WHII.7

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=Describe the rise of unions and socialism, including the ideas and influence of Robert Owen and Karl Marx.=



** Topics on the Page **

 * Overview **
 * Trade and Labor Unions **
 * ** African Americans and the Labor Movement in the United States **
 * Socialism **
 * ** 5 Attributes of Socialism **
 * Robert Owen **
 * Karl Marx **
 * Women in the Workforce **
 * **Women's Suffrage**
 * **Women Suffrage Movement and World Peace, 1914-18**
 * **Effects on Women in the United States**
 * **Rheta Childe Dorr and //What Eight Million Women Want// **

[[image:MAP.jpg width="80" height="41"]]See also AP World History Key Concept 5.1

 * To understand the rise of unions, socialism, and the ideas of Robert Owen and Karl Marx, one must first understand the consequences of the Industrial Revolution
 * By the end of the 19th century, working and living conditions for working classes were intolerable, poverty was rampant, and child labor and impossible work hours exploited human beings in numerous ways.
 * In response, labor unions and socialist parties arose in an effort to give workers a way to express their grievances and seek changes in industrial practices.

Timetoast Timeline - Industrial Revolution


 * [[image:rotating gif.gif width="43" height="43" link="@WHII.6"]]See World History II.6 for more on the Industrial Revolution **

**Trade and Labor Unions**
Background sources on the Industrial Revolution - The Internet Modern History Sourcebook at Fordham University


 * Trade Union History** from Trade Union Congress, London Metropolitan University


 * The Early Labor Movement**

In the eighteenth century, much of Western society witnessed the world’s first Industrial Revolution and the abandonment of an agrarian culture with craft based production. The young industrial environment provided much of the momentum for the establishment and advancement of the labor union. The start of the Industrial Revolution sparked a rising fear in the craft associations of the time, who feared encroachment on their established jobs, wage changes, and workforce restructuring. The rapid expansion of the industrial society quickly drew large numbers of women, children, rural workers, and immigrants into the work force to labor for meager wages in appalling conditions. These working environments would sow the seeds of the early labor movement.

Over the last three hundred years, trade/labor unions have developed into a number of forms, influenced by differing political and economic regimes. The immediate objectives and activities of trade unions vary, but may include:
 * **Provision of benefits to members:** Early trade unions provided a range of benefits to insure members against unemployment, ill health, old age and funeral expenses. Professional training, legal advice, and representation for members is still an important benefit of trade union membership.
 * ** Collective bargaining :** Trade unions are able to operate openly and are recognized by employers, and they may negotiate with employers over wages and working conditions.
 * ** Industrial action **: Trade unions can organize strikes or resistance to reach certain wants and goals.
 * **Political activity:** Promotion of favorable measures to the interests of their members or workers as a whole. They can practice campaigns, undertake lobbying, or financially support individual candidates or parties.
 * **Protect workers rights**: Trade unions protect the rights of workers in their membership. Each worker should not be abused by the employer and has a right to demand a fair wage, safe working conditions and equal rights under the law
 * **Dispute Resolution**: Trade unions represent the interests of workers in the event of a dispute. They intervene through implementing grievance mechanisms as well as providing conflict resolution through arbitration and mediation.
 * **Improving working conditions**: Trade unions strive to improve the working conditions of the workers they represent. These can be done in advocating for shorter working hours and better working conditions

London Metropolitan University has an interactive timeline on the British trade union movement

Click here for a PBS lesson plan on trade unions, in which the students act out a negotiation. Click here for a lesson plan on labor unions in the US, in which the students hold a mock trial to find out who is to blame for workplace disasters

[|Labor History Timeline] from the AFL-CIO.


 * [[image:Rotating_globe-small.gif]]African Americans and the Labor Movement**


 * Link to an article on [|Labor Day, the labor movement, and black Americans.]
 * Link to //[|The Black Man and the Unions]// written by W.E.B. DuBois in March, 1918.

See also **United States History II.5** on the rise of unions and radical political parties in the industrial era

** Socialism **
Socialism is a system of government in which the state controls the economy and runs businesses for the benefit of citizens. It is a socioeconomic system where property and the distribution of wealth are under social control. This control may be either:
 * 1) **Direct**: exercised through popular collectives including workers’ councils
 * 2) **Indirect**: exercised on behalf of the people by the state.


 * More Definitions: Socialism**
 * 1) a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
 * 2) Economic system where everyone equally owns production.
 * 3) Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or government ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.
 * 4) a system of society or group living in which there is no private property.



The origin of modern socialist movements is found in the working class. Click [|here] for a timeline of socialism beginning in 1799.

Social critics saw themselves as reacting to the excesses of poverty and inequality in the period, and pushed for reforms such as the egalitarian distribution of wealth and the transformation of society into small communities. Socialism implied the elimination of money, markets, capital, labor, and commodity.

Click [|here] for a video for a quick video that looks at the root of socialism, its history, and how it fits into political ideologies.

For a more in-depth explanation of socialism click [|here].

Sourcebook on Socialism - The Internet Modern History Sourcebook at Fordham University

Link to a [|Crash Course overview video] on Capitalism and Socialism, including info on Karl Marx.


 * [[image:Quill_and_ink.png link="@http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/leaders_thinkers.html"]]Robert Owen: (1771-1858) **

[[image:Multimedia.png]]View this video to learn about Robert Owen and his New Harmony experiment

 * [[image:robert_owens.jpeg width="233" height="259" align="right" caption="Portrait of Robert Owen"]]At the beginning of the 19th century reformers like Robert Owen were concerned with the social conditions that the factory system seemed to be creating.
 * Owen was a prominent industrialist who began to advocate for the establishment of new communities that would alleviate the poverty and suffering that resulted from the Industrial Revolution.
 * Considered the father of the co-operative movement and one of the first socialist thinkers, Robert Owen founded New Lanark, a model factory community in Scotland.
 * It is widely regarded as one of the earliest examples of open primary education, limited work hours, disabled worker compensation, and other innovations of labor movements in the 19th century.
 * Owen believed that if you could change the environment you could change the person. This instinct to help his fellow man and a consciousness that class was not inherent in the person but a result of the conditions in which the person lived, formed central themes in socialist thought throughout its development.
 * He believed it was the business's responsibility to provide for laborers: housing, health, food and education. This is known as the corporate responsibility approach where business owners need to be more responsible for workers.

Click [|here] to read a collection of primary sources written by Owen about New Views of Society provided by Yale University.
 * Owen believed that the root evils in society were the institutions of religion, marriage, and most importantly private property. He attempted to create a community without these institutions, hoping that it would change the way people behaved.
 * He envisioned rural villages composed of farms and small-scale industry that operated cooperatively by the citizens.
 * Along with [|Charles Fourier], he laid out specific ideas for the communities including population and land sizes.
 * However, his attempt to create a Utopian community in New Harmony, Indiana failed for a number of reasons.
 * Throughout the remainder of his life, Owen promoted the idea of 'socialism' and became one of the leaders of Britain's growing labor movement. Although he had some harsh criticisms of competition, private property and the market economy, which drew some people away from his ideas; his advocacy helped to create cooperative societies, labor exchanges, and trade unions.

Timeline:
 * 1799 - Owen purchased cotton mill in New Lanark, Scotland; planned to make into an experimental industrial community to prove that a factory can be both profitable and humane
 * 1824 - Owen moves to America, created experimental 1,000 member colony called New Harmony in Indiana; although a center for progressive thought, members lacked the practical skills needed to keep the community together.
 * 1828 - New Harmony collapses, Owen returns to London; begins to promote vision of what he began to call 'socialism'

__Helpful Owen Sites:__
 * The History Guide
 * Education in Robert Owen's New Society: The New Lanark Institute and Schools


 * Click here for a lesson plan on capitalism and socialism


 * Click here for a lesson plan on various economic systems

** Karl Marx: (1818-1883) **



"No thinker in the nineteenth century," noted historian Isaiah Berlin, "has had so direct, deliberate and powerful influence upon mankind as Karl Marx" (quoted in //Karl Marx: His Life and Environment//, Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 1).

Marx and Engels' Writings

**Audiobook with text of The Communist Manifesto**

Berlin, Isaiah. (1963). Karl Marx: His life and environment. (Third Edition). New York: Oxford University Press.

Click on the image to the right for information about Mexican artist Diego Rivera.


 * Karl Marx was a German writer and philosopher of history and economics, whose ideas significantly influenced the development of socialist theory and political economic thought in totality.
 * Although most Marxist theories are attributed only to him, Karl Marx's friend Friedrich Engels was a driving force in the creation and production of Marx's ideas.
 * Trade unionists and socialist political parties were greatly inspired by the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, notably //Das Kapital// (1867) and //The Communist Manifesto// (1848).
 * Marx believed that "the history of society is the history of man seeking to attain mastery of himself and of the external world by means of his creative labour" (Berlin, 1970, p. 7).
 * Marx describes history through the lens of class struggle - the perpetual struggles of different social classes. It is from this class struggle that historical progress emerges, as one social class triumphs over another.
 * In his critique of Industrial Capitalism, Marx argues that the dominant struggle of his time was between the proletariat (the working classes) and the bourgeoisie (the ruling classes); the conflict between those that own the means of production and those that must sell their labor in order to survive.
 * Thus to Marx, history is defined between the social interactions of oppressors and the oppressed. The oppressors control the means of production and the government, leaving the oppressed with no way to resist exploitation and domination. Capitalist Industrial society continues this pattern of class warfare, pitting the “bourgeoisie” (owners) against the “proletariat” (workers).
 * [[image:200px-Karl_Marx_001.jpg width="220" height="310" align="right" caption="Karl Marx, 1875"]]In the //Communist Manifesto//, Marx predicts that dire working conditions caused by the industrialization will lead to a series of revolutions that would transform human beings and ultimately remove the need for a state.
 * Marx sought a new vision of society in which the workers would rise up against their oppressors, seize control of organizations and institutions, and create a classless system in which everyone could prosper. For Marx, the fall of the bourgeoisie and the rise of proletariat were both inevitable.

Timeline Timetoast Timeline
 * 1844 - Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels meet in Paris France.
 * 1848 - Marx and Engels publish the //Communist Manifest;// predicted that as capitalism progresses, the working class would become so large, poor and unhappy that revolution would be inevitable. This would lead to 'socialism', a workers state where people contributed to their ability and received according to their need. Government would soon be unnecessary and a new, stateless society would take way - 'communism'.
 * 1867 - Marx publishes the first volume of //Das Kapital//; an attempt at analyzing all aspects of life through the economic forces of history.
 * 1883 - Marx dies.
 * 1885 - Engels publishes the second volume of //Das Kapital//, edited by Engels from an earlier draft by Marx.
 * 1894 - Engels publishes the third volume of //Das Kapital.//
 * 1895 - Engels dies.


 * Click here for a lesson idea on Karl Marx and communism
 * Click here for a list of resources on Karl Marx from Mr. Donn's

__Important Things to Note:__
 * Marx's emphasis on class struggle throughout "history of all hitherto existing society" is heavily dependent on the German Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's theories of dialectics.
 * The personal relationship between Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels is an interesting irony; it is not coincidental that as with most intellectual and political movements, the privileged leisure time afforded by Marx’s and Engels’ class status enabled them to write the definitive critique of class status.
 * The personal relationship between Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels is an interesting irony; it is not coincidental that as with most intellectual and political movements, the privileged leisure time afforded by Marx’s and Engels’ class status enabled them to write the definitive critique of class status.


 * **Critique of Marx's Ideas:**
 * Marx and Engels envisioned society was idealist.
 * A classless society means there is no government and no one to regulate the state.
 * Socialism is utopian and causes chaos in the state.
 * A state with no private property where everyone shared everything will be ungovernable

__Helpful Marx Sites:__
 * “Karl Marx’s Sociology”.
 * “The History Guide: Lectures on Modern European Intellectual History: Karl Marx”
 * “Marxism Page”
 * [|Karl Marx] from Philosophers from Trinity College.

Review the material on Karl Marx with this [|Jeopardy-style game.]

[[image:Female_Rose.png]]**Women in the Workforce**
By 1914 only 10% of trade unionists were women.
 * However, of the total women working, only 10% of them were organized.
 * "Of the 10% of organized women, almost half were members of unions in the textile industry (the only industry in which they had maintained continuous organization), and a high proportion of the remainder were members of teaching, clerical and shop workers unions." TUC History Online

Link to //[|Women Working, 1800–1930]// is a digital exploration of women's impact on the economic life of the United States between 1800 and the Great Depression from the Harvard University Library Open Collections Program.


 * WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE. See also World History II.9 **


 *  The fight for the vote was the single demand around which the disparate strands of the women's movement could rally in the late nineteenth century.
 * By the end of the 19th century the women's suffrage campaign had a mass following among working class women.
 * Many of its leaders were well known as socialists and worked through various labor movement organizations as well as establishing their own organization - the Lancashire and Cheshire Women Textile and Other Workers' Representation Committee.
 * In 1903 the Pankhursts (Emmeline and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia) formed the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU).
 * In its early years the WSPU had strong labor movement connections but apart from the Independent Labour Party, the labour movement was slow to support women's suffrage and the link was severed. The WSPU concentrated its efforts on influential and 'well placed' women in a less democratic pressure group style of campaigning differing only from the salon style of the older middle class suffrage societies in its less orthodox tactics.
 *  Individual acts of arson and terrorism captured the headlines, as did the strong-arm response of the Liberal government.
 * The mass campaigns of working class women with which Sylvia Pankhurst was identified attracted less media attention. Sylvia was expelled from the WSPU in 1914 because of her support for labor movement causes and for her activities among working class women in the East End of London.

TUC History Online
 * Women Suffrage Movement and World Peace, 1914-18**
 * Women in the United States played a critical role in advocating for peace prior to and during the First World War
 * Women such as Jane Addams, Crystal Eastman, Lucia Ames Mead, and others advocated for world peace during the World War One and are credited for keeping the United States out of the war until 1917.
 * Crystal Eastman and the Women's Peace Movement, New York Historical Society
 * Movements established by these women included: The Women Peace Party (WPP), the Nations Main Suffrage Organization, National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), American Union Against Militarism (AUAM).
 * They held anti-war demonstrations and protests such as the Women's Peace Parade in New York City, 1914 and represented the united States at the Women's Peace Conference in Hague 1915 and the International Woman Suffrage Conference in Budapest 1913.

National Federation of Women's Workers


 * Effects on Women in the US**
 * Greater economic freedoms given to women in the Industrial Revolution allowed for the overall growth of women's social movements and political activism
 * **Rheta Childe Dorr**, who was a journalist during the Progressive Era, campaigned to end child labor and sought to improve trade union rights within the US. She also helped to found the [|Women's Trade Union League] of New York.

Dorr wrote a book in 1910 entitled **What Eight Million Women Want**.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Her work helps to showcase the growing influence of women in a once male dominated public sphere. The three main movements examined in her book include economic freedom of women in industries, women’s suffrage, and marriage freedom and divorce.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In her dreams for the future she states, “The division of labor between [men and women] will be on a natural and not conventional lines. No one will be rewarded according to sex, but according to work performance”.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Like many other ideas at the time, Dorr believed in equality based on merit. Her ideas can be connected to those of Marx, where no one would be ranked on an unfair basis, but live within a classless society in which your abilities and hard work would allow you to prosper.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Click [|here] to read more about Dorr and look through primary sources that include excerpts from her writings including in What Eight Million Women Want.

__**References:**__

Donnachie, Ian (2003) Education in Robert Owen's New Society. Retrieved 26 February 2011 from The Encyclopedia of Informal Education's site: []. Duiker, W. J. & Spielvogel, J. J. (2002). The essential world history. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Elwell, Frank, 2003, //The Sociology of Karl Marx//: @http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Marx/index.htm Karl Marx (2010). Retrieved on 26 February 2011 from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's site: []. Karl Marx. Retrieved 26 February 2011 from Spartacus Educational's site: []. Friedrich Engels. Retrieved 26 February 2011 from Spartacus Educational's site: []. Marx and Engels' Writings. Retrieved 26 February 2011 from Marx and Engels' Writings's site: []. Marxism Page (2011). School of Politics and International Relations, College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University: @http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/ Montagna, Joseph A. (2012). The Industrial Revolution as discussed by the Yale University/New Haven Teachers’ Institute: @http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1981/2/81.02.06.x.html PBS (2005). Timeline - //Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism//. Retrieved 23 February 2012 from PBS site: @http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/timeline.html PBS (2005). 'Leaders and Thinkers: Robert Owens.' //Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism//. Retrieved 23 February 2012 from PBS site: @http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/leaders_thinkers_owen.html PBS (2005). 'Leaders and Thinkers: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles'. //Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism//. Retrieved 23 February 2012 from PBS site: @http://www.pbs.org/heavenonearth/leaders_thinkers_marx_engels.html Robert Owen (2004). Retrieved 26 February 2011 from The History Guide's site: []. Spencer, L and Krauze, A. //Hegel for Beginners// Published by Icon Books, 14 of 175 pages reproduced here. Retrieved 23 February 2012 from site: @http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/easy.htm http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Labor_union