Left-Wing Ideologies: Socialism and Anarchism in the 19th Century

Left-Wing Ideologies

Two new left ideologies emerged in the mid-nineteenth century:

Socialism and Anarchism

These two movements:

• They believed that inequality and injustice were due to private property, defended by the bourgeoisie.
• They proposed the disappearance of the State and Private Property.

Socialism

Founders: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Its objective is to end private property (bourgeoisie), through a revolution of the proletariat to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat and abolish private property, disappearing the classes of the societies and thus the State would disappear.

Main works: The Capital, The Communist Manifesto

Anarchism

Founder: Mikhail Bakunin

His goal was to achieve maximum individual freedom by eliminating everything that limited. It would be achieved through a revolution of the peasants and proletarians, abolishing the state and replacing it with egalitarian communities of production and consumption. In these groups, all decisions would be made by popular assemblies.

In 1864: the First International Workingmen's Association (IWA) is created. A few years later, disagreements between socialists and anarchists led to its dissolution.

In 1889: some socialist leaders create the Socialist International (Second International), of Marxist ideology. The Second International created some of the symbols of the identity of the workers movement:

• The first of May
• The Anthem of the International.

Labor movements succeeded in getting governments to develop labor laws to:

• Prohibition of child labor
• Maternity
• Obligation of the employer to pay accident insurance.
• Reduction of the working day to 8 hours.

Class-based society emerged: FOTO*

A class-based society:

• Three groups: upper (nobility, bourgeois capitalists), middle (civil servants, lawyers, doctors, small merchants and artisans, small farmers) and working class (proletariat and poor tenant farmers and agricultural laborers).
• The social class of people was determined by their profession and wealth.
• Society was open: people's social class could change if their personal situation.
• In theory, all citizens were now equal before the law.
• In practice, there were large economic inequalities.