‘Ideologies’
Ideo’logy
‘the system of ideas at the basis of an
economic or political theory’ or ‘the manner of thinking characteristic of a
class or individual’
--(Oxford English Dictionary)
Examples:
Liberalism, Socialism, Nationalism,
Colonialism, Anarchism, Communism, Fascism, Nazism, Feminism.
An Ideological
Century?
When did forces begin to shape the story of the
twentieth century? Was it 1900, or earlier and how much earlier? There is a
broad agreement amongst historians as to the facts of those forces that had a
major influence on the twentieth century world: The twentieth century was one
where ideologies battled it out, an example of which is the cold war in which
capitalism fought communism. There is a great deal of debate surrounding the
reasons for these forces.
Liberalism, Socialism, and Nationalism were the
most influential of these forces. These were, by 1900, already old ideologies,
but became more sharpened and intense as more people became involved by
politics and gained the ability to vote.
Liberalism
This was the oldest of them, originating in
England in the 17th century. It has a different meaning in different
places, but its essence lies in individual liberty. There was a time when this
was very radical and revolutionary, when it attempted to limit monarchical
power and support religious freedom. They believed that it was the governments
role to keep the peace, but otherwise not to interfere with people’s lives. The
key concept of liberalism is individual liberty, freedom to do what you want,
so long as it does not cause harm to others.
It was an attack on Absolutism, the theory that
the monarch has absolute power, deriving from God. Liberalists disagreed with
the divine right of kings, which they attacked implicitly as well as explicitly.
With the Enlightenment (an 18th century philosophical movement linking science
and social progress) came the notion that humans were good and that human
science, not god, was what influenced history. In 1688 came the Glorious
Revolution, limiting the power of the monarch, and the American (1776) and
French (1789) Revolutions followed suit, giving power to the people.
At the time, customs, tariffs and monopolies
meant that economies didn’t have free commerce. Liberalism extended its ideas about
political freedom to economic freedom. Adam Smith, who wrote The Wealth of
Nations (1776), was against government intervention in the economic sphere:
no trade barriers, no monopolies, no artificial limits to trade. He believed that
Governments should leave individuals free to pursue their own interests, which
was the best way of generating wealth. He believed that intervention
constrained instead of protected economies, and that if individual actors are
left alone, the economy will regulate itself (something known as the ‘invisible
hand’).
Laissez-faire economics became the term commonly given to
this idea of the self-regulating market economy, which is still the ideology of
global capitalism.
Socialism
Liberalism didn’t please everyone: the poor
weren’t as free as the rich, non-westerns weren’t as free as westerns and women
weren’t as free as men. Socialism was concerned with society as a whole, rather
than the individual, and was inspired by Enlightenment ideas about equality and
human goodness. It had more faith in human intervention than liberalism.
Socialists aims were to improve human life as a collectiveand achieve basic
equality for all people, believing that liberal economic ideas exacerbated the
problem as there was no concern for the disadvantaged. Two Utopian socialists
were Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and Robert Owen (1771-1858), who set up New
Lanark, an experimental community in Scotland.
By the 1850s, socialism tried to develop more
realistic programmes, as utopians became to be seen as ‘naiive’. ‘Scientific
Socialism’ was this more practical solution. Karl Marx (1818-1883) thought
class conflict was the main ‘motor’ of history and that history develops in
clearly discernable steps, where class tensions advanced history. He saw the
aristocracy overthrown by the bourgeoisie and thought the next major historic
leap would come through conflict between the middle classes (bourgeoisie) and
the working classes (proletariat).
Nationalism
This has taken different forms throughout
history and is essentially loyalty to a nation state. It was originally a vehicle
for the implementation of liberal ideals of political freedom. ‘Peoples’ began
to define themselves linguistically and culturally, and wanted to create their
own nations. Italy (1861) and Germany (1871) were examples of such efforts.
From the 1870s, nationalism became more
aggressive or zealous. The creation of new nations in Europe gave a sense of
increasing competition, as did Charles Darwin’s theories about the survival of
the fittest. Politicians used appeals to nationalism to rally the masses.
Questions: