Miliani - Utopian Socialism, Transitional Thread From Romanticism to Positivism in Spanish America

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Utopian Socialism, Transitional Thread from Romanticism to Positivism in Spanish America Author(s): Domingo Miliani Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1963), pp. 523-538Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2707982Accessed: 08-06-2015 21:17 UTC

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UTOPIAN SOCIALISM, TRANSITIONAL THREAD FROM ROMANTICISM TO POSITIVISM IN

SPANISH AMERICA *

BY DOMINGO MILIANI

I. Introduction

By 1830 the wars for emancipation were virtually ended in most Spanish American countries. Then began an era, lasting at least three decades, which was typified by the quest for institutional grip-handles, and by republican policies and upheaval. The struggles on the battle- field against Spain were finished, only to be followed by political factions, incipient parties battling for the power to run the government. Parliamentary debate was bottle-necked by interminable digressions about the form of the State. Centralism and federalism were the slogans of more or less structured oligarchies-"of no difference" it might be said, so far as the desire for power goes, and differing only like the two facets of the same phenomenon bearing external labels. Liberals or conservatives, centralizers or federationists would in the end amount to more or less the same thing. The lack of definitive ideologies and concrete programs to guide politics opened the doors wide to armed disputes in which soldiers after a recess, former heroes, converted their primitive energies to settling the battle of ideas, or set themselves up as undisputed leaders of seditious parties. The latter alternative would come about by a series of revolts and guerrilla- fighting rather than by elections; presidents might last twenty-four hours after an election but dictators would install themselves for twenty-four years and direct the course of nations. Meanwhile the ideologists would argue whether British parliamentary democracy is better than the North-American kind, or vice versa, in comparison with our Spanish-American sort.

The constitutions that emerged from congresses were nearly per- fect in words but their application would be casual and unfortunate. The strong hand prevailed over written justice. This evil became en- demic in our historical and political development, and it would not be too bold to say that we still have this condition in our own times.'

*This paper was presented before the Conference held by the International Society for the History of Ideas at the University of Mexico City, Nov. 22-24, 1962.-Translated by Philip P. Wiener.

1 Jose Gil Fortoul defines the Spanish-American politics of this period as follows: "The politics of each people is characterized at a given time by the special form of its institutions and the way in which they function. Furthermore, the interpretation and application of the laws of the constitution are always more important than the more or less advanced doctrine serving as a norm for Congresses commissioned to draw up the laws. The wisest constitution is a dead letter if it is contradicted by the

523


524 DOMINGO AMILIANI

The old principles of the French Revolution acclimatized to our continent would not always be realized except as catchwords on the eve of election campaigns. And the latter, the right to vote, was either the discriminatory instrument of social majorities-as in Venezuela- or of an oppressive and destructive formula as in the Argentina of Rosas.2

IL. The Advent of Romanticism. European Socialism The generation that was born during the thick of the war for inde-

pendence, and witnessed in its youth the fluctuations of a politics yet to reach stability, went to Europe and fed on the social question which had already produced powerful uprisings and disturbances in France and other countries. Romanticism had arrived at its period of broad commiserative social concern; European political thinkers and social philosophers saw the inadequacy of the old political structures and hastened to weave new models of a utopian character, likely to palliate the imminence of explosions from the populace. England and France were intent on sounding out the situation; theoreticians and seers proliferated, syndicalist movements-strongly persecuted-were followed by legal and semi-secret groups, each recognizing in essence the question of economic and social inequalities even when the method of solution indicated points of discord and lack of unity. In religious matters there was a tendency to revindicate Christianity, and in some cases even to found new religious sects. From the illusory field of utopias one passed on to political conclaves; and in ideology from philosophical pragmatism and laisser-faire economics to a spirit- ualism of a revolutionary or evolutionary hue, to a readjustment of the relations of proprietors to workers leaning to social equality and harmony, and to a redistribution of risks. Capitalism became a shunned monster in the hands of its own creators and connoisseurs in whose own entrails its future destiny was gestating. The system itself customs of the social and political milieu, the anarchical or despotic tendencies of parties, and the authoritarian or dissolving procedures of the Government. This is verified by the history of the Latin American republics during much of the XIXth century, in which despite the form of their constitutions, a form which at times attained near perfection in theory, the individual often enjoyed less liberty than people in other nations subjected still to an apparently antiquated constitutional regime (the monarchies of England, Belgium, Holland, Italy). It is even reported that social evolution proceeded in some periods more rapidly under a dictatorship than under the regular functioning of the legitimate government." J. Gil Fortoul, Historia Constitucional de Venezuela, 3 vols. revised third ed. (Caracas, 1942), II, 222.

2 In Venezuela, for example, to be a citizen, voter, or eligible for election, it was necessary to have an annual income of at least 150 pesos; on the other hand, the constitutional rule which required the voter to know how to read and write, could never be applied. In Argentina, the universal suffrage, instituted by the centralists, brought Juan Manuel de Rosas to power and perpetuated his leadership.


was not attacked, but its most ostensibly inhuman aspects were; some repudiated mechanization and some exalted it to serve the "most numerous and poorest" classes.3

In every field signs of -the anxiety and unrest set into motion by the social question were discernible. The stage was prepared for utopian socialism. The new theorists and utopians proposed to alter the course of historical and political events since the French Revolu- tion; the intellectuals refined its possible analysis. The scales were tipped in favor of the recognition of the basic principles of the Decla- ration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, but through groups that would actualize these rights and more especially through a new ideology.

The first preoccupation was the conciliation of individual and collective interests; in the latter, the harmonizing of social classes, the recognition of great impresarios and intellectuals as leaders of political organization and as substitutes for the military castes and pro- fessional politicians. Everything, cloaked in mystical virtuoso ideas, led to the belief that the important thing was the reeducation of society along a predominantly moral path.4

Actually what happened was not only that the problem of social inequality became more acute at that time but romanticism, above all, also initiated an awareness of the problem because romanticism had more than stimulated the gregarious qualities of man into hu-

3All socialistic theories, says Cole, "have something in common; they all take their starting point from the recognition of the key importance of the 'social problem' and from the belief that man ought to take some sort of collective or associate action to deal with it. They are all sharply hostile to laissez-faire-to the conception of a natural law which, in the absence of collective human interference with its operation will somehow work out for good, however that good may be defined. They all rest on a belief in the virtues of collaboration, as against competition, or of planning, as against what their opponents call 'free enterprise.' They all require of men a more cooperative attitude and behavior than are characteristic of capitalist society-still more than were characteristic of it a century ago. The most obvious common factor among all the 'Socialisms' . . . is the denunciation of the competitive spirit as manifested in capitalist industry and of its consequence in human ill-fare and oppression." G. D. H. Cole, A History of Socialist Thought, 5 vols. (London and New York, 1953), I (Socialist Thought: The Forerunners 1789-1850), ch. XXVI, 302-3.

4 "From 1830 to 1848, French socialism, which then triumphed everywhere in the world, far from showing itself as materialistic, as German Marxism was to be, was idealistic and sentimental like the poetry of its time. It was more fraternalistic than equalitarian; rather than appeal to the law, it invoked the sense of duty, it stressed the union rather than the struggle of classes because it conceived a complete transformation of society and because it wished to bring happiness to all mankind. It united moral reform, including religion, with social and economic solutions to the problems of the status of women, the child and the family, education, and justice, in short, spiritual problems as well as materialistic improvements. In all of this, French socialism was closely related to romanticism, and their influence com- bined to work on society." R. Picard, El romanticismo social (1944), 328.


526 DOMINGO MILIANI

manitarian, sentimental, and philanthropic feelings. At the same time romanticism was so preoccupied with making nature the great confi- dant of human afflictions, that it led man to observe also the nature of the masses and especially the lot of the working classes that had acquired historical awareness of their destiny.5 The conviction that society is perfectible in its growth made possible the creation of utopian formulas. The study of the past in retrospective comparison gave rise to the more direct awareness of the state of poverty and precarious- ness of the social classes and to the mapping of new roads more feas- ible for the convulsed countries of Europe to follow.

III. The American Situation and Socialism Utopian socialism and literary romanticism appeared as simul-

taneous movements in America. They invaded Argentina with the return of Echeverria to that country; he, as a young man, had to stay in France for five years, from 1825 to 1830. It was a Paris stirred by strikes and poverty, saturated with idealism, which it fell to his lot to experience. He returned a romantic in literature and an incipient socialist in politics. In Buenos Aires he had received his first philosophical coating at the hands of the much discussed Fernandez de Agiiero.6 In France, he would frequent the salon and its chatter in the circle of Benjamin Constant and Destutt de Tracy with whose doctrine he was already familiar. But, above all, the new doctrines of Political Economy took hold of the traveler, and provided him at a critical time with a new science with which to build the foundations of objective analysis, strongly attached to the trend of economic liberalism.

Argentina, on his return, was not the country of the time of Riva- davia under whose government laisser-faire liberalism seemed to be firmly rooted in the city of Buenos Aires, but without extending to the provinces. The fundamental postulates of "Conquer and divide" of the May Revolution were maintained, while there emerged from the shadow of the provinces the silhouettes of armed caudillos. The proce-

5 "In their outlook on the external world the romantics united man again to the universe. In the social thinkers of the beginning of the XIXth century, the feeling for nature was expressed in the tendency to seek explanations and laws for social facts similar to those of the physical sciences." Picard, op. cit., 35.

6 This anti-scholastic priest, sympathetic to the ideas of Bentham, Tracy, Condillac, and Holbach, undoubtedly left on his pupil an initial impression, deep enough to make the latter, in direct contact with the French spiritualistic ideas of Victor Cousin, take Cousin to task harshly for his pragmatic inclinations. Alberto Palcos notes: "In expressing such a reproach, he retracted the sense of his own preaching, confirming the accusations of those who loudly asked for the ruin of Fernfandez de Agilero. The studious youth and independent opinion of the capital city, it is known, sustained him energetically. He summoned his abilities, rare for a man of the church, as well as his dauntless strength to lay low the philosophical ghosts of the colonial period." Alberto Palcos, Prologo to Estaban Echeverria, Dogma Socialista (La Plata, 1940), p. XII.


UTOPIAN SOCIALISM IN SPANISH AMERICA 527

dure had begun in 1820, but reached its culmination in 1830. After the aforementioned disputes of the factions in the Parliament, led respec- tively by Rivadavia (National or Centralist Party) and Dorrego (Federalist Party for Autonomy), the decision rested in the hands of three caudillos: Quiroga, Rosas, and Lopez; finally, the field was clear for Rosas, Governor of the Province of Buenos Aires.7 The ideas of Constant, Tracy, Bentham, and Guizot plotted the course of Riva- davia as a statesman, but perhaps through that blind inclination to carry out the ideas of European liberalism, he lost sight of the social realities of his own country and was finally destroyed as a ruler by the anti-centralism of Rosas.8 The Federation became a police-state per- secuting all its opponents, real or supposed, lumped together under the label "filthy, savage centralists." The struggle for liberal thought was a failure. Colonialism was restored to power.

Echeverria came in contact with young men of similar social pre- occupations-Alberdi, Gutierrez, and Quiroga Rosas. In the style of the French salon of Benjamin Constant and Tracy which he had fre- quented in Europe, and in a form similar to the social gatherings of Rivadavia, Luca and Margaret Mandeville, were sketched and laid down the platforms of what would be in 1837 the Literary Salon of Marcos Sastre, the place where the generation called the May or Young Argentina was hatched.9

7Three men-Quiroga, Lopez, and Rosas-divided among themselves the political leadership of the country and subjected to their influence the lesser revolutionaries who had come to the fore in the various provinces. Despotism-prophesy- ing often as the inevitable sequel of indomitable freedom-was the system which triumphed in the quarrel carried on for some time by the three autocrats; but only for a time. What Quiroga and Lopez did with the subordinate revolutionaries, Juan Manuel de Rosas realized more fully in Buenos Aires, and a little later, after the death of the first two, his authority ruled the country, deprived of a constitution and laws, but subject to a more absolutist and centralized authority than any that there had been until then. For this reason, it may be said that the lack of legal forms was important for a State under Rosas, but the latter was the antithesis of the State for Rivadavia. Jose Luis Romero, Las ideas politicas en Argentina, IV, 119.

8 "The principles that inspired the minority of the May revolution did not die with the dissolution of the General Assembly of the year 13. When Alvear fell, something very essential remained unchanged: the new habits and liberal spirit of society, resplendent with greater brilliance in the era of Rivadavia." . . . "From the fall of Alvear to year 20 the resistances to progress were formidable: the cautious conservatism of the rich bourgeoisie, the silent resistance of the restoration clergy, the anarchical influx of crowds of gauchos, the stubborn independence of feudal barons, the mutinous insolence of military leaders, all conspired against those who had conceived the revolution as a substantial transformation of the colonial regime, and not as a simple secession of the metropolis." Jose Ingenieros, La evoluci6n de las ideas argentinas (Buenos Aires, 1951), I, 311-12.

9 A restless and politically conscious youth came together, before 1837, to form the Association of Historical and Social Studies, in the home of Miguel Cane. And


528 DOMINGO MILIANI

But then it was no longer a question of reading the romantic poets and novelists as it was a matter of discussing and analyzing seriously the country's social and economic situation in the light of utopian socialist theories studied and brought in with conviction by Esteban Echeverria.

Meanwhile the situation in the streets grew steadily worse in its persecutions; the spirit of counter-revolution set in. It was not the same as the problem that Echeverria had witnessed in Europe, namely, the problems between proprietors and workers of big fac- tories, not present in Argentina; the rapidly increasing poverty of industrial regions was not so noticeable in the plateau city. But, on the other hand, the religious issue and, above all, the sterile battle of parties lacking a program and doctrine, and the dictatorial usurper role of the caudillos prevented any progress in the conquest of social equality. This evidence induced the young men of the Literary Salon to make an objective evaluation of history, starting from May. The problem of sketching a program was posed without being tied ser- vilely to the liberal molds of Europe or North America; it developed from the systematic study of social and economic facts. Study was to be united to autochthonous thinking without adhering to an intro- verted nationalism, but taking into account the laws of the historical development of mankind.10

IV. Argentina's Utopian Socialism and Planning Even though there were similar recognizable documents within

the utopian socialism of other Latin-American regions, Argentina was probably the country which produced the most organic movement and was the most outstanding for its very transcendent ideas. Studying both manifestations-movement and ideologies-is tantamount to surveying the continental socialism of the times.

The movement to which I refer is known as that of the 1837 Generation, the Association of May or of the Young Generation of Argentina. The document is the Dogma Socialista, edited by Esteban before the Literary Salon was founded, the same Marcos Sastre had organized in 1835 or 1836 a Reading Room which functioned like a Public Library annexed to his book-store. These may be regarded as the immediate predecessors of the Salon and May Association; cf. A. Palcos, Prologo, loc. cit., p. XXI.

10 "But if the perception of the course our sociability should take, must emerge from the twofold study of the law of the progress of human evolution and of our own national qualities, then we must infer that there are two directions for us to take in our planning: (1) the investigation of the philosophical elements of human civilization; (2) the study of the forms which these elements should assume under the particular influences of our age and soil. On the first point, it is necessary to listen to the European intellect, better taught and better versed in human affairs and philosophy than we. On the second point, we do not have to consult anybody except our own reason and observation." J. B. Alberdi, Doble armonia entre el objeto de esta institucion ... in Dogma socialista . . ., Documentos, 248-49.



Echeverria (and partly by Alberdi), a synthesis of the ideas of that generation, published first in the periodical El Iniciador of Monte- videlo in 1837, later augmented and published as a book in 1846.

The study of letters, manifestos, and other documents of the group as well as the perusal of the Dogma Socialista will lead one to the con- clusion that the aim was to keep alive the principles of liberalism in- troduced by the May Revolution the success of which was creditable to Bernardino Rivadavia. But these principles in the hands of the new thinkers can bear analysis and criticism, definition, and amplification.

In the first place, they revitalized the Rights of Man and Citizen. They placed special emphasis on the concept of freedom which many, who enjoyed its use in practice, were less able to descry in essence." To this concept of liberty they added that of equality, made concrete in the equality of classes, in the economic and social sense, in order to deduce from the liberal twins of "Liberty-Equality" the principles of the Association (and sociability, in the terms used by Alberdi), clearly socialistic in spirit, reaching out in a quest for harmony between the individual and society.12

By a similar chain of ideas they deduced and applied the law of indefinite social progress, the basis for them of revolution, a word which is used so often in America to qualify a movement, uprising, or sedition promoted by groups hungry for power, lacking social objec- tives, and unhampered by any plans to transform the socio-economic structure. Both terms-revolution and progress, the latter understood as the cement of democracy-in the mind of Young Argentina derived their meaning from the utopian socialists of Europe, and were used by partisan followers who favored insurrectional means or were opposed to such a method. The America that had just left Spain's tutelage was judged objectively as having "its body emancipated, but not its mind." 13

11 "All the parties from the beginning of the revolution have complained and have warred with each other in the name of liberty: Rosas, Oribe, and many of their antagonists also shouted in the name of liberty; but what is liberty? Their answer was: liberty is what I stand for." Echeverria, Dogma . .. , 145-6.

12 "In order for the association to correspond fully with its aims, it is necessary to organize it and constitute it in such a way as not to upset or damage the interests of society or of individuals, but to combine the social and individual element, the country and the citizen's independence. In the union and harmony of these two principles resides the problem of social science." Ibid., 154.

13 "All revolutions resemble each other in the sense that they all have as their aim the overthrow of the established government and the substitution of one more in conformity with prevailing ideas. . . ." Echeverria, Origin and nature of the extraordinary powers granted to Rosas, Obras Completas (Buenos Aires, 1874), V, 301-3.

"We understand by revolution not the discords or the turbulences of civil war, but the complete displacement of an old social order, or an absolute change in the internal as well as external regime of a society." Dogma . . . , 187.


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The practical mission they would undertake was to fill the weak or unsuccessful spots with independence. Political emancipation had been obtained, but social freedom remained a pending problem re- solvable only by "sociability" through the conjunction of political, philosophical, religious, scientific, artistic, and industrial elements.

A wall against progress had been built up by the people-the popular masses and especially the rural ones migrating to the city- who were uneducated and at the mercy of the whimsical will of Rosas. His idea of equality admitted only different hierarchies of intelligence and virtue, and his idea of sovereignty was not summed up in an ab- stract people but in "the collective reason of the people" even if it were by forgery. It was a question then of educating the masses- "educating the sovereign" Sarmiento would say-in so many republican virtues, social morality, and technical preparation. The most vi- able instrument for this purpose would most likely be religion. Re- ligion at the time was the most sensitive spot in the Argentina of Rosas in which the Catholic Church was the keystone of the Holy Alliance ("Santa Federacion"). The matter was attacked with skill and subtlety, even under the notorious influence of the Saint- Simonians-especially Leroux. I believe that this was one of the points where the transitional thread towards positivism appeared most plainly.

Two possibilities were open to the Argentian utopians on the religious question: an initial and very bold one of criticizing the Cath- olic Church and setting up a model of civic Christianity-a common feature in the thought of nearly all the French and Italian socialists- and a second blend which would announce the advent of a positivist universal religion whose effectiveness in Argentina could be judged with misgivings as indeed remote.

As to Catholicism, the defenders of freedom of worship and conscience were marked as adversaries of a state religion; they reverted to biblical Christianity in its pristine character of a religion of the masses, and they anathematized an oppressive Catholic Church serving the social hierarchy. They placed the priest on the same level as any other citizen, and proclaimed aloud the submission of the clergy to the civil laws. On this question, at least in theory, they were antici- pating and preparing in America those who were to carry out the Mexican Reform of 1857.14

14 "Religious society is independent of the civil society, the former orients its hopes toward another world, the latter concentrates on the earth; the mission of the first is spiritual, that of the second temporal. Tyrants have forged chains for man out of religion, and thus has arisen the unholy union of power with the altar. . .. The State as a political body cannot have a religion, because it is not a person and lacks a conscience of its own. The principle of freedom of conscience can never be reconciled with the dogma of a State Church .... The ecclesiastics as members of the State are under its jurisdiction and cannot form a privileged and distinct body



Concerning the "religion of positivism," without fallinig inito the melancholy mysticism of an Enfantin, Echeverria echoed the pro- phetic voice of Leroux, referring to the birth of a universal religious belief in humanity, though he judged it as still in the realm of mere conjecture. Even for tactical political reasons the time was not propitious for enitering upon a metaphysical discussion of the new religion, given the universal fanaticism towards which the people of Argentina were led. On this point he had hit the mark. And his good judgment saved them from stepping into the quicksand of European socialist doctrines: a passive religiosity which drained off energy from the social objective.

We have seen the features of liberalism and romanticism purified in the hands of the socialists, as well as the convergence of socialist doctrines of Europe in the ideology of the Argentinian generation. It remains to be seen how they confronted some other particular issues which affiliated them definitely with the rising era of positivism. I believe that where they dug deepest was in facing the problems of the greatest gravity in their time: the question of the exercise of popular sovereignty and of unifying a country torn by civil wars. There was also the application of methodological criteria, approximating more or less scientifically the social topics of the Continent and fertilizing the ground for positivism to take root.

As for the subject of sovereignty the stock of ideas of the Associa- tion included the most acute criticism ever applied to the paradoxical aspects of our representative democracies; to wit, the discrepancy between the constitutional precepts, the laws handed down by legisla- tures, the fiction of sovereignty exercised by people in voting, and the propensity to ultra-liberal interference which contravenes the most elementary ideals of mankind, even when they are linked to perfectly obvious interests in capitalism.

At first sight, when Echeverria and his group asserted that universal suffrage is absurd and that the ignorance of popular majorities deprives them of exercising the electoral privilege conscientiously, it would seem as though Echeverria was advocating the rankest and most reactionary principles. However, seen as a function of historical reason and of plain facts, this conception emerges not as an original one per se but if adapted in the first instance to our political events it was logically a sound judgment and also a check ideally on the en- thronement of feudal leaders-like Rosas-through constitutional means in discord with social necessities and aspirations.15

in society. They should be subject to the same duties and obligations, the same civil laws and penalties, and the same authorities as other citizens are. . . ." Ibid., 167-71.

15 "Sovereignty is the greatest and most solemn act of the reason of a free people. How can those who do not realize its importance concur in this act? Those


532 DOMINGO MILIANI

The unification that they envisaged was dispassionate and just. Of the two traditional groups, the centralizers and the federationists, they took the ones who could be classified under ideological aspects, subjected them to harsh confrontation with the social reality of Ar- gentina, adopted what was useful and applicable, and discarded what was ambitious and personal. They convoked a coupling of forces and intelligence for the unification of the country and for the cessation of the injurious battles of factional interests.'6

Finally, in relation to methodological criterion, its major aim con- sisted in achieving, for one thing, a synthesis of all the social doctrines in vogue at that time, with an idealistic bent and in a form similar to what Marx advanced with a materialistic spirit; these doctrines were to be blended with a sensible criterion of adaptation. Secondly, they would be the first to investigate the roots of our collective grievances by the study of social and economic questions with rigorous historical discipline as far as would be given by their cultural development.

They saw intuitively the need for grounding any governmental program in the nation's political economy in a synthesis of indigenous facts and experience, and they went to tradition in search of clear explanations of what were gains and losses in historical change. They thus cut down on what had become a habit with liberals in politics, viz. discussing the theoretical formalities of the European schools without first consulting the regional phenomena belonging to each country. In summary, they marked off the boundaries of fields, fixed positions obedient with the laws of socio-economic development, and broke down the bothersome stratifying process of feudal caudillism.17 who through lack of intelligence are incapable of distinguishing good from evil in public affairs? Those who ignorant as they are of what might be best have no opinion of their own and are consequently exposed to yield to suggestions of the evil- minded? Those who through their imprudent voting could compromise the freedom of the country and the existence of society? . . . In order to emancipate the ignorant masses and open the road to sovereignty to them, it is necessary to educate them" (Ibid., 202).... "While the public mind has not acquired the necessary maturity, the constitutions will do no more than feed anarchy and foment in the mind scorn for all law, justice, and the most sacred principles" (Ibid., 208).

16 "We desire a politics, a religion, a philosophy, a science, an art, and an industry which concur simultaneously in one and the same moral solution, and which proclaim and diffuse truths so interrelated that they are directed to establishing the harmony of feelings with intelligence, in an intimate union of all the members of the Argentinian family.... We shall adopt everything pointing to progress, everything legitimate in the interests and doctrines of the factions of the revolution" (Ibid., 216-17).

17 "No social doctrine has any authority or value in our day if it is not rooted at the same time in science and in the history of the country in which it is propa- gated. But persuaded as I am of this already, and in view of the sterile prattle of our press, I tried to establish on the historical indestructible foundation of the tradition of May, the rudiments of a scientific and Argentinian social doctrine. This



Let us grant they did not accomplish the application of their aims to the immediate practical situation, aims that were perhaps too ambitious for the times. Let us assume that they committed serious errors like enjoying themselves in elite groups within each province and not succeeding in pulling the masses away from Rosist throats. Let us grant that they were wrong in supporting the causes of other armed leaders whose only real virtue was being opposed to Rosas but who aspired also to personal power as the country's leader. Granting all that, we still have to recognize their undeniable quality of having been the first ones who as a homogeneous group proposed to systema- tize politics in a concrete program. And they cannot be accused of being mere theoreticians, since, as a most brilliant succession of pro- gressive representatives, they in time shortened ideology, tempered minds, and forged a national image from the ores of the Dogma So- cialtista and from the May Association in their meetings and plans.

The three great political thinkers-Sarmiento, Echeverria, and Alberdi-were born within this movement in the history of ideas in Argentina."8 Sarmiento, theorist, left in Facundo the persistent traits

attempt had a double aim: first, to raise politics among us to the high level of a genu- ine science, not only in theory but also in practice; secondly, to end once and for all the sterile digressions of the old politics based on imitation and plagiarism which have contributed so much to lead the minds of our compatriots astray and to anarchy" (Echeverria, Carta 2a de polemica con De Angelis in Dogma Socialista ... Documentos . . . 422).

18 In the discussions of the Conference at which the present paper was read, Dr. Ardao in a friendly personal chat remarked to me that Sarmiento had never had direct or indirect contact with the socialist group of the May Association. A more complete investigation of the references would have to be carried out. For the time being, however, I stand by my statement in the text, and in corroboration I quote the following reference of Ingenieros: "Quiroga Rosas preached fervently to the new converts of San Juan. Sarmiento was returning from his first visit to Chile with his teaching disoriented and without clear direction; his entrance into the group implied a fundamental renovation of his culture. He alludes to it in his Recuerdos de Provincia (p. 180): 'In 1833 my unfortunate friend Manuel Quiroga Rosas went to San Juan with a badly prepared mind, full of faith and enthusiasm for the new ideas agitating the French literary world and owner of a hidden library of modern authors: Villemain and Schlegel in literature; Jouffroy, Lerminier, Guizot, and Cousin in philosophy and history; Tocqueville, Pierre Leroux in democracy; the Revista Enciclopedista as the synthesis of all doctrines'" (J. Ingenieros, La evolucio'n de las ideas argentinas, op. cit., ch. VII is on the Saint-Simonians of Argentina; for their influence on young Sarmiento, cf. II, 492). The whole quotation of Ingenieros refers to other works of Sarmiento in which the subject is mentioned and I refer those interested in inquiring further to look into these works. It is true and note- worthy, in the text I have just quoted, that Sarmiento, in a manner that leaves his statement under indictment, locates the socialist influence of Quirogas Rosas in 1833, a date which does not coincide with the years of intense activity for the diffusion of the ideas of the Dogma Socialista which appeared only in 1837. This is another point demanding more exact information in any investigation dedicated exclusively to the subject.


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of his socialist apprenticeship, as the testimony of his Recuerdos de Provincia was to acknowledge concerning the disciplinary orientation and shape of his intellectual profile, thanks to the influence of the publicist of the Dogma Socialista, Manuel Quiroga Rosas. Echeverria was to die soon and bequeath his Dogma Socialista; Alberdi, in his Bases and other writings, was to reveal his line of development, even if he then openly detracts from his socialist tendency and wishes to justify a position identical with Echeverria's idea of negation. Sar- miento, governor, was indebted for his most transcendent acts to the programs and ideologies of Echeverria and Alberdi, married surely to their positivist ideas. It would suffice here to verify this by compari- sons of facts and ideas but it is not necessary to go further in order to grasp it.

V. Reflected Images of Argentine Socialism in Spanish America The cabinet struggles promoted by the Association did not take

long to be affected by the Rosist faction. Exile and return. Some took abode in Montevideo, others in Chile. This experience led them to think more seriously about what had been at first hardly a faint idea. The socialist destiny that they had envisaged for Argentina was judged a common factor also for the remaining Spanish American countries. It was then necessary to carry the ideas of the Dogma somewhat further than the provincial boundaries of the Republic. The campaigns for ideological and organizational extension in the interior of the country had counted on a dynamic and enthusiastic agent: Manuel Quiroga Rosas. He would also be the one who was to outline the plan of what he called "the caravan of progress." It con- sisted in preparing a group of young men in the doctrine of the Dogma in order for them to go out and inject it into other neighbor- ing nations. To this plan the solidarity of Uruguay and Bolivia in their management contributed, more than Chile where politicos and socialists met, but where sectarian oligarchies deprived the rising ideology of the possibilities of diffusing the new beliefs or set up ob- stacles in other ways. Nonetheless there was a Chilean edition of the Dogma.

Quiroga Rosas began an offensive through letters he sent to Juan Maria Gutierrez and to Alberdi, in which he expounded his plans.19

Later they would understand that they had done enough to pre- 19 I quote fragments from the letters mentioned: "In the hands of Montevideo,

Bolivia, and France lies the fate of South America. . . . Your imagination is too active for me to begin to weary it with the representation of political, international, literary, commercial, etc. advantages which we shall be able to obtain with the resi- dence of a few young laborers of the new era in Bolivia and in Peru. Do you not believe that at least we shall project, from both ends of the land of Bolivar and San Martin, the indestructible bases of American unity?" M. Quiroga Rosas, Letter to Alberdi, dated Jan. 12, 1839, Buenos Aires. Dogma . . . Documentos, 325-6.



pare for the struggle against the Argentinian dictator, and they turned their eyes again to his country. However, the idea of a continental extension-the exportation of the revolution, as we say today -of the Dogma was symptomatic of the revived desire for a change that was spreading through the whole ambit of "Spanish colonies." The May Association resembled in organizational structure Mazzini's model and from this same affliation came the program outlined in the Dogma Socialista. But, above all, this idea of propagating a shared ideology and founding associations of Young Republicans in every American country they were allowed to enter, was the same as that of Young Europe with an obvious parallel.

No study has been made of the extent of the direct diffusion of the Dogma Socialista in America, especially through its periodical publi- cation in 1837 or its later reprinting in book form. But we do know certainly that at about the same time there appeared in other countries similar movements less favored by fortune and more fragile in cohesiveness, but definitive in the field of ideas.

VI. Socialist Footprints in Venezuela Venezuela was historically one of the countries that showed per-

haps the greatest similarities to the Argentina of the Association. After 1830, when Bolivar died in exile, a wave of caudillism brought ex-heroes to the surface. Paez arbitrarily set himself up as judge of the presidency for fifteen years. Rulers alternated by name and with them military conspiracies succeeded one another. Political parties that traced their lineage to the factions that had originated in Greater Colombia, began to assert their not dissimilar oligarchical features. The conservatives ruled from 1830 to 1846 with Paez as the aggluti- nating agent. The liberals, though not well organized until 1840, took power in 1846 led by Antonio Leocadio Guzman. They submitted to the military tutorship of Jose Tadeo Monagas and were practically annihilated by him at the end of a decade of dictatorship, very closely resembling that of Rosas in his crafty tactics.

Then came the honeymoon of parties, both promising eternal loyalty-similar to the one that overthrew Rosism-and in 1858 an ephemeral parliamentary unity gelled.

From 1830, a new generation with a civil (rather than military) orientation was set in motion under the leaders of the Conservative Party-more liberal in practice than the party that bore the name. All were anxious to have reforms in the scientific, philosophic, and literary field even more than in politics. Its most representative intellectual figure was Fermin Toro, clearly the bearer of utopian socialism to the country without his alluding to such currents directly, given his conservative connection. We can identify his position by the ideas he expounded, and by the authors he quoted in affinity or in confirma- tion of his own ideas, in his two most important works: one, an eco-


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nomic analysis (Reflexiones sobre la ley de 10 de abril de 1834) and the other on international politics (Europa y America), the first, published as a book in 1846, the second, published earlier (in 1839) as a series of articles for the press. It would be useless here to establish the points of ideological coincidence in political economy and tendencies to utopian socialism with those analyzed before in the Dogma Socialista. At times they coincide even in the very definition of terms. We cannot discard the possibility that Toro might have known the work of Echeverria, or vice versa; the hypothesis remains to be verified. Both tie in together roughly with the dates of their political publications, cited above (1837: first edition of the Dogma Socialista of Echeverria; 1839: Toro's Europa y America; 1846: second edition of the Dogma and the first edition of Toro's Reflexiones). It is also no less true that both have doctrinal convergences through the common philosophical sources which inspired them. However, there is one feature which deserves to be singled out in Toro and which surpasses the conduct of the Argentine group. I am referring to his having intuited and announced as a warning-in Europa y America-the dangers of European imperialism already fully on the offensive in Argentina and Mexico through the French and North American aggressions and which in Argentina counted on the com- placency of the socialists, while Rosas adopted a defensive stand for national sovereignty.

The plans of Toro were limited to analyzing in historical detail the aggressions committed by France and England against weak countries. The United States was still the object of Spanish-American out- spoken sympathy. Toro summed it up-and in this agreed with the Argentinians-by regarding America as the continent of autonomous democracy whose mission is to preserve republican institutions but adjusted to the concepts of association and harmony of the social classes. There was nothing extraordinary in that since the European socialists themselves-Cabetists or Icarians, Fourierists or Saint- Simonians-established socialist colonies that had failed in the United States and in Mexican California. However, Fermin Toro indeed was the first to point out with a vast range of information the social ballasts and lassitude of European capitalism-at the stage of "industrial feudalism"- a phrase copied from Sismondi. Speaking comparatively, he declared that our society in Spanish America- though not overcome by the great social contradictions of industrial- ism-was the propitious soil for institutional perfectibility with only intellectual aid from Europe. In the latter feature he differed from his contemporaries who confounded Europe's cultural contribution with the armed aggression of imperialism. Furthermore, these same contemporaries of Toro underestimated the possibilities of progress of their own people, advocated European immigration, and under-


tJTOPIAN SOCIALISM IN SPANISH AMERICA 537

valued whole sectors of people- especially the rural and native ones- when the time came to selling them out. What was a positivist feature in the Argentines was a romantic one in Venezuela.

Naturally Fermin Toro at once thought there were errors of a fundamental sort in an indictment of our socio-historical development. But we have to credit him with some sound judgments like in- sisting without equivocation or bad faith on the necessity of Spanish- Americans uniting in defense against the danger of aggression from industrial powers. Also to his credit was his clamoring against our republics' signing military pacts or treaties-and compromising our economy-with these powers, if doing so limited national freedom and sovereignty or opened the door to countries economically and militarily stronger.

VII. Confluence of Socialism and Positivism Some Argentinians, belonging to the generation of Utopians, in

time arrived at positivism through the road of objective social analysis on which they had ventured. As concrete cases there were Sarmi- ento, who wrote Conflictes e armonias de las razas en America, and Alberdi in his last years. A thinker who came from an extension of positivism which brought him to a very advanced socialism was Alejandro Korn. He was of the opinion, after the victory of Caseros, that the Argentine socialists in exile would return to their country and head for positivism.20 In any case, we know that the fact of dis- covering how political phenomena are determined by the economic and social condition of our nations, prepared minds and mentors for the new positivist doctrine. The first reflected ideas of positivism arrived at by the teacher of Auguste Comte despite Comte's denial later of any influence-namely, Saint-Simon, known and taken as a doctrinal cement among the ideologists of our socialism, as much in their personal stock of ideas as in their French and Italian exegetes. Thus, Comte in his early years 21 coincides with the ethical thought of European socialists, but more clearly with the Spanish-Americans who saw themselves compelled to adopt methods and procedures in

"A. Korn, Influencias filosoficas en la evolucion nacional (Buenos Aires, n.d.), ch. IV, p. 75.

21 "In his earlier view it will be seen that Saint-Simon was very much the pre- cursor of Auguste Comte-the Comte of the Positive Philosophy rather than of the later Politique positive. Comte's Positivism was indeed essentially an outgrowth of Saint-Simon's ideas, and Comte's earliest work was written under Saint-Simon's supervision, while Comte was acting as his amanuensis and pupil. Comte hated to be reminded of this. He broke away early from Saint-Simon, especially on the score of his objection to the religious aspect of Saint-Simon's later doctrine. Yet Comte himself in his later phases came back to a view which took on much of the doctrine of Saint-Simon's Nouveau Christianisme and also echoed Saint-Simon's conception of les savants as the controllers of education and as the advisers of the State." G. D. H. Cole, op. cit., I, 47.


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greater objective agreement with those fixed by positivist sociology. Limits of space prevent giving a detailed account of the European

sources of Spanish-American socialist thought. We can hardly do more than mention the names of some of the main authors who crop up in the writings of our authors: Fourier, Owen, Lerminier, Bazard, and especially, Condamine.

University of Venezuela.


Article Contentsp. 523p. 524p. 525p. 526p. 527p. 528p. 529p. 530p. 531p. 532p. 533p. 534p. 535p. 536p. 537p. 538

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1963) pp. 451-603Volume Information [pp. ]Front Matter [pp. ]In Memory of A. O. Lovejoy [pp. 451-456]Herakleitos and the Law of Nature [pp. 457-472]Nature as Craftsman in Greek Thought [pp. 473-496]Renaissance Humanism: The Pursuit of Eloquence [pp. 497-514]Assimilation and Transformation of Positivism in Latin America [pp. 515-522]Utopian Socialism, Transitional Thread from Romanticism to Positivism in Spanish America [pp. 523-538]The Impact of Metaphysics on Latin-American Ideology [pp. 539-552]The Idea of the Welfare State in Europe and the United States [pp. 553-568]NotesA Postscript on Bodin's Connections with Ramism [pp. 569-571]Descartes and Plato [pp. 572-576]On the History of the Red Cross [pp. 577-583]Sidgwick's Concept of Ethical Science [pp. 584-588]

ReviewPhilosophy and Culture, East and West [pp. 589-592]

Editorial Note [pp. 592]Books Received [pp. 593-598]Acknowledgments [pp. 601]Back Matter [pp. ]

Miliani - Utopian Socialism, Transitional Thread From Romanticism to Positivism in Spanish America

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