Realism, Positivism, Marxism

and Materialism.Chapter 22: pages 900-911

The objectives for this slideshow are:

• In what ways did the failed revolutions of 1848 foster the idea of MATERIALISM?

• In what ways was REALISM a sign of the times in painting and literature?

• Identify what is Positivism—

• And, finally, you will learn the important background that influence Karl Marx beliefs and its future impact on Russian History.

The revolutions of 1848 spread throughout Europe, and what began with hope was

quickly suppressed by reactionary, conservative governments.

After the failure of the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, the dreams of

many Europeans ended.

There had been some

positive outcomes of

1848—peasants

were freed in Germany

and Austria, and many moved to America.

Many were bitter about government reaction after the

revolutions. This new attitude was called materialism: an idea that all

things were a result of physiological or physical forces.

In art and music it was called realism.

Realism included painters such as Courbet, Millet, and

Daumier…

Courbet’s paintings were of the peasants—in the countryside, but they were displayed in the salons

of Paris, for the bourgeoisie to observe.

Perhaps this was a way of saying that “we may have been defeated in the revolutions, but we are still

here. Our needs are just.”

Realism found its way into the

writings of authors such as Flaubert.

Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is a

landmark novel that mocked

romantic illusions about marriage and family life.

Emma Bovary commits suicide after many unhappy love

affairs…

Both writers and painters broke away from the traditions of

romanticism and said they wanted “real facts.”

Similar to realism was the idea of positivism, which meant that one must insist on verifiable facts and

not on wishful thinking.

In politics this became Real Politik--but we will learn more

about that later.

But no other ideas came out

of the post-Congress of

Vienna era which would have more

influence than those of Karl

Marx.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was the son of a lawyer

from Prussia.

Marx associated with other German radicals—similar to the

radicals we saw in our movie Les Miserables. This group was called

the “Young Hegelians.”

Marx met Friedrich Engels (1820-1893) who was the heir

to a vast fortune.

Marx and Engels met in Paris in 1844. In 1847, they joined the

Communist league—which

was, at that time, a tiny group of revolutionaries.

In 1848—a momentous date in publishing history, the Communist

Manifesto was published.

What was the Communist Manifesto?

It was a “manifesto” that encouraged workers to overthrow the systems that oppressed them.

Marx wrote about the alienation of labor…when work becomes so mechanical that people become estranged from the objects they produce. This was something he

observed as the unregulated industrial revolution continued in

Britain and spread to Europe.

A good example of this is factories where people would be doing

repetitive tasks for very little pay.

Marx studied Hegel’s view of thesis, antithesis and synthesis.

Marx echoed that history

was the result of impersonal

forces—

He wrote that conditions , mainly economic, produce the

change--

The Communist Manifesto was a summons to

revolution…

The famous saying,

“Workers of the world, unite.” is one of the

most famous in history.

So remember, this saying has its roots in the unhappy conditions of France and other countries prior and after the 1848 revolutions.

Karl Marx spent time in London—where he spent hours in the British Library Reading Room. There he began the research that led to his great works of political and economic analysis, including the monumental Das Kapital.

Marx was buried in Highgate cemetery.

Marxism’s message began to diminish between 1848 and 1870—labor became organized, most

men got the vote, and there were other increases to wages and

benefits.

And in fact, Marxism should have died out…but instead, he was read and re-read

by a young man in the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 would be a much later outcome of the writings of Karl Marx—70 years

after the revolutions of 1848.