Week 3 Political Analysis Workshop: Two Texts, Three Questions

Introduction to Political Science Free sample edition

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned to describe an ideology by what it values, what it fears, and how it argues, without ranking it, and to sort each claim by its kind. In this workshop you do that on two real texts that sit near the start of two traditions: the Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels (1848) and Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). You find sentences yourself in the free Project Gutenberg editions, label each one, tally the labels in a spreadsheet, and describe both texts in words their own adherents would accept. Then you ask a chatbot about the same texts and catch where it misquotes, misattributes, picks a side, or invents a source, the way you will check any claim about a political text in the rest of this course.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: What do the Manifesto (1848) and Burke's Reflections (1790) each value, fear, and argue, and how much of each text's argument rests on claims about what is rather than claims about what ought to be?

Workshop data: Project Gutenberg's edition of The Communist Manifesto (eBook 61), read beside Burke's Reflections in eBook 15679

Get the data: Project Gutenberg's edition of The Communist Manifesto (eBook 61), read beside Burke's Reflections in eBook 15679 landing page or the direct data file — free, no login required.

Source: The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels (1848), in Project Gutenberg's free online edition, read together with Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) in Project Gutenberg's Burke's Writings and Speeches, Volume the Third.

Rows: 6 sentences per student, 3 from each text (the passage log has 6 rows; the illustrative fallback has 8 rows)
Columns: text; search word; the sentence in your own words; values, fears, or argues; kind; reason
Categories: kind is empirical, empirical-leaning, or normative; question is values, fears, or argues

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches

Ways of working

primary-text-analysis
read-the-data
argument-map-and-steel-man

Procedure

Open the Project Gutenberg landing page for The Communist Manifesto (gutenberg.org/ebooks/61) in your browser and choose Read online now. Use your browser's find command (Ctrl+F, or Command+F on a Mac) to search for the word hitherto, which takes you to the start of Part I, under the heading Bourgeois and Proletarians. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: You land on the opening sentence of Part I and can see that this edition prints the word societies.
Read the first several paragraphs of Part I. Choose three sentences, other than the opening one, that show what the text values, what it fears, or how it argues. Log each one in rows 1 to 3 of the passage log: the search word that finds it, and the sentence in a few of your own words. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Rows 1 to 3 each name a findable sentence from Part I, described in your own words.
Open the Project Gutenberg landing page for Burke's volume (gutenberg.org/ebooks/15679), titled there The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03, and choose Read online now. Search for partnership and for means of some change, read the paragraphs around each, and log three sentences from Reflections in rows 4 to 6 the same way. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Rows 4 to 6 each name a findable sentence from Reflections, described in your own words.
For each of the six rows, write which question the sentence answers (values, fears, or argues) and its kind (empirical, empirical-leaning, or normative), with a one-line reason. A claim about what has happened or how things work is empirical; a claim about what ought to be is normative. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: All six rows carry a question label, a kind label, and a reason.
Open a blank spreadsheet. Type your six kind labels in cells A2 to A7. In B2 type =COUNTIF(A2:A7,"empirical"), in B3 =COUNTIF(A2:A7,"empirical-leaning"), and in B4 =COUNTIF(A2:A7,"normative"). In C2 type =B2/6*100 and copy it to C3 and C4. Copy the counts and shares into the tally table. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: The three counts add up to 6 and the three shares add up to 100.
Fill in the charitable-reading table for both texts: what each values, fears, and argues, and what each implies about when political power is rightful. Write each cell in words a thoughtful adherent of that text would accept, and give neither text a verdict. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: Every cell of the charitable-reading table is filled, with no cell ranking one text above the other.
Do the critique step in Part 6: paste the prompt into one approved chatbot, or use the equivalent route, and check each answer against the pinned fragments and this week's definitions. Tool: Authoritative archives and data sources (the National Archives, the Avalon Project, Project Gutenberg, the Legal Information Institute, un.org, the House of Commons Library, Pew Research Center, Freedom House, V-Dem, the World Bank, Our World in Data) plus a spreadsheet for the seat-allocation and margin-of-error arithmetic, and one approved chatbot used as an analysis partner whose political-science slips the student catches. Check: You have the chatbot's answers, or the printed flawed analysis, marked with every error you found.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if you cannot open the Project Gutenberg pages or a spreadsheet.

Complete the workshop with the two illustrative pamphlets below, written for this workshop about a made-up island country and not real texts, in place of your passage log. Label every sentence by question and by kind with a reason, tally the kinds by hand or with the same spreadsheet formulas over 8 sentences instead of 6, fill in the charitable-reading table with the reform pamphlet in the first text column and the tradition pamphlet in the second, answer every analysis question about these pamphlets, do the critique step, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

These two illustrative pamphlets from a made-up island country give you eight sentences to label when you cannot open the real texts.

Fallback model data
Row	Pamphlet	Sentence
R1	Reform pamphlet	Every generation of our island's history has been a contest between landowners and those who work the land.
R2	Reform pamphlet	The land should belong to the people who work it.
R3	Reform pamphlet	Since the last harvest, rents on farm plots have doubled.
R4	Reform pamphlet	We must replace the old council with an assembly of workers.
T1	Tradition pamphlet	Our council has settled disputes for nine generations without a civil war.
T2	Tradition pamphlet	Reform should come one tested step at a time.
T3	Tradition pamphlet	Councils that change slowly have lasted longer than councils that change all at once.
T4	Tradition pamphlet	We owe our grandchildren the institutions our grandparents built.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

This is your passage log; each row records one sentence you found and labelled yourself, so every count later rests on your own close reading.

Student scaffold table 1
Row	Text	Search word that finds the sentence	The sentence in a few of your own words	Answers which question: values, fears, or argues	Kind: empirical, empirical-leaning, or normative	Your reason for the kind
1	Manifesto (1848), Part I
2	Manifesto (1848), Part I
3	Manifesto (1848), Part I
4	Reflections (1790)
5	Reflections (1790)
6	Reflections (1790)

Tally your kind labels here so you can see how much of each text's argument rests on claims about what is and how much on claims about what ought to be.

Student scaffold table 2
Kind	Count	Share of my 6 sentences (%)	Formula or steps used
Empirical
Empirical-leaning
Normative

Describe both texts with the same three questions so that each gets the same fair treatment and neither gets a verdict.

Student scaffold table 3
Question	Manifesto (1848)	Reflections (1790)
Values: what it holds dear
Fears: what it guards against
Argues: how it reasons
When political power is rightful, according to the text

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

Report how many of your logged sentences are empirical, empirical-leaning, and normative, give each as a share of your log, and show the formula or division you used.
For each text, which question did most of your logged sentences answer: values, fears, or argues? Support your answer with one sentence from each text, named by its search word so a reader can find it.
Explain why the Manifesto's opening sentence is an empirical claim while abolishing private ownership of the means of production is a normative conclusion. Do the sentences you logged show the same move from a claim about what is to a claim about what ought to be?
Using your charitable-reading table, say what each text implies about when political power is rightful, connecting to Week 2's idea of legitimacy. Then say where the single left-right line would usually place each text and name one thing that placement flattens.
Name two limits of your passage log, such as that six sentences from a few pages cannot stand for a whole book, that an edition or translation shapes the wording, or that your own views shaped which sentences you noticed, and say how each limit could change your tally.
Choose one reflection option and answer it: (a) which sentence was hardest to describe in words its own adherents would accept, and what did you change to make the description fair? or (b) did your own views pull you toward one text, and how did the three questions help you keep both readings even?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed passage log above. Please do six things. First, quote word for word the opening sentence of Part I of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, and tell me who wrote it and in what year. Second, quote Edmund Burke's sentence about a state without the means of some change, and give the year of Reflections on the Revolution in France. Third, tell me whether the Manifesto's opening sentence is an empirical claim or a normative claim. Fourth, tell me which of the two texts is more correct about how society should work. Fifth, tell me in one sentence whether the left-right spectrum is a good map of political views. Sixth, name a U.S. Supreme Court case that ruled on whether communism is constitutional, and give one statistic on how many Americans call themselves socialists, with its source.

Test the response for these likely failures:

Chatbots often quote the Manifesto's opening as "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle," or put a smooth-sounding sentence about change in Burke's mouth that appears nowhere in the pinned edition.
Chatbots often credit the Manifesto to Marx alone, give it a later year, or attach Burke's partnership idea to a different thinker.
Chatbots often call the Manifesto's opening sentence normative, or write that history proves private ownership should be abolished, as if the conclusion followed from the facts alone.
Chatbots often answer the fourth request by picking one text as more correct or calling one ideology the reasonable one.
Chatbots often call the left-right spectrum either a complete map or a meaningless one in a single sentence.
Chatbots often name a confident-sounding Supreme Court case and holding about whether communism is constitutional, with a citation that looks real.
Chatbots often supply an exact share of Americans who call themselves socialists, or cite a survey a student cannot open.

In 3–5 sentences, say what the chatbot got right, quote at least two of its errors, and correct each one with the pinned fragment, the pinned year, or this week's definition.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objectives, Objective 3 (compare the major political ideologies and normative theories evenhandedly — liberalism, conservatism, socialism and its family, and the smaller families; justice, liberty, equality, and rights; the harm principle; Rawls and Nozick — stating each position in its strongest form and distinguishing empirical from normative claims) and Objective 2 (explain power, authority, legitimacy, and the state — Weber's types of authority, the criteria of statehood, sovereignty, and the social-contract answers of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau — and apply these concepts to real and hypothetical cases), takes comparable effort of about the same 90 minutes, uses the same rubric, and earns the same credit. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis, printed here in full: "The Manifesto (Marx, 1867) opens: 'The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle.' In Reflections (1790), Burke wrote that 'a state that changes is a state that dies.' The opening sentence of the Manifesto is a normative claim, so history proves that private property must be abolished. Of the two writers, Burke is plainly the wiser, and conservatism is the correct view. The left-right spectrum is a perfect map of every person's politics. A famous Supreme Court ruling held that communism is unconstitutional, and a recent national survey found that most Americans call themselves socialists." Mark every error you can find, quote at least two, and correct each one in 3–5 sentences with the pinned fragments, the pinned years, or this week's definitions. Submit the marked-up analysis and your correction in place of the chatbot report and share link.

Part 7 — What to Submit

The completed passage log, tally, and charitable-reading tables, or the completed fallback pamphlet table with its tally and charitable-reading table
Written answers to all six analysis questions
The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis and correction

Deliverable:

A short Political Analysis Workshop report on two classic texts: three completed tables (a six-row passage log labelled by question and kind, a tally of kinds with shares, and a charitable reading of both texts with what each implies about rightful power), written answers to six analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's answers about the same texts, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose how you show it: written answers, a recorded explanation with a transcript, or a labelled diagram that places your six sentences by question and kind with short notes; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria
Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Sourcing and close reading	Six findable sentences (or the eight fallback sentences) are logged with their text and search word, each described accurately in the student's own words, and the Manifesto's edition wording societies is noted.	Most sentences are logged and findable, but one or more lacks a search word or is described inaccurately.	No passage log is submitted, or the sentences cannot be found in either text.
Kind labels and tally	Every sentence carries a kind label with a sound reason, the counts match the labels, and each share is computed with the formula or steps shown.	Most labels are sound, but a reason is missing, a count does not match the labels, or a share lacks its formula or steps.	No labels or tally are reported.
Charitable reading with no verdict	Both texts are described by what they value, fear, and argue in words a thoughtful adherent would accept, and neither is ranked above the other.	Both texts are described, but one description is a strawman, a cell is missing, or a verdict slips in.	No charitable-reading table is submitted, or one text is described only to dismiss it.
Legitimacy and the spectrum	The answer states what each text implies about when political power is rightful and where the single left-right line would place each, naming one thing that placement flattens.	The answer addresses legitimacy or the spectrum, but not both, or names a placement without saying what it flattens.	Neither legitimacy nor the spectrum is addressed.
AI critique or equivalent route	The chatbot answers, or the printed flawed analysis on the equivalent route, are checked, at least two errors are quoted, and each is corrected with a pinned fragment, year, or definition; both routes earn this band equally.	The chatbot answers or the printed flawed analysis are checked, but only one error is corrected, or a correction lacks its evidence; both routes are scored the same way.	No critique is submitted on either route, or chatbot output is pasted without being checked.
Limitation and reflection	Two real limits of the six-sentence log are named and one reflection option is answered with a specific example.	One limit is named, or the reflection is general.	No limitation or reflection is submitted.

Quality Gate

Every logged sentence can be found in the Project Gutenberg edition with its search word, or comes from the printed fallback pamphlets.
Every sentence carries a question label and a kind label with a reason.
Every count and share comes from your own labels and formulas or hand tally, never from memory or a chatbot.
Both texts are described in words their adherents would accept, and neither is ranked above the other.
No quotation, case, statistic, or source is invented anywhere in the submission; any quotation is copied from the page.
The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence.

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