Chapter 24: Mass Society and Democracy

Growth of Industrial Prosperity

The Second Industrial Revolution

• Bessemer Process– Henry Bessemer– Production of steel– Cheaper and more efficient process

• Electricity– Thomas Edison’s electrical lights– Joseph Swan’s light bulb– Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone– Guglielmo Marconi’s radio waves

The Second Industrial Revolution

• Internal combustion engine– Automobiles– The Wright Brothers’ airplane

• Kitty Hawk, North Carolina 1903• Led to airlines beginning in 1919

• Assembly line (Henry Ford)– Manufactured goods more efficiently– Instead of the people moving, the product moved down a

conveyor belt– Led to mass production (benefits?)

Organizing the Working Classes

• Karl Marx– Communist Manifesto (1848)

• Industrial Revolution led to poor factory conditions• Capitalism was the problem behind it• Claimed all of world history is “history of class struggles”• Battle between:

– Bourgeoisie (Middle Class Oppressors)» Owned and ran everything

– Proletariat (Working Class Oppressed)» Controlled and owned nothing

– Eventually this will lead to revolution and destruction of classes

Organizing the Working Classes• Socialism– Parties formed based on Marxist ideas– German Social Democratic Party

• Wanted revolution to become one political party• Competition for election into parliament• Would allow for laws regarding working conditions to be passed

– However people were divided over how these parties should be run• Some wanted true Marxists ideas and revolution• Others wanted more peaceful methods (revisionists)

Chapter 24: Mass Society and Democracy

Modern ideas and Uncertainty

Modernism

• 1870-1914• Rebellion against traditional style of art and literature• Literature– Addressed social problems

• Women in society• Alcoholism• Urban slums

– Symbolist writers• True reality was the human mind• Everything seen is just symbols of the mind

Modernism• Painting– Impressionism

• Went to the outdoors for inspiration (Nature)• Claude Monet

– Postimpressionism• Art as a spiritual experience• Vincent van Gogh (Starry Nights)

– Cubism• Geometric designs in art• Pablo Picasso

– Abstract• Line and color only (Speaks to the soul)• Wassily Kandinsky

Claude Monet- Japanese Bridge

Van Gogh- Starry Nights

Picasso- Houses on the Hill

Pablo Picasso- The Old Guitarist

Wassily Kandinsky-

Modernism• Architecture– Functionalism

• Buildings should be functional not ornate• Simplify buildings• Louis H. Sullivan

• Music– Igor Stravinsky

• The Rite of Spring (1913)– Bold rhythms and expressive sound

Uncertainty in Science• Marie Curie

– French Scientist– Discovered element radium

• Gave off energy known as radiation• Found within an atom

• Albert Einstein– Theory of Relativity

• Space and time not absolute but relative to who is looking at it• Matter is another form of energy

• Sigmund Freud– Psychoanalysis

• Allows therapist to go deep into a person’s mind and unlock memories

• Helped to unlock repressed memories to help heal

Extreme Nationalism• Social Darwinism– Herbert Spencer

• Social progress came from the idea “survival of the fittest”• Strong survive and weak die• Social progress stresses helping the weak/poor• Nations were in a “struggle for existence”

– Nations compete for resources– Used to justify racism and discrimination

Extreme Nationalism

• Anti-Semitism– Hostility towards Jewish people

• Dreyfus Affair– French military officer accused of selling secrets– Evidence showed otherwise

• Russia– Pogroms

» Organized massacres of the Jewish people» 25,000 emigrated from Russia

• Zionism– Movement to create homeland for Jews in Palestine