11. THE "MODERNIZING" OF THE WEST

THE URGE TO RATIONALIZE AND CONTROL SOCIAL DYNAMICS

Bentham's Utilitarianism.  Going back a bit in our narrative, it is important to mention the legacy that Bentham (1748-1832) had on the development of British social thinking at the end of the 1700s and beginning of the 1800s. Bentham is considered to be the founder of British Utilitarianism ... a philosophy built simply on the idea that "the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the true measure of right and wrong."  In short, he was a strong advocate in favor of "human rights." He was highly opposed to slavery, believed in equal rights for women, was a strong advocate of the separation of church and state, was opposed to physical punishment, and believed strongly that there should be no restrictions on speech.  He even supported the idea of animal rights. But he spent his greatest energies on the matter of prison reform.  In short, he was a very "modern" philosopher and jurist! But he did not believe that all of these came simply by lifting traditional Christian moral standards ... as if these "human rights" would come into place on their own in a rather natural manner (as did Marx and other philosophers that came after him).  To him, human rights would come only through proper moral and political reform of society ... enlightened social reform – principally by enlightened public authority.  In short, under British utilitarianism, the primary role of government was to oversee the process of human progress. AUGUSTE COMTE The Frenchman Auguste Comte (1798-1857) reacted to the sometimes wild speculation of French rationalists, who during the previous century had built their philosophical theories on "reasonable" propositions – rather than on the observation of actual phenomena.  In short, he introduced British empiricism to French or continental philosophy, terming his approach "positivism." He was particularly interested in seeing social philosophy built on very careful observation of actual social behavior rather than mere rationalist speculation ... such as Rousseau's social theories a half-century earlier, which had helped push France towards the tragedy of its recent Revolution.  Thus Comte laid the groundwork for the field of modern sociology with its demand for "factual" foundations for all assertions of truth. In his major six-volume work, Course of Positive Philosophy (published in the period 1830-1842), he stated that human knowledge began in its primitive stage as theology, or laying all events at the feet of divine forces or God (related to the Divine rights claims of monarchical authority).  The next stage, the rationalist or philosophical stage, was then characterized by broad abstract principles as the foundation of truth or knowledge (he had in mind the rhetoric of Revolutionary France).  But the rising stage that the world found itself entering at this point (a pragmatic, bureaucratic post-Revolutionary France) would now be built on the works of scientific scholars who would direct society through their knowledge of actual fact-based science. Most interestingly, none of Comte's Positivism or Progressivism itself was itself based on the empirical methods he called for in his study – but was instead a continuation of the French rationalist approach to knowledge! Nonetheless his ideas would catch the imagination of 19th century Europe and help move it toward the notion that all truth is built on fact and fact alone. JOHN STUART MILL Mill (1806-1873) was an amazing child prodigy, reading classic Greek literature (from Aesop to Plato) by age 8, then a full array of Latin and Greek works by age 10 ... plus history, math, physics and astronomy.  In all of this, he was carefully "home schooled" – pruned and protected in his infancy and youth by his father, James Mill – in order that the son would be "associated" only with the sharpest minds (his father's and that of the family friend Jeremy Bentham) ... and not with lower social orders of his own age ... a key part of the educational philosophy of the British "Positivist" movement.  His father's goal was to grow his son into "a bright light of Utilitarian philosophy that might light the world."  In part the father succeeded, though at a deeply heavy emotional and spiritual cost to the son. Utilitarianism, Positivism, or Liberalism – all amounted to pretty much the same thing:  holding the common view that a person is born with no a priori thoughts or abilities ... but as a thinking creature is simply the result of careful development by guiding hands – hopefully ones that care deeply for the happiness of those in their care.  It was all very personal.  Liberals (both Americans and British, from Jefferson to the Mills) viewed with great distrust the intervention of public authorities in this process.  In short, "the best government is the one that governs the least!"  This would be a central tenet of Mill's Utilitarian or Liberal philosophy. The understanding was that simply a person becomes what the surrounding world brings to that person ... nothing more, nothing less.  Therefore that surrounding world – physical as well as social – must be carefully shaped, engineered, protected.  But this must be carried out on a personal or individual basis ... not on a public or Socialistic basis. Personal freedom was essential to proper development. Thus it was that Mill would later reject deeply the ideas of his former mentor, Bentham.  Mill would disagree strongly with Bentham that social progress would come best through the process of well-constructed government action … Mill holding to the later developing idea that social progress would fare better under personal or private development than under official governmental action … which to subsequent British Liberals was central to their idea of the critical importance of personal freedom. However ... Mill was closely connected with the British administration of India – being a high-ranking official from 1823 (at age 17!) all the way to the end of the East India Company in 1858.  In this matter, he would, take a broader view of the responsibilities that fell to "more enlightened" social hands in face of a "barbarian" society.  Something akin to social action or "benevolent despotism" would be required under such circumstances ... but must be carefully conducted so as to benefit and not just merely subdue such a barbarian society. And as far as an issue under much discussion at the time, Mill felt that religion was the highly laudable ability of human thought to rise above the merely physical or natural condition of life to contemplate and be moved by ideals of excellence.  But whether there was a supreme Deity or consciousness to which human thought draws itself – or which energizes the forces of life as Creator and Sustainer – was a most uncertain proposition for Mill. In any case, the very simplicity and the very attractiveness of Utilitarian or Positivist "Liberalism" would catch on widely in the fast-changing political setting of 19th century Britain.  And Mill, with his many publications, would be one to give great clarity and appeal to this idea ... also helping to make the British Liberal Party a growing force in British politics. DARWINISM When in 1859 Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published his book, On the Origin of Species – the culmination of years of research and earlier publications – he shook the moral foundations of Western civilization.  This occurred not because Darwin invented a new worldview out of thin air.  The ideas of progress through social struggle were by this time rather widely accepted.  The British Whig party, in fact, was built on this idea:  that Britain should be run by those proven strongest in life's competition and that no tears should be wept for the poor swept aside by life's struggles, because that would only hinder human progress. No, it was not the newness of Darwin's ideas that made his works so spectacular, but it was because he gave such precise explanation – and justification – to these Whiggish ideas.  His great contribution to this debate of worldviews was that he built his Darwinist theory of life on a vast field of scientific evidence, something that had by that time become the absolute requirement for any claim to Truth.   Also, he was building his ideas on a well-established base of earlier works on this matter of evolution. Robert Malthus … and early versions of "survival of the fittest" Since the publication in 1798 of the book An Essay on the Principle of Population by the English clergyman Robert Malthus, there was considerable discussion in England about the problems created by a rapidly expanding human population on the earth, the issues of hunger, disease and war that this would produce.  Consequently, by the time of Darwin's 1859 publication, a number of leading political and intellectual figures in England had already taken the social position that the best thing to do about the rising number of English poor was – by a process of natural de-selection – simply to let them maintain a natural balance with their world by the thinning of their ranks through hunger and disease.  It was thus wise not to encourage their expansion through unnecessary charity. Charles Lyell (1797-1875) In the early 1800s, at the same time that biology was moving toward the development of a theory of natural evolution, similar work was moving ahead in the area of geology.  The most notable figure behind this work was Charles Lyell. Lyell had developed an early curiosity about different earth formations in England into a full-blown quest to give an explanation for the layers of the soil that he observed within the country's cliffs and mountains.  On a trip to Italy in 1828-1829 where he studied Mt. Etna, he came up with the idea that all these geological features  (mountains, valleys, islands, deserts, etc.) did not occur abruptly – but were the process of gradual shifts (volcanos) and decay (erosion) in the earth's surface ... taking place naturally over a very long stretch of time, a process continuing even into the present. Further study in Spain the next year led him during the period 1831-1833 to publish his 3-volume work, Principles of Geology.  Loaded with supportive data for his theory, the book was to make a tremendous impact on his time. Overall, Lyell presented a view of the earth as being both very old (older than the calculus of those who reckoned the earth's age on the basis of adding up the Genesis chronologies) – possibly even millions of years old – and very much still in the process of becoming.  To him the earth was even to be looked upon as a living organism. An earlier Darwin We have already introduced Lamarck as a major part of this dynamic.  But it is also interesting to note that Lamarck was himself influenced by Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), who in 1796 described in his publication Zoonomia how species had developed slowly over the generations by their abilities to pass on from generation to generation not only their basic traits, but also useful alterations in those traits.  Thus Erasmus's grandson Charles Darwin came from a family already securely located in the evolutionist camp! Darwin himself Then what Darwin achieved in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species was to show through actual scientific analysis how living creatures on this planet could have evolved slowly over an enormous expanse of time from a small number of simpler forms into a vast array of much more complex species.  All of this could have been achieved entirely through a natural or mechanical process by which the very competitive nature of life rewarded the stronger offspring of any species the better chance for survival, and the privilege of birthing a new generation that retained that superiority.  Eventually this struggle for life – and its continuation from generation to generation – would, over time, bring into existence a distinctly new, more complex species, one better adapted to the complexities of life.   Thus every living creature we saw around us was naturally evolved from a less complex ancestor by a process termed "natural selection."  In short, morally speaking, life was at its core simply a matter of the survival of the fittest. It was Darwin's Cambridge University teacher, John Henslow, who arranged for Darwin in 1831 to sail on the British naval ship Beagle to the South Pacific islands just off the coast of South America ... and who urged him to take with him a copy of Lyell's Principles of Geology.   Lyell's vision of even the earth itself as a living, developing organism touched Darwin's thoughts deeply.  With this sense of a dynamic earth in mind he thus came up with an unprecedented (and correct) explanation of how coral atolls were formed out on the high sea. Nature cooperated in the process.  While he was in Chile an earthquake took place in which he actually observed the land rise in front of him.  Thus the concept of a dynamic earth was not merely a theoretical one for him.  He also observed strata of sea shells in the mountains at a height of 12,000 feet, lifted over time from an earlier position as a sea bed. What he was doing was giving further support to Lyell's view of the earth's natural life – support so extensive that the world of learned scholars felt themselves forced to look upon the earth in this way from this time on. Upon his return to England in 1836 he was greeted easily as an accomplished colleague by the scientific community.  But he was just getting started.  His thoughts returned to the questions of why life took the shape it did – which increasingly left God out of the picture. Darwin was not really a radical by nature, and for years kept his thinking to himself.  But he was thinking thoughts that he knew would not be well greeted by many in his times, including his devoutly Christian friend, Henslow. Actually it was in 1842 that Darwin first drafted a brief version of his theory and then two years later a full draft version – but was unwilling to bring it before the public because of the furor he knew it would stir.  He would show it only to close friends such as Lyell and Thomas Henry ("T.H.") Huxley.  Finally in 1858 he was inspired to act when he received a paper from Alfred Wallace, a botanist working in the Malayan islands, a paper which pointed to the same hypothesis he had been developing.  His friends urged him to bring out his own thoughts on the subject in a joint paper worked up with Wallace – presented that summer.  With this he was ready to bring out his full work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.  In November of 1859 he presented his first edition – which was bought up immediately and quickly went to further editions (6 such editions over the next 13 years).  The English scientific community was highly approving; the clergy were adamantly hostile, as he expected. His friend Huxley only added fuel to the fire by extending the logic of his friend's theories into the realm of social action, cultivating a theory known as "Social Darwinism."  It was Huxley who came up with the idea that brutal competition in society or "survival of the fittest," was a necessary part of the advance of mankind.  Darwin was himself not a proponent of this view – but soon became identified with it. Other books by Darwin followed over the next years – the most important of which was The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871).  Here he came out directly with what had only been implied in his Origin, namely that even man himself was the by-product of the evolutionary process, not only physically but also morally and spiritually.  This of course challenged the notion that man was a very distinct part of the Creation process – but instead was merely another, albeit a highly evolved, by-product of the on-going mechanism of evolution.  In 1872 he went a step further in his The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, stating the the emotions we attribute uniquely to man are in fact shared in some less evolved ways with other members of the animal kingdom. Herbert Spencer Darwinism was further buttressed by the writings of other social philosophers of the day.  Besides Darwin's pupil Huxley, who actually coined the term "survival of the fittest,"  there was Huxley's friend Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), who had been moving in the direction of Darwin's thinking even before Darwin published his first work in 1859.  Spencer had been working on both social theory (his 1851 Social Statistics) and personal development theory (his 1855 Principles of Psychology), his work heavily influenced not only by Malthus but also by the theories of Lamarck.  Then when Darwin's work was published in 1859 Spencer came out full force in his support of evolution as the basic doctrine of life, in every aspect of life on earth. Soon Spencer would even outdistance Darwin as the most recognized philosopher of the late 1800s.  But the very names Darwin and Darwinism would still serve as the most powerful symbols able to raise strong debate, pro and con, not only well into the 20th century but still even today. NIETZSCHE The German philosopher and writer Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was not exactly a Darwinist, but certainly was – or would soon become – a voice of his times, a period deeply steeped in the Darwinist mindset.  In his multi-volume series Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), he gave the German culture the ideal of the bermensch – except that he was referring to the highly achieved individual – not some racial group, such as the Nazis would eventually use the term in reference to the German people as a whole, seeing themselves as a superior breed.  Nietzsche was referring to the highly self-cultivated individual who (reflective of Nietzsche's own personal struggles) had come to put aside all other values (wealth, sex, even happiness) in order to focus completely in meeting fully the high calling that fate had placed on that person.  Such a person strove to rise above the mere animal call to life – to rise above ( ber) mere common existence as a person (Mensch).   In fact, with respect to the ideal of the racial bermensch, he was actually much opposed, getting himself in trouble with the German authorities for his strong anti-nationalism.  He even at one point renounced his Prussian citizenship.  No, Nietzsche was extolling the powerful individual that he claimed should be directing human life on this planet, not the group-think of the rising nationalist spirit that he saw developing around him – one which would eventually lead Europe into the disastrous national or tribal conflict known in its time as  the Great War and to us today as World War One (as well as its continuation as World War Two a generation later). He also was distinctly an atheist – informing the world that "God is dead."  He (like Marx) saw the Judeo-Christian religion as offering humanity only enslavement to earthly commonness by teaching people to aim not for greatness in this life – but instead to aim for some supposed afterlife that Judeo-Christianity claimed awaited the humble and faithful at death.  Nietzsche was very emphatic in stating that there was no evidence whatsoever that such a Heavenly life actually existed. THE ASSAULT ON CHRISTIAN MORALITY As an Anglican clergyman, Malthus himself had, back in the late 1700s, wrestled with the problem of why God would allow suffering to occur within his creation.  Malthus finally concluded that God wanted man to rise to the challenge of life, to succeed in the face of life's difficulties through the discipline of hard work.  Those who fell short of the challenge were simply some kind of disappointment to the great Creator.  Those who failed merely reaped that which they had sown.1  This in essence was the British version of Sturm und Drang! Malthus's explanation of course was a terrible reading of what the founder of the Christian faith himself had taught the world.  Jesus put the challenge not in terms of natural selection, but quite the opposite.  According to Jesus, the challenge of life was to find ways to help the poor in the face of the huge challenge of survival in a competitive world of economics and politics.  This ability to do charity, when the opposite would be so much more tempting, was for Jesus the measure of greatness of anyone in God's kingdom. At some point people were going to have to choose between the two, Jesus or the Darwinists. The original Puritans had chosen Jesus, and built an experimental society of mutual service among social equals based precisely on the spiritual ethics of Jesus Christ.  The Virginians, not exactly Darwinists but of the same mindset, chose instead personal success at the cost of others (the slaves).  Thus by the mid-1800s this was not a new issue. It is simply that Darwinism finally gave aggressive selfishness the moral justification that an increasingly aggressively selfish society seemed to require.   But Darwin himself, very sensitive to the importance of human charity and mutual concern in human society, was quite aware of this ethical matter, and actually troubled by how many were choosing to read cruel ethical justification into his theories. 1It is truly amazing the extent to which man can go in rationalizing about God and God's intentions. MARXISM At the same time that German (and other) social philosophers were seeing  in the fast-changing dynamic of their days the fulfillment of history through the rise through struggle of the tribal nation (France, Germany, Italy, etc.), German expatriate philosopher (in exile in London) Karl Marx (1818-1883) headed down an entirely different road in his explanation as to where history was headed.  He saw history fulfilled not in the struggle among nations but instead in the struggle among economic classes, principally between the owners of wealth and the subject classes (proletariat)2 that produced that wealth for the owners through their labors.  Marx was so insistent on this matter that he actually despised nationalism and all the discussion going on about nationalist struggles, seeing that as a distraction leading people away from the real struggle that lay before them, the industrial class struggle that was about to unfold – and lead the world into its final stage in history. The Hegelian dialectic applied to Marx's economic theory In 1848 Marx published his famous 30-page Communist Manifesto in the hope of capitalizing on the spirit of political rebellion that was rocking continental Europe at that time.   His Manifesto outlined history as a series of quite Hegelian dialectical struggles over time between those who legally owned the land, tools, machinery (what Marx summed up as social property or the "means of production") that produced the wealth that the people of society lived off of, and the proletariat who, though they owned none of those means of production, labored physically in using those means of production to bring forward the wealth that society lived off of.  Typically in history, in the distribution of the wealth that a society jointly created for its survival and prosperity, most all of that wealth went to the class of property owners, with very little making its way to the hands of the proletarian workers. This would bring tremendous tension to society, which eventually would turn into physical conflict because of this social injustice.  Again, in Hegelian (and eventually Darwinian) dialectical fashion, such conflict or class struggle would then move history forward to a new, and better social system, shaped by the way the opposing classes synthesized their social positions into a new social structure. Continuing his analysis in a further work, Das Kapital,3 he carefully described the situation around him in Europe where the feudal system, once dominated by landed aristocrats, had been challenged by a new social class of industrial and financial capitalists, thus creating the age of capitalism.  But he also saw how capitalism in turn had created its own opposing social force in the form of the industrial workers (the industrial proletariat) whose labors supported the capitalist system.  And he predicted that conditions were quickly rising that would cause the industrial proletariat in its turn to rise up against the capitalist class, and – through the necessary historical conflict or revolution – open the way to a new social system. Time was on the side of the worker, because capitalism by its very nature is highly competitive even among the capitalists themselves – each capitalist trying to eliminate his competitors in order to gain greater control over the market.  This way they could increase their profits, even establish total or monopolistic control over the whole process.  But of course as they drove each other out of business, they were inadvertently thinning out their capitalist social ranks, making their numbers smaller at the same time that the ranks of the proletarian were growing.  Thus simply the calculus of the few against the many meant that the days of capitalism were numbered.  At that point (which supposedly was now upon them) all the proletariat had to do was rise up and seize control of the means of production, thus destroying the power of the capitalist class, and the public government that had been protecting the capitalists.  Thus in rising up against their capitalist oppressors, they had "nothing to lose but their chains." A property-less, state-less, utopia But, according to Marx, the resultant social system would be different, it would be utopia itself.  There would be no further class of dominators or exploiters of the proletariat, because the new society would be made up solely of industrial workers.  There would be no other class of people in the new society but this one single industrial class.  Everyone would now live as social equals – as comrades, rather than as a two-class system of gentlemen lording it over a servant class. Being equals, all would live communally, as in all land, tools and machines being owned jointly by all – and by nobody in particular.   Consequently, there would be no need for the political enforcing agency of the state or government.  It would simply wither away, because the sole purpose of the state was to protect the interests of the privileged class of property owners, whether feudal, capitalist or whatever.  In the communist society there would be no personal property, thus no state.  Something like a Rousseauian bliss would then hold this happy world together. Communism as the last stage of history Also, the new society would end the long historical dialectic of a ruling class and a proletariat class finding themselves once again in conflict.  With no division under communism between a propertied class and a proletarian class, there would be no cause for social conflict, no tension, no stress, only blissful peace.  Thus this last historical revolution would bring history to a completion, the kind of millennialist completion that everyone was expecting because of the unprecedented progress they had been observing coming forth at mind-boggling speed.  All history was supposedly about to fulfill itself, and Marx was showing how that was to be accomplished. All very scientific This was all pretty powerful stuff.  And it appealed to the interests not only of European industrial workers, but also to intellectual Progressivists – not only in Europe but also in America.  Marx's theories seemed to be irrefutable because they were built on hard fact.  Unlike the philosophical speculations of social philosophers before him, but quite like Darwin, Marx had thrown a lot of data into his analysis, supposedly hard economic data, thus qualifying his theory as "scientific socialism," making him – and those who followed his lead – "scientific socialists." Marx's militant atheism As all materialists or mechanists, Marx had no need of the concept of God, or some divine hand driving forward the economic process he had outlined.  It all worked – similar to Darwin's theories – entirely mechanically.  Marx personally was an atheist.  In fact he was quite opposed to the Christian religion, or any religion that saw history shaped and judged by a Supreme Being.  As for Christianity, he saw the religion simply as a cruel psychological tool used by Europe's ruling classes (most lately the capitalists) that savagely exploited their own servants or workers, by excusing their horrible treatment of the workers under the promise that if the oppressed workers all cooperated with the system and behaved themselves (not rebel against their oppressors) they would be rewarded in the next life with heaven.  To Marx, such religious theory was only a form of spiritual opium given to the masses to keep them docile. The spread of Marxism among Europe's intellectuals Meanwhile, as Europe headed into the Twentieth Century, clearly a growing number of social and political philosophers were convinced that, through some kind of Darwinian process, Western civilization (and, via the West, also world civilization as well) was moving into a bright future in which utopian existence for all – even (and especially) the unwashed masses – seemed to loom into view.  Society just needed some adjustments here and there – led of course by these political philosophers or social scientists – in order to bring this process to completion.  "Historical progress" and "democracy" – however conceived specifically (and the variation was indeed huge) were the bywords, the slogans, the shibboleths, of those who supposed that they possessed special intellectual insights into where the world was headed. Within that group of Western social reformers was a large group of Marxist ideologues and political activists – forming the Social Democratic Party in a number of European countries – whose expectations were that Marx's Communist revolution would soon break out across Europe.  This supposedly would occur naturally first in a society experiencing the most advanced state of capitalism, probably Great Britain or Germany.  After all, Marx's scientific socialism would not work except under the historical circumstances he had so carefully described.  Every stage of historical development had to be completed before history would be ready to move on to the next step or phase in its development.  The dialectical method demanded that kind of historical precision. 2A term drawn from Roman times in reference to the members of the Roman working class who held little or no property and thus few or no political rights. 3Marx was a prolific writer ... who found getting his work published difficult because of the opposition it always faced from the authorities.  Of his multi-volume Das Kapital, the first volume would be published in 1867.  Additional volumes would be published by his friend Friedrich Engels after Marx's death in 1883:  volume two in 1885 and volume three in 1894. Go on to the next section:  The West Since 1850: An Introduction   Miles H. Hodges