Marxist writers have cropped up here before as sources of spanking references, and here’s one from the man himself. I’m not entirely sure that, when Karl and his friend Engels were writing, appealing to the kinky community 150 or so years later was really their key goal. But I rather liked this, first published: in Die Presse, June 20, 1862.

Humanity in England, like liberty in France, has now become an export article for the traders in politics.

We recollect the time when Tsar Nicholas had Polish ladies flogged by soldiers and when Lord Palmerston found the moral indignation of some parliamentarians over the event “impolitic”.

We recollect that about a decade ago a revolt took place on the Ionian Islands… which gave the English governor there occasion to have a fairly considerable number of Grecian women flogged. Probatum est, said Palmerston and his Whig colleagues who at that time were in office.

Flogging Polish girls is clearly a good thing. (Hi, Kami!). As for the women in Greece: I’m curious as to how many constitute “a fairly considerable number”. Are we talking four rabble-rousers brought to the governor’s office and held down over a table for a birching, or a hundred stripped and whipped in the market place? Typical Marx: fascinating writing, but so deeply flawed.