: : Pinko Central is right! Marx's personal life was a mess! He spoke out against the family--saying "the bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education . . .becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry . . .": : Can you believe that chickenshit Marx? And anybody who knows anything knows that his family lived in dire poverty. In London, no less, which was the hub of commerce in the 19th century.
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: *First off, can you show me where in this clipped remark of Marx that he is disparaging the family per se? As I read it, he's (rightly) attacking the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie in his own day who preach the 'family' while operating factories which were little better than comcentration camps:
: " Every day the factory whistle shrieked tremulously in the grimy, greasy air above the workers' settlement. And in obedience to its summons sullen people, roused before sleep had refreshed their muscles, came scuttling out of their grey houses like frightened cockroaches. They walked through the cold darkness, down the unpaved street to the high stone cells of the factory, which awaited them with cold complacency, its dozens of square oily eyes lighting up the road. The mud smacked beneath their feet. They shouted in hoarse sleepy voices and rent the air with ugly oaths, while other sounds came floating to meet them: the heavy hum of machinery, and the hiss of steam. Tall black smokestacks, stern and gloomy, loomed like thick clubs above the settlement.
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: In the evening, when the setting sun found weary reflection in the windows of the houses, the factory expelled the people from its stone bowels as though they were so much slag, and they climbed the street again -- grimy, black-faced, their hungry teeth glittering, their bodies giving off the sticky odor of machine oil. Now their voices were lively, even joyful, for work was over for another day, and supper and rest awaited them at home.
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: The day had been devoured by the factory, whose machines sucked up as much of the workers' strength as they needed. The day was struck out, leaving not a trace, and Man had advanced one more step towards his grave." --Maxim Gorky
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: That's really a great thing for a family, eh? Add to the scene the *fact* that entire families - men, women and children - were forced into these places out of dire necessity and I'd say the bourgeois concept of 'family' was/is a pretty empty one for the working classes.
Compared to today, using the wonderful 'Monday-morning quarter-backing' technique, we can say that. It's true, compared to today, those folks had a tough row to hoe. And guess what? In a couple of hundred years, when the standard of living is far superior to what it is now, those folks will look at the writings of today and wonder how we got by. It's relative.
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: On your second point... Marx probably could have gone into business with Engels (who was, BTW a successful industrialist)
Well, almost, his daddy was the successful one; Engels it turns out was a sort of hanger onner.
instead of trying to organise the working classes and providing them with a doctrine designed to overthrow nothing less than the very property relations which allowed for that pleasant bourgeios family at the proletariats' expense. Furthermore, I'd like to see just how 'successful' *your* whitebread, 'Leave it to Beaver,' upbringing would prepare you if you were expelled from America and found yourself in, say, Tokyo,
boy, that really follows...
Japan as Marx was expelled from the Continent while taking up residence in London, England.
All he had to do was not be a radical. He made a choice. Sometimes ya make a good choice and other times ya make a bad choice. Too bad, so sad.
Add to this the fact that, unlike your sorry ass, he was *the* focus of revolutionary activity for the working classes and it's not surprising that the guy didn't get any table scraps from the bourgeoisie. --K
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Nope, instead he bummed his way through life by mooching off of his wife's parents who also happened to be wealthy industrialists. And who were also against their daughter's marriage to the ne'er do well, Marx. Oh, and by the way, let's not forget the nice gift of a maid by his mother and father in law, whom Marx eventually managed to impregnate while his wife was sick, terminally as I recall. I don't think he ever claimed responsibility for that.
Nice decent chap, eh?
Give me the Beavers anyday.
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