Foundational Ideologies of the Labor Movement

Ideological Bases of the Labor Movement

Utopian Socialism

Karl Marx criticized what he saw as an ignorance of the social struggle between employers and workers, which prevented a peaceful solution to class conflict. Utopian Socialism is based on:

• Small communities with collective ownership.
• A welfare state, acting as the protector of collective experiences.
• An economy designed to meet the needs of each community.
• Peaceful political tactics.
• Solidarity, philanthropy (positive relationships between people), and brotherly love.
• Equalizing social organization: all people with equal rights in small, self-sufficient communities.

Marxist Socialism

It was developed by Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his friend and patron Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). Marxism attempted to analyze the contradictions of the capitalist system and how these contradictions lead to the destruction of that system. Key features include:

• Property owned by the state.
• A pre-dictatorial state leading to the definitive establishment of communism, after which the state would disappear.
• A centralized, collective economy.
• Creation of parties and labor unions to promote the violent seizure of the state through revolution.
• A classless society where the individual is subsumed by the community.

Marxism served as the ideological basis for many revolutionary movements of the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Anarchism

Anarchy means 'no authority.' Its chief theorist was the Russian military aristocrat Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), who advocated for spontaneous rebellion against capitalist society and the state. Syndicalist doctrine promoted action by all oppressed sectors of society: workers, youth, soldiers, peasants. This revolution aimed at the immediate and total destruction of the bourgeois social order, the state, and its instruments of control (police, military, government, borders). Key features include:

• Collective ownership administered by all.
• Immediate destruction of the state.
• A collective economy where each community is autonomous.
• Rejection of political participation, advocating for violent revolution to immediately dismantle all social institutions.
• A classless society where each individual is free.