Education, Morality, and the Politics of Class in Hamburg and Stockholm, 1870-1914

Abstract

The 'bourgeois' ideal of respectability was an important constituent of European class relations. This cultural norm, which originated in the religious revivalism and economic activities that shaped middle-class life, was first used to formulate bourgeois opposition to the supposedly effete, licentious aristocracy. It was also part of bourgeois-worker relations, where the images of respectability became enmeshed in the socialists' fight for (and the middle classes' opposition to) workers' participation in the public political sphere.' 'Bourgeois' moral and cultural norms, long used to deny workers political equality, proved as I shall argue to be a weapon for the workers as well. Workers used respectability to gain power in bourgeois economic and political spheres. Moral norms allowed organized workers to identify their own 'pure', class-based, superior culture; to define and defend it in public debate; and to demand a public acknowledgement of the difference between bourgeoisie, workers, and a third, unregenerate group, the Lumpenproletariat. The battle was, to a large extent, constituted around public personae. Much of the debate focused on claims to respectable, 'civilized' public behaviour (curtailing public lusts and violence) as well as responsible, sensible participation in the public sphere (observing the decencies of debate, following the rules, using correct grammar, etc.). Sexual norms, which had played a large role in the eighteenth-century struggle between the bourgeoisie and the nobility, were less prominent; although accusations of impropriety occurred, the stigma of truly outrageous behaviour was often reserved for the aristocracy. Hamburg's socialists were more likely to be portrayed as publicly drunk and violent than as