But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

Thinking about Dialectical Materialism while waiting for the bus. New Town Road, August 2010.

Today is Book Club Friday, my name is Kris and I have a confession to make: I am an Engels Man.

Friedrich Engels used to be a name that was known throughout the world. Cities, towns and streets bore the name. Ships, railway engines and tanks. You don’t see so much of that these days…

The book that I am currently halfway through (it’s a biggun) is Tristram Hunt’s exploration of the man, The Frock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels. If you are not familiar with Engels, perhaps you’ve heard of his more famous philosophical collaborator, Karl Marx.

It seems to me that – with this book – Hunt is seeking to recover Engels’s reputation from those who have portrayed him as responsible for Stalinist excesses and chosen him as the fall guy for the failures of Marxism. In this (at least halfway through the book), he’s partly successful. I’ll reserve judgement on that when I’ve finished!

For now, I can say that Hunt has achieved much in constructing with some flair the intellectual, cultural and economic milieu that helped form Engels the man – businessman, armed revolutionary, philosopher, and pants man. The years surrounding preceding and following the tumultuous events of 1848 are full of the kinds of tales to keep a good biography ticking over (despite the necessary deviations into political philosophy).

Money, spies, revolution, bullets whizzing past, busty wenches, tempting maids, theories of surplus; so far this book has it all. It's well worth a look, particularly if you'd like to bone up on your socio-economic history.

If you are a keen reader (or would like to be), and want to track your habits or see my recommendations or make some of your own, feel free to check out my profile at Goodreads!

Comments

smudgeon said…

Engels was a "pants man"?

I'm not sure what that means, but it made me snicker.

8 October 2010 at 09:59

Kris McCracken said…

Me, a "pants man" generally refers to a gentleman who is a hit with the ladies.

George Clooney is a good example of a pants man. As is Engels.

8 October 2010 at 10:19

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

This will hurt me...

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