La Reunion, a French Settlement in Texas

La Réunion, a French Settlement in Texas

The last half of the eighteenth century was a period of awakening for the masses of western Europe; revolution thundered in Paris and reverberated throughout all Europe. Thrones tottered and fell; others rose to take their places. Republics were created by the revolutions overnight to live and thrive only during the predominance of the French Revolution, and then fade into the kingdoms from whence they had emerged. Peoples were led to believe that the day of Utopia had arrived and they turned upon their masters and oppressors to destroy them, and then, in return, were led to the battlefields and slaughtered for the whimsical desire for glory of the man who rode the waves of emotional fanaticism to power. Out of the mad chaos created by such desires and emotions a new system of economic hope was created. French dreamers and intellectuals had seen, in a short time of twenty-five years, the ultimate hopes of a nation rise to exalted heights in a sort of religious fanaticism and then plunge to depths of despair. A culture or civilization in which such a catastrophe as that could happen, so the philosophers thought, must be faulty beyond repair. Some of these philosophers surrendered to discouragement and pessimism while others sought to rebuild and reconstruct the crumbling ruins of the past. Claude-Henri Saint Simon, Louis Blanc, Franois Fourier, Pierre Proudhon, Karl Marx, Robert Owen, 10 Charles Kingsley, Saint Jean-Baptiste La Salle, Frederic Engels, and Johann Rodbertus were some of the most prominent socialists and thinkers who attempted to find a solution to the economic ills of Europe and to guarantee an equitable distribution of wealth to the masses of the people.[1] This new system became known as socialism and was a middle class movement which developed out of the shattered eighteenth century era. Side by side with socialism developed communism, a doctrine developed out of the working class needs which, it was thought by some, neither socialism nor capitalism could satisfy. Socialism, as maintained by nineteenth century philosophers, stemmed not only from the old totalitarian doctrine of the Greek city-state but from the old concept of a universal pattern of cultural religion and economics of the medieval period. The philosophers were only substituting economics for medieval religion in the new social theory. The spirit of co-operative good, of theoretical equality and ultimate perfection of society are common to both Utopian socialism and religion. The socialists visualized a world of productivity sufficient to abolish poverty and furnish abundance to those who worked. The problem, as they understood it, was to prevent the concentration of enormous wealth in the hands of a few individuals by which those who possess wealth deprive the masses of equitable distribution of goods. This concentration could be prevented, so thought the socialist, if production and distribution could remain in control of the people who produced the materials. The socialist dreamed of an economy in which there would be a social development along with the economic but in which all inequality and special privilege would be eliminated from 11 both political and economic life. One writer has defined socialism as: Over against the socialist theory was the pragmatic theory of capitalism already operating in many parts of Europe and America. The same writer defines capitalism as: ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 58590
Author: Hammond, Margaret F.
Release Date: Jan 1, 2019
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Hammond, William Jackson, 1896-