Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

Please write a short essay (400-500 words) in response to Engels’ book. Please focus your
discussion on one or a combination of the questions suggested below. Make sure that your
response addresses specifically to Engels’ text. Avoid generalizations.

For example; Try focusing on a specific passage by explaining it and interpreting it. 

Friedrich Engels, The Housing Question (1872)
Including the Preface to 1887 edition, Parts 1, 2, 3:
Th link below should take to the readings:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/housing-question/


In 1872 Engels published a series of articles offering a critique of two opposing movements that led
housing reform in the nineteenth century:
o utopian (French) socialism
o conservative philanthropy
Engel’s position is consistent with his and Karl Marx’s “scientific socialism.” Please familiarize
yourself with Engels by running a quick search on the web. 

Part 1:
The first part of Engels’ book attacks a non-revolutionary brand of utopian socialism which he
associated with the influence of the French philosopher P.-J. Proudhon.
Please check quickly who was P.-J. Proudhon. Relate him to our earlier discussion of Baron
Haussmann’s operations in Paris and to the time of Napoleon III.

Now run a quick search about the utopian ideas of Charles Fourier, Fourierism, and the utopian
communities in the 19th century called Phalanxes or Phalanstères. How is the Fourierist socialist
utopia similar or different from Thomas More’s?

In his critique of Proudhon and French utopian socialism, Engels argues that, by trying to alleviate
the housing problem of the working classes the utopian socialists mistook a symptom for the
disease. What the members of the proletariat needed was not access to housing but awareness of
the root causes of their misery: the greater political economy of industrial capitalism. Please explain
what Engels means by this. Do you agree more with Engels or the French utopians?

Part 2:
By the 1870s a conservative philanthropic movement had gained enough traction in England to
pass housing legislations in the Parliament, and threatened to overshadow the “social question” in
the larger European context. A group of wealthy philanthropists tried to better the working
conditions of the urban poor.

Engels argues in this text that that “bourgeois philanthropy” was steeped in ideology. What is
ideology in this case? Please explain.

Engels contends that conservative philanthropy, not unlike utopian socialism, would produce
mortgage-carrying homeowners out of the proletariat—another form of oppression. Please identify
the sections where he talks about home ownership and mortgage.

Do you think solving the housing crisis is a distraction from the larger problem of inequality? If you
disagree with both Engels and the French utopians please articulate your own position.

General questions:
Please comment on Engel’s tone. Is he being ironic? Is he willing to accept positions other than his
own? Is this a manifesto?
What can architects and city planners do to solve the housing question? What would Engels think
about modern architecture and modern mass housing projects. Would he be skeptical?

Again, Please focus on discussing one or a combination of the questions suggested above. Be specific, NO GENERALIZATIONS. NO OUTSIDE SOURCES. NO PLAGIARISM. ONLY USE ASSIGNED READING