Freidrich Engels explores Michel Foucault’s ideas about the organisation of social space through the relationship between social and spatial mobility. In The Condition of the Working Class in England (1945), Engels suggests that social class is dialectically linked with one’s ability to freely navigate urban space, arguing that the city space of industrial Manchester during the ‘hungry forties’ worked as a mechanism of the capitalist state to control the socio-spatial movement of the working class as a means of reinforcing class division. Adopting a Marxist perspective, Engels contends that the cartography of Manchester itself was built to reinforce the socio-spatial restraints of capitalist development; ‘the town itself is peculiarly built,
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57.) and how ‘this colossal centralization, this heaping together of two and a half million human beings at one point, as multiplied the power of this two and a half millions a hundred-fold’. (Engels, 1845, p. 57). This implies that spatial autonomy is limited to those in London, and works to isolate and the socio-spatial movement of bodies in industrial towns such as Manchester, and the North of England more broadly. Further, Engels notes London to be ‘the commercial capital of the world’ (Engels, 1845, p. 57). In this way, economic freedom and mobility also symbolises spatial mobility, exemplifying what Marxist Geographer Edward Soja terms as the ‘socio-spatial dialectic’ (Soja, 1996, p.1).Foucault argues that bodies become ‘situated, distributed, classified, regulated and identified in mobile and changing spatial matrices’ (Tally, p. 122) and Engels similarly suggests that cities are isolating urban spaces in which ‘people regard each other only as useful objects; each exploits the other […] the strongest treads the weaker under foot’. (Engels, 1845, p. 57). This spatial alienation and social classification draws on Karl Marx’s concept of ‘reification’ whereby human beings lose all value except that of use and exchange in the monopolizing structure of capitalism. This is further reinforced when Engels notes that ‘the capitalists seize everything for themselves, while to the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains’ (Engels, 1845, p. 57), suggesting that both social and spatial freedom is restricted to the capitalist minority whilst the proletariat are held captive within the restraints of their class. Spatial autonomy and the freedom of the flâneur is thus permitted only to the bourgeoisie. As Engels notes, ‘the whole district is abandoned by dwellers, and is lonely and deserted at night.’
57.) and how ‘this colossal centralization, this heaping together of two and a half million human beings at one point, as multiplied the power of this two and a half millions a hundred-fold’. (Engels, 1845, p. 57). This implies that spatial autonomy is limited to those in London, and works to isolate and the socio-spatial movement of bodies in industrial towns such as Manchester, and the North of England more broadly. Further, Engels notes London to be ‘the commercial capital of the world’ (Engels, 1845, p. 57). In this way, economic freedom and mobility also symbolises spatial mobility, exemplifying what Marxist Geographer Edward Soja terms as the ‘socio-spatial dialectic’ (Soja, 1996, p.1).Foucault argues that bodies become ‘situated, distributed, classified, regulated and identified in mobile and changing spatial matrices’ (Tally, p. 122) and Engels similarly suggests that cities are isolating urban spaces in which ‘people regard each other only as useful objects; each exploits the other […] the strongest treads the weaker under foot’. (Engels, 1845, p. 57). This spatial alienation and social classification draws on Karl Marx’s concept of ‘reification’ whereby human beings lose all value except that of use and exchange in the monopolizing structure of capitalism. This is further reinforced when Engels notes that ‘the capitalists seize everything for themselves, while to the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains’ (Engels, 1845, p. 57), suggesting that both social and spatial freedom is restricted to the capitalist minority whilst the proletariat are held captive within the restraints of their class. Spatial autonomy and the freedom of the flâneur is thus permitted only to the bourgeoisie. As Engels notes, ‘the whole district is abandoned by dwellers, and is lonely and deserted at night.’