Paul Leroy-Beaulieu: “Colonization Among Modern People”

Rob Edwards

Paul Leroy-Beaulieu: “Colonization Among Modern People”

• Leroy-Beaulieu was deeply involved in French political life

• Colonial expansion is the question of life and death for France

• France was formerly a great colonial empire, and that must be revived

• Europe-centered politics have left France with diminished prestige and territory

• Louisiana territories were a huge loss

• The new enlightened society realizes the potential, and believes in the civilizing mission of France as well as the capacity for colonial development

• 15-20000 colonizers per year out of France's 100,000 person per year surplus would be plenty to start colonies in Africa and in several other areas

• Lack of capital isn't the problem either

• In the end, it simply boils down to the lack of supporting spirit for colonial politics

• France, one it becomes an established colonial nation again, will again have open before it high hopes and big perspectives.

The British Empire: Colonial Commerce and “ The White Man’s Burden”

Joseph Chamberlain

The British Empire: Colonial Commerce and “ The White Man’s Burden”

Thesis:

· Joseph Chamberlain (1836-1914)

o British imperialist that argued the welfare of the Britain depended upon the preservation and extension of the empire.

o British Empire had a sacred duty to carry civilization to, Christianity, and British law to the “backwards” people of Africa and Asia.

· June 10, 1896 The Empire is based on commerce and cannot survive without it and should guard it from attack.

· March 31, 1897 The Empire cannot survive without its dependencies which are it natural markets for trade, half the British population would starve if the size of British Empire was reduced to the size of United Kingdom.

· January 22, 1894 England is entirely unable to support the enormous population, which is now maintained by the aid of her foreign trade.

· Pax Britannica

o March 31, 1897 Rule over these territories can only be justified if we can show that it adds to the happiness and prosperity of the people.

o Material improvement of the conquered peoples

o You cannot have omelettes without breaking eggs; you cannot destroy the practice of barbarism, of slavery, of superstition

o Britain has mission to civilize the barbarian of the world because of its importance.

"The Unconscious, Psychoanalysis, and Civilization and Its Discontents" by Sigmund Freud

A Note on the Unconscious in Psychoanalysis:

• Freud explains the definition of unconscious as a state in which the human being does not remember anything
• Things learned in the unconscious state are able to emerge in the conscious state
• Freud gives an example of a patient under hypnosis who recollects what happened during the unconscious state

Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis:

• Freud describes hypnotic patients again and explains how he helps them remember what happened during the unconscious state. After some help, the patients remember what happens
• Freud describes repressed thoughts which many hysteria patients do when traumatic events happen
• Freud believes that the cure to hysteria is to talk about the suppressed thoughts with the patient
• Freud provides an example of a patient who is cured of hysteria after she remembers a specific event which was repressed in her memory

Civilization and Its Discontents:

• Freud believes that man is inherently aggressive citing examples such Genghis Khan and World War I
• Freud believes that Civilization will suffer from this aggression and it will eventually crumble
• Freud disagrees with the communists who believe that private property is the reason for man's aggression. Instead he believes that aggression is part of man and nothing will be able to stop it

Prostitution in Victorian England

Thesis: The story of prostitutes in Victorian England showed a life of vulgarity and suffering.

x- Prostitute was beaten as a child, ran away to a lodging house.

2- 10-12 year olds sleeping together

x- Lived with a 15 year old as his wife (despite her being 12) until he was sent to prison

x- Lives with individuals who promiscuously change partners and boast of stealing

x- Begins to break and steal to be imprisoned intentionally.

x- Women go out for prostitution in order to earn money- failure to do so causes beating.

Mill, The Subjection of Women

Thesis: As an advocate for women's rights, Parliament member, John Stuart Mill, took his The Subjection of Women as an opportunity to point out man's flagrant abuse of power by discussing the nonsensical restrictions put in place by men and the surprising obedience of many to these restrictions.

I. Inequality
--A. Not a result of deliberation or forethought, or any social ideas, or any notion whatever of what conduced to the benefit of humanity or the good order of society.
--B. Simply placed on women by men for nonsensical reasons (ex: muscle strength). Therefore, it is not a supportable case.
--C. Inequality and the "rule of men" is "accepted voluntarily"
--> A huge sum of women do not accept it, however, as displayed in writings that have allowed for them to publicly share their displeasure.

II. Women's Struggle for Rights
--A. With no representative party as there is in the U.S., women in England act as part of an organized "Society" that is managed by women for the more limited object of obtaining the political franchise.
--B. Women demand admission into professions and occupations hitherto closed against them.
--C. Women begin to protest worldwide, not just in England the America, against the disabilities under which they labour.

III. Men as a Hinderance
--A. In a relationship, most men, excluding the brutish, desire "not a forced slave but a willing one; not a slave merely, but a favourite."
--B. Men, to instill fear in women ("to maintain obedience"), turned the whole force of education to effect their purpose.
--> Women are brought up in an educational system that leads them to think their ideal of character is the opposite of that of men. They are raised by education not to belive in self-will, and government by self-control, but submission, and yielding to the control of others.
--> "The duty of women"
--C. Being attractive to men became "the polar star of feminine education and formation of character."
--D. "the generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal."

IV. Suffrage
--A. "To have a voice...is a means of self-protection"
--B. "There is not a shadow of justification for not admitting women" under the same allowance of suffrage. "The majority of the women of any class are not likely to differ in political opinion from the majority of the men of the same calss."

V. Occupations
--A. Like men, women can prove themselves through success in an open profession, and thus prove their qualification.
--> No justification for occupational restrictions

Bernhardi: Germany and the Next War

Bernhardi argues that “war is a biological necessity of the first importance.”

War the Key to Healthy Development of Nations

Struggle

The struggle for existence is the basis of all healthy development

Struggle is a universal law of nature

War Leads to the Success of Growing Nations

Strong, healthy, flourishing nations increase in numbers

Conquest becomes the law of necessity to support the rising numbers of successful nations

The Right of Conquest

The right of conquest is universally acknowledged

The instinct of self preservation leads inevitably to war

The knowledge that war depends on biological laws leads to the conclusion that every attempt to exclude it from international relations must be untenable

"Why We Are Militant" by Emmeline Pankhurst

In a speech in the United States, Pankhurst expresses her ideas about women suffrage:

• Britain widen its suffrage to men three times after much rioting and violence
• After women have tried for years to gain suffrage peacefully, they have no more options but to be militant
• the women suffrage movement was almost dead until two women stood up in 1905 and asked a candidate when women would gain the right to vote
• Women must be militant to reach their goals and they are justified because of their the years of intolerance against them
• Women want to change the bad laws but cant without the right to vote
• The divorce and marriage laws are outdated and women need a voice to change them
• It is also and injustice that men receive higher wages than women for the same job
• Men are sympathetic of injustice in other countries so why aren't they sympathetic of the injustice to women in their own countries
• If men were treated the same way as women, they would not stand for it either

"The Yearning For Social Justice" by Nikolaus Osterroth

Osterroth describes the miserable working conditions of the mine:

• The miners must work long hours in grueling conditions
• Long term effects include elongated arms and crooked backs
• For the women who used to work in the mines, the work would cause premature births and damage to child-bearing organs

Osterroth's first acquaintance with the Social Democrats:

• With worker resistance against the new work rules, the miners turned to the Catholic Priests for guidance
• The Priests believe that God wants the miners to be humble servants to the mine owners
• The workers beleive that the priests should tell the owners that their actions are unchristian and hardhearted but instead the priests are accepting gifts from the owners
• Osterroth finds a Social Democrat leaflet and is encouraged by what he finds
• He agrees that the government and bourgeois had gone to far and it was time for the workers to unite through unions and stand up for their rights
• He is encouraged by the leaflet and decides to join the Social Democratic Party movement
• On May Day he gives a speech to demonstrate worker's solidarity and their defiance of capitalism

Friedrich Nietzsche "The Will to Power" and "The Antichrist"

Thesis: In The Will to Power, Nietzsche describes the basic animalistic drive for power that all men have. In The Antichrist, Nietzsche criticizes Christianity as a baseless religion that taught false morality and religion.

I. The Will to Power

a. Drive for power = freedom

b. Ethics – aimed at holding the desire for power in check

c. Society that gives up war and conquest = in decline

d. Democracy hates the will to power

e. Democracy – release of laziness, of weariness, of weakness

f. Order of rank is needed in “age of suffrage universal”

g. Order of rank determined by quantum of power

II. The Antichrist

a. Good – all that heightens power

b. Bad = all weakness

c. Happiness – feeling that power increases

d. Sympathy for weak is worse than any vice

e. Christianity – the religion of pity

f. In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point

g. Equal rights for all is a “poison of the doctrine”

From Myles Anderson: Mayhey on Prostitution

Statement of a Prostitute
I. Sixteen year old girl's stroy
A. Orphan who worked as a maid and was beaten by mistress
1. she ran away
B. She went to a lodging house for shelter
1. Saw and head many bad things
2. After several months, she was convinced to sleep with a young man whom she stayed with
3 months until he was taken to prison
3. She broke windows at a church so she could go to prison to punish herself
C. After she got out of prison, she continued living on the streets
1. At the lodging-house where she stayed, several dozen boys and girls would share one bed
2. They were all young
3. There was often fighting
4. Stole to so she could go to prison again to escape her life
D. After going to prison several times, she continues to lead the same life as before
E. the police ignore the things happening at these houses
F. All the boys and girls steal

From Myles Anderson: Drumont - "Jewish France"

Drumont:
1. conservative journalist, anti-semitic
2. Blamed Jews for contemperary degeneration

Jewish Fance
I. Comparison of Jews with Aryans (hostile to eachother)
A. Aryan means "noble", "generous" therefore Aryans have better morals than other races
B. Semites and Aryans have always been at war with eachother
1. Semites want to make Aryans servants
2. Modern Semites use tricks instead of violence and have infiltrated all of Europe
C. Semites are greedy and crafty vs. Aryans who are enthusiastic and chivalrous
D. Semites are Earthbound vs. Aryans who are connected to heaven
E. Semites follow instinct and take advantage of others vs. Aryans who are brave and devoted
F. Aryans are more creative
1. Semites steal Aryan creations

Reflections on Violence

Thesis: Sorel in this passage asserts the necessity of the myth of the general strike to overthrow the bourgeois society and violence if the workers are to fulfill their rightful place in the world.

• Economic progress profits future generations, but does it give the working class any glory?
• Workers see religion as a middle-class luxury, since the emotions it calls up are not those which inspire workmen.
• Does there exist among workmen forces capable of producing enthusiasm to lead society on the path of economic progress.
• Literature of the professors of rhetoric is mere chatter, and the attempt by scholars to find institutions in the past to use to discipline their contemporaries is a vain attempt.
• Morality is not doomed to perish as long as it can strengthen itself by an alliance with an enthusiasm capable of conquering all obstacles and prejudices.
• But this sovereign force will not be found among the paths of contemporary philosophers, inventors of reforms, and experts in social science.
• There is only one force, and that is the one resulting from propaganda in favor of a general strike.
• The idea of a general strike produces an entirely epic state of mind, and bends all energies for the realisation of better life for workers
• In the total ruin of institutions and morals there remains something powerful, the soul of the revolutionary proletariat.
• It will not be swept away in the general decadence of moral values, if the workers bar the road to middle-class corrupters with plainest brutality.
• Conditions necessary to allow the development of proletarian forces are violence enlightened by the idea of a general strike.
• It is to violence that Socialism owes those high ethical values by means of which it brings salvation to the modern world.

The Man Versus The State

Thesis: Herbert Spencer feared that growing government intervention in the economy and abandonment of laissez-faire would lead to socialism and slavery.

• Extension of this policy will create the idea that the government should intervene whenever something is wrong.
• It makes the assumption that it is the duty of the state to deal with all evils and secure all benefits
• Every extension of regulative policy involves an addition of regulatory agents, giving increasing power to the growing organization of officials
• Increasing power of a growing administrative organization is accompanied by decreasing power of the rest of society to resist its growth and control
• If this trend continues, it will lead to state-assumption of land, communication, and industry; private forms of which will die away
• These socialists are not thinking of accompanying pains, only promised benefits
• They are not regarding these evils as the ill-working of human nature
• Each member of the community will be a slave to the community as a whole.
• Slavery is the ultimate outcome

Inside the mind of the great FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

[pictured: artist's rendition of an Übermensch, or "Superman"]

Although widely derided at the time for his radical opinions, Friedrich Nietzsche catalyzed a revolution of Western philosophy with his embrace of an irrational worldview and harsh criticism of established institutions.

Some context: it's hard to pinpointii one inspiration for Nietzsche. Many point to Spinoza, but Nietzsche himself called the Spaniard "

a masquerade of a sickly recluse."

Key tenets of Nietzsche's philosophy:

The condition of mankind is inherently irrational

Man's advancement is motivated by a Will to Power (Wille zur Macht), i.e. achievement and ambition, not some inner morality

Suffering is endemic to this existence -- it will always exist and be present

Certain men are better (i.e. more talented or capable) than others-- perhaps rooted in the evolutionary model

Thus, these

institutions are INVALID!!!!:

Platonic idealism: There is no dichotomy between the "ideal" and the "real": it's just one unified world

Christianity: for the same reasons as above. The idea that there is a higher power that will "redeem" all men abhors Nietzsche-- there is only one world, in which suffering is endemic. Christianity subsidizes mediocrity by promising fake redemption. GOD IS DEAD!!!!!

Democracy and socialism: these governments let the masses rule themselves. The masses are BAD. No good.

So what should we do?

Contrary to popular belief, FN is NOT nihilistic...there is a purpose in a purposeless world

The purpose of life should be to protect the strong, not to help out the weak.

We should cultivate SUPERMEN (Übermensch) in our society

(another modern interpretation shown)

Friedrich Nietzsche: "Teh Will to Power" and "Teh Antichrist"

THE WILL TO POWER:

-The man's most fundamental desire, his drive for power, must be checked

-Any society that instinctively gives up war and conquest is in decline

-Democracy represents disbelief in great human beings

-"At bottom we are one and all self-seeking cattle and mob."

-European democracy represents a release of laziness, weariness, weakness

-Rank is determined by power

-Annihilation of decaying races of Europe is needed

-Root of all evil has won

-Degeneration of rulers and ruling classes has caused the worst problems in history

-Single individual can justify existence of whole millennia

-"Not mankind but overman is the goal!"

THE ANTICHRIST

-Good=all that heightens power in man

-Bad=all that proceeds from weakness in man

-Happiness=the feeling of increasing power

-Sympathy for weak is worse than any vice

-Christianity is sympathy for the weak

-Christianity tries to break down higher men

-Christianity is the religion of pity

-All of Christianity is imaginary causes and results

-Christianity destroys courage and will to improve one's situation

Emile Zola, The Experimental Novel

Emile Zola

The Experimental Novel

Thesis: Emile Zola in The Experimental Novel treats literature as a science, that literature is in fact a study of the effect of individual on society and effect of society on an individual.

· Emile Zola (1840-1902) was one France’s great novelists

o Wrote a famous letter in 1898 in defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus

o Description of Paris Slums made him famous both as a social critic and a literary innovator

· Emile Zola uses physiology to explain how science explains how man works from the mechanism of the organs.

· Emile continues that man is also influenced by society and his social condition.

· That literature is the study of the individual’s effect on society and the effect of society on the individual.

· Science wants to explain these conditions to be purely physical and chemical which aids him in finding the laws which govern them easily

· What constitutes the experimental novel:

o To posses a knowledge of the mechanism of the phenomena inherent in man

o To show the machinery of his intellectual and sensory manifestations, under the influences of heredity and environment

o To exhibit man living in social conditions produced by himself, which he modifies daily, and in the heart of which he himself experiences a continual transformation

· We learn to use science to solve scientifically the question of how men behave when they are in society.

· The experimental novel is a consequence of the scientific evolution of the century.

· The metaphysical man is dead; our whole territory is transformed by the advent of the physiological man.

· We have become experimentalists instead of philosophers

· The experimental method in letters, as in the sciences, in on the way to explain the natural phenomena, both individual and social, of which metaphysics, until now, has given only irrational and supernatural explanations.

Gustave Le Bon: Mass Psychology

Rob Edwards

Gustave Le Bon: Mass Psychology

• Gustave Le Bon was a french social psychologist with strong conservative leanings

• Thousands of isolated individuals can be extremely susceptible to mob mentality when the opportunity presents itself

• Whoever the individuals are that compose these crowds, regardless of their class, occupations, character, or intelligence, all become one collective mind

• A lot of times this is brought about by the unconscious dealings of the mind that far outnumber its conscious dealings

• The greater part of our daily actions are the results of hidden motives which escape our observation

• In a crowd, every act and thought is contagious

• People become the slave of the unconscious activities of their brains, and mob rule takes over

• Mob rule makes all people, no matter what their social class, act like uncivilized beast

• The ideas that take control of mobs are often the ones that are the most absolute and simple

• Crowds have a powerlessness to reason

• The leaders of these crowds are more frequently men of action than thinkers

• “Ideas, sentiments, emotions, and beliefs possess in crowds a contagious power as intense as that of microbes”

Jeanne Bouvier- The Pains of Poverty

Bouvier worked a 13 hour day and often stayed up all night continuing to work, but she and her family still often wanted for food.

-At age 11 she began to work at a factory for 13 hour days, although there were laws against it

-Sheriff came and took all their possessions

-Family forced to rent hovel, still not enough money

-Mother beat her for not getting raises at factory

-Factory foreman kept money for wages for himself

Groncourt Brothers, On Female Inferiority

Thesis: The Groncourt brothers believed that women were inferior to men both physically and intellectually. If a woman tries to improve intellectually then she becomes unbearable.

I. Women are only beautiful in their hips

II. Women are not naturally smart

a. Anything smart that they do is a product of rigorous education

III. Men like women who are always happy and does not try to improve intellectually

If a mistress tries to become more educated and talk about intellectual subjects with man she becomes very annoying and unbearable

"The Man Versus the State" Spencer

“The Man Versus the State” by Spencer

Thesis: Concerned about the shift of liberals to state intervention, Spencer stressed the necessity of traditional laissez-faire policies in order to avoid socialism and slavery by the government.

• The policy of those who support state intervention takes for granted the fact that evils can be removed from society
• That all “evils” should be dealt with by the state
• The more govt intervenes, the more they will demand for even more intervention
• Every extension of this policy calls for “growth of officialism” and increase of powers of officials
• The growing power of administrative govt brings the decreasing power of society to resist them and control their own life
• Coming slavery? à because this impending socialism involves slavery
• The changes will lead to state-ownership of land and communication and state-usurpation of industries (most of the private forums)
• Through govt-intervention, people’s liberty will be surrendered as “material welfares were cared for”
• Each person would be a slave to the community as a whole
• Liberalism should function in limiting govt power and Parliament powers