Deck 15: European Civilization, 1871-1914: Society and Culture

Question 1

The working class movement before 1914 was unable to resolve which of the following contradictions?

A) Socialism sought the abolition of the private employer, while trade unionism sought to bargain with employers for better conditions.
B) The trade unions wished to prepare for revolution, while the socialist political parties were more interested in rhetoric and theories.
C) Rural workers were more conservative than urban workers, especially in countries like Italy.
D) Intellectuals favored unionism, while workers favored socialism.

Answer 1

Socialism sought the abolition of the private employer, while trade unionism sought to bargain with employers for better conditions.

Question 2

The labor unions of Britain, in contrast to the unions on the continent

A) were created and led by the Labour party.
B) brought into being the Labour party.
C) were less successful in forcing collective bargaining on employers.
D) were much faster in organizing themselves for political action.

Answer 2

brought into being the Labour party.

Question 3

Karl Marx's sharpest struggle in the First International was with Bakunin, who argued that

A) socialists must work to reform the state gradually, rather than change it through revolution, as Marx argued.
B) the state was the main enemy of the common person.
C) only through elections could the working class improve its condition.
D) socialists must cooperate with capitalists to improve wages and working conditions.

Answer 3

the state was the main enemy of the common person.

Question 4

On the continent, except for Russia, as Marxist or Social Democratic parties became larger and larger, they generally

A) became more and more revolutionary.
B) maintained the same positions they had held earlier.
C) turned less revolutionary, and increasingly worked through the parliamentary process to obtain practical benefits for the workers.
D) turned reactionary, allying on occasion with the right to obtain benefits from the state.

Question 5

Among the Marxists who opposed "revisionism," or compromise with governments and capitalists to obtain reforms, and continued to demand violent class conflict were

A) George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells.
B) Sidney and Beatrice Webb.
C) Karl Kautsky and V.I. Lenin.
D) Jean Jaurès and Eduard Bernstein.

Question 6

By evolution, Charles Darwin meant that

A) species change over time and by a kind of chance.
B) species change because they want to survive.
C) organisms change through intelligent and purposeful action.
D) humans evolved from monkeys.

Question 7

Social Darwinists

A) refuted the notion that human nature had an animal side.
B) argued that some peoples were naturally superior to others.
C) replaced adaptation with virtue.
D) all of the choices are correct.

Question 8

The Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, was one of the most important books written by

A) Ivan Pavlov.
B) Gregor Mendel.
C) Herbert Spencer.
D) Sigmund Freud.

Question 9

Nietzsche argued that

A) modern, democratic societies were the product of evolutionary development.
B) Christian virtues demonstrated a slavish morality.
C) human beings were more driven by reason and rationality than by instincts and a "will to power."
D) all of the choices are correct.

Question 10

By the end of the nineteenth century, the Catholic church had begun to adapt the trends of the modern _{age by}

A) and focusing on its spiritual mission.
B) criticizing, in the 1891 papal encyclical Rerum Novarum, the abuses of capitalism and calling for social action.
C) encouraging the formation of Catholic socialist parties and Catholic labor unions.
D) all of the choices are correct.

Question 11

Analyze the rise of the European trade union movement and socialism in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Question 12

What accounted for the decline of classical liberalism in Europe by the end of the 19th century?

Question 13

In what ways did science and scientific thinking change between 1860 and 1914? How did science in this period on the one hand lead to concrete advances but on the other, call into question the very rationality of our world?

Question 14

What changes did European religions undergo in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? How did scientific advances trigger some of those changes?

Question 15

Why did Marxism experience a push toward revisionism in the late nineteenth century?

Question 16

Why did Darwin's ideas provoke such an outcry?

Question 17

Why were the Protestants less successful in resisting the effects of the age than Catholics?

Question 18

In what ways did economic trends in the nineteenth and early twentieth century undermine liberalism?

Question 19

Why was the notion of human beings as rational creatures questioned in the late nineteenth century?