http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2012/08/labor_day_drinking_a_history_of_proletarian_benders_and_a_guide_to_drinking_on_the_job_.3.html

On precisely this date in 1844, the authors of The Communist Manifesto (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0451527100/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0451527100&adid=1YFVWNE1SFR20PTPJECV&) went on a bender in France. It was epic, and it was epochal, and it is hard to think of a drinking session more significant to the formation of the modern world.
Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were in their 20s at the time, and neither was a drinking novice. Marx first demonstrated talent in the beerhounding field during his first and only year at the University of Bonn. It was, in the understated phrase of his father, a period of "wild rampaging (http://books.google.com/books?id=CbhZ9bpze9QC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=karl+marx+wild+rampaging&source=bl&ots=Q5BSIX0jg1&sig=zGWdQfSLr1_h35hWeBqKVv-aZFY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7qIrULuDN4as6QHouYD4Bg&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=karl%20marx%20wild%20rampag)." As a co-president of his “tavern club,” the lad often tangled with the rival Borussia Korps (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps_Borussia_Bonn), which would force him and his bourgeois brethren to kneel in allegiance to the Prussian aristocracy. In hopes of repelling their attacks, Marx started packing a pistol, and a bullet grazed his brow in the duel that inevitably resulted; boys will be boys. He transferred schools, got serious about philosophy, and fell in with the Young Hegelians (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/y/o.htm) for a while. To blow off steam while working on his Ph.D., he would knock back pints with Bruno Bauer (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bauer/); they would now and then get smashed and ride donkeys down the main streets of villages.

Engels, meanwhile, had been educating his palate, preparing to become first great champagne socialist. One month-long vacation in the French countryside found young Engels “more or less squiffy all the time (http://books.google.com/books?id=3KOyuSakn80C&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=cleany+washed+smoothly+combed&source=bl&ots=v_hzyVOMtT&sig=cMD_xTzlOq6PVhr3YLnTvXhc9KE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sK0rUNPLEsTW0QGj7oDoBQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=squiffy&f=false),” and his most recent biographer likens his diary of the trip to “an upmarket wine-tour brochure (http://books.google.com/books?id=sOtr1M8DOKoC&lpg=PP1&ots=qupaeSPKeS&dq=editions%3AhlM9ADek9uYC&pg=PA163#v=onepage&q=%22upmarket%20wine-tour%20b).” (Sample text: “Within a few bottles one can experience every intermediate state from the exultation of the cancan to the tempestuous fever heat of revolution, and then finally with a bottle of champagne one can again drift into the merriest carnival mood in the world!") An industrialist and a revolutionary, Engels spent two years learning the family business at Ermen and Engels’ Victoria Mill outside of Manchester, England, witnessing the horrors of child labor and gathering material for his first book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0192836889/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0192836889&adid=0HEEZ1HJC1AF3B310ZCE&).

It is comforting to know they were normal men despite their magisterial work.

A traditional Porter, like Yuengling, is a true working man's beer. Nutritious and relatively low in alcohol it's just the thing for to accompany a laborer's lunch. A pilsen with dinner and double bock for the evenings festivities, what more do ya need?

http://youtu.be/heK8QjhWGag

What a fine album, as close as I could get to 'cry in my beer' music. Mama hated diesel so bad....

Yeah, one of my favorites...Down to seeds and stems again blues...

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2012/08/labor_day_drinking_a_history_of_proletarian_benders_and_a_guide_to_drinking_on_the_job_.3.html

On precisely this date in 1844, the authors of The Communist Manifesto (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0451527100/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0451527100&adid=1YFVWNE1SFR20PTPJECV&) went on a bender in France. It was epic, and it was epochal, and it is hard to think of a drinking session more significant to the formation of the modern world.
Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were in their 20s at the time, and neither was a drinking novice. Marx first demonstrated talent in the beerhounding field during his first and only year at the University of Bonn. It was, in the understated phrase of his father, a period of "wild rampaging (http://books.google.com/books?id=CbhZ9bpze9QC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=karl+marx+wild+rampaging&source=bl&ots=Q5BSIX0jg1&sig=zGWdQfSLr1_h35hWeBqKVv-aZFY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7qIrULuDN4as6QHouYD4Bg&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=karl marx wild rampag)." As a co-president of his “tavern club,” the lad often tangled with the rival Borussia Korps (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps_Borussia_Bonn), which would force him and his bourgeois brethren to kneel in allegiance to the Prussian aristocracy. In hopes of repelling their attacks, Marx started packing a pistol, and a bullet grazed his brow in the duel that inevitably resulted; boys will be boys. He transferred schools, got serious about philosophy, and fell in with the Young Hegelians (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/y/o.htm) for a while. To blow off steam while working on his Ph.D., he would knock back pints with Bruno Bauer (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bauer/); they would now and then get smashed and ride donkeys down the main streets of villages.

Engels, meanwhile, had been educating his palate, preparing to become first great champagne socialist. One month-long vacation in the French countryside found young Engels “more or less squiffy all the time (http://books.google.com/books?id=3KOyuSakn80C&pg=PA140&lpg=PA140&dq=cleany+washed+smoothly+combed&source=bl&ots=v_hzyVOMtT&sig=cMD_xTzlOq6PVhr3YLnTvXhc9KE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=sK0rUNPLEsTW0QGj7oDoBQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=squiffy&f=false),” and his most recent biographer likens his diary of the trip to “an upmarket wine-tour brochure (http://books.google.com/books?id=sOtr1M8DOKoC&lpg=PP1&ots=qupaeSPKeS&dq=editions%3AhlM9ADek9uYC&pg=PA163#v=onepage&q=).” (Sample text: “Within a few bottles one can experience every intermediate state from the exultation of the cancan to the tempestuous fever heat of revolution, and then finally with a bottle of champagne one can again drift into the merriest carnival mood in the world!") An industrialist and a revolutionary, Engels spent two years learning the family business at Ermen and Engels’ Victoria Mill outside of Manchester, England, witnessing the horrors of child labor and gathering material for his first book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0192836889/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=slatmaga-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as4&creativeASIN=0192836889&adid=0HEEZ1HJC1AF3B310ZCE&).


Engels' err... "reputation"... is well known but the old Fart as a gangsta packing a 9 is quite an image.

Karl from Compton...

Ya gotta admit, it has a ring to it.

Engels' err... "reputation"... is well known but the old Fart as a gangsta packing a 9 is quite an image.

Karl from Compton...

Ya gotta admit, it has a ring to it.

I laughed so hard when I read that part.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/85000/images/_86431_marx_birth300.jpg
Cheers to Karl Marx

Famous as a revolutionary, Karl Marx is perhaps less well-known as the brewer's friend. But he did like beer. In the time he spent in London, Marx frequented many a pub around the capital while predicting the downfall of capitalism over a pint - or ten.

BBC correspondent Darius Bazargan went on a pub crawl around Marx's favourite boozers in Tottenham Court Road where he found a historian who has kept the flame burning for Marx the drinker.

Imannuel Kant was a real piss-ant (drunkard)
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger, was a boozy (drunk) beggar
Who could drink you under the table.
David Hume could out consume
Wilhelm Frederich Hegel.
And Wittgenstein was a beery (beer-loving) swine
Who was just as schloshed (drunk) as Schlegel!

So goes the song by Monty Python. But one name which is conspicuously absent from the British comedy team's ditty is Karl Marx.

Ironically it seems the author of Das Kapital was not one to turn down a good English pint.

Michael Pentelow, a trade unionist, wants to reveal that side of Karl Marx. To do so, he has mapped out the central London pub crawl Karl Marx used to make with his friends.

The German writer lived in Soho for five years. Mr Pentelow says that in the 19th century there were 18 pubs along the nearby Tottenham Court Road. Today, there are only six.

Speaking in one of them - the King and Queen - Mr Pentelow said: "I've found out many sides of Karl Marx.

"I'm interested in him as a person, as well as a revolutionary. Serious-minded people can have fun and that's what Karl showed."

Father of vandalism?

Marx would certainly have been drunk by the end of an 18-pub crawl. But was the father of communism also the father of vandalism?

An extract from the writings of Marx's drinking partner Wilhelm Liebknecht suggests he and another radical friend may have been the original lager louts:

"Now we had had enough of our 'beer trip' for the time being and in order to cool our heated blood, we started on a double march, until Edgar Bauer stumbled over a heap of paving stones. Hurrah, an idea! And in memory of mad students' pranks he picked up a stone and Crash! Clatter! A gas lantern went flying into splinters. Madness is contagious - Marx and I did not stay far behind, and we broke four or five street lamps.

If Mr Pentelow had suggested Marx had a tendency to overdo the shandies a few years ago he would probably have found himself described as a "revisionist counter-revolutionary."

But with Marxism largely consigned to the historical dustbin, it remains only to raise our glasses and toast Marx the drinker rather than Marx the thinker.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/86431.stm
[/QUOTE]

Boyz will be boyz. As this was written in 1998 this BBC chump might be cut a little slack, dust bin my ass.

Here's the passage from Liebknecht in it's entirity:


A London pub crawl with Karl Marx, late 1850s

One evening, Edgar Bauer, acquainted with Marx from their Berlin time and then not yet his personal enemy […], had come to town from his hermitage in Highgate for the purpose of “making a beer trip.” The problem was to “take something” in every saloon between Oxford Street and Hampstead Road – making the something a very difficult task, even by confining yourself to a minimum, considering the enormous number of saloons in that part of the city. But we went to work undaunted and managed to reach the end of Tottenham Court Road without accident.

There loud singing issued from a public house; we entered and learned that a club of Odd Fellows were celebrating a festival. We met some of the men belonging to the “party,” and they at once invited us “foreigners” with truly English hospitality to go with them into one of the rooms. We followed them in the best of spirits, and the conversation naturally turned to politics – we had been easily recognised as Germany fugitives; and the Englishmen, good old-fashioned people, who wanted to amuse us a little, considered it their duty to revile thoroughly the German princes and the Russian nobles. By “Russian” they meant Prussian nobles. Russia and Prussia are frequently confounded in England, and not alone of account of their similarity of name. For a while, everything went smoothly. We had to drink many healths and to bring out and listen to many a toast.

Then the unexpected suddenly happened…

Edgar Bauer, hurt by some chance remark, turned the tables and ridiculed the English snobs. Marx launched an enthusiastic eulogy on German science and music – no other country, he said, would have been capable of producing such masters of music as Beethoven, Mozart, Haendel and Haydn, and the Englishmen who had no music were in reality far below the Germans who had been prevented hitherto only by the miserable political and economic conditions from accomplishing any great practical work, but who would yet outclass all other nations. So fluently I have never heard him speak English.

For my part, I demonstrated in drastic words that the political conditions in England were not a bit better than in Germany [… ] the only difference being that we Germans knew our public affairs were miserable, while the Englishmen did not know it, whence it were apparent that we surpassed the Englishmen in political intelligence.

The brows of our hosts began to cloud […]; and when Edgar Bauer brought up still heavier guns and began to allude to the English cant, then a low “damned foreigners!” issued from the company, soon followed by louder repetitions. Threatening words were spoken, the brains began to be heated, fists were brandished in the air and – we were sensible enough to choose the better part of valor and managed to effect, not wholly without difficulty, a passably dignified retreat.

Now we had enough of our “beer trip” for the time being, and in order to cool our heated blood, we started on a double quick march, until Edgar Bauer stumbled over some paving stones. “Hurrah, an idea!” And in memory of mad student pranks he picked up a stone, and Clash! Clatter! a gas lantern went flying into splinters. Nonsense is contagious – Marx and I did not stay behind, and we broke four or five street lamps – it was, perhaps, 2 o'clock in the morning and the streets were deserted in consequence. But the noise nevertheless attracted the attention of a policeman who with quick resolution gave the signal to his colleagues on the same beat. And immediately countersignals were given. The position became critical.

Happily we took in the situation at a glance; and happily we knew the locality. We raced ahead, three or four policemen some distance behind us. Marx showed an activity that I should not have attributed to him. And after the wild chase had lasted some minutes, we succeeded in turning into a side street and there running through an alley – a back yard between two streets – whence we came behind the policemen who lost the trail. Now we were safe. They did not have our description and we arrived at our homes without further adventures.

Source: Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs, by Wilhelm Liebknecht. First German edition, Nuremberg, 1896; first English translation (by E Untermann), 1901. Reprinted by Journeyman Press, London, 1975.

Edgar Bauer, hurt by some chance remark, turned the tables and ridiculed the English snobs. Marx launched an enthusiastic eulogy on German science and music – no other country, he said, would have been capable of producing such masters of music as Beethoven, Mozart, Haendel and Haydn, and the Englishmen who had no music were in reality far below the Germans who had been prevented hitherto only by the miserable political and economic conditions from accomplishing any great practical work, but who would yet outclass all other nations. So fluently I have never heard him speak English.

For my part, I demonstrated in drastic words that the political conditions in England were not a bit better than in Germany [… ] the only difference being that we Germans knew our public affairs were miserable, while the Englishmen did not know it, whence it were apparent that we surpassed the Englishmen in political intelligence.
that's some fine Victorian-era trolling.