Rise of Fascism

I. Failure of Socialist Revolutions

A. Reliance upon Gradualist Tactics

1. Parliamentary Solutions--because the socialist political parties became vested in the bourgeois political process, they saw this “gradualist” means of rectifying and reforming capitalism as preferable to the dangers of Marxist revolution.

a) Not everyone who viewed themselves as socialists also viewed themselves as adherents to Marxism, believing in the inevitability of the proletarian revolution.

b) This reliance upon the political solution left these social democrats susceptible to attacks not only from the left, however, but also from the right--and those on the right would prove just as impatient with the pace of change as those on the left.

c) The gradualists used revolutionary rhetoric, because they felt it was what the people wanted to hear; but in political action they attempted to stay “in the middle of the road,” veering neither to far left nor right; they attempted what political scientists would term today “triangulation.” tacking to what they believed were the popular positions on a variety of tactics.


2. Problems of the postwar period--these problems were most severe in Germany, which in the early 1920s had runaway inflation reaching Zimbabwean proportions; storied were told of people bringing money in wheelbarrows to pay for the day’s loaf of bread. But even the victors experienced social dislocation.

)a) Worker militancy before the war--workers and their unions in the period just before the outbreak of hostilities were beginning to flex their muscles and contest the status quo; workers went on strike in a variety of countries and a variety of industries during this time period.

b) Sacrifices during the war--for most of the countries in Europe, the war was a time of sacrifice and privation--but these sacrifices were not shared equally by the entire population. This situation added to the class resentment that added to the feelings that European societies, as they were then constituted, were unjust and need to be changed.


3. The Failure of Gradualism--while people might have been satisfied with a gradual change in the way European societies were structured before the war, the crisis in confidence of governments throughout the region because of the horrendous cost of the war contributed to feelings that government could no longer be trusted to make the necessary changes.

B. The Socialist Split--Harman claims that there were three factors that weakened socialism as a result of the war.

1. Social Democrats--put nationalism before class solidarity. Some of these people would eventually drift into fascism; the most prominent name to do so was Benito Mussolini, who left the Italian Socialist party--where he served as editor of the party newspaper--to found fascism in Italy.

2. Revolutionary Socialists--willing to stand and fight in the streets for the socialist revolution. Many revolutionary socialist were Marxists--they believed that the proletarian revolution was the next logical step in the evolution of society. Many of these people (or, at least, the ones that survived) moved into the various communist parties. As the Russian Revolution continued to be threatened, these people continued to support it. After Lenin died, and Stalin won the power struggle with Trotsky over who would succeed Lenin, the communists supported the idea of protecting “socialism in one country,” and many willing followed the dictates of Stalin to protect the Soviet Union.

3. Independent Socialists--vacillated between the Social Democrat position and the Revolutionary Socialist position.

II. Fascism

A. Definition: 1: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition; 2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary).

1. Historical use--this term has become a contested political epitaph, and has lost some of its original meaning. Historically speaking, however, it has stood in counterpoise to its opposing political system, socialism/communism. Historically, the term has been used to describe some political philosophies on the right.

a) During the 1960s, it was used by members of the left as a term of disdain for many of the ideas they disagreed with on the right; it was politically potent because the best known fascist politician was Adolph Hitler. It was often coupled with the word “pig” to goad police into doing something unprofessional, as in “fascist pig!”


b) The political right in this country has spent part of this decade pushing back against this trend, accusing liberals of being fascist; this has further muddied the concept.

2. The Connection between Fascism and Socialism--despite the seeming connection--Mussolini was a socialist, Hitler called his political party the National Socialists--the two political systems are diametrically opposed to one another, and should not be confused; one cannot be a socialist and a fascist.

a) Socialism is internationalist in its outlook--it views the divisions among humans to be along class lines, rather than along ethnic or national background. Socialism also has a strong economic component--that the workers should control the means of production. It is primarily an economic/political movement.

b) Fascism emphasizes nationalism to the point of being jingoistic (extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy). Economics is an afterthought for most fascists; the economics component mostly has to do with ensuring that order is maintained, so unions are usually made illegal. Fascism is largely a social/political movement

B. The Rise of Mussolini and Fascism

1. Root of the term--from the Latin word Fasces, which means the binding together. It was used in iconography to symbolize the binding together of a nation (see the 1916 US dime). For Italian fascists, using the iconography of ancient Rome was a way to harken back to this supposed glorious period of Italian history, and to tie their efforts in modern Italy to that period.


2. Mussolini left Socialist Party--Mussolini left the Socialist Party over his avid support for Italy’s entry into World War I. He was well known politically, but had little political popularity, except for other disillusioned socialists and some militarists who were disappointed over Italy’s being denied land from Austria and along the Dalmatian (Yugoslav) coast.


3. Occupation of factories in Rome and Turin--by 1920, economic conditions in Italy were worsening; harvest levels for both wheat and corn fell to approximately half of their war time highs. Approximately 500,000 workers occupied factories around the country, most prominently in the industrial center of Turin. The leaders of the unions, however, felt that the time was not right for a socialist revolution--or even hard bargaining with capitalists--and essentially bargained workers back into the factories with little change.



4. Mussolini mobilizes former soldiers--Mussolini mobilized many former soldiers concerned about the apparent power of “reds” in the factories into a paramilitary organization known as the “Blackshirts” for the color shirt they wore at rallies and mobilizations. With the collaboration of local police and the army, groups of Blackshirts began assaulting socialists, destroying their meeting places, forcing them to drink castor oil.

a) Because their assaults were against socialists, they had the tacit support of industrialists and the bourgeois, interested in keeping the workers under control.

b) Mussolini even gets the government to pay members to assault socialists, thereby making his organization even more attractive to unemployed or underemployed soldiers.

c) Blackshirts usually behaved like bullies, only fighting when they badly outnumbered opponents


5. The March on Rome (1922)--the Italian prime minister, trying to control this growing political movement, offered Mussolini a place in his government; Mussolini instead that he be made prime minister. The king acquiesced to this request.

C. Il Duce--despite his distaste of parliamentary democracy, Mussolini spent the next two years running the government as prime minister--although his Blackshirts came in handy to keep order.

1. Imprisonment of opposition--during the early years of the regime


2. Assassination of Matteoti--Mussolini’s henchmen kidnapped and murdered a socialist member of parliament, Matteoti, who had the audacity to stand up in front of the body and denounce the actions of the government. Mussolini declared the end of democracy in Italy, and himself at “the Leader”--and the king and army let him do so.

World Wars and Peace

Global War and Peace

Global conflicts proved to need global resolutions

I. Imperial Japan

A. Adoption of Western practices

1. Industrialism

2. Modernization of the Military

B. Scientific Racism

1. Japan and "White Privilege"

2. Japan and Its Asian Neighbors

3. A Leader in Pan-Asianism--or an Exploiter?

C. Militarism

1. No civilian control of military

2. Argued that militarism necessary to gain Japan greatness as a nation

3. Resistance to militarism

D. Defeat of Japan

II. Anti-Colonialism and the Cold War

A. Congo

1. Dispute with Belgium

2. Lack of speedy response from UN, turn to USSR

3. US turns to Mbuto

III. Movement for Peace

A. Citizens movements

B. League of Nations

C. United Nations

1. Successes

2. Failures

Europe in Turmoil

I. The German November Revolution



A. The March 1918 Offensive

1. Brest-Litovsk Treaty--the concessions wrung out from the Soviet Union at Brest-Litovsk allowed Germany to move troops and war material from the Eastern Front to the Western Front (which was also why the Allies were putting so much pressure on Russia to stay in the war); Germany then quickly developed a plan to execute an offensive to win the war before the United States could land troops in Europe and push the advantage toward the Anglo-French side.


2. New Strategy--planned as a four-stage offensive, to break out of the trench warfare stalemate that had lasted nearly three years by this time, each stage of the offensive was to consist of three parts:

a) Artillery bombardment--the new strategy called for relatively short, intense bombardment with artillery; in the firs of the four offensive, the German army shot more than 1 million artillery shells along a 160 mile front in under 5 hours.

b) Stormtroopers--the initial attack was instigated by a select group of soldiers, called stormtroopers, chosen because of their military skill. The were to attack the weakest part of the enemy’s defense, disrupt command and communications, and then hold their position until the regular troops arrived.

c) Consolidation--while the stormtroopers made the initial attack, the rest of the army was to advance shortly afterward to consolidate the new position.

3. Initial success--despite intelligence reports that tipped off the Allies of the impending attack, Allied forces were initially overrun, and the German army made the greatest advances since before the war bogged down in trench warfare in late 1914.


4. Ultimate failure--the Germans were unable to follow-up on this initial success. The Allies quickly shifted their own strategic defensive tactics, and moved most of their troops and command structure further behind the forward trenches, beyond the reach of German artillery, which meant that the initial bombardment was less effective. The front lines were largely guarded by snipers and machine gun nests, and the areas the stormtroopers attacked were quickly reinforced. The casualty rate for the stormtroopers quickly became atronomical, meaning that the German army was depleting itself of its best soldiers. Even the early success was illusionary, because the greatest success of the new strategy took place in those area of the least strategic importance.



B. Entry of United State Armed Forces--was essentially the turning point of the war, because the troops and war material the Allies could now bring to the point of attack along the Western Front simply overwhelmed the German forces there. The arrival of US forces occurred several months before the Germans anticipated it happening; even if the offensive had been successful, it is doubtful whether the Germans would have been able to hold their advanced positions.

1. 100 Day Offensive--began August 18, 1918 and lasted until the formal German surrender in November.

2. Breakdown of German Army--despite continued communication problems between the Allied forces--and the fact that American commanders refused to place US troops under the command of any “foreign” officer (except for the all African American battalion from Harlem), the US entry into the war force the German army to begin to retreat along the western front.

a) German General Ludendorff,, the commander of the German army, in the midst of what was apparently a nervous breakdown, asked the Kaiser to form a new government. The Kaiser brought in several pro-war Social-Democratic Party (SPD) to be ministers in the new government.


b) The eventual surrender by the civilian government, rather than by the German, permitted the creation of the “stabbed in the back” myth, which helped create the atmosphere for the re-establishment of militarism in Germany in the 1930s; defeat was blamed on the weakness of the civilian government--the socialist in particular.


C. Naval mutiny--the German Naval high command, hoping to stave off defeat and rehabilitate the reputation of the navy, order the High Seas Fleet to leave their blockades ports and enter the North Sea to engage the British Royal Navy.


1. Kiel Mutiny--rank and file sailors, realizing that this was a death warrant for themselves, mutinied instead. The sailors armed themselves, and joined with dockworkers in the city to disarm opponents, and the group also established a sailor’s and workers council to run the city.




D. Revolution in Germany--the Kiel Mutiny touched off protests against the war and the government in a number of cities: Bremen, Hamburg, Hanover, Cologne, Leipzig, Dresden, and a number of smaller cities, as well.

1. Munich--socialists took control of the royal palace and declared the ‘Bavarian Free State.”

2. Berlin


a) Karl Liebknecht--recently freed from prison, Liebknecht led a procession of workers and soldiers with guns and red flags through the streets of Berlin to the imperial palace--recently abandoned by the Kaiser, who fled to Holland--and declared a socialist republic from the balcony.

b) Phillipe Scheidermann--a pro-war Social Democratic Party(SPD) leader in the Kaiser’s last government, proclaimed a republic from the balcony of the imperial parliament.

c) Factions reunite--the two SPD factions (temporarily) reunited to present a “revolutionary” government of people’s commissars for endorsement by an assembly of 1,500 workers’ and soldiers’ delegates--in effect, a German soviet.

3. “Moderate” socialists--pro-war socialists outnumbered radicals in the new socialist government, and they used their greater numbers--and collaboration with the military and others on the right--to suppress the opposition on the left.

a) Friedrich Ebert--President of the short-lived Socialist Republic, and first president of the Weimar Republic. Worked with the military and the Freikorps (right-wing former soldiers, many of whom eventually found their way to the National Socialist Party--the Nazis) to put down the Spartikus Revolution, led by Liebknecht and Luxemberg. Members of the Freikorps murdered both Liebnecht and Luxemberg.

b) The failure of the war led to a greater sympathy for left-wing solutions, and many people who previously had supported liberal political solutions moved left and looked to the SPD as a proponent of those left-wing solutions--only the moderate politicians who controlled the party, while advocating radical solutions for public consumption, acted in a “gradualist” fashion, making only piecemeal reforms.

c) Public impatience with the slow pace of reform led many to back the Independent Socialist Party, whose members had broken with the SPD over the war. The government could no longer rely on the army, either, since rank-and-file soldiers, also dissatisified with the slow pace of reform, joined workers in the streets in larger cities.


d) Emergence of the Freikorps--the government turned to the Freikorps to put down the Spartikus Revolution, and to intimidate their opponents on the left. The members of the Freikorps were drawn largely from the ranks of the stormtroopers, many of whom felt alienated from the rest of German society because of their experiences during the war, and also feeling that they had been betrayed by that society--that they had not suffered a military defeat, but abandoned by other members of German society. This alliance nearly backfired in 1920, when members of the Freikorps staged the Kapp Putsch in 1920, and attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic. While Adolph Hitler was not himself a member of the Freikorps, many members migrated to the Nazi Party and the SA

II. The Spirit of Revolution--Germany was not the only country where revolutionary firmanent took place.

A. Austria--had a socialist party similar in structure to Germany, and worked to tone down worker protest to remain “respectable.”

B. Turkey--no socialist revolution, but Greece declared its independence; the conflict here quickly devolved into atrocities on both side. The Turks, however, in reaction to the defeats their army experienced to Russian forces on the battlefield, blamed another Christian minority in the country--the Armenians, and began a program of genocide that eventually murdered somewhere between 1 and 1.5 million men, women, and children.

C. France--French troops in Archangel, like their British and American counterparts, refused to take any a part in battles in Russia, and French sailors had to be evacuated from the Black Sea after several mutinies.


D. Great Britain--strikes by workers in Glasgow (“Red Clydeside”), London, Liverpool, and Belfast, which nearly turned into a general strike that united Catholics and Protestants.


E. United States--witnessed the greatest strike wave in history--steel, meat packing, metal workers. A general strike in Seattle.


F. Spain--inspired by events in the Soviet Union, farm workers in the south of the country had a number of strikes and meetings to attempt to organize. In Barcelona, workers went on strike for next several years; when local business leaders hired gunmen to murder labor leaders, anarchist leaders took matters into their own hands to strike back.

The Russian Revolutions

I. The 1st Russian Revolution--weariness with the war, and the shortages of food and other materials, made Russian workers and their families willing to stand up to the state oppression to end the war and bring their loved ones homes.



A. February Revolution--began on February 23, which socialists declared Working Women’s Day

1. Distributed leaflets--the socialists in Petrograd (the Russianized version of St. Petersburg) marked the day by distributing leaflets to workers in the city, made speeches, and held meetings, but did not call for the workers to go on strike or take any action, for fear of government reprisal.

2. Spontaneous strikes--many women workers in the city, tired of seeing their families go to bed hungary every night, went out on strike, marching in the streets and calling their fellow workers out with them. Discontent was focused food, with shouts of “Bread for the workers!” and “Down with high prices! Down with hunger!”

3. Popular support--the next day, women workers in Petrograd were joined by approximately 400,000 workers in the city square, demanding an end to the war. Armed police attacked the unarmed crowd; soldiers in barracks in the city were used to assist police patrols, and a contingent of soldiers was recalled from the front to put down the rebellion--but instead fraternized with the crowd, and joined them, disarming the police and arresting politicians. The tsar’s advisors recommended that he abdicate the throne, which he agreed to do on March 1.

B. Provisional Government



1. Russian Duma--dominated by landowners and industrialists; few members of the small bourgeois class were members, and those who were largely followed the lead of the upper classes.

a) Duma leaders tried to maintain the monarchy until it became impossible for Nicholas to hang on. The tsar’s ineffectiveness was magnified because during the war he stayed close to the front, leaving his wife Tsarina Alexandria, to rule on domestic issues. The tsarina, unfortunately, had come under the influence of an allegedly debauched Russian Orthodox monk, Grigory Rasputin, who was able to bring comfort to her hemophiliac son.

b) Duma provisional government was dominated by large landowners and industrialists, and lead by a member of the royal family, Prince L’vov. The only figure involved with the provisional government with any revolutionary credentials was Alexander Kerensky, a lawyer who had defended revolutionaries in court.


2. Establishment of the Petrograd Soviet--the lesson learned from the aborted 1905 Revolution led to the re-establishment of the Petrograd Soviet. The worker-led soviets quickly became the focus of the revolution and the de facto government of the city. The elected executive board took over the responsibility of the day-to-day governing of the city--providing food for mutinying soldiers, overseeing the arrest of old police and government officials, arranging for each factory to provide volunteers for the revolutionary militia that maintained revolutionary order, and establishing a newspaper to keep citizens informed of events.


a) All of this was done without much guidance from previous revolutionary leaders, who had largely been exiled to Siberia--although most had subsequently escaped and were living elsewhere in Europe (or the United States, in Trotsky’s case).

3. Russian Social Democratic Labor Party--the main Marxist political party on the eve of the 1905 Revolution, but rent by factional splits.

a) Mensheviks--Menshevik means minority party in Russian. The Mensheviks argued for a broadly-based radical socialist party, but one that would cooperate with bourgeois political parties.


b) Bolsheviks--Bolshevik means majority party in Russian--but the Bolsheviks’ position as majority party was very short-lived, largely because of the belief of their leader, V.I. Lenin, that the socialist revolution would be best served by leadership provided by a small vanguard of dedicated revolutionaries, like himself, rather than relying on inexperienced leaders rising to the top in the chaos of a developing revolution.


c) Unattached radicals--some members of the RSDLP remained unaffiliated with either faction--most conspicuously Trotsky--until forced to make a choice in October 1917.

4. War of Revolutionary Defense

a) The Duma provisional government refused to pull out of the war, provoking great displeasure from the Petrograd Soviets (and much of the rest of the country as well).

b) Experienced radical leaders were still outside of the country at this point. The first two to arrive in Petrograd, Stalin and Molotov, had little expertise in Marxist revolutionary thought (Stalin, in fact, was little more than a hired thug at this point), and offered little guidance to the soviets.


c) Although the soldiers and workers had little confidence in the leaders of the Duma, but they had less confidence in their own ability to guide a revolution themselves, and therefore took little action against the Duma.

5. Failure of the Provisional Government--many blame the arrival of Lenin from Switzerland (courtesy of the German government, which transported him via rail to Sweden, then by ferry to Finland, and then by rail to Finland Station in Petrograd); but it was the government’s insistence on carrying on the war effort, and the growing disenchantment of the greatest number of Russians with this policy, that led to their downfall.

a) Tsarism without the Tsar--the Duma provisional government attempted to maintain the policies of the Tsarist regime without the Tsar as figurehead, not realizing it was the policies that made the Tsar unpopular.

b) Russia’s “colonies” were not overseas, but its governance of non-Russian peoples--fifty percent of the population--within its “empire.”

c) The continuation of unpopular policies quickly made the provisional government unpopular, and this more than any machinations on the part of Lenin led to its downfall.


d) The Kerensky Offensive--the straw that broke the camel’s back. Caving in to continued pressure from the allies, Kerensky (who came to power because of his own political skills, and the lack of such skills by nearly everyone else in the Duma) agreed to opening a new offensive in Austrian Silesia (part of the present-day Czech Republic). The military offensive was a disaster--horrendous casualties, along with mass desertions and mutinies. Kerensky vacillated between attempting to reassert tsarist military discipline, and co-opting militant leftist leaders within the ranks. Lenin had anticipated this development, and was ready to take advantage of the situation.



II. The Soviet Revolution

A. The Bolshevik Revolution--resulted from great number of Russians, dissatisfied with the vacillations and lack of success of the provisional government--and particularly its failure to end Russian involvement in the war--turned to someone who promised a new solution to their problems.


1. Lenin’s vision--his insistence upon building a revolutionary vanguard within the nascent (small and brand new) trade union movement within the small industrial sector gave the Bolsheviks a huge advantage over other groups.

a) Party organization--by the summer of 1914, the Bolsheviks had a substantial following in the factories of Petrograd, and a large contingent presenting the working class in the Duma--although many went to prison for refusing to support the war effort.


2. Trotsky’s vision--Trotsky argued that although the working-class in Russia was very small, because of the country’s “special circumstances” (mainly having to do with the working-class being concentrated in Petrograd and Moscow), that Russia could “skip” the bourgeois revolution and proceed directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat.

3. “Peace, Land, Bread”--Lenin’s political program, as it was presented to Russians, was simply stated, and appealed to the great mass of people. His speeches and pamphlets distilled Russian dissatisfactions in much the same way that Thomas Paine did for Americans in the Revolutionary War.

4. Kornilov Affair--dissatisfaction with the provisional government came not only from the left, but from the right as well. General Kornilov attempted to lead Russian troops against the workers’ militia in Petrograd, but the cossacks abandoned him, and the militia captured Kornilov and about 7,000 of his supporters with little trouble

5. Bolsheviks become increasingly popular, and during the summer won majorities in both the municipal and parliamentary elections in Petrograd.

6. The October Revolution-- “The Ten Days that Shook the World” The Bolsheviks were able to seize power in Petrograd with little difficulty, and practically no bloodshed. The Bolsheviks declared the dictatorship of the proletariat--distributing land to peasants, nationalizing the banks, seizing all church property (including bank deposits), seizing all private bank deposits, handing over control of factories to the soviets, and fixing the wage rate higher that it had been during the war, as well as declaring a standard 8 hour work day.
Scene from Reds



B. The Aftermath

1. Brest-Litovsk Treaty--Germany demanded (and eventually received) land concessions, which cost Russian most of the Ukraine--which included most of the country’s known coal reserves, and the best land for growing wheat. Trotsky attempted to forestall this development by refusing to sign the demands-- “neither war nor peace”--but Lenin, conceding the war weariness of the country, decided to make the concessions, while hoping that socialist revolutions in the rest of Europe would make the treaty moot.

2. Internal threats-- “white” (as opposed to “red”) Russians and Cossacks--mainly large landowners and their mercenaries--led the “white” forces. Bolsheviks forces eventually responded to the white atrocities with atrocities of their own, including the murder of the royal family.

3. External threats--Russia (or the Soviet Union, as it was known by now) was also invaded by Japan, Great Britain, and the United States in the years immediately after the end of the war--although only Japan stayed any length of time.

World War and World Revolution

I. The Causes of the Conflict

A. “Entangling Alliances”--the customary reason for the outbreak of hostilities was that the European powers (Great Britain and France on one side, Germany on the other) had made alliances with weaker powers (mainly Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, respectively) that necessitated them going to war against each other because their allies went to war.

1. Austro-Hungarian Empire/Germany--the Austro-Hungarian Empire was teetering on the edge of its demise, and had turned to Germany as an ally should the burgeoning nationalist movements within its borders (Serbs and Croats, in particular).

2. Russian/Great Britain/France--Russian, despite its internal political difficulties (see 1905 Revolution), was looking to expand its influence in southern Europe, largely at the expense of the two teetering empires, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. Great Britain and France had already pushed into some of those areas, particularly in Lebanon (France), Egypt (Great Britain, which with assistance from France had constructed the Suez Canal), and Palestine.

B. Rise of Nationalism


1. Resistance to Colonialism--being treated as second-class people in their own countries led many victims of colonialism to develop a sense of national identity where none had existed before.

2. Ethnic nationalism--as the old empires began to fall apart, ethnic enclaves within these empires began to think of themselves as nations, as well. In some cases, these ethnic groups were aided and encouraged by other nation-states hoping to benefit from the downfall of weakened empires--like Russia, which hoped to benefit from both the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, and began to encourage their “brother Serbs” to resist both imperial governments.

3. Wars of reconquest--the so-called “long peace” after the end of the Napoleonic Wars (lasting until the Franco-Prussian War of 1870) removed much of the conflict between the European powers from Europe--and made the drive for colonial conquest more fierce. Colonialism was largely driven by the capitalist thirst for raw materials and new markets for goods, but national pride was also in part responsible for this development.

a) The development of the “yellow” press, which provided its audience with sensationalist news and chauvanistic nationalism in a newspaper that only cost the reader a penny, also contributed to the tacit support colonialism enjoyed among the laboring classes.

4. The Non-Colonial World Power--Germany, alone among the European powers, had no overseas colonies in 1880. This colonial activity by Germany injected that country into increasingly tense relationships with other European colonial powers, which contributed to the formation of the alliance system.

a) Treaty port in China

b) Tanganika, Rwanda-Burundi, and South West Africa on the continent of Africa.

c) Maghreb (northwestern Africa), where Germany began challenging French and Spanish control of Morocco and Algiers, creating tensions with those two countries.

d) Middle East--via the Berlin-Baghdad Railway

II. The Socialist Alternative--socialism developed in response to the multiple difficulties that capitalism created for a number of people. Because socialism emphasized class alliance across national and ethnic boundaries. This ideology failed to halt the combined power of capitalism and nationalism, however.



A. Capitalism Economic Depressions--since capitalism emerged as the dominant economic system in 1800, it has been portrayed as creating wealth for everyone (although that wealth has been unequally distributed). This panglossian outlook overlooks some of the significant economic downturns that occurred, however.




1. The Long Depression--a world-wide period of price deflation, which began around 1873 and lasted until about 1888. While economists emphasize the good effect this trend had on prices of goods, for many workers it meant that they struggled to buy goods because they were unemployed, since capitalists would cut production in the hope that scarcity would inflate prices.


2. The “Business Cycle”--this term had largely disappeared from the economist’s vocabularly, although the current economic crisis has reintroduced it. Also known as the “boom and bust” cycle, which is perhaps a bit more descriptive. The “Long Depression” had various antecedents and successors: 1837-1840, 1858-1861, 1893, 1907-1915, 1921-1922, 1929-1941.

3. The Socialist Project

a) With the spread of the capitalist economic system to industries beyond textiles, more workers were drawn to the theories of Marx and Engels and other socialist thinkers; socialist thought ranged from the gradualism of Prudohn to the direct action anarchism of Mikail Bakhunin, among others.


b) The establishment of radical labor unions dedicated to overthrowing the capitalist system emerged by 1905



(1) Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

(2) Confederation General du Travail (CGT) followed similar syndicalist, direct action tactics of direct control by workers of the shop floor



(3) 1905 Russian Revolution--the Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 opened an opportunity for revolutionaries because of a crisis in confidence in the Tsar. Although still largely an agricultural society, Russia did have a thin layer of industrial workers in urban centers like Moscow and St. Petersburg. In the latter city, under the leadership of Lev Davidovitch Bronstein (or, as he is better know, Leon Trotsky) worker soviets (Russian for council) were formed to from factories in the city to do the work of government. After the Revolution was defeated, leaders like Trotsky and Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) were exiled from the country.

4. Socialists and the Drums of War—whether to support the calls for war or not split many socialist parties on the national level. Socialists had long maintained that wars were fought in order to advance the capitalist enterprise at the expense of the working-class. Gradualists, who worked inside the national political structure, argued that the war effort needed to be supported, or the socialist political movement would be rendered irrelevant and marginalized politically; socialist further to the left argued that this presented an opportunity to overthrow capitalism, because support for the war among workers was “soft” and could be overcome.


a) Germany—the German Social Democratic party voted to support the war effort, while individual socialists—among them Karl Kautsky, Karl Liebnecht, and Rosa Luxemberg, went underground to work against the war, although all three and many of their compatriots ended up in jail, anyway.

b) France—the socialist Guesde and the syndicalist Jouhaux both supported the war …

c) …as did the Marxist Plekhanov and the anarchist Kropotkin in Russia


d) United States—Woodrow Wilson ran for his second term in 1916 promising to keep the United States out of the conflict in Europe, but by late summer of 1917 the United States had declared war on Germany, and the first troops began arriving shortly after that. Socialists who spoke out against the war quickly found themselves in jail; Eugene V. Debs, the 5-time Socialist Party candidate for president, was arrested in Canton, Ohio, in October 1917, tried, convicted of sedition, and remained in prison until 1922; IWW members were also rounded up and put on trial in 1917-18.

III. Total War and Total Carnage




A. Total War—most government officials, military leaders, and participants believed that the war would be over in a matter of months, if not weeks—and that their side would prevail, of course. By 1916, it became obvious to many that all sides would need to devote all possible resources to fighting the war, even though this meant limiting the amount of food available for civilians, while still requiring a full-day’s work to produce war material.


B. Casualties—37 million dead or wounded, including both military and civilians

1. France—1.4 million military deaths, 300,000 civilians. 1 in 5 men of military service age killed; 4,266,000 military wounded.

2. Great Britain and Ireland—885,000 military dead, 109,000 civilian, 1.66 million military wounded

3. United States—116,708 military dead, 757 civilians, 205,690 wounded

4. Germany—2 million+ military dead, 426,000 civilians, 4.2 million wounded

5. Russia—1.8 million military dead, 1.5 million civilian, nearly 5 million wounded.



C. Treaty of Versailles—in the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month, germany agreed to surrender. Forced to abandon Alsace-Lorraine (gained in the Franco-Prussian War 1870), demilitarize the Ruhr Valley, give up overseas colonies (which were quickly snapped up by the victors), and pay huge indemnitities to the allies (except the new Soviet Union, which had quit the war in 1917) to allied powers.

1. League of Nations—Woodrow Wilson’s vision of an international body meant to adjudicate international disputes, and thereby end the necessity for war

2. Recognition of national aspirations for some European ethnic groups.

a) Poland

b) Czecholslavakia

c) Yugoslavia

d) Hungary

3. Denied national aspirations



a) Ireland (temporarily—until settlement of the Anglo-Irish War in 1921)

b) India

c) Vietnam

4. Protectorates—a special status given to some groups who aspired to nationhood, but were deemed “not quite ready” for that step (included many groups in the Levant or Middle East)

a) Palestine and Zionism

Capitalism Transformed

I. Advancement of Technology

A. Communications

1. Telegraph--although this was an older technology (it had been around since the late 1830s), the first successful continuous transatlantic cable went into operation in 1866 (an earlier cable began operation in 1858, but it failed fairly quickly). This sped communication between Europe and North America from several week by boat to several minutes by wire.

2. Telephone--provided even faster person-to-person communication.

B. Electrical power--although electricity had been discovered in the 1750s (Ben Franklin), it was not until the 1880s that the 1879 invention of the light bulb paid big dividends.


1. Water power--used to operate early mills (both grain and textile), which is why these early mills were built along swift-flowing rivers like in Manchester, England, and Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

a) The water wheel was used to provide power for the machinery in the mill. The power was conveyed to the machines by a series of shafts and belt, but the further removed from the power source the machine was, the less power it received.

2. Steam power--the conversion to steam power allowed factories to be built anywhere that a boiler could be supplied with a source of heat and a boiler to turn water into steam--so it meant that factories were no longer tied down by geology. These factories still suffered, however, from the belt transfer of power, meaning that machines further removed from the immediate source of power did not perform as efficiently.


3. Electric power--the initial benefit of electric power was to extend the work day via the electric light bulb; work in factories could now be carried on throughout the night. The factory could be operated 24 hours a day.

a) Electric motors--after the turn of the 20th century, individual machines within factories began being supplied with individual electric motors. This meant that each machine tool received the same amount of power, and could be controlled by management at a certain speed.

b) Electric motors and the pace of work--the advent of individual electric motors to run machine tools allowed factory managers to control the pace of work with minimal supervision. While this did not mean the end of foremen or other supervisors, it made the task of supervising greater numbers of workers with fewer foremen easier.

c) Scientific management--the advent of the electric motor made the implementation of theories of “scientific management” easier, because workers could be made to work at the pace of work the machine set.



C. Urbanization--the growth of the factory system around the world led to the growth of city populations, as well.

1. Factory size--factories grew larger during this time period, as well, which allowed companies to exercise greater “economies of scale”--producing commodities in greater numbers, which allowed them to further invest in machinery (capital) and to sell these commodities at lower and lower prices.

2. Commodification of Leisure--the growth of urban populations also led to the commodification of leisure.


a) Taverns, pubs, and saloons--many of these establishments were owned by the breweries that produced the product sold there. These establishments also provided meeting places, as well as a place to socialize.


b) Sports teams--many of the early semi-professional sports teams were sponsored by capitalists (Harman’s example of Arsenal, but also the Decatur Staleys--later Chicago Bears--and the Ft. Wayne Zollner Pistons--later Detroit Pistons).


3. Improved Sanitation and Living Standards--as more people moved to cities to take jobs in factories, the rich became aware that the living standards of the poor needed to be raised to provide labor for these factories--and because the diseases that ravaged the poor in these urban areas because of the lack of sanitation also tended to jump to the places that the rich lived, as well.

a) Construction of sewers and safe supplies of potable water--including projects like reversing the flow of the open sewer that had been the Chicago River, which polluted the drinking water of the city in Lake Michigan

b) Park systems--develop in Europe and North America to give city residents “places to breath” and an “appreciation for nature.”





D. Henry Ford and the Five Dollar Day--perhaps Ford’s greatest innovation (even greater than his application of the assembly line). The Five Dollar Day permitted Ford’s workers to buy the products that they made--an unusual occurrence in that day and age.

1. Rationale--the annual labor turnover in the Ford factory before the Five Dollar Day was greater than 350%--meaning that for every job in the Ford factory, the company had to hire and train three and a half employees each year. Despite the simplicity of most of the jobs, this greatly decreased the productivity potential of the other innovations in the factory.


2. Enticement--workers did not like the pace of work, or the fact that their interactions with other worker were restricted because they were tied to their machines, which operated continuously--and they voted with their feet, moving to other, more attractive jobs when they became available. The promise of the Five Dollar Day--twice the going wage rate of the automobile industry, which itself was a relatively high wage industry--was also an attempt to entice workers to stay at Ford’s, because workers only got the money after staying more than a year with the company.

3. Reward

a) Ford garnered an incredible amount of positive publicity for this innovation; it was probably one of the most important factors in creating the legend of Henry Ford


b) Workers were rewarded by a profit-sharing scheme that paid them the equivalent of Five Dollars a Day is they stayed with the company. And met numerous other requirements set forth by the company: that they be married, that no boarders stay in their house, that they stay away from too much alcohol, that they passed the muster when a representative from the Ford Sociological Department showed up to interview them, and that they take English classes if English was not their first language.