Understanding Socialism: A History of Socialist Thought from Beccaria to Trotsky.

Welcome to the first in our series on socialism. To do this right we have to let go of the stories we tell ourselves. Ask how things came to be. Be curious and scientific, not doctrinal or emotional.

For example, if you consider yourself aligned with socialist principles, can you step back and view the marvels a capitalist system has delivered? Can you, as a capitalist, look critically at the harm? Can we ascribe values to these observations and ask whether they reflect standard moral and ethical norms we want reflected in our society? Can we accept that ideals attempting to form a general framework for society cannot be static and must evolve and iterate?

At its core, this approach is known as Hegelian dialectic, the study of opposites and constant flow. G.W.F. Hegel, who was the greatest influence on Karl Marx, was himself inspired by the work of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus; the philosopher behind the notion that no person can step into the same river twice. The river changes. It’s in constant flow. We are as well.

The point is, you cannot evaluate a system simply by what it was intended to produce. You must also place a value upon its unintended consequences. Moreover, no system is static.

Under capitalism, the world has experienced technological innovations at a rate never before experienced in human history: medicine, communications, manufacturing, transportation. Nearly every element of society, the world over, has been impacted in a significant way under the system of capitalism. Along the way, these things have also altered the nature of capitalism. Capitalism is a different river and we, a different people. But if we’re to be true observers, we must also ask whether or not capitalism is responsible for such growth and innovation. Would society have developed in such profound ways under another system? All worthwhile questions and pathways.

This is a discussion about socialism.

So we have to establish a foundation and some definitions despite the constantly changing nature of systems. And from this foundation, we can develop key questions with the tacit agreement between us that some are unanswerable. But we can take comfort in knowing that a lack of an answer shouldn’t frustrate our quest for one. It merely recognizes the river for what it is.

The reason I began by talking about capitalism is because socialism is fundamentally a critique of capitalism. And most socialist critiques are similar in nature. The variations of socialist ideology come with the prescriptions for evolving beyond capitalism.

Much like our river analogy, the order and approach toward this series is subject to change based upon revelations through studying and feedback. But as of now, I have four essays planned in the series to try and deconstruct this amazing topic.

Part one will be level-setting. Definitions of key concepts. The history and evolution of thinking. The economics of socialism and the intersection of political, economic, social and cultural aspects of the theory. Next we’ll cover major figures of socialism from the philosophical drivers and those who added critical elements along the way, to proponents and detractors. Part three will cover the labyrinth of related systems and the myriad expressions of socialism in different regions of the world.

Then we’ll conclude with the American experience specifically. The influence of organized labor, significant figures, and the evolution of socialist critique in American culture.

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“So let me take this opportunity to define for you, simply and straightforwardly, what democratic socialism means to me. It means building on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed economic rights for all Americans. And it builds on what Martin Luther King, Jr. said in 1968 when he stated, and I quote, ‘this country has socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.’” -Bernie Sanders

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Chapter One: Audience feedback and answers.

Laying this out ahead of time has given us an opportunity to be collaborative. To kick things off, I asked Unf*ckers in the Facebook group and the YouTube community to provide a basic definition of socialism as if they were explaining it to a young person. As usual, the responses were wonderful. Responses are below with names and handles used with permission from those who submitted.

Nicholas Walton: Socialism is an economic system where the government of a country nationalizes and controls all its industries.

Stephen Whitfield: Socialism is the idea of using the government to channel the profit of industry to the benefit of all the citizens that make that industry possible. A government, its citizens, and its businesses must work with one another to function properly.

Trikucian: I would explain it to my little girl as [a] government that takes money through taxes and redistributes it back to the people. Whether through infrastructure like roads, healthcare, education, or just basic welfare concepts like food and housing.

Nathan Shapiro: The equitable sharing of resources in a society. To each according to his/her needs.

Cbb Cbb: Public streets and roads and highways vs privately owned streets and roads and highways? The “comedian” Bill Maher stated something like ‘Americans love socialism, they just don’t like to call it that.’ He also remarked that ‘if you take a trip in your car, you don’t have to bring your own highway.’ Or something to that effect. I do not remember his exact words.

Alex Powers: Socialism is the abolition of the employer-employee dichotomy and a period in which the state exists not to serve the capitalist class but the working class, actively confronting the interests of the ruling class. It is the next step on the path to a moneyless, classless, stateless society.

Dan Garcia: I must cite David Pakman in explaining what I also believe: Social Democracy versus Democratic Socialism. Similar words in a different order. I feel this needs to be clarified in order to understand the misinformation and demonizing of the term, especially by the right.

Democratic Socialism is a form of Socialism where one seeks to socialize ownership of the means of production. Social Democracy is a highly regulated form of Capitalism, like we see in European and Nordic countries. Very different things.

Nelson Silva Cordeiro: I believe this can be an incredibly difficult topic to explain...but at the same time, such a simple one. Simplest in form, an elected leadership based on creating an environment, where fair and equal opportunity, and also responsibility is given to all citizens. Where the overall health of the society is put above any one’s own interests. Everyone participating keeps the possibility of a high quality of life for their communities as high as possible. Health, education, social nets etc., all offered as a right.

Mathew R. Dwyer: Socialism is recognition that some sectors are off-limits to the profit motive. Full stop.

Bob Knudsen: I think of the general philosophy of socialism as understanding and acting on the knowledge that all in society live better when top-down authoritarian systems that over-proportionate the rewards (money) to the few at the top are limited or eliminated altogether. Co-ops instead of corporations in a nutshell.

Jim Moynihan: Socialism is a term of opprobrium in America used by business interests to denigrate most expansion of government activity other than a larger defense budget.

Inigo Gonzalez: Socialism is a means of organization that prefers systems and solutions that benefit the community as a whole, over the well-being of any given individual. This generally means that said systems and solutions are designed, created, managed, and owned by the community itself, rather than by any given individual. The end result is a community more focused on equity than rapacity.

Charles Morris: A society collectively caring for its members most in need.

Bobster Jones: Fair and equal pay, healthcare, emergency services. Rich people pay more to help the poor. It’s just like Jesus taught us in Sunday School.

Rikki Mitchell: When the people own the means of production. In this day and age, I imagine that whenever a corporation needs a bailout, when subsidies go toward the oil companies or animal agriculture, etc., (using our tax dollars of course), the people would own a portion of that company. Those payouts would be used to better our communities.

Nate Bedocs: Socialism is a constructed economy that evenly distributes the wealth of a nation. This is why healthcare for all isn’t socialism, this is why any of our social safety nets (think fire, police, EMS) aren’t actually socialist policies. Please make a firm distinction that what the far right calls socialism isn’t actual socialism.

Markus Cleary: Shared a meme that said, “If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat, while most of the other monkeys starved, scientists would study that monkey to figure out what was wrong with it. When humans do it, we put them on the cover of Forbes.”

Karyl Hebel: Socialism, to me, means everyone should be equal before the law, that taxation should be shared revenue so that each individual has the resources and “wealth” needed to live and live well. Public money—taxes—should protect everyone’s health and well-being; funding our schools, healthcare, emergency services, transportation, social nets, food assistance, veteran services, utilities, etc.; the social systems for the core population, so that individual freedom for equal opportunity is denied to no one. These resources should protect ordinary Americans in their unique cultures, traditions, and family values, as an investment in a healthier, more productive nation, in all its diversity.

Will Watkins: The concept that a society’s method of distributing resources is done in a way that benefits the individuals in that society in the most equitable manner. Protecting and ensuring basic human needs of food, clothing, shelter, health care, and access to capital are the fundamental core principles of society. In addition, the civil rights (relating to free speech, press, association, travel, and petition of government) of the individuals of that society and their ability to engage in democratic processes should have the fewest frictions as possible.

Robert McDermott: Socialism is where everyone gets education and healthcare while their dignity is protected into retirement and beyond. This happens because rich people pay a fair share of taxes and aren’t allowed to whine about it. Of course, it’s not perfect, the rich still get away with stuff but nothing like they do in your kleptocracy masquerading as a democracy, republic, whatever the f*ck fever dream you’re currently experiencing. I find it so tragically funny that my political views are considered moderate here in Ireland, but in your clusterf*ck of a country, I’d be a loony leftie radical communist.

K. Michael Groves: Employee owned workplace. Democracy in the workplace.

Dan P. Martin: Socialism is an inversion of capitalist risk/reward model where workers democratically elect their management and decide how to share the risks and profits, as well as use of the commons in production. To protect the commons, banking under socialism is controlled centrally to subsidize growth and development (or de-growth) to account for externalities beyond the scope of the workplace. The commons are inputs used in production other than human labor.

For example, centrally controlled banks would subsidize public transportation to promote its growth and development, recognizing the poor use of resources and unsustainable polluting effects of personal vehicles, which are disproportionately borne by those who benefit least.

SnailPowered: Socialism is acting in the interest of the good of a group, before personal gain. That is probably overly simplistic, but I think it truly encapsulates how it is used most often. Jimmy Carter may not have been a socialist, but I feel that it is undeniable that he practiced socialism as a leader. I found that during my time as a leader in the U.S. Army this definition of socialism is also what inspired men to follow me.

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Chapter Two: The Importance of Being Bernie.

Just this small experiment illustrates the challenge in defining something as broad as socialism. In these extraordinary responses we can begin to understand the complexity of systems design. We heard political and economic themes, concepts like fairness + equity, class struggle, social constructs and corporate systems. Issues pertaining to basic rights; civil, human, natural rights and legal. Expressions of social constructs like dignity and morality. Centralized planning. Nationalization.

These are all aspects of socialism and the duality of defining it as an economic system and an ideology. And there’s crossover between the two, with ideological concepts informing economic structures and vice versa.

Before we dig into actual definitions and begin to dissect both the economic and ideological frameworks from a historical perspective, let’s first look at how socialism is addressed in our current society.

Perhaps the best way to do this is to peer through the lens of the mainstream media, which acts as both a reflection of our beliefs and a megaphone. While talking about socialism is no longer as taboo in this nation as it was during the Cold War era, it’s still difficult to find honest discourse outside of niche outlets. To demonstrate this, let’s check how socialism is spoken about on the establishment liberal mouthpiece, MSNBC.

This first snippet is from Lawrence O’Donnell, himself a prominent liberal media figure who has publicly stated he is a socialist, despite his establishment credentials:

“Socialism in the 1950s, in America, became a bad word. And we then became anti-intellectual about socialism. We as a country stopped thinking about what it actually is and just adopted, for the most part, a posture of fear against the word and the concept of socialism. And so, you know, when Medicare was proposed in the 1960s, the argument against it…well, it was essentially ‘it’s socialism.’ That was the entire argument. And it was kind of surprising that the argument didn’t work, especially because it was true. Medicare is socialism and everyone on Medicare in this country is the beneficiary of a very smart socialistic program called Medicare. And to deny that it’s socialism is to deny economic literacy. But that’s what our politics does.”

This is about as honest an assessment as you’ll hear from a mainstream figure on the proverbial left. But even though he’s a fixture on MSNBC, that quote is from a C-SPAN appearance. I have no doubt that aspects of socialist theory creep into O’Donnell’s signature op-eds on his program, but they’re certainly not readily accessible. This bit from Chuck Todd, on the other hand, is far more indicative of the manner in which socialism is addressed by even the supposedly most left leaning mainstream outlet.

“That got us thinking about other ISMs that could use redefining. If you like to commune with people, does that make you a communist? How about if you’re into fashion? Are you a fascist? If you’re left-handed, does that make you a leftist?”

Aside from the fact that Chuck Todd probably won’t be headlining comedy clubs anytime soon, this strikes at the heart of how socialism is generally dismissed, even among liberals. Also, he has a television program and I don’t. So there’s that.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the constant din of anti-socialist rhetoric in the right wing media and political ecosystem.

Like Jesse Watters keeps working on his ghoulish Bill O’Reilly impressions, saying anyone who wants socialism wants to destroy America. Greg Gutfeld thinks that wanting socialism is like drinking after a hangover when you swore you’d never drink again. Jeanine Pirro freed the hook from her mouth long enough to quip that she thinks there’s a giant conspiracy of socialist forces ready to “do whatever is necessary to make socialism happen.” Fox News introduced a clip of former Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus talking about socialism by “thoughtfully remarking “socialism sucks..”

Donald Trump told the United Nations that one of the world’s most serious challenges was socialism rather than the obvious answer that, in fact, he was. Ron DeSantis spoke out against communism, Leninism and socialism saying it denies the worth of the individual. And Ben Shapiro flatly stated, “capitalism is good because capitalism is freedom. Socialism is bad because socialism is tyranny.” Because, Ben.

Neither the casual nor devout consumer of mainstream news is ever really confronted with serious dialogue about ideology and political theory. So the information about socialism, as just one example, is either delivered in a bemused and dismissive tone on the left, or vituperative tone on the right.

It’s why Bernie’s presidential bids were seismic in terms of influence on our language and culture. Bernie’s steady drumbeat of messages about inequality, the 1%, universal healthcare, and student debt relief were vital. By pointing out the byproducts of a denigrated capitalist system he was able to open hearts and minds to evaluating other political and economic modalities without the need to expressly criticize capitalism or promote socialism.

In fact, I would argue that one of the reasons Bernie’s message resonated to the degree that it did is that he never expressly advocated for socialism. Even now, past his presidential candidacy years, he’s still cautious about the framing of his ideas. His new book, for example, is titled, It’s Ok to Be Angry about Capitalism, which might be the harshest criticism he’s offered. It’s not called “Capitalism Failed,” “Death to Capitalism,” “Down with Capitalism.” Just, it’s okay to be angry.

But he’s particularly good about calling out the people who take advantage of the system. The uber wealthy. The oligarchs. The 1%. Millionaires and billionaires. And when he takes capitalism to task, it’s usually couched in language that blames the wealthy for corrupting the system, not the system itself.

Even his framing as a democratic socialist was a high wire act. One that is actually false. As Unf*cker Dan Garcia pointed out, in the United States we have the concept of social democracy and democratic socialism backwards.

Social democracy, sometimes referred to as “market socialism” seeks to construct socialist systems on top of a market based system that preserves private property, markets to determine price and production, wage labor and shareholder capital. Democratic socialism, or “classical socialism” on the other hand, takes a more Marxian approach to organizing economic systems such as labor-owned production and centralized planning.

It’s not that Bernie was being disingenuous, and I’m not sure how much semantics matter to even the most curious member of the public. I just think that it was far easier to build a national platform around the term democratic socialism, and once it started it was too late to shift gears. But since we’re placing so much emphasis on the importance of language, it’s worth making the distinction here.

Either way, what Bernie accomplished is not to be understated. Over the past dozen years or so he has helped mainstream ideas that were the third rail in the U.S. Not even for discussion in polite company. Stuff that was spoken about on college campuses, and barely so. Maybe incorporated into white papers at left-leaning nonprofits and think tanks. That’s why I think he took such a measured linguistic approach, always refraining from stating that capitalism is a failed system. Stopping short of calling for a socialist revolution. Using terms like uber-capitalism, socialism for the rich, democratic socialism, social safety nets, Scandinavian models, corrupt oligarchy, corporatism, etc.

But now that these ideas have once again been released into the wild, and younger generations are especially willing to examine the merit of systems other than capitalism, we’ve reached an interesting point in capitalist history. Most thinking people understand that what we have now, no matter what you want to call it—capitalism, corporatism, oligarchy, inverted totalitarianism, whatever—it’s not working. Inequality is widening. Entire systems keep failing. The pandemic exposed the fragile nature of globalism.

And oh, by the way, we’re cooking the planet.

Strictly speaking of the United States—and this isn’t being ethnocentric, just pragmatic as we remain the key driver of the global economy—the immediate future looks bleak in terms of leadership; with Joe Biden seeking a second term and what is shaping up to be the most evil cast of characters ever assembled running against him. And I get that it’s frustrating and a lot of shit can happen in just a few years, but I truly believe that the 2008 financial crisis, the Occupy movement in 2011, and rise of Bernie Sanders potentially ushered us into a new era brimming with opportunity to evaluate the history of economic and social systems in order to design new ones.

But, as we’ve said before, how can you know where you’re going if you don’t know from whence you came? And before we can even get there, we have to know what the hell we’re talking about.

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Chapter Three: A brief overview of crucial concepts.

As we saw with the confusion surrounding social democracy vs. democratic socialism, it’s important to nail down a few key concepts and terms as we move through this discussion. As we’ll cover in upcoming chapters, the language and concepts surrounding socialism have evolved over time. The most enduring contributions to our general understanding, however, come from Karl Marx. Much of what we’ll pull from is largely attributed to his work in Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto and various other works completed by Friedrich Engels after Marx’s death.

Importantly, the roots of socialism predate Marx. But one of his great contributions was to define certain ideas and build them into an economic framework. At the time Marx was writing, he viewed the classes in the capitalist system generally as the working class, or proletariat, and the bourgeoisie. The workers and laborers comprised the proletariat and the owners of capital, sometimes referred to by Marx as the guardians, were the bourgeoisie. Later on, the rise of the service and merchant class—those who stand to profit from trade but still lack the status of a capital guardian—would develop into the petit bourgeoisie.

While it may seem elementary to us today, one of his innovations was in valuing capital. In the simplest of terms, prior to this period commodities were viewed in terms of their use value. What the raw form of a material is worth. The exchange value is its value in a transaction.

Prior to Marx defining value in such terms, most models strictly considered use value and attempted to equate quantifiable values between commodities. X amount of corn is worth Y amount of iron, as he proposes in Das Kapital. But the process of turning a material into something with an exchange value, or worth in a marketplace, involves a degree of labor to transform it from its natural state. As he wrote:

“The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productiveness, of the labor incorporated into it.”

So again, sounds super simple but it’s hugely important to understanding the roots of what will ultimately be his critique of the entire capitalist system. By valuing the inputs of labor and crediting this ingredient as that which gives exchange value to a commodity, he makes labor the central economic ingredient in the value of production. Or as Marx calls it, “incorporating living labor with their dead substance.”

When we talk about the means of production, another central element to economic theory, we’re talking about everything involved in bringing a product to market. Tools to extract raw materials and the transport of materials and goods. The equipment used to add value to a raw material. Essentially everything outside of the raw material and the labor required to convert it into something worthy of an exchange value.

Another one of the keys to differentiating between capitalism and various forms of socialism is an understanding of private property. Essentially, who owns the means of production. Who owns the tools, the factories, the machines, the transportation, etc.

In a capitalist society, it’s pretty straightforward. The guardian class owns the means of production and therefore determines how it’s used. In a socialist society, the workers themselves would theoretically own the means of production thereby stripping the guardian class of such private property. This is one key distinction we can make, for example, between modern social democracy and democratic socialism. The former would still allow for the existence of private property, but utilize state programs of taxation to redistribute the surplus capital derived from production. The latter would flow directly to the working class.

Now, all of this paints a small picture within a much larger system. If we jump ahead in our timeline to when the Bolsheviks took control of Russia and attempted to convert from a feudal economy to a collective, the concept was theoretically based upon a more democratic socialist style economy. A “soviet” is essentially a local, democratically elected council that would determine the governance and economic activities of a defined region. Again, in theory this democratic process would give ownership and authority to control the economy and grant quasi-ownership of the means of production. The vision of a union of soviets controlling pieces of a large system was the genesis of the Soviet Union. Later on we’ll discuss how this concept never came to fruition, but just the idea of it is an approximation historians have to how the working class could own the political and economic process within a larger system.

Building on this, the natural question arises of how exactly labor owned and controlled operations would participate in the larger economy and thrive under a political system. That’s where the theories diverge even more. Again, as we move through the series we’ll give examples of different interpretations and systems that evolved from attempting to answer questions like this. But for now, we’re still in the definitions and level-setting phase so let’s continue with a few questions because we can already see how complications would arise along the way to building out a socialist infrastructure, not only within a defined territory but in terms of how this economic system would fit into a global marketplace.

Here are just a questions that illustrate the complexity of these theories:

• If market forces such as supply and demand aren’t solely responsible for determining price, then how are goods and services valued?

• How do you determine output?

• We’re used to the idea that the price of something is what the market will bear or people are willing to pay for it. Under a socialist system, who values the inputs such as labor and raw materials?

• If ownership of property and the means of production are distributed among the working class, how do we determine the value of a share? Is skilled labor worth the same as unskilled labor?

• Where does capital investment come from if not the markets and the bourgeoisie?

• If surplus value—the amount above the value of labor and material inputs—is split among the working class, then how are deficits accounted for?

• We’re conditioned to believe that innovation is fostered by the desire for capital accumulation. Under a socialist system, what are the key incentives to innovate if all surplus wealth is distributed evenly?

• We’re also conditioned to believe that scarcity increases value and abundance detracts from it. If scarcity is a market force then does it still exist in the absence of a free market? Does it even matter?

Attempts to answer these and many other questions naturally involve government intervention to a large degree. Some believe that many of these questions are answered with a centralized planning model whereby outputs are predetermined by central authorities that set fixed production amounts. Modern day China is a good example of this. The Soviet Union was a bad example. What’s the difference?

In the years following the Cuban Revolution, centralized planning looked to be paying dividends. Then came the lean years, or the “special period” as the Cubans called it, when centralized planning failed and their primary market collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Some believe that you can have decentralized planning in terms of output and control over the means of production, but it’s difficult to pinpoint enduring examples of success.

Now, students of economic and social theory will recognize our discussion thus far as pretty basic. But, again, it’s important to establish a common vocabulary and to frame inquiries in a way that contextualizes the challenges different theories present in the real world. From here we can build on the key concepts and terms such as labor, surplus, means of production, centralized planning, scarcity and so on to see how socialist theory was interpreted at different times throughout its history.

For the real aficionados, I promise that this will get deeper as we go. As preview, we’ll cover notable figures such as Cesare Beccaria, Jeremy Bentham, Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Mikhail Bakunin, John Stuart Mill, John Dewey, Rosa Luxemburg, Peter Kropotkin, Karl Kautsky, Emma Goldman through to Michael Harrington and even Bernie.

We’ll introduce many of these characters in the next essay when we examine distinct epochs of socialist history beginning with the real socialist roots that predate Marx. So with the key concepts and terms under our belt, we’ll build our timeline and bring central players into the mix on our way to distinguishing between Socialism, Marxism, communism, anarchism, utopian socialism, Maoism, Leninism, Stalinism, democratic socialism and more. We’ll add color to this discussion by evaluating historical examples in Cuba, China, Scandinavia, Russia, Africa and Latin America.

Then we’ll focus specifically on the United States as a microcosm of all of these approaches. Concepts, movements, key figures, timeline and an evaluation of where things stand today.

Thanks for jumping into the river with me. Hopefully when we emerge, we will indeed be different as no doubt the river will be.

Here endeth Part One of Understanding Socialism.

In Part One of Understanding Socialism, we noted that G.W.F. Hegel’s work had a profound impact on a young Karl Marx. Hegelian dialectic, the study of thought and reason by synthesizing contradictions into a higher truth, is the beating heart of Marx’s critique of capitalism. The conflicts that Marx sought to resolve were material, as opposed to the abstract that Hegel sought to reconcile. In this material setting, Marx studied the contradictory nature of the interests between labor and the capitalist class. He believed them to be so extreme as to be inevitable, and that numbers, strength and political will favored the working class. The rift would worsen over time, lead to a global popular uprising and eventually to what he called the withering away of the state.

This ultimate expression, the formation of a utopian socialist society, informs our vague notion of communism. A moneyless and classless society. Interestingly, when attempting to draw upon non-material influences, his intellectual predecessor Hegel arrived at a different conclusion, one that favored monarchical rule.

Both were wrong.

Monarchies died at the hand of nationalism. The working class never united across national boundaries. The state has only gained power, far from withering away.

Why, then, do we give so much credence to the philosophies and prognostications of these thinkers? How can there be so many competing visions of socialism? Is socialism a moral and ethical discipline, or is it political and economic? We add these to the ever deepening layers of questions surfaced in Part One that were more practical in nature. Questions regarding the value of labor, what drives a market, foundations and formations of capital, property rights and ownership.

So what’s the throughline in all of this?

In our capitalism essay, we demonstrated how our views of capitalism, the very definition of it, in fact, has changed over time. New thinkers. New nations. Technology. Innovation. Changing cultures and attitudes. All contributing to the evolution of thought. The river Heraclitus spoke of.

And, whether it’s Adam Smith and capitalism, Karl Marx and socialism, Kant’s transcendental idealism, Mill’s utilitarianism, Dewey’s pragmatism or Goldman’s anarchism, there is one constant. Every system and the intellectual behind it strives to organize society in a framework that incorporates the practical aspects of human nature and provides a positive outcome for the greatest number of people.

The great philosophers are engaged in conversation. Their ideas echo over generations and weave their way into new modalities. We speak of Hegel because his process and way of thinking informed Marx. Karl Marx was offering a critique of an economic system formulated by Adam Smith and François Quesnay. Socialism was conceived 50 years before Marx even put pen to paper. So, to understand the evolution of socialism, we have to contextualize the various epochs through which it evolved. Understand the motives of those who drove each iteration. Dig into the external factors that altered the nature of it. Wars. Famines. Movements. Attitudes.

So, we have to do more than just offer definitions and examples. We have to weave a larger narrative that contemplates all of these factors and sets them in historical context. So, let’s start at the beginning.

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Chapter Four: A Better Way?

The Enlightenment, known as the long century in Europe, opened the human mind to the possibility of moving beyond the feudal structures that dominated society throughout history. Declared the “Age of Reason,” intellectuals began investigating life through an epistemological lens. Reason and science over faith. A Cartesian approach to philosophy that placed the human mind and experience at the center of exploration rather than God. Prior to the Enlightenment, feudal structures dominated the landscape of empires and burgeoning nation-states, most of which remained tied to monarchies, religious control or a combination thereof.

But in the 17th Century, and throughout the 18th, a newly formed intellectual class was beginning to think differently about how to organize society. A new economic structure based upon markets gave rise to the theory of capitalism. Advances in agriculture allowed for populations to grow after being decimated by famines and plagues in centuries prior. A middle class was emerging, with artisans and merchants occupying new roles in society.

And there was a New World, across the ocean from where this intellectual revolution was occurring, that held the promise of secular and democratic rule. And this is where our story begins. At the dawn of the 19th Century. In the new experiment, it was the time of Jefferson, Madison and Monroe—iIntellectual products of the Enlightenment, political products of an anti-monarchy revolution. Forged in blood, to be sure. But brimming with possibilities.

And, as the New World matured and broke free of the shackles of the European patriarchy, so too were the citizens of Europe agitating for something new. For them, it was the time of Napoleon, King George III, the emperors Alexander and Nicholas in Russia. The patchwork of Germanic states were still organized in feudal territories, each owing allegiance to blood rulers and aristocratic systems. This was prior to the epic orchestration and consolidation of Germanic states under Otto von Bismarck, which would come later in the century.

But, it’s in these territories that a new breed of philosopher would build upon Enlightenment principles and begin to fuse them together with possibilities that abounded, as markets connected humanity at a pace never before witnessed in human history. It was the height of G.W.F Hegel, the German philosopher who inspired Marx’s material dialectic. But it was in France where the true roots of socialist theory emerged. And it was a businessman from Wales who made one of the first practical attempts to implement it.

Bentham and Beccaria’s Building Blocks

(How’s that for alliteration?)

Again, timing matters. We’re speaking loosely about the early 1800s. Critically, just prior to this period, there were two revolutionary moments that reverberated the world over. The American Revolution, first, and the French Revolution a decade or so later. I bring this up because there are those who believe that early socialist roots can be found in the Jacobin movement and brief ruling tenure during the French revolution. While there are traces of socialist theory, the Jacobins were a political force, first and foremost. So, while there’s crossover in some of the desired outcomes such as secular rule, equal rights and universal education, the Jacobins favored strong central authority and were notably light on economic policy. I mention it because the French Revolution is sometimes tied to the birth of modern socialism, but I see it more as a cousin than a parent.

One of the difficulties of distilling any sweeping construct such as socialism into even a multi-part series, is in determining which of the vast number of theorists to include. In each, we find remnants of prior intellectuals and eras, some small innovations and some profound ones that fill out the mosaic of thought. Most texts consider three men, that we’ll cover in a moment, as setting the roots of what we would consider socialism. But, since everyone is building on ideas that came before them, there are two figures in particular that should be in the conversation: Milanese aristocrat Cesare Beccaria and British intellectual Jeremy Bentham.

We’ve spoken of both men before. Beccaria is most known for his book On Crimes and Punishments, which proffered the idea that criminal justice should be preventative rather than punitive, and suggested myriad reforms that remain hallmarks of jurisprudence to this day. But, like many other great intellectuals throughout history, Beccaria was also a noted economist and social theorist. He was the first to write that the quantity of a good had an inverse relationship to its price. In other words, the theory of supply and demand. He also wrote extensively about tariffs and trade and their effect on behavior. In just these examples, Beccaria had a massive impact on economics and the law. Regarding the latter, luminaries from Voltaire to Thomas Jefferson lauded Beccaria’s work.

Importantly, Beccaria wrote early enough to influence Bentham, who was far more productive and lived a good deal longer than Beccaria. Bentham not only wrote on criminal justice, he contributed vital work on taxes, welfare reform, separation of church and state, trade, policing, democracy and more. He was an infinite well of inspired thought that challenged establishment thinking throughout Eastern and Western Europe. He closely observed uprisings in Russia and the French Revolution, and was considered to be one of the most important public figures of his time. Today, he is best known as the founder of utilitarianism, in fact coining the term.

Utilitarianism is essentially a moral theory that can be applied in the political, economic and carceral realms, and it basically holds that any action that demonstrates a positive social good is just. An early example of greater good theory, basically.

So, why these two? Out of scores, if not hundreds, of truly remarkable Enlightenment thinkers, are Beccaria and Bentham so relevant? Especially since they were most productive at the latter stages of what historians consider to be the Enlightenment.

Well, I think that’s part of it. Beccaria and Bentham were most productive at the moment the western world was transitioning from the Enlightenment to the Modern Era. So, in many ways, they were the products of all the great thinkers who came before and the ones who were handing the baton to the next generation. Remember that monarchies and organized religion were still clinging to administrative power and lording over quasi-feudal economic structures. All of this was crumbling during the industrial revolution and the political upheavals in Europe and across the pond.

So, here we have two radical intellectuals promoting democratic thinking in every realm, from policing and incarceration to representative government and welfare. They were beginning to think in systems, seeing the relationship between economic conditions and behavior; to view economic justice as a responsibility of the state through sponsored welfare, guaranteed employment, fair labor and trade practices.

They understood the interconnectedness of social, economic, political and legal disciplines and how they related to the construction of moral and democratic societies. All of this dramatic historical stuff was just feeding into them. The founding of America, the crumbling of monarchies, growth of industry, surging inequality alongside the creation of a middle class, wars, famines, abundance, revolutions, secularism.

Essentially, it was a dizzying time. All of the structures that had guided empires for centuries were disintegrating at once. Market economies opened the world to new economic possibilities. Democratic rule was challenging authoritarian monarchies. New classes were emerging. So figures like Beccaria and Bentham were grappling with these implications, imagining new social, political, legal and economic constructs that could manage the change and attempting to reorganize society in ways not contemplated since the time of Aristotle.

So, as the world entered the 19th century, a new breakthrough was imminent.

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Chapter Five: Socialism Takes Root From The Seeds Of Revolution.

The second industrial revolution and the Revolution in France set the stage for the birth of socialist theory. In everything we discussed so far, particularly at the turn of the 19th century, we see how intellectuals like Beccaria and Bentham were assimilating these revolutionary inputs into moral and ethical frameworks that informed new theories in economics, politics and the law. And together, these theories informed new constructs for society writ large.

But, at the core, there were two main constants. The state and class hierarchy. In many ways, the next big breakthrough was to take these new frameworks to the next logical step. And, in this, we see the roots of socialist theory. One that challenges the last two vestiges of Enlightenment thought and drives us into the modern era. The idea that all of these advances might themselves supplant the traditional role of the state and thus lead to a new paradigm, if not elimination, of class hierarchies altogether.

That’s the fundamental shift introduced by Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier of France and Robert Owen from Wales, considered by most to be the true intellectual progenitors of socialist theory.

To introduce us to this trio, I want to bring in the work of Michael Harrington. Harrington was the founder of the Democratic Socialists of America, who was a major left wing figure in the United States, author of eighteen books—including the one we’ll pull from, titled Socialism: Past and Future, his final one.

“Fourier and Saint-Simon had unhappy personal experiences with the upheaval in France. They wrote as the industrial revolution was taking off. Owen was a factory owner, and Saint-Simon might be said to have been the first philosopher of industrialism and, for that matter, the first “historical materialist,” with his emphasis on the underlying importance of the economic in social and political history. Both of them greeted the new technological world as a means to their utopian ends. Fourier is the exception, the one of the three who was not that enthusiastic about industrial progress. Yet he was far ahead of his time as a thinker who made an almost Freudian definition of what socialism would be.”

Harrington is making an important distinction between the Jacobins, Enlightenment thinkers in the vein of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and economic theorists such as Quesnay and Smith. They were the first to view industrialization, markets and economic mobility between the classes in a societal construct that might inevitably, with the right inputs and under the right circumstances, evolve into an egalitarian society that rid the world of centralized rule and class distinctions. In fact, it was Saint-Simon who first proposed the idea of “withering away of the state.”

As Harrington also notes, however, Fourier had his suspicions about the burgeoning merchant class, something that would echo in Marx’s critique a few decades later. Here he is in his own words:

“Are merchants alone exempt from the social obligations imposed on all the other classes of society? When a general, a judge or a doctor is given a free hand, he is not authorised to betray the army, despoil the innocent or assassinate his patient. Such people are punished when they betray their trust; the perfidious general is beheaded; the judge must answer to the Minister of justice. The merchants alone are inviolable and sure of impunity! Political economy wishes no one to have the right of controlling their machinations. If they starve a whole region, if they disturb its industry with their speculation, hoarding and bankruptcies, everything is justified by the simple title of merchant.”

Right away, we can see some of the seeds of thought that would germinate in Marx’s works. Mistrust of the merchant class. An organic movement toward a stateless society. We’ll get to Owen in a moment, because, as I mentioned earlier, he was the first to put these theories into practice. But I want to make another distinction between these early theorists and where Marx would eventually land. Saint-Simon, the more optimistic of the two Frenchmen, was critical of the bourgeoisie but supportive of industrialists and financiers, the ones who leveraged the means of production and made things. As Harrington posits, “how can one man inspire both the banking industry and the socialist movement?”

He continues to suggest that it was Saint-Simon’s followers who “squared the circle,” by saying,

“If government was now to be replaced by society as defined functionally, then the critical question: What is society and who are its functional leaders? For Saint-Simon, the answer was industrialists and bankers…in contrast to the coupon-clipping bourgeoisie.”

Again, we’re at the beginning stages of socialist theory, when old structures were beginning to break down and new leaders were inspired by secular potential rather than pre-Enlightenment deterministic thinking. Every idea was groundbreaking and held potential. But we can also see that even these early thinkers faced the same queries we raised in Part One regarding ownership of production, generation of capital and investments, role of governance and so on.

As we continue to traverse the landscape of socialism, we’ll periodically allude to adjacent but no less important movements that either inspired socialism or were inspired by it. Just know that passing references to such important milestones and movements is not intended to diminish it, just to help us stay focused on the task at hand. Among the tributaries such as utopianism, utilitarianism and anarchism, it’s important to recognize that feminism was a dominant corollary of most authentic socialist movements. This is particularly true in the case of our three progenitors. As Fourier proclaimed, “The degree of feminine emancipation is the natural measure of general emancipation.”

Even more than Fourier, the Saint-Simon movement came to embody the whole of the new socialist movement as encapsulated in the words of George Lichtheim, who wrote:

“Socialism was a faith—that was the great discovery the Saint-Simonians had made! It was the “new Christianity,” and it would emancipate those whom the old religion had left in chains—above all woman and the proletariat!”

But, if Saint-Simon and Fourier represent the intellectual foundation of socialist theory, willing to challenge feudal society structures, nobility and norms, then it was the Welshman Robert Owen who gave rise to socialism in practice.

Paradise Lost: Robert Owen and New Harmony

Robert Owen was an exemplary member of the newly defined merchant class, rising through society as a successful businessman. His experience as a benevolent employer led him to, as Harrington notes, “try to convince the British and American elite that social justice was a pragmatic investment. During the very hard times after the Napoleonic Wars, there was widespread misery, unemployment, and, as a result, fear of revolution. The cost of caring for the poor—outlays that had been taken at considerable measure as an insurance policy against a French-style revolution in Britain—rose even as the wartime prosperity ended.”

Owen had a weakness, as perceived by the ruling class, however, and that was his atheism. This shut him out of much of upper echelon society and contributed to his own radical transformation from good natured elitist to working class champion. Owen took his fortune to the United States to establish New Harmony, one of the earliest models of utopian socialism we can point to. Don’t get me wrong, there were multiple attempts throughout Europe and even some in the United States, but what Owen was able to construct due to his significant personal means stands as one of the ultimate tests of faith in socialist doctrine.

In 1825, Owen set roots in Harmony, Indiana, a village that was home to a small Christian group. Setting himself up as the guardian of the community, Owen guided a handful of followers through the establishment of a new constitution and a number of communal governing councils designed to put economic, political and labor decisions into the hands of the members.

The experiment failed within three years, and Owen was forced to give up the community, at which point he returned to Europe. But, in these three years, enough historical information and context was gathered, as though in a human laboratory, to dissect the benefits and downsides of a community organized in such a fashion. As the Socialist Alternative organization notes:

“By turning the community into a voluntary association, a very different sort of social arrangement came about. Those who came over to New Harmony were a mass of pauperized laborers, deprived of work in the midst of an agricultural recession. Many forced into criminality, these layers had none of the social commitment that Owen had expected, but instead sought unemployment relief, turning the community less into the utopian paradise Owen foresaw and something more akin to a soup kitchen.”

I want to go way into the future for a moment to highlight something we covered in our series on the presidency of Bill Clinton. Recall that one of the features of the so-called New Democrat playbook was the attempt to turn every struggling laborer into an entrepreneur. The experiment was an abject failure. And, it continues to be, as demonstrated by the ongoing effort of organizations like the Clinton Foundation, who continue to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that everyone wants to own a business. The vast majority of working people are looking for steady, gainful and, if possible, rewarding employment, not the risk and upheaval associated with entrepreneurship. It was a lesson that Robert Owen learned the hard way in the 1820s.

Moreover, Owen’s attempts to inculcate the community with his personal views on atheism only turned many of the community against him. So, the whole thing fell apart in rather short order, despite the communal environment, freedom of movement and expression and financial security blanket from Owen.

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I wanted to end on this example. And, the next section will include a similar one just a half century later to demonstrate a few key points. First off, Marx was a student of all of this activity that inspired his work, one way or another. The New Harmony experiment, among others before and during his time, would inform his view of utopian socialism. Some might be surprised to learn that the man so closely associated with this vision actually took a rather dim view of the attempts to organize communal spaces and utopian societies. This is where we see the rational and scientific, if not anthropological, intellect of Marx.

Marx understood something more about human nature than those who had come before him, and was able to synthesize this understanding into his approach. Harrington puts it perfectly:

“Marx, the student of Hegel, knew perfectly well that the means are themselves the end in the process of becoming. By changing the definition of how one gets to socialism, you change the definition of socialism itself.”

What Owen and other revolutionaries failed to understand about the nature of revolutionary change is the groundswell. The process. The catalyzing events required to inspire the masses and move them to change their own circumstances. It’s why Marx is so important today, even if he misread the outcome and perhaps the speed and totality of capitalism’s momentum and agility; its ability to transform over the decades to do just enough to keep the masses in check and prevent uprisings.

Marx knew that societal transformation couldn’t, and wouldn’t, be thrust upon even those who stood to benefit the most from it. It needed to be bottom up, not the other way around.

So, that’s where we’ll pick up next. The groundwork has been laid, the foundation set. In the next essay, we enter the heart of socialism to examine the life and impact of one of the most important people in human history.

Here endeth Part Two.

In Part One of our series, we set the table for a lengthy discussion about one of the most amorphous political, economic and social concepts in history. To illustrate this, we began with the words of our audience, whom we asked to describe socialism as succinctly as possible. The answers were as diverse as they were thoughtful, and it truly set the tone for the series. We offered some of the more dubious modern claims about socialist theory from mainstream mouthpieces, talked about the importance of Bernie Sanders in normalizing concepts associated with modern socialism in the United States, and introduced some of the key concepts and vocabulary most commonly used in socialist economy theory.

Then, in Part Two, we went back to the origins of socialist theory by looking at the bridge between the Enlightenment period and the modern era with philosophers such as Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham, who in turn laid the groundwork for what would become socialist theory. This is where we introduced three men considered by some to be the progenitors of socialism: Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen.

My biggest takeaway from revisiting this period in history is just how profound their ideas were in a period when humanity was emerging from the feudal structures that dominated European culture for centuries. And, I should point out that most of our discussions center around the European experience with socialism, though we will cover other expressions of parallel thinking in other cultures and periods throughout history. But the concepts that we wrestle with today are most often associated with European philosophers and the influence they had on the world, so that’s what we’ve concerned ourselves with for the most part.

So, if Part Two described the foundational period, we’re heading into what I’m calling the “critique period” of socialism. The critique period is a relatively short period of time, but it is perhaps the most essential period to understand. The relevant philosophical period associated with Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen is the first part of the 19th Century; but, as we’ll see, there is a good deal of overlap between their productive years and what we’re about to cover.

I’ve chosen to bookend the foundational period and the critique period with two important events that relate to manifestations of socialist theory—Robert Owen’s New Harmony experiment in 1825 and the Paris Commune in 1871. It’s impossible to overstate the importance of these years and the enduring influence of the philosophers most associated with this period, each of whom builds upon the concepts of our founding trio and, in some cases, collaborates with them. In terms of the nomenclature, please know that these aren’t formal periods or names that you’ll find associated in any texts. It’s a shorthand for how I’ve personally come to understand the evolution of socialism. I call it the critique period for a couple of reasons.

First off, is that the philosophers we’re going to cover are primarily offering a critique of capitalism and striving toward the development of a general system theory that can be applied in political, social and economic realms. During this time, we witness both great collaboration and disagreement among leading philosophers striving to create these systems and wind up exiting this period with several expressions; mostly notably utilitarianism, socialism and anarchism. There’s a ton of overlap between them, and each will ultimately spawn scores of new doctrinal tributaries.

The other reason to consider this more of a critique period is that these theories are in development. They’re responding to both the foundational theories and unfolding realities of a maturing capitalist society. But they haven’t yet reached the application phase, or what we’ll call the “praxis” phase, to borrow from Marx. That’s what we’ll cover next, from the Paris Commune through the Russian Revolution.

So, we’re going to actually end this episode right before the Paris Commune of 1871 because, in so many ways the inflection point in European history and socialism as a burgeoning doctrine is the year 1870, one of the most pivotal years in modern history. For the American UNFTR audience, imagine what 1945 is to American imperialism, 1968 is to the civil rights movement or 2001 is to civil liberties all crammed together in a single momentous year. Truly fascinating stuff.

In terms of the protagonists, as expansive as this era is, I’m going to limit our discussion to four main philosophers. A few words on this approach before we begin Part Three in earnest.

We’re going to cover the works of John Stuart Mill and (finally) Karl Marx. These two giants will kick off the critique period; and two other massively influential theorists, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin, will kick off Part Four and serve as our bridge from the critique to praxis.

Students of Marxism, socialism, anarchism or history in general might find my omissions a bit startling. It would be impossible to fully explore the voluminous literature and philosophers whose work contributed so much to the conversation. So, I narrowed it down to these four for reasons that will hopefully make sense as we move forward. But Part Four will also introduce us to a slew of other big names.

Briefly, I believe that, in totality, Mill, Marx, Proudhon and Bakunin represent the most significant and enduring contributions to our understanding of socialism and challenged establishment thinking in a way that altered the course of history. And, in many ways, where they diverged wound up being more important and instructive than where they were aligned. Because, after this period, socialist theory would splinter into multiple disciplines, much like the major religions of the world did throughout history.

And, in the truest actualization of dialectical materialism, this brief period is a study of both the material influences of philosophers upon the world and the world upon them. In this exchange, these four challenged the foundations of modern society, culture, government, religion and morality in such a manner that we feel the resonance of their words to this very day.

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Chapter Six: Revolutionary Conditions.

In the beginning of the 19th Century, the European continent was convulsing with new political, spiritual and social energy. The trio of Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen set the world’s collective imagination on fire, and new theorists were poised to build on their proposals for how to organize a new world.

Since we’re choosing 1825 and the collapse of Owen’s American New Harmony experiment as our jumping off point, it’s important to get a feel for the times. So, before we unpack the theories of our main characters today, let’s talk about the circumstances in which they were writing as intellectual heirs to the founders of socialist thought.

As I mentioned, there is a good deal of overlap between our theorists, and in many cases they were friends, enemies and even collaborators. For context, Beccaria and Bentham were born in 1738 and 1748, respectively. Saint-Simon, Hegel, Owen and Fourier were born about a half a generation later, just enough time to soak in the lessons of these founders and read their work in real-time in their formative years. The philosophers in the critique period were all born after the turn of the century and were most active from New Harmony through to our 1870 ending point, with the exception of Proudhon, who died in 1865 but was incredibly influential until that point, and perhaps even more so thereafter.

What Mill, Proudhon, Bakunin and Marx were experiencing during these years is so important because European life was advancing at a revolutionary pace unmatched in recorded history. For one, the population of Europe doubled in the 19th Century, from 200 million to 400 million, thanks to advances in industrial agriculture and the widespread use of coal, among other factors. These inventions facilitated industrialization on a colossal scale and contributed to the seismic changes in class structures, the nature of labor, urbanization, transportation and the development of international trade. It should be noted that this growth in population occurred in spite of historic European migration to America and other destinations.

Of course, not all of Europe developed in lockstep. There were surges and depressions, shifting power dynamics, wars, famines—all the normal events that punctuate the course of history. So, as a practical matter, I’m going to talk in generalizations. But, to be clear, political, industrial and social developments varied dramatically from England to Italy, Russia to France, and so on. But, on the whole, what our theorists were observing was nonetheless extraordinary, and they were able to connect several dots when committing their observations to the page.

In order to stay focused, I’m not going to cover major geopolitical or religious changes, though they certainly contribute to the evolving social landscape. For our purposes, there are a handful of critical innovations that ultimately impact the social and economic elements of socialism because they facilitated growth that would ultimately challenge the traditional political and religious structures that dominated European culture for centuries prior.

Perhaps the most significant ingredient in large scale economic growth, beyond technological innovations, was something we largely take for granted. Private property and its associated legal protections. English common law and the Napoleonic Codes would set the template for most of the developed world in terms of property rights and help usher in a slew of economic innovations in banking as a result.

Property could be pledged. From this tangible asset, one could build through leverage; and so long as the newly formed codes protected this underlying asset, one could also then take risks and take advantage of yet another innovation: the shareholder.

Private property pledged to a banking institution opened the burgeoning petit and haute bourgeoisie to the capital markets and allowed them to create corporate structures that could also invite capital from outside shareholders. If you’ve ever wondered what the Marxist obsession with the concept of private property is all about, this is it. Serfs and peasants didn’t possess land or assets and were therefore left behind in the industrial fervor. But, from the peasant class, there emerged a new class of laborer, consigned to working in urban factories and trading one form of serfdom for another.

This is the economic liberalism that Adam Smith envisaged. The innovations that Jeremy Bentham was reacting to. The very real circumstances that moved from the theoretical to the tangible. And it was the very real effects of economic liberalism that Marx, Mill, Proudhon and Bakunin saw unfolding in front of their eyes, often to their horror.

“It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.”

This passage is from Charles Dickens’ introduction to Hard Times in 1859. Few described the soot and grime as vividly as Dickens. The cultural impact of such descriptions were as profound in Europe as Jacob Riis’ tenement photographs or Upton Sinclair’s fiction in America at the turn of the 20th century. Against this backdrop, our theorists chronicled the emergence of the new working class, subjected to horrific conditions in factories and urban hellscapes and experiencing the underbelly of capitalism. The new form of serfdom was called wage slavery. Hundreds of thousands of able bodied working men moved from the fields to factories within a generation, and as the capitalists thrived, they searched for ways to increase profits and productivity, leading to yet another devastating development that sent children and women into the factories, sometimes alongside the men and sometimes in place of them.

The economic dislocation of the newly formed labor class was horrifying. But, in this, our philosophers saw potential. The potential to form a new center of political and economic power in the hands of the working class. Without the laborer, the factories could not run. And the new working class was more literate than the peasant laborers just a generation or two before them.

The working class was a tinderbox, ready to explode at any moment because the industrial economy differed from the sleepy agrarian economy. It was subject to boom and bust cycles, shocks that often occurred with devastating frequency over a matter of a few short years.

In short, the risks and stakes were so much higher for the new working class than even the peasant class that had come before. This modern economic dislocation was wholly unnatural, brought about by the artificial forces of capitalism, as opposed to the natural occurrences that plagued feudal economies of the past. Sure, droughts, famines and diseases had devastating effects on feudal economic systems, but everyone experienced them. They were indiscriminate. On the contrary, in the early stages of capitalist industrialization, the bourgeoisie was far more insulated from periodic shocks due to the nature of capital markets, assets and private property protections. For this, let’s bring in one of our protagonists to explain the risk differential between the new laborers and the capitalist class. Writing at the time of Dickens, here’s Mikhail Bakunin from an article titled “The Capitalist System,” believed to be written sometime in the late 1840s:

“But the capitalist, the business owner, runs risks, they say, while the worker risks nothing. This is not true, because when seen from his side, all the disadvantages are on the part of the worker. The business owner can conduct his affairs poorly, he can be wiped out in a bad deal, or be a victim of a commercial crisis, or by an unforeseen catastrophe; in a word he can ruin himself. This is true. But does ruin mean from the bourgeois point of view to be reduced to the same level of misery as those who die of hunger, or to be forced among the ranks of the common laborers? This so rarely happens, that we might as well say never. Afterwards it is rare that the capitalist does not retain something, despite the appearance of ruin. Nowadays all bankruptcies are more or less fraudulent. But if absolutely nothing is saved, there are always family ties, and social relations, who, with help from the business skills learned which they pass to their children, permit them to get positions for themselves and their children in the higher ranks of labor, in management; to be a state functionary, to be an executive in a commercial or industrial business, to end up, although dependent, with an income superior to what they paid their former workers.”

Today, Bakunin is recognized as one of the fathers of anarchism, but he is also considered one of the most influential political and economic theorists of all time who offered several important contributions to socialist theory and challenged many of Marx’s most significant assumptions. And, with that, let’s fully bring our philosophers into the conversation to eavesdrop on the most important conversations in the development of socialism.

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Chapter Seven: Marx And Mill.

“The materialist doctrine—that humans are the product of circumstances and education and that changed humans are thus the product of changed circumstances and education—forgets that circumstances are changed by humans and that the educator himself must be educated. It must therefore split society into two parts—of which one is elevated above society (for example in Robert Owen). The convergence of the changing of circumstances and of human action can only be understood and comprehended rationally as revolutionary practice.”

This excerpt from Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach in 1845 reflects the changing attitudes among the classes, altered by the circumstances of education and industrialization. As much as philosophers were imagining new social, political and economic structures, the newly formed working classes were changing, as well and agitating for change. It’s in this agitation that we find one of the most significant shifts among the great thinkers of the time. The commonality in their critiques is in many ways obvious. Where their paths diverge is in their beliefs about the future.

Turns out, the working class had its own ideas of where the capitalist system would go next.

To elucidate the emergence of socialist thought, let’s start with the oldest of the theorists who is least associated with socialism but provides a crucial bridge from some of our founding philosophers, most notably, Jeremy Bentham.

One of Bentham’s associates and mentees was a young John Stuart Mill. As I mentioned, Mill is sometimes excluded from the socialist conversation—he’s most associated with utilitarianism—but he’s a pure starting point for us because he paid little attention to our other philosophers while landing on very similar ideas.

James Mill was relatively poor, but had the good fortune of befriending one of England’s most prominent citizens, Jeremy Bentham. Mill himself possessed a keen mind and diligent work ethic and, together with his friend Bentham, they guided Mill’s prodigious son John Stuart, who would take up the mantle from Bentham to become one of Britain’s brightest intellectual lights.

Born in 1806, John Stuart Mill was treated from an early age to a radical and profound education, which included time in France at the age of 14, where he not only became proficient in French but mesmerized by French culture and politics. The forward thinking nature of Mill’s education included Bentham’s utilitarianism and David Ricardo’s synthesis of politics and economics. Over time, he would develop his own thoughts on the nature of capitalism and the developing industrial landscape and meld the teachings of his famous mentor and taskmaster father into his own unique brand of utilitarianism.

Mill pushed beyond the limited scope of philosophical morality to extend the concept of utility into all areas of life and governance from jurisprudence, democracy, worker’s rights and, most notably, women’s suffrage. You might have noticed, by the way, that our discussions thus far exclude female philosophers. That’s deliberate, because the fight for equal rights and suffrage was still in its infancy. As we’ll see in the next sections, some of the most fierce advocates for socialism and anarchism were women who linked worker’s rights and suffrage together in a profound way to advance the cause of feminism. So many consider Mill to be one of the earliest and most significant figures in the feminist movement, with one of his most well-known works titled The Subjugation of Women (1869) considered a cornerstone in the feminist literary canon.

Here’s Mill in his own words:

“The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes—the legal subordination of one sex to the other—is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.”

In his attitude toward women, we see Mill’s mind at work with respect to human rights and class distinctions. He would carry this over to the industrial sector when examining the plight of the laborer, giving over their time and labor to a selfish breed of capitalists. Remember that there were already thought experiments and actual experiments such as New Harmony that attempted to contrive situations that alleviated the brutal conditions of the workplace by placing control in the hands of the proletariat.

So, Mill had a frame of reference and ideas to build upon. Rather than the more utopian visions that had been espoused, or the top down dictatorial concepts of someone like Owen, Mill believed in a more gradual evolution toward worker cooperatives. This could take the form of profit sharing or actual ownership over the means of production, or perhaps both. But he was practical enough to suggest that this would take time and education and that it was too early in the transition between peasant to industrial worker to assume that any such transformation would be possible in the immediate.

So, while it’s fair and accurate to put Mill in more of the moral philosopher bucket and append him firmly to utilitarianism, it’s important not to pigeonhole him. His ability to project the utilitarian ethos onto the trials and tribulations of the working class is revolutionary in its own right, and in many ways he would prove to be prescient in terms of his assessment of the working class ability to revolt against their circumstances. So, what we get from Mill is more procedural than doctrinal. A way of looking at the world and making connections between previously disparate philosophies.

Although Karl Marx was 12 years Mill’s junior, they were productive around the same time. And while there’s very little evidence that Mill studied Marx or even cared about his writing, we know for sure that Marx knew a lot about Mill but didn’t think much of him. In fact, Marx referred to Mill as shallow. But he wasn’t just picking on Mill; this was par for the course with Marx, as we’ll soon talk about.

Philosophically, Marx and Mill likely shared more in common than not. But Marx had a habit of treating contemporaries with disdain, partly out of professional jealousy and partly because he was pointedly against anyone who suggested that the transition toward economic liberty for the working class could be anything but revolutionary. He would soften this stance toward the end of his life, but most of his writing was electrifying and caustic when it came to the nature of uprisings. Evolution and incrementalism was antithetical to his world view, and he wasn’t shy about criticizing nearly everyone around him.

In his early years, when he first connected with his lifetime collaborator Friedrich Engels, Marx routinely felt obscured by those he considered to be lesser minds. So, he would sometimes write scathing rebukes of others’ work in the hopes of drawing them into a scrum and siphoning off their popularity.

Marx was the original influencer.

While there’s no question that his strategy worked and he had the brilliance to back up his pomposity, it sometimes worked too well. Time after time, Marx would find himself in exile by both friend and country.

Karl Marx grew up in Germany and received a great education, but was unremarkable in school. His family had tried to push him towards studying law, but he chose philosophy instead and thus consigned himself to a life of squalor. If not for the financial support he received from his friend Engels, Marx may very well be an unknown. Especially because my man had a little difficulty holding down a job, and his revolutionary ideals made him a pariah throughout Europe.

In fact, because he was prolific, Marx would often find work in journalism, but would constantly run afoul of authority in doing so and was therefore exiled from cities and entire countries. First, he was kicked out of his home country. So he went to France. Shortly thereafter, the French showed him the door, so he moved to Belgium, where he was suspected of arming radicals and once again kicked out and kind of snuck back to France.

Importantly, we’re in the 1840s, and the backdrop to his repeated exiles is important. It would be a stretch to suggest that Marx’s writing to this point, while radical and provocative to be sure, had any demonstrable effect on the world around him and the protests that began to occur throughout all of Europe. But it was enough to convince Marx that he was onto something. We’ll come back to the political setting in a moment.

We rejoin the Marx caravan in 1849, when he was exiled from France once again and took his family to London, where he would reside for the remainder of his life.

Just the year before, he penned The Communist Manifesto, the work that would ultimately set him apart from the other scholars of the day, though few recognized it at the time. It’s perhaps the lightest of his works in terms of scholarship, but has endured as a revolutionary handbook that inspires to this day, no matter how wrong his prognostications ultimately were. The intellectual heft we associate with Marx came in the form of his other works, with Das Kapital being the most prominent.

But, throughout his life, Marx was seen as somewhat of an ornery figure. He drank. He smoked. Partied. Was uncomfortable speaking in public, preferring instead to write terrible things about people that were supposedly friends. Some posthumous texts about him are seething with bitterness and anger toward the man, calling him tyrannical, doctrinal and self absorbed. Others are far more kind, noting that despite the struggles and financial hardships he brought upon them, his family adored him and he was considered to be quite endearing in private.

Regardless of who Marx was as a person, the real takeaway here is that Marx’s influence in his life was shockingly small, considering how he is perceived today. Had subsequent philosophers not split so fiercely in their interpretations of his work, therefore amplifying it during a time when true revolution was sweeping across Eastern Europe, one must wonder whether we’d be reading him at all. I think it’s absolutely fair to state that if not for Engels’ support and dedication to completing, organizing and preserving his work, Marx may indeed be a footnote. As Louis Menand wrote in The New Yorker:

“Apart from his loyal and lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels, almost no one would have guessed, in 1883, the year Marx died, at the age of sixty-four, how influential he would become. Eleven people showed up for the funeral. For most of his career, Marx was a star in a tiny constellation of radical exiles and failed revolutionaries (and the censors and police spies who monitored them) but almost unknown outside it. The books he is famous for today were not exactly best-sellers. “The Communist Manifesto” vanished almost as soon as it was published and remained largely out of print for twenty-four years; “Capital” was widely ignored when the first volume came out, in 1867. After four years, it had sold a thousand copies, and it was not translated into English until 1886.”

Okay, so let’s get back to timing for a moment. Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848 during a time of great upheaval throughout Europe. Germany, Austria, Hungary, France, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Denmark—all in dramatic turmoil. Some nations experienced riots, some were overthrown. It was worker pandemonium all across the continent due to a few factors. There was a financial panic that gripped most of the European economies, as was the norm in the early stages of industrialization. This led to famine in rural areas that had already seen a decrease in population, and therefore viable workers, in the great urban migration to factories. But the urban areas were rocked with unemployment and thus faring no better. Those who were working were laboring in conditions that were truly the stuff of nightmares, and so discontent set in all over Europe. And smack dab in the middle of this, Karl Marx writes the Communist motherfucking Manifesto. (I think that’s translated from the original German.)

While the book didn’t ignite further demonstrations or prove to be true with respect to the grand uprising of the proletariat to overthrow the nations of the world, it would add credibility to Marx’s legend. It was a pocket guide to revolution that inspired both admiration and criticism and contributed as much to the splinter in Marxian interpretations as it did to coalesce radicals and revolutionaries around the notion of socialism and/or communism.

Let’s quickly dig into a few key takeaways from Marx’s work that we can use as building blocks. Recall from Part One, we mentioned that Marx was a student of Hegel and the concept of material influence on the world. Marx’s vision of materialism followed that the conditions dictated by the capitalists would alter the very nature of the working class and convert them into a revolutionary mindset. This mindset would forge a bond across nation states, and worker solidarity would ultimately lead to the proletariat seizing the mechanisms of state power. This, of course, did not happen. And we’ll talk more about why in later sections.

Marx was also decidedly wrong when it came to predicting that mechanization of plants and factories would ultimately kill profits. His theory was that if labor is what adds value to a commodity, then without labor, the value must therefore decline. In reality, the opposite wound up being true, and a century later economists like Schumpeter would drill into the nature of creative destruction to explain why this is the case.

Where Marx was absolutely right was in describing the volatile nature of capitalism and the tendency of bust cycles to rob the working class:

• He understood the powerful nature of private property in a way that few others could really grasp at the time.
• He predicted worker discontent and subsequent upheaval as a result.
• He gave the world a practical understanding of the value of labor, surplus value as something fungible that could just as well belong to the laborer as the capitalist.
• And Marx gave us the words to describe the fatigue that had already set into the factory worker.

In the Communist Manifesto, he declared:

“Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!”

In this way, Marx would easily become propagandized over time as a revolutionary rather than the practical philosopher he was.

As often happens over time, several generations of writers and activists have attempted to interpret Marx’s work in order to craft some sort of overarching ideology. But this is a fool’s errand. For, as prolific as Marx was, he was loath to put forth a doctrine or what we would consider Marxism. Atheists have attempted to cling to his work because of his dismissive attitude toward organized religion with statements like, “Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.” And, while he was Jewish, which made him the subject of contempt among many of his contemporaries, he rarely professed any fealty to his religion.

To my mind, Marx’s strength was in his power of observation. His ability to contextualize the rational and practical sentiments among the working class are the most enduring aspects of his work and place him among the giants of the intellectual class.

“In countries where modern civilization has become fully developed a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and as modern industry develops they even see the moment approaching when they will disappear complete as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce by overseers, bailiffs and shopmen.”

It’s possible that Marxism as an ideology is a construct that has been thrust upon him and not something of his own invention. There exists countless critiques of Marx’s vast body of work, with many attempting to craft an ideology out of his observations. The opinions are as diverse as Marx’s work itself and offer no more insight into his heart than a re-reading of his works. It’s possible that one does not exist. There is no definitive interpretation. No ideology. And this is one of the reasons we’re still talking about him to this day. His contributions were so rich and abundant, and his criticisms so scathing, it’s difficult to find anyone before and since him that so thoroughly inspired and confounded the masses. The inability to definitively tie Marx to an idea has meant he somehow belongs to all of us and none of us.

In the next Part, we will connect Marx specifically to Proudhon and Bakunin, who are in many ways far more important to the events that would transpire between 1870 and 1917. So, we will begin Part Four by looking at how these two men as contemporaries of Marx and Mill more aptly captured the zeitgeist of the working class and predicted the rupture among the working class that gave rise to the organized labor movement and new ideas about how to organize industrial society. Proudhon and Bakunin will be our bridge to the rise of unions, state socialism, anarchism and a new breed of social philosophy characterized by figures like Peter Kropotkin, Karl Kautsky, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky. And an important development in the feminist and anarchist movement with the likes of Emma Goldman.

The inflection point of the next period, that we’ll refer to as the Praxis period, begins with the ever important turning point of 1870 and the Paris Commune in 1871. The peasant and factory uprisings throughout Europe in 1848 planted the seeds of revolution that inspired Marx and Engels, as well as Proudhon and Bakunin. And these seeds would blossom in 1870 and ’71 in a way that would transform the political and economic world.

Here endeth Part Three.

“Politics is a constant battle over values, and we are all inevitably in a state of competition to realize our ideals. In such a contested space, it is possible to develop tactics only in a situated and contextualized way. Because there is no war to be won, but rather an endless series of struggles, critical theory must focus on strategies and tactics.” -Bernard Harcourt, Critique and Praxis

We left off in Part Three with somewhat of a cliffhanger. It’s 1848. Karl Marx just published The Communist Manifesto to critical acclaim, with millions of copies sold throughout the world and governments toppled as a result, thereby ushering in the Russian Revolution…something, something Fidel Castro, China takes over the world and Hunter Biden sells uranium to the Norwegians for a bag of cocaine, steals a fishing vessel and blows up the Nord Stream Pipeline.

(For those of you following at home, the only true part of that was that Marx published the Communist Manifesto.)

Right, so…Marx’s seminal political work was published in a vacuum and pretty much collected dust until it was brushed off by Russian and German revolutionaries much later on. But the uprisings throughout Europe made him extremely prescient. Workers were revolting against increasingly brutal working conditions in the new urban factory settings toward the end of the First Industrial Revolution. Economic crisis gripped the European economies and led to widespread starvation and dislocation, which manifested in worker revolts in disparate parts of the continent.

Throughout what I’m referring to as the “critique period,” from New Harmony in 1825 to a historical turning point in 1870, we’ve thus far examined the works of Marx and John Stuart Mill, who were working in parallel. What happened from 1848 to 1870 in the second half of the critique period was a gradual coalescence of political thinking.

This merger of interests and observations helped formulate more specific and practical philosophies. With peasants moving into the working class, accessing education and participating in the capitalist economy, there was a sense among socialist theorists that the ideas that once existed in journals and scholarly outlets might somehow come to life.

But how? And where?

Two intellectuals who sought to answer these questions were Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin. While Marx deserves to live in the public consciousness as one of the great intellectuals in human history, in socialist circles, Proudhon and Bakunin were far more influential during their lifetimes and probably contributed more to the practical aspects of socialist theory that have endured. I’ll leave it to academics to answer why Marx emerged as the most notable of all the theorists, which is not to take anything away from his scholarship; it’s just a fascinating twist of history that’s above my pay grade.

So, we’ll pick up our journey heading out of the critique period by talking about Proudhon and Bakunin and why their contributions bridge the narrative to the “praxis period,” which takes shape in 1870. We’ll spend a bit of time in 1870 and 1871 to discuss why this was such an inflection point that reverberates even today, then crank through 50 years of an epic battle between socialism and capitalism culminating in the dual revolutions in Russia in 1917.

Let’s quickly talk about the distinction between these periods and why I chose to separate them around this specific moment in time.

This is where we have to bring political structures into the conversation. We’re talking European-style socialism specifically, but we can’t discount what was unfolding around the world. In Asia, the dominant force remained the Qing Dynasty, though anti-monarchism would eventually spread to China in much the same way as it swept across Europe, only slightly later. And of course, across the pond the American experiment continued to arouse interest among political groups.

A nascent empire built on democratic principles with no established monarchical rule, no heirs or dynasties? Yes please.

The possibility of secular democratic rule was inspiring and there’s no question that it was influencing the minds of the great thinkers in our story.

With more than 50 revolts and uprisings occurring throughout Europe in 1848, it makes sense that a revolutionary sentiment was palpable. Whereas Marx viewed this through the lens of the proletariat and envisioned a mass uprising that crossed borders and united people based upon class, there was something much bigger at play. But one can imagine how unsettling and inspiring this period was, because the uprisings were largely independent of one another. Completely uncoordinated.

Source: The Collector, The Revolutions of 1848: A Wave of Anti-Monarchism Sweeps Europe

If this scattershot of protests throughout Europe in 1848 signified a global philosophical shift and would portend a changing of the ruling guard, then 1870 was the single atomic blast that would define the next century.

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Chapter Eight: Socialist Fault Lines.

If critique implies something wholly theoretical, then praxis represents the attempt to bring theory to life in some practical manner that impacts society broadly. That’s why big ideas like socialism are ultimately difficult to define. A holistic framework like socialism must account for cultural practices, economic conditions, geography and terrain, education levels, legal structures and political circumstances. And in 19th Century Europe, all nations were undergoing incredible transformations in every manner possible.

As we said in Part Three, what places Marx on the Mount Rushmore of political thinkers is his attempt to organize social, economic and political theories into practical doctrines and to predict how it would all come about. Most practitioners of the social sciences weren’t that bold. Still, he had impressive foundations to build upon.

Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham were writing at a time of relative stability in terms of feudal and monarchical systems. Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier and Robert Owen bore witness to the early impact of the first Industrial Revolution that challenged some of the economic and political structures that dominated European life for centuries. Combined with the church’s waning influence, they began to break free of traditional shackles to think freely about the evolution of society. In response, intellectuals like Mill and Marx began to wonder aloud how society would evolve.

The Germanic states were about to get a significant makeover under Otto von Bismarck. The United Kingdom would double down on imperialism. Monarchies and dynasties were just starting to fall apart. And the United States was careening toward a Civil War that would take it off the stage for a spell. All the while, the capitalist engine was gaining a head of steam and new classes were being forged throughout Europe. Can you imagine how disorienting this period was? The church is no longer at the center of political and cultural life. The peasant class was migrating to urban environments. And beneath it all, we have a population growing exponentially, thus exacerbating the inequality that resulted from the new capitalist market structures.

So now, let’s paint this picture from the perspective of the worker.

A generation ago, your family was probably on a farm somewhere in the countryside and pretty uneducated. Now you’re living in a city, kids are attending school and you’re working long hours in brutal conditions. But, you’re working and living alongside the same people. And so you get to talking, because you’re always together.

You still go to church, but it’s not as important as it was to your parents. They don’t run the schools and the government like they used to. And speaking of governments, the monarchy your ancestors grew up with—the ones who used to live in faraway gated castles and lord over vast territories of disparate villages—are losing luster and respect. They start to seem almost powerless in the face of the real people who are in charge these days. The factory owner, the capitalist.

And that’s where one of the fault lines in socialist praxis began to occur.

“In 1851, the ‘Amalgamated Society of Engineers’ was formed, which became one of the ‘New Model Unions.’ The distinctive feature of the ‘New Model Union’ was that it organised skilled workers only on a craft basis, so to say the ‘aristocracy of labour.’ Unskilled workers and workers in the new factory industries remained unorganised until towards the end of the century.

 

“French unions were closely associated with socialism of St. Simon and similar political ideologies from the beginning, but the French labour movement remained decentralised, highly individualistic and therefore rather ineffective. Also the German labour movement was associated with political parties and political action from its start in the 1860s, but it was more centralised and cohesive.”

This passage is from an essay titled Economic Development in Europe in the 19th Century. It highlights the differences between labor movements in different countries depending upon an array of influences and starting points.

I know I’m beating this to death, but noting the differences in culture, legal systems, education levels, and even the industries that were taking off is really important, because it prevents us from painting the European experience with a single brush. It also exposes one of the flaws in Marx’s vision: he believed that the worker would see themselves as workers first and countrymen second. Religion didn’t factor into his equation and governments were something to be seized.

But that’s not how the working class saw itself.

We can see the difference in an important organization that was founded in 1864—long after the failed revolutions of 1848 had died down—the International Workingmen’s Association (First International). At this time, Marx had been thrown out of Germany, France and Belgium, and was toiling away in almost total obscurity in London. Outside of the tiny constellation of revolutionaries who traded barbs and shared work with one another, he was essentially forgotten.

Somehow, the reclusive Marx was invited to the inaugural meeting of the First International. Despite accounts that he said virtually nothing during the meeting, he was appointed to an organizational subcommittee. He did not squander this opportunity.

The idea behind the First International was to organize anarchists, socialists and labor unions into a single movement. It was a bold initiative that gained surprising momentum early on and welcomed important intellectuals and labor leaders from all over the world. One of the most notable members was renowned anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.

Bakunin

Bakunin was a physically hulking man and a towering figure in several movements throughout his life, described by someone close to him once as “born not under an ordinary star but under a comet.” If Karl Marx was quietly annoying and politely exiled from country after country due to his writing, Bakunin was thrown out of countries like a disruptive bar patron.

Born in Russia in 1814, Bakunin served in the Russian army before quitting to pursue philosophy. He moved about during the tumultuous period of the 1840s, spending time in Germany and France; and it’s in France where he first encountered Marx and Friedrich Engels as well as Proudhon, whom we’ll get to shortly.

According to Bakunin’s biographer, Paul Avrich:

“His broad magnanimity and childlike enthusiasm, his burning passion for liberty and equality, and his volcanic onslaughts against privilege and injustice all gave him enormous appeal in the libertarian circles of his day.”

Bakunin’s personality and tendency to draw attention would prove to be trouble. In Dresden, he was sentenced to death. Then he was extradited to Austria, where he was again sentenced to death. Fate intervened again and he was sent to Russia, where he was imprisoned for several years, spending half of it in Siberia. Somehow, this very obvious and looming figure managed to escape to Japan and eventually made his way to the United States during the American Civil War. Of the United States, Bakunin wrote, “the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy.”

After a brief visit to the United States, Bakunin would settle for a couple of years in London around the time the First International was founded. It was then that he would cross paths with Marx and begin to collaborate on building this new international framework. It’s here that we can see the socialist and anarchist paths truly diverge.

(Quick note on Bakunin after this point, because we’re going to focus on the break with Marx more than the balance of Bakunin’s life. He was eventually expelled from the First International because he started to break apart from the other anarchist groups represented. Bakunin dedicated much of his energy in later years to the worker’s cause in Russia and had a great impact on anarchist thinking the world over. He died in Switzerland in 1876.)

But it’s how Bakunin broke with Marx’s ideology that matters most in our story today. At its core, his critique of Marx and the prevailing socialist narrative of the day was with respect to the state. In his words, “No theory, no ready-made system, no book that has even been written will save the world. I cleave to no system.” Essentially, Bakunin understood that no matter who was in control of the state, it would be corrupt. If the lower and working classes were to authentically gain control of their fate, they would need two things: education and organization.

Again, Bakunin in his own words:

“If instinct alone sufficed to liberate peoples, they would long since have freed themselves. These instincts did not prevent them from accepting…all the religious, political, and economic absurdities of which they have been the eternal victims. They are ineffectual because they lack two things…organisation and knowledge.”

In his mind, and in the minds of the growing ranks of anarchists in Europe, state socialism and state capitalism were two sides of the same coin. Marx’s vision would simply replace one oppressive regime with another. Here’s Noam Chomsky 100 years after the fact reflecting on how this all played out.

“Maybe the only prediction of the social sciences that ever came so dramatically true was Bakunin’s discussion of this in the late 19th century. He was arguing with Marx. And it’s well before Leninism, but he predicted very perceptively that the rising class of intellectuals were just kind of becoming identified as a class in modern industrial society...He predicted that they were essentially going to go in one of two directions. There would be some who would believe that the struggles of the working class would offer them an opportunity to rise and take state power in their own hands. And at that point he said they would become the red bureaucracy who would create the worst tyranny that humanity has ever known, of course all in the interests of the workers. That’s one direction. And he said the others would recognize that you’re never going to get power that way and the way to get power is to associate yourself with what we would nowadays call state capitalism and just become the servants of its ruling class.”

Bakunin understood the two paths forward better than anyone it seems. Either you’ll have “red bureaucracy,” with labor rising up to seize control of the state, or they’ll partner with state capitalism. That’s why he advocated for elimination of the state to the greatest extent possible and is considered one of the founders of modern anarchism. But if his ideas were taking root in Russia and the Germanic states in particular, there was another part of Europe that was trending in a different direction. Here’s Marx from The Communist Manifesto:

“France is the land where, more than anywhere else, the historical class struggles were each time fought out to a decision, and where, consequently, the changing political forms within which they move and in which their results are summarized have been stamped in the sharpest outlines.”

And this is where we have a little visit with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

Proudhon

Proudhon connects so many of our protagonists. He associated with Fourier in particular and knew both Marx and Bakunin personally. A French socialist, philosopher and economist, Proudhon was the first to declare himself an anarchist, describing liberty as “the synthesis of communism and property.”

One unfortunate trait that he shared with Bakunin was a tendency to casual anti-Semitism in his writings. Bakunin was more prone to these sentiments in private, whereas I think it’s fair to say that it was more pronounced in Proudhon’s work. Whether that’s part of the subtext to his criticisms of Marx is beyond me, but it’s worth pointing out that there were interpersonal dynamics at play during that shouldn’t be ignored. Proudhon was also far more sexist than his contemporaries, many of whom were firmly behind the feminist and suffrage movements.

In practical philosophical terms, Proudhon favored worker cooperatives as well as peasant possession over private ownership or the nationalization of land and workplaces. It’s here where Marx and Proudhon would battle most for the mantle of the emerging socialist doctrine.

As Michael Harrington, author of Socialism: Past and Future writes:

“One part of that realism, which emerged with striking clarity in Marx’s 1847 polemic with Proudhon, was an insistence upon the importance of an emergent trade-union movement to socialism. In one of his most audacious insights, Marx understood that the unions, even when focused on immediate demands, were potentially the school of socialism, the point of contact between the movement’s idealism and the practicality of the masses.”

So we see at this time that our intellectuals were trying to incorporate labor unions into their revolutionary prescriptions. It’s interesting that Marx, Bakunin and Proudhon were writing at the height of the American Civil War. When we think about this period, I think U.S. ethnocentrism tends to overlook the fact that these figures were all contemporaries of Abraham Lincoln. In The Federative Principle, Proudhon wrote, “If Mr. Lincoln teaches his compatriots to overcome their revulsion, grants blacks their civil rights and also declares war on [what creates] the proletariat, the Union will be saved.”

Proudhon was truly in praxis mode, perhaps more than Marx and Bakunin. He attempted to found a national bank that looks a lot like the modern day credit union. He pushed for an income tax on capitalists and shareholders. But he’s perhaps most famous for the popular phrase “Property is Theft,” a proclamation taken from his influential work What is Property in which he also declared, “I am an anarchist!”

Unlike Marx’s break later with Bakunin, Marx and Proudhon would battle through polemics almost from the outset of their relationship. Proudhon published The Philosophy of Poverty in 1846 in response to what he viewed as Marx’s authoritarian version of socialism. Always looking for a good fight, Marx responded the following year with The Poverty of Philosophy, and attacked Proudhon vigorously.

Proudhon wasn’t immune to the treatment his contemporaries received at the hands of power, by the way. Though he wasn’t exiled and forced to live the nomadic existence that both Marx and Bakunin led, he was imprisoned by Napoleon III for nearly three years following the revolts of 1848.

Perhaps the clearest expression of his feelings toward state socialism can be found in The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century where he states:

“Direct legislation, direct government, simplified government, are ancient lies, which they try in vain to rejuvenate. Direct or indirect, simple or complex, governing the people will always be swindling the people. It is always man giving orders to man, the fiction which makes an end to liberty; brute force which cuts questions short, in the place of justice, which alone can answer them; obstinate ambition, which makes a stepping stone of devotion and credulity.”

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Chapter Nine: 1870, The Year Everything Changed.

Throughout the 20th Century, historians began to look at 1870 as a tipping point in the evolution of political and economic systems. Stepping back to contextualize what was happening on the ground, we can see some clear changes that began with the uprisings of 1848 and culminated in 1870:

• The broader union struggle, the conflicts between the newly constructed trade or craft unions that organized workers based on their chosen trade, and industrial unions that attempted to unite workers of all backgrounds and skill levels. This is going to be a central theme in our next section when we examine the American socialist experiment.

• Simultaneously, monarchical authority and state power was beginning to disintegrate in new and different ways with a capitalist class emerging to wrest control of state apparatuses.

• And we have burgeoning social systems associated with our protagonists ranging from socialism and anarchism to mutualism and syndicalism.

But the real world was moving faster than the social theorists who were attempting to define it. Two events that center on this period would provide a boost to capitalism with such force and authority that it would become the dominant political and economic structure and alter the course of human existence. German unification and the second Industrial Revolution.

The German writer Ludwig von Rochau coined the term “Realpolitik” in the 19th Century. This term would come to be associated with the governing style of Otto von Bismarck who unified the Germanic states in the mid 19th century.

By 1870, Bismarck’s work was near complete and a new form of politics was born. An empire not based on blood rule or aristocracy. An empire born not of bloodlust, but by pragmatism. Drawn upon ethnic lines, organized to promote economic growth and unified by language and culture. The speed with which Bismarck acted and the ease with which he drew together the Germanic states immediately cast unified Germany in a new light and made it the center of the European economy.

Sure, the United States had done it, but it was a blank slate, a clean canvas. All it took was political will, a frontier spirit and willingness to commit mass genocide of Native peoples to build an independent state. But for a ruler to unite the Germanic states under a political and economic umbrella and wrap it in nationalistic pride was astounding. This wasn’t hereditary, it was ethnic. A top down maneuver that understood the bottom up. Bring together disparate states that are unified by language and culture enough to make it a source of pride, create an economic engine that will be dominant, and kick the whole thing off by kicking Napoleon’s ass and you’ve got a formula for secular nationalism.

The history buffs out there will know this but, like many other nation states, Spain was still in turmoil and was struggling to recover economically. So a deal was struck with Bismarck to facilitate the administrative state, not in a way that would make it part of Germany, but in a consultative fashion more than anything. This was the last straw for France who saw the encroachment on southern Europe as a bridge too far. So they mounted an offensive against the newly formed German state that ended up with the total defeat of Napoleon’s army and his imprisonment.

As a result, France was forced to give up most of the territory Alsace-Lorraine, which kicked off mass outflow of French from these parts and an influx of German citizens. As if that wasn’t enough, Germany also imposed punitive financial reparations upon France, which stymied the economy of the country.

There are two historic events that result from this, one immediate and another that would play out over time. The immediate impact was the formation of the Paris Commune in 1871, which we’ll talk about shortly. The long-term consequence of German unification and punitive treatment of the French was a deep seated hatred of the German people in France that would explode twice in the next century with devastating consequences to the world.

A 1981 article by Roberto Vivarelli from the University of Florence details the importance of 1870 in geopolitical terms, centering on the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and ‘71, calling it a “prelude to the First World War.” In the article, he cites a number of historians who share the view that 1870 was an inflection point that reverberates well into the 20th century:

“1870, which saw the formation of the German Empire as it was shaped by Bismarck and the beginning of German hegemony over Europe, took on the precise function of a turning point, a decisive moment at which one distinct form or ideological era comes to an end and another begins. Thus the moment of change that marked the defeat of liberalism echoed that decline in Europe which later found its provisory epilogue in the First World War.”

But the impact of 1870 extended beyond the first Great War, as Harrington writes:

“Bismarck’s revolution from above left reactionary social and ideological structures intact and prepared the way for Adof Hitler.”

What’s really important about Harrington’s note here is that Bismarck not only unified Germany into a superpower relative to the time, he did so without smashing the working class or any of the labor movements. So, during the Great Depression, revolutionaries and fringe parties who were sidelined at the turn of the century through World War One still remained (albeit on the sidelines). But they were there, with the more radical elements prone to view the outreach of the Nazi Party in a favorable light. But that’s for another day.

What’s important about Bismarck’s actions is that he took a top down approach to consolidating power that alternately inspired some of our philosophers and worried others. If the working classes could be so easily swept up into state control and assuaged, then over time they would become servants to the capitalist state.

What’s fascinating is that recessions and economic shocks continued unabated during the 1870s and ’80s; this contributed to the economic dislocation of workers at the same time the world was going through a technological revolution that favored the capitalist class. How the second Industrial Revolution took shape is important to understand because it speaks to the utter speed and totality of industrialization throughout Europe that would overwhelm any causes for revolution and splinter the labor groups, thus preventing the concept of worker solidarity across national boundaries.

In 1998, Joel Mokyr, Professor of Economics and History at Northwestern University, wrote a paper on the magnitude of the industrial revolution. Here’s a passage for context:

“The first Industrial Revolution—and most technological developments preceding it—had little or no scientific base. It created a chemical industry with no chemistry, an iron industry without metallurgy, power machinery without thermodynamics. Engineering, medical technology, and agriculture until 1850 were pragmatic bodies of applied knowledge in which things were known to work, but rarely was it understood why they worked.

 

“The consequence of changing production technology was the rise of technological systems. Again, some rudimentary systems of this nature were already in operation before 1870: railroad and telegraph networks and in large cities gas, water supply, and sewage systems were in existence. These systems expanded enormously after 1870, and a number of new ones were added: electrical power and telephone being the most important ones. The second Industrial Revolution turned the large technological system from an exception to a commonplace.”

Innovation during this time was both widespread and sector specific. For example, Henry Bessemer revolutionized the steel industry with the Bessemer converter that eliminated impurities from iron and sparked subsequent innovations that resulted in high quality and far cheaper steel. The Germans led the charge in chemical innovation that impacted agriculture, medicine, weapons, plastics, rubber, and myriad applications that enhanced a wide array of industries.

Electricity was still in the nascent stages of development in the 1800s but exploded after 1870 with the invention of the lightbulb, Nikola Tesla’s alternating currents and large scale energy transmission projects that would light up entire cities. Rail travel got faster and safer. Crude oil cracking was invented, which kicked off a wave of innovation with respect to the use of fossil fuel.

So, against this backdrop of historic innovation that helped foster capitalism, we have Bismarck’s top down consolidation of the Germanic states allowed for the existence of labor unions, thus calming some of the revolutionary spirit from the leftist movements. It also cleared the way for the growth of the capitalist class, in spite of profound recessions, that was able to take advantage of a freight train of innovation exploding throughout Europe. With a convincing victory over its rival in France and no monarchy to pay fealty to, the most significant development from this period was the invention and immediate rise of nationalism.

As Vivarelli notes, “The key to understanding German unification in 1870 lay in the creation of a ‘strong state,’ not in a ‘free state’... All the elements of an aggressive nationalism can be found in the history of Germany after 1870, but they are already present in the Parliament of Frankfurt and in the German middle classes that were represented in that Parliament; and it is here that the separation between the idea of nation and the liberal idea was first fully expressed in Germany.”

Paris Commune (1871)

I know it’s strange to come in now with what I referred to as the bookend of the critique period, but similar to Owen’s New Harmony experiment, the short-lived existence of the Paris Commune is absolutely central to understanding the hope and optimism that remains among proponents of socialism. And it really crystallized Marx’s view of the potential that existed among the working class to rise up and seize the levers of power.

With Napoleon defeated and imprisoned, the French government was adrift. Racked with recession and rudderless, a movement took hold in France to regain control of its fate. On March 26 of 1871, a group referred to as the Paris Commune, a worker led party, was elected to lead the nation. Its list of accomplishments is stunning and the organization was swift.

According to Marxists.org:

“On March 30, the Commune abolished conscription and the standing army, and declared that the National Guard, in which all citizens capable of bearing arms were to be enrolled, was to be the sole armed force. It remitted all payments of rent for dwelling houses from October 1870 until April, the amounts already paid to be reckoned to a future rental period, and stopped all sales of articles pledged in the municipal pawn shops. On the same day the foreigners elected to the Commune were confirmed in office, because "the flag of the Commune is the flag of the World Republic.”

The Commune continued breaking down remnants of the power structure by formally separating the Church from state affairs. It removed all religious symbolism from the schools and state offices. It revived factories with workers in charge of production and decision-making. Legislated reduced working hours, abolished child labor, burned public guillotines and demolished symbols of militarism. It banned state press, encouraged participation from women, and took control of the nation’s finances to settle debts and return money to the people.

It was a glorious period that would inspire not only Marx and build the reputation of Proudhon (who was seen as an inspirational figure for the French revolutionaries), but it would provide a useful legend for the likes of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky just a few decades later. Lenin, in fact, referred to this period as “the first step” and would use it as a model for the Russian soviets.

In the end, the Paris Commune lasted only two months before the exiled leaders gathered military forces and brutally put down the leaders in what is referred to as “The Bloody Week.” But, it would loom large in socialist circles as an example of what is possible when the working class unites.

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Bring It Home, Max.

The death of our protagonists over the next several years cleared the way for new revolutionaries who would interpret their work in various ways and battle against the forces of industrialization. Capitalism would go on a historic winning streak at the turn of the 20th Century, characterized by increasing nationalism and a new breed of imperialist tendencies across the pond in the United States.

In the next sections, we’re going to move toward the United States but tell the story of Russia in parallel as new figures emerge to seize control of the public imagination, as well as the levers of power, with vastly different outcomes that would forever splinter the socialism movement and corrupt many of the ideals of its founders.

We’ll also explore the increasing divide between industrial and craft unions as well as anarchists and the new breed of socialists in Europe characterized by Lenin, Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.

We’ll talk about how the Great War changed the calculus in both Europe and America and fed into the capitalist movement and the rise of nationalism that would plague the globe throughout the 20th Century and beyond.

We’ll learn how Marx emerged as the figurehead of communism, and how state power in partnership with the newly formed capitalist class combined to snuff out the labor movement in the United States. And, how a lanky, mild mannered figure from Indiana named Eugene Debs would capture the imagination of so many Americans from railroad laborers in the early 1900s to Bernie Sanders.

Here endeth Part Four of Understanding Socialism.

Remember that summer? The best one ever? The one after high school ended and before you and your friends set off for the next chapter of your lives? Waking up late to stay out even later. Cobbling together internships or summer jobs, working as few hours as possible to make just enough money to burn a hole in your pocket. Maybe college was in your future, or maybe you were ready to jump into the working world to get a head start on your laboring years.

Either way, September would be the dividing line between youth and adulthood. And so every waking moment was spent in search of a good time. In search of yourself. The best and worst countdown clock because it was the first time in your life that you felt the excitement of emancipation, the openness of possibilities, the freedom of relative irresponsibility. In a few short weeks, you would set off on a 50-year journey to build a life of encumbrances, all in service of shedding them someday so that you can recapture this exact moment.

Only this moment will prove impossible to recreate. Those encumbrances will never leave. They’ll only get bigger. They’ll harden like concrete on your feet, change your perspective and sour your outlook. And the further away from this moment you get, the more distant the memory becomes. Some of your friends won’t recall it at all. Others will have a different interpretation of what happened. Distance, loss, dashed expectations and unexpected debts will crowd out your memory and distill these weeks into a handful of faded photographs in your mind.

That incredible summer? That’s the Paris Commune.

A few short weeks where potential met reality, emancipation was real and the guardian class was unprepared to rein in the indomitable spirit of the working class. Free education. Dissolution of the professional military. Dismantling of the bureaucratic apparatus. Debt and outstanding rents settled. Free elections, not just of top officials, but all officials.

And then the violent blow of reality. The September to that glorious summer of your youth.

Like you, France would never be the same. In fact, the world would never be the same. Recall the lessons of Marx and Hegel. We, the people, shape the world, and in return it shapes us. Just like the United States will never be the same after Donald Trump, Europe’s radical intelligentsia were never the same after the Paris Commune. Not because similar models appeared all over the world, but because it changed the language of dissent.

It put the ruling class on high alert and hardened their resolve to suppress any like-minded idealism. It fueled the imaginations of revolutionary thinkers from Paris to Latin America. All of the ideas that had, until this point, only lived on the pages of radical pamphlets and journals suddenly, and surprisingly, came to life. No intellectual class planned the revolution. No organized political movement seized the levers of power. Just an organic power grab of ordinary citizens and workers who took control out of necessity and frustration.

Most of the radical intellectuals recognized the power of spontaneous revolution. And it would later give credence to the Marxian hope in the dictatorship of the proletariat and inform the widely held Marxist belief that power could be seized from below. But few would agree from this point forward on how best to recapture this moment. Like we’ve said before, every city, every country, every culture was different, and any attempt to recreate the revolutionary tendencies present in Paris during the time of the Commune would prove to be utterly elusive. As Marx and Engels famously wrote, “France is the land where, more than anywhere else, the historical class struggles were each time fought out to a decision.”

Thereafter, the radical intellectual class would splinter in all directions and give way to praxis that no longer resembled the theories they pretended to emulate. Nowhere was this more the case than Lenin’s Russia. As historian Hans-Josef Steinberg wrote, social democracy from this period until the First World War is “the history of the emancipation from theory in general.”

And so began the revolutionary divide.

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Chapter Ten: Revolutionary Conditions.

Goldman. Kropotkin. Lenin. Debs. Kautsky. Luxemburg. Trotsky. These are the enduring names of the next chapter in our story. Intellectual heirs to Marx and Engels, John Stuart Mill, Mikhail Bakunin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; themselves the products of Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham. Since the time of Plato, philosophers have been trying to organize society via economic and political means with class struggle often at the center of new thoughts and disciplines; each generation of thinker reflecting back the norms that exist in religious, economic and cultural structures and trying to explain the nature of power dynamics, determine models of fairness and equity and agitate for new ways of thinking about the natural world and humankind’s place in it.

And then along came capitalism. Capitalism was not fait accompli. But it was compelling. And brutal. And inspiring. And growing. Oh boy, was it growing.

Prior to it, the world was harsh, but simple relative to what capitalism introduced. There were essentially two classes: rulers and peasants. The ruling class controlled the wealth, the church, and the government. Aristocracy and rulers were hereditary. Artisans worked at the pleasure of noblemen. Education was reserved for male elites. Daily life among the working class consisted of subsistence farming and toil.

The Age of Reason, or the Enlightenment, coincided with advances in agriculture and exploration that opened the minds of intellectuals who began to question the nature of power and wonder aloud if perhaps there was a better way to organize society. Pure economic capitalism, the formation of market economies; both created the possibility for a more just and open society and the possibility for the ruling class to prevent this from ever happening.

Our exercise in understanding socialism only extends thus far to the European experience, though we’re going to broaden our scope to include the United States. It should be reiterated that we’re excluding developments in other parts of the world that we’ll tackle at later dates. But insofar as Europe was the nucleus of classic Marxist thought, we should start once again by evaluating broader circumstances in different parts of Europe.

One of the central tenets of Marxism is that it’s designed to be an international movement. This is a critical concept to understand, as the rise of nationalism would pose one of the biggest obstacles to the spread of socialism. And we get a good sense of this when we look at how movements were organized in different regions that differed due to cultural differences, economic circumstances, the maturity of labor movements, strength of the church and other institutions of power, and so on.

So let’s take a brief tour around Europe to examine the difference between labor and socialist movements in respective countries.

The United Kingdom

For example, during this period, Britain was undergoing enormous change. Imperial exploits in India were underway during this period, as were tensions with Ireland. The labor movement in urban parts of Ireland was more radical and defiant than that of England, and the Irish peasantry and farmers were agitating against the British government for control of their land. The mid-century famines were fresh and painful, and the agrarian working class was keen to change their circumstances. But the British working class was far less ideological and more interested in participatory politics and reform.

Of particular note was a group called the Fabians. As famed 20th Century economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote, “The Fabians emerged in 1883, and remained for the whole of our period a small group of bourgeois intellectuals. They hailed from Benthan and Mill and carried on their tradition.”

Like other movements at this time, the socialist movement was developing apart from the labor movement, which was obviously anathema to Marxist ideology. This split, or misalignment between labor and the socialist movement, was only one phenomenon that prevented the rise of Marxism. Compared to other European countries, the UK was relatively stable, both economically and politically. It had a robust industrial economy, a mature democracy, and it was culturally isolated as an island compared to the open borders and interconnected cultures in central Europe. It had also long before gone through the pain of separating church and state and reducing the role of the monarchy in governance. As such, it was less prone to class ruptures and political crises at this time.

Thus, the socialists in the UK were of a different character. Less revolutionary, more tactical. More polite, if you will. Schumpeter refers to them as reformers who “greatly disliked the phraseology of class war and revolution.” Instead, he argued:

“Formulation and organization of existing opinion were all that was needed in order to turn possibilities into articulate policy, and this organizing formulation the Fabians provided in a most workmanlike manner...They were genuine socialists because they aimed at helping in a fundamental reconstruction of society which in the end was to make economic care a public affair.”

Germany

Contrast the British socialist experience with the movement in Germany, and we find few parallels in terms of tactics and circumstances. In many ways, Germany was the heart of the socialist movement. We don’t necessarily think of it that way today because it was ultimately Russia where the revolution took hold. But Germany is where several prominent Marxist intellectuals gathered during this period to build on the ideas of Marx and plot a path forward for international socialism.

Germany was home to the largest and most politically active socialist party in the world called the Social Democratic Party (SPD) as the German acronym translates differently. The SPD was dominated by the great theorist Karl Kautsky, who was probably the most influential figure in the Marxist movement. It’s significant that the party developed during this period on the heels of German unification and the rise of nationalism. So, from the start of this period, there exists a tension between the more nationalistic tendencies of Germany, which would rear its ugly head twice in the next century, and the more internationalist sentiments of the SPD.

Where the British and German experiences somewhat align is in the maturity of the political apparatuses and the rise of a bureaucratic class of socialists. Whereas this class would toil quietly within the British system, however, the SPD played a prominent role in creating German policy. It’s why several Marxists pinned their hopes on Germany, not Russia, as the most obvious and natural place for classical Marxism—the more evolutionary form of socialism as successor to capitalism—to take hold.

Many consider it a historical curiosity that Bismarck allowed for radical fringe groups to exist, as they would ultimately take shape into formal parties that participated in the system. But many Marxists and, most notably the Russian revolutionaries of the time, would begin to sour on the reformist movement in the SPD, referring to them in literature as “opportunists.” But for the better part of the late 19th Century, Kautsky was the leading Marxist figure in Europe.

As the Jacobin writes:

“Kautsky’s greatest pre-war political limitation was that he, like all other Marxists of the era, failed to fully predict, or prepare for, the rise of this bureaucracy. As was the case with Rosa Luxemburg and Vladimir Lenin, he incorrectly assumed that an upsurge in class struggle would either sweep the ‘opportunist leaders’ aside or force them to return to a class struggle stance. As such, neither he nor Luxemburg built an organized Marxist tendency inside the SPD that could effectively challenge for leadership.”

It’s important to note that this article, which aligns with the sentiments of many more mainstream Marxists still today, is a defense of Kautsky’s beliefs.

“History has confirmed Kautsky’s predictions. Not only has there never been a victorious insurrectionary socialist movement under a capitalist democracy, but only a tiny minority of workers have ever even nominally supported the idea of an insurrection.”

This foreshadows the ultimate split among German and Russian Marxist revolutionaries and remains a point of contention to this day. This context is crucial as we drive closer to the Russian Revolution, as well.

France

Now, contrast the maturity of the SPD with what was happening in France, home of multiple revolutions, a radical working class, the birthplace of Proudhon’s anarchism and so much more. France begins to develop in a more anarchical fashion. It’s still a time of tremendous upheaval in France. The citizenry was still smarting from the loss to Germany and the heavy tax Germany would extract as a result. Trade unions developed quickly throughout France, as opposed to industrial unions that many Marxists hoped for. Acts of terrorism were commonplace in urban environments. These were reflections of Proudhon’s decentralized beliefs and the inherent revolutionary strain within French culture.

However, gradually, a professional socialist political class would emerge late in the 19th century and begin to coalesce, though it too would contain multiple strains of socialist and anarcho-syndicalist leaders who fought over tactics and strategy. Perhaps the most significant chapter in French history around this time, however, was the Dreyfus Affair. While not an event that can be tied to socialist theory, it greatly divided the French people and would become a longstanding cultural and political touchstone that echoed in all corners of French society.

Here’s an excerpt from Adam Gopnik’s piece in the New Yorker:

“On a January day in Paris, in 1895, a ceremony was enacted in the courtyard of the École Militaire, on the Champ-de-Mars, that still shocks the mind and conscience to contemplate: Alfred Dreyfus, a young Jewish artillery officer and family man, convicted of treason days earlier in a rushed court-martial, was publicly degraded before a gawking crowd. His insignia medals were stripped from him, his sword was broken over the knee of the degrader, and he was marched around the grounds in his ruined uniform to be jeered and spat at, while piteously declaring his innocence and his love of France above cries of ‘Jew’ and ‘Judas!’”

Now, the end of the story, where Dreyfus is concerned, is a happy one, as he is ultimately vindicated and goes on to lead a long and productive life. But the reason this moment—actually, it dragged on for years before he was cleared in the courts—was vital to the story of France at the turn of the century because it drew on several themes and tensions that existed at the time.

One of the democratizing factors and sources of pride among the French people was the creation of a more civil and representative military. Rather than being a weapon of the elite, it was transformed into a body designed to protect the people. And it was welcoming to all who wished to serve, which is why it was notable that such a respected Jewish member of the middle classes would be subjected to such hatred and raw anti-Semitism. More germain to our story is that it was French liberals and socialists who fought tirelessly on behalf of Dreyfus and against the last vestiges of Catholic prejudice.

Anti-Semitism would of course only continue to increase over the course of several decades, leading to the mass exodus of eastern European Jews at the turn of the century through the First Great War, and then again in the Holocaust. Despite the existence of Anti-Semitic attitudes among earlier radicals such as Bakunin and Proudhon, it was more natural for European Jews to align with socialist thought, though from a decidedly secular standpoint. Increasingly, however, Jewish socialists would find themselves on the margins of political action and navigate more to the anarchist wing of the leftist movements. I think it’s fair to say that it’s no accident of history that the Jewish revolutionaries of the time, such as Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, wound up dead or in exile rather than occupying a seat at the table.

Spain

This was surely the case as we look further south toward Spain, where the Catholic church continued to play a prominent role in governance and society. It was also home to radical trade unions that partook in direct actions more than some of their northern counterparts. The strength of trade unions and the dominance of the Church laid a different kind of foundation than some of the other nations where socialist concepts took shape more naturally in the political realm. Thus, Spain developed more in the tradition of Bakunin-style anarchism rather than any classic expression of Marxism.

Russia

Ah, mother Russia. The backwards peasantry and enormous land mass posed challenges for the Marxists intellectuals of the time. Kropotkin, Bakunin, Lenin, Trotsky and Goldman were all of Russian descent. Rosa Luxemburg was from Poland, but grew up under Tsarist Russia rule. This was really the foundation of the Marxists and anarchist intellectual class, though it was widely believed that the circumstances in Russia were too immature to foment a true Marxist revolution. We’re going to spend more time in Russia in our epilogue because the Russian Revolution is so central to the development of communism and so many of the shibboleths that persist in present times.

But in terms of the general conditions of the time, there are a few key developments that help us contextualize where Russia was during this revolutionary period. Geopolitical and economic concerns dominated Russia in the late 1800s more than the formation of a socialist movement, though this was taking root as well. The more significant preoccupation was with an increasingly militant and unified Germany.

Social structures were breaking down at the same time as rapid industrialization was taking hold, and the monarchy was also coming apart. In 1881 alone, Russia entered into an alliance with France in a show of force against Germany. Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, an event blamed falsely on Russian Jews, which in turn led to widespread pogroms and the beginning of a mass exodus of Russian Jews that would total more than two million over the next few years.

The important context for our story is that Russia was still very much a feudal society under monarchical rule and enormously disparate conditions between urban and rural areas. In all important ways, to Marxist thinking at least, Russia lagged so far behind its contemporaries that even the inspired class of radical revolutionaries that it produced believed that the fertile ground for socialism lay elsewhere.

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Chapter Eleven: Revolutionary Divide.

So, we can see that conditions differed among the European nations in the late nineteenth century. The economies of Europe were developing in fits and starts, still punctuated by down cycles, periodic famines and labor uprisings. Political changes were also in the wind, and alliances were shifting. Anti-Semitism was on the rise alongside hyper nationalistic tendencies that were beginning to emerge in response to German unification. But there was one consistent theme among all nations: the steady march toward capitalism.

Every passing decade that capitalism took hold, it strengthened the resolve of the bourgeoisie as well as its ability to control the political system. End of monarchy means democratic institutions are now for the taking. Wage labor means the laboring class is both agitating for change, but also reliant on wage earnings and becoming less and less self-sufficient. So, while capitalism was creating a new form of wage slavery and discontent during recessions and depressions, significant portions of the population were moving into the petit bourgeoisie and upper classes. And they were determined to hold onto this newfound status.

So, the great socialist intellectuals of the time were presented with several challenges. First, capitalism was gaining momentum and rapidly transforming the world economy. Power dynamics were shifting as well, and the old monarchical structures were giving way to democratic rule. To most, that signifies progress; but to Marxists, it was a threat because the political class wasn’t hereditary or steeped in tradition. Nor was it tied to the church. The political class was tied to nationalism and state control.

Then there was the matter of the working class. Labor movements had already been developing prior to Marxist theory penetrating class consciousness. And, within the labor movement, class distinctions were also developing. Trade, or “craft” unions, organized by discipline and sectors, were dominant, and they were becoming increasingly political in their advocacy for concepts like eight-hour workdays, weekends off, anti-child labor laws and the like.

Again, these seem like positive developments, but to Marxists who viewed history through the lens of class struggle, this presented a dilemma as trade unions were leaving the so-called unskilled, or industrial laborers behind. It was believed, and still is by most Marxists, that in order for a socialist revolution to take hold, the working class must be aligned in all ways against the bourgeoisie.

There’s also the matter of the battles the trade unions fought. It’s interesting to understand the labor view of victory as compared to the anarchist or pure Marxist view. Labor would view the eight-hour work week, abolition of child labor, safe working conditions, minimum wage and collective bargaining as complete victories. Whereas the radical left viewed these as capitulations to the capitalist system, themselves acknowledgement of the power dynamic between the two classes. This is so fundamental to understanding a purely Marxist critique of the labor movement.

Now, the two concepts that unite socialists, the very foundation of Marxists beliefs in fact, are that private property should be abolished and the working class must form an international bond. “Socialism in one country,” as Stalin would later promote, was a fallacy. A socialist state alone among a sea of capitalist economies would never work. So, on this, nearly all theorists were in agreement. But what to do about the rise of capitalism with respect to these tenets led to a fracture among the intellectual class. It’s here we see the real split between the anarchist and Marxist movements.

Before we dig into the specifics of this divide, let’s zoom out again to look at the competing narratives:

• Russia is still monarchical, backward and just starting on the path to industrialization.
• Germany is unified, militant and maturing politically, which in and of itself was feeding into nationalist sentiment.
• The UK was doing its own thing taking a more bureaucratic and reform-minded approach to socialization and trying to expand its power through imperial measures.
• France is rife with bombings and terrorism.
• Trade unions are exploding throughout Europe, both pushing back against the capitalist system while leaving unskilled workers behind; all the while courting the political class. And the Dreyfus Affair in France and pogroms in Russia signified an unsettling shift in sentiment among the masses against the Jewish European population.

When you zoom out like this, one begins to understand how the 20th century unfolded the way it did.

Because consensus on principles and a platform are crucial to any movement, the revolutionaries of the time recognized that a new organization was required if socialists were to make any headway against these conditions and an increasingly capitalist society. Thus, in 1889—five years after Marx’s passing— a new international organization was formed called the Second International* to unite the disparate socialist movements throughout Europe, with the SPD playing the most prominent role as the biggest organized socialist party in the world at the time.

The goal of the Second International was to partner with trade unions and move them more toward an industrial union mindset, to widen their scope in terms of membership and internationalism, while supporting local actions.

The First and Second Internationals are important bodies because they leave a trail of documents that give us access to developing wisdom. And in many ways, the profound disagreements found in the minutes of the meetings and among the radicals that gathered from all over the world offer even more insight than where they were aligned. Recall that it was during the First International that we first saw the split between Bakunin and Marx, cleavage that would widen and deepen as the world hurtled toward the Great War.

To better understand the evolution of thought that both guided and divided leftists during the Second International, let’s get to know the protagonists.

*Marxist historians note that an earlier attempt to organize a Second International occurred in 1880. Though the delegates disbanded, their workpapers and socialist manifesto served as a foundation for a reconstituted Second International formally convened in 1889.

Karl Kautsky

Karl Kautsky reigned supreme in the German SPD Party and as ranking member of the Second International. He was greatly admired by nearly all the leading socialist and even anarchist thinkers of the time.

A native of Prague who was educated at the University of Vienna, Kautsky was influenced as a student by the work of Marx and Engels. And, in fact, he would go on to become a close friend of the latter during his time in London. While he would remain a devotee of Marx and Engels, Kautsky wasn’t afraid to construct his own theories of socialist evolution, pointing out that wage growth among the working class brought many within it closer to the bourgeoisie, thereby exacerbating tensions between the lower and upper classes and negating the revolutionary spirit among wage earners that Marx believed would create the conditions for socialism.

Thus began Kautsky’s steady march toward centrism. While he retained a position of great influence in both the Second International and within the SPD, his pragmatism would often set him at odds with both entrenched bureaucrats and more radical members of the leftist movements in Germany. He rejected any entreaties on the left to engage in violence, favoring a more political and policy-driven solution to building coalitions with the SPD. But his refusal to side with the SPD over its support of war credits later put him at odds with the party he helped build. As the Jacobin writes:

“Virtually no influential political current in Germany or beyond sought to implement Kautsky’s political prescriptions. Despite his steady turn to the center after 1909, Kautsky’s entreaties were ignored by the bureaucratized officialdom of the German Social Democratic Party throughout the revolution. Germany’s radicals, on the other hand, rejected their former mentor for having abandoned his long-standing commitment to revolutionary class politics.”

Essentially, in playing the middle, Kautsky alienated himself from the hawkish bureaucrats who pushed Germany toward the war and the radical left that was determined to foment revolution despite the fractures among the laboring class. Through a current lens, Kautsky would be considered a radical leftist. But at the time, Kautsky looked increasingly out of step with more radical intellectuals such as Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin. Though he returned to Vienna and the SPD after World War One, he would end up fleeing Austria during the German occupation in 1938, the year he died.

Rosa Luxemburg

Perhaps one of the most fascinating, brilliant and bold minds to emerge during this time was Rosa Luxemburg. Luxemburg was born in Poland during the tsarist rule under Russia and was an agitator from day one. Brilliant, brash and rebellious, she found herself at odds with authorities in school and joined the socialist movement in Poland during her teenage years. Thus began a life on the run and shouting truth to power.

First stop on the Luxemburg express was Zurich, where she aligned with other Marxist ideologues and began developing her own economic theories based upon the rise of nationalism. She was one of the first theorists to connect imperialism to capitalism’s need to exploit labor and posit the theory that hyper nationalism would severely impede, if not stamp out, any hopes of an internationalist labor movement. Furthermore, she was equally critical of state-sponsored capitalism and state-sponsored socialism. In her mind, they were two sides of the same coin that excluded the working class from accessing surplus capital.

Like so many of our protagonists, Luxemburg would spend much of her life on the run from government authorities, and sometimes she was imprisoned. Her philosophy was a bold defense of revolutionary Marxism. She favored international strikes. Spoke out against the liberalization of trade unions, feminism and socialism. But she was as important to the field of economics as she was to revolutionary Marxism. In fact she was already known widely as “Bloody Rosa” for her revolutionary provocations when she published an enduring work called “The Accumulation of Capital” in 1913, which became a philosophical cornerstone of the Second International.

Her economic work deserves another minute here. While her radical activities would ultimately get her killed, there were several years when she was recognized as a leading theorist within the Marxist movement and inspired countless prominent figures from members of the SPD to the Bolsheviks. On economic matters, her profound theory regarding nationalism and the exchange value of labor helped refute one of Marx’s primary claims. Specifically, in Marx’s view, if labor was the central ingredient in creating the exchange value of a commodity, then displacement of workers due to industrialization would therefore reduce profitability for owners. In this, he felt the workers possessed more control than they realized.

But Luxemburg better understood the ability of capitalism to exploit external markets for cheap labor and sometimes even cheaper goods. Thus, while capitalism could allow for skilled laborers to move up the ladder, it could just as easily separate the lumpenproletariat from other higher wage laborers and divide the working class. Furthermore, she extrapolated the danger posed by the growth of trade unions and nationalism, both factors that would divide the classes along both wage slavery lines and geographic borders.

Like the work of so many other great theorists, we take Luxemburg’s contributions for granted. Because she was right. When you look closely, she was one of the first people to offer a critique of globalization and to predict that it would prevent the working class of the world to unite as Marx had hoped.

The last few years of Luxemburg’s life are illustrative of the divide on the left that would ultimately fracture beyond repair. Luxemburg had collaborated closely with all the great leftists of the day. She was particularly close with Lenin, despite her disappointment at the nature of authoritarian control he, Stalin and Trotsky exerted in the early stages post Russian Revolution. Despite her criticism, she and Lenin vehemently opposed any war efforts in Europe. In fact, Lenin was forced into exile, while Luxemburg was imprisoned for standing against the German government in 1914. She would celebrate the Russian Revolution from a prison cell. Upon her release, she immediately continued speaking out against the war and the bureaucratic behavior of the SPD.

What’s interesting about Luxemburg is how closely she continued to align with classical Marxism and how well she understood the politics on the ground and among the people. While no doubt a revolutionary figure, her understanding of working class hearts and minds actually led her to take a position against the far left in 1919. The Russian Revolution had inspired radicals in Germany, most notably Berlin, to push for a German revolution. Luxemburg understood, as did Lenin and Trotsky, however, that Berlin was a bubble and this sentiment was not shared throughout Germany. So, she advocated for a complete takeover of the parliamentary system in the upcoming elections to place leftists in all positions of elected power. She wanted to break the bureaucracy by taking it over because she believed any uprising would ultimately fail.

She was outvoted in the Communist Party, and German revolutionaries instead took to the streets. They were brutally and quickly put down by far right German officers. And, though she had personally pushed to take over government positions through elections and cautioned against revolt, Luxemburg and her close associate Karl Liebknecht were discovered in a hiding place and beaten to death; her body was discarded into the Landwehr Canal.

The Anarchists: Goldman and Kropotkin

There are so many important figures that emerged during this time that demonstrate the evolution of Marxist thinking, but I want to veer off for a moment to briefly discuss two activists that best define the anarchist splinter movement. Much in the spirit of Proudhon and Bakunin, Emma Goldman and Peter Kropotkin symbolize the divergence in strategy and beliefs of the far left movements.

Emma Goldman is also our first real bridge to the United States. Though born in Lithuania in 1869, Goldman was raised mostly in Rochester, New York and she has one of the more fascinating life stories one could imagine, considering she is largely lost to history. So much so that the great historian Howard Zinn was astonished to learn of her later in his life and committed himself to teaching her story. He even wrote a play about her. He describes Goldman as a, “free spirit, bold, speaking out against all authority, unafraid, and…living her life, as she wanted to live it, not as the rules and regulations and authorities were telling her how to live it.”

How radical and influential was Emma Goldman during her lifetime? Well, J. Edgar Hoover called her “one of the most dangerous women in America” and deported her in 1919.

Perhaps the most formative event, similar to Eugene Debs, was the execution of radicals blamed for the Haymarket uprising. More on that later. But it galvanized Goldman in a way that few were prepared to dedicate themselves. Goldman consumed anarchist literature and traveled the country giving fiery speeches to thousands of people. She became a nurse overseas and would practice for the remainder of her life with such deep compassion she even offered to treat President McKinley when he was shot by a fellow anarchist. Obviously, no one took her up on this, and it would have been difficult since she was imprisoned at the time.

Throughout her life, Goldman would move between Europe and the United States and practice her trade (sometimes anonymously on people who would rather kill her than be treated by her).

I wanted to surface Goldman for a couple of reasons. One, because she was a high profile female leader in the United States who gained an international reputation as an influential theorist and activist. And, because she offers some of the clearest ideas of anarchism that help define the split between classical Marxism and the anarcho-syndicalist movement to the left of it. Here’s Goldman in her own words:

“Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man’s subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man. There is no conflict between the individual and the social instincts any more than there is between the heart and the lungs: the one, the receptacle of a precious life essence; the other the repository of the element that keeps the essence pure and strong; the individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life; society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence—that I, the individual—pure and strong.”

What I find fascinating about the anarchist movement is that it recognizes all the practical aspects and challenges of the Marxist movement, the evils of capitalism and the danger of bureaucracy. But it breaks down artificial constructs to get to the root of human nature, materialism and social orders and creates a system based upon more fundamental aspects of the human condition.

It’s extremely clear that the cheap knockoff of anarchist thinking in modern times is the libertarian movement. But libertarians have appended themselves to capitalist constructs in ways that would have offended the likes of Goldman.

I have to confess that I often found myself wondering why people like Goldman, Kropotkin and Bakunin were so far afield of the dominant Marxists of their day, including Marx himself. One of the clearest pictures that helped me understand the fundamental difference between them is in the vast literature related to the criminal justice system.

In a compendium of anarchist essays regarding criminology curated by Anthony Nocella, Mark Seis and Jeff Shantz, they offer a glimpse into the split:

“The overwhelming majority of crimes committed under state capitalism are property related crimes committed by those who are marginalized from the means of production, not to mention the colossal crimes committed by those who own the means of production.”

In many ways, this reflects a core belief of Marxism. The campaign against private property is fundamental to the Marxist critique of capitalism, but mostly to the extent that it extends to the means of production. This is where anarchist thinking goes even deeper to suggest that not only is private property a destructive concept, but any system of justice built upon the very notion of protecting property must therefore be destructive and unjust. Now take it a step further as the authors again note:

“Another major unquestioned assumption of criminology and criminal justice is that punishment through the deprivation of liberty equals justice.”

To the anarchist, if state sponsored systems, whether socialist or capitalist, are built upon the concept of property, regardless of who’s in control of it, then the justice system that protects it is built upon a lie. This means that property belongs to us all and is therefore set free. A kind of material liberty. Again, you can begin to see the roots of modern libertarianism here.

Well, if all these suppositions are true, then anarchists also denounce the deprivation of liberty as punishment for liberating property. Deprivation of liberty is perhaps the greatest sin in the anarchist playbook, which is hardly surprising considering so many of them wound up behind bars.

To the anarchist, all such constructs of jurisprudence and economics are artificial, and therefore unnatural. Their primary critique of evolving socialist praxis, whether the bureaucratic form practiced by the SPD or the state sponsored apparatus of the Bolsheviks later on, is elucidated in these words from Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin:

“Collectivists begin by proclaiming a revolutionary principle—the abolition of private property—then they deny it no sooner than proclaimed by upholding an organization of production and consumption which originated in private property.”

Kropotkin was a mentor and hero to many, including Emma Goldman, who considered him the “godfather of anarchism.” Despite noble Russian origins and a respected career in geology, Kropotkin would lead a life of activism and philosophy, building on the works of Marx, Bakunin, Proudhon, Darwin and countless others whose work he consumed voraciously. Though he cut a fatherly and scholarly figure, Kropotkin was as radical as any of his contemporaries and would find himself in prison and exile just as frequently. Throughout his life, he lived in Russia, France, England, the United States and eventually found himself back in Russia, where he was able to witness the Russian Revolution and heartily criticize what became of it.

Kropotkin looked down upon the evolution of socialist theory and the founding intellectuals Fourier, Owen and Saint-Simon saying, “The three great founders of Socialism… looked upon it as a new revelation, and upon themselves as the founders of a new religion. Socialism had to be a religion, and they had to regulate its march, as the heads of a new church.”

In what is considered his most influential and perhaps most poetic publication, The Conquest of Bread, Kropotkin wrote:

“Anarchism emerges and develops within and in response and opposition to state managed industrial capitalism’s associated harms ranging from enclosures, to dispossessions, to displacements, to mass murder and genocide, to slavery and exploitation.”

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Pulling on Historical Threads

Before we move to the next chapter to talk about the surging labor and socialist movements in the United States during this period, I want to explain why I’ve spent so much time talking about key figures in movements adjacent to socialism. I find it useful to analyze where movements break apart. These fractures tend to echo over time, and I think there’s a lot we can apply to the liberal and leftist movements of today.

It’s fairly clear in retrospect that capitalism quickly ate at the roots of what nearly every leftist held as foundational. From the bureaucratic Fabians to the cast of exiled anarchists, there was an understanding that the working class should own, or control, the means of production and that movements must be organic and of the masses.

Capitalism gutted these foundational tenets by constructing legal and economic systems and protections around the concept of private property. Furthermore, it created hyper competition between industrial centers of influence that relied on the kind of protectionism that could only be afforded by nationalism. By pitting German workers against Russian workers and stoking tensions along nationalistic lines, the capitalist class was able to coerce members of the working class into a protectionist mindset. Thus, when national pride was attacked, as in the case of Germany’s punitive attitude toward the French after 1870, the bourgeoisie was able to partner with governments to militarize.

It’s why the most successful movements were drawn upon national lines and found mostly in union organizing, with the strike being the most potent weapon of dissent. Bureaucratic socialists recognized the strength of organized labor and the potential power it wielded against structures of power. But because labor movements were organized by sectors and trades and along national lines, they were unable to coalesce across borders and industries to generate mass mobilization along class lines.

These were the circumstances our theorists and activists were contending with. More than a century later, we’re having the same discussion, except there is much less consensus among activists and capitalism has become entrenched in nearly every country across the globe. Markets have matured. Supply chains have been established. Trade alliances have been formed. A global financial system has been finely tuned to manage transactions at every level. Any separation between the bourgeoisie and political power has been eliminated, and any talk of mass mobilization that crosses national boundaries has been long forgotten.

And yet, we continue to twist ourselves in knots on the left in particular and argue over whether it’s better to replace the roof of the house with solar panels and use non-toxic cleaning supplies or burn the barn to get to the nails. Schumpeter examined this tension in the past by comparing the Fabians to classical Marxism:

“Thus, though it might be said with truth that, in the matter of class war as in others, Fabianism is the very opposite of Marxism, it might also be held that the Fabians were in a sense better Marxists than Marx was himself. To concentrate on the problems that are within practical politics, to move in step with the evolution of things social, and to let the ultimate goal take care of itself is really more in accord with Marx’s fundamental doctrine than the revolutionary ideology he himself grafted upon it. To have no illusions about an imminent catastrophe of capitalism, to realize that socialization is a slow process which tends to transform the attitudes of all classes of society, even spells superiority in fundamental doctrine.”

Echoes of this argument can be found in the discussions surrounding Trump versus Biden, 2.0. Is it better to elect a past president who promises to destroy the foundation of democracy so we can break the system that suppresses us or re-elect a sitting president who personifies incrementalism?

Social Democrats in the United States, essentially the Bernie wing of the left, will point to the Scandinavian model as an example of tangible incrementalism. But Schumpeter had an answer for that as well seventy years ago, in speaking of Sweden:

“Like her art, her science, her politics, her social institutions and much besides, her socialism and her socialists owe their distinction not to any peculiar features of principle or intention, but to the stuff the Swedish nation is made of and to its exceptionally well-balanced social structure. That is why it is so absurd for other nations to try to copy Swedish examples; the only effective way of doing so would be to import the Swedes and to put them in charge.”

Essentially, he’s saying we can’t handle a smooth transition to a Scandinavian model because we’re not built that way. It’s just not in our DNA. Not to mention the institutional barriers we’ve constructed along the way that have all been in support of capitalism. He uses a phrase that I absolutely love to describe this. He calls it the “performance of the bureaucracy.”

Anywhere the bureaucracy has done its job well, to protect and uphold the status quo, it becomes increasingly difficult to reform let alone tear down. By referring to it as a “performance,” he brings bureaucrats to life and makes them purposeful rather than mindless and faceless. There’s a wonderful little film that came out in 2022 called Living that captures this aesthetic perfectly. Those faceless bureaucrats hold tremendous power.

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Chapter Twelve: The Red Special. Socialism, U.s. Style.

Our audience is probably pretty familiar with the final protagonist of this essay. The uninitiated are going to hear a lot about him over the next year because a certain GOP candidate might be running for president from prison. And it won’t be unprecedented.

After the Civil War in the United States, we went on the most uninspiring run of presidents in the republic’s brief history. Impeached Johnson, corrupt Grant, lackluster Hayes, two month Garfield, banal Arthur, Cleveland, Harrison and Cleveland again. And McKinley, who was gunned down by an anarchist. Reconstruction started, then failed. Mass urban migration spurred by emancipation and reckless industrialization. Deep and frequent economic calamity. Riots. Protests. You name it, we went through it.

In terms of mass social movements and populism, there was one man who stood quietly apart from all the rest. A man so credible, honest and moral that he would slowly imprint onto the consciousness of the working class and come to embody the heart and spirit of both the industrial labor movement and the burgeoning socialist party in America.

Eugene V. Debs was born into a relatively prosperous family in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1855. From an early age, Debs proved to be a hard working man of the people, forging a lifelong bond with rail workers beginning at the age of 14 when he dropped out of high school to clean engine grease from rail cars. Over the years, Debs would perform several different functions as a laborer on the railroads, and the rail system would become his public education. While he was barely educated in a formal sense, Debs was a voracious reader and a tireless raconteur who enjoyed the company of working folks, poets, intellectuals, politicians and union leaders alike. Even his most fervent detractors throughout his life, his political adversaries, the judges who sentenced him and his jailers held an enduring respect for the polite and gregarious man from Terre Haute.

Though he was only a young boy at the time, the first formative event of Debs’ life was the execution of radical abolitionist John Brown for his attack on Harpers Ferry. Something about Brown’s story captivated the imagination of a young Debs, who would bear witness to the second formative event in his life through the lens of John Brown.

In 1886, thousands of workers took to the streets of Chicago in what became known as the Haymarket Riots. Fed up with lousy pay and poor working conditions, the working class went on a raucous and sometimes violent campaign to demonstrate for workers’ rights. On May 3rd, the police killed one of the strikers, which led local anarchists to gather in Haymarket Square in protest of the murder. What began as a peaceful demonstration devolved into terror when a bomb was set off, killing several policemen. Retribution was swift, brutal and most likely wrong as eight prominent anarchists were arrested and sentenced in a sham trial. One of the condemned men committed suicide, four were hanged and three were sent to prison.

The Haymarket Affair would galvanize more than just a young Debs. It enraged members of the working class throughout the nation. But it also had a chilling effect on street movements, just as the political class intended.

At the time, Debs was already a prominent figure in the labor movement and had proudly organized a union shop that printed a publication called The Magazine. As his biographer Ray Ginger wrote in The Bending Cross, “The Magazine thus became the first official labor publication in the country to carry the union label, an honor about which Debs never tired of boasting.”

But there was one thing that haunted Debs throughout his life. Believing that he could convince anyone to fight for the working class and work within the system in doing so, he spoke out too late in defense of the Haymarket rioters; a mistake he vowed never to make again.

Debs was mostly apolitical in his early life, preferring to expend his energy on the labor movement. His first love, the railroad, would be his proving ground for organizing. Equally comfortable in the boardroom as he was on a picket line, Debs straddled a fine line between classes and endeared himself to nearly everyone he met. Because he and his wife Kate Metzel never had children, Debs would commit himself fully to promoting the safety and wellbeing of working men and women everywhere.

His first opportunity to compensate for his fatal mistake during the Haymarket Affair was to speak out against the treatment of protestors during the Pullman Strike. So active was he in fighting against Pullman and the dirty Pinkerton mercenaries who literally murdered activists in cold blood, that the uprising soon became known as the Debs Rebellion. Debs had formed his own rail worker union by this time. According to Ginger, in the same year as the Pullman Strike Debs’ union, “signed up a hundred fifty thousand railroaders, while the combined Brotherhoods could list only ninety thousand names.”

Because of this, Debs would ironically find himself at odds with looming union figures of the day such as Samuel Gompers. He would also find himself at odds with the Cleveland administration that he had previously supported. Anxious to make amends with the capitalist class, the other unions eventually capitulated to Pullman’s demands, and Debs wound up as a target of the Cleveland justice department who charged him with conspiracy. The Pullman affair was Debs’ grand disillusionment with the whole system. It served to radicalize him personally, while building the legend that would turn him into one of the most prominent political and activist figures in U.S. history.

Ultimately, Debs had to serve time for the conspiracy charges. In prison, he quickly became a favorite among both the incarcerated population and those in charge of the prison. It’s during his incarceration that he began educating himself on other struggles of the day and reading the works of the great Marxist and anarchist intellectuals. But it wasn’t in Marx that he found inspiration. It was in the works of Karl Kautsky, the German socialist attempting to transform Germany from the inside-out through the auspices of the SPD.

Upon his early release, and with a new radical political education under his belt, Debs set out to align himself with a political movement and against the two major parties. As Ginger writes:

“In 1896, the only Marxist party in America was the Socialist Labor Party, dominated by the beliefs and personality of Daniel DeLeon… The Socialist Labor Party had become a narrow sect, a religion which followed the Messiah DeLeon.”

Over the years, DeLeon and Debs would hold one another in personal contempt, but often put their differences aside to fight on the side of labor. But the thought of being in a political apparatus of DeLeon’s likeness didn't appeal to Debs.

There was another option at the time, however. The People’s Party, which was the first party that attempted to draft Debs as a candidate for president. But Debs wasn’t interested in becoming a candidate, only in aligning with a party that might have some influence over labor politics regionally. Without a candidate for the top of the ticket, the People’s Party wound up endorsing the Free Silver candidate of the day, William Jennings Bryan, who might have won if not for a bumper crop in the west that year that placated the rural agrarian voters who had recently been suffering.

Many historians believe that if not for the sudden reversal of fortune in America’s “bread basket” Jennings might well have prevailed and Debs might never have turned to the Socialist Party.

Debs’ political education even included a lunch with none other than Emma Goldman, who found him “genial and charming” and said he agreed with keeping the revolutionary spirit alive. But Debs was a practical man who reluctantly stood in the limelight and remained loyal to the labor movement above all else. But this loyalty illustrates the divide within labor, as well, that Europe was experiencing.

Unionization movements spread quickly in the United States, but they developed along trade lines. There was far less desire for industrial unionization on a mass scale, which made individual labor efforts susceptible to cooperation with the capitalist class, especially around election time. But when labor did rise up, movements would be brutally crushed by the likes of the Pinkertons, and always with the support of governors and presidents all too happy to scramble police and even military support to crush any attempt to stem the tide of capitalist interests.

So fractured was the labor movement, and so brutal was the treatment of it by the political class, that Debs eventually resigned himself to participating in the political system. And the only logical place remaining after the turn of the century was in the warm embrace of the Social Democratic Party, officially founded in 1898. And in 1900, they convinced Debs to be their presidential nominee, but the campaign garnered little attention. But by 1904, however, the party had matured and things had changed as Debs hoisted the movement atop his shoulders.

As a candidate, Debs operated like a union organizer. He traveled by rail, of course, from state to state, and spoke to more than 250,000 people until his voice and body gave out. Along the way, he cautioned against demagoguery and channeled his inner Marxist. It was Debs who helped Americans understand in explicit terms that it was the capitalist system that oppressed them and that it was their choice, if not responsibility, to challenge it. Here’s Debs in his own words:

“If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in someone else could lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands and get yourselves out of your present condition.”

Debs went on to garner more than 400,000 votes. It’s important to note that the Republican candidate, Teddy Roosevelt, promoted himself as a reformer and a progressive. The trust buster who took on wealthy elites. A man of the people. Young. Vibrant. Bombastic. And a self-styled hero of the Spanish American War who cultivated a farcical but effective avatar of the Rough Rider. Essentially, he was too popular and easily rode to victory.

Though he was a committed member of the main socialist party now, Debs remained a union man at his core, and in 1905, standing on a platform with prominent figures such as Big Bill Haywood and Mother Jones, Debs helped bring into existence the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). This would be Debs’ primary focus over the next couple of years, as he attempted to persuade workers to become members and trade unions to stand in solidarity with the IWW. But unions were professional and competitive organizations by now. There were powerful positions at the top and bureaucratic influence in the middle. Thus, when Debs was drafted for a third time to run in 1908, it was labor that fired the first shot to sell out the socialist movement, and Samuel Gompers who pulled the trigger by backing Jennings Bryan again and falsely claiming the Debs’ campaign train, the Red Special, was secretly funded by Republicans.

The Red Special was a tremendous asset for Debs, who immediately published the list of every person who donated to fund the purchase of it. He was in his element on a train and talking to people. As the Red Special traversed the country, Debs created a spectacle everywhere he went, which led even former President Cleveland to predict that Debs would win more than a million votes this time around. It was a wild race. Roosevelt still loomed large, promoting his hand picked successor and VP William Taft. William Randolph Hearst had thrown his hat into the primary ring. The Prohibition Party was making noise. Labor was fighting with the socialists, the socialists were at odds with the Labor Socialists, the People’s Party was still around and the Independence Party made a bid as well.

When all was said and done, Debs’ vote tally remained almost the same as it had four years before. It was a massive disappointment for Debs, who nearly killed himself in the process and wound up in poor health. The biggest reason the movement didn’t budge from years prior, however, was that once again—as capitalism does—the economy in 1908 had begun to recover, giving the appearance of stability, though it was just another uptick in the boom and bust cycle.

That being said, the movement didn’t die there. In fact, in 1912, with Debs again atop the ticket, the socialist votes totaled nearly nine hundred thousand. Debs didn’t run in 1916, but by this time Europe had descended into chaos with the First World War and the United States was about to join in. In so many ways, the onset of the Great War was the beginning of the end of the socialist movement. That might seem like a strange thing to say considering we’re only a year away from the Russian Revolution, but World War One altered the course of history to such an extreme that it crushed any hope of an international revolution along class lines.

America’s entrance into the war was a particular affront to the socialists and anarchists who understood that war profiteers built on the backs of the poor who were sent to die for capitalism in a foreign war. That may be a familiar theme by now, but it was radical at the time and a position held only by socialists and anarchists throughout the world. To defend its stance on the war, the Wilson administration strengthened the Espionage Act to include non military offenses that included profane and abusive language. The target was clear.

Just 13 days after giving a relatively benign speech in Ohio, at least where the war was concerned, a federal grand jury indicted Eugene Debs for speaking out against the war. In April of 1919, Debs was sent to prison to serve a 10 year sentence. Even in prison, he fought for prison reform and gained a following of all the prisoners who wept at the gates, along with Debs, upon his release when his sentence was eventually commuted by the new President Harding.

There’s a tendency to elevate Debs to some sort of pious deity. But even Debs’ biographer Ginger, whose account of Debs can only be considered fawning, said:

“Eugene Debs was neither a purist nor a moralist, but a trade-union leader and a Socialist. He firmly believed that basic changes in human behavior would follow rather than precede the establishment of socialism.”

And there we are back at the beginning. Right back to our first essay. That’s the dialectic that every philosopher from Hegel to Lenin would grapple with. Whether we as a people would bring about the socialist change we desire, or if implementing socialism could change us as people. Force it in Russia where the people aren’t ready and therefore need to be cajoled, or nurture it in Germany where gains were being made politically? Approach it systematically through programs and forget the doctrinal elements of the ideology, as in Scandinavia? Maintain a stiff upper lip and go about one’s business inside the system as would a Fabian in London? Align with socially radical priests in Madrid, or take to the streets with anarchists in Paris? If Eugene Debs couldn’t convert each and every voter whose hand he shook and gaze he matched as he rode the Red Special from dusk to dawn, can anyone?

If political and economic doctrines were allowed to grow in a lab, perhaps we would have cleaner, easier answers to all of these questions. But capitalism has proven to be the more forceful agent in the dialectic. Constantly changing the discussion and the facts on the ground. And all of the changes it brought about, when combined with hyper nationalism, laid the groundwork for the death of authentic socialism. World War One may have created the circumstances that paved the way for the Russian Revolution, but in doing so, it also killed all hope for a Marxist revolution, forever altered the dynamics between nation states and set capitalism ablaze with a surge of industrial innovation.

Here’s Margaret MacMillan from her book, The War That Ended Peace:

“Industrialization, the scientific and technological revolutions, the play of new ideas and attitudes, were shaking societies across Europe and calling old, long-established practices and values into question. Europe was both a mighty continent and a troubled one. Each of the major powers had prolonged and serious political crises before the war, whether over the Irish question in Britain, the Dreyfus affair in France, the standoff between crown and parliament in Germany, the conflicts among nationalities in Austria-Hungary or the near revolution in Russia. War was sometimes seen as a way of getting beyond the divisions and the antipathies and perhaps it was. In 1914 in all the belligerent nations there was talk of the nation in arms, the Union Sacree, the holy union where divisions, whether of class, region, ethnicity or religion, were forgotten and the nation came together in a spirit of unity and sacrifice.”

International collaboration, one of the pillars of Marxist thought, was destroyed by the war. Eugene Debs passed away in 1926. Kropotkin in 1921. Rosa Luxemburg, 1919. Vladimir Lenin, 1924. Others such as Emma Goldman, Karl Kautsky and Leon Trotsky would live to see the beginning of World War II and try to advise future Marxist Internationals on how to keep the flame alive. But by this time, there were only two empires that mattered, each working diligently to portray the burgeoning Soviet Union as a socialist state when nothing could be further from the truth.

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In the epilogue of the series, we’re going to talk about the Russian Revolution as a historical reference point, then broaden the discussion to recap important lessons. We’ll try to pull together some important takeaways that help us contextualize current leftist movements, the struggles we face in mobilizing the masses around key issues and how new ideas are required to face the challenges of the future. It’s important to know from whence we came because so much remains the same; at the same time, there’s no question we’re stepping into a vastly different river.

Here endeth our series on Socialism.

Every punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity, says the great Montesquieu, is tyrannical. A proposition which may be made more general thus: every act of authority of one man over another, for which there is not an absolute necessity, is tyrannical.” -Cesare Beccaria

“Every law is an infraction of liberty.” -Jeremy Bentham

“We regard society as the ensemble and union of men engaged in useful work. We can conceive of no other kind of society.” -Henri de Saint-Simon

“When the wage-earning classes are poor, their independence is as fragile as a house without foundations. The free man who lacks wealth immediately sinks back under the yoke of the rich.” -Charles Fourier

“The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways: 1st — When they are neglected in infancy. 2nd — When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them. 3rd — When they are paid low wages for their labor.” -Robert Owen

“A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes—will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.” -John Stuart Mill

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” -Karl Marx

“When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called the People’s Stick.” -Mikhail Bakunin

“Property is theft!” -Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

“The working people cannot purchase with their wages the wealth which they have produced.” -Peter Kropotkin

“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.” -Rosa Luxemburg

“Ask for work. If they don’t give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.” -Emma Goldman

“As things stand today capitalist civilization cannot continue; we must either move forward into socialism or fall back into barbarism.” -Karl Kautsky

“I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out!” -Eugene V. Debs

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Is There A Throughline To Be Found In All That We’ve Covered?

There are scholars far more entrenched in the social sciences who have considered this question. So, who am I to go down this path? Who are we? At the outset, we talked about the changing river. How the exchange of ideas impacted the great thinkers and how these ideas came to shape policy and influence the course of history. Circumstances never remain the same no matter how fundamental our natures may be; but the quest for insight into the human condition has always been there.

So, while I know in my heart there are countless texts that probe the significant questions of our time in more meaningful ways, we have accomplished something profound. We’ve created a safe space to explore ideas in a contemporary setting. We have a community of engaged audience members willing to come on this journey to see if pieces of it resonate with your individual experiences.

The task was straightforward enough. Understanding Socialism. But the journey revealed more questions than answers. The implication behind the task was to see whether or not we could find pieces of useful information to apply to current systems of social, political and economic governance. But this, too, was frustrated by the very definition of socialism.

Recall that we began by stating that socialism is fundamentally a critique of capitalism. And, given that capitalism remains the dominant system that governs the global economy and has therefore co opted social structures and political systems, it begs the following question:

Does socialism even matter?

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Revolutionary Russia, 1917

“All the produce of their labor, over and above subsistence far more suitable to rats than to men, has gone into the coffers of the Bolsheviki…Thus one of the fundamental principles of Marxism has been reduced to absurdity in the house of its professed disciples…The modern world could no more get along without accumulated capital than it could get along without police or paved streets. The greatest change imaginable is simply the change that has occurred in Russia—a transfer of capital from private owners to professional politicians.” -H.L. Mencken, The Baltimore Evening Sun. January 14, 1935.

It must have felt like quite the oversight. A five part series on socialism that ended at the start of World War One. I think it’s fair to say that most casual political observers and those who remember anything from high school social studies have a vague notion of Marx. A few things happen, Lenin takes over Europe and communism is born.

The point of ending where we did is that I believe any authentic movement toward socialism ended with World War One, just prior to the Russian Revolution. It may also be accurate to suggest that the revolution may not have come about were it not for the Great War. So, let’s square these ideas before we continue with our takeaways from the series, and go through a quick timeline of Russian history in the late 1800s and early 1900s:

• 1881, the assassination of Tsar Alexander II kicked off a wave of pogroms throughout the Russian Empire, beginning in present day Ukraine. This, in turn, led to the mass migration of eastern European Jews over the next several decades. Economically and politically, Russia set about playing catchup with the rapidly industrializing nations throughout Europe. It entered into a pact with France in response to German unification, and in 1891 it began construction on the Trans Siberian Railroad, which remains the largest railway in the world.

• In 1896 Tsar Nicholas II took over and continued to pursue eastward expansion, building a Russian port in China in 1898. But trouble was brewing in this part of the world. Japan, Germany, Russia and the United States, among others, were all looking to seize power in disparate parts of China. Then, in 1900, the Boxer Rebellion in China erupted, partly in response to foreign interference in the region. This set Russia on a collision course with not only the Chinese, but with an increasingly militarized Japan who ultimately defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904.

• It was a devastating defeat that crushed the morale of the Russian people. The Russian empire was in turmoil, and revolution was in the air. Amidst an embarrassing treaty with Japan negotiated by Theodore Roosevelt, which earned Teddy the Nobel Peace Prize, the Russian people take to the streets. In St. Petersburg, a peaceful protest turned deadly when protestors were murdered in what became known as Bloody Sunday. Russian sailors aboard the battleship Potemkin revolted in June of the same year. Throughout the year, revolutionaries attempted to overthrow the government in what Vladimir Lenin called “a dress rehearsal” for the ultimate socialist revolution.

• In 1906, a new constitution was written, establishing the Duma. Pyotr Stolypin took over as Prime Minister, supplanting the governing duties of the tsar, and a new reign of terror coined “Stolypin’s Necktie” was ushered in.

• Stolypin was assassinated in 1911 and Tsar Nicholas reasserted his rule, though under the mysterious counsel of the infamous Rasputin.

• Though Russia initially wanted to stay out of the burgeoning conflict in Europe, fate had other plans. Russia entered the Great War and sustained enormous casualties, sparking even more unrest among the peasants sent to fight for their country. From exile, revolutionaries Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky began plotting another revolution. In 1916, Rasputin was killed. In 1917, uprisings among the military and protests in the street forced Tsar Nicholas to abdicate his post. The already fragile provisional government failed and, under Trotsky’s masterful hand, the Bolsheviks rode to power in a bloodless coup promising peace, land and bread to a wary Russian population ready for permanent change. Tsarist rule was officially dead in Russia, and the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded where all other socialist revolutions had fallen short.

From Revolutionary Russia:

“Trotsky’s role in the October Revolution became central. He emerged as the chief inspirer, organizer, and manager of the insurrection. Already a legendary figure because of his activity in the Revolution of 1905, he was a rousing orator and crowd pleaser…The fact is that Trotsky did a superb job in timing and administering the actual seizure of power, whereas Lenin provided the overall theory and the iron will needed to see it through.”

During the war, Germany did whatever it could to foment revolution in Russia and sow chaos. In fact, they did the same to the British by financing revolutionary activities in Ireland. In the end, the conditions were ripe in Russia for a wholesale change. A disillusioned military; an impoverished peasantry; anger among the industrialists who blamed Stolypin and the bureaucrats for getting them into the war; incredulity among the citizens who blamed Stolypin, Tsar Nicholas, Rasputin, anyone in a position of power; broken land reform promises to poor Russian farmers; national embarrassment over the loss to Japan.

It was all too much.

Again, Revolutionary Russia:

“Only an ideology and an unbending government were needed to set off the explosion. The tsarist system supplied the latter and Karl Marx supplied the former.”

But, for as much as Russian communist history has been written opportunistically by both Russian and American powers over the past century, it’s perhaps more accurate to suggest that the Bolsheviks came to power less under a mandate and more because they were in the right place at the right time. As Joseph Schumpeter wrote in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy:

“There is no reason for assuming that, but for the strain the World War put upon the social fabric, the Russian monarchy would have failed to transform itself peacefully and successfully under the influence of, and in step with, the economic development of the country.”

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The People's Stick

This strikes at the heart of revolutionary theory, with the benefit of hindsight, and why World War One was likely more responsible for the Russian Revolution than Marxist and socialist movements. Capitalism has been able to placate the masses at every turn, except under the most extreme circumstances. But the war not only starved millions; it risked starving capitalism of the oxygen it needed to breathe. As Schumpeter points out, if not for the Great War, Russia would likely have continued to pursue industrialization and democratic reform. The provisional government would have had time to mature, and so would capitalism.

But Russia was weak. It was weak prior to the war relative to its neighbors. It hadn’t yet completed the industrial capitalist phase of its development, as Marx theorized. And now, millions were dead from the war, a pandemic and famine.

Lenin and Trotsky were nothing if not prepared. While it might not have been the place they dreamed revolution would occur, they were certainly ready to seize power when the opportunity presented itself. To them, socialism was a global revolution, so if Russia was home base, so be it. Thus, they immediately went to work to establish soviets throughout Russia and bring workers into their revolution. From Revolutionary Russia:

“Soviets were formed all over Russia, from districts within cities to remote villages; soldiers elected committees to represent their interests; and workers formed factory committees, trade unions, and armed militia to see to their needs and to defend the gains the revolution had brought them. These structures represented a kind of direct democracy and were consciously erected to better their lot and protect the interests of the group involved. But could they form the basis for a national consensus and a Russian-wide system?”

The answer to this question remains unanswered. Not because a Russian-wide system that ultimately consumed most of eastern Europe didn’t come to pass. But because there was nothing resembling a consensus. Think of the words of our theorists:

Bakunin: “When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called the People’s Stick.”

Debs: “I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, someone else would lead you out!”

Beccaria: “Every act of authority of one man over another, for which there is not an absolute necessity, is tyrannical.”

Lenin and Trotsky led the Russian people to the promised land. And Joseph Stalin led them into hell. The circumstances may have been such that revolution was at hand, but the people weren’t ready to come along. They were simply tired and demoralized. The same exhaustion and embarrassment that infected the German people after the war and throughout the Great Depression that paved the way for the Nazi Party.

Thus, the “People’s Stick” was wielded by the state apparatus of the Bolsheviks under the murderous hand of Stalin for the next half century, and the people suffered under the yoke of tyranny; a tyranny that bore no resemblance to the Marxist theory it purportedly credited for its formation.

Here’s Margaret MacMillan from The War That Ended Peace:

“When we look back at the years before 1914 we can see the birth of our modern world, but we should also recognize the persistence and force of older ways of thinking and being. Millions of Europeans, for example, still lived in the same rural communities and in the same manner as their ancestors. Hierarchy and knowing one’s place in it, respect for authority, belief in God, still shaped the way in which Europeans moved through their lives. Indeed, without the persistence of such values, it is hard to imagine how so many Europeans could have gone off willingly to war in 1914.”

After the war, the river was changed and tinged with blood, and so too were those who waded through it.

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Inputs, Conditions And Conclusions

Okay. Time to riff. To dispense with the formality of structure. While I’m framing this as the epilogue to our series, it’s more of a conversation starter. An invitation to dialogue. From day one, we set out to tackle difficult subjects and to make sense of the world. The idea behind this series was to understand the theories that inspire hope among those who are offended by the capitalist system, and concerned for the trajectory of inequality and our race toward climate disaster.

It’s common among leftists to call for radical change to our systems and behaviors. #BlackLivesMatter. Trans activism. The #MeToo Movement. Occupy. Cultural movements seeking to upend harmful norms and systemic oppression.

Leftist writer Fredrik deBoer has been in my algorithm lately criticizing such movements, claiming a lack of organization combined with misguided messaging have done little to affect change. (This is the guy I was ranting about in the AOC essay who published the article saying she was just a regular old Democrat now.)

What’s interesting about deBoer’s critique is that he criticizes AOC on the one hand for fighting within the system, then chastises movements outside of the political system for not being political enough. I think he’s missing the point.

I may have been inclined to jive with deBoer prior to putting this series together. I might have looked at his words as bitter pills—tough talk we need to have. But I’ve come to see things a little differently now. Listening closely to the echoes of history has a way of doing that. What’s missing from his critique, and the critique among many leftists today, is the importance of class consciousness. It’s a fundamental ingredient of change.

It’s what was missing from Robert Owen’s New Harmony, but what was present during the Paris Commune. It’s what existed in France and Germany prior to the Great War, but was absent in Russia. This lack of consciousness allowed the peasant class in Russia to go from feudal industrial rule to state-sponsored socialist rule. A mere changing of the bureaucratic guard. The same consciousness that gave rise to a professional political class in Germany and a revolutionary labor movement in France, both of which were stunted by the onset of war and rise of nationalism.

The pre-war mentality that MacMillan spoke of had an element of class consciousness threaded throughout the disparate movements in Europe. But this consciousness disappeared in a wave of nationalism that presaged the war. And, from the ashes of war, it was capitalism that offered the promise of both nationalistic identity and economic recovery.

The bitterness among nations lingered and prevented the working classes from each country from aligning. Recall the two pillars of Marxist belief: internationalism and the abolition of private property in the means of production. Lenin and Trotsky differed slightly on the approach to internationalizing Bolshevik success, but were in agreement that the Marxist vision of socialism required it to spread beyond Russia. They needed trading partners and allies to fight the growing influence of capitalism.

After Lenin’s death and Trotsky’s expulsion, Stalin would reverse course on this idea and cherry pick Lenin’s words out of context to promote the idea of “socialism in one country,” which was just another form of authoritarianism.

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Class Consciousness

So that’s the first lesson. Class consciousness is required to mobilize the masses in a coordinated movement toward a specific goal. But lesson number two is mass mobilization also requires an organizing framework and structural means to achieve these ends. As Michael Harrington writes in Socialism: Past and Future:

“Marx and Engels’s turn toward what can only be called democratic socialism was a critically important deepening of the idea of socialism itself. The utopians had not been democrats, even if their followers were, and their projections of the future, with their vision of an ‘organic’ and nonpolitical transition to the new society, thus omitted the essential: the democratic socialization of a more and more complex economy from below.”

Toward the end of their collaboration, and in Engels’ work after Marx’s death, we see the intellectual baton passed to those who concerned themselves with the functional aspects of revolution, most notably Karl Kautsky. One of the crucial elements missing in many of the forums involving Marxist theory is a discussion about democracy.

One of the more successful elements of the Paris Commune, as an example, was the democratization of the bureaucratic apparatus. Every role had to be earned through democratic means. No appointments to key positions. Total representation. It’s one of the elements of the U.S. political system that most intrigued the Marxists and syndicalists, though they recognized the perils of a U.S. system that was architected around race. But we have to remember that, at this time, democracy was still relatively new in Europe. And parliamentary democracies were often still conjoined with the Church or monarchies.

Harrington’s point is well taken. The complexity of economic systems under capitalism and the fragmentation of the working classes meant that political systems had to mature in order to keep pace. Moving from capitalism to socialism had to be something more than organic. Thus, democratic institutions were required to facilitate growth. To constrain capitalism for sure, but also to involve the lower classes, lest they be left behind under state sponsored capitalism or state sponsored socialism.

So, there are our first two foundational conditions. Class consciousness and democratic structures and processes that allow the working class to wrest power from the elites.

I think these are fairly obvious. It’s just that we don’t say these things out loud.

Now, for the more controversial concepts. One of our listeners remarked early on that it sounded like I was promoting the concept of a vanguard class of intellectuals in the way Lenin prescribed. Here’s how Lenin described it in his seminal text What Is To Be Done:

“Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships of all classes and strata to the state and the government, the sphere of the interrelations between all classes. For that reason, the reply to the question as to what must be done to bring political knowledge to the workers cannot be merely the answer with which, in the majority of cases, the practical workers, especially those inclined toward Economism, mostly content themselves, namely: ‘To go among the workers.’ To bring political knowledge to the workers the Social-Democrats must go among all classes of the population; they must dispatch units of their army in all directions.”

Lenin’s prescription was to train a select group of workers to rise about their status in order to “raise the amateurs to the level of revolutionaries.” This class, or party, would proselytize the gospel of Marx and teach the proletariat and lumpenproletariat alike the ways of revolution. Why? Because he knew that the peasants spread across the vast expanse of Russia still lived in the same feudal, pre-modernist conditions their ancestors had. Lenin was among those who hoped to someday bring socialism to Russia. It didn’t occur to him or his contemporaries that the revolution would actually begin there.

I responded to the listener at the time with an equivocation. I agree conceptually with an organized group, or professional political class, that exists to raise the consciousness of the working class. In fact, my theory is that it is the precise function of the Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives. But, I wanted to get through the series to draw attention more to a group like the Fabians. Important side note here. I’m not lionizing the Fabians. The society held a few questionable views early on, and the more recent incarnation of the society is a watered down version that lacks heart.

But, at the time in the UK, they played an important role in supporting the labor movement. They advocated for women’s rights, minimum wage and universal healthcare. These were the domestic policy areas over which they exerted a quiet and outsized influence.

The point is, the UK was a more developed capitalist economy that had already rid itself of monarchical rule in day-to-day governance and separated church and state. It was far ahead in its industrialization journey, and the party system was deeply entrenched, much as it is today in the United States. And yet, many of the most important reforms that came to pass involving social welfare and social justice were promoted from within by the Fabians. That’s why it’s important to understand both the goals of a movement, but also the circumstances under which you’re operating in order to achieve them.

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Class Identity

When we think about the composition of class, we’re presented with a different challenge than most of the previous eras we covered. As I pointed out in our recent labor essay, one of those challenges is in raising the consciousness of the working class when there is no real working class identity any longer. One might see themselves as poor, middle class, upper middle class, rich or wealthy. But you rarely hear people self-identify as working class as much as they identify with their occupation or political identity.

Working class seems almost anachronistic, and the growth of the independent workforce—freelancers, gig workers, part-timers—and the rise of remote work in the service sector, has driven us further apart from collective identities.

If we think about the term itself, it implies that the identity of the largest segment of the population is tied to the concept of work. Labor is not simply the means, but the end as well. It’s all consuming. But our identities transcend our individual and collective labor. We’ve advanced beyond identifying by the trade in which we toil. Even the most current data show that the average American will hold more than 12 jobs in their lifetime. This is a fundamental shift that must be taken into account.

We may be no closer to understanding why we’re here or the meaning of life, but we know it exists beyond what we do to put bread on the table. So, rather than try to stuff ourselves back into a box, maybe it’s time to evaluate new systems that incorporate the understanding that abundance now affords us the opportunity to be more than our work.

The real battle isn’t over the soul of the nation, as Biden often promoted during his campaign. It’s between the oligarchy and everyone else. Our job is to raise consciousness of this condition and to demonstrate ways in which the masses can seize power and harness the markets before they do further harm to us and the planet.

This is the framing that Occupy tapped into. The 1% versus the 99%. Occupy raised the consciousness of the 99%, but the prescriptions for seizing power were too amorphous, or perhaps too daunting. But it gave us a starting point to frame a movement.

In many ways, it’s the opposite of objectivism, which sought to paint collectivists as takers. This is the ultimate snow job. A concept adopted and promoted by the bizarro wing of modern libertarianism and free market idealism. The idea that each human is some autonomous creative being whose needs supersede all others, and anyone who seeks to share in societal gains is somehow a pariah. That we, the masses, are the real takers.

The capitalist class are the takers. The 1% are the takers. The rest of us are the real producers, the makers. And the greatest magic trick of all has been convincing everyone else that the opposite is true. Liberals wonder how a charlatan like Trump can convince tens of millions of people that he represents the producer class, the workers of the nation, that he stands for them. Tens of millions of workers lining up behind a man whose catch phrase as a reality TV star was “You’re fired.” It’s surreal.

But he didn’t invent this con. He’s the product of decades of propaganda from Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman to Bill Clinton and Larry Summers, who tell us that the way to take care of the many is to put more power into the hands of the few.

In terms of organizing movements, one belief I’ve held that is categorically wrong is that religion should play no role in galvanizing the masses. I call myself an agnostic in polite company, but I’m really an atheist. And, thus, I’ve allowed my disdain for religion to color my view of its role in the world.

How can I promote working within the democratic system to affect change while criticizing anyone who looks to their faith for guidance outside of it?

Doing so has created a spiritual vacuum that provided an opening for the worst religious actors to wield power inside the system.

A proper movement would lift up positive voices from all corners of life and society. We expend so much energy sneering at the folks in “flyover country,” laughing at those with deeply held religious convictions, condemning the professional managerial class and so on. It’s why members of these groups are so hostile to liberals whose pathos looks like false piety. It’s not enough to say, “we have a common enemy, it’s the 1%.” This is a hollow pronouncement if we cannot first find common ground. If we cannot first raise consciousness.

We’ve done a better job lifting up the voices of the marginalized; but must take care not to cast aside the very real feelings of those who aren’t traditionally marginalized, but are also being left behind. We have a planet to save and children to protect.

Can we challenge ourselves to construct a model for authentic change without being too moralistic?

The capitalists hold all the levers of change. They’ve purchased the political system. They control the information we consume, and therefore the narrative. They own the means of production and subsume all the gains. And still, they want more. Because that’s the nature of capitalism.

So let’s look at the conditions in totality.

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Bring It Home, Max. (Finally.)

Raising class consciousness. Expanding democratic processes into all systems. Installing a dedicated class of socially conscious bureaucrats to perform the important, yet mundane, work of systemic change. Solidarity between groups that have been inculcated by the capitalist class to despise one another on false grounds. And to acknowledge that the character and spirit among U.S. citizens is distinct from other cultures.

We can learn from other examples and learn from history, but our movement must be distinct. It’s folly to believe we’re going to exorcise the demon of American individualism. The key is to build upon it and demonstrate how the capitalist class is suppressing the rugged frontier spirit of American individualism by rigging the system to favor the elites.

That’s why the cooperative model of work makes so much sense. Why it’s different from the New Democrat free market ideas espoused for the past 50 years. Our job is to teach people that they can be free within a collectivist system. This requires a great amount of political skill and careful communication.

If we stop fighting on the ground to elect progressives who can change the tenor of discussions in government and set new priorities, choosing instead to shout at the rain from outside the halls of power, we’re leaving power to its own devices.

And they will choose wrong.

Intellectually, we know we must reduce nationalistic tensions. We need to forge cooperative, measurable and ironclad hemispheric goals to reforest, reduce poverty, decarbonize and demilitarize. These things require new playbooks because the world has changed. But the existing power structure, absent progressive voices, has only the playbooks of old to reference. Playbooks that get us into conflicts and war. As Chris Hedges wrote, “War is a force that gives us meaning.” Going to war is easy. Building a cooperative peace that provides pathways to sustainability and lifts people out of poverty is hard.

It’s tempting to say that the capitalist epoch is coming to an end. But that end might signify that it’s the final epoch for us all. There’s so much that socialism, syndicalism, anarchism and Marxism can teach us about how we got here, but the worst fears the great thinkers held regarding capitalism have long been realized. So, new thinking is required if we’re literally going to save our species. And, given where we are in world history, the United States will either lead the way in changing the world, or we’re going to drag everyone down with us. Such is the outsized nature of our economy, our might and our influence. While that might smack of ethnocentrism, it’s simply a statement of fact.

Can we think like Bakunin and “cleave to no system?” Can we channel the vision of Luxemburg and get people to notice their chains? To build a system for tomorrow, we’ll have to borrow elements from the past and incorporate them with new visions. It’s not enough to want to revive some strict interpretation of Marxism. To paraphrase Clemenza, leave the dogma, take the lessons.

For example, saving the planet may require that we nationalize certain industries. This concept is so anathema to our ideals that doing it abruptly would inspire revolt. But, as we’ve said before, there isn’t a single industry that wasn’t originally built by the public sector and government investment.

A widespread movement to worker cooperatives might seem like an affront to the capitalist system, but the Mondragon Corporation has proven that it can compete in a global marketplace while allowing for worker ownership and agency. Would global sustainability be achieved better through collaborative yet competitive progress with China, or by threatening another world war?

Can we look at the Scandinavian models of social welfare reforms without sacrificing our individualistic identity as Americans? Can we recognize that democracy with socialist structures mitigate inequality and allow for full expression of civil liberties? Can we allow ourselves to drop the absolutism of equality to see that even Marx acknowledged the sliding scale of labor value? (He wasn’t a proponent of absolute equality, he favored equitable access to opportunity and surplus gains in proportion to one’s needs.)

These are incredibly complex questions that rely upon us all to raise class consciousness. Absent such consciousness, we risk the last part of this whole equation to catch us off guard: the catalyzing event that spurs revolutionary change. It will happen. It always does. And it’s impossible to predict.

The world was never the same after the world wars. After 9/11. Even more recently, after the financial collapse or the election of Donald Trump. These moments impact the way we see ourselves, and those who are prepared to act in these moments take hold of the narrative and the reigns of power.

The fascists after World War One.

The capitalists after World War Two.

The free market libertarians after the stagflation crisis of the ’70s.

The neocons after 9/11.

Each time, moving further away from anything the theorists in this series imagined. Each time, changing the river. Each time, changing us.

No answers, Unf*ckers. Just questions. But better ones, as we go along this journey together to find common ground, meet people where they are and prepare for what comes next.

Here endeth the series.

Resources

• The Collector: What do Hegel and Marx Have in Common?
• Socialist Alternative: Robert Owen and Utopian Socialism
• Marxists.org: Encyclopedia of Marxism: Events
• Washington State University: Introduction to 19th-Century Socialism
• Howard Zinn: Commemorating Emma Goldman: 'Living My Life'
• Stanford: Hegel's Dialectics
• The History of Economic Thought: Cesare Beccaria 
• Stanford: Jeremy Bentham
• Foundation for Economic Education: Robert Owen: The Woolly-Minded Cotton Spinner
• Stanford: Karl Marx 
• Central European Economic and Social History: Economic Development In Europe In The 19th Century
• Marxists.org: Encyclopedia of Marxism
• The New Yorker: Karl Marx, Yesterday and Today
• Marxists.org: Glossary of Organisations
• Northwestern Whitepaper: The Second Industrial Revolution
• The Collector: Revolutions of 1848
• Chemins de Mémoire: Franco-Prussian War of 1870
• Journal of Modern History: 1870 in European History and Historiography
• JSTOR: Paul Avrich: The Legacy of Bakunin
• Marxists.org: Bakunin
• The Anarchist Library: The Federative Principle
• The Anarchist Library: Property Is Theft
• Jacobin: Why Kautsky was Right 
• The New Yorker: Dreyfus Affair
• The Jacobin: John Dewey
• Marxists.org: Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism 
• Spartacus Ed: Karl Kautsky
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: FAQs

Book Love

• Joseph A. Schumpeter: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
• John M. Thompson: Revolutionary Russia, 1917
• Bernard Harcourt: Critique and Praxis
• Ray Ginger: The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs
• Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto
• Karl Marx: Das Kapital 
• Michael Harrington: Socialism: Past and Future
• Victor Serge + Natalia Ivanovna Sedova: Life and Death of Leon Trotsky
• Anne Sebba: Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy
• Peter Kropotkin: The Conquest of Bread
•  Staughton Lynd + Andrej Grubačic: Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History
• Emma Goldman: Anarchism and Other Essays
• Anthony J. Nocella II, Mark Seis and Jeff Shantz: Classic Writings in Anarchist Criminology: A Historical Dismantling of Punishment and Domination.
• Margaret MacMillan: The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914

Image Sources

• John Jabez Edwin Mayal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.
• London Stereoscopic Company, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.
• Mikhail Bakunin: Nadar, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: Nadar, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.
• Socialist Party of America, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.
• 1921, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.
• John Jabez Edwin Mayal, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Changes were made.