Seminar Paper on William Cobbett's Rural Rides

William Cobbett was a radical journalist and politician who lived from 1763 to 1835. He originated from Farnham, Surrey (about 45 minutes from here) where his father was a farmer and inn keeper. In his early life, he was a crow scarer and plough boy on his father’s farm before moving to London in 1783 where he found work as a clerk. He then joined the army in 1784, which took him to Canada until 1791 when he discovered the quartermaster stealing funds. He tried to expose this by writing a pamphlet, but did not have enough evidence and was accused of being a trouble maker and so fled to France with his new wife. They soon moved to America where Cobbett taught English to French refugees. It was here that he launched his career as a journalist, under the name “Peter Porcupine”.

During his time in the United States he wrote many pamphlets and founded and edited several small periodicals, including The Political Censor and The Porcupine Gazette. However, due to some of his accusations, a libel suit was filed against him and he returned to England in 1800. He was welcomed as a “literary asset” and opened a bookshop before starting the famous Weekly Political Register in 1802. His turn to radicalism and criticism of the government's handling of an army mutiny had serious consequences, in 1810 Cobbett was convicted of sedition and was in prison for 2 years. He was released in 1812, and emerged as a great popular spokesman for the working classes, setting up a cheaper periodical, the Register in which he championed the working classes and parliamentary reform, while condemning the government for high taxes and widespread unemployment. He went back to America in 1817 and returned in 1819 to find industrialisation in full swing, which he repeatedly attacked in his group of essays Rural Rides, which I will be focusing on.

Although his more political projects, the Parliamentary Debates and the Parliamentary History of England, were taken over by others while he was in prison, he never lost his interest in politics. He ran for Parliament unsuccessfully twice but was elected in 1832 from Oldham, following the acceptance of the Great Reform Bill which was passed that year. The parliamentary reform that succeeded this fell short of the demands of Cobbett and the Radicals, since the working class was still denied the vote. He opposed much of the legislation of the new Whig government in the reformed Parliament, especially the New Poor Law of 1834, which effectively criminalised the poor and was designed to be rid of them, either by locking them away in workhouses or by shipping them off to the colonies.

Cobbett has been praised as the prophet of democracy, but most of his writings are idealist in the way that they look back to the old agrarian England of responsible landlords and contented tenants. He is not thought of as a particularly profound thinker; his comments on economic matters were rarely solid and emotion rather than reason decided many of his conclusions. But the fact that he himself grew up a farmer’s son mean that he was very passionate about the interests of the common man, and his ability to write in a way that was understood by the working class made him the leading English Radical of the early 19th century and a very effective journalist and social commentator.

Cobbett was very interested in the plight of the working class, and he famously thought that “when farmers became gentlemen, labourers became slaves”, referring to the Act of Enclosure which forced poor labourers from the common land to the cities and, ultimately, helped the industrial revolution which Cobbett opposed. One belief of Cobbett’s was that “men fail much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent” (Advice to Young Men: And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829)). He liked to see people earning a living, and thought that “unless people will do their duty, they will have themselves, and only themselves, to thank for their ruin” (Rural Rides page 42), however this soon became almost impossible for the peasantry. He blamed the government and thought that rapid industrialisation was going to destroy traditional ways of life, a view that was reinforced on his travels during Rural Rides when he noted that farm workers had been reduced to “walking skeletons”. He therefore had no time for a government that taxed the poor into workhouses, or the army who he saw as free loaders, or the church and its tithes (a proportion of crops paid yearly to the church). He was a very passionate man and thus a very passionate journalist.

He is often seen as the first real journalist, as he did proper research and got first hand experience of what he was writing about. This is exemplified in Rural Rides which was originally published in the Register and in 1830 took book form. It was the rising tax on newspapers that lead him to publish pamphlets, such as the Two Penny Trash, which achieved a circulation of 40,000, instead of weekly periodicals. He was a champion of the people, often writing in support of revolutions such as the Swing Riots, against the industrialisation of farming, and was not one to mince his words. His journalistic philosophy was to “sit down to write what you have thought, and not to think about what you shall write”, showing him as a very practical man. He was also critical of other journalism around at the time, as he was famously quoted to say; “The very hirelings of the press, whose trade it is to buoy up the spirits of the people. Have uttered falsehoods so long, they have played off so many tricks, that their budget seems, at last, to be quite empty” (http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_cobbett.html).

In rural rides he explores what it is that is causing “a state of things, where all is out of order; where self-preservation, that great law of nature, seems to be set at defiance” (page 19). He was appalled by the taxes and tithes that reduced farmers to poverty and pushed them off what was once common land. This view is typified on page 27 when he says “all that mass of wealth that is vulgarly called church property; but which is, in fact, public property, and may, of course, be disposed of as the Parliament shall please”. The anger coming through here is moving to the reader and, throughout the essays, his love of the country and everyone in it is shown through the venom in his words.

Rural Rides was researched and written when Cobbett was in his sixties, showing his intense dedication to the cause. He sums up his intention when writing it; “that I may see as many farmers as possible, and that they may hear my opinions and I theirs” (page 26). He is holding out a hand to the less educated people, trying to spread knowledge and debate, in the hope that it may somehow spread to government. His want for someone to speak out is shown on page 33; “Unless, then, we speak out here... we shall not only be totally ruined, but we shall deserve it”. He was a big believer in speaking out for your rights, although he was never a violent man or a protestor. The main philosophy that he lived by was that “if they all... come boldly forward, everything will be done necessary to preserve themselves and their country” (page 40), however I think that this was idealistic as the government has to be willing to listen before talking can do any good. His belief that “The noble men and gentlemen, who are in Parliament, and who are disposed to adopt measures of effectual relief, cannot move with any hope of success unless backed by the yeomen and farmers” was, in my view, misled, because governments and monarchies have been ruling for centuries without the explicit support of the peasantry, and if the government is as corrupt as Cobbett believes them to be, they will find their way around a few lowly dissenters who do not even have a vote. Cobbett died on his farm near Guilford on June 18, 1835.

Bibliography

Cobbett, W, Rural Rides in the Counties of Surrey, Kent , Sussex, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Somersetshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Hertfordshire. (1830)

William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men: And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829). Letter I: To A Youth

http://www.answers.com/topic/william-cobbett

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/william_cobbett.html

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/123318/William-Cobbett

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRcobbett.htm

http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/text/contents_page.jsp?t_id=Cobbett

Seminar 4: The Communist Manifesto

Some of the points in the Manifesto that I am particularly interested in include the fact that Marx is looking at the matter in a very practical way, talking about changing society rather than taking a laissez faire attitude and letting things work themselves out. However, I am not sure that the changes he proposes are necessarily the best way to go. This may be because I find it extremely difficult to conceive a society like the one that Karl Marx sets out. I have to agree though that his insight into how society is structured and the “machine” of the working class does make sense. It has to be remembered that in the 21st century, in the Western, capitalist world, we now have a balance between work and enjoyment, therefore we can have a job and reap the rewards. Because of this, some of Marx’s ideas are no longer relevant, and the loss of this freedom would discourage many from communism.

We discussed in class that the second section in the Manifesto brings to light the positives of communism, which many of us had written off as a purely negative thing. For example, it would eliminate religion and other such barriers, which would make society, laws and debates much less complicated and controversial. However, the fact that everyone becomes part of the workforce, as just another cog in the machine, is a negative. It could easily happen that personality and individuality gets lost. We looked at China and the Soviet Union as examples of the manifesto at work, and also mentioned Cuba and Venezuela. Taking China, for example, it is very closed off from the western world and this may have encouraged its success. This is because being open to the western world would be likely to inspire doubts as to the fairness of the system and encourage people to want to own things for themselves and to want more from their life. Both China and the Soviet Union have been pretty successful in setting up Communist societies, as have Israel's Kibbutzes in which everyone is equal and the whole community works to provide for everyone. In the western world there have also been several similar communities built up where they trade and barter, however these communities still have to work in a capitalist economy and so are not pure examples of communism. The problem with these communities is that they offer no independence or freedom.

We also tried to figure out why communism has been so successful in these countries; it is relatable to the majority of the population, the manifesto is written in clear, simple layman’s terms and so is easily understood and followed, it feeds upon the grievances of the population and so is popular, and it is very practical. It was also suggested that Communism may be more suited to larger populations, where the economy would be more productive.

It was said that the recent financial crisis might possibly open society up to change like this as people become poorer and more unhappy with the social and economic system that we currently live by. Communism is often seen as a “spectre” or ghost, especially in Europe, underlying and always there, just needing something or someone to give it life. One of the main positives of the Communist Manifesto is that Marx and Engels updated it several times in their lifetimes and so it is still quite valid to society today.

Lecture 4: Marxism and Karl Marx

Marxism is very Hegelian in nature. Marx himself, who died in 1883, is said to have achieved a fusion of Hegelian philosophy (especially of history and dialectics), British empiricism (especially the economics of Smith and Ricardo) and French revolutionary politics (especially socialist politics). He was a journalist, working as an editor in 1841 and the London correspondent for the New York Tribune in the 1850s.

He was also an economist, viewing the subject as essential to the understanding of human life and the motive power of history. Men were seen as the productive animal (as opposed to Plato’s political animal, Kant’s moral animal and Hegel’s historic animal). He also believed that we create the environment that we inhabit, therefore we are “not a figure in the landscape, but a shaper of the landscape”.

Marx believed in scientific techniques and evidence, believing that politics were scientific socialism.

Hegel, Philosophy and History

The “Young Hegelians”, such as Feuerbach, believed that God is created in the image of man and that the Garden of Eden is a real place; an ideal society. Marx said that “philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it”. Therefore, the world does not evolve naturally in to a perfect society, we must create it. The Hegelian system criticises “mechanistic materialism”, Karl Marx describes this as not science, but “bourgeois ideology”. He writes of his “master”, Hegel, “I have taken the liberty of adopting a critical attitude towards my master, to rid his dialectic of mysticism and thus to subject it to profound change”. He criticises “crude materialism” (for example, Locke’s empiricism) and “mechanistic materialism”. This apparently “forgets that circumstances are made by men and the educator must himself be educated”. Therefore, personality is NOT just the result of social circumstances. This is an example of dialectical materialism. “The question of wether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but a political question.” Marx is dismissing empiricists, such as Descartes.

The German Ideology

We have no natural rights, or Hegelian-type built in progression of history (no geist or “spirit of the time”. BUT, Marx did agree with Hegel’s theory about dialectical change; this IS the way that history unfolds, but as a result of CLASHES of ideas and there is a history of CLASS STRUGGLE. This is between 2 classes, with the state there as either a means by which one is dominant OR as a broker, with neither strong enough to control the state. This is how Marx viewed the French revolution, with Napoleon as a broker because the bourgeoise was not strong enough to dominate the whole country.

The bourgeoise are factory workers, free from feudal obligations and therefore with a sort of autonomy as they own a means of production of wealth. Marx saw that your relationship to a “means of production” determines your social class. Therefore there are two classes; those that own factories/ farms/ shops etc and the workers in these places. He thought that in a capitalist economy, everyone will be pauperised eventually as businesses go bust and merge to form a monopoly. He welcomed the “proletariat”, an emerging class in the 19th Century which had the most revolutionary potential as they have no means of production and therefore “nothing to lose but your chains”; all they have is “worthless” constitutional rights.

To tackle this, Marx developed a “materialist concept of history”, using historic logic. It consists of:

Thesis: bourgeoise (free market capitalism, liberal state, individual rights)

Antithesis: proletariat

Synthesis: socialism

Marx’s definition of socialism is also objective. He wants to see social ownership of the means of production, and the establishment of an equal social system that can only happen through a proletariat revolution (violent or otherwise) on an international basis. Until this happens, the proletariat will be alienated, e.g., the workers in Smith’s pin factory where the object you produce enslaves you. After this revolution, the state will be “the dictatorship of the proletariat” in which all means of production would be communalised and a system of communism would be instilled. This is similar to the Kantean Kingdom of Ends, Hegel’s “fully rational society”/ “organic society” and the Garden of Eden or Heaven.

In 1843 Marx published a criticism of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right in which he complained about the complexity but like the key idea of dialectical change and progression to a perfect society; he proclaimed that “I have stood Hegel on his feet”. He said that universal laws are the ideology of the ruling class and the religion is only “ideology” and “mysticism” of a feudal society which thrives on alienation. It also, according to Marx, reinforces the irrational authority of feudal society, culminating in the divine right of Kings. It is rejected by empiricists and economists (such as Smith, Hume and Ricardo who were all atheist). Religion is also seen as a way of controlling and restricting the population (Malthus). Liberals are generally atheist or consequentialists (meaning people that believe that religious ideas are beneficial, wether true or not) and Marx believed that the “individualism” of bourgeoise religion (Protestantism) has replaced the system of family loyalty and obligation in the feudal village.

Communist Manifesto

This is the most famous work of marx, containing a prediction of world economy, world culture (globalisation brought about by dynamics of the capitalist economic movement). It said that the bourgeoise will spread, and communism will spread and that the proletariat has to be “class conscious” and organised as a social force (for example, as trade unions or political parties), with everyone treated as worthwhile.

Economics

Marx had a high regard for Smith and Ricardo, especially Smith’s market mechanism as it is a bourgeoise ideology. He also agreed with Hobbes, whose model of “the war of all against all” in the state of nature is the purest form of bourgeoise ideology.

Unfortunately, I could not keep up with the last of the lecture because we rushed through very fast.