We shall be talking about socialists, 19th
centuries socialists of Europe today.
Can we start with the working understanding or
what socialists are either of you.
Socialist believe in the centralized production
of good censer which is little using and central
control of resources.
Who is the centre, which controls it?
The government.
So, we basically believe in nationalization
of resources and there you. Let us modern
socialism; socialism in an ideological sense
has been sort of opened and about for a long
time you could think about in terms of Jesus
as having been some kind of socialist you
could think of Buddha as having been a socialist
too can you, can you think of them in what
sense? That they believe that everyone should
be giving an equal share of the commodities.
They were not socialist so much in the economic
sense of the world, but they believed in the
idea of quality of man in a metaphysical sense,
since people like Jesus or Buddha believed
in their transitoriness of human life and
its experience, they believed that everybody
was equal in being victims of that which was
simply transitory, you cannot be a multimillionaire
and be an exception to the law of things being
transitory, so in that sense most religious
communities have had a basic element of socialism
in the sense that they consider themselves
equal in the governance by fate.
However, a lot of the socialism did not translate
itself into material socialism as we see it
in modern times that is a big difference,
it is true that early forms of belief systems
there is considerable idea of equality of
people not only in terms of there being equally
victims or for that matter subject to fate
or destiny or whatever is a equivalent of
the rules that they govern spiritual and physical
existence of people in a metaphysical sense.
But also in terms of humility which was taught,
almost all great cuts and religions at some
point of time have taught humility as a big
virtue, humility is one of the biggest virtues
of the Christians, humility is an big virtue
of the Buddhists and Jains, so therefore,
an attitude whereby you do not tend to let
yourself become the center of your conciseness
and to that extent consider that others are
as much the same as you are, so in this sense
to in this sense of an attitude, in this sense
of a posture towards life and towards others
a lot of religious communities lot of religious
cults have had a strong element of equality
egalitarians in terms of value systems and
in terms of virtues and beliefs.
But, this is not the socialism that we are
talking of now, we are talking more recent
socialism, either the 13th or 14th century
I am not very clear about it, there Jesuits
started of a socialist kind of republic in
Peru, it was entirely run controlled and organized
totally by the Jesuits organization who constituted
the government, it was a republic in the sense
that it was not a monarchic, and what is important
that it was totally, tightly, centrally, controlled,
managed, monitored much like a modern socialist
economy would be, but somewhere around 13th
or 14th century in Peru and important issue
is it lasted a 100 years, that would probably
be a socialist experiment in modern times.
As you can see the fundamental motivating
force that gets people into socialistic thinking
is a reaction to capitalism and reaction to
the evils of private property, not that private
property is evil John Lock said it was not
and others to have said it was not, but they
all admitted that could have an evil dimension
to it in the sense that it could be exploitative,
it could be predatory. So, a lot of socialists
thought as focused itself as a reaction to
this aspect of capitalism and private property,
and that too in 19th century socialism not
in exception at all.
But before we going to that we should see
the Mileu in which I think I have spelt Mileu
wrongly, l i u am I am I right is something
wrong with the spelling is it the Mileu spelling
check it out. There is an I missing know it
went for a vocation, so we will check that
out, you see the industrial capitalism as
its beginning in 1780 in England and grows
rapidly through the end of the 18th century,
and grows very rapidly in the first 25 years
all over you are particularly a France and
Britain, in Britain very rapidly because Britain
had early start and France too, Germany was
picking up by the 1840s, so and in a distance
was picking up too, so the first half of 19
century was a period of very rapidly going
industrial capitalism there is no doubt about
it.
What is important is that in this period then
the predominant social classes went through
a transformation and therefore also the conflict
between the classes, do you recall that Ricardo’s
writings and in Smith’s writings, the predominant
classes were the landowners and the capitalists,
the workers too existed as a class in their
writings but some or other the conflict allow
the debate between Ricardo and Malthus.
For instance, some or other the conflict seems
to be essential between landowners and the
capitalists at that time, the workers trying
to find some credibility, some space for themselves
in the society were at that time found to
be trying to manage between the two optional
hegemonies of one the capitalists or landowners,
but in the first half of nineteenth century
all of that changes, it is a period also of
a strong strive between landowners and capitalists
it is true, but it is a period which saw the
rapid coming into power ones and for all of
the capitalists.
This is also a period when the strife between
the capitalists and the working class grows
in intensity, they were frequent violent clashes
in this period, till finally there was a blood
bath, in France when there was a civil war
type situation with the working class rows
in a revolutionary moment and in was crusts
in a big blood bath in 1848, beyond this point
ostensible or visible confrontation between
the working class in the capitalists appeared
to disappear, and beyond this the rule of
capital seems to be the order of the day,
capitalism and the urban boozavazi constitute
both the political and cultural dimensions
of European society from here on.
In the history of nineteenth century socialism
too, you can think of 1850 as a bench mark,
up to that time you had a variety of socialists
ideas coming up having their own followers
and having their own projects and so forth,
till by 1850 all of them seem to run out of
steam, but more importantly by above 1850
the emergence of Marxism completely eclipses
all of the pre Marxist socialist ideas.
Marx as you knew as you know lived most of
his life in England as an exile, and wrote
in German, he never wrote in English and I
think the first translation of Marx outside
German was somewhere in the 1870’s late
1870’s, I think equally important
Marx reformulated the economics of Smith and
Ricardo into their logical end especially
the Ricardo.
Shall it looks at Marx after a little while
before we finished dealing with the earlier
socialist who were popular in Europe, why
did people try to become socialists, why did
people try to become socialist, it is primarily
a moral or an ethical gesture, it was a reaction
to capitalism from an esthetic, from a moral
and also from a political point of view, but
the politics of early socialists did not have
much economics to it, at least not the kind
of economics which Marx was writing about
much later.
As I said the moral stunts against socialism
was predominant, and this moral stunts itself
took two variants, either you could think
of people who were opposed to exploitation
by capital and property, so profiteering society
based on the power of capital produced moral
reaction has a source of operation, as a source
of anarchy. The other moral preoccupation
which socialism was regard to the enslavement
of the workers, the enslavement of the workers
to a market which is controlled and dominated
by capital, so the bondage of workers to capital
was a source of moral repartements, socialist
thought along both terms those who thought
about capital and profits were thinking in
terms of a society where the power of capital
would not be there, and where institutions
would be there which would displays the market
place as a source of livelihood and as a source
of allocation of resources, most important
people who thought this way was thought of
justice for them preoccupation was socialism
was mainly preoccupation with the idea of
justice, capital and profit meant injustice.
So, dealing with capital and profits stringently
meant justice to the people, on the other
hand the second type of reaction, which is
the response as an attempt to liberate workers
from their bondage to the capitalists led
to preoccupation with liberty not so much
justice, and a variety of socialists ideas
were thrown up in this , some of them wondering
on anarchy, some of them advocating that there
should be neither private property nor the
state, which is a classic anarchical position.
So, you had this whole range, so first half
of 19th century could be Europe also experimenting
with all kinds of socialist ideas till they
all ended up in the work of marks in the second
half.
So, let us look at these early socialists
will call them most of them utopians so will
call them utopians, saint Simon French man
with a kind of a mistake he believed in the
power of the people, but more importantly
in the power of people with merit to run and
manage society, saint Simon thought that capitalism
was immensely wasteful, immensely exploitative
so he wanted to display capitalism with a
society run by a meritocracy, he said these
people who run the society would be what he
called the industrialists, they would be scholars,
they would be scientists, they would be intellectuals,
they would be entrepreneurs, they would be
workers, in short all of them people who spear
ahead the modernity of Europe, so these industrialist
would be monitoring and running the economy
and society.
It would be an economy based on very high
technology, high levels of investments and
rapid economic growth, and interestingly the
running of this economy the management of
this economy would be in hands of the capitalists,
although saint Simon visualize the economy
and society being freed from capitalists,
he thought capitalists who are the ones fit
to manage this new social order, and how would
they do it because they were the source of
innovation in modern world so they were the
ones who could think a fresh, they could think
creatively in the new society too.
Saint Simonism as I said was a strongly personality
oriented belief system, the followers of saint
Simon picked upon the some kind of a Messiah,
and one of the greatest of the disciples of
saint Simon became the founder of a modern
sociology August the Conth, Conth actually
built saint Simon up into almost a cult figure,
so what is the net outcome of saint Simon,
there were lots of attempts starting programs
and projects which would transform the society
socialistically but nothing much happened,
but what did happened was their grow a large
number of followers of saint Simon across
the world particularly in United States, Canada
of course also in France.
And his influence as a thinker as a messianic
figure, as a mistake became eventually more
important than the programs and projects that
he started. Charles Fourier; Fourier followed
the opposite track to saint Simon, he was
not a modernist as saint Simon was, he was
much more Rousseauvian and his thinking, does
somebody have something to say about Russo
what was he saying, can somebody tell me something
about Russo in this class? Vani
Yes Adhithi.
The state of nature Russo manage and he is
not a immoral or lacking morals hi is just
aim on the idea of morality almost does not
It’s a later day creation
It’s a later day creation. Yeah according
to Russo
And he says it then he speaks about a general
will his social relates to a general will
where it is general of people they should
be taken as.
They also spoke about pleasure and And and
the influence on morality
Well nice is quite a bit, now we do not need
to know much about more about Russo then what
you people have said except that Russo was
thinking as a man in a statue nature as Adhithi
says as a noble Savage, so Savage because
he was not covered by the trappings and quote
civilization and noble because he was free
of the degenerative and corrupt influences
of civilization, according to Russo is the
coming into existence of society and its institutions
which was a source of a corruptions of this
noble Savage.
So, he was thinking in terms of the way out
as a kind of a social contract among the members
of society, to liberate themselves from the
perverse influence of society and following
general will constitute a new social order
based on a social contract to which they surrender
their freedom, what is interesting is to note
that in both Hobs and Russo the idea was that
you gain liberation from your own mediocrity
by surrendering to of your all your freedoms
to a force superiority yourself. It is a complete
sacrifice of freedom in order to be secure
in both cases. Anyway Charles Fourier shared
Russo’s ideas about the degenerative quality
of society in fact Charles Fourier was completely
oppose to the institution of family as a as
a basic source of corruption, as a basic source
of degeneracy of human beings.
So, one of the thing that you wanted band
in a socialistic world was that family as
a core unit of corruption should be abolished,
women and men should deal with each other
as individuals based on their free will and
based on their shared commitments and so on
and so forth, and not at all be corrupted
by the institution of the family. On this
core it might be interesting for us to get
a 100 years later then Fourier and see what
happened in the soviet union after the revolution,
like Charles Fourier early soviet leaders
after the revolution 1920, 21 there was no
belief in the institution of profit family,
because the reasoning was family was the core
unit of the society which led to the idea
of property, and the idea of property became
dominating over the human minds such that
exploitation followed, so at that time the
idea was that if you did not have families
you will completely cut off possibility of
the emergence of the very idea of private
property, so that socialist conciseness, equality
of conciseness would spread this was generally
the belief 1920, 21, so lot of people live
together, lot of people came together, they
had children.
But, there was no marriage in the early mid
20s, what it did is not for us to consider
because we do not know what happened, but
what certainly did was that it produced a
certain amount of disillusionment, because
it was discovered by the 1930s that the family
was lot more than in institutional property,
the family was an institution of security,
psychological, emotional, physical, so the
dissolution of the family as an institution
did not create an alternative institution
which provided that security, which provided
that sense of comfort which family gave. So,
in the 1950s there was a lot of rethinking
on all these things and it was accepted that
it was probably on wise thing to have abolished
family in the 1920s.
But that soviet union in the 1920s now we
are talking now about Fourier and his times
in France, but Fourier was very much in favor
of abolition institution of the family as
the basic source of degeneracy in human life.
Fourier was also thinking in terms of reorganization
of industrial production into small workers
communities which would work on the basis
of equal ownership, which would work on the
basis of equal share of work and equal share
of earnings.
How popular Fourier was in the long run is
difficult to say because by 1830s there were
other who are becoming more popular, there
were other issues in society which were becoming
central, the person who was really significant
after saint Simon was Sismondi; Sismondi was
an aggressive theoretician he was not just
a moralist as a saint Simon was a or as Fourier
was, Sismondi was theoretician of socialism,
he was he was a strong critic of say’s law,
he was critical of say’s law, because he
said there would be no over production in
society as long as the accounting identity
which was aggregate demand equals aggregate
supply could translate itself into a reality,
instead of being virtual equilibrium if it
turned into a real equilibrium it would be
useful, but there was no way in which that
real equal equilibrium could come about for
the simple reason that society was unequal,
it was divided strongly between capitalists
and workers, so where could you think in terms
of a society without over general production
this is one point.
The other thing like many other socialists
of his time Sismondi was also preoccupied
with the idea of under consumption, do you
have any idea of this theory of under consumption
was, we have seen it in Ricardo, if you did
not its fine basically again following from
Ricardo the argument goes that as he economy
develops the share of rent would go up he
was talking of Condloss you remember, if condloss
continued the share of rent in the national
income would go up and the share of profits
would drop, but more importantly the share
of wages would drop too.
So, Ricardo was of the opinion that the economy
would be characterized by under consumption,
which means aggregate demand less than aggregate
supply, and he saw the revolution or he saw
the resolution of for this in the abolishen
of condloss, and the reemergence of the capitalist
into strength and the growth of the economy,
where as Sismondi and such as the socialists
are same thought that under consumption had
nothing to do with something like condloss
and anything else, it was a nature of capitalism,
workers were exploited they were kept as subsistence
or below, and they had extremely unhygienic
conditions of work, terms of work and so forth,
in short workers had neither they were with
all to buy enough goods not it they have the
will to seek higher levels of comfort in affluence.
There was depressed economically and psychologically
as a result of which Sismondi believed that
say’s law was a myth; myth created so that
people would believe that capitalism was a
harmonious process Sismondi says it is not
a harmonious process at all, equally important
the glorification of Lazy fare was something
which Sismondi saw as a trick, played to convinced
people that all was well with the society
where as what was happening was exploitation
of workers persisted continued increased all
the time. Where lazy fare had an idea seems
to cover up, what was happening to the workers
just a second and finally, what was we done
the society.
Sismondi was talking of something which came
up again and again in Europe during that century,
he said all land must go from the aristocratic
landowners into the hands of pessions and
small pesent holdings should be the backbone
of agriculture, and the small pessions would
be the bases of rural economy, and then you
would have artisans and workers who run factories
in which they would share the profits, and
eventually the government would become responsible
for a very massive social security net, poor
loss, loss to protect the health of workers,
working conditions of the workers and so on
and so forth, unemployment, protection.
What is interesting about Sismondi’s ideas
is that they had a vitality that seems to
carry them through the century
towards the last three decades of the 19th
century, they grow up a very powerful movement
in Russia in which intellectual, scientists,
thinkers, professors, writers were all involved
in an abs urge of fresh thinking of future
of Russia. Broadly most of them were grouped
together under the title norothnicky, narodh
means people in Russian, norothnicky is people
I mean people who advocated the rule of people
populists, norothnicky would be a people who
advocated populism norothnicks.
Now, there was whole brand whole variety of
norothnicks beginning with people like Chansawiskey,
Danielson, Varansaw and then write to the
1920s a great economist in Masko university
called Chinua, they were all of the believe
that land must be redistributed to the pessions,
taken away from the aristrocrasy redistributed
to the pessions, that the pessent village
or the mayor or the village community or the
obstina as they called it also the village
community would become the source of new democracy
and new socialism. With its traditional sharing
ideas, with its traditional ideas of looking
after each other built into a socialist fabric
Russian socialism was seen by these people
as the basis of new Russian society based
on optional china or the mire.
Now, these people came into violin conflict
not so much violin, but aggressive conflict
with the Marx’s who are all earlier norothnicky
themselves, they all came from that background,
but in the 1890s Placknou and others broke
off from the norothnicky movements started
the communist movement in Russia. Incidentally
Danielson was a first person a norothnick
was a first person who translated Marx his
capital from German into any other language,
he translated into Russian this was this was
a first non German publication of capital,
so they were all admirers of Marx, but more
emotionally morally then in terms of a person
and then as Marx who analyze with soviet union
analyze Russian problems in fact.
They were strongly moved by Marx’s analysis
of capitalism, his analysis of exploitation,
and his analysis of the movement of capitalism
all of that and they were inspired by that
to create a framework of resurrection of Russia,
and they thought Marx would help, I still
remember ones reading about women called , a
great norothic leader she wrote to Marx asking
him what should be done with Russia, show
us away how to make a revolution here Marx
was of course very mode rest he wrote back
to say that he had no knowledge of what was
happening in Russia its only Russians you
know what was happening in Russia so they
should decide what should be done in Russia.
If there is anyway his ideas helped them he
was very happy that was it, but the point
am making is norothnicks were strong followers
of Marx in their own way, but Marx’s party
as came into existence in the 1890s, and then
one of the greatest Marx’s; Russian Marx’s
a man called , but better known as V I Lennon,
he came into open confrontation with a norothnicky
because he saw that the political opposition
to the rise of Marxism in Russia was norothnicks
not even the , so there was conflict with
being them, and in 1905 Lennon wrote a classic
called Development of Capitalism in Russia,
in which was entirely a polemic against norothnic
views, which have just now described the village
community the economically strong small pession
farm as a so on and so forth, in the 1920s
soviet union had come into being, but still
there were norothnick thinkers in Masco university,
one professor Chinua a great agricultural
economist wrote a classic called Pessent Farm
Organization, which by the time he published
it went underground because very soon he was
taken away by Stalin’s forces and he was
lost somewhere in Siberia, but his Pessent
Farm Organization was regretted by the American
economic association in the 1960s, and published
as a classic.
Now, what Chinua was saying was precisely
what people like Sismondi saying, what Chansawiskey,
Danielson and all this they were saying that
the Pessant Farn in Russia had its own vitality,
it was not a capitalist organism and it was
not exploitative it had its own vitality it
had tremendous strength to survive and grow,
and at the same time it was more suited to
Russian conditions than capitalist agriculture
and so on and so forth, but, that the story
of the norothnicks. I just brought it up that
it will a nice aside to see how far Sismondi
like ideas went in the 19th century, almost
right through the century
Godwin; William Godwin was a libertarian he
was conservative, but he was a strong utilitarian
also, he looks at property from a utilitarian
point of view and things that is unjustifiable
because property does not carry any meaning.
I must explain that other British socialist
had criticize property not from utilitarian
point of view, but from a from a natural rights
point of view will come to that, these were
followers of Ricardo, but who uses lots of
idea of statue nature and who had their own
idea of natural rights, will come to that,
but at this point in time it is William Godwin
and Godwin simply said that property was not
justified simply because it was good not good
from utilitarian point of view, if you know
he could justify property from that point
of view and he had although that Ricardo was
not a utilitarian.
Ricardo was another person who thought in
the same way which is the reason he felt that
the future of England was better in the hands
of capitalists then with landowners, so Godwin
central program was that if property was abolished
then all the evils of capitalism would be
removed and people would be able to live an
equalitarian existence, but, then abolition
of the state is as important as abolition
of property, because it is a state which upheld
the property rights. The legitimacy of the
property came because the state authorized
private property, so according to Godwin the
state should be abolished just as property
should be abolished, so you can see that William
Godwin was a fine anarchist in his own way,
a person who says state should be abolished
is none other than anarchist.
But one of the most interesting Englishmen
that period was Robert Owen, Scotsman an industrialist,
he strongly believed in communitarian and
socialist ideas, he believed that people were
neither good nor bad, but they were teachers
poor conditions by the circumstances environment
in which they lived. So, his whole idea was
create institutions of sharing, institutions
of collective management, institution of communal
living, then if you have children growing
up in that these children would be the children
constituting a new generation socialistic
generation.
So, towards its end Owen converted his factory
into socialistic cooperative, which was run
and manage by the workers, and which was run
and which also a profit sharing entity, and
his idea was that a socialistic or communal
type of existence would be encouraged around
that factory, some kind of commune would be
organized by the workers and their families
would live and their by gradually educate
themselves into socialistic ideas. And all
activities which are of exchange between his
organization and the rest of the world would
be on the basis of equal labor which was simply
that he was using labor as a numeror, he was
a strong believer and labor theory of value.
what is a numeror? Anybody Adhithi.
I think it is probably the value of a good
would be decided by.
Nice guess but, do you know numeror other
while oh you did not study general equilibrium.
Yeah you have you have finished general equilibrium.
but, we did not come across numeror.
What is money in a general equilibrium model?
there is
Right but, the money is notional no, so what
was the function it was numeror namely it
was only an accounting entity which measured
the value of goods, we just a measure otherwise
it has no existence, that kind of a money
is numeror, so here labor was used as numeror
and Robert Owen thinking, everything would
be measured in terms of the of the embodied
labor and that would in turn lead to a new
system of exchange based on labor, so you
have all these English socialists not to forget
the Ricardian socialists.
If you remember many of Ricardian people of
Ricardian times believed in Locke’s idea
of natural right, particularly the right to
property was a natural because Locke said
each man was entitled to the fruits of his
own labour, and land property was a creation
of his labor and so it was justified, in fact
Locke went further to say that unequal distribution
of land had nothing to do with the fact that
some people owned little land more land in
the beginning, but the fact was money people
came by money, and when people made money
they invested money in land and that create
an unnatural ownership of land, and therefore,
in equalities were a product of money rather
than land at property according to Locke.
Now, the Ricardian socialist accepted Locke’s
idea of landed property, but they said it
was not a natural right because landed property
always almost always interfered which somebody
else’s way of expressing his freedom of
work, what to do with this labor power, what
to do with his fruits of labor, which was
his natural right landed property tended to
interfere with other peoples natural right
of this right, so they said landed property
was not a natural right, and therefore it
was not to be encouraged.
So, broadly we have run through a very quick
exercise of different jaws of socialism as
they existed prior to 1850, as I said a lot
of them were experimental but most of them
were very serious thinkers Robert Owen for
instance was a member of important British
government committee which enquired into poverty,
and his radical opinion came out in his reports
which were of course rejected by the British
government, but what I am trying to say lot
of them were very serious people, very strong
in their belief in what they did and said,
but what all of them lacked was a clear analysis
of capitalism. In order to know that you have
disease you have to know be a good diagnostician,
in order to be a good diagnostician you have
to know here anatomy really well, am I not
right, Marx first probably the best one in
the knowledge of the anatomy of capitalism.
So, when Marx started writing all pre Marx
in socialism were eclipsed more important
Marx was not writing something different from
what was already said, in fact he was quiet
essentially a classical economist par excellance,
he carried Ricardo’s economics to its ultimate
logical end as Ricardo perhaps himself might
not of carried, but then that was not all
Marx, there lot of other things to Marx too,
There was an idea of history, there is an
idea of dialectics, and Marx was a very strong
socialistic too, aid an idea to alienation
what he did to people, so by and large putting
together the corpus of knowledge starting
with labor theory of value and classical political
economy, building with other things Marx created
a system of knowledge which dominated not
just rest of the 19th century, but almost
the whole of the 20th century across the world.
Break it up for now and start after the break.
