Socialism in the Nineteenth Century
Property was accompanied by power. This was justified by the aristocratic rule, which considered the wealth of the nobility to be a gift from their God. The capitalists considered themselves as wealth creators, while exploiting the workers to get the wealth.
With the industrial revolution, the aristocratic rule became irrelevant, giving way to the bourgeoisie political and economic power. The capitalist wealth continued to increase, the workers continued to be exploited, and inequality dominated across the nation. The workers were denied the right to maximize their potential, and the utilization of resources and technology was limited against the interests of the public.
The nineteenth century socialists such as Karl Marx, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Friedrich Eagles among others thoughts that democracy would help to bring a socialist society. They thought that the way to end the exploitation of the workers by the capitalists was to deny capitalists the right to ownership. They thought democracy would encourage businesses to thrive, move powers from the capitalists, and enhance distribution of power and wealth on bases of the amount of work during production.
The Marxists conception on socialism during this phase was to displace capitalism, and enhance communism. According to these socialist, socialism was characterized by proletariat controlling means of production .This was to be achieved through workers state. They expected the workers to elect a workers state in their interest.
Though the socialists were determined to change the situation, the power and wealth continued to flow to the wealthy increasing their wealth leaving the poor poorer. They argued that freedom could only be secured on basis of economic security and independence. (George 1960, p. 85).
The socialists looked forward to a social society where wealth and power would be distributed equally, a society without exploitation of citizens, industrialization and in general worthy living lifestyle. They encountered a number of drawbacks, making it possible to get socialist society in the nineteenth century.
Reasons why the Democracy failed to bring Socialist society in the Nineteenth century.
Criticism played a role in the failure of achieving a socialist society in the nineteenth century. These criticisms included- the claims that the socialist political models and economic are incompatible with civil liberty, and condemnation of socialist societies. Friedrich Hayek considered socialist commanded economy transmits biased information on productive quotas and prices lacks as it lacks price mechanism. His argument is that no rational economic decisions can be made by socialist economy. Hayek also argued that the prosperity of general population and loss of both economical and political freedoms is necessary in order to achieve social control over private property and wealth distribution, which is advocated by socialists. According to Ludwig von Mises the state is the sole owner of capital goods, so it impossible to give rational pricing such goods in a socialist economy. Throughout the century many socialists emerged in struggle of attaining a socialist society. In January 1917, executive powers were assumed, and Lenin wrote a draft on regulation on workers control.
According to the draft, workers would control businesses with more than five workers working in the office. The draft allowed the workers to access all stocks, documents and books. Owners of various enterprises were expected to abide to these regulations. Initially when governing was conducted through elected soviets and alliance with a Left Socialist Revolutionaries whi0ch were based on the peasants, the Bolshevik government was able to nationalize industries and banks. During a Constituent Assembly the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party won the majority. When the Constituent Assembly elected Victor Chernov, a Russian leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, he went against Bolshevik proposals. This made Bolshevik to declare the list in which the assembly was elected outdated. (Andrew 2007, p. 34-41).
During the World War, war communism was implemented to repel invaders. The great powers organized an economic boycott, and under the communism, the strikers were killed, private businesses outlawed, and peasants provided for city workers. Continued shortage of consumer and housing goods, lack of individual rights to speech and assembly, caused disillusion to many Communist party members. The Communist party rule collapsed, and subsequently the socialism disappeared.
William Beveridge, a British Social reformer influenced the Labor party in UK. He identified poverty, lack of access to education, unemployment, and poor housing as the main afflicters of the working class. The Labor government of 1945 introduced state pension through national insurance, and unemployment benefit. In 1948, Aneurin Bevan also introduced Labor Partys National Health Service, criticized the government for failing to progress and demanded that public direction was required to get streams of economic activity. Criticism limited the efforts of the Socialist in attaining socialist society (Robinson and Rafty, 1997).
The poor, usually the workers suffered many forms of exploitation. The Feudal restrictions fixed the workers on land and limited their income. The capitalists hired and fired the workers any time they wanted, forcing the poor to work cheaply in order to win in the job market. This competition made the workers to sell their labor at the advantage of the rich who continued to make more from the high produce from the workers. This limited the efforts of the socialists. Education levels of the workers continued to decline, giving the wealthy chances for creating more from the ignorant workers.
Workers worked under inhuman working conditions. Their environment was polluted, and their rights compromised. The machinery used by the workers killed them and they had little food supply mostly of poor quality. This reduced the life span of the poor thus limiting the ability of the socialists from achieving democracy.
Socialism failed to achieve its Marxist ideals because of pre-industrial economies which would have served as the platform in building communism. This means that to achieve socialism, the socialist needed to disturb an already crated wealth, and directing an already developed industrial system, a move that was not easy. The attempt of the socialist rulers to create a better platform for socialism went further to betray it. Instead of countervailing pressures on labor movement of the workers, they became super-capitalists and harsh to the workers.
The capitalist economy continued to be more rational compared to the communists economy because the data which the leaders were expected to plan and give effective economic measures was not accurate. The authorities became prey of greed and lies on demand and supply, process of socialism thus distorting the socialism process. The system collapsed as the managers started overestimating industrial output, workers started stealing from the factories and bureaucrats continued to distort their reports to match with what the leaders would have wanted to hear (Young 2001, p, 42).
The labor union power was reduced drastically, and the capitalists were free to merge as a way of weakening workers and a way of getting cheap labor. This lead to longer working hours reduced income and inflation. Despite the harsh working conditions, the workers could not organize to resist as they were afraid of being fired. Due to their powerlessness, they could not protect themselves from the system that had reduced the value of their labor to a commodity rather than a measure of value.
As the competition increased, the less successful were reduced into bankruptcy while the ones who survived continued to be richer and wealthier. Greed of both the workers and the socialists encouraged the richer to punish the workers for their poverty. The socialists failed to achieve a socialist society because the line between the capitalist and proletarian was obscured by the fact that the retirement-plan mutual funds had enable almost half of Americans to invested large amounts in stock market. Workers associated their welfare with the capitalists prosperity. This explains the reason why the workers were not resisting repeated tax breaks among other favors.
Conclusion
During the nineteenth century, the socialists were determined to achieve equal distribution of wealth and powers in the states. Lack of equality in this distribution divided citizen into two classes- the rich and the poor. The trend of acquiring wealth was obvious that the poor continued being poor while the rich became more rich. The poor were subjected to constant exploitation. This made socialist long for a socialist society though their efforts were being pulled down by the workers traits such as greed, powerlessness, fear and lie, the capitalist efforts, and criticism.
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