Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 10:58:17 -0500
From: "Charles Brown" <charlesb-AT-CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Wives in commony


Charles Brown recomments,
    Marx fathered an a child with "Lenchie" the maid in his house. Engels took public responsibility for fathering , i.e. let people think that he was the biological father, covering for Marx, who was married. Engels was not. Engels revealed the truth on his death bed. Read the autobiography of Marx's daughter, Eleanor Marx, Vol. I, by Yvonne Kapp.
     Of course, you might say that in committing community of wives, Marx, a petit bougeois, was within the "painful convention " of the bourgeoisie as he and Engels describe so well in the Manifesto.
     By the way, in the Manifesto virtual seminar I just left, someone, might have been Rob Beamish, was claiming that Marx wrote the whole Manifesto and Engels practically only put his name on it.   I don't have a strong opinion who wrote what in the Manifesto, just think it would be interesting for scholars of this authorship issue to debate this. In general, I reject the extreme anti-Engels schools against the joint nature of the whole original marxist authorship. I take Engels's view of it, which is that he was sort of second fiddle;  but I think he was not out of tune, and he had some critical soloes.

>>> Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us> 03/27 12:15 AM >>>

Actually I think that the passage can be read as implying more than scorn
for bourgeois horror at the idea of free love. Insofar as it can be
attributed in part to Engels, it can be read as advocating free love,
where that quaint phrase means that whoever may love whomever and it aint
nobody's business but their own. Marx himsrlf was painfully convcentional
about these matters, though. --jks

On Thu, 26 Mar 1998, Carrol Cox wrote:

>
> Charles Brown writes:
>
> <<- Actually Marx and Engels use is sort of the obverse or reverse or
> inverse of a bunch of people owning one thing. It is one person "owning" a
> bunch of people. You know the old double standard: one man having several
> women. That's why Marx shot it down, because he knew it was one of the
> first thing the doublestandard minded men would try to institute - legally
> sanctioned polygamy.>>
>
> This is the common mistake in reading of trying to extract a positive from
> the negatives of satire; it is a mistake because it makes it impossible
> for the writer to express a negative for its own sake, for regardless of
> what he/she writes, it will be construed as an implicit positive (all
> negative statements being so construable). But Marx and Engels are not in
> fact talking about communism (or socialism) here but are scorning the
> bourgeosie, and that scorn constitutes the entire content of the passage.
>
> Carrol
>
>
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