The Constitutional Consequences of the Social Question
17.4.1 From Censitary to Universal Suffrage
The first consequence of these drastic social changes was an expansion in the number of people authorized to vote in elections.
In the mid nineteenth century, the European nation-states’ swelling wealth allowed the middle class to achieve a degree of political influence, as it was incorporated into the electoral base when censitary and indirect suffrage was abandoned, giving way to universal (male) suffrage.[984] In the United States, the transition to universal suffrage was a consequence of the incorporation of new, non-slave states into the union populated by many small property owners, a process that would be consolidated after the end of the Civil War in 1865.
In Europe, the expansion of suffrage came about in some countries progressively, as it happened in England between 1832 and 1918, and in others abruptly, as it was the case in France in 1848, though it would be consolidated after 1875; in Prussia, in 1850, at least formally; and in Spain, first between 1868 and 1875, and then on a permanent basis after 1890.[985] These were clear signs that European politics was undergoing a historic shift.[986] Women suffrage, as we have seen in the previous chapter, would not appear until the twentieth century.Universal suffrage, despite being initially limited to men, swung open the doors to masses of workers who had become “class conscious” in the wake of the publication, on February 21,1848, of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels’ (1820-1895) Communist Manifesto (Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei) apow- erful proclamation of communist principles, which ended in the following manner:
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and intentions. They openly declare that their ends can only be attained by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.
Let the ruling classes tremble at the prospect of a communist revolution. The proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite![987]17.4.2 The Questioning of the Laissez Faire Principle:
The Socialist Approach
Galvanized by Marxism, the working class struggled to replace the laissez faire state with another model, one which endorsed the exercise of political power to prevent the exploitation of man by man, thereby threatening one of the basic individual rights on which the liberal state was based: the right to property.[988]
17.4.2.1 From Romantic Socialism to Scientific Socialism
In 1754, Rousseau, in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, had already described private property as the root of social inequality (Viroli 2002, 73). France’s Francois-Noel Babeuf (1760-1797) would seek to apply these ideas as the first to seek to extend the revolution to the social level (Conspiracy of the Equals) before being executed by the Directorate (Rose 1978).
At the theoretical level it was the French Romantic Socialists, such as the Count of Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and Charles Fourier (1772-1837), who laid the foundations for economic authoritarianism by advocating the abolition of inheritances and state acquisition of the “means of production”, as a means by which to achieve social justice, to be based on the principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. The movement grew more radical with Pierre Proudhon (1809-1865), Louis Blanc (1811-1882)[989] and, above all, Marx himself.
17.4.2.2 The Revolutionary Approach
Socialism represented a full-on attack against the premises of the liberal state, as it advanced the idea that the defense of the disadvantaged should constitute one of the government’s essential aims, a principle openly criticized by liberals, who feared its social consequences and dreaded a return to an all-powerful and authoritarian state.
In France the Revolution of 1848 clearly constituted an uprising of the masses (Geary 1984, 25-89) as opposed to the quintessentially bourgeois Revolution of 1830 (Pilbeam 2006, 168-180).[990] In fact, the first article of the Constitution of the Second French Republic (1848-1851) defined the new regime as a “social republic” and introduced universal (male) suffrage, definitively adopted in France, displacing censitary electoral systems.[991]
It is worth pointing out that in the mid nineteenth century France was, along with the United States, the only western country with a large number of small landowners, in the former as a result of the Revolution of 1789, in the latter as a consequence of the staggering abundance of land available. Thus, in these nations citizens were more sensitive to the dire conditions suffered by workers in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, and convinced by their social realities that this was not an inevitable state of affairs.[992] In fact, the French Constitution of 1848 recognized as one of the state’s primary functions that of providing citizens with work, an objective it pursued through the creation of “National Workshops” (ateliers nationaux). This policy, without any doubt, marked a precedent in the construction of what would come to be called the “welfare state”.[993]
Liberals, however, put up strong resistance to these kinds of developments. It is noteworthy that on September 12, 1848, the very lucid liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) rose to address the French Second Republic’s Constitutional Assembly to deliver a “speech against the right to work” in which he rejected a series of social rights which he viewed as utterly incompatible with the individual rights which the liberal state ought to ensure. In his view, accepting these postulates meant opening the door to the return of political authoritarianism.[994]
Following Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto Socialism took on a decidedly political tint and became an international movement overtly aimed at toppling the liberal state.
To achieve this Marxist Socialism espoused class struggle, i.e. the proletariat as a united, international class violently overthrowing the exploitative class: the bourgeoisie. For this purpose, the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) was founded in London in 1864, also known as the First International (Freymond and Molnar 1966, 3-35).17.4.2.3 Social Democracy and Mass Parties Emerge
During this stage, “scientific” Socialism was clearly revolutionary in nature, as it called for an armed uprising against the liberal established order, seeking the institution of a totalitarian regime: the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the first stage of a process leading to the creation of a state devoid of social classes. The failure of the Paris Commune (March-May 1871), however, would lead Marx to renounce violence, and at the 1872 Hague Congress, radical anarchists led by Bakunin (1814-1876) were actually expelled from the IWA (Nomad 1966, 68). Henceforth the socialist movement’s aim became to control the liberal state by legal means through the corresponding electoral processes. This was Social Democracy, a political movement which arose when supporters of Marx and La Salle met at Gotha in 1875 (Manuel 1997, 208).
This explains why it was at this time when the first mass parties were founded: in 1875 the German Socialist Workers’ Party,[995] the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party in 1879 (Gillespie 1989), in 1892 the Italian Socialist Party,[996] the English Labour Party in 1900 (Worley 2009, 3), the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party in 1901 (Hildermeier 2000, 42-50), and in 1905 the French Section of the Workers’ International (SFIO), the forerunner of the current French Socialist Party.[997]
17.4.3 The Conservative Approach: Bismarck's Sozialpolitik
It is certainly a paradox that the social rights of workers would begin to receive effective protection from a conservative government such as that in Imperial Prussia, a development that started because Bismarck, despite the fact that he belonged to the Prussian aristocracy, was astute enough to realize the need to reduce the pressure exerted by the socialist movement, spurring him to adopt a policy of worker protection which may be considered a precursor of the “welfare state”.
After the establishment of the Second Reich in 1871, and despite his resounding victories over France and Austria, the all-powerful Bismarck faced strong internal opposition from the bourgeois parties in the Reichstag. It was then when to buttress his political position, he opted to win over and ally himself with the working class by endorsing the state’s adoption of policies favoring its welfare (Roth 1984, 59-84). In a speech before the Reichstag on November 17, 1881, Emperor William I recognized that it was incumbent upon the state to promote the well-being of all its citizens, especially the most vulnerable and needy, through the appropriate institutions and using those resources at society’s disposal. At this point Bismarck’s government adopted what would come to be termed “social policy” (Sozialstaat), which took the form of a series of legislative measures passed between 1883 and 18 89.[998] This set of laws would be incorporated into the Social Insurance Code of 1911, and enabled the Weimar Republic to expressly recognize the right to social welfare protection.[999]
The social protection model backed by Bismarck would be adopted in the United Kingdom from 1906 to 1911, thanks to Lloyd George and his advisors W.H. Beveridge and Winston Churchill, who urged the government to take a step forward and break with the outmoded tradition of social assistance provided exclusively in the form of the “poor laws”. It should be noted that 20 years later the British government would take a further step to reinforce social protection by assuring state funding for the system, as under Bismarck’s model it was only sustained financially by employers and workers.[1000]
17.4.4 The Return of the Interventionist State
In general, however, Europe’s governments would remain relatively reluctant to protect the least fortunate classes so long as their liberal states were enjoying considerable economic growth, fruit of their colonial expansion. This would abruptly change, however, with the catastrophic turning point of World War I, a “collective suicide” committed by Europe’s all-powerful nation-states which would lead, among many other things, to the success of the Russian “Soviet Revolution” in
1917. These developments in Europe would give rise to anew constitutional model, reflected, on the other side of the Atlantic, in the Mexican Constitution of 1917, which featured references not only to “individual rights” but “social rights” as well (Meade 2010, 169-170).[1001] World War I and the Russian Revolution would prompt western governments to generally embrace this recognition of the need for the state to take an active role in mitigating economic inequality and social injustice.
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