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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Nov 18, 2020 11:08 am

In the last 25 years the US budget for immigration and border control has gone up by 133,567%.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by rainbow » Wed Nov 18, 2020 11:36 am

Brian Peacock wrote:
Fri Sep 11, 2020 6:36 pm
Apparently a quick hand shandy can help with a migraine...

https://www.practicalpainmanagement.com ... sturbation
Fascinating. Not many people know that serotonin is structurally related to the tryptans.
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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by DRSB » Thu Nov 26, 2020 7:47 am

A friend of mine wrote something about Engels, I've had similar thoughts as well. This is a google-translation from Russian.
I have been looking closely at Frederick since school and here's why. I was perplexed by the contradiction: Engels owned a textile factory, therefore, he is a capitalist, and if a capitalist, then mercilessly exploits the proletarians. Consequently, what could Karl Marx, the leader of these very proletarians, have in common with the one who squeezed the juices out of the working people? But Marx and Engels were presented as friends! I remember the title of the book about them - "Great and touching friendship." How is it, I wondered, twelve-year-old, that the exploiter and the one who laid his life on denouncing the exploiters are friends? There was no one to ask.

The living conditions of workers and women workers in those days were monstrous - this is what Engels himself writes in the article "The Condition of the Working Class in England." Cites gruesome facts: In Manchester, 57 percent of workers' children die before they reach five. Most workers are homeless: 350,000 workers in Manchester and its suburbs live in damp, dirty barracks. And Engels cites the reason for the misery of the poor: "If the bourgeoisie has graciously agreed to profit from it, it will receive a wage that is barely enough to keep the soul in the body." The workers worked in the most difficult conditions for a paltry wage. The working day lasted 13 hours. What about child labor? They got up to the machine from the age of eight.

But surely in such conditions the workers of Engels' factory lived and worked! There is no evidence that he somehow tried to improve their life, built, say, a hospital or a school. If it were, the official biographers would certainly have danced on this fact. But silence. This means that the capitalist Engels was not engaged in improving the labor and living conditions of the workers. And I didn't do it for a simple reason - fierce competition. It is worth increasing labor costs, profits immediately fall. And there will be less surplus value. And therefore, let us refer to Marx, "capital is merciless in relation to the health and life of the worker." That is, it is reasonable to assume that Engels was merciless to the health and life of his workers. Or not? Judging by the fact that nothing is reported in the literature, the answer is yes.
As a theoretician, Engels formulated: the cause of all society's troubles is private property, it divides society into classes, it is the cause of exploitation. In the article “Fair wages for a fair working day,” he writes: “... this justice is entirely on one side - on the side of capital. Therefore, let us bury the old slogan forever and replace it with another: the means of labor, raw materials, factories, machines - in the possession of the workers! " But as a practitioner, he doesn't follow his theory. What prevented him from giving his factory to the workers? Believe the theory with practice? Hand out shares to workers?

And Engels needed money. They are very much needed. And not for myself, but for a friend. Karl Marx, who vehemently defended the workers in his writings, did not work a single day. From what the Marx family spent their money on, we can conclude that they had aristocratic habits. They lived in Brussels, but Jenny ordered outfits and even business cards from London. Marx could not imagine his life without expensive wines and a good cigar. And they rented apartments not in the workers' districts, but in the bourgeois quarters. They had servants. For forty years the Marxes lived essentially at the expense of the capitalist Engels. Friedrich sent money to a friend and did it sincerely, because he believed that the ideas of a brilliant friend would lead mankind onto a bright path. It was an unparalleled and incomprehensible example of selfless friendship.
Engels' personal life was vague. His friend was Mary Burns, a spinner at his textile factory, she worked there since nine years. They met when she was twenty-one. According to fragmentary information, Mary was cheerful, energetic, with a developed sense of dignity. Engels fell in love with Mary, but did not offer her a hand. That is, due to the difference in social status between him and her, he cannot formalize official relations with her. And also called a revolutionary.

Engels came to Brussels with Mary, but she was not allowed into the house of the Marxes - Jenny believed that she, a representative of the old von Westphalen family, should not accept an outbred proletarian. Frederick resigned himself to this humiliation. Mary too. However, he did not endure at another moment - a tragic one, it almost came to a break with Karl. Mary died early, in 1863, Engels told a friend to his inconsolable grief: "I buried her yesterday." And what about Marx? He limited himself to one word: "I sympathize." And then he turned to the request: he and Jenny are broke, in debt as in silks, there is nothing to pay for housing, in a word, dear Fred, have they come in addition to what they sent the day before? Engels was struck by his friend's insensitivity to his grief. I wrote a letter in which harsh expressions: I knew before, dear Karl, about your callousness, but I could not have imagined that at such a moment in my life you would not have a few words of consolation: “All my friends, including acquaintances from among the inhabitants , showed me evidence of more compassion and friendship than I could have expected ... You decided it was appropriate
Marx was ashamed, wrote the answer: forgive, forgive me, dear Fred, I am a pig, there is no excuse for me, but believe me, only in extremes, maddened by everyday hardships, could I do this, therefore understand and forgive!
Engels is generous: thank you, Karl, for these words of yours, you removed the stone from my soul, I already thought that I had lost both of you - Mary and you ...
Engels is 200 years old this November.
Last edited by DRSB on Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Nov 26, 2020 7:56 am

'Tis true. But it doesn't invalidate Engles' descriptions, views or conclusions - it just makes him a bit of hypocrite. Then again, the work of Marx and Engles was an attempt to explain a whole web of social and economic relationships across the broadest possible scope. One man, or two, cannot change that on their own by their own hand. First the concepts and understandings have to be arrived at and articulated. Nonetheless, other industrialists of the era did make efforts to ameliorate and improve the material conditions of their workers. Cadbury, Rowntree, and Salt spring to mind.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by DRSB » Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:04 am

Yeah, everybody needs money. And those that give theirs away, still want recognition. Tolstoy did, and expected everybody to honor him for his act of selflessness.

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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Nov 26, 2020 8:52 am

Carnegie too.
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"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by pErvinalia » Thu Nov 26, 2020 9:24 am

Yeah, but did he own an iPhone? Checkmate, capitalists!
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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by Hermit » Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:47 am

DRSB wrote:
Thu Nov 26, 2020 7:47 am
A friend of mine wrote something about Engels, I've had similar thoughts as well.
Your friend wrote unmitigated crap. I'll just comment on this assertion:
Your friend wrote:Engels owned a textile factory
No. Engels did not own a textile factory. His father was a partner of family-owned textile factories in Germany and Great Britain. As such, his father had limited control over how the factories were run.

Engels was initially employed as an office clerk in the Manchester factory. He did become a partner in the firm in 1864, but relinquished it five years later in order to focus on his studies. During those five years he would have had even less influence on how the business was run than his father. The most he could do was to divert some funds from it in order to support Marx. This did not get unnoticed by the rest of the Engels family.
Engels never inherited the mill - when his father died, his family feared he would squander the legacy "on his communist friends", and he was unable to withdraw any capital from the firm for 20 years. He left the mill in 1869 but retained shares and invested in the stockmarket, to provide an income that allowed him to continue supporting Marx and to write and work for the cause of socialism. (Link)
Sorry, but I really cannot be bothered going through the rest of your friend's account of Engels' alleged hypocrisy. It is uninformed at best, but I suspect more likely motivated by malice borne of an unbridled hatred of socialism.
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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by DRSB » Thu Nov 26, 2020 12:05 pm

OK, thanks for putting things right, Hermit!

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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by DRSB » Sun Nov 29, 2020 10:21 am

I didn't know Engels stepped in to resolve even this issue!
Helene Demuth gave birth to Frederick Demuth on 23 June 1851 in the Marx home of 28 Dean Street, Soho. She was not apparently in any kind of “respectable” relationship at the time, so young Freddy was fostered out. The Marx children assumed (or rather, were helped to believe) that frequent visitor Engels was responsible. But Helene never spoke about her son’s father.

It is now generally (but not universally) believed that Karl Marx was actually Frederick Demuth’s father. This means Karl was shagging Helene whilst his wife was pregnant with Jenny Eveline. His letters from the time mention that he went into hiding in the British Library for many days when Lenchen’s pregnancy would have been discovered.
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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by laklak » Sun Nov 29, 2020 2:51 pm

Ol' Karl, what a goer, eh?
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by Sean Hayden » Sun Nov 29, 2020 7:19 pm



--just found this website: https://www.ibiology.org/

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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by DRSB » Mon Nov 30, 2020 6:21 am

Nice site! Thanks for sharing!

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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by rainbow » Mon Nov 30, 2020 6:30 am

laklak wrote:
Sun Nov 29, 2020 2:51 pm
Ol' Karl, what a goer, eh?
Not many people know that Marx wasn't a Marxist.
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Re: That's amazing ! Post incredible facts here.

Post by DRSB » Mon Nov 30, 2020 8:12 am

rainbow wrote:
Mon Nov 30, 2020 6:30 am
laklak wrote:
Sun Nov 29, 2020 2:51 pm
Ol' Karl, what a goer, eh?
Not many people know that Marx wasn't a Marxist.
Least of all Engels!

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