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Blog Post #7

Reflections on Equal Rights
There were three documents to analyze that reflect on the concept of civil rights. The four documents are Citizenship and Social Class, and Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship.
Citizenship and Social Class: This is a short book written by T.H. Marshall that argues three ideas and how they would impact society. He argues that society has a responsibility to do three things, the first being "First, the compression, at both ends, of the scale of income distribution." This means that the wage gap between citizens is far too wide and efforts should be made to ensure that people make more similar amounts of money. This is something that people have been complaining about since the industrial revolution, however, this is just as much of an issue today as it was in the 1950s. The second is "the great extension of the area of common culture and common experience" which is a call for equal treatment for all. This was highly criticized because it really only catered to working-class white men and left out the second class citizens of the time meaning blacks, Hispanics, and women. The final was " the enrichment of the universal status of citizenship, combined with the recognition and stabilization of certain status differences chiefly through the linked systems of education and occupation" which is more like an end goal for the writer. This goal would be impossible without the first two being possible, universal citizenship is a concept that many argue is the key to global unity. These ideas were radical at the time but at the same time struck a chord with many as reasonable ideas for social change which was contrary to the more impractical ideas of communism.
Ruling Class Strategies and Citizenship: The writer argues there are five types of advance industrialist countries liberal, reformist, authoritarian monarchist, fascist, and authoritarian socialist. First, the writer looks at absolute and constitutional regimes, Russia, Prussia, and Austria were all pre industrialist absolutionist while Britain and the United States were constitutionalist. The writer then looks at the United States transition from constitutionalism to liberalism which occurred 50 years before the labor movement. The contested and merged regimes were analyzed next such as Franch, Spain, and Itlay compared to the authoritarian regimes such as Germany, Russia, Austria, and Japan. The one theme all of these countries have in common is they all have a ruling class which is in charge of the large majority. Fascism and Authoritarian Socialism was the next analyzed, the key factor is world war I had on geopolitics.

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