Introduction
World history has always been followed by people’s continuous fight for human rights, equal opportunities, respect, and dignity. The major challenge, however, lied in the limited opportunity to secure these rights for each individual in terms of various socioeconomic factors that contribute to the national development. The following paper suggests that the Atlantic Revolutions period, when regarded through the prism of socialist thinking, could reflect the idea of equal opportunities achieved with the help of depriving people of excessive authority over others. Moreover, the notion of riots and wars for the sake of peace correlates with one of the many tools socialist leaders applied while trying to bring the doctrine to life.
Main body
For the purpose of finding the optimal solution, many sociologists tried to define social theories that would serve as a basis for further propositions of the overall historical development. Thus, some of the basic sociological theories aimed at dealing with inequalities among individuals include:
- Structural functionalism – defining functions of each part of society in order to calculate the overall contribution to its development;
- Conflict theory – defining the ways of individual inequalities influence the overall discrepancy in social power;
- Symbolic interactionalism – analyzing interpersonal peculiarities of communication (Ritzer and Stepnisky 2017).
Having reached no consensus in terms of universal equality, world leaders decided to do what they felt was the best option in a specific setting. However, while some national figures did what was best for their personal benefit and satisfaction, others tried to do everything for the sake of the common good. One of the major crises in terms of this dissonance traces back to the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century – the era of continuous revolutions and fighting for fundamental human rights and freedoms (Forrest, Hagermann, and Rowe 2016). Thus, the middle of the 19th century was marked by the final events in the Atlantic Revolutions that were primarily caused by the worldwide riots for human rights, liberalism, and major shifts in rather authoritarian governing patterns.
While all of these theories make sense in certain sociological settings, there is no particular solution to all the issues facing society today that would equally influence all the social groups. However, based on the aforementioned approaches, scholars have been trying to develop doctrines that might benefit the absolute majority of people by providing them with equal opportunities. Some of the vivid examples of such approaches include the introduction of socialism and capitalism – opposite social hierarchy patterns that are both aimed at securing human rights equality. In the context of the aforementioned timeframe of constant revolutions, the idea of a socialist paradigm was introduced, changing the way authorities cooperate with citizens.
The Notion of Socialism
One of the fundamental principles of maintaining international peace – active cooperation – has been placed in the foundation of the socialist movement, which emerged with the commence of the Industrial Revolution back in the 18th century (Ball, 2020). Some of the major principles of socialist thinking at the time included:
- Equality;
- Democracy;
- Individual freedom;
- Self-realization;
- Community (solidarity) (Gilabert and O’Neill 2019).
When examining the following doctrine pillars for the first time, one might think of socialism as a beneficial way of dealing with social inequality and continuous discrimination. However, if to take a closer look at the issue, it becomes clear that the concept itself is rather utopian and is barely possible to implement regarding the overall social structure and principles of human behavior formed thousands of years ago by people’s ancestors. To begin with, the notions of self-realization and solidarity, when perceived through the prism of the socialist movement, contradict each other.
One of the pillars upon which socialism is built is the idea of commonwealth secured by equal opportunities for the nation, objecting to the private ownership opportunity for the individuals. The very concept of self-realization, however, is quite correlated with the idea of competition, which is impossible in the context of common ownership. Moreover, major human instincts are based on the competition, as it made evolution possible, provoking people for actions that would benefit their well-being. Hence, while at the beginning of its existence, socialism was considered salvation for some fundamental human rights breaches, its further implementation attempts were not successful.
The Atlantic Revolutions
The beginning of the 19th century was marked by some major coup d’états that were caused by power abuse in most empires of the time. As a result, residents all over the world were awakened by the idea that they were capable of combating abuse and discrimination by pooling their efforts in the fight against imperialism and human right violation (Fitz, 2016). Bearing this idea in mind, most countries across the Atlantic coasts decided that the only way to achieve equality was to deprive some people of excessive power by pursuing the fundamentals of democracy and giving authority to the people. Within such a framework, the idea of socialism makes much sense, as it does not give any preference to those in power, i.e., forbidding them to impose their power upon fellow residents. Moreover, according to socialist thinking, those in power have neither moral nor legal right to single out certain representatives of society by providing them with more opportunities and authority over other state residents.
Taking the following interpretation into consideration, it becomes clear that such an approach to the division of power in society seems ideal when the overall situation gets out of control, as it happened after a series of coup d’états taken place worldwide. Under such conditions, people need something secure to believe in order to remain strong until the end of the fight. The Atlantic Revolutions, in their turn, emphasized the utopian perspective of the socialist ideology. However, once the dust settled, the overall concept of having no opportunity to enter the free market and earn more than other people by outcompeting them began to seem unfair as well, as it somehow limited the scope of human development ability. This phenomenon might be explained by the fact that at times when people had no legal right to get paid for their labor and express their thoughts, the universal equality seemed ideal for them on the background of extremely severe discrimination. However, once they understood that their equal abilities might be rewarded differently with no human rights violation involved, the overall expectations from labor and government rose significantly.
To conclude, it should be noted that the overall social development is a complicated process that requires constant reconsideration in order to correspond to people’s expectations from human rights and opportunities paradigm. Thus, the historical background plays a significant role when reflecting upon people’s major priorities and needs. The period of Atlantic Revolutions, and its implications like the development of liberalism and national governance, thus reflects the ideas of socialist thinking, as it was primarily focused on power abuse deprivation and the establishment of justice.
References
Ball, Terence. 2020. “Socialism.” Britannica. Web.
Fitz, Caitlin. 2016. Our Sister Republics: The United States in an Age of American Revolutions. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
Forrest, Alan, Karen Hagemann, and Michael Rowe, eds. 2016. War, Demobilization and Memory: The Legacy of War in the Era of Atlantic Revolutions. Berlin, Germany: Springer.
Gilabert, Pablo, and Martin O’Neill. 2019. “Socialism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Web.
Ritzer, George, and Jeffrey Stepnisky. 2017. Modern sociological theory. New York, NY: Sage Publications.