A comprehensive, stimulating, well-written and scholarly but accessible account of the main strands of European political thinking between 1776 and 1848.
Gregory Claeys, Royal Holloway, University of London
The years between the American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution of 1789 and the European Revolutions of 1848 saw fundamental shifts from autocracy to emerging democracy. It is a vital period in what may be termed modernity: that is of the western societies that are increasingly industrial, capitalist and liberal democratic. Unsurprisingly, these years of stress and transition produced some significant reflections on politics and society.
This indispensable introductory text considers how a cluster of key thinkers viewed the global political upheavals and social changes of their time, covering the work of:
Edmund Burke
Thomas Paine
Jeremy Bentham
Georg Hegel
Alexis de Tocqueville
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Lively and approachable, it is essential reading for anyone with an interest in modern history, political history or political thought.
Michael Levin is Emeritus Reader in Politics at Goldsmiths, University of London. His previous publications include The Spectre of Democracy: The Rise of Modern Democracy as Seen by its Critics (1992) and J.S. Mill on Civilization and Barbarism (2004).
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Helen M. Jewell Women in Dark Age and Early Medieval Europe c. 5001200
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Michael Levin Political Thought in the Age of Revolution 17761848
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POLITICAL THOUGHT IN THE AGE OF REVOLUTION 17761848
BURKE TO MARX
Michael Levin
Michael Levin 2011
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It is an age of Revolutions, in which everything may be looked for.
Thomas Paine.
Whatever happens, every individual is the child of his time: so philosophy too is its own time apprehended in thoughts.
G.W.F. Hegel.
Preface
The years from 1776 to 1848 saw fundamental shifts from the politics of the court to that of the masses and from autocracy to emerging democracy. It is a key period in what may be termed modernity, the main components of which we shall discuss in but rejected the ways in which such ideas were implemented, for liberal individualism seemed to neglect the need for community and social coherence. Alexis de Tocqueville came from a family of victims of the French Revolution. He studied the American political system to discern the extent to which democracy could be kept compatible with freedom. He also wrote a classic eyewitness account of the 1848 French Revolution, after which, for a short period, he became French foreign minister. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels did not write in any detail on the 1789 revolution, yet it was a fundamental influence on their thinking, for it provided their model of how one class overthrows and succeeds another, in consequence of which one socio-economic structure is replaced by another. Engels played a minor military role in the German revolution of 18489, the failures of which he and Marx eventually attributed to the relatively undeveloped state of the industrial proletariat.
With Burke, Hegel and Tocqueville, we find a critical attitude to modernity, perhaps centrally on account of its destruction of community. Our four radical critics of the old order do so on quite different bases: Paine on lack of rights; Bentham on lack of happiness; and Marx and Engels on class exploitation. However, too simple and apparently clear-cut divisions between conservatives and radicals neglect their significant affinities. For example, Burke noted the rise of a new class to power, Hegel criticised the irrationality of many traditional procedures, and Tocqueville outlined the injustices of the old regime in France.
Though this work draws on some of my previous writings, it has principally been a product of my retirement. This has made it a great pleasure as it has been completed away from the pressures of recent academic life. I worked on it merely when I felt so inclined. Since ending my teaching career, my main official link with the university world has been as a convenor of the Seminar in the History of Political Ideas at the Institute of Historical Research, London University. Im grateful to my fellow convenors and other members of the seminar for providing such a congenial and stimulating forum for the discussion of political ideas. Fellow Convenor Gregory Claeys read the Burke and Paine chapters and kept me writing by the simple expedient of frequently asking how I was getting on with it. I am very grateful to him, and also to David McLellan for helpful comments on the Marx and Engels chapter. Thanks also to Sonya Barker, my editor at Palgrave Macmillan, for always being positive. Finally Id like to say that my basic intention has been to write an introductory account that is intelligible to undergraduate students taking courses in the history of political thought.
