminists all
challenged Europe’s governing class of liberals
and elites

 France: the embattled republic
 Franco-Prussian War (1870) a humiliating defeat for
France
 The Paris Commune (1871)
 Pitted the nation against the radical city of Paris
 Paris refused to surrender to the Germans
 Government sends troops to Paris in March 1871
 Barricades and street fighting
 Twenty-five thousand were executed, killed in fighting, or
consumed in fires
Government of the Second Empire collapsed
 The Third Republic

 French anti-Semitism: a new form of radical
right-wing politics (nationalist,
antiparliamentary, and antiliberal)
 The Dreyfus Affair (1894)
 Dreyfus convicted of selling military secrets to Germany
 Sent to Devil’s Island
 The verdict was questioned and documents were
proven to be forgeries (1896)
 Dreyfus eventually freed in 1899 and cleared of all guilt
in 1906
 Republicans saw the church and army as hostile toward the
republic

 The Dreyfus Affair and anti-Semitism as
politics
 Merged three strands of anti-Semitism
 Christian anti-Semitism (Jews as Christ killers)
 Economic anti-Semitism (Rothschild as representative
of all Jews)
 Racial thinking (Jews as an inferior race)

Anti-Semitic French Cartoon with Caricature of
Jakob Rothschild, 1898

“The Ogre’s Meal,” Caricature of Edouard Drumont, Editor
of La Libre Parole, from Le Rire, 1896

“Anti-Semitic Agitation in Paris: Mathieu Dreyfus Burned
in Effigy in Montmartre (Paris).”

 Zionism: Theodor Herzl (1860–1904)
 Considered the Dreyfus Affair to be an expression
of a fundamental problem
 Jews might never be assimilated into European
culture
 Endorsed Zionism—building a separate Jewish
homeland outside Europe
 Zionism as a modern nationalist movement to
create a nation-state for Jewish citizens

 Germany’s search for imperial unity
 Three problems
 Divide between Catholics and Protestants
 Growing Social Democratic Party
 Divisive economic interests of agriculture and industry

 Germany’s search for imperial unity
 The new coalition
 Agricultural and industrial interests allied with socially
conservative Catholics
 Social Democrats depicted new enemies of the German
empire
 Bismarck passed antisocialist laws in 1878
 Workers Reforms
 guaranteed sickness and accident insurance
 Rigorous factory inspection
 Limited working hours for women and children
 Old-age pensions
 Social welfare legislation did not win the loyalty of
workers

 Britain: from moderation to militance
 Problems
 Liberal parliamentary framework began to show signs
of collapse
 Nationwide strikes of coal and railway workers
 Irish radical nationalists began to favor armed
revolution
 Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Brotherhood
 Home Rule tabled (1913)

 Russia: the road to revolution
 Internal conflicts and an autocratic political
system
 Threatened by Western industrialization and
Western political doctrines

 Russian industrialization (1880s–1890s)
 State-directed industrial development
 Serfs emancipated in 1861
 Heightened social tensions
 Workers left their villages temporarily to work and then
returned for planting and harvest
 The legal system
 No recognition of trade unions or employers’
associations
 Outdated banking and finance laws

 Alexander II (1818–1888, r. 1855–1881)
 The “Tsar Liberator”
 Set up zemstvos, provincial land and county
assemblies (1804)
 Curtailed the rights of zemstvos, censorship of the
press
 Assassinated by a radical

 Alexander III (1845–1894, r. 1881–1894)
 Steered the country toward the right
 Stern repression
 Increased authority of the secret police

 Nicholas II (1868–1918, r. 1894–1917)
 Continued these “counterreforms”
 Advocated Russification to extend the language, religion,
and culture of Greater Russia
 Pogroms and open anti-Semitism
 The Populists
 Russia to modernize on its own terms, not those of the
West
 Based on the ancient village commune (mir)
 Mostly middle class, students, and women
 Overthrowing the tsar through anarchy and insurrection
 Read Marx’s Capital and emphasized peasant socialism

 Russian Marxism
 Organized as the Social Democratic Party
 Concentrated on urban workers
 Russian autocracy would give way to capitalism
 Capitalism would give way to a classless society
 Social Democratic Party split (1903)
 Bolsheviks (majority group)
 Called for a central party organization of active
revolutionaries
 Rapid industrialization meant they did not have to follow Marx
 Mensheviks (minority group)
 Gradualist approach
 Reluctant to depart from Marxist orthodoxy

 Social Democratic Party split (1903)
 Lenin
 Leader of the Bolsheviks while in exile
 Coordinated socialist movement
 Russia was ripe for revolution

 The first Russian Revolution (1905)
 Causes
 The Russo-Japanese War
 Rapid industrialization had transformed Russia
unevenly
 Low grain prices resulted in peasant uprisings
 Radical workers organized strikes and demonstrations

 Bloody Sunday (January 22, 1905)
 Two hundred thousand workers led by Father Gapon
demonstrated at the Winter Palace
 Guard troops killed 130 and wounded several hundred

 The protest grew
 Merchants closed stores
 Factory owners shut down factories
 Lawyers refused to hear cases
 The autocracy had lost control

 Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto
 Guaranteed individual liberties
 Moderately liberal franchise for the election of a Duma
 Genuine legislative veto powers for the Duma
 Nicholas failed to see that fundamental change
was needed
 1905–1907: Nicholas revoked most of the promises
made in October
 Deprived the Duma of its principal powers

 Russian agriculture remained suspended
between emerging capitalism and the peasant
commune

 Peter Stolypin (1862–1911) and the Stolypin
reforms (1906–1911)
 Agrarian reforms for the sale of 5 million acres of royal
land to peasants
 Granted peasants permission to withdraw for the mir
 Canceled peasant property debts
 Legalized trade unions
 Established sickness and accident insurance

 Nationalism and imperial politics: the Balkans
 Rising nationalism divides the disintegrating
Ottoman Empire
 Uprisings in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria
(1875–1876)
 Reports of atrocities against Christians
 Led to the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878)
 The Treaty of San Stefano
 The great powers intervened

The Decline of the Ottoman Empire, 1699–1912

 The Treaty of Berlin (1878)
 Bessarabia to Russia, Thessaly to Greece
 Bosnia and Herzegovina under Austrian control
 Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania become
independent states
 The independent kingdom of Bulgaria (1908)
 Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina

 Turkish nationalism
 Turks had grown impatient with weakness of the
sultan
 The Young Turks
 Forced the sultan to establish a constitutional government
in 1908
 Launched effort to “Ottomanize” all imperial subjects
 Tried to bring Christian and Muslim communities under
more centralized control
 Spread Turkish culture

The Science and the Soul of
the Modern Age
 Darwin’s revolutionary theory
 Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
 The Origin of Species (1859)
 Five years aboard H.M.S. Beagle
 Observed manifold variations of animal life
 Theorized that variations within a population made
certain individuals better adapted for survival

the Modern Age
 Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
 Darwin used natural selection to explain the origin of
new species
 Applied theory to plant and animal species as well as
to man
 The Descent of Man (1871)
 The human race had evolved from an apelike ancestor

the Modern Age
 Organic evolution by natural selection
transformed the conception of nature itself
 An unsettling new picture of human biology,
behavior, and society
 Jean Lamarck (1744–1829)

the Modern Age
 Darwinian theory and religion
 Darwinian theory challenged deeply held religious
beliefs
 Sparked a debate on the existence of God
 For Darwin, the world was not governed by order,
harmony, and divine will but by random chance
and struggle
 Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
 Argued against Christians appalled by the implications
of Darwinism and called himself an agnostic
 “… follow reason as far as it can take you”

the Modern Age
 The rise of the social sciences
 Influence of Darwinism on sociology, psychology,
anthropology, and economics
 Social Darwinism
 Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
 Applied individual competition to classes, races, and
nations
 Coined the expression “survival of the fittest”

the Modern Age
 The rise of the social sciences
 Social Darwinism
 Popularized notions of social Darwinism were easy to
comprehend
 Integrated into popular vocabulary
 Justified the natural order of rich and poor
 Nationalists used social Darwinism to rationalize
imperialism and warfare

the Modern Age
 Challenges to Rationality: Pavlov, Freud, and
Nietzsche
 The irrational and animalistic side of human nature
 Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936)
 “Classical conditioning”
 Behaviorism
 Eschewed mind and consciousness
 Focused on physiological responses to the environment
 Sigmund Freud (1856–1936)
 Behavior largely motivated by unconscious and irrational
forces
 Unconscious drives and desires conflict with the rational
and moral conscience

the Modern Age
 Challenges to Rationality: Pavlov, Freud, and
Nietzsche
 Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and the attack
on tradition
 Middle-class culture dominated by illusions and self-
deceptions
 Rejected rational argumentation
 Bourgeois faith in science, progress, and democracy
as a futile search for truth

the Modern Age
 Religion and its critics
 The Roman Catholic Church on the defensive
 Pope Pius IX issued the Syllabus of Errors in
1864
 Condemned materialism, free thought, and religious
relativism
 Convoked a church council (first one since the late
sixteenth century)
 Doctrine of papal infallibility
 Denounced by the governments of several
Catholic countries

the Modern Age
 Religion and its critics
 Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903)
 Brought a more accommodating climate to the Church
 Acknowledged that there is good and evil in modern
civilization
 Added a scientific staff to the Vatican, opened
archives and observatories

the Modern Age
 New readers and the popular press
 Facilitated the spread of new ideas
 Rising literacy rates and new forms of printed
mass culture
 Journalism
 Emphasis on the sensational
 Advertising
 “Yellow” journalism—entertainment, sensationalism,
and the news

the Modern Age
 The first moderns: innovations in art
 Modernism
 Questioning the moral and cultural values of liberal,
middle-class society
 Characteristics
 Self-conscious sense of rupture from history and tradition
 Rejection of established values
 Insistence on an expressive and experimental freedom
 A new understanding of the relationship between art
and society

the Modern Age
 The first moderns: innovations in art
 Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)
 Devotee of occult mysticism
 The role of the visionary artist
 From soulless materialism to the psychic-spiritual life

Black Lines by Wassily Kandinsky, 1913

the Modern Age
 The revolt on canvas
 French Impressionism in the 1870s
 The legacies of Claude Monet (1840–1926) and
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)
 Paved the way for younger artists to experiment more
freely
 Impressionist artists organized their own independent
exhibitions

Impression/Sunrise, Calude Monet 1872

the Modern Age
 Post-Impressionism
 Paul Cézanne (1839–1906)
 Reducing natural forms to geometric equivalents
 Emphasis on subjective arrangement of color and form
 Art as a vehicle for an artist’s self-expression

Still Life with a Curtain, Paul Cezanne 1895

the Modern Age
 German Expressionism
 Emil Nolde (1867–1956)
 Painters turned to acidic tones, violent figural
distortions, and crude depictions of sexuality
 Edvard Munch (1863–1944) and Egon Schiele
(1890–1918)
 Henri Matisse (1869–1954) and Pablo Picasso
(1869–1954)

The Scream, Edvard Munch,
1893

Self Portrait, Study for Ermiten, Egon Schiele, 1912

Portrait of Ambroise Vollard by Pablo Picasso, 1909

MODERN INDUSTRY AND THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS

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