Romanticism, Realism, and Marxism: 19th Century Europe

Cultural Context

Romanticism

Romanticism became the banner of the youth who wanted to spread the revolutionary spirit in politics, philosophy, literature, and the arts. This movement was a cry for freedom, both socially and artistically. The themes, cutting idealistic people, are the exaltation of the individual and privacy.

Artists from this period include Delacroix in painting, Chopin in music, and Victor Hugo in theater. Romanticism idealized history, society, and nature. For this reason, they were branded as evasive and replaced by realism.

Realism

Realism is an art movement concerned with the concrete reality of human beings. Thus, the usual topics are everyday life or the harsh conditions of workers.

In science and technology came breakthroughs and innovations, as played by Darwin in the field of biology, which equates human beings with other living beings in the struggle for survival. In Physics and Chemistry, Marie Curie contributed to atomic energy. In the field of technology, the photograph and the telephone appeared. The social sciences were consolidated, and specifically, the emerging economy in England.

Philosophical Context

Three sources of Marx's thought:

1. Hegelian Idealism

Left Hegelian (Hegel's thought accepted but criticized many of his positions). The First Generation criticized the idea of God and religion. Marx criticized the attempt to accept materialist religion and God and criticized him, as the speaker is an ideal concept. The second generation had a critical conception of the state and the politics of Hegel. Marx accepted the dialectical contradiction and criticized idealism. He said that the dialectic is a process that takes place in the matter.

2. English Political Economy

Marx accepts the importance of economic reality in the historical process and his discovery that work is the source of wealth. He was critical of not having been aware of the alienating dimension that work has.

3. Utopian Socialism

Marx accepted the criticism of capitalism. He criticized the utopian socialists who wanted to change the existing inequality in capitalist society. It seems that their proposals are naive because they do not realize the individual initiatives of well-intentioned people are meant to remedy the situation of the workers.

Historical Context

During the first half of the 19th century in Europe, there were three waves of revolution:

• The 1820 revolution, which in Spain led to the Revolutionary Triennial.
• The 1830 revolution, which resulted in the conquest of power by the bourgeoisie in Western Europe.
• The 1848 revolution, which was proletarian, and there was an awareness by which the proletariat acquired the need to be protagonists in their process of liberation due to the abandonment that the bourgeoisie had given them after the 1830 revolution.