Ideologies of the Nineteenth Century
- Distinguish conservatism, liberalism, nationalism, and socialism
- Explain the core arguments of Marxism
- Analyze how competing ideologies drove the revolutions of 1848
Conservatism and liberalism
The nineteenth century was an age of competing ideologies — systematic sets of beliefs about how society should be organized. Conservatism, born in reaction to the French Revolution and defended by Edmund Burke and Metternich, valued tradition, monarchy, hierarchy, and established religion, and distrusted rapid, rationalist change. Classical liberalism was its rival: rooted in the Enlightenment, it championed individual liberty, constitutional and representative government, civil rights, rule of law, and, in economics, laissez-faire free markets. Note that nineteenth-century liberals generally favored the vote for property-owning men, not universal suffrage — a limited liberty by later standards.
Nationalism and socialism
Two more forces reshaped politics. Nationalism held that peoples sharing language and culture should form their own nation-states; it could ally with liberalism (against foreign empires) or, later, with conservatism (to build powerful states). Socialism arose as a response to the harsh inequalities of industrial capitalism, arguing that the means of production should be owned and run for the benefit of society rather than private profit. Early "utopian socialists" like Robert Owen and Charles Fourier imagined ideal cooperative communities, but they were criticized as impractical dreamers by a more systematic rival.
Marxism
Karl Marx, with Friedrich Engels, offered "scientific socialism" in The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital. Marx argued that all history is a story of class struggle — under capitalism, the bourgeoisie (owners) exploit the proletariat (workers). He predicted that capitalism’s own contradictions would drive the workers to a revolution, overthrowing the owners and creating a classless, communist society in which property is held in common. Marxism became the most influential ideology of the labor movement, inspiring socialist parties across Europe and, in the twentieth century, communist revolutions.
Reduce each ideology to its core value: conservatism = order/tradition; liberalism = individual liberty and constitutions; nationalism = the nation-state; socialism/Marxism = economic equality through collective ownership. These one-word anchors sort most exam evidence.
Contrast the goals of classical liberalism and socialism, and explain how Marx’s theory of class struggle predicted the end of capitalism.
- 1.State liberalism’s aims: individual liberty, constitutional government, civil rights, and free-market (laissez-faire) economics, with political power for property-owning men.
- 2.State socialism’s aims: reducing the inequalities of industrial capitalism by having the means of production owned and run for society rather than private profit.
- 3.Introduce Marx: he saw history as class struggle, with the bourgeoisie exploiting the proletariat under capitalism.
- 4.State his prediction: capitalism’s contradictions would drive workers to revolt, overthrow the owners, and build a classless communist society.
Nineteenth-century classical liberalism is best characterized by its support for:
Nineteenth-century "liberalism" is not modern American liberalism. Classical liberals favored free markets and limited government and usually restricted the vote to propertied men — closer to what we might now call libertarian than to advocates of a large welfare state.
According to Karl Marx, the driving force of all human history is:
Use ideologies as analytical categories on essays: identify which ideology a document or event expresses, and how ideologies clashed (e.g., conservative order vs. liberal-nationalist revolt in 1848). Labeling the ideology sharpens both sourcing and argument.
Answer the 2 checkpoints as you read.
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