Illness-generating conditions of capitalism and empire: The contributions of Engels, Virchow, and Allende

Three people – Friedrich Engels, Rudolf Virchow, and Salvador Allende – made major contributions to understanding the social origins of illness under capitalism and empire. All three writers emphasized the importance of political economic systems as causes of illness-generating social conditions. Engels and Virchow provided analyses of the impact of political economic conditions on health that essentially created the perspective of social medicine. While Engels and Virchow documented the impact of early capitalism, largely before the expansion of empire, Allende focused on empire and underdevelopment. Although little known in North America and Western Europe, Allende's studies in social medicine have exerted a great influence on efforts to achieve political economic changes that improve health conditions in Latin America and elsewhere in the less developed world. While Engels, Virchow, and Allende conveyed certain unifying themes that contribute to our understanding of the connections among health, capitalism, and empire, they also diverged in major ways, especially regarding the political economic structures of oppression that cause disease, the social contradictions that inhibit change, and directions of reform in political economic systems that would foster health rather than illness. A look backward to these prior works gives an historical perspective to issues that today gain even more urgency. The works of Engels, Virchow, and Allende have influenced a new generation of researchers and activists, who also focus in large part on political economic systems as social determinants of health and illness.