姓 名: 陈玥彤 专 业:英语 年级、班级:12级1班
学 号:12301015 作业日期:2013.12.26
章 节:Chapter 15 European Civilization 1871-1914: Society & Culture
作业要求:Write a summary of The Waning of Classical Liberalism in about 200 -300 words in English.
体例说明:中文字体为宋体,英文为Times New Roman,小四字,行距1.5倍
The Waning of Classical Liberalism
Liberalism has gone through a series of changes in its development. Classical liberalism, starting from the 17th, reached its heyday in the 19th with a deepest principle emphasizing the liberty of the individual. In this view the individual was not simply formed by race, class, church, nation, or state but was ultimately independent of all such collective identities.
Forced by the changes in economic situations, governments had to intervene in economic activities. Thus the “new liberalism” and the welfare state with an enlarged role for government emerged. Besides, the liberalism was undermined also by many developments in the field of thoughts such as Darwinian evolution, the new psychology, trends in philosophy and the arts. Apart from the challenges from the field of thoughts, the popularity of struggle, encouraged by both intellectuals and actual historical events, also contributed to the decline of classical liberalism.
Driven by the economic trends, intellectuals and other currents, the classical liberalism faded step by step, but there are still signs of the persistence of liberalism in the half century before 1914.
姓 名: 张滢 专 业:英语 年级、班级:12级1班
学 号:12301033 作业日期:2013.12.15
章 节:Chapter 15 European Civilization 1871-1914: Society & Culture
作业要求:Write a summary of Revisionist and Revolutionary Socialism in about 800 -1000 words in English.
体例说明:中文字体为宋体,英文为Times New Roman,小四字,行距1.5倍
Revisionist and Revolutionary Socialism, 1880-1914
In 1875 the Marxist and Lassalle branches of the socialist movement united to form the Social Democratic Party. The German socialist party subscribed to Marxism. The leaders were August Bebel and William Liebknecht, who remained in touch with Marx until Marx's death in 1883. Engels died in 1895. The late work of Engels was concerned with codifying and disseminating the work of Marx. As German industry grew so it the membership of the Social Democratic Party.
In 1912 the SDP became the single largest party in the Reichstag, and one in three Germans voted for it. Bismarck was afraid of the socialist movement. Following two unsuccessful attempts on the life of the Kaiser in 1878 he imposed severe restrictions on the political activities of the socialists. The Reichstag had limited powers. It controlled taxation but had no power over the executive. The Imperial Chancellor was only responsible to the Emperor. In some individual state parliaments universal male suffrage did not apply. For example, in Prussia. The Saxon government abolished universal suffrage in 1896 when the socialists became too strong. Mobility between the classes was very low. It was rare for a worker to rise into the bourgeoisie. The new industrialists acted like patriarchs, very much in the manner of a Prussian landowner. For example, Stumm, the mine and factory owner, dominated every aspect of life the Saar basin. With German industrial expansion the standard of living of workers was rising. The SDP also had a programme of immediate social reform which was attractive to voters. German unions increased in strength. In 1900 the membership of the socialist unions, called the Free Trade Unions, was 680,000. By 1913 membership had risen to 2,575,000. The German unions became increasingly influential in SDP policy. There was some dissent from the official Marxist line of the SDP. In 1899 Eduard Berstein in his work The Presuppositions of Socialism opposed Marxism and maintained that the working movement should concentrate on immediate reforms. His 'revisionist' ideas were officially condemned by the German SDP. Nonetheless, Berstein remained a member of the SDP.
In short, Engels is so thoroughly convinced that the tactics based on the presumption of a catastrophe have had their day that he even considers a revision of them necessary in the Latin countries where tradition is much more favorable to them than in Germany. "If the conditions of war between nations have altered," he writes, "no less have those for the war between classes." Has this already been forgotten? No one has questioned the necessity for the working classes to gain the control of government. The point at issue is between the theory of a social cataclysm and the question whether with the given social development in Germany and the present advanced state of its working classes in the towns and the country, a sudden catastrophe would be desirable in the interest of the social democracy. I have denied it and deny it again, because in my judgment a greater security for lasting success lies in a steady advance than in the possibilities offered by a catastrophic crash. And as I am firmly convinced that important periods in the development of nations cannot be leapt over I lay the greatest value on the next tasks of social democracy, on the struggle for the political rights of the working man, on the political activity of working men in town and country for the interests of their class, as well as on the work of the industrial organization of the workers. In this sense I wrote the sentence that the movement means everything for me and that what is usually called "the final aim of socialism" is nothing; and in this sense I write down again today. Even if the word "usually" had not shown that the proposition was only to be understood conditionally, it was obvious that it could not express indifference concerning the final carrying out of socialist principles, but only indifference-or, as it would be better expressed, carelessness - as to the form of the final arrangement of things. I have at no time had an excessive interest in the future beyond general principles; I have not been able to read to the end any picture of the future. My thoughts and efforts are concerned with the duties of the present and the nearest future, and I only busy myself with the perspectives beyond so far as they give me a line o conduct for suitable action now. The conquest of political power by the working classes, the expropriation of capitalists, are no ends themselves but only means for the accomplishment of certain aims and endeavors. As such they are demands in the programme of social democracy and are not attacked by me. Nothing can be said beforehand as to the circumstances of their accomplishment; we can only fight for their realization. But the conquest of political power necessitates the possession of political rights; and the most important problem of tactics which German social democracy has at the present time to solve appears to me to be to devise the best ways for the extension of the political and economic rights of the German working classes.