Political Ideologies of the 19th Century

Can society be improved? What is the best way to run society? These are some of the sweeping questions that political theories and ideologies attempt to tackle.

Political theories provide the study of broad political concepts as well as their application in government. Political ideologies comprise a set of fundamental beliefs as they apply to mass-scale movements. The most important examples in 19th-century Europe were conservatism, liberalism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism, and social Darwinism.

Western 19th-century Political Ideologies

A number of political theories and ideologies were popular in 19th-century Europe. They included conservatism, liberalism, socialism, anarchism, nihilism, and Social Darwinism.

The political ideals of 19th-century Europe could be divided into two major categories. One category was the conservatives who supported the monarchy and traditional institutions. The other group sought to change society in order to improve it. These were the advocates of liberalization of state institutions and the press and more radical left-wing groups such as the socialists, the anarchists, and the nihilists.

List of 19th-century Political Ideologies

• Conservatism
• Liberalism
• Socialism
• Anarchism
• Nihilism
• Social Darwinism

19th-century Political Theory of Conservatism

In general, conservatism is the type of belief system that is focused on the preservation of traditional institutions and the way of life. In 19th-century Europe, conservatism was usually associated with the monarchy and other hereditary institutions like the nobility. Conservatives such as the Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich and the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought to minimize the liberal trends in society and revolutionary politics by different means.

19th-century Political Theory of Liberalism

Liberalism, also known as classical liberalism, had roots in the 17th-18th-century Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was also known as the Age of Reason because it advocated for social and scientific progress and questioned traditional institutions such as the monarchy and the Church. Liberals believed in popular sovereignty, elections, freedom of the press, and individualism. There were numerous variations of liberalism, and the reactions toward this theory differed as well. For example, the United States lacked hereditary institutions like the European monarchy. It was, therefore, easy to disseminate and subscribe to liberal ideas.

Portrait of John Locke, Godfrey Kneller, 1697. Source: The Hermitage Museum, Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

In Europe, however, liberalism faced opposition. For example, the Revolutions of 1848 spread throughout Europe, affecting approximately 50 countries. Each incident of unrest had specific causes. However, they shared the general trajectory of seeking social liberalization and reform. When the Revolutions failed, liberal activists and intellectuals felt disillusioned.

Some notable European and American thinkers include:

• John Locke (1632–1704)
• Adam Smith (1723–1790)
• Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
• Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

19th-century Political Theory of Socialism

Socialism, in 19th-century Europe, was closely linked to the works of the German philosopher Karl Marx. A radical form of socialism is sometimes referred to as Communism. In the socialist belief system, the means of production are controlled by the workers themselves. Socialism is primarily focused on class as the focal point of historic progress.

19th-century socialists often sought to improve the poor conditions of the workers in the broad context of the Industrial Revolution. Socialism is also associated with egalitarian ideas.

19th-century Political Theory of Anarchism

Anarchism is both a political theory and a movement. Anarchism rejects authority: its more radical forms reject all forms of authority, including the state. After all, the state has a monopoly on power. Because anarchism rejects the state, it advocates for significant decentralization. The left-wing versions of anarchism also argue for collectivism, in which there is no private property, but rather, collective ownership. In the 19th century, one of the most important proponents of anarchism was the Russian thinker Mikhail Bakunin.

19th-century Political Theory of Nihilism

Nihilism is a form of negation. In 19th-century Russia, nihilism was a political theory and movement that rejected the social order altogether. This movement arose out of university circles. It expressed dissatisfaction with the social reforms that did not go far enough, according to the nihilists.

A Portrait of a Nihilist Student, Ilya Repin, 1883. Source: Far Eastern Art Museum, Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Some social reforms in question included the 1861 emancipation of the serfs, who were unfree peasants attached to the land of the nobility. Nihilism was also linked to anarchism and associated with Mikhail Bakunin. Certain nihilists engaged in terrorist acts. The most famous of them was the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

19th-century Political Theory of Social Darwinism

19th-century British naturalist Charles Robert Darwin (1809 – 1882) arrived at the concept of evolution. He argued that evolution explained the biological changes in animals over long periods of time. The purpose of these changes was to make animals better adapt to their environment, survive, and thrive. This idea is sometimes described as the survival of the fittest.

"A Venerable Orang-outang,” a caricature of Charles Darwin as an ape, 1871. Source: The Hornet magazine, Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

British sociologist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) coined this term. Some thinkers applied the idea of the “survival of the fittest” to the surrounding society. They argued that society, too, was based on ruthless competition. The notion of the fittest—the smartest and the most beautiful—was incorporated into late 19th-20th-century supremacist theories of racial hierarchies, from Anglo-Saxon racism to the Nazi ideology of the Third Reich.

19th-Century European Thinkers

There were many important 19th-century thinkers in Europe, including:

• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
• Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
• Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)
• Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
• Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

The two most impactful thinkers were Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx. Their ideas affected political development from their own time until today.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) influenced subsequent intellectuals and the development of Western thought at large. Hegel was part of a movement called German idealism. This thinker built an entire system of philosophy, the parts of which should be understood in the context of the whole. He was interested in analyzing many subjects: God, the development of the state, and historic progress.

Hegel's ideas about the nature of the state and the development of history at large are especially important in the context of the study of political theory.

Dialectics and Historic Progress

The Philosopher Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel, Jakob Schlesinger, 1831. Source: Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Some of Hegel's essential works include The Phenomenology of Spirit and The Science of Logic. Hegel's writing influenced another German thinker, Karl Marx.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883), a Jewish-German intellectual, was one of the most important thinkers of all time in the history of Western thought. He often collaborated with Friedrich Engels. Marx spent a significant amount of time living in London, England where he witnessed the terrible conditions of the working class. This experience affected his intellectual trajectory. His best-known works include The Communist Manifesto and Capital.

Portrait of Karl Marx, John Jabez Edwin Mayal. Source: Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Marx focused on analyzing capitalism—an economic system in which the means of production are owned by big business (called capital). He argued that the working class experienced exploitation in this system. He wrote extensively on the relationship between capital, the working class, and the middle class (called the bourgeoisie).

Marx argued that eventually the working class would develop class consciousness and become aware of itself as an interest group. The misery caused by the workers' exploitation and oppression will eventually lead to a social revolution. Marx did not clarify the means by which this revolution would be achieved. In turn, the dictatorship of the proletariat would arise, in which it would be the working class exercising control rather than big business.

Eventually, the state would erode altogether, giving way to a classless society. This would be the time of socialism (Communism), an egalitarian system, in which all workers own and control the means of production.

Mikhail Bakunin

Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) was a Russian revolutionary and intellectual. Bakunin was very influential in radical circles, including the anarchist and nihilist movements, in the late 19th-early 20th century. He lived in Russia, Europe, and the U.S., and was critical of the monarchy, specifically, and the state, in general. He was also critical of religion. At first, Bakunin was influenced by Hegel. In the 1840s, Bakunin also met Karl Marx, with whom he later had a falling out as he disparaged Marx’s concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Mikhail Bakunin, Nadar. Source: Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Bakunin also took part in protests, such as the Czech Rebellion. The latter was part of the Revolutions of 1848 that swept Europe that year in search of social reform. He was also a member of workers’ organizations.

Bakunin’s best-known works, such as Statism and Anarchy, written in the 1870s, outline his ideology. He argued for significant decentralization and the type of anarchism that was radically collectivist in nature.

Aftermath

The practical impact of Hegel and Marx was evident in the 20th century. For example, the successful 1917 Russian Revolution, which overthrew the monarchy, was based on Marx’s socialist ideas.