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Charisma is an exceptional quality that makes the very few people who possess it able to influence others by attracting their admiration and obedience. The term derives from ancient Greek and originally meant “gift.” From Christian theology, where it designates a special gift given by God’s grace, the concept has entered the political vocabulary through the reflection of German sociologist Max Weber. Weber appropriated the term to mean a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which the individual is set apart from ordinary human beings and treated as being endowed with exceptional powers.

Weber distinguished between three forms of authority according to the different sources of their legitimacy: (1) the rational authority is based on the belief in the legality of its commands, (2) the traditional authority rests on credence given to the sacredness of traditions, and, finally, (3) the charismatic authority stems from the faith in the extraordinary quality of a person. Whilst both the rational and traditional authorities are ordinary, because they can be subsumed under, respectively, discursively or historically grounded rules, charismatic authority goes beyond rules as it is based on the extraordinary gestures and qualities of the leader.

Examples of charismatic figures include Indian nationalist Mahatma Gandhi, Russian Communist leader Vladimir Lenin, British prime minister Winston Churchill, French president Charles de Gaulle, and Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Chartism

Chartism was a democratic reform movement that emerged in Britain in the second third of the nineteenth century. The Chartists (those who advocated the Chartist program of reform) derive their name from the People’s Charter, a document produced on May 8, 1838. The expressed purpose of this charter was the compulsion of the lower house of the British parliament toward political change and improvement through a restructuring of the constitution and citizens’ rights. Historically, Chartism represents an important effort to increase and transform political representation through suffrage, thereby repairing the ills of a society disabled by low enfranchisement. As an ideology, Chartism was the conscious democratic struggle for improving of the lives of citizens in an industrialized economy.

Origins

Chartism emerged in the context of widespread economic depression and political isolation of citizens outside the landed class. In 1831, the British electorate was composed of roughly half a million voters, as compared to a national population of nearly fourteen million. Landed elites maintained control of both economic development (even as Britain transitioned towards an industrial economy), as well as political power, through structuring districts and limiting the franchise. By means of such legislation as the Importation Act of 1815 (informally known as the Corn Laws), these elites maintained control over agricultural prices at the sacrifice of workers’ wages and the balance of the economy writ large. A significant percentage of the British people were legally excluded from the development and execution of acts of state, leaving their interests underrepresented and creating conditions for abuse and class conflict.

The success of reformist Whigs in the general election of 1831 opened the possibility to alleviate these tensions. With the enactment of the Representation of the People Act of 1832 (the Reform Act), the British parliament ushered in transformations to the institutional arrangement of the political process. The new franchise extended political representation to the burgeoning business class, while, in addition, reducing the number of districts represented in the House of Commons. Such reforms disabled the institutional parameters that had encouraged the landed elites’ sustained political power.

The New Poor Law And The People’s Charter

Under these conditions, the political movement of Chartism emerged. While not yet a sustained national movement, local political activists (both trade unionists and middle-class reformers who were still excluded from the extension of the franchise) began to coalesce around the need for even further institutional reforms, perceiving universal suffrage as a means to enact these changes. These activists sought even wider-reaching reforms than most Whig party members were willing to endorse. Parliament responded to pressures for further reforms with the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 (the New Poor Law). And, while this New Poor Law did further extend the franchise to the middle class, it did not extend this right to the working class. Such political actions were perceived as creating incentives for class divisions through a restructuring of poor relief and workhouses, infringing on workers’ rights and ignoring general demands for complete (adult male) suffrage.

Activists, following on a long tradition of democratic dissidence, responded by convening a parallel parliament (thus evoking both British and French democratic histories). Delegates to this convention would eventually produce what was known as the People’s Charter. The charter consisted of six points of reform: complete adult (over age twenty-one) male suffrage, annual elections, secret ballots, abolition of property requirements for parliamentary service, pay allowances for all members of Parliament, and equal districts. Chartists argued that these transformations would correct the limitations of recent legislation, such as the First Reform Act and the New Poor Law, rectifying social inequalities produced by the then unrepresentative electorate. They claimed that such reforms would help to further the democratization of Britain, extending suffrage that was protected by transparent electoral institutions, and allowing all Britains representation in the House of Commons.

Fracture And Decline

Initially, Chartism was not a reactive movement. Instead, Chartists conceived of themselves as engaging in traditional British politics, acting with a similar ethos as the Whig reformers, and aimed at the high ideals of repairing economic and political inequalities. Chartist leaders hoped to capitalize on the spirit of reform that had already begun to transform Britain’s institutional structure. However, the conditions that encouraged a broad-based reform movement did not persist long. (Their demands, along with a petition of 1,280,000 signers, were rejected by the British parliament on July 12, 1839, by a 235–46 vote.) Growing class tensions between groups who had previously found common political ground began to limit the movement’s success. Economic and health conditions worsened in metropolitan centers in the early 1840s, and divisions between the working and middle classes became magnified by the costs of depression (in combinations with the threats the New Poor Law imposed on the working class). In response, the remaining Chartist elites (those who, following parliamentary reaction, had not yet been imprisoned) transformed their tactics; some employed workers’ strikes, others later encouraged armed uprisings. As these uprisings became more violent, and the British army began to confront rioters, the strength of the movement waned further. By 1848, while violent revolutions and political instability threatened much of Europe, tensions in Britain were already declining, without much hope for the successful implementation of Chartists’s reforms.

Historical Significance

While Chartists ultimately failed to meet their own political goals, the movement itself was successful in furthering the use of political channels for engaging in reformist—as opposed to revolutionary—action. Moreover, the demands for universal suffrage helped further conditions for democratization that extended beyond the movement itself.

The Chartist ideology is perhaps best known as an important early example of the expression of working-class consciousness attempting improvement and political change. Socialists and Marxists would later point to Chartism as evidence of sociological and world-historical transformations that signaled the decline of capitalism. However, the distinction between Chartism as social reform guided by humanitarian concerns for the costs of low representation, versus one of economic reform for worker’s rights, only emerged as the national movement began to lose coherence and economic conditions created differing incentives for classes that had previously been unified under the early banner of reform.

Bibliography:

Belchem, John. Industrialization and the Working Class: The English Experience 1750–1900. Portland, Ore.: Areopagitica Press, 1990.
Epstein, James, and Dorothy Thompson, eds. The Chartist Experience Studies in Working-Class Radicalism and Culture, 1830–1860. London: Macmillan, 1982.
Lovett,William, and John Collins. Chartism: A New Organization of People. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1969.
Reprinted with an introduction by Asa Briggs. Taylor, Miles. The Decline of British Radicalism, 1847–1860. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
Thompson, Dorothy. The Chartists: Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution. New York: Pantheon, 1984.
Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class London: Victor Gollancz, 1963.