Year 2, Lecture 1: William Randolph Hearst and his contributions to Journalism

We started the lecture by going over the period in American history which pretty much cemented the idea of America as a blank canvas. The 1800s saw America transform, with the established cities of the East giving way to the lawless, unclaimed West coast. The 1840s and 50s saw the first Gold Rush in which, while millions left the Irish Famine and widespread disillusionment of Europe, and Asia, hundreds of thousands of those already in America took to the road and headed West to claim their fortune in the mines. This lead to a new generation of men who had worked their way from the mines to being millionaires, such as W R Hearst’s father, George Hearst who was lured from Missouri in 1850.

From this drive West emerged the Frontier Thesis which is crucial in the American psyche. They were travelling to a new place where they could establish their own way of life, free from the restraints of organised society in the East. This brought out the adventurous, violent, individualistic side of the American man which defines the American constitution. Those that succeeded in making their millions did so simply because they were stronger, smarter and had more guns than those that failed.

George’s hard won success in the mines was simply a stepping stone to the career in politics that he strived for and his son, William, used it to his advantage, showing himself as a self-made man. He also took from George’s success the fact that even poor, uneducated people could be successful, so the son of a millionaire certainly could. He came from a ‘legend-maker’ and his grass roots heritage inspired him to strive to succeed.

George either bought or won the San Francisco Examiner, depending on your sources, which he then used to head his campaign to start a political career. Early American newspapers, known as “penny papers” were either political or commercial, in a time where reporting was partisan and “objectivity” was not thought important. This meant that they acted as a voice for whoever it was that owned the paper and their political views, and were often used for party propaganda. However, in 1846, New York papers came together to organise the Associated Press which sold news stories to the papers to provide raw, uncut, objective stories to several newspapers. This was the beginning of objective, unbiased journalism.

In 1887, William took over the Examiner from his father who had no real interest in running it. He transformed the paper, showing the passion he had for journalism and reflecting his eye for art that had been honed by his trips to Europe with his mother. Front pages of newspapers used to be walls of text, simply putting as much information as possible in. WRH reduced the number and length of stories on the front page, making the headlines larger and eliminating advertisements. Above the mast head he put endorsements and circulation figures, so that the paper effectively advertised itself. His obsession with the front page did not end there, WRH was the first journalist to put illustrations on the front page of a newspaper to “attract the eye and stimulate the imagination of the lower classes and materially aid comprehension”. This appealed to a wider readership as it took into account those with low literacy and those who spoke a different language, taking not of the varied population of California. He also improved the style of the writing to make it more focused and more urgent, with sensational, snappy headlines to catch the reader’s interest.

His Examiner was pro-labour, anti-capital, anti-railroad and very much aimed at the working class. It supported the unions and worker’s rights; however it occasionally was quite racist. It used language that its readership could understand, taking into account the ‘slang’ that was developing as a way for people of all different origins to communicate, making the paper much more accessible than most.

New York was a booming, lively city fuelled by cheap labour, new technology and low commodity prices. Joseph Pulitzer owned the World and was the king of New York journalism. He was seen as a genius for his new style, very similar to WRH’s, of dramatic, sensational writing aimed at the working classes. In 1896, Hearst decided he was bored of San Francisco and set up the New York Journal in completion with Pulitzer’s The World. He poached “The Yellow Kid”, an immigrant cartoonist whose work was immediately identifiable and understandable to the working classes. He was perfect for pulling in mass audiences and very valuable to Hearst. Pulitzer hit back by employing another cartoonist to copy the Yellow Kid and thus the Journal and the World soon became known as “Yellow Papers”, now know as Red Tops in the UK.

Yellow journalism was very interested in crime and “underwear journalism” (sex stories) and the two papers soon battled for crime stories and led their own investigations, offering rewards for information on crimes and sending reporters to find out anything they could. It turned into a free-for-all and this type of investigative journalism soon became known as “muckraking”. Nellie Bly was the original Muckraker, and started the trend for undercover journalism which we see today in stories such as those dishing the dirt on footballer’s affairs. Bly did investigations such as “Ten days in the mad house” and revealed corrupt politicians, sweatshops and similar shocking stories.

The Spanish War in Cuba proved to be a boom time for Yellow journalism. In 1897, Cuba’s insurgency problems continued to build and WRH sent one of his best reporters, Harding Davis, and his best illustrator, Frederic Remington, to Cuba. Hearst was a champion for the Cuban cause and encouraged the government to get involved and break their isolationist policy. However, the reporter he sent to Cuba reported that he had “not heard a shot fired or seen an insurgent” and the illustrator also became bored and complained that “everything is quiet. There is no trouble here. There will be no war.” Hearst replied “Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war”. This built Hearst’s reputation, however he later denied that he said it and we do not know for an absolute fact; it is difficult to distinguish between legend and truth, but subsequent actions by Hearst suggest that he was capable.

For example, he interfered once again for the story “Rescue of Evangelina Cisneros”. For this story, he set up a petition to free her, which he managed to get signed by the President’s wife, but when this was not effective, he sent a reporter to bribe prison guards to let her out and took her to New York where he paid for her stay in the Waldorf. She had an audience with the President and eventually the USS Maine was sent into Havana Harbour where, a week later, it mysteriously exploded, making war inevitable and ending American isolationist policy. The edition in which Hearst reported this was the first ever to get over the million circulation mark, marking the boom of the yellow press and showing that war, above even crime and sex, sells papers. Hearst referred to it as a “splendid little war” and pushed it in his papers, even celebrating by firing rockets from the roof of The Journal. He then went to Cuba himself with a large accompaniment which showed the extent to which journalism had changed with the emergence of the Yellows.

From Hearst’s successes, the nature of the relationship between journalism and government changed; media became a strong influence on foreign affairs and diplomatic policies, to such an extent that the line between reporting news and creating it has become blurred. Hearst was also very influential in creating a model for popular journalism which developed into the tabloid. This was later copied in the UK by Northcliffe of the Daily Mail and Rothermere of the Daily Mirror and ultimately by Rupert Murdoch and The Sun. Tabloid journalism is now hugely popular and has taken over as the leader of the journalistic world, with far more tabloids being published than broadsheets.

Module Summary/end of module test preparation

Here are the questions that we went through in the lecture, and my version of the answers:

1. Mary Wollstonecraft asserts that the social subjection of women was partly due to nature, and partly due to the system of education given to men and women. Why might she have thought this? (20 marks)

This is linked to Romantic views of nature and the fascination at the time with human nature. This state of nature was looked at by Rousseau, Hobbes and Locke. Wollstonecraft accepted that women are physically weaker and is part of the romantic movement, appreciating and celebrating nature, accepting that it is in women’s natures to be submissive. However, she rejected the system of education at the time, which was Aristotelean.

Aristotle has been seen to be as influential as Christianity itself. He saw women as and inferior species, akin to animals, with no role in reproduction. He also believed in “natural slavery”, that some people are naturally meant to be directed and that it is cruel to give them freedom. Women were included in this category. He also thought that the best sort of rule is Aristocracy.

Wollstoncraft’s work was a reaction against these Aristotelean ideas. She was part of the general radicalism movement, politically liberal, like Shelley. She agreed with Locke’s idea that we begin with tabula rata and so education is very important. She was inspired by Rousseau’s anti-elitism, but their ideas clashed in his attitude towards women and education. In Vindication on the Rights of Women, she said that women are partly at fault for accepting their role in society, which is then reinforced by the education that they receive. She thought that we are human beings first, and should be treated equally in the public sphere, with no difference in rights etc, and that gender should come second. She saw it as not important in the public sphere, only in private, personal relationships.

1. Compare the epistemological stance of Keats in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to that of Kant in the “Critique of Pure Reason”. (20 marks)

Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge, or the theory of theory; thinking about how we can be certain about what we know. Aesthetics is the study of beauty itself. Both of these men had interest in both of these areas.

Keats was a poet in the Romantic movement, along with Shelley, Byron and Wordsworth, and had an interest in the nuomenal; possible worlds that exist beyond what can be expressed in words. In “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, he wrote that “truth is beauty, beauty is truth... that is all you can know”, which is a very strong philosophical statement (something you would not hear from an actual philosopher) and has all the trappings of romanticism.

Kant talked about the division of the universe into nuomenal and phenomenal. The nuomenal is objects in themselves, even when they are not being perceived. Phenomenal is the object when it is perceived. The aesthetic response when you, as a subjective being, see something beautiful, for Kant, is a proof of the existence of the nuomenal world. Any subjective, blissful, sublime feeling or emotion gives a glimpse of the world beyond ordinary perception, hence beauty is truth, truth is beauty.

1. Define and very briefly discuss the following terms as used in logic before the innovations of Frege;

1. Axiom (2 marks)

Axiom comes from Euclidean geometry and syllogism. An axiom is the starting point of absolute truth, beyond doubt and argument. Aristotle’s example “all men are mortal” is axiomatic, in that a syllogism can be constructed from it. This is often known as syllogistic or deductive logic. e.g., all men are mortal, Aristotle is a man, therefore Aristotle is mortal.

1. A priori (2 marks)

This means knowledge that is know without experience, without any verification from the external world. Hume rejects this idea and Locke’s theory of tabula rata says that there is no such thing. However, Hegel thinks that most things are known a priori, such as the rules of logic. This originates in Aristotle’s work.

1. A posteriori (2 marks)

This is knowledge that only comes from experience. Empiricists and materialists depend primarily/absolutely on this kind of knowledge.

1. Deduction (or analysis) (2 marks)

Deduction is the syllogism; we derive a conclusion from the original premace, e.g. we can deduce from the fact that an oak tree is an oak tree that it is a tree. Kant’s example is that if a man is a bachelor, we can deduce that he has no wife. Therefore it is a statement that is true by definition, a certain/analytic truth.

1. Induction (or synthesis) (2 marks)

This is synthetic logic, the opposite of deductive logic, because you add knowledge that is not in the deduction. It is similar to jumping to conclusions, which journalists have a perpetual dislike of. It is a method of science and therefore most scientific theories are inductive; based on adding information in. For example, deductive logic is that aeroplanes can crash, this is an aeroplane, therefore it can crash. The inductive would be that plane crashes are rare, which requires gathering data and calculating the odds.

1. In the Essay on Human Understanding, Chapter X (On Miracles), it might be said that David Hume asserts that every observable phenomena is a miracle. If this is true, why does he assert this? (10 marks)

Hume said that every observable phenomena is a miracle because certain knowledge is impossible by deduction. For example, there is no reason to say that because the sun sets, it will rise tomorrow. He is skeptical about any kind of truth statement, or taking a leap of faith. It is very difficult to live by his way of thinking because it means questioning everything and being sure of nothing. He says that when someone tells you that they have seen a miracle, you should compare the likelihood of the miracle occurring and the likelihood that he is a “knave” or a fool. We live in a world of logic.

1. Contrast your understanding of Philosophical “materialism” with philosophical “idealism” with particular reference to Hegel and Marx. (20 marks)

Materialism is an epistemological stance, that the world is made up of sensible matter; objects, atoms etc. Idealism says that everything you see is a mental phenomena, in the abstract. For example, the statement “love makes the world go round” is idealistic because it says that the spirit or geist of love causes the world to be. Hegel was a transcendent idealist, believing that nothing at all is matter but everything is spirit or manifestation of geist. Geist, according to Hegel, has a purpose and therefore this theory is teleological; saying that everything has a purpose and everything happens for a reason (Aristotle). It also says that everything is logical and conforms to dialectical rules.

Marx was Hegelian and professed that “I have stood Hegel on his feet” (which is often mis-quoted). He said that the world creates ideas. He was not a materialist in the sense of John Locke, an English Empiricist that believed in mechanistic materialism. Marx was essentially materialist, but saw that ideas do play a role in the world.

1. Discuss the economic, demographic, political, technological and sociological factors influencing the development of newspaper and periodical journalism in the period 1815 to 1915. (20 marks)

This is between the end of the Napoleonic wars and one year into the First World War, in a century when the world became the world we know today. There was no radio or television, so they were dependent on newspapers. Economic factors include the introduction of free trade and capitalism, allowing people to make money and getting rid of mercantilism, corn laws and protectionism. Cobbett and Dickens explored these factors in their writing, looking at the new liberal way that individuals could make money through newspaper businesses, creating the golden age of profits.

Demographic factors include urbanisation, which Cobbett wrote about, with people moving to towns to make densely populated areas, which aided distribution and created a concentration of people with similar interests. The markets that emerged also aided distribution, for example New York. Malthus was involved in this; the country was no longer rural, urbanisation had begun.

Political factors included the rise of the radical press, the repeal of stamp duty, the end of censorship and the liberal political regime that was in place, allowing much more freedom of expression.

Technologically, the steam driven printing press of the 1820s led to tens of thousands of copies in a night compared to the dozens of the old Gothenburg press. Railways were also important in that distribution was vastly improved. The telegraph also had an impact, meaning that news could be transmitted in the same day, for example the news of the Crimean War.

Sociological factors such as class and language also influenced the growth of journalism, as many more people could read and access papers, especially in urban environments such as New York where people were living on top of each other. This was also the time of William Randolph Hearst who transformed the journalism industry with images and cartoons and attention grabbing headlines.

Economically, the reforms of liberalism and free trade were very constructive for the market and meant that many people were able to start up newspaper businesses. It was also useful that in cities, people spoke the same language, therefore making news more easily spread.

Lecture 5: William Randolph Hearst

William Randolph Hearst was around at the end of the 19th Century, and virtually invented modern popular journalism and was one of the founders of modernism.

In 1848, Europe was grouping together. It is known as the year of revolutions; Marx predicted one that didn’t happen, the Irish were defeated by the British, the French revolution was suppressed, so the country became economically backwards, and the Russian and Austrian revolutions both failed.

1849 is know for the gold rush in California, which sparked massive European emigration, with New York’s Ellis Island as the entry point. The Europeans were fleeing oppression, backwardness and poverty, and created a cosmopolitan ‘linguistic melting pot’ in New York City.

William Randolph hearst was based in San Francisco, which, in 1849, had over 150 languages. He published the first ever tabloid rumour; the gold rush, creating the hype which led to frenzied settlement of the west and the railway boom. His newspaper the San Francisco Examiner was the first ever sensational circulation newspaper, largely printing articles on rumours of gold. It’s main revenue business was advertising shovels, for those that believed the gold rush rumours. With this newspaper, the gold rush mentality (meaning that they are only interested in greed and fear, the things that sell newspapers) was established and still survives today. The visual style of the newspaper was also very similar to that of today’s papers.

1850s America was characterised by the railway boom, the settlement of the West and the telegram invention, which helped Hearst in setting up the settlement newspapers that were crucial in creating the new communities, and also in establishing WRH’s print empire. He got rich by selling a shot at the gold that was promised in the West.

The American Civil War in the 1860s was partly to liberate black people but mainly to free the Southern states from the government. No new state could be a slave state, which angered many of the people in areas that wanted to be under the federal government. South Carolina left the US and was then invaded by the federal army, which set off an industrial war using modern inventions. It led to the creation of a ‘Yankee’ empire and the future of America was settled; it would be a liberal, trading, industrial nation, based on the ideas of John Locke etc. The already booming cities of the North, such as New York and Boston, gain massively from this as they get cheap cotton and produce, which they can then ship to Britain, from the Southern states which have cheap labour.

America has always been a country of contrasts. William Randolph Hearst built up his newspaper empire in the new towns in the West, while James Coolitzer set himself up as a rival in New York City. He had arrived in the US in 1849 as a Hungarian nationalist-reactionary and taught himself English. He set up the New York Daily World (which the Daily Planet in superman is based on) and was seen as on the side of ‘sod busters’, or poor farmers, because he wanted de-valuation and also because he was seen as a ‘nut breaker’, a penetrating investigative journalist. He spoke out against issues such as oil and railway companies and the terrible working conditions of those that they employed. He was populist, isolationist and not afraid to speak his mind.

At the time, New York City had all the ingredients for rapid growth; there was plenty of cheap labour from the emigrants arriving daily, desperate for work; they had a liberal constitution which meant they had civil rights and rights to ownership; the urban concentration, with a high population density which reduced economic overheads (from this perspective, Cobbett’s views of industrialisation and urbanisation were wrong). This was Coolitzer’s world, and was seen as the “era of the rubber bands” because people went from rags to riches in just one generation. There was vast infrastructure investment, which stimulated the economy, helped by the vast internal market for products. The absence of war was also a key factor in New York’s success, as Europe was engulfed by the Franco-Russian war and other disputes which meant even more people left the continent for the ‘streets paved of gold’. There was also an absence of imperial entanglements and colonies, leaving the government free to focus on infrastructure etc. It is also important to know that the US was very anti-European.

The 1860s saw the newspaper wars, where Coolitzer was on top, then Hearst comes along copying Coolitzer’s paper with the New York Sun, but in a simplified version; simpler headline styles, shorter and simpler articles (articles longer than 250 words would be deleted) and it was the first newspaper to have engraving and therefore appealed visually as well. Hearst also invented the cartoon strip, however, Coolitzer soon developed the Yellow King strip which was the most popular (the Simpsons is an explicit reference to this). Hearst bought this cartoon strip and rocketed ahead of the competition. He was an expert on distribution and was ruthless in the circulation wars, he introduced competitions such as bingo, he headhunted the most popular parts of other papers and used banner headlines. The news was all about crime, creating an over-estimation of danger and feeding on the formula of fear and greed to grab the public’s attention.

The Spanish-American war was about the US wanting an export-import relationship with Cuba, but colonisation could not be considered as an option because they had learnt from World War One that it causes many problems. The people of Cuba wanted independence from Spain, but the Spanish were trying to suppress this. The thing that sparked the war was the singing of an American ship in Habana Harbour, Cuba, this cause the US to declare war on Spain and “support Cuban independence”. However, this decision was very unpopular in the US.

William Randolph Hearst saw this as a good thing, an opportunity for US world power with New York as the capital of the world, at first. He sent reporters to Habana, where they reported that they saw no war. To this Hearst said “you supply the story and I will supply the war”, and within 24 hours the ship had been blown up. This is a prime example of Hearst’s methods.

Now, all tabloid journalists work by this method: 1) think of the story, then 2) stand it up. They would think what they wanted to write about, then they would dig around to find enough evidence to make it plausible. This is because, Chris Horrie says, true stories are less interesting, and this is shown in the fact that big headlines catch peoples attention, and therefore sell more papers.

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.

Lecture 3: a tale of two revolutions, and two perspectives; urban (Dickens) and rural (Cobbett)

This weeks lecture was looking at the economic revolutions of the time when Dickens and Cobbett were writing. So, to start, a historio-social summary.

England did well out of the French Revolution, despite the fact that the Napoleonic war was very expensive. The British public, in particular the aristocracy, were very interested in what was going on in France as they feared that it could spread to England and cause them great difficulties in controlling the discontented people. This worry was worsened by the creation of Income Tax in 1799 to pay for the war effort.

British naval power was absolute and when French trade was destroyed by blockades of their ports, Britain experienced an exports boom, supplying even the French army's clothing. While other European armies were occupied, Britain took the opportunity to expand its trading empire and creating a monopoly. The Transatlantic Trade Triangle was exeedingly profitable, with 1 million slaves transported in the 16th Century, 3 million in the next and 7 million in the next, before the Abolition of Slavery Act in 1833. This formed a part of the textiles trade which made up 60% of exports. As well as this great success, coal output doubled between 1750 and 1800 and Manchester's population grew from 17,000 in 1760 to 180,000 in 1830. This is a growth never before seen and led the city to be viewed as revolutionary, a city of the future. Marx and Engles thought it to be where a workers revolution is likely to break out because the discontent caused by overcrowding, long hours, gruelling work and low wages was growing with the population. In fact, it is often thought that the ideas that drove the Russian revolution were born here.

The cotton trade was key to the Industrial Revolution, using the raw material from slave plantations in the American South, and Lancashire to produce the finished article. It was mainly for export and inventions such as the gaslight meant longer hours and an even more efficient process.

However, the end of the war meant the end of the boom, there was widespread unemployment, so the Corn Laws were drawn up to protect farming by putting a tarrif on imported grain, making the price of bread shoot up and the working poor even poorer. As people were driven from the country side to find work, the conditions in towns and cities grew dire. People were living in slums, with the sewage of the rich, being pushed onto the poor because it had nowhere else to go, the infastructure could not keep up with the growing population, sanitation was terrible and diseases and illnesses such as cholera were rife. This all led to major discontent among the people.

The goverment responded with a policy of brutal repression of any form of dissent and strict penal penalties. Exportation of "criminals" to the colonies began. In 1819 in Manchester, the Peterloo Massacre of a group of 60,000 campaigning for parliamentary change against a corrupt and unrepresentative government that was dominated by the rich aristocracy, led to 11 deaths and showed the extent to which the government were afraid of dissent.

However, there were still many protests across the country, demanding that growing industrial towns should have the right to elect MPs. At the time, less than 2% of the population had the vote and there was a big problem with "rotten boroughs", for example Old Sarum which had 11 voters and 2 MPs. The reform Act of 1832, brought on by the pressure on the government, lead to a less corrupt and slightly more representative system. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 mean that bread became cheaper, however this was used to argue that wages could be lowered because workers could now survive on less. This was NOT the desired result.

Farming:
Enclosures had mean that the idea of the landholding peasantry was no more, and there was nothing to stop the non-industrial labour moving to industrial. Up until the 18th century, the population had been rising only slowly, staying at a steady 5 million between the end of the 17th century and the middle of the 18th. However, after 1770, it started to rise dramatically (an idea that Cobbett disputed). Around this time, the Swing riots occured. Rural labourers opposed to new technology, such as threshing machines, staged riots across the south in 1830. These people were known as "rural ludites" and were completely opposed to new technology and change, fearing that their traditional way of life was in jeapardy.

The Poor:
The poor were looked after by the Speenhanland System which was devised as a means to alleviate distress caused by high grain prices. It was means tested and a sort of top-up for wages, dependent on children, price of bread etc. It had an immediate impact on landowners who had to pay it and these problems led to the New Poor Law of 1834. This said that no able-bodied person could receive money or help, except in a workhouse. They developed these workhouses to be a deterrent to being poor, like a prison, it was sectioned into men, women and children, and they worked it out so that they were given only enough food to keep them alive from day to day, but an amount which would slowy kill them. This effectively criminalised the poor, as their only options were workhouse or deportation. It was influenced by Bentham's utilitarian ideas that people did what was pleasant and wouldn't do what was unpleasant, so if poverty was made as unpleasant as possible, people would not be poor. This created the idea of "stigmatising relief", making relief an"object of wholesome horror".

Ireland:
At this time, Ireland was wild, poverty stricken and desperate. There was much discontent, and seen as a dangerous back door for the French, especially as both countries were Catholic. Due to this threat, the Duke of Wellington passed the Catholic Emancipation in 1829; parliament was trying to bring the Irish under control. MPs were elected to sit in Westminster, including Daniel O'Connell in 1828, however, because this was before the Catholic Emancipation, he was debarred from taking his seat. He was a pacifist and saw the act of union as dangerous because Ireland was not properly represented; only the Protestant aristocracy could take a seat. He campaigned for a repeal and began a radical political movement, holding peaceful rallies and meetings such as the 1843 meeting in Tara which is estimated to draw 1 million people. He planned another at Clontarf where he wanted to get more than a million people, however an MP banned the meeting and sent troops and a cannon. O'Connell had to make a decision whether to hold the meeting and have hundreds of people die, or to give up. He backed down and this caused the idea of peaceful revolution in Ireland to be given up on completely.

The famine of 1845-1850, where more than a million died and two million emigrated on "coffin ships", was seen as very badly handled by Britain. It is reported that during this famine, food and livestock were actually exported to England, even though Ireland needed it most. Therefore, someone said that "The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine".

We then went on to talk about Cobbet and Dickens and their respective views, which i will be publishing as part of my seminar paper next week, as this post is already stupidly long!