Social Movements Week Nine

This week will examine utopian movements, especially the socialist movement and its current expression in Latin America. 

Quiz Nine will open no later than March 27 and close promptly at 1 p.m. on March 31.  You will have two chances to take this quiz.  To find your score after the first try, go to the Gradebook in Sakai.  It will give you a total score, but not item scores.  For this quiz, learn to identify the individuals:  mentioned in Turncoats and True Believers, Chapter Six, and "Rethinking  Socialism in Latin America".  These include Ignatius Donnelly, Edward Bellamy, Ayn Rand, Robert Owen, Karl Marx, Friederich Engels, Jose Arguelles, Marija Gimbutas, Margaret Mead, C.G. Jung, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Hugo Chavez, Heinz Dieterich, Raúl Isaías Baduel, and August Bebel.  


Reading:
  1. Turncoats and True Believers, Chapter Six.  in Sakai/Resources/WeekNine
  2. Ted Goertzel, "Rethinking Socialism in Latin America"  in Sakai/Resources/WeekNine
  3. Pictures of the Utopians in Chapter Six of Turncoats are in a powerpoint in Sakai Resources/WeekNine.  There is also a powerpoint on Rethinking Socialism.
Several elements tend to recur  ideological scripts, as we have discussed.  These can be illustrated in the history of Socialism which is one of the most important social movement historically, and one which still has followers today.  Let's review some of these items:.
    good guys and bad guys -  oppressors and oppressed  -  victims and victimizers.  These may be defined by social class, race, ethnic group, gender, etc.  
    Utopia and Dystopia -  heaven and hell -  Often the dystopia is described in great detail - everything that is wrong with the current world - while the utopia is left vague.  If we can get rid of the bad guys that are causing the current dystopia, everything will be peaches and cream...
    Imminent crisis/ transformation -  analogous to religious milleniarism, the coming of Christ or the Messiah or another transformational figure.  In social movements this may be economic collapse, nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, racial explosion, etc.  This may trigger revolutionary change leading to utopia.
    A powerful leader/hero who rallies the forces of good, progress, gives them strength.  Clearly analogous to a religious messiah, a revolutionary leader such as Lenin, Stalin, Ayatollah Khomeini,  varioius cult leaders.

History of Socialism

All of these have appeared in the Socialist Movement at one time or another in different ways.  There are a number of texts.  By far the most famous text is the
Communist Manifesto.      Still has its followers today.    Jeffrey Lewis:  History of Communism Part One.  Hugo Chavez's Socialism.   Chavez Talks Socialism.

Marx spent most of his life documenting the dystopia of capitalism, especially in England.  He avoided specifying what would replace it, viewing this as utopian speculation.  One of his followers, August Bebel, filled this gap with a book called Woman and Socialism - apparently only women were so practical-minded they needed specifics.  It is especially utopian in its ideas about the withering away of the state - crime will disappear so no police will be needed.  "Neither political nor common crimes will be known in the future.  Thieves will have disappeared, because private property will have disappeared, and in the new society everyone will be able to satisfy his wants easily and conveniently by work." 

There are other groups in the socialist movement, some of which come before Marx.  The utopian socialists were a competing group including Sir Thomas More who wrote the original book Utopia, which was a portrait of an ideal state based entirely on reason.  He was a Catholic layman, lawyer and writer but not involved in a social movement.  Robert Owen tried to implement this vision, founding a community called New Lanark Mills in Scotland, and one called New Harmony, in Indiana.

A very influential utopia was the book Looking Backward published by Edward Bellamy in 1887.  It was a work of science fiction, portraying a man who traveled to the future to the year 2000.  He found a completely egalitarian society organized on military lines with men working until they were 45, then retiring.  There was great stability, almost no need for new legislation, because all ideals had been realized.  There were technical innovations such as wired music available in people's homes. 
By 1900 Looking Backward was the second best selling secular book in US history, second to Uncle Tom's Cabin.  He inspired a Nationalist movement which also advocated "socialism" and later was one of the inspirations for National Socialsim in Germany, although his vision was gentle and consensual, he thought socialist utopia would come because everyone would agree that it was desirable, it would be completely voluntary.

One more utopian we can consider is a libertarian, believer in capitalism, Ayn Rand, author of the novel Atlas Shrugged.  She had a conflict with her chief disciple and lover, Nathaniel Branden, who was much younger and married to a woman his own age.  She was also convinced that cigarettes were good for you because they were produced by capitalist, free market corporations - a view she never publicly retracted even though she quit smoking when she came down with a fatal lung cancer.  Objective medicine web site. 

What can we say about the motivations of these people when the thought up these ideas and started the movements?  They were young people searching for meaning in their lives.  Marx tried law, philosophy and poetry in his quest for a meaningful career.  He wrote a three hundred page treatise on the philosophy of law before he found it to be emplty.  He felt that his poetry was worthless:  "the real of true poetry flashed open before me like a distant faery place, and all m y creatins collapsed into nothing...I was for several days quite unable to think.  Like a lunatic I ran around in the garden."  He found the answer in Hegelian philosophy - the struggle between thesis and antithesis leading to a more perfect synthesis.  It made him feel that he was part of history.  It was like a religious conversion and his father approved saying "your philosophy satisfactorily agrees and harmonizes with your conscience."  He got his degree but couldn't get a teaching job, went into journalism, moved to Paris when the newspaper was suppressed.

 Bellamy wanted into the army, failed the physical.  Did not succeed with other career ideas until he became a writer.  Ayn Rand was a refugee from Soviet Russia, became militantly anti-Soviet in part because of how her family was oppressed.