Speaker 1: Hello, and Welcome to Western SIV, episode five hundred and nineteen.
Speaker 1: Do you hear the people sing? In the summer of
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty, Europe stirred again. Fifteen years had now passed
Speaker 1: since the defeat of Napoleon, and the diplomats of the
Speaker 1: Congress of Vienna had promised stability. Yeah, it's true. Monarchies
Speaker 1: had been restored, borders had been returned to their original
Speaker 1: position more or less, and revolution had been banished. But
Speaker 1: beneath the polished surface of order, the continent remained restless.
Speaker 1: As we talked about in a previous episode, industrialization was
Speaker 1: starting to sweep the continent and cities were swelling. Ideas
Speaker 1: were also circulating faster than armies ever had, and a
Speaker 1: new generation, too young to remember the terror or the
Speaker 1: Battle of Waterloo, was beginning to ask why kings got
Speaker 1: to rule it all? And so the spark came, as
Speaker 1: it often did, in the city of Paris in July
Speaker 1: of eighteen thirty, King Charles the Tenth, stubbornly clinging to
Speaker 1: the divine right and aristocratic privilege that he thought had
Speaker 1: been restored, as with everything else, during the Congress of Vienna,
Speaker 1: issued the July Ordinances. The July Ordinances dissolved the Chamber
Speaker 1: of Deputes, the really only elected body of the French
Speaker 1: government at that point. He restricted the press, and he
Speaker 1: narrowed who was allowed to vote even further. And so
Speaker 1: for three days Letois Lurias Paris positively erupted. Students, workers
Speaker 1: and shopkeepers, tore up paving stones and raised barricades. The
Speaker 1: tricolor flag, which had been banned since the days of Napoleon,
Speaker 1: suddenly reappeared in the streets. Charles the tenth fled, and
Speaker 1: once again the Bourbon monarchy found itself toppled. However, this
Speaker 1: was not seventeen eighty nine. Once again, power did not
Speaker 1: pass to the people, but to the liberal bourgeoisie. In
Speaker 1: this case, the crown was offered to Louis Philippe, the
Speaker 1: citizen king, who would rule not by the grace of God,
Speaker 1: but as the king of the French. Louis Philippe Orleans
Speaker 1: was born in Paris in seventeen seventy three into a
Speaker 1: branch of the Bourbon family that was close enough to
Speaker 1: the throne to enjoy its privileges, but far enough away,
Speaker 1: luckily to feel its resentments. His father Louis Felippe the second,
Speaker 1: the Duke of Orleans, was a prince of the blood
Speaker 1: who styled himself as kind of a reformer, flirting with
Speaker 1: the Enlightenment ideas and disastrously with revolution from the start.
Speaker 1: The younger Louis Fleebey grew up in a household where
Speaker 1: royalty and rebellion were constantly kind of rubbing shoulders altogether uneasily.
Speaker 1: As a boy, his education was deliberately modern. Tutors emphasized science, languages,
Speaker 1: and history over court etiquette. He learned English early, he
Speaker 1: read Brousseau, and he absorbed the idea dangerous for a prince,
Speaker 1: that monarchy might only survive if it adapted to the
Speaker 1: will of the nation. These lessons wouldn't make him a revolutionary,
Speaker 1: but they would critically make him a survivor. The French
Speaker 1: Revolution tested that flexibility almost immediately in seventeen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: when Paris exploded, Louis Fleebey was only sixteen years old.
Speaker 1: Two years later, as France slid toward war, he joined
Speaker 1: the revolutionary army, not as a court ornament but as
Speaker 1: an actual officer, and in seventeen ninety two he fought
Speaker 1: at the Battle of val May, the cannon smoked battle
Speaker 1: that saved the Revolution from foreign invasion. It was an
Speaker 1: extraordinary moment, a boorbomb prince standing in the ranks of
Speaker 1: a Republican army, cheering the retreat of Prussian troops, and
Speaker 1: for a time it looked like Louis Felipe might become
Speaker 1: a new kind of royal, one forged by revolution rather
Speaker 1: than crushed by it. But that hope did not last.
Speaker 1: In seventeen ninety three, his commander, General du Morees, defected
Speaker 1: to the Austrians. Though Louis Felipe had absolutely no part
Speaker 1: in the burial, suspicion just clung to him and worse,
Speaker 1: back in Paris, his father actually voted for the execution
Speaker 1: of King Louis the sixteenth and renamed himself Felipe Egalite.
Speaker 1: The gesture, however, did not save him, and he was
Speaker 1: guillotined later that year. With his family named poison and
Speaker 1: his safety gone, Louis Philippe fled France and exile became
Speaker 1: a rather long apprenticeship for the young man. For the
Speaker 1: next two decades, he lived as a wanderer, moving through Switzerland, Scandinavia,
Speaker 1: and eventually the United states in America in the seventeen nineties,
Speaker 1: he traveled the length of the Young Republic, down the
Speaker 1: Ohio River, across the frontier, and through cities that still
Speaker 1: smelled of fresh lumber and fresh ambition. He taught French
Speaker 1: in classrooms just to get along. He lodged and modest ends,
Speaker 1: and he learned firsthand what a society without an aristocratic
Speaker 1: privilege actually looked like. It was not a Romantic democracy,
Speaker 1: he admitted that, But it seemed practical and energetic, and
Speaker 1: he never forgot that lesson. When Napoleon seized power in France,
Speaker 1: Louis Philippe remained distant. He refused to serve the empire,
Speaker 1: but he also avoided loud opposition. Instead, he just waited.
Speaker 1: By the time the Romans were restored in eighteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: he had become something rare among European princes, a man
Speaker 1: who had lived like a commoner and who actually understood
Speaker 1: the modern world. The restoration ultimately brought him home, but
Speaker 1: not back into favor. King Louis the eighteenth tolerated him,
Speaker 1: wary of his popularity and liberal reputation. Under his son
Speaker 1: Charles the tenth, that weariness turned into open hostility. Louis
Speaker 1: Felipe cultivated a careful image, neither reactionary nor radical. He
Speaker 1: lived quietly at the Palais Royal, walked the streets of
Speaker 1: Paris without excessive ceremony, dressed plainly, and presented himself as
Speaker 1: the citizen prince. This was not humility so much as
Speaker 1: it was a strategy. He knew that legitimacy in post
Speaker 1: revolutionary France could no longer rest on divine right alone.
Speaker 1: Throughout the eighteen twenties, he became a focal point for
Speaker 1: liberal opposition. Journalists, bankers and constitutional monarchists whispered his name
Speaker 1: as an alternative. He never openly plotted against Charles the Tenth,
Speaker 1: but nor did he ever do anything to discourage the rumors.
Speaker 1: And so he waited as he always had it. And then, ultimately,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned in July of eighteen thirty, that patience
Speaker 1: finally paid it off. Louis Felipe emerged just as Charles
Speaker 1: the Tenth attempted an illiberal crackdown that cost him his throne.
Speaker 1: He presented himself not as king by God's will, but
Speaker 1: as a constitutional monarch would be chosen by the nation,
Speaker 1: and he would be king of the French, not of France,
Speaker 1: a subtle but profound shift in its meaning. Sovereignty, at
Speaker 1: least in theory, flowed upward from the people, not downward
Speaker 1: from heaven. His regime promised constitutionalism, property rights and order, liberty,
Speaker 1: but not, of course democracy. France had changed its king,
Speaker 1: but not a social hierarchy. Still, the July Revolution sent
Speaker 1: a shockwave across Europe, proving that the Viennas system could
Speaker 1: actually be challenged and beaten, because after all, it was
Speaker 1: not Louis Philippe who had been restored to the throne.
Speaker 1: Neder Niche's careful policies were starting to come undone, and
Speaker 1: the aftershocks quickly rippled outward. In the southern Netherlands, Catholic
Speaker 1: and French speaking Belgians revolted against Protestant Dutch rule. By
Speaker 1: the end of eighteen thirty Belgium declared its independence, and in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty one Europe's great powers begrudgingly accepted a new
Speaker 1: constitutional monarchy. It was the first successful national secession of
Speaker 1: the post Napoleonic era, a dangerous precedent for a continent
Speaker 1: stitched together from empires and dynasties. Britain, watching events on
Speaker 1: the with a mixture of fear and fascination, ultimately chose
Speaker 1: reform over revolution. As I mentioned before, the Peterloo Massacre
Speaker 1: still lingered, and industrial cities like Manchester Birmingham still had
Speaker 1: no parliamentary representation. In eighteen thirty two, Parliament passed the
Speaker 1: Great Reform Act, expanding the electorate and redistributing seats. It
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily create democracy, after all, most working class british
Speaker 1: Men still couldn't vote, but it signaled something crucial. In Britain,
Speaker 1: political pressures could lead to change without the rise of barricades. Elsewhere,
Speaker 1: reformers took a harder line in Poland and elsewhere, rulers
Speaker 1: took a harder line. In Poland, a nationalists uprising against
Speaker 1: Russian rule in eighteen thirty to eighteen thirty one was
Speaker 1: crushed with brutal efficiency. The Polish Constitution was abolished and
Speaker 1: the country was absorbed ever more tightly into the Russian Empire.
Speaker 1: The lesson was clear, reform depended not only on ideas,
Speaker 1: but power and armies. In Germany and Italian lands, unrest
Speaker 1: simmered rather than exploded in the early nineteenth century, as
Speaker 1: Europe struggled to settle out for the fall of Napoleon.
Speaker 1: Italy was not a nation, but it was a puzzle
Speaker 1: of broken kingdoms. It was duchies, papal lands, and still
Speaker 1: foreign possessions. The Congress of Vienna had restored old rulers
Speaker 1: and old borders, but had never restored legitimacy to a
Speaker 1: country yearning for its own nationhood. And it was in
Speaker 1: that simmering heat that some really interesting secret societies start
Speaker 1: to flourish. The most famous and most fear of these
Speaker 1: was the Carbonari. The Carbonari took their name from charcoal burners,
Speaker 1: men who worked in forests and mountains, living outside of society.
Speaker 1: It was a perfect disguise. Like their namesake, the Carbonari
Speaker 1: operated in the shadows, gathering in secluded places, speaking in
Speaker 1: coded language and swearing elaborate oaths. Their rituals were theatrical,
Speaker 1: often medieval. Honestly, if you look at them, initiations could
Speaker 1: be by candlelight, symbols of fire and smoke, allegories of
Speaker 1: tyranny and liberation. But honestly, beneath all the medieval pageantry
Speaker 1: and drama, there was a real modern anger. The Carbonari
Speaker 1: were not revolutionaries, and like the Jacobin sense right. They
Speaker 1: didn't want to tear society down to its foundations. They
Speaker 1: wanted a constitution, They wanted limits on royal power. They wanted,
Speaker 1: especially an end to foreign domination, particularly Austrian domination in
Speaker 1: northern Italy. And they wanted the fair rule of law.
Speaker 1: These men were lawyers, army officers, minor nobles, and educated professionals.
Speaker 1: They were men caught between two worlds. They were too
Speaker 1: modern for absolutism, too cautious for radical democracy. Their moment
Speaker 1: finally came in the wake of Napoleon's fall. During the
Speaker 1: Napoleonic era, Italians had tasted centralized administration, legal quality, and
Speaker 1: careers open to talent. When the old regimes returned after
Speaker 1: eighteen fifteen, those gains vanished almost overnight. Censorship returned, constitutions
Speaker 1: were revoked, Austrian troops marched openly through Lombardy and Venetia.
Speaker 1: For many Italians, restoration didn't seem like peace at all.
Speaker 1: It seemed like a return to suffocation, a return to subjugation,
Speaker 1: and so in eighteen twenty and eighteen twenty one, the
Speaker 1: Carbonari moved from conspiracy to action. In the Kingdom of
Speaker 1: the Two Sicilies, officers linked to the society forced King
Speaker 1: Ferdinand I to finally grant a constitution. For a brief
Speaker 1: intoxicating moment, it seemed as though Italy might follow Spain
Speaker 1: and Portugal down the path of constitutional reform, but that
Speaker 1: dream collapsed just as quickly. Austrian armies intervened, crushed the
Speaker 1: movement and restored absolutist rule. Executions, imprisonment, and exile quickly followed.
Speaker 1: A similar fate met Carbonari inspired uprisings in Piedmont. The
Speaker 1: pattern became grimly familiar, whispered meetings, sudden revolt, short lived success,
Speaker 1: and then brutal, brutal repression. By the mid eighteen twenties,
Speaker 1: the Carbinari were weakened, infiltrated and hunted men. Their secrecy
Speaker 1: had protected them from the police, but it had also
Speaker 1: limited their reach. They could ignite sparks, but they could
Speaker 1: never sustain a general conflagration. But out of that failure
Speaker 1: emerged something new. One of the men watching closely was
Speaker 1: Giuseppe Nazzini born in genu One, eighteen oh five. Mazzini
Speaker 1: had flirted briefly with the Carbonari as a young man,
Speaker 1: and he had paid the price. Arrested in eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: and imprisoned. He was released into exile, an experience that
Speaker 1: would define his life. From abroad, he reflected bitterly on
Speaker 1: what had gone wrong. The Carbonari, Mazzini concluded, were doomed
Speaker 1: by their very nature. They were too secretive, too cautious,
Speaker 1: too dependent on elites and military officers. They spoke in symbols,
Speaker 1: is that of principles. Worst of all, they lacked a
Speaker 1: clear vision of Italy itself. They wanted constitutions, yes, but
Speaker 1: for what country and under what identity. In exile, Mizzini
Speaker 1: began to imagine a different kind of movement, not a
Speaker 1: secret societ wrapped in the throes of ritual but something
Speaker 1: more open, a national mission grounded in moral purpose and
Speaker 1: popular participation. And so in eighteen thirty one, in Marseilles,
Speaker 1: he founded Young Italy. Young Italy was radical in the
Speaker 1: way that the Carbonari had never been. Its goal was
Speaker 1: explicit and uncompromising. It wanted a united, independent Italian republic,
Speaker 1: no foreign rulers, no patchwork of states, no restored dynasties
Speaker 1: softened by constitutions. Italy, Menzini insisted, was not merely a
Speaker 1: geographic region. It was a nation with its own destiny.
Speaker 1: The movement rejected propaganda secrecy. Instead of whispered oaths, Young
Speaker 1: Italy used pamphlets, newspapers, manifestos. Mizzini wrote endlessly, passionately, framing
Speaker 1: nationalism as a moral duty. He believed were instruments of
Speaker 1: human progress, each with a role assigned by providence. Italians
Speaker 1: divided and humiliated had a sacred obligation to rise, not
Speaker 1: for material gain, but for the soul of humanity. Young
Speaker 1: Italy targeted the young deliberately, students, artisans, junior officers, people
Speaker 1: with energy and little to lose. It encouraged insurrection not
Speaker 1: as a coup by elites, but as a popular uprising.
Speaker 1: Where the Cobbinari had feared mass politics, Mizzini embraced it
Speaker 1: now yet honestly, in practice, I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but Young Italy didn't fare hardly any better than its predecessor,
Speaker 1: of the Carbonari insurrections in the early eighteen thirties. All
Speaker 1: failed leaders were arrested, supporters were executed. Mazzini himself lived
Speaker 1: a life perpetual exile, pursued by police and mocked by monarchs.
Speaker 1: To many contemporaries, he seemed a romantic failailure, brilliant sincere,
Speaker 1: but totally impracticable. But here's the thing, guys ideas sometimes
Speaker 1: they have long lives. The Carbonari had cracked the facade
Speaker 1: of restored absolutism. They proved that resistance was possible, that
Speaker 1: constitutions could be demanded at gunpoint, even briefly. Young Italy
Speaker 1: transformed that resistance into something larger, more enduring, a national ideology.
Speaker 1: Where the Carbonari whispered about reform, Mazzini shouted about unity.
Speaker 1: Where they sought concessions, he demanded transformation. And together they
Speaker 1: marked the opening chapters of a period of Italian history
Speaker 1: that will get into later called the resor Jimiento, the reorganization.
Speaker 1: The Carbonari had first lit these fires in secrets, and
Speaker 1: now Young Italy would carry the flame into the streets. Unification,
Speaker 1: though still decades away, had been written, and it would
Speaker 1: not be erased. In the German Confederation, similar tensions emerged
Speaker 1: the Humback Festival of eighteen thirty two, through tens of
Speaker 1: thousands waving black, red and gold banners, colors that symbolized
Speaker 1: a united German nation. Speakers likewise demanded constitutional governments, civil liberties,
Speaker 1: and national unity. But the response, in this case from
Speaker 1: conservative rulers was swift. There was censorship tightening, student groups
Speaker 1: were simply dissolved, and police surveillance was expanded everywhere. The
Speaker 1: message was unmistakable. Dreams of unity in Germany would not
Speaker 1: be tolerated, at least for the moment. By the eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: Europe was changing faster, honestly than its political systems could absorb.
Speaker 1: Railways now crisscrossed the continent, collapsing distances and accelerating commerce.
Speaker 1: Factories were drawing millions into cities where housing was cramped,
Speaker 1: wages low, and disease common. A new social class, the
Speaker 1: industrial working class, was growing and it was increasingly aware
Speaker 1: of itself. Economic hardship sharpened political tension. Poor harvests in
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen forties drove up food prices while industrial
Speaker 1: downturns threw thousands out of work. And then in Britain,
Speaker 1: the Chartist movement demanded universal mail, suffrage and secret ballots.
Speaker 1: And it's worth kind of digging into this for a
Speaker 1: moment because I think it's indicative of what's going on
Speaker 1: in Europe at the time. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: contradictions right now in the British political system. You know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about an industrialized nation that's honestly governed by
Speaker 1: a political system that excludes most of the people who
Speaker 1: made it run because it just hadn't been a lot
Speaker 1: of changes to Britain's political systems since the Middle Ages,
Speaker 1: and out of those contradictions emerged the Chartist movement, which
Speaker 1: was the first mass working class political movement in modern
Speaker 1: British history. Chartism was born in the eighteen thirties, a decade,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, deep disappointment. The Reform Act
Speaker 1: that I mentioned earlier of eighteen thirty two had promised changed,
Speaker 1: but for working people it delivered very little. Rotten boroughs disappeared,
Speaker 1: and the middle class gained new political power, yet the
Speaker 1: vast majority of adult men, especially industrial workers, remained voteless.
Speaker 1: At the same time, industrialization was reshaping human life, long hours,
Speaker 1: dangerous factories, child labor, and economic cycles of boom and
Speaker 1: bust produced insecurity rather than prosperity. When the Poor Laws
Speaker 1: were reformed in eighteen thirty four, were placing outdoor relief
Speaker 1: with grim workhouses. Many workers concluded that Parliament governed against them,
Speaker 1: not for them. The response was not immediate, rebellion, but
Speaker 1: an organization. In eighteen thirty eight, a group of reformers
Speaker 1: drafted a short document that would give the movement its name,
Speaker 1: the People's Charter. It contained six demand simple and radical
Speaker 1: in their implications. They wanted universal mail suffrage, secret ballots,
Speaker 1: equal electoral districts, payment for members of parliament, annual parliaments,
Speaker 1: and the abolition of property qualifications for members of parliament.
Speaker 1: None of these proposals addressed wages, food prices, or factory
Speaker 1: hours directly, but together they struck at the heart of
Speaker 1: political power. The message was unmistakable. Social reform was impossible
Speaker 1: without political democracy. Chartism spread rapidly because it spoke the
Speaker 1: language of injustice that working people already understood. Mass meetings
Speaker 1: filled open fields and town squares. Petitions were circulating in factories,
Speaker 1: hubs and workshops. Newspapers carried Chartist arguments into homes that
Speaker 1: had never before seen political writing aimed at them. Leaders
Speaker 1: such as Fergus O'Connor gave the movement a fiery public face,
Speaker 1: while quieter organizations built local associations across Britain. When made
Speaker 1: the Chartism revolutionary was not violence, but it was the
Speaker 1: sheer scale honestly. For the first time, there were hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of working men acting together as one political class.
Speaker 1: They didn't ask for favors, they claimed rights. Parliament was
Speaker 1: inundated with petitions bearing millions of signatures, an unprecedented assertion
Speaker 1: of popular sovereignty. The state, however, was not impressed. The
Speaker 1: first Great Chartist petition in eighteen thirty nine, was rejected
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly by the House of Commons. Frustrations billed into unrest.
Speaker 1: In Newport, Wales, armed Chartist clash with troops in an
Speaker 1: uprising that edited in bloodshed and executions. Elsewhere, strikes and
Speaker 1: demonstrations rattled authorities, Yet the movement remained divided over strategy.
Speaker 1: Some believed simple moral force, peaceful persuasion, and political pressure
Speaker 1: would bring the day. Others argued for physical force, convinced
Speaker 1: that power would never healed without coercion, and that division
Speaker 1: haunted Chartism throughout its life. Despite setbacks, the movement endured.
Speaker 1: A second petition in eighteen forty two carried even more signatures,
Speaker 1: only to be rejected again same year. Economic depression triggered
Speaker 1: the plug plot strikes, as workers pulled plugs from factory
Speaker 1: boilers to halt production. Once more. Repression followed arrests, transportation, imprisonment,
Speaker 1: but Chartism, for a little bit at least, refused to die.
Speaker 1: Its final great moment came in eighteen forty eight, a
Speaker 1: year when revolution swept across Europe. In Britain, chartists planned
Speaker 1: a massive demonstration at Kennington Common, accompanied by another petition,
Speaker 1: this one claiming nearly six million signatures. The government panicked quietly,
Speaker 1: mobilizing troops and enrolling special constables. When the day came,
Speaker 1: the demonstration was peaceful and the petition, once examined, proved inflated.
Speaker 1: Parliament rejected it again, and the movement never recovered its
Speaker 1: former momentum. By the early eighteen fifties, Chartism had faded.
Speaker 1: None of its six points had become law, and to
Speaker 1: many contemporaries it looked like a failure. But history judged
Speaker 1: it differently. Chartism changed Britain by changing political expectations. It
Speaker 1: normalized the idea that working people belonged in national politics.
Speaker 1: It trained a generation and organization debate and protest, and
Speaker 1: over time, slowly, grudgingly, almost every single Chartist demand became law.
Speaker 1: Secret ballots finally came in eighteen seventy two, property qualifications
Speaker 1: slowly vanished, members of parliament were paid, electoral districts were reformed,
Speaker 1: and universal mail suffrage followed by the early twentieth century. Still,
Speaker 1: Chartism failed in the short term because Britain's rulers simply
Speaker 1: refused to yield. It succeeded in the long term because
Speaker 1: industrialization and changed to society made opposition to it quite
Speaker 1: frankly untenable. The movement ultimately proved that democracy was not
Speaker 1: a gift bestowed from above, but a demand built from below.
Speaker 1: Now back on the continent, socialist ideas were actually gaining traction,
Speaker 1: and that brings us to another actor in our story,
Speaker 1: Karl Marx. Karl Marx was born in eighteen eighteen in
Speaker 1: the quiet Rhineland town of Trier, a place that looked
Speaker 1: ancient but lived under modern pressures. Roman ruins actually were
Speaker 1: directly next to Prussian bureaucratic offices. Catholic tradition co existed
Speaker 1: uneasily with Enlightenment rationalism. Marx's family embodied these tensions. His father,
Speaker 1: Henrik Marx, was a lawyer, Jewish by birth Lutheran by conversion,
Speaker 1: who embraced both Voltaire and Kant with the fervor of
Speaker 1: a man who believed reason could liberate society from him.
Speaker 1: Karl inherited both skepticism towards its authority at a confidence
Speaker 1: in the power of ideas. And we know that Marx
Speaker 1: was a difficult child, but brilliant, sharp tongued, restless, and
Speaker 1: impatient with convention. At the University of Bong and later Berlin,
Speaker 1: he immersed himself in philosophy, particularly the work of Heigel.
Speaker 1: But Marx was never content to admire systems from a distance.
Speaker 1: He wanted to expose their contradictions. He wanted to open
Speaker 1: up the machine and show everybody how it worked. While
Speaker 1: his peers debated metaphysics, Marx sharpened his talents for polenic,
Speaker 1: learning how to argue not just persuasively, but honestly, a
Speaker 1: little mercilessly. In Berlin, he fell in with the young Hegelians,
Speaker 1: radical intellectuals who used Hegel's philosophy to critique religion, monarchy,
Speaker 1: and tradition. Marx quickly emerged as one of the most
Speaker 1: aggressive voices among them. But even there he was dissatisfied philosophy.
Speaker 1: He started to suspect, explained the world brilliantly and never
Speaker 1: changed it, and so the realization pushed him towards journalism.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty two, Marx became the editor of the
Speaker 1: reichland Zetunde, a liberal newspaper published in Cologne. For the
Speaker 1: first time, his ideas collided directly with political reality. Writing
Speaker 1: on censorship, poverty, land rights, and the plight of the
Speaker 1: rural poor, Marx discovered the limits of abstract liberalism. Prussian
Speaker 1: officials did not argue with his logic, they just shut
Speaker 1: the paper down. The experience radicalized him. If rational criticism
Speaker 1: could be silent so easily, perhaps the problem wasn't bad policies,
Speaker 1: but it was the structure of the system itself. Forced
Speaker 1: into exile, Marx moved to Paris in eighteen forty three,
Speaker 1: and there, amid the cafes, his thinking transformed. Paris exposed
Speaker 1: him to socialism not as a philosophy, but as a
Speaker 1: lived experience. He met with workers, artisans, and revolutionary who
Speaker 1: spoke not of ideas but of hunger, wages, and exploitation.
Speaker 1: It was also in Paris that Marx met the man
Speaker 1: who would become his lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Angeles was
Speaker 1: everything that Marx was not He was financially secure, socially graceful,
Speaker 1: and already emerged in the reality of industrial capitalism through
Speaker 1: his family's textile business. Yet intellectually they were two peas
Speaker 1: in a pod. Angles brought empirical observation, factories, slums, labor conditions,
Speaker 1: Marx brought theoretical firepower. Together they forged a new understanding
Speaker 1: of society history, driven not by ideals alone, but by
Speaker 1: material conditions and class struggle. By the mid eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: Marx's thinking had hardened into coherent worldview. He rejected utopian
Speaker 1: socialism as naive and liberal reform as insufficient. Capitalism, he argued,
Speaker 1: was not unjust because of moral failure. It was unjust
Speaker 1: because exploitation was the foundation of capital's very structure. The
Speaker 1: bourgeois didn't choose to exploit, they had to in order
Speaker 1: to survive in the system within which they controlled. Workers, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: were alienated from their labor, from their products, and ultimately
Speaker 1: from themselves. Prussian pressure followed Marx even into exile. In
Speaker 1: eighteen forty five, he was expelled from France and settled
Speaker 1: in Brussels, where he continued writing and organizing, and here
Speaker 1: his tone sharpened, gone was any lingering faith in the
Speaker 1: idea that gradual reform could work. Revolution, Marx now believed,
Speaker 1: was not only inevitable, it was necessary. Class conflict was
Speaker 1: not a tragic deviation from history, was actually the engine
Speaker 1: that drove everything. And as Europe drifted towards crisis in
Speaker 1: the late eighteen forties, Marx found himself increasingly at the
Speaker 1: center of radical networks. When a small group called the
Speaker 1: Communist League asked him to draft a statement of principles,
Speaker 1: he jumped at it. The result that was published in
Speaker 1: February of eighteen forty eight was the Communist Manifesto. It
Speaker 1: opened not with a cautious argument, but with a challenge quote,
Speaker 1: a specter is haunting Europe, the Specter of Communism. And
Speaker 1: a few explosive pages, Marx and Engles laid out their
Speaker 1: vision of history as a succession of class struggles, culminating
Speaker 1: in a conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariats. Capitalism,
Speaker 1: they argued, had created its own grave diggers. The working
Speaker 1: class would overthrow the system and would build a classless society.
Speaker 1: And as we will see in future episodes, the timing
Speaker 1: was perfect. Now. Meanwhile, while this was going on Europe's
Speaker 1: conservative guardians, figures like meta Niche believe that repression could
Speaker 1: still preserve order. Metternich's system of censorship, surveillance, and alliance
Speaker 1: building had kept revolution at base since eighteen fifteen, but
Speaker 1: by the late eighteen forties it was clear that fear
Speaker 1: alone could no longer hold back the demand for constitutions, nations,
Speaker 1: and social justice. By the eve of eighteen forty eight,
Speaker 1: Europe was a consonant in the change. Liberalism had won
Speaker 1: some partial victories, nationalism earned without fulfillment, and industrial capitalism
Speaker 1: had now created massive inequalities and new political actors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Kings still sat on their thrones, but their
Speaker 1: legitimacy was wearing thin. Next time, when revolution finally comes
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty eight, honestly, it doesn't erupt from nowhere.
Speaker 1: It's the release of pressures that have been building steadily
Speaker 1: since eighteen thirty And I hope this episode has sort
Speaker 1: of emphasized a lot of those changes, a lot of
Speaker 1: those that gunpowder barrel that's just being steadily and slowly packed,
Speaker 1: and in eighteen forty eight it all explodes and will
Speaker 1: be a reminder at the age of barricades is far
Speaker 1: from over.