[Marxism] Job training for the police state
Twitterist Товарищ Х (http://twitter.com/tovX) recently made me aware of these articles, which all seem to have the same underlying theme: Job training for the U.S. police state http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/10/nation/na-spy-highschool10?pg=2 It's the fastest growing field in academia, -- Boy Scouts train for badge in anti-terrorism - Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5331188/Boy-Scouts-train-for-badge-in-anti-terrorism.html Around 35,000 Explorer scouts aged from 14 to 21 are currently in the law enforcement exploring programme across America. Dressed in combat fatigues and armed with air guns firing tiny plastic pellets, they are taught how to assault buses, raid marijuana fields and rescue terrorist hostages from buildings. -- Girl Scouts Emergency Preparedness Patch Program Can you think of an emergency that was caused by other people? Answers may include terrorist attacks, bombings, contaminated food (e-coli), arson (intentionally starting a fire), etc. This topic may be the most challenging for girls to comprehend, depending on their background experience and knowledge, and their age. *In the kit, there are some news clippings of specific man-made hazards like the events of September 11, 2001, the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, and the 2001 Anthrax scare. It may be worthwhile to check out the kit and review these clippings (or your own online search) if girls need a frame of reference for this discussion. http://www.gscnc.org/files/pdf/program/Girl%20Scouts%20Emergency%20Preparedness%20Patch%20Program%20-%20Policy%20Comments_FINAL.pdf The Patch Program manual, excepting the passage quoted above, has mostly benign content, leaving one to wonder about the goodies in the kit. Still, considering both the DHS sponsorship of this program, and the larger context of militarizing youth and training them as agents of the police state, this recruiting effort among the 3.4 million Girl Scouts in the US is deplorable. -- YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Rosa replies to SA, SM, and LK
See: http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/yet_more_replies.htm Weight Loss Program Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=IfAYi6mQ2AlB5R5Rju9JdAAAJ1BRugI4sJACAWmXIev8NAFPAAYAAADNAAAEUgA= YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has key role in current gains
Luko writes one might say, that China is saving world wide capitalism from deeper crises, but I prefer China growing than starving so that the working masses in the imperialist countries fall into misery. I have never been a follower of the the worse the better strategy. = Me neither. I assume you meant to say so that the working masses in the imperialist countries don't fall into misery. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Is it Seven Days in May for Obama?
Mark Lause wrote: While it's interesting and telling that the professional goons (well, goon reenactors, really) on the idiot box have raised this spectre of a military coup, it couldn't be more groundless and absurd. Actually, if I have some time today, I plan to blog about McChrystal within the historical context of the military opposing the president, Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War the classic example. I don't think that any of this has any domestic implications in terms of, for example, the French generals revolting during the Algerian war of independence. More to follow... YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Video of 1948 Progressive Party campaign song...
I've been playing around lately with putting videos together and posting them on YouTube The last one puts together material from the 1948 campaign of Henry A. Wallace with a song from that bid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RC_ydKzioxMfeature=channelhttp://www.youtube.com/user/LauseMarkA#play/all/uploads-all/0/RC_ydKzioxM I posted the lyrics for this earlier, but they're short enough to merit repeating The donkey is tired and thin. The elephant thinks he'll move in. They yell and they fuss But they ain't foolin' us 'Cause they're brothers right under the skin. Refrain... It's the same, same merry-go-round, Which one will you ride this year. The donkey and elephant bob up and down On the same merry-go-round. The elephant comes from the North The donkey may come from the South If you look you may find The donkey's behind But they've got the same bit in their mouth. REFRAIN If you want to end up safe and sound Get off the merry-go-round To be a real smarty Just join the new party And get your two feet on the ground. REFRAIN ML PS: I'm entirely new at this sort of thing and assume that material from 1948 is so old that it's all in the public domain. However, if someone complains, YouTube takes it down, so YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has keyrole incurrentgains
Since the reproduction of value seems to be the single issue in your head, got nothing else to say. Don´t care about defeatists, either. S. Artesian escribió: You may have read a lot, but you understand very little. If you've got a problem with identifying China's expansion of capitalism based on fixed asset investment, initially in the export sector, but most recently under the stimulus program in the heavy state/collective industry YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] WSWS review of Moore movie
The other night, while doing other things, the shows of Rachel Maddow, Bill Mahrer and Jon Stewart passed over the screen. Terms like capitalist and capitalism / socialist and socialism had managed to work their way into each one of them. They weren't using it the way we would, but it capitalism was clearly identified with the mess the world faces now and socialism with the idea of being socially responsible. As opposed to what popular culture in America has cranked out for us through my lifetime, I'm rather pleased with what we're getting now ML YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] The demise of the dollar
I don't see exactly how this squares with the fact that China and Japan have increased their purchases of US Treasurys, but hey, you never know what the bourgeoisie will come up with in their grand game of beggar thy neighbor. In any case, first a correction, or addendum to Fisk's presentation. Iraq has blacklisted Sinopec from bidding on concessions in the next round after Sinopec bought Swiss oil company Addax Petroleum. Perhaps Russia does want to get away from the dollar, and Iran did announce its determination to price its oil in Euros, but I don't see any exporter accepting a basket of currencies for payment that includes the recently collapsed rouble, particularly when corporations in Russia are increasingly unable to make payments on their debts to European banks. And oil importers? Why would Japan, or the EU want oil currency priced in appreciating euros and yen, thereby effectively raising the price of their oil? To further appreciate the value of their currencies? Doesn't quite make sense, given the statements of the ECB worrying over the recent appreciation of the euro and its negative impact on exports and overall growth, and the critical role dollar depreciation played in the US, and global recovery, 2003-2007. I don't accept that currency rivalry will cause greater competition in the Mideast, or between the US and China. For one thing, for the yuan, or its foreign trade form the renminbi, to operate in a basket of currencies, the yuan would have to become fully convertible with other currencies--- and when that occurs, US private hedge funds, currency traders, etc. with many more hard currency reserves than all the central bankers in the world, will start whipsawing the yuan through the markets, eventually ripping a hole in the thin tissue supporting China's economic miracle, and then the run will start-- with capital flight and the ensuing economic disorder putting an end to that miracle. However, I do think that these notions of currency rivalry reflect the drastic decline in profits for the oil exporters, the oil majors due to the overproduction of oil, and for 35 years nothing has worked against and hand-in-hand with overproduction to boost profits like increasing tensions, threats, then promises and the delivery of war. I too do not believe that things have to get worse to make things better, but I have no doubt things are going to get much worse, with much more hostility being directed at China. - Original Message - From: Louis Proyect l...@panix.com To: David Schanoes sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 9:05 AM Subject: [Marxism] The demise of the dollar http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html The demise of the dollar In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading By Robert Fisk YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] WSWS review of Moore movie
I think my comments from 2004 concerning Moore's film Farenheit 9/11 apply here too: http://marx.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2004w27/msg00023.htm Jim F. -- Original Message -- From: Adam Richmond adambrichm...@yahoo.com Subject: Re: [Marxism] WSWS review of Moore movie Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 07:17:28 -0700 (PDT) As usual, a smug, condescending review of another film from WSWS. I don't dispute any of their facts. It is their approach that is so appalling. This film helps bring into focus a growing restlessness with the status quo. Does it bring it completely into view and point to the solutions? No. So far we know that Mr. Moore is not a revolutionary socialist. But what Michael Moore has done is to bring the economic system into question, something that has not been done in a major public forum, perhaps since the 1930s. That fact is lost on the ultralefts of the WSWS. It is up to the revolutionaries to see the film and take Michael Moore as the real thing. It opens the door for a new way of seeing the basic facts of US politics. Best Weight Loss Program - Click Here! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/BLSrjpTFoYebipymAEa70msN6AWuZRBFbRS1iANzTV1VxcSHBogqgo0NPtG/ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has keyrole incurrentgains
With a statement like yours below, Nestor, do you seriously expect anyone to believe you've ever read anything of Marx's? You got nothing to say because basically you've got nothing to say. You accuse me of criticizing China's overproduction, when it's China's own State Council that issued these new guidelines in order to counter overproduction. You issue the slander and slur accusing me of Friedmanese, when it's again China's own State Council that invited Friedman to China after his Nobel Prize and treated him as a hero. I don't take kindly to slurs and slanders associating me with a man who welcomed the triumph of Pinochet. I have repeatedly stated that behind every one of Friedman's free markets stands a death squad. Perhaps I shouldn't let it upset me that much since clearly you don't have the slightest clue as to what Marx, Friedman, and you yourself are talking about. But I do. Sue me. Nobody's perfect. You think somehow production of things, objects is going on separate and apart from their production as commodities; and that somehow these things, object are in and of themselves the satisfaction of the needs of humankind. You're singing an aria in the opera of your own ignorance. The reproduction of value is not an issue in my head, it's the issue that defines capitalism. It's the single issue that contains, determines, informs every other issue in the origin, development, survival, and consequently, possible abolition of capitalism.. In case nobody has told you that before, I'm telling you that now, because it is certainly clear you've never read it in Marx. Take your slanders somewhere else. - Original Message - From: Nestor Gorojovsky nm...@gmail.com To: David Schanoes sartes...@earthlink.net Sent: Tuesday, October 06, 2009 10:38 AM Subject: Re: [Marxism] China's nationalized sector has keyrole incurrentgains Since the reproduction of value seems to be the single issue in your head, got nothing else to say. Don´t care about defeatists, either. S. Artesian escribió: You may have read a lot, but you understand very little. If you've got a problem with identifying China's expansion of capitalism based on fixed asset investment, initially in the export sector, but most recently under the stimulus program in the heavy state/collective industry YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Rosa replies to SA, SM, and LK
Rosa wrote: “What of this question, though? “Where does logic come from Rosa?” Don't you know? As far as we can tell, from that ruling-class theorist, Aristotle. But so what?” And Aristotle and the whole mode of thinking of Greek society, obviously, fell from the sky. So Rosa, the Historical Materialist, can’t be bothered with explaining why logic came about as a product of the necessities of life, and instead gives us this accidental, bourgeois, at the very root, view that logic was the particular fancy of this particular philosopher which happens to work according to the ordinary language standard of clarity, which Rosa takes for granted. Remember? It is PEOPLE who make their own history, it is their actions, not your whimsical taste for clarity. And Marx, well he just happened to be a particular communist, but no relation to the historical conditions in which he lived though, no siree. The anal retentiveness is YOUR anal retentiveness, because lacking a formal model where to fit the dialectic, and reduce it to YOUR sterile mind games, (I don’t mean to scare you by putting YOUR in caps, I only want to stress these are your actions, it is time for you to understand where they come from as pertains your social being) you think advancing the interests of workers is a question of convincing comrades of your philosophy, which is bourgeois pragmatism in disguise, instead of, as it were, engaging in the real movement, or more to the point, the production of an objective consciousness. Until we are clear on what our social being is, we can’t even start talking about dialectics in a materialistic fashion. _ Hotmail: Powerful Free email with security by Microsoft. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/171222986/direct/01/ YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Breman: Myth of the Global Saftey Net
From the current issue of New Left Review (see http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=articleview=2800): -- Media reports on the economic meltdown have mainly concentrated on the impact of the crisis on the rich nations, with little concern for the mass of the population living in what used to be called the Third World. The current view seems to be that the setbacks in these ‘emerging economies’ may be less severe than expected. China’s and India’s high growth rates have slackened, but the predicted slump has not materialized. This line of thought, however, analyses only the effects of the crisis on countries as a whole, masking its differential impact across social classes. If one considers income distribution, and not just macro-calculations of gdp, the global downturn has taken a disproportionately higher toll on the most vulnerable sectors: the huge armies of the poorly paid, under-educated, resourceless workers that constitute the overcrowded lower depths of the world economy. To the extent that these many hundreds of millions are incorporated into the production process it is as informal labour, characterized by casualized and fluctuating employment and piece-rates, whether working at home, in sweatshops, or on their own account in the open air; and in the absence of any contractual or labour rights, or collective organization. In a haphazard fashion, still little understood, work of this nature has come to predominate within the global labour force at large. The International Labour Organization estimates that informal workers comprise over half the workforce in Latin America, over 70 per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa and over 80 per cent in India; an Indian government report suggests a figure of more than 90 per cent. [1] Cut loose from their original social moorings, the majority remain stuck in the vast shanty towns ringing city outskirts across the global South. Recently, however, the life of street hawkers in Cairo, tortilla vendors in Mexico City, rickshaw drivers in Calcutta or scrap mongers in Jakarta has been cast in a much rosier light. The informal sector, according to the Wall Street Journal, is ‘one of the last safe havens in a darkening financial climate’ and ‘a critical safety net as the economic crisis spreads’. [2] Thanks to these jobs, former imf Chief Economist Simon Johnson is quoted as saying, ‘the situation in desperately poor countries isn’t as bad as you’d think’. On this view, an admirable spirit of self-reliance enables people to survive in the underground circuits of the economy, unencumbered by the tax and benefit systems of the ‘formal sector’. These streetwise operators are able to get by without expensive social provisions or unemployment benefit. World Bank economist W. F. Maloney assures the wsj that the informal sector ‘will absorb a lot of people and offer them a source of income’ over the next year. The wsj draws its examples from Ahmedabad, the former mill city in Gujarat where I conducted fieldwork in the 1990s. Here, in the Manek Chowk market—‘a row of derelict stalls’, where ‘vendors peddle everything from beans to brass pots as monkeys scramble overhead’—Surajben ‘Babubhai’ Patni sells tomatoes, corn and nuts from a makeshift shelter: ‘She makes as much as 250 rupees a day, or about $5, but it’s enough to feed her household of nine, including her son, who recently lost his job as a diamond polisher.’ Enough: really? Five dollars for nine people is less than half the amount the World Bank sets as the benchmark above extreme poverty: one dollar per capita per day. Landless households in villages to the south of Ahmedabad have to make do with even less than that—on the days they manage to find work. [3] Earlier this year I returned to the former mill districts of the city to see how the economic crisis was affecting people there. By 2000, these former working-class neighbourhoods had already degenerated into pauperized quarters. But the situation has deteriorated markedly even since then. Take the condition of the garbage pickers—all of them women, since this is not considered to be man’s work. They are now paid half what they used to get for the harvest of paper, rags and plastic gleaned from the waste dumps on their daily rounds. To make up the loss, they now begin their work at 3 am instead of at 5 am, bringing along their children to provide more hands. The Self-Employed Women’s Association, which organizes informal-sector workers in the city, reports that ‘incomes have declined, days of work decreased, prices have fallen and livelihoods disappeared’. [4] Their recent newsletter presents the following table, testifying to the crash in prices for the ‘goods’ collected on the dumps. A sewa activist based in Ahmedabad reports on the anguish she met when visiting local members. One of these, Ranjanben Ashokbhai Parmar, started to cry: ‘Who sent this recession! Why did they send it?’ I was
[Marxism] Rosa's latest replies
http://anti-dialectics.co.uk/weak_responses_from_kosloff_and_mage.htm Obama Raises Pell Grants Get Your Degree with Government Grants and Scholarships! http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/c?cp=o-Nhj9ChKEDNUkzY6MP_ZgAAJ1BRugI4sJACAWmXIev8NAFPAAQFAM_gYz4AAAMlABI2RwA= YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] did Abbas encourage Israel to kill Gazans?
http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=105964language=en YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Palestinian fury over Abbas' complicity with Israel over Goldstone
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/world/middle-east/Palestinians-angry-as-President-Mahmoud-Abbas-drops-Israel-war-crimes-case/articleshow/5087230.cms http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118941.html http://stopthewall.org/latestnews/2082.shtml http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1005/p06s16-wome.html anger at Abbas - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0tc4WkqXU YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Asian economic realities
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/roach061009.html YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Another review of Michael Moore movie
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/vogel061009.html YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Vanessa Redgrave backtracks on Zionism
NY Review of Books Volume 56, Number 16 · October 22, 2009 Let Israeli FIlms be Shown By Vanessa Redgrave, Julian Schnabel, Martin Sherman To the Editors: A group of prominent filmmakers has protested the Toronto Film Festival's choice of Tel Aviv, in its City to City section showcasing films from and about a particular city, as a propaganda campaign on behalf of...an apartheid regime.[*] Their letter declared that the signatories were not protesting against the Israeli filmmakers who were included or their films. Their stand seems to us to be improperly thought out and to have distressing implications. The protesters use the term apartheid regime. We oppose the current Israeli government, but it is a government. Freely elected. Not a regime. Words matter. In their letter the protesters say that Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages. True. Just as much of America is built on obliterated Indian property. Are they implying that Tel Aviv should not exist? At least not in its present form? Which would mean that the State of Israel (the original State of Israel, not including the occupied territories) should not exist. Thousands of Palestinians have died through the years because the Israeli government, military, and part of the population fervently believe that the Arab states and, indeed, much of the world do not want Israel to exist. How then are we halting this never-ending cycle of violence by promoting the very fears that cause it? The injustice and cruelty inflicted upon the Palestinians over decades are immense. Many great powers, most notably the Soviet Union and Great Britain, have collaborated in this injustice, just as, if only by their silence, they played havoc with the lives of Jews during the Third Reich and the ensuing Holocaust. Many Israelis are aware of this history. Many citizens of Tel Aviv are particularly cognizant of the situation of the Palestinians and are concerned about their government's policies and their country's future. And none more so than the Tel Aviv creative community. This is exemplified by Israeli films that criticize their government's behavior, and some startling Israeli theater pieces, such as the Cameri Theatre's Plonter, seen earlier this year in London. The Israeli peace bloc, Gush Shalom, and many Israeli human rights groups and advocates are based in Tel Aviv. Some 10,000 Israeli citizens demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the military attack on Gaza in January this year, a fact not reported by the BBC World News or CNN. These citizens of Tel Aviv and their organizations and their cultural outlets should be applauded and encouraged. Their presence and their continued activity is reason alone to celebrate their city. Cultural exchanges almost always involve government channels. This occurs in every country. There is no way around it. We do not agree that this involvement is a reason to shun or protest, picket or boycott, or ban people who are expressing thoughts and confronting grief that, ironically, many of the protesters share. If attitudes are hardened on both sides, if those who are fighting within their own communities for peace are insulted, where then is the hope? The point finally is not to grandstand but to inch toward a two-state solution and a world in which both nations can exist, perhaps not lovingly, but at least in peace. The year 2009 is the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Barenboim-Said West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. We hope that those who protest Israeli inclusion in film festivals will take note of this example of the power of art freely expressed and available to all, and reconsider their position. Vanessa Redgrave Julian Schnabel Martin Sherman Notes [*]Editors' note: The Toronto Film Festival ran from September 10 to September 19; a list of Israeli films featured in the City to City section is available at www.tiff.net/filmsandschedules/programmes/citytocity. For the full text of the protest letter and a list of its signers, see torontodeclaration.blogspot.com. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Review of Engels biography
Volume 56, Number 16 · October 22, 2009 He Kept Marx Going By Adam Kirsch Marx's General: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels by Tristram Hunt Metropolitan, 430 pp., $32.00 The traffic of pilgrims to the grave of Karl Marx, in London's Highgate Cemetery, may not be as large as it once was. But at least the grave still exists, presided over by the enormous black bust erected by the British Communist Party in the 1950s, after so many statues of Marx's heirs have been destroyed. His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work, said Friedrich Engels in a speech at Marx's funeral, on March 17, 1883; and even if the second part of that prophecy seems doubtful today, the first is surely beyond dispute. But what about Engels himself? Anyone wishing to visit his resting place will find no place to go. When he died, twelve years after Marx, Engels ordered that his body be cremated and his ashes thrown into the English Channel. It was as if he wanted to make certain that, as Tristram Hunt writes at the end of Marx's General, in death as in life there was nothing to detract from the glory of Marx. Such self-effacement was the constant theme of Engels's relationship with his best friend, collaborator, and alter ego, from the beginning of their partnership, when they were in their mid-twenties, until its end a lifetime later. Marx was a genius, Engels declared, we others were at best talented. Such self-deprecation does not make Engels sound like a very urgent subject for a new biography. The problem is compounded by the fact that, for twenty years, Engels's primary contribution to the birth of Marxism was to retire from writing and organizing so that he could earn money to support Marx and his family. After 1848, when their activities during the failed German revolution made them personae non grata on the Continent, Marx and Engels moved to England, whose liberalism sheltered them even as they attacked it. Marx's story during the next two decades is one of great intellectual and human drama. Living in dire poverty in a Soho slum, enduring the deaths of children and his own tormenting illnesses, he gave painful birth to Capital and asserted doctrinal control over the burgeoning Communist movement. Little Bookroom / Culinary Tuscany Engels, on the other hand, spent that crucial period working at Ermen and Engels, the family cotton-spinning business in Manchester, sending part of his income to Marx, and living pretty well on what was left over. As Hunt writes, Engels's existence was that of a leading Manchester merchant—a sophisticated, high-bourgeois world of dinners, clubs, charitable events, and networking. It was a double life, not just ideologically but domestically, too. Engels was officially unmarried, and maintained a respectable bachelor apartment for receiving guests, but he was actually living with Mary Burns, a working-class Irishwoman who was effectively his wife. It was a ticklish situation for a man who railed against the sexual exploitation of working women by their employers. The right of the first night was transferred from the feudal lords to the bourgeois manufacturers, Engels complained, but his arrangement with Mary—and the way that, after her death, he filled her place with her sister, Lizzy—itself has a rather feudal feel. That the basis for Engels's pleasures and Marx's work was, ultimately, the exploitation of the proletariat—the very thing the two men dedicated their lives to ending—makes Engels's Manchester years appear not just undramatic but potentially hypocritical. Engels does not sound very indignant, for instance, when writing to Marx about a day he spent with the Cheshire Hunt: On Saturday I went out fox-hunting—seven hours in the saddle... At least twenty of the chaps fell off or came down, two horses were done for, one fox killed (I was in AT THE DEATH). Engels's pleasure in this aristocratic pastime is not fully explained by the fact that it was supposedly good training for the cavalry maneuvers he would be called upon to lead, come the revolution. But he refused to be embarrassed by his inconsistencies. Would it ever occur to me to apologise for the fact that I myself was once a partner in a firm of manufacturers? Engels wrote after his retirement. There's a fine reception waiting for anyone who tries to throw that in my teeth! Engels's doubleness, which offers such a striking contrast to Marx's single-mindedness, is why he proves to be a surprisingly fruitful subject for Tristram Hunt. The book's original title in the UK was The Frock-Coated Communist, and Hunt makes much of the piquancy of the juxtaposition: the revolutionary in a respectable frock coat, the militant who indulged his taste for wine and women. Engels, Hunt suggests, proves that communism is not just a matter of party congresses and five-year plans, or even of Marx's boils and pawnshops. Neither a Leveler nor a statist,
