2 - A brief transnational history of the Settlement House Movement

Summary

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world's market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.… In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. (Marx and Engels, 1908 [1848]: 12–13)

Cosmopolitanism and globalisation, as described by Marx and Engels in this quote from their Manifesto of the Communist Party, have changed the world in a sweeping way. Production and consumption are organised globally and are no longer bound to the local conditions of the various countries. Knowledge production has also outgrown its ‘narrow-mindedness’ (Marx and Engels, 1908 [1848]) and became global. It is striking to see how this clear-sighted diagnosis published in 1848 is a prophecy that has proven true 172 years later. Yet, though both knowledge production and the production of goods have become more and more global, the prophecy of the communist manifesto failed because, as this chapter argues, it underestimated other social developments during that period.

The Settlement House Movement played an important role within these social developments. It contributed to the discourse and the work on the social question, translated the Christian idea of welfare into the social constellation of modern industrial capitalism, made visible and analysed social issues in a scientific way, propagated social reforms and, finally, strengthened the idea of dealing with these social issues within the nation as a welfare state. These contributions were relevant globally since these social processes – as described by Marx and Engels (1908 [1848]) – affected the entire industrialising world. The interpretations and the solutions, however, were developed within national contexts, and, ultimately, strengthened the nation in the form of the modern national welfare state.