Social/Working Classes See Great Changes
Such competition and jealousies could not but help to engender significant social anxieties, and tension among the various strata of middle class society began to manifest itself in the latter part of the century. The small businessmen and shopkeepers, whose numbers rose steadily until shortly after 1900, often resented the power of the great capitalists. The people of the middle class feared being edged out of the marketplace by large companies, with whom they could not have hoped to compete. The shop-keeping class always had to work hard simply to maintain their lifestyle and was often dependent on banks for commercial credit. Over consumption—keeping up with the Joneses if you will—was threatening their economic future. There is also reason to believe that the learned professions were becoming overcrowded. To be a professional person no longer ensured a sound income. The new white-collar work force had just attained respectability and a non-working class status and they profoundly feared slipping back into their previous social origins.
The manual labor force, or so-called "blue collar workers," also experienced profound changes during this period. In all industrializing continental countries the numbers of the urban proletariat rose. The increasingly mechanized factories often required less highly technical skills from their workers, and unskilled labor also found increased opportunity in work associated with shipping, transportation, and construction. Work assumed a more impersonal character. Factories were located in cities, and almost all links between factory or day labor employment and home life dissolved. Large corporate enterprise meant less personal contact between employers and their workers. As before, these people had no champion above, and so had to press for reforms themselves. While they no longer took their grievances to the streets as they did in 1848, the urban working class nonetheless recognized that they had to remain united in order to receive benefits from the system. They turned to new institutions and ideologies, chief among them the trade union, democratic political parties, and socialism.
The mid-century organizational efforts of the unions were directed towards skilled workers. The goal was the immediate improvement of wages and working conditions. By the close of the century, industrial unions for unskilled workers were being organized. They were very large and included thousands of workers. They confronted extensive opposition from employers, and long strikes were frequently required to bring about employer acceptance. In the decade immediately preceding the war there were an exceptionally large number of strikes throughout Europe as the unions attempted to raise wages to keep up with inflation. Despite the advances of unions and the growth of their memberships, they never included a majority of the industrial labor force. What the unions did represent was a new collective fashion in which workers could associate to confront economic difficulties and to attain better security.
The extension of the democratic franchise throughout most of Europe to include universal male suffrage provided workers with direct political influence, which meant that they could no longer be ignored. Discontented groups could now voice their grievances and advocate their programs within the institutions of government rather than from the outside. The advent of such democracy brought about the formation of organized mass political parties. The new expansion of the electorate brought into the political process many people whose level of political consciousness, awareness, and interest was quite low. This electorate had to be organized and taught the nature of power and influence in the liberal democratic state, and where a political vacuum exists there is always someone or something willing to fill it. The organized political party—with its workers, newspapers, offices, social life and discipline—was the vehicle that mobilized the new voters. The largest single group in these mass electorates was the working class. The democratization of politics presented the coalitionists with opportunities and required the traditional ruling classes to vie with the socialists for the support of the new voters.
Ah, socialism. It is fair to say that politics was transformed after 1880 by the appearance on the political stage of an urbanized working class. Its biggest battalions were the semi-skilled workers of large workshops, organized in trade unions, and enrolled in mass socialist parties inspired by the message of Karl Marx. These new organized socialist parties were dedicated to the principle of class struggle and aimed not to destroy the state as the anarchists wanted, but rather to seize control of it in order to expropriate the capitalist expropriators. The party leadership was often composed of intellectuals and skilled workers; small producers, peasants, and white-collar workers in economic difficulty provided a proportion of the membership, but socialist parties were most successful where they had firm roots in the organized labor movements.
Mass suffrage, elementary education, and a popular press enabled socialist parties to build up their strength and increase their impact. Limited suffrage and illiteracy did not stifle mass movements; on the contrary, spontaneous revolts and wildcat strikes became more likely, but it was more difficult in these conditions for party leaders to divert those energies down political channels. In some states, authoritarian regimes continued to restrict freedom of association and expression. There, the revolutionary opposition of socialist parties was directed as much against arbitrary power, militarism and bureaucracy as against capitalist exploitation. An alliance with "bourgeois" liberal or democratic parties that were also opposed to reaction might then be undertaken as a useful combination of force. Equally, it might be rejected as dangerous fraternization with the class enemy.
To strengthen their position against international capitalism, European socialist parties formed a second International in 1889. Whereas the membership of the First International (1864–76) had been that of individuals, that of the Second was of national parties. Within many states there were national minorities and the combination of national, religious, and social protest against oppression—as in the case of Poland—could be explosive. The leaders of the Austrian Social Democratic party tried at the turn of the century to reconcile the socialist viewpoint with the very real demands for national autonomy of socialists in different parts of the monarchy. Among the masses, national loyalties might in the final resort outweigh class loyalties. This was the constant anxiety of leaders of socialist parties and trade unions, and the secret weapon with which governments might, in the last resort, render socialism powerless. Socialism, with all its ramifications, was now a permanent part of European politics.
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