Political philosophies

Story hook

On the night of 27 February 1933, the Reichstag — the German parliament building in Berlin — burst into flames. A young Dutch communist named Marinus van der Lubbe was found inside and confessed. The newly appointed Chancellor of Germany, a 43-year-old Austrian called Adolf Hitler, who had been in office for just 28 days, used the fire to demand emergency powers. The next morning, President Hindenburg signed the Reichstag Fire Decree suspending most civil liberties; a month later (23 March 1933), the Reichstag itself passed the Enabling Act, granting Hitler power to legislate by decree. German democracy died in nine weeks, between 30 January and 23 March 1933, the most consequential nine weeks in 20th-century political philosophy.

Eighty-five years earlier, on 21 February 1848, in a small London printer's shop, a 30-year-old German exile named Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels had handed in a 23-page pamphlet for printing. Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei — "The Communist Manifesto" — opened with the line that haunted Europe's ruling class for the next 150 years: "A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism." Within months, revolutions broke out in Paris (February), Berlin (March), Vienna (March), Milan (March), Budapest (April) — the Springtime of Peoples. Most were crushed by autumn. But the idea, like the spectre, did not die.

The two centuries between Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) and Francis Fukuyama's The End of History? (1989) were the laboratory in which humanity tested every available answer to the question: how should we live together? The five answers we are about to study — liberalism, capitalism, socialism, communism, fascism — are not abstract textbook labels. They were political experiments paid for in revolutions, wars, gulags, and gas chambers. They shape your tax rate, your news feed, and the question of whether you're allowed to read this sentence.

Why this matters for UPSC

This unit closes GS-I "World History" and feeds directly into GS-II (governance theory) and the Essay paper. Prelims rarely tests political philosophy directly, but a question on the authorship of the Communist Manifesto or the date of Mussolini's March on Rome is fair game. Mains has asked about fascism's appeal, the welfare state's evolution, and ideological tests of liberalism in the 20th century. Interview boards love to probe candidates' own political preferences and ability to argue across ideologies. Weight: medium Prelims, high Mains and Essay, medium Interview.