This document discusses the development of socialism and Marxism in response to the problems caused by industrialization in the 19th century. It outlines the ideas of utopian socialists like Fourier and Owen, before summarizing Karl Marx's scientific socialism which argued that capitalism would inevitably lead to revolution as the proletariat grew in size and oppression. It then discusses the varieties of socialism that emerged, including reform socialists, revolutionary Marxists, anarchists and syndicalists, as well as international socialist organizations like the First and Second Internationals. In conclusion, it examines the growth of socialist parties and unions in Germany and Britain in the late 19th century.

1. HI4774
Socialism, Marxism & Working Class
Organisations

2. Jim Connell, ‘The Red Flag’
(1889)
The people’s flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyred dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts’ blood dyed its every fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.

3. Industrialisation:
Some Problems & Responses
 Consequences of Industrialisation => Problems
 Poor living and working conditions
 Fear of radicalism, disease, immorality …
 State Intervention from the 1830s and 1840s –
especially in Britain and France
 Poor Law Amendment Act (1834)
 Development of “Working Class Consciousness”
 The Luddites (1811-12)
 Workers Associations, Trade Unions, Co-
operatives

4. “Utopian” Socialism: Some Examples
 Charles Fourier - Phalanxes - The Theory of
Social Organisation (1820)
 Robert Owen - New Lanark - Villages of Co-
operation
 Henri de Saint-Simon & the Saint Simonians

5. Karl Marx and ‘Scientific’ Socialism
 b. Trier, 1818;
d. London, 1883
 The Communist
Manifesto (1848)
 Capital (Das Kapital),
volume 1 (1867)
 Important as a savage
critique of Capitalism
and pointed towards a
revolutionary alternative:
Communism

6. Karl Marx & Class Struggle
 The economic development of society creates class struggle.
 ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian,
lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word,
oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to
one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now
open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a
revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the
common ruin of the contending classes.’ (Marx, The
Communist Manifesto)

7. Karl Marx & Revolution
 By the nineteenth century, in Capitalist
societies, class struggle involved the
Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat.
 The growing size, oppression and misery of
the Proletariat under capitalism would
inevitably produce revolution.
 Revolution would result in the ‘Dictatorship
of the Proletariat’, which would give way to a
classless society.

8. Varieties of Socialism in the later
Nineteenth Century
 Reform Socialists
 work within the existing political system
 Revolutionary Socialists - Marxists
 overthrow the existing system, create a new
one based on the ‘proletariat’
 Anarchists
 destroy the state completely
 Syndicalists
 opposition to the state via trade unions and
strike action

9. Organising Socialism
 The International Workingmen’s Association (‘First
International’) - 1864
 Opposition forum
 Dissemination of Marxism
 The Second International -1889
 Less eclectic > Marxism dominated
 Based on Socialist parties from different nation-states
 Problems
 Reform or Revolution?
 Should socialists collaborate with middle-class
radicals?
 Internationalism & Nationalism?

10. Socialism in Nation States: Two examples
 Germany
 Social Democratic Party (SPD) 1875; win 20% of
the vote at the 1890 election
 Eduard Bernstein initiates the ‘revisionist’ debate,
1896-1898.
 Great Britain
 ‘New’ Unionism, 1880s: emergence of more broadly
based, militant and socialist trade unions
 Fabian Society (1884).
 Labour Representative Committee (1900); the
‘Labour Party’ (1906).