Journalists could report on the many international events now of significance to their local readership: the plundering, the economic tensions, the smothering of revolts in Paraguay, China, and the US. They began to report on the anthropology of new peoples encountered overseas. The man of property found a conflict between his egalitarian ideology and his unequal relations with anyone not a white businessmen. He resolved the problem by considering himself of a superior race; the Enlightenment didn’t apply to women and foreigners. He considered himself the product of Progress, warping evolutionary theory into social Darwinism: history’s march produced the Enlightened Business Man, most fit and ready to dominate. He might try to dominate, but popular demand for democracy was growing, though completely implemented nowhere. Where voting occurred in Europe, as occasionally in France, the bourgeois parties called themselves liberal, reform, progressive, republican, radical and finally radical socialist. Of course when they would win elections, usually due to their superior funds, they’d shift back to the middle. Because bourgeois industrialism was associated with liberalism, the church became part of a peasant/royalist conservatism. But in Latin America parts of the church stayed on the anti-business side permanently, leading in part to modem liberation theology. Working-class organization persisted in mutual aid societies and co-ops, generally for production on continent, and generally for retail shops in Britain. Trade unions and strikes were usually illegal. But after a slump in the middle 1860’s new unions sprang up, and one of the few revolutions in Europe, the Paris commune of 1871, frightened the wits out of the bourgeois, who reacted with pronounced violence. By now the business class was against any social change. The intoxicated captains of industry encouraged, by tlieir behavior, the rise of individualism. The nuclear family arose as a protection of the individual’s lair against society, disconnected by new cash relationships that replaced everything from barter to slavery. When the depression came, to stay for some twenty years starting in the 1870’s, it effected the entire world at once and business individualism and nationalism merged in the stmggle for economic dominance. The flge of Cmpire (1875-1914): During the belle epoque, tliere was one chief nightmare among business liberals. If your agriculture, mining, and industry are carried out by “tlie colored races”, you become completely dependent on them... and tliey will demand emancipation. The business class regularly preached freedom, but they meant their own freedom to exploit others. As Anatole France observed, ‘ ‘The law in its majestic equality gives every man the same right to dine at the Ritz and to sleep under a bridge.” These contradictions led to the strange death of bourgeois liberalism, pushed to self-destruct in WWI by the new business conservatives and mass politics. Advertising was invented to sell to the masses the products of industrial production and imperial exploitation. It sold cinema, the five cent or nickelodeon pictures, which Page 46 Rain Winter/Spring 1992 Volume XIV, Number 2 rose to lavishness in only a few years: the first accessible mass media. Businessmen made fortunes in these new markets, but the consumables and the buying clout of the masses made it harder to keep them in their political place. There was still not much democracy. Even by 1914 half the male working class in Britain was disenfranchised by voting limitations. Ruling classes discussed their problems less honestly now since the public was listening. But as the pressure for enfranchisement grew, former liberal businessmen became openly conservative. They didn’t like these new changes. The government, for its part, tried to adjust by launching mass spectacles to promote nationalistic trust in the state. It worked. At the start of the war, from 1914 to 1915, 2 million British volunteered to be cannon fodder. Some governments began social programs to undermine socialism, but this didn’t always work because the programs were so modest. Progress had a negative impact on most people, so riots and peasant revolts became regular headaches for most governments. Separation between the wealthy and the workers had increased, reinforced by repression-minded city planners. So socialists found their own alternatives. Thousands of buying, processing and marketing co-ops for farmers flourished in each country. Wherever European workers gained the upper hand they created scores of co-ops, mutual support groups and strong unions. The French radicals even had something like the modem “small is beautiful” platform, promoting small farms, small businesses, and small communities. Craft workers and skilled journeymen, forsaken by industry, formed the most active, educated element in new socialist movements. But conspicuous consumption, a phrase coined in this age, or elite spending behavior, could gainfully employ a handful of these craftspeople. This helped the radical arts-and-crafts movement thrive, eventually led by artists such as William Morris, a socialist and naturalist. This movement spawned enlightened town planning, art nouveau and other progressive activities. Later, many artists reacted to art nouveau's anti-capitalist, anti-industrialist messages, and instead celebrated Modernity and Progress. Art’s avant garde lost its natural lines and materials and adopted geometric, artificial ones. The working class became extremely well organized in this period, despite anti-union employers, and the educated By the end ofthe 19th century the bourgeoisie were uncertain ofthe destination ofthe train they had boarded, the one called Progress. Enlightenment-inspired notions they had abandoned werefiring up the masses, and Capitalism was taking a right turn towards war.
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