Key Social and Economic Terms of the 18th and 19th Centuries
Glossary of Terms: 18th and 19th Centuries
Stratified Society
First defined as a closed social group, it belonged to individuals who performed the same or similar functions in society. They were endowed with a legal status, with specific laws or privileges (then meant private law). The privilege determined the exclusive and closed nature of the estate.
Bourgeoisie
Until the 18th century, it was used to describe different social groups, as well as the city where that applied. During the 19th century, its use was gradually restricted to denote those who had more and dominated social life.
Unlink
To separate assets from entailments, allowing owners full ownership.
Dispose
To pass or transmit to another the domain of a thing or other right.
Movable Property
Consists of goods without a fixed location that can be moved, such as money, securities, shares, electricity, oil, etc.
Real Estate
Consists of goods that cannot be moved, often fixed from one site to another, such as houses, buildings, farms, land, etc.
Mayorazgos
Permitted maintaining a set of interrelated goods in a way that this bond could never be broken. The property thus passed, linked to the heir, usually the eldest son, so that the bulk of a family’s assets did not spread; it could only increase.
Socialism and the Proletariat in the 19th Century
Poor social and economic conditions of the proletariat—also called the workers, but the fact that it only had their offspring (children)—led to projects and theories to combat poverty and defend this social group. Some thinkers believed that the ownership and administration of the means of production should be placed in the hands of the workers. Others proposed that the economy should be controlled by the state. All these theories were known as socialist, with two distinct streams:
- Utopian Socialism: An ideal current that developed in the first half of the 19th century. The name “utopian socialists” was given to a number of thinkers who devised formulas to solve the labor problem through principles very difficult to put into practice. They were rated as “Utopia,” the title of a famous work by Thomas More in the 16th century, which described a perfect society.
- Scientific Socialism: In the second half of the 19th century, this stream of socialism was founded by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Both exposed the foundations of a new doctrine, now known as Marxism, in works such as “The Communist Manifesto” and “Capital.”
Marxism and the Class Struggle
For Marx, the determining factor in social and historical phenomena is the economy. All cultural values, all forms of society, and all religious expressions depend on the forms of production. In early human society, all men were equal, and all property was common. However, this original society split into two antagonistic groups when private property emerged. Owners of the means of production became the ruling class. These groups have been in constant conflict, and therefore, for Marx, the history of society is the history of class struggle.
In the historical moment in which Marx lived, the two antagonistic classes were the bourgeoisie, owners of the large factories, banks, and businesses, and the proletariat, whose living and working conditions were very poor. Economic systems had only helped to increase the wealth of the bourgeoisie and the poverty of the workers, accentuating social inequality.
For Marx, the solution to the labor problem is for workers to become aware of their situation and come together to fight against the bourgeoisie, which must be overthrown. The bourgeoisie has only had the freedom to farm for profit, not realizing the working and living conditions of their workers. With this, the proletariat succeeds in establishing the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat,” a period during which workers become owners of political power, establishing state ownership of the means of production to produce, not for profit but to satisfy the needs of people. After this transition period, a communist society will be established: a classless and stateless society where there would be no form of exploitation.