Week 4

Order and Resistance

Major Topics

1. Liberalism: the political and economic ideology of

middle classes

2. Early revolutionary movements: Carbonari, Greek

Revolt, and Revolution of 1830.

3. Imagining a new society: Utopian Socialists

4. “Springtime of the People”: Revolutions of 1848

1. Liberalism

Adam Smith (1723–1790)

“…[E]very individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the

society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the

public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the

support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own

security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be

of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in

many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no

part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no

part of it. By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the

society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”

–Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)

Economic Liberalism: Laissez faire

Political liberalism: individual liberty

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)

“…[T]he sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or

collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their

number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power

can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized

community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own

good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot

rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for

him to do so…These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or

reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for

compelling him…To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired

to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The

only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to

society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely

concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over

himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

–John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859)

2. Three Waves of Revolution

1820-1825: Carbonari movements, Greek Revolt

1829-1834: July Days in Paris, Polish Uprising,

worker rebellions.

1848: European wide revolutions

Carbonari movements, 1820s

Antonio Gisbert Perez, The Execution of Torrijos (1888

Greek Revolt, 1821

E. Delacroix, Massacre at Chios (1824)

Revolution of 1830 in France

E. Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People (1830)

Francois Guizot and conservative

liberalism

I have heard equality much spoken of; we have

called it the fundamental principle of our

political organization. I am afraid there has

been a great mistake. Without doubt there are

universal rights, equal rights for all, rights

inherent in humanity and which no human

being can be stripped of without injustice and

disorder. It has been the honor of modern

civilization to redeem these rights from that

mass of violence and force under which they

had long been hidden and to bring them back to

light. There you have personal rights, universal

and equal for all, from which stem equality in

civil order and in moral order. But will political

rights be of this order?

It is through tradition, through heredity that families,

peoples, and history subsist; without tradition, without

heredity you would have nothing of that. It is through the

personal activity of families, peoples, and individuals that

produces the perfectibility of the human race. Suppress it,

and you will cause the human race to fall to the rank of the

animals. I say that aristocracy is the condition of modern

societies, a necessary consequence of the nature of modern

democracy. Upon this aristocracy two conditions are to be

imposed: First, it is to be constantly submitted to the control

and examination of democracy; second, it must recruit itself

constantly from the people. (1831)

“Live by work or die fighting”: Lyon silk

weaver revolts, 1831-1834

Silk weavers at work

“The revolt of Lyon has brought a great secret into the

open...Every manufacturer lives in his factory like the

colonial planter in the midst of his slaves, one against a

hundred, and the subversion of Lyon is a sort of insurrection

of San Domingo...The middle class must recognize clearly

was the situation is; it must know exactly where it stands. It

has beneath it a proletariat which is agitated and disturbed...

That is the danger that threatens modern society; that is

where the barbarians will come from to destroy it.”

—Marc Girardin, friend of Guizot and chair of history at

Sorbonne.

H. Daumier, Rue Transnonain (1834)

3. Utopian Socialists

Charles Fourier (1772-1837), creator of the…

Phalanstery?

E. Cabet (1788–1856) inspiring his supporters

to follow him to Icaria.

Worker perks at Robert Owen’s (1771–1858)

factory in New Lanark

Louis Blanc (1811–1882): The worker’s

socialist

“Let’s drink to the abolition of the family”:

Utopian socialism and the emancipation of

women