Pavlac B.A. A Concise Survey of Western Civilization: Supremacies and Diversities throughout History
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stuff at the ‘‘five-and-dime’’ discount chains. Even Christian holidays felt the impact,
as Christmas (the celebration of Jesus’ birth) began to outshine Easter (the celebra-
tion of Jesus’ resurrection) because its ritual of buying and giving gifts suited con-
sumerism.
Also by the late nineteenth century, a wave of industrial innovation intensified
the revolution in new areas. The mastery of electricity and steelmaking allowed
cities to grow even larger, not only across the landscape, but also up into the sky.
Buildings could be raised to amazing heights and dimensions because of steel
girder skeletons, electric elevators, and lightbulbs (1879). Church steeples had
been the tallest urban structures since the Middle Ages. Business towers of the
modern skyscraper now began to define the modern city skyline. Below the earth,
subways (London in the 1860s, Paris in 1900, New York in 1904) propelled workers
to and from their homes and factories. Communication through telegraph (1829),
then telephone (1876), and finally radio (1906) tied the world more tightly
together.
All Western economies needed power to function. Coal from the ground gained
another competitor in another mineral, petroleum. This ‘‘rock-oil’’ has since
become so important to human beings that it has claimed for itself the sole word
oil. The first oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859 led the way in supplying
industrial society with a sufficient amount of the material. People first valued oil as
a fuel that was refined into kerosene for lamps. Kerosene replaced whale oil, which
had replaced other plant and animal oils.
Scientists soon discovered how to easily manipulate petroleum for more than
just its burning and lubricating properties. Its associated by-product, natural gas,
became a common fuel for lighting, heating, and cooking. Oil’s combustible prop-
erties likewise beckoned scientists to experiment with it as a fuel source for
machines. It began to replace coal.
At the nineteenth century’s end came an invention that would transform indus-
trial people’s mobility: the internal combustion engine. Gasoline, originally con-
sidered a waste product from refining oil for kerosene, fueled the most common
version. This new engine became a more powerful, smaller, and therefore more
mobile motor than the steam engine. The internal combustion engine placed on a
frame with pneumatic tires became the automobile, which traveled on roadways.
When attached to spin a propeller, the gas engine metamorphosed into the air-
plane on large airfoils that flew through the sky. The two Wright brothers who
owned a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, assembled and launched the first modern
aircraft at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in December 1903. Both the car and the
plane would revolutionize travel in the twentieth century, outpacing the success of
the train.
Oil also became the foundation of a new petrochemicals industry. The first
businesses made dyes for coloring fabric and then advanced to fertilizers and medi-
cines. By 1900, researchers formulated petroleum into Bakelite, the first plastic.
Bakelite could take on new shapes, forms, strengths, and even colors. Plastic contin-
ued to unleash waves of inventiveness. At the time, no one worried about how
the burning, refining, or disposing of petroleum products might bring their own
problems.
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Review: How did urbanization develop a modern society?
Response:
CLEANING UP THE MESS
Politically, the nineteenth century began not with a leap forward, but with a step
backward. By the time the French Revolution was over in 1815, many thought that
its ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity were a thing of the past. The Romantic
Movement rejected the harsh results of the Enlightenment’s rationality and tech-
nology’s advance. The Romantics produced poetry, stories, and art that expressed
a longing for a simpler time, whether a reimagined past or a fantasy fairyland. The
French and Industrial Revolutions together brought too much change. A retreat to
nature seemed preferable to the dirty, seething cities. Traditional ruling elites
seemed better than crude upstarts like Bonaparte. The Corsican’s defeat at first
comforted traditionalists that all would return to their version of normal.
The victors over Napoleon convened the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) to
reorder the chaos left by France’s conquest of Europe. Over the course of nine
months, hundreds of leaders and diplomats from all of Europe discussed the future
(even while dancing and drinking at the many parties). Leading the assembly in
its deliberations was Prince Clemens von Metternich (b. 1773–d. 1859), the first
minister for the absolutist Habsburg emperor of Austria. Metternich and others
developed the political concept of conservatism, namely, the policy that advocated
preserving as much as possible of traditional political, social, and cultural struc-
tures. Under Metternich’s leadership, the congress allowed only such alterations in
the old system as were necessary for European stability. It restored most of the old
dynasties to power, dumping Bonaparte’s relatives and puppets and sending them
into exile or retirement. The restorations ranged from the beheaded Louis XVI’s
brother as the new king of France to the pope ruling once more over the Papal
States. A few citizens protested, but all over Europe princes reaffirmed absolutism
by shredding constitutions.
The congress also reasserted the balance of power between the great powers of
Europe: Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia. France had too often tried to
conquer Europe. The victors strengthened states on France’s borders to help pre-
vent any further aggression. Along the northeastern border of France, the United
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Kingdom of the Netherlands combined the Dutch and the Belgians under the aristo-
cratic dynasty of Orange, newly elevated to royalty. Along the southeastern border,
the melded Kingdom of Sardinia-Savoy-Piedmont barred the Alpine access to Italy.
Austria held sway over the rest of northern Italy. Directly east of France, Prussia
acquired a conglomeration of territories in the Rhineland. Prussia and Austria took
joint leadership of a new, albeit weakened, German Confederation that reconstitu-
ted the hundreds of small principalities of the dead Holy Roman Empire into a few
dozen. These measures effectively hemmed in France. No one thought to ask
whether the peoples of these newly drawn states wanted their assigned roles in the
balance of power.
In an attempt to prevent more warfare and revolutions, the Congress of Vienna
tried two new alliance mechanisms. Previously, alliances had lasted for only the
duration of wartime. After 1815, nations tried to use alliances to prevent war. First
was the Holy Alliance, binding together the absolute rulers of Orthodox Russia,
Roman Catholic Austria, and Lutheran Prussia in an odd burst of religious coopera-
tion. This agreement called for the promotion of Christian charity and peace, yet it
failed due to the power politics of tsar, emperor, and king.
The innovative Quadruple Alliance of Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Britain bet-
ter maintained the reestablished order. For the first time, collective security pro-
vided an ongoing peacetime mechanism to prevent reckless wars between states.
According to the doctrine of balance of power, states organized against one another
only when one or more threatened the status quo. Collective security meant that
all nations worked together regularly to maintain peace. After 1815, the regular
meetings of great powers to produce international harmony became known as the
Concert of Europe. The Quadruple Alliance provided the first international peace-
keeping structure to solve civil disturbances in the lesser states of Europe and to
prevent dangerous unrest among the peoples.
Although the Quadruple Alliance worked relatively well, Britain slowly began
to withdraw. As the only great power with a substantial overseas empire, England
was uncertain about its growing rivalry with Russia, the dominant Eurasian power.
Meanwhile, the restored Bourbon dynasty in France regained its international
respectability as it resisted reform and revolution. Thus, France gradually took
England’s place within the Concert of Europe. Europe settled into a few rare dec-
ades of international peace.
No Western ruler even contemplated including the distant United States of
America. Yet America’s example of republican government also showed to many
that an alternative to absolutism was still possible. While strict social hierarchies
appeared to be reasserted in Europe, the commoners remembered their access to
power under the French revolutionary regime, however brief or illusory. The
French proclamation of liberty and equality had not been realized by Napoleon’s
dictatorship, but the lower classes liked those ideas all the same. The bourgeoisie
continued to accumulate wealth and demand more power for themselves. The aris-
tocracy increasingly lost its purposeful social function. Even absolute monarchs had
adopted many of Napoleon’s and revolutionary France’s methods precisely because
they were so successful.
The idea of revolution simply would not disappear: people had already seen
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for themselves that political action could topple incompetent regimes. Those who
supported revolutions were usually categorized as liberals. The political concept of
liberalism stood for embracing change in order to broaden, as much as reason-
able, people’s political, social, and cultural opportunities. Liberalism appealed to
the middle classes rising with the Industrial Revolution. Its ideas encouraged the
expansion of their political and economic power and influence.
The beliefs held decades ago by liberals on the left and conservatives on the
right of the political spectrum were quite different from what they are today (see
table 11.1). The nineteenth-century conservatives embraced absolute monarchy
with its strong interventionist bureaucracy, mercantilistic economic theory, distinc-
tions among social classes (with aristocrats at the top), and a close cooperation of
state and church (called the union of throne and altar). In contrast, the nineteenth-
century liberals called for constitutional and republican government, laissez-faire
economic theory, equality before the law for all citizens (perhaps even including
women), and separation of church and state with religious toleration. These dichot-
omies do not necessarily fit well with today’s issues and labels. Usually, only the
basic attitudes of a leftist acceptance of change and a right-wing resistance to change
have remained appropriate. So political identification should always focus on spe-
cifics, not labels.
Nevertheless, the basic political parties of modern European democracies
became organized around these competing ideologies. Political parties offered
structure both to win in elections and, once elected, to cast votes in representative
bodies. As more people accumulated substantial wealth and property, they wanted
to influence political decisions that could affect their ability to make money. Taxa-
tion, regulations, and monetary strength became issues of national debate. As a
result, the new wealth accelerated the growth of political parties. Over the course of
the century both sides in many countries used the methods of parliamentarianism.
Liberals tried to reduce government regulations, while conservatives sought to pre-
serve advantageous taxation. In the cities, political parties that controlled the levers
of power and patronage operated so smoothly for their constituents that they them-
selves earned the name ‘‘machines.’’ Political parties with their permanent leader-
ship, mass membership, and enforcement of discipline at the polls became essential
to the functioning of representative government.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the conservatives retained their dominance
in most places. The propertied people of lineage wanted to stay in charge, sharing
Table 11.1. Views of Western Political Parties in the Nineteenth Century
Conservatism Liberalism
Absolute monarchy Parliamentarianism
Social class distinctions Equality of citizens
Aristocratic and upper class support Capitalist and middle class support
Mercantilism Laissez-faire/classical liberal economics
Union of throne and altar Separation of church and state
Note: The issues important in the nineteenth century are not necessarily those that matter today. Then
and now, conservatism tends to resist change, while liberalism promotes it.
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power with only the new rich capitalists. But politics changed without too much
violence in England, which already had basic constitutional and republican struc-
tures. Majorities in Parliament bounced back and forth between the first two sig-
nificant political parties, aptly named Liberals (nicknamed Whigs in England and
America) and Conservatives (called Tories even today in Britain). The Whig Reform
Bill of 1832, for instance, appeased the middle classes by removing some of the
worst antiquated structures for parliamentary elections and doubling the electorate
to about 20 percent of the population. Working-class citizens then launched the
Chartist movement, in which they petitioned, marched, and demonstrated to get
representation for themselves. Although the Chartist movement largely failed and
vanished after 1848, Parliament slowly legislated reforms to further open up politi-
cal participation (see figure 11.3). By 1884, the British had reached universal suf-
frage for men, meaning all adult male citizens had the right to vote. Despite
expectations of social revolution, voting and democratic institutions still left the
privileged wealthy in charge, much as they always had been since the beginning of
civilization. Politics opened the doors of access to power to only a few more people.
On the European continent, meanwhile, liberals resorted to revolutionary
action as a force for political change. The revived absolute monarchies allowed very
few possibilities for reform through the ballot box. France in particular kept break-
ing out in revolutionary fervor. Without the same traditions and institutions as Brit-
ain had to channel the violence of political change, criticism of the regime all too
easily escalated first into riots and then into rebellion. To break conservative domi-
nance, liberals often felt compelled to resort to revolutionary violence. Armed
clashes flashed on the barricades, with soldiers on one side and bourgeoisie, work-
ers, and students on the other. This violence recast the regimes, even if it did not
always improve them. And once France had erupted into revolution, more out-
breaks exploded throughout the rest of Europe in 1830, 1848, and 1870.
Figure 11.3. The British Parliament buildings were built during the
nineteenth century in a Romantic style imitating Gothic architecture.
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The Revolutions of 1830 were the first to significantly affect European politics.
In July, the French people deposed the absolutist-inclined King Charles X and
replaced him with the more liberal King Louis-Philippe. The Dutch and the Belgians
took the opportunity to split the united realm into the separate countries of the
Netherlands and Belgium. The Belgians, in turn, remained themselves divided
between French and Dutch (Flemish) speakers. In Austria, the conservative Metter-
nich wanted to invade and force the new countries to reunite, to maintain the
Congress of Vienna’s decisions. The other members of the Quadruple Alliance
would not cooperate. Rather, the great powers recognized Belgium as a sovereign
state and signed a treaty that guaranteed its inviolable neutrality. Any country’s
attack on Belgium would then be a violation of international law and trigger war
with the other great powers. In eastern Europe, the Poles, who had been granted
by the Congress of Vienna a ‘‘kingdom’’ technically separate but ruled by the Rus-
sian tsar, tried to free themselves entirely from Russian domination. Sadly, they lost
miserably, and the Russian reprisal erased any political liberty the Polish had
enjoyed. Other efforts by Germans and Italians in certain principalities, as well as
the Spanish and Portuguese, managed to secure only a handful of meager liberal
reforms.
The Revolutions of 1848 sparked by France were even more widespread and,
initially, successful. In February, the French had tired of the Bourbons, with their
tendencies to incompetence and tyranny. They tossed Louis-Philippe off the throne
and proclaimed the Second Republic (1848–1852). Elsewhere in Europe, many rul-
ers briefly backed down before revolutionary demands. In Austria, Metternich and
his mentally deficient emperor, Ferdinand I, both resigned. The new eighteen-year-
old Emperor Francis-Joseph I (r. 1848–1916) promised a constitution. Hungarians
declared their independence from the Habsburg monarchy. Italians took up arms
against their own Habsburg absolutism. The Prussian king accepted a constitution.
Many Germans came together at a parliament in Frankfurt to better unify the Ger-
man people under constitutional authority. Unfortunately for German liberals, a
lack of leadership and squabbling over methods and goals slowed progress. Before
long, European rulers realized that most of their military remained obedient, while
liberal politicians possessed very few armed forces. By the summer of 1849, armies
commanded by loyal generals had restored most monarchs to their absolutist
thrones at the cost of much bloodshed.
France was not quite done with revolution. First, however, the hastily arranged
democracy of the Second Republic quickly degenerated into the Second Empire
(1852–1871) under the dictatorship of Louis Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon
Bonaparte. Louis took the name Emperor Napoleon III (by number recognizing the
‘‘reign’’ of Napoleon’s son, who had died years earlier as a pampered prisoner in
Scho
¨
nbrunn). One of Napoleon III’s few major innovations was to rebuild Paris
with broad boulevards. His original intention was that the wide streets would allow
his troops to quickly move through the city and, if necessary, break any bourgeois
barricades. Its real consequence was to open up Paris for growth and development
as one of the leading urban centers in Europe. Napoleon III’s imperial rule did not
bring lasting peace and stability. It was failed foreign policy rather than domestic
insurrection, however, that ended Emperor Napoleon III’s reign.
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Napoleon III recklessly declared war on Prussia, which began the Franco-Prus-
sian War (see below). France’s humiliating defeat led to a brief struggle over the
nation’s political destiny. Most of the country recognized a moderate-conservative
Third Republic (1871–1945). At the same time, an organized group of liberals and
radicals in the capital proclaimed the Paris Commune (March–May 1871). The
commune tried to establish a state of complete equality and social justice. Instead,
republican forces of moderation and conservatism crushed this effort, using Napo-
leon III’s boulevards to successfully invade the city. The victorious Third Republican
government killed or executed more than twenty thousand and exiled another
seven thousand Communards. After this reactionary bloodletting, comparable to
the radical Reign of Terror a century earlier, the French settled into a functional
republican system.
After 1848, both liberalism and conservatism were quite shaken. A new genera-
tion of artists and writers offered skeptical and critical portrayals of society called
realism and naturalism, replacing the optimistic hopes of the Romantics. Realists
described the common social and political problems of the day, while the natural-
ists focused on the most tragic and harsh aspects of the changing industrialized
society. In the second half of the nineteenth century, many conservative princes
and politicians accepted both the necessity and inevitability of some change and
began to adopt liberal platforms. Also, as will be explained in chapter 12, they
learned to use the originally liberal idea of nationalism for their own aims. By taking
the lead on constitutions, social reform, and business opportunities, conservatives
could regulate what they saw as the inevitable process of progress. The German
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (b. 1844–d. 1900), however, doubted such prog-
ress. He proclaimed the doom of Western civilization unless it recognized the moral
hypocrisy of its failed doctrines of Christianity. Nietzsche suggested that the human
will’s desire for power offered the only certain path for the future.
The power of the industrial age certainly made it easier to kill people. Armies
could be raised and equipped more quickly and could attack more efficiently. The
industrialization of war increased the participation of the lower and middle classes,
which made them agitate for greater political participation, as seen many times
throughout history since the Greeks. At the same time, industrialization and the
resultant wealth produced smaller-scale violence over political disputes. Guerrilla
warfare (Spanish for ‘‘little war,’’ adopted from Spain’s resistance against Napo-
leon) became more common. Guerrillas were irregular forces, neither recruited
nor drafted, nor trained and uniformed like the professional soldiers of modern
industrial armies. Instead, guerrillas were usually volunteers defending their home-
land, moving easily in and out of civilian populations. With their smaller and less-
well-equipped numbers, guerrilla bands were too weak and too few to survive open
battle against well-armed and drilled armies. They succeeded best in sneak attacks.
Guerrillas gained access to more weapons and supplies through the manufacturing
capacity and transportation options introduced by the Industrial Revolution.
The other form of political violence enabled by the industrial revolution was
terrorism. Terrorists used lethal violence to achieve their political ends, usually
targeting civilians (mostly because noncombatants are easier to kill than trained,
equipped, and alert armed forces). Industrialization enabled terrorists to travel,
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both to acquire their weapons and training, and then to reach their targets. Civilized
regimes resented and feared the terrorists’ use of violence, since the modern states
considered the use of violence their own unique privilege. Not powerful enough to
have armies or even guerrilla forces, terrorists resort to murder and mayhem on a
small scale to attain political power, usually to benefit a national group or a political
idea. A terrorist without an ideology was a criminal. Yet a terrorist who succeeded
could ascend to be a statesman of a body politic.
Bombings and assassinations, consequently, multiplied in the nineteenth cen-
tury. The most famous terrorists in the nineteenth century were those who believed
in anarchism, the idea that if the growing industrialized and bureaucratized socie-
ties were destroyed, a utopian agricultural society would appear. Anarchists blew
up government offices and killed leaders to undermine the structures of political
trust and obedience that held societies together. Within a few years of the turn of
the twentieth century, anarchists had killed a president of the United States, a prime
minister of Spain, a tsar of Russia, a king of Italy, and an empress of Austria. Despite
these murderous successes, most people failed to welcome anarchy. Western civili-
zation’s basic political divisions of right and left endured, while little today remains
of anarchism.
Review: How did competing political ideologies offer alternatives in the nineteenth
century?
Response:
FOR THE WORKERS
Conservatives and liberals frequently confused anarchism with socialism, although
socialism was a very different movement. Many intentionally promoted this confu-
sion, hoping to associate the terrorist anarchists with the socialists and imply that
the latter were violent also. Part of the problem was the wide diversity of socialists.
There existed, and still exist, many socialisms, although many Americans today
often lump them all together as one collective bad thing. Quite simply, socialism in
all its forms wanted to improve workers’ rights and lives. Socialists tried to awaken
a class consciousness, an awareness of what workers under these new conditions
shared in common. Different kinds of socialism basically offered workers an alterna-
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tive organizing principle to those of the liberals of the middle classes and the con-
servatives of the upper classes. What could be bad about that?
Power to the workers, the possibility of sharing power with the masses, threat-
ened both liberals and conservatives. They feared, to some extent correctly, that
giving more wealth, money, and votes to the working classes would mean less for
them. If workers had an effective voice, the freedom of middle and upper classes to
do what they wanted to do would be hemmed in. They might have to pay higher
taxes; they might make fewer profits; they might have to rub shoulders with social
inferiors in shops and churches; they might have to ask for the votes of the majority
of all adults.
So both liberal and conservative governments of the nineteenth century often
supported business leaders in resisting socialism in any form. Governments have
protected ownership of real estate since the beginning of civilization, originally to
benefit the few who possessed most of the farmland. Meanwhile, peasants called
for land reform, since all humanity deserved a share in creation. In the industrial
age, factories became the most important places of wealth creation. Factories more
obviously belonged to those whose investments financed their construction. Politi-
cians and managers passed laws and used force to intimidate workers, usually call-
ing it ‘‘law and order’’ or ‘‘protection of property rights.’’ Workers called for a fair
share of wealth, even if they lacked access to capital. Workers organized, demon-
strated, and used violence to change the industrial system, calling it ‘‘people’s jus-
tice.’’ For capitalists, the profits generated by the modern industrialized state
justified beatings, arrests, and executions. For workers, the exploitation suffered
under the factory system excused vandalism, murders, and bombings.
The Industrial Revolution was transforming society regardless. Social roles were
in flux and traditional roles based on rural relationships were disappearing. People
lost a sense of ‘‘knowing their place.’’ Then along came the socialists, advocating
social justice and trying to create a more fair society based on a more equal distribu-
tion of wealth. Many socialists also argued for granting equal rights to women and
for protecting women and children from being harmed by economic necessity.
Socialists rejected classical liberal economics and argued for better ways to invest
capital and reap profit.
Many workers found socialism more attractive than either liberalism or conser-
vatism because it promised to relieve their misery. Factory owners and managers
vigorously exploited workers at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Modern
lighting and machines meant factories operated around the clock, so workers
sweated away in shifts lasting between ten and fifteen hours, with few breaks. Holi-
days were rare and weekends nonexistent. Lack of education or connections pre-
vented laborers from finding better work than that in factories or mines. Ricardo’s
‘‘iron law of wages,’’ where owners paid workers as little as possible, resulted in
whole families toiling away in factories in order to make ends meet. Also, because
women and children were paid less for the same work done by men, factory owners
employed larger numbers of them. The lives of worker families focused on the
capitalist’s factory, not the domestic fireplace. Indeed, the hearth vanished entirely
for most, since available housing was in crowded, unsafe, and unsanitary tene-
ments, ramshackle collections of small apartments.
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Between the home and factory, wretched homes were often better than the
dangerous workplaces. Stale air and loud noise were common health hazards. Whir-
ring gears and belts crushed slow fingers and tore off errant arms. Long days only
increased the fatigue and carelessness that allowed accidents. Injuries on the job
were the problem of the victim, since worker’s compensation or even the ability to
sue owners for negligence did not exist. The only alternative to working in a factory
was being arrested for the ‘‘crime’’ of poverty and being forced to work in the
poorhouse and prisons. Many of the awful conditions faced by the working class
are chronicled in that classic holiday chestnut, Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
The domination of machines became more relentless at the beginning of the
twentieth century. The Industrial Revolution culminated in the perfection of the
conveyor belt system and the invention of interchangeable parts. This innovation
led to modern mass manufacturing with assembly-line production. Henry Ford
used it first in the manufacturing of his Model T car in 1905. Workers focused on
narrow, repetitive tasks that reduced the time to make a car from a day and a half
to an hour and a half. The myth put forward and often believed today is that Ford
increased his workers’ pay so that they could all afford the cars. In fact, he raised
the wages because the workers needed the incentive to work through the mindless
repetition of modern production. Ford’s policies at his auto factories nevertheless
finally began a trend toward increased wages and benefits for workers.
Such concessions were too little too late for workers, many of whom had turned
to socialism. Socialists proposed their own solutions to solve the workers’ plight,
since in the century and a half from the spinning jenny to the Model T, factory
owners and capitalists had been unwilling to help workers prosper. A half-dozen
separate socialist trends competed against the laissez-faire attitudes of the industrial
capitalist manufacturers.
One, utopia n sociali sm, called for improvements for workers, often explicitly
based on economic facts, histo rical trends, and even moral visions. Histor ians have
labeled it ‘‘utopian’’ becaus e these socialists dreamed of an ideal societ y, along the
lines descr ibed in literature abo ut im aginary state s cal led utopias. The Fr enc h nob le-
man Count Henry de Saint-Simon published his call for socialism in 1825, The New
Christianity, which appealed to the commands of J esu s. In that book, he gave voice
to the original phrase of ‘‘from each accord ing to his abilities, to each according to
his needs.’ ’ He also called for production to be for the genera l welfare, not private
profit.
Perhaps the most famous utopian socialist was Robert Owen (b. 1771–d.
1858), a Scotsman who rose from poverty to become a wealthy capitalist factory
owner. The ‘‘dark Satanic mills’’ disturbed Owen. In reaction, he began to argue
that employers should treat their workers as humanely as possible. They should
provide secure housing, good pay, shorter working hours, schools, banks, and
shops. In consequence, he claimed, productivity would increase. Although he con-
tinued to make a profit, his attempt at model factory communities, such as at New
Harmony, Indiana, were less than successful. Few businessmen or politicians paid
attention.
The second variant of socialism, whether called ‘‘scientific’’ socialism, Marx-
ism,orcommunism, would become enormously influential and creatively destruc-
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