Assignment:
Modern Europe Cabet and Marx Assignment
This assignment is due in class on Wednesday October 24 and should be typed, double-spaced with one-inch margins.
Briefly identify an example of each the following in E. Cabet's Voyage in Icarie of 1842:
- Provision for public health and safety
- The organization of city planning
- Cultural/educational amenities for citizens of Icarie
Identify what Karl Marx claimed were the motivations behind the following issues connected with the U.S. Civil War in his 1861 article on "The North American Civil War":
- Why poor southern whites supported slavery and slave holders despite not owning slaves themselves
- The connection between the interests of slave-holders and the U.S. government's foreign policy of conquests and occupations in North America (the occupation of Texas, the Mexican War and annexation of the Southwest, the invasion of Spanish-ruled Florida, the removal of native Americans from much of their traditional lands) during the le century.
- How did the southern slaver-holder class succeed in forcing the free states of the North to accept slavery over ever-greater parts of the U.S. and its territories before 1860 despite repeated attempts to limit slavery before the eruption of civil war.
- Marx claimed that the nature of slavery as an economic system necessarily leads to stagnation and an inability to innovate. How does he attempt to demonstrate this claim.
- One of the most common criticisms of Marx's form of analysis is that he puts too much emphasis on technological and economic change as the driving forces of social and political change while ignoring or under-estimating cultural, moral, or other factors that shape people and society. After reading his analysis of causes of the U.S. Civil War do you see this criticism as valid or as unfounded at least in this case. Be specific about the reasons for your conclusions.
E. Cabet, Voyage in !curie, 1840
Karl Marx, The North American Civil War, the October 1861 article only.