Monthly Archives: January 2020

Unit 4, Discussion 3: Marx and Marxism

Uncategorized, Unit 4

The theory of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, presented in the Communist Manifesto (1848), was yet another theory of progress so popular in the nineteenth century, along with Darwinism, Positivism and nationalism. Marxism was popular with the proletarians created by the Industrial Revolution, because it predicted that they would one day win a successful proletarian revolution against the bourgeoisie all over the world, one whose success was the inevitable product of class conflict between the two classes. For the same reason, the middle class hated this theory and fought the rise of the proletariat. The theories of Marx and Engels would never be borne out or live up to their predictions. BUt it was a major fear factor that explains much about the politics of the middle class in the late nineteenth century and the birth of social welfare legislation, which Marx had never foreseen or predicted.

 

Karl Marx, the Principle author of “The Communist Manifesto” (1848)

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Unit 4, Discussion 2: Darwin and His Descendants

Uncategorized, Unit 4

Here is a link to a transcript of this Episode

Who was Charles Darwin, this Newton of the Nineteenth century? And what was his theory of the evolution of species by natural selection. How did it impact virtually every aspect of Western Civilization, from political ideologies to psychology and philosophy? In this special landmark podcast, Dr. Reiman explores his significance.

Darwin in 1870.

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Unit 4, DIscussion 1: The Unification of Germany and Italy, 1848-1871

Uncategorized, Unit 4

ationalism took a dark turn for the worse after 1848. Nations that came into existence after 1848–such as Germany and Italy–were unified by military monarchies adopting the strategies of statecraft and war. In this podcast, Dr. Reiman traces the ways in which these two nations buried liberalism in their countries and strengthened autocratic government between 1848 and 1871, lighting the long fuse to World War I.

A Young Bismarck

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Unit 3, Discussion 5: The Revolutions of 1848

Uncategorized, Unit 3

The Revolutions of 1848 in Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Rome were the last liberal national revolutions in Europe because they all failed, and because they all raised the specter of a new kind of revolution, revolution by the communist proletariat. In this podcast, you will prepare for the Unit 3, Discussion 5 assignment by understanding the causes and consequences of these events, as well as the meaning of the new ideas of Socialism and Communism that were birthed by them.

 

Louis Blanc, leader of the Paris proletarians in the Revolution of 1848

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Unit 3, Discussion 4: The Revolution of 1830 in France

Uncategorized, Unit 3

In this podcast we look at the false hope that the French Revolution of 1830 put in the hearts of the liberal bourgeoisie (middle class).  “Hearts” is the correct word, because Romanticism was a driving force of this liberal revolution, as the painting by Eugene Delacroix shows here.  The Revolution of 1830 set up the middle class for an awful fall, and the fall came with the bloody revolutions of 1848 all over Europe, revolutions that decoupled liberalism from nationalism and revolution forever afterwards.

 

“Liberty Leading the People,” by Eugene Delacroix (1830)

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