Was Friedrich Engels a Racist and German nationalist?

[LeninKobaMao]

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/engels.html

All I can say is that i am heart broken after reading the content on this website. I really feel as though the man who was a good friend of Karl Marx and a staunch anti-racist is essentially a Nazi. I really do feel heart broken of these fascist quotes. If these quotes are real then Engels is a Nazi and my faith in him has been lost.

Engels. "Democratic Pan-Slavism" (NRZ February 16. 1849), Collected Works, Vol. 8 p 378. ". . . hatred of Russia was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution, hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution."

Engels: "This miserable debris of former nations, Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks and other thieving rabble, whom the liberal Philistine raves about in the interest of the Russians, deny each other the very air they are breathing, and have to slit each others' greedy throats."

Those two quotes in particular sickened me I feel so awful I can't even explain it. I don't think I will sleep tonight. Is there anybody that can give me guidance to the truth? Is there an explanation for this nationalist bullshit?

[khad]

All this says is that Engels was a douchebag. With regards Marx's anti-semitism, this article puts it into perspective somewhat (the second one, not the first):

http://everything2.com/title/Karl+Marx%2527s+Anti-Semitism (http://www.worldsocialism.org/canada/marx.and.antisemitism.1960.v27n214.htm)



I think that to accuse Karl Marx of "antisemitism" is kind of unjust. Due to the great tragedy that supra-European (http://everything2.com/title/supra-European) antisemitism (http://everything2.com/title/antisemitism) has wrought so recently in our times, it is perhaps hard for us to think in the mindset of the mid-nineteenth century. Today the very concept of a "Jewish condition" or a "Jewish question" would rightly be considered "antisemitic", yet these issues were very real and lacked contention to varying degrees in Central and Western Europe at this time. That it would be the Jewish question that would set the whole unholy engine (http://everything2.com/title/totalitarianism) in motion was neither to be known nor imagined.

The goal of the European nation-state was the equality of all within it before the law and the abolition of all special privileges held by members of the society. A class system (http://everything2.com/title/class+system) developed which was defined mainly by the relation of each class to the other - the proletariat (http://everything2.com/title/proletariat), the peasantry (http://everything2.com/title/peasantry), the aristocracy (http://everything2.com/title/aristocracy), the bourgeoisie (http://everything2.com/title/bourgeoisie), and so on. But one group remained essentially un-assimilated and apart from the class system - very literally a "nation with a nation" - and these people were the Jews. Frequently proving themselves unwilling to engage in capitalistic enterprise and prohibited from developing an intelligentsia (http://everything2.com/title/intelligentsia) by the state (until the end of the 19th century), there was one property of the Jewish "nation within a nation" that the state found particularly useful: its supra-European nature.

As early as the 17th century, when flourishing and increasingly more expensive monarchial wars were draining countries dry, the Jewish state banker (often known as a "court Jew (http://everything2.com/title/court+Jew)") was enlisted by the state to provide finance and to administer this finance. Thus a small group of Jews - apart from the rest of the impoverished European Jewry - began increasingly to be identified with the state. When the aristocracy lost its privileges, they became in fact the only group that was directly identified with the state. Thus in countries where attacks on the authority of the state were still considered profane (http://everything2.com/title/profane), antisemitism was a replacement (in much the same way members of the nobility who were thought to influence the Monarchy used to be criticised by Medieval rebels, rather than the actual Monarchy itself)1.

So we may recognise two distinct components of Central and Western European Jewry in the time under consideration - the large mass of Jewry at various stages of emancipation (http://everything2.com/title/emancipation), and the privileged few who by their services to the state already enjoyed emancipation, by which is meant equality with other citizens. The nation state's problem was that if emancipation of all of Jewry led to the death of the Jewish identity, the death of its financial networks would follow. The financial nets of the Jewish state bankers (of which the most famous, and infamous to antisemites, is no doubt the House of Rothschild (http://everything2.com/title/House+of+Rothschild)) relied on the capital of middle-class Jews being drawn into the "net". The power of the Jewish state bankers rested on their position within Jewish society, and emancipation could only lead to a deterioration of their civic and social status. We see frequent examples of state officials not really protesting attacks on Jews in general, but moneyed Jews in particular.

Karl Marx's particular brand of writing on the Jewish question can be traced to a brand of anti-Jewish (note with care I do not say antisemitic) writing which was popular in Prussia shortly after the Congress of Vienna (http://everything2.com/title/Congress+of+Vienna). Radicals (this sort of radicalism was concerned with rights for "the people" and "the nation") looking to attack the reactionary (http://everything2.com/title/reactionary) Prussian government, but to do so in an understated way, found it useful to focus on the Jews instead. They did not understand why it was that the Jewish people were preserved as a separate entity within the nation, but they knew they didn't like it. They recognised that the Jewish question wasn't just about human tolerance (http://everything2.com/title/human+tolerance), but was entwined amidst the politics of the nation state.

Karl Marx's writings on the Jewish question separate it from the discussion of theology, and instead discuss the social aspect of European Jewry ("Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew ..."). He is discussing the social element of the Jewish condition which he believes prevents its emancipation, and unsurprisingly for Marx, his answer lies in the economics (http://everything2.com/title/economics) - namely, moneylending (http://everything2.com/title/moneylending). Karl Marx was not a moneyed Jew, he was a Jewish intellectual, shunned by the state. His anti-Jewish writings were aimed at condemning the rich Jewish bankers, whom he and his fellows regarded bitterly due to their favour by a state which would happily see Marx and his ilk starve. Hannah Arendt writes that "Marx as an individual Jew was as little embarrassed by these arguments against 'Jewry' as, for instance, Nietzsche was by his arguments against Germany (http://everything2.com/title/Germany)."

And that's why Karl Marx wasn't an "antisemite". He was merely representative of the Jewish intelligentsia which began to develop in the 19th century, which sought to differentiate itself from its maligned, richer fellows. Much of Marx's supposedly "antisemitic" tract in fact is a discussion of the Jewish relationship with a Christian state, and how true "freedom" for both Christians and Jews might be achieved.

1. The Jewish state bankers were utterly a-political as a group, being loyal rather to authority itself (as opposed to the masses (http://everything2.com/title/masses), which they instinctively and rightly distrusted).

Sources

Arendt, Hannah (http://everything2.com/title/Hannah+Arendt). The Origins of Totalitarianism: Harvest, 1966.
Marx, Karl (http://everything2.com/title/Karl+Marx). On the Jewish Question: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/ (1844)

[h0m0revolutionary]

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/engels.html

All I can say is that i am heart broken...

Why would you be bothered, you're a Maoist, you're hardly in the tradition of Marx anyway.

EDIT: PLEASE DO NOT FLAME IN THE LEARNING FORUM - Bob The Builder

[khad]

Found it. There was a book published on Engels and the national question:

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol3/no2/rosdolsk.html

Roman Rosdolsky, Engels and the ‘Nonhistoric’ Peoples: the National Question in the Revolution of 1848, Critique, Glasgow, 1987, pp 220, £8.00

[Hit The North]

Sorry, but this John J Ray must have got his MA in lying and his PhD in confabulation.

How is this quote by Engels proof that he thought the Germans to be a superior race?:


"The Germans have long since shown that in all spheres of science they are equal, and in most of them superior, to other civilised nations. Only one branch of science, political economy, had no German name among its foremost scholars."Meanwhile his analysis of Marx's On The Jewish Question sounds like the work of a man who has not read it but chooses to harvest it for the odd "damning" quotation which he then places out of context in order to substantiate his slander of anti-Semitism, when, in fact, the article is a defence of Jews in Europe.

As for the attitude toward Russia. Every notable revolutionary of the 19th century regarded Tsarist Russia as the epitome of reaction - particularly given its role in putting down the revolution in Poland. Btw, the Poles were regarded as the most revolutionary people after the French in all circles of the Left at this time.

The under-hand, scurrilous and lying attitude of this insignificant and dishonest "academic" is revealed with this bizarre interpretation:


Engels liked the idea of a "Thousand year Reich" too


This is our calling, that we shall become the templars of this Grail, gird the sword round our loins for its sake and stake our lives joyfully in the last, holy war which will be followed by the thousand-year reign of freedom.What a shameful attempt to besmirch Engels' name by deliberately and erroneously comparing the above statement with the Hitlerian notion of a thousand year reich.

I heartily recommend that anyone who comes across this wanker should smack him about the face with a dead fish.

[New Tet]

I'd be outraged over this shit if it were new. Instead it makes me laugh that silly screeds like this one are still circulating and that intelligent people are still falling for it.

This is akin to the Rosicrucian, Scientology and and all other sham religions (and religion in general!); it relies on the ignorance of the audience to make its fraudulent case.

Bob The B.: I disagree with the "dead fish" thing; too offensive. To dead fish. Even hitting the author with a bag of dog shit would be an insult to dog shit.

[ComradeOm]

All I can say is that i am heart broken after reading the content on this website. I really feel as though the man who was a good friend of Karl Marx and a staunch anti-racist is essentially a NaziIf you're convinced, on the basis of a few carefully selected quotes, that Engels was a Nazi then you're either extremely gullible or have no idea what Nazism entails. But hey, I'm sure you can trust some internet personality who proudly proclaims that he "Stands with Israel" and maintains a "Gun Watch" blog

The actual quotes are ridiculous. The evidence for Engels' supposed support for "GERMAN TERRITORIAL CLAIMS" is a piece written in 1841 during a war crisis when Engels was an officer in the Prussian Army. How on earth is this a representation of the following four decades of his life? More to the point anyone can just snatch quotes out of context to support their case. Witness Engels, from the same work, denounce nationalism and expansion to the east:

...the servile twaddle which without any principle all newspapers now serve up against the French is utterly repulsive to me. It requires a high degree of obsequiousness to be convinced by the July convention that the Eastern question is a matter of life or death for Germany and that Mohammed Ali endangers our nationhood

As for your specific quotes:


Engels. "Democratic Pan-Slavism" (NRZ February 16. 1849), Collected Works, Vol. 8 p 378. ". . . hatred of Russia was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution, hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution."The website claims that this work is not online (a lie (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/02/15.htm)) and you'd do well to read the whole piece. This is essentially a call to put the revolutionary cause over the national one (the opposite of what the website makes out). In particular the last line of the paragraph is purposefully omitted:

We know where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated, viz. in Russia and the Slav regions of Austria, and no fine phrases, no allusions to an undefined democratic future for these countries can deter us from treating our enemies as enemies

This puts a very different spin on the piece. Engels is not railing against the Russian or "Slav people" per se but stating that counter-revolutionary movements in these nations should not be granted legitimacy simply because they aspire to national independence. That is, that it would be folly for a revolutionary movement to "establish a counter-revolutionary Czech state"

Incidentally this is another early work of Engels - 1847


Engels: "This miserable debris of former nations, Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks and other thieving rabble, whom the liberal Philistine raves about in the interest of the Russians, deny each other the very air they are breathing, and have to slit each others' greedy throats."I don't have a date (although it must be post-1878) or source for this one, so I can't provide context. However anyone who is familiar with the chaos and petty empire building that marked the Balkans in the last decades of the 19th C would probably agree with Engels' analysis


Is there an explanation for this nationalist bullshit?Boo hoo. Engels referred to to nationalities in the shorthand. Would you be calling him a Nazi if he had written about 'French' or 'English' policy in disparaging tones? Engels was a man of his time and not all his sentiments would, or should, be considered acceptable today. He shared many of the common prejudices of his day, and should be condemned for this, but this is not particularly apparent from the harmless quotes you presented

[red cat]

Why would you be bothered, you're a Maoist, you're hardly in the tradition of Marx anyway.


So, actually making the revolution is off the list of Marxist traditions nowadays?

In that case:

"We'll change henceforth the old tradition,
And spurn the dust to win the prize!"

[New Tet]

This is the kind of shit that this "Anti-Engels" masochist, anti-Islam, crypto anti-Semite exhibits in his page.

Obviously, the primary objective is to portray all Arab peoples (Semites themselves) painting a despicable image of an "internationalist, fascist, blood-drinking Jew" (exactly as the Nazis portrayed the Jew during their own offensive against the world). Meanwhile, Mo--the Arab--reproaches the blond, blue-eyed European or American for wanto to portray a cartoonish but somewhat sympathetic image of Mohammed (presumably Islam itself).

Notice that the image of the 'evil' Jew is one painted by the author of the, um, cartoon below:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=425&pictureid=3759http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=425&pictureid=3759
http://www.revleft.com/vb/album.php?albumid=425&pictureid=3759

[ZeroNowhere]

On Marx and Russia: While he wasn't especially fond of the Russian nation (connected to his earlier view that war against Russia by nations would lead to proletarian revolution across Europe), he didn't have much against Russians, as shown by his later comments on the mir and such. As for being anti-semitic, he was a Jew, and didn't deny that much. 'On the Jewish Question' was anti-anti-Semitic, as well as playing on the economic-Jew stereotype to attack capitalism. I believe Draper wrote on the subject. Of course, there was also the tracing of Judaism (which is a religion rather than a race) as was practiced to capitalism. The quote of Engels on German achievements in various fields doesn't state at all that 'Germans are superior':

"The Germans have long since shown that in all spheres of science they are equal, and in most of them superior, to other civilised nations. Only one branch of science, political economy, had no German name among its foremost scholars. The reason is obvious. Political economy is the theoretical analysis of modern bourgeois society and therefore presupposes developed bourgeois conditions, conditions which for centuries, following the wars in the wake of the Reformation and the peasant wars and especially the Thirty Years’ War, could not establish themselves in Germany. The separation of the Netherlands from the Empire removed Germany from the international trade routes and restricted her industrial development from the very beginning to the pettiest scale. While the Germans painfully and slowly recovered from the devastations of the civil wars, while they used up their store of civic energy, which had never been very large, in futile struggle against the customs barriers and absurd commercial regulations which every petty princeling and imperial baron inflicted upon the industry of his subjects, while the imperial cities with their craft-guild practices and patrician spirit went to ruin — Holland, England and France meanwhile conquered the leading positions in international trade, established one colony after another and brought manufactory production to the height of its development, until finally England, with the aid of steam power, which made her coal and iron deposits valuable, headed modern bourgeois development. But political economy could not arise in Germany so long as a struggle had still to be waged against so preposterously antiquated remnants of the Middle Ages as those which hampered the bourgeois development of her material forces until 1830. Only the establishment of the Customs Union enabled the Germans to comprehend political economy at all. It was indeed at this time that English and French economic works began to be imported for the benefit of the German middle class. Men of learning and bureaucrats soon got hold of the imported material and treated it in a way which does little credit to the “German intellect.” The literary efforts of a hotchpotch of chevaliers d’industrie, traders, schoolmasters and bureaucrats produced a bunch of German economic publications which as regards triteness, banality, frivolity, verbosity and plagiarism are equalled only by the German novel. Among people pursuing practical objectives there arose first the protectionist school of the industrialists, whose chief spokesman, List, is still the best that German bourgeois political economy has produced although his celebrated work is entirely copied from the Frenchman Ferrier, the theoretical creator of the Continental System."

Really, I'd say that wasn't an especially inaccurate description. Quotes from pre-commie Engels doesn't show much either (it's like claiming that 'Marx was a liberal!' using his pre-communist writings). And the passage from Engels' Young Hegelian writing on Schelling doesn't state what it is claimed to at all:

"And this crown, this bride, this holy thing is the self-consciousness of mankind, the new Grail round whose throne the nations gather in exultation and which makes kings of all who submit to it, so that all splendour and might, all dominion and power, all the beauty and fullness of this world lie at their feet and must yield themselves up for their glorification. This is our calling, that we shall become the templars of this Grail, gird the sword round our loins for its sake and stake our lives joyfully in the last, holy war which will be followed by the thousand-year reign of freedom. And such is the power of the Idea that he who has recognised it cannot cease to speak of its splendour or to proclaim its all-conquering might, that in gaiety and good heart he gives up all else at its bidding, that he sacrifices body and soul, life and property in order that it and it alone shall triumph."

Thousand year reich? What? Unless one is using 'reich' to mean 'rule' (and who does that, anyways?), in which case... So? It's quite obviously an attempt to draw a parallel with Nazism, but does this make anybody who says, "Führerstand" similar to Nazis too?

On the Pan-Slavists, Engels again changed his position on them (as well as others, such as revolution arising from war and being necessarily violent), but he still wasn't at all a German nationalist. In fact, he justified criticism of pan-Slavism on the basis that the RhZ was not being German nationalists, as they had already harshly criticized Germany, and now were moving on to the Slavs. His view on the matter was that, "But let us not harbour any illusions. Among all the pan-Slavists, nationality, i.e. imaginary common Slav nationality, takes precedence over the revolution. The pan-Slavists want to join the revolution on condition that they will be allowed to constitute all Slavs without exception, regardless of material necessities, into independent Slav states. If we Germans had wanted to lay down the same fantastic conditions, we would have got a long way in March! But the revolution does not allow of any conditions being imposed on it. Either one is a revolutionary and accepts the consequences of the revolution, whatever they are, or one is driven into the arms of the counter-revolution and one day finds oneself, perhaps without knowing or desiring it, arm in arm with Nicholas and Windischgrätz." This is connected to his view that revolution would come in around 1852 or so due to a crisis similar to that which caused the 1848 revolution, and, since most people probably hadn't even heard of the communists by then, there wasn't any hope that they would actually be communist. Rather, they would be compelled in their fight to defend unstable reforms to capitalism, which would eventually lead to the abolition of capitalism en générale. Along with this came the expression of prejudices in the form of fighting Slavs and so on, which, according to Engels, cannot cause one to stop supporting the revolution lest one become a counter-revolutionary. Of course, there was no crisis and revolution, causing Marx to go back over his theory of crisis (and then begin to revise it fully after 1857), and Engels later got involved in growing socialist movements, ditched the 'inevitably violent revolution' crap, and so on. So he later, for example, repudiated his earlier belief that, "Moreover, when the Paris uprising found its echo in the victorious insurrections in Vienna, Milan and Berlin; when the whole of Europe right up to the Russian frontier was swept into the movement; when thereupon in Paris, in June, the first great battle for power between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie was fought; when even the victory of its class so shook the bourgeoisie of all countries that it fled back into the arms of the monarchist-feudal reaction which had just been overthrown — there could be no doubt for us, under the circumstances then obtaining, that the great decisive battle had commenced, that it would have to be fought out in a single, long and vicissitudinous period of revolution, but that it could only end in the final victory of the proletariat." ("But history has shown us too to have been wrong, has revealed our point of view at that time as an illusion.") He also stated that, "Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in on it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are fighting for, body and soul." But yeah, Engels was still not a nationalist in his earlier years, though his views were still rather shit. Anyways, his reference to 'reactionary peoples' was not in reference to the actual people, in the same way his reference to the destruction of reactionary classes didn't necessarily mean killing all of the bourgeoisie, it was a reference to groups and nationalities who were (generally) reactionary, as revealed to him by their actions in the 1848 rebellion and such. Presumably he thought that said nationalities would be wiped away in a revolution as the nationalities whose histories had made them ready for proletarian revolution asserted themselves. This probably derived from the fact that there was hardly even a fairly large proletariat anywhere other than England and some industrial capitals such as Paris in 1848, so it would perhaps make sense to divide nationalities in this sense. Again, he didn't seem to actually have much of an opinion on 'nationalities' other than that if there was a successful revolution, what happened would be necessary.

His comments on the German 'right' to take over Schleswig was based on his view that bourgeois revolution would lead to proletarian revolution (ie. 'permanent revolution', which he later dumped), and he wasn't exactly nationalistic about it. In fact, he was quite disparaging about Germany, saying, "Impotent though Germany has been from time immemorial, she has the satisfaction of knowing that the Scandinavian nations, and especially Denmark, have fallen under her sway, and that compared with them she is even revolutionary and progressive." This article was concerned with bourgeois revolution and the spread of capitalism, rather than nationalism.

On this:

"In any case we must declare that since 1871 we have always been ready for a peaceful understanding with France, that as soon as our Party comes to power it will be unable to exercise that power unless Alsace-Lorraine freely determines its own future, but that if war is forced upon us, and moreover a war in alliance with Russia, we must regard this as an attack on our existence and defend ourselves by every method, utilising all positions at our disposal and therefore Metz and Strasbourg also..... so our army will have to lead and sustain the main push.... So much seems certain to me: if we are beaten, every barrier to chauvinism and a war of revenge in Europe will be thrown down for years hence. If we are victorious our Party will come into power. The victory of Germany is therefore the victory of the revolution, and if it comes to war we must not only desire victory but further it by every means...."

Engels was quite evidently saying that if the SDP came to power (not the best of terms, but only in hindsight, in gets the point across), and France declared war on them, they would have to defend against them. And if they did come to power in Germany, there wouldn't be much point in instituting a name change (or are the Paris Commune to be condemned for using 'Paris' in their name?)

Anyways, I can't find the source for the apparent quotes about Lafargue, though he certainly wasn't racist in his dealings with the guy (and he was Marx's son-in-law, anyways). And Lafargue wasn't black, so it's possible Engels may not have been serious anyways (after all, the guy had written parodies frequently since before he became a communist, and him and Marx were quite aware of the happenings and rhetoric of the 'murkin Civil War). For example, he plays around with alliteration here:

"Here is a bit of news for Paul; Sam Moore gives us tonight a parting dinner, he sails on Saturday for the Niger, where, at Asába, in the interior of Africa, he will be Chief Justice of the Territories of the Royal Niger Company, Chartered and Limited, with six months’ leave to Europe every other year, good pay, and the expectation of returning in 8 years or so an independent man. It was chiefly in honour of Paul that he consented to become Lord Chief Justice of the Niger Niggers, the very cream of Nigrition Niger Nigerdom. We are all very sorry to lose him, but he has been looking out for something of the sort for more than a year and this is an excellent place. He owes his appointment not only to his legal qualifications, but very much, also, to his being an accomplished geologist and botanist and ex-volunteer officer — all qualities very valuable in a new country. He will have a botanical garden, and make a meteorological station; his judicial duties will mainly consist in punishing German smugglers of Bismarck’s potato spirit and of arms and ammunition. The climate is far better than its reputation, and his medical examination was highly satisfactory, the doctor telling him he would have a better chance than young men who kill themselves — out of pure ennui — with whisky and black harems. Thus when the 3rd volume comes out, a portion, at least, of it will be translated in Africa as I shall send him the advance sheets."

As you can see, he gets in a dig at Paul before disclosing that the guy had been looking for something of the sort for a while, so it could well have been an inside joke. One would expect Laura to take more offence if he was actually insulting her husband earnestly. It's hardly without precedent, Marx had also compared Lassalle to Jewish stereotypes in order to poke fun at him when he was pissed off at him being stingy.

On this:

"I have arrived at the conviction that there is nothing to his [Tremaux's] theory if for no other reason than because he neither understands geology nor is capable of the most ordinary literary historical criticism. One could laugh oneself sick about his stories of the nigger Santa Maria and of the transmutations of the whites into Negroes. Especially, that the traditions of the Senegal niggers deserve absolute credulity, just because the rascals cannot write! . . . Perhaps this man will prove in the second volume, how he explains the fact, that we Rhinelanders have not long ago turned into idiots and niggers on our own Devonian Transition rocks . . . Or perhaps he will maintain that we are real niggers."

Tremaux was an extreme adaptationist, Engels was challenging this (and he misinterpreted Tremaux as implying that people were as they are because of their soil, thus one would think that people on 'Devonian transition rocks' would be niggers). He also implied that Tremaux himself was racist. Of course, this is bollocks, and Tremaux is awesome. See here (http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00003806/). Engels' view of Tremaux was shit, but not racist. He didn't really give much reason to suppose that he had a racist view of niggers.

Also, no, M+E were not Lamarckians, what the hell?

This: "I begin to understand French anti-Semitism when I see how many Jews of Polish origin and with German names intrude themselves everywhere, arrogate everything to themselves and push themselves forward to the point of creating public opinion in the ville lumiere [Paris], of which the Paris philistine is so proud and which he believes to be the supreme power in the universe," does not translate into 'anti-Semitism is good'. Most revolutionaries here would call reactionaries in many places understandable, that doesn't mean that we approve of it. In fact, he there refers to the Parisians who become ASses as 'philistines'. Also, one would think that the constant reminders that Marx was a Jew from Bakunin, for example, would have had some effect in that case.

Anyways, this is boring (also I should be getting to bed), so I just skipped to the ending, and apparently if your parents are worried about you, they don't think much of you as a person. Huh.

[Random Precision]

Engels. "Democratic Pan-Slavism" (NRZ February 16. 1849), Collected Works, Vol. 8 p 378. ". . . hatred of Russia was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution, hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution."

Really you should read the whole piece: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/02/15.htm

Engels is critiquing a piece by Bakunin, who is putting forth the idea that the Pan-Slavist movement (Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Slavism)) had or could develop fundamentally revolutionary aims. Pan-Slavism was essentially a tool used by Tsarist Russia to support its own designs on the rest of Eastern Europe, and Slavic independence movements in Germany, Austria etc. looked to unity with Russia as their goal, which would of course have been a huge step backward for the revolutionary cause in those parts of Europe. Or of course, the other result of Slavic independence could be petty infighting, like what was going on in the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire and is still going on today. He is also saying that Slavic "independence" in this context has long ceased to be a meaningful goal, since in many cases the Slavic peoples have been absorbed into Germany or Austria, and no longer have a native language or culture.

Of course he also says some frankly racist things in this piece- that Germany and the United States are civilized, Slavs and Mexicans are lazy and can only benefit from the former bringing them civilization. Indeed we should criticize those sentiments fiercely, but also understand them as part of the era that Marx and Engels lived in.


Engels: "This miserable debris of former nations, Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks and other thieving rabble, whom the liberal Philistine raves about in the interest of the Russians, deny each other the very air they are breathing, and have to slit each others' greedy throats."

The website you linked to provides the supposed original quote in German, which unfortunately I can't read. However there is no results for "miserable debris", "theiving rabble", etc. in the Marx-Engels archive at MIA, so my take on it is, source or he never said it.

[New Tet]

Really you should read the whole piece: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/02/15.htm

Of course he also says some frankly racist things in this piece- that Germany and the United States are civilized, Slavs and Mexicans are lazy and can only benefit from the former bringing them civilization. Indeed we should criticize those sentiments fiercely, but also understand them as part of the era that Marx and Engels lived in.

I think a more vigorous defense of Engels and the 'civilizing principle' is required here.

Engels, like Marx, was supremely able to change his point of view/s when the facts warranted.

By the time he wrote "Socialism, Utopian..." and The Dialectics of Nature, his thinking on many subjects had experienced important changes.

He brilliantly incorporated the latest anthropological findings of his time to the science of Socialism.

Relatively unconnected to Marx and the entire European scene, Lewis Henry Morgan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Henry_Morgan) wrote a book that Engels read. Engels liked the idea that someone would attempt an ethnological study applying the materialist conception of history. But what pleased him more, was that the study yielded results consistent with the method and with the theory that years before Marx had elaborated in published work! IOW, a 'new' science that corroborated the fundamental philosophical principle of historical materialism.

Far from being a racist, Engels was a true humanist, a scientist wanna-be, a great intellectual and a well-heeled professional revolutionary. But, above all, he was an ally and important teacher to the working class.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

On whether Marx was an anti-semite, check this out:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1977/kmtr1/app1.htm

[New Tet]

On whether Marx was an anti-semite, check this out:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1977/kmtr1/app1.htm

I couldn't read all of it just now but what I've read so far is excellent. Bookmark!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

His other work is equally good.

[Dave B]

I don’t want to be trapped into endorsing or apologising any of the following but I am just going to try and put it in some kind of context.


I think that when Englels was attacking Pan-Slavism, that in itself could be viewed as ‘race’ or ethnic based movement, he was particularly bitter at the role that they played in the 18748-9 revolutions particularly as they affected Germany.

I think that when he attacked the ‘Slav’s’ he was attacking the ‘culture’ rather than the people as a ‘race’ which he regarded as feudalistic and reactionary.


I think the culture of feudalism was regarded at the time in a similar way as we might regard fascism and the regimes in places like Saudi Arabia etc


To get a flavour of it, and it would appear that Poles are ‘Slav’s’ apparently, and he did have a higher regard for them;


Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany, IX. Panslavism — The Schleswigholstein War.
MARCH 15th, 1852.






BOHEMIA and Croatia (another disjected member of the Slavonic family, acted upon by the Hungarian, as Bohemia by the German) were the homes of what is called on the European continent "Panslavism." Neither Bohemia nor Croatia was strong enough to exist as a nation by herself. Their respective nationalities, gradually undermined by the action of historical causes that inevitably absorbs into a more energetic stock, could only hope to be restored to anything like independence by an alliance with other Slavonic nations.

There were twenty-two millions of Poles, forty-five millions of Russians, eight millions of Serbians and Bulgarians; why not form a mighty confederation of the whole eighty millions of Slavonians, and drive back or exterminate the intruder upon the holy Slavonic soil, the Turk, the Hungarian, and above all the hated, but indispensable Niemetz, the German?

Thus in the studies of a few Slavonian dilettanti of historical science was this ludicrous, this anti-historical movement got up, a movement which intended nothing less than to subjugate the civilized West under the barbarian East, the town under the country, trade, manufactures, intelligence, under the primitive agriculture of Slavonian serfs.


But behind this ludicrous theory stood the terrible reality of the Russian Empire; that empire which by every movement proclaims the pretension of considering all Europe as the domain of the Slavonic race, and especially of the only energetic part of this race, of the Russians; that empire which, with two capitals such as St. Peterburg and Moscow, has not yet found its centre of gravity, as long as the "City of the Czar" (Constantinople, called in Russian Tzarigrad, the Czar's city), considered by every Russian peasant as the true metropolis of his religion and his nation, is not actually the residence of its Emperor; that empire which, for the last one hundred and fifty years, has never lost, but always gained territory by every war it has commenced.

And well known in Central Europe are the intrigues by which Russian policy supported the new-fangled system of Panslavism, a system than which none better could be invented to suit its purposes. Thus, the Bohemian and Croatian Panslavists, some intentionally, some without knowing it, worked in the direct interest of Russia; they betrayed the revolutionary cause for the shadow of a nationality which, in the best of cases, would have shared the fate of the Polish nationality under Russian sway.

It must, however, be said for the honor of the Poles, that they never got to be seriously entangled in these Panslavist traps, and if a few of the aristocracy turned furious Panslavists, they knew that by Russian subjugation they had less to lose than by a revolt of their own peasant serfs.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch09.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch09.htm)

If he was a ‘Slavonic’ racist it didn’t appear to go very deep and that some ‘Slav’s’ were OK, assuming that is that Michael Bakunin was a ‘Slav’, you will have to excuse me I am not very well informed on this kind of racial stereotyping.

Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany, XVIII. Petty Traders, OCTOBER 2, 1852.


They found an able and cool-headed commander in the Russian refugee Michael Bakunin, who afterwards was taken prisoner, and now is confined in the dungeons of Munkacs, Hungary. The intervention of numerous Prussian troops crushed this insurrection.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch18.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/germany/ch18.htm)


I do actually think however that Engels was a bit of a German patriot particularly in his early days and that does come out in ‘Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany’. But he was also capable of ridiculing his own ‘people’ as well.

There didn’t appear to be much evidence of anti Russian racism later when he spoke somewhat respectably of the primitive communists of the Russian Mir system in

On Social Relations In Russia by Engels, Afterword (1894)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/01/russia.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/01/russia.htm)

There are far worse examples of Marx and Engels racism in a truly horrendous letter that uses the ‘N’ word in an unambiguously disgusting way in a letter that I am not going to even link.

That kind of thing wasn’t present however in Das Capital were he clearly compared the plight of African slaves with that of the English working class as equivalents.

There was a quote in volume III were Karl did seem to suggest that different races had different innate abilities and that could have an impact on historical material development.


The possibility is here presented for definite economic development taking place, depending, of course, upon favourable circumstances, inborn racial characteristics, etc.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch47.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch47.htm)

Racism was a emerging issue in Europe in the 19th century which in particular took the form of anti-Semitism of course. An early campaigner was in fact George Eliot I think with perhaps one of the first anti anti-Semitism books Daniel Deronda first published in 1876. Altough there are different views. but;


Needless to say, in the Jewish community of Eliot's time, Daniel Deronda was greeted with enormous warmth. It was the first time the community felt it had been represented fairly by a major British novelist.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Deronda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Deronda)

I believe she influenced Dickens with the result that he produced ‘Our Mutual Friend’ to counter balance a bit the Fagin thing in Oliver Twist.



The way Dickens challenged the stereotypical portrayal of Jews in Our Mutual Friend was revolutionary for its time.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mutual_Friend (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Mutual_Friend)




She was in fact a bit of a radical herself even though she was writing books in order that they would just sell and earn her a bit of a living.

I have to confess that I hate entering into discussions on racism as I always feel that I am jumping into a vat of shit.

[LeninKobaMao]

Thanks for all your replies but what about what he said about the Senegalese people?

[New Tet]

Thanks for all your replies but what about what he said about the Senegalese people?

What did he say about the Senegalese people?

[chimx]

On whether Marx was an anti-semite, check this out:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1977/kmtr1/app1.htm

Marx was Jewish. 'nuff said.

[Misanthrope]

Marx was Jewish. 'nuff said.

So was Hitler.

[New Tet]

Replying to "Marx was Jew", you said:


So was Hitler.


Do you seriously believe that?

[9]

Marx was Jewish. 'nuff said.

Not necessarily. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6985808.stm
Being Jewish doesn't make one incapable of anti-Semitism. It really isn't enough simply to say of someone who has made anti-Semitic remarks, "she is Jewish, so it can't be anti-Semitism".

Nonetheless, the evidence that Marx was not an anti-Semite is overwhelming, so it makes no difference.

[gorillafuck]

So was Hitler.
Nope.

[LeninKobaMao]

What did he say about the Senegalese people?

Letter from Engels to Marx, October 2, 1866: "I have arrived at the conviction that there is nothing to his [Tremaux's] theory if for no other reason than because he neither understands geology nor is capable of the most ordinary literary historical criticism. One could laugh oneself sick about his stories of the nigger Santa Maria and of the transmutations of the whites into Negroes. Especially, that the traditions of the Senegal niggers deserve absolute credulity, just because the rascals cannot write! . . . Perhaps this man will prove in the second volume, how he explains the fact, that we Rhinelanders have not long ago turned into idiots and niggers on our own Devonian Transition rocks . . . Or perhaps he will maintain that we are real niggers."

[New Tet]

Letter from Engels to Marx, October 2, 1866: "I have arrived at the conviction that there is nothing to his [Tremaux's] theory...

Who was this Tremaux, and what was his theory?

[ZeroNowhere]

Who was this Tremaux, and what was his theory?See here (http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00003806/).


On whether Marx was an anti-semite, check this out:That's the article which I had referred to, thanks for linking to it.

[New Tet]

See here (http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00003806/).

Thanks, ZN. I happen to agree with punctuated equilibrium as applied by Gould to the study of natural history. I once did a modest paper on it for an English class I attended. My teacher didn't like it much (largely because it was awful) but gave me an A for effort.

Tremaux, however, is a revelation to me.

As Random Precision pointed out, Engels' terminology is lamentable and condemnable by our own present-day standards, but to use it to discredit all of Engels' magnificent work would require that we throw away the baby with the bathwater.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Zero, thanks for the Tremaux link!

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

It would be a mistake to read Engels's use of the 'n' word through modern eyes. I am old enough to remember when what would now be regarded as horrendously anti-gay langauge was common currency, even among those on the left who would now never dream of using such language.

[LeninKobaMao]

I believe you all about Engels being anti anti-semitism but it seems that he had no problem using ethnic slurs against black people and had a obvious hatred of Slavs. But then again almost every white European back then was racist to some extent. It is still quite dissapointing to find out that one of my heroes was a racist. Win some you lose some.

[Revy]

There is only so much you can explain away. You can try to say that some of Engels' quotes were taken out of context, but quite a few remain that are just blatant and obvious bigotry.

Maybe Marx and Engels aren't gods, giants of history leading the way to progress? Maybe they were just intellectuals, developing ideas about socialism. The personality cult came later, "critical analysis" thrown out the window in favor of blind adulation.

[ZeroNowhere]

it seems that he had no problem using ethnic slurs against black people
To be honest, I don't see why this is at all interesting.


and had a obvious hatred of Slavs.Rather, he thought that they were not prepared for revolution, and therefore would join the counter-revolution, based on the 1848 rebellion.


Maybe Marx and Engels aren't gods, giants of history leading the way to progress?Wow, you're so anti-dogmatic. I am in awe.


It is still quite dissapointing to find out that one of my heroes was a racist.It's also unfortunate that leading feminists like Clara Zetkin wanted to kill all men (but I suppose that's what feminism is based on, if subliminally).

[Revy]

Wow, you're so anti-dogmatic. I am in awe.

I'll pretend that wasn't sarcastic.:wub:

[New Tet]

It is still quite dissapointing to find out that one of my heroes was a racist.

It's what happens when all you're looking for is a hero.

[ZeroNowhere]

It's what happens when all you're looking for is a hero.
Correct. After all, racism is nothing but the very essence and driving force of heroism, and a hero who is not heroic is an absurd proposition. Similarly, statements which seem injected with the highest levels of profundity are necessarily infected with emptiness, and thus one looking to be most profound should never state facts; rather, they should state psychology.

[New Tet]

Here's something I dug up from my disorganized archives:


The People
November 25, 1995
Vol. 105 No. 15

FREDERICK ENGELS

Frederick Engels, the 175th anniversary of whose birth we
celebrate on Nov. 28, was Karl Marx's lifelong friend and
cofounder of scientific Socialism. In their ceaseless malicious
attacks on Marx, the defenders of capitalism never weary of
ascribing Marx's hostility to their robber system to his alleged
personal "frustrations." Marx, they say, was a "failure." Their
line changes with Engels.

Engels was a successful businessman. But Engels never had his
heart in what he called "this damn business." He worked at it
mainly to supply the material means whereby he and Marx carried
on the great scientific labors that have given cohesion and
direction to the movement for working-class emancipation.

Engels' solid contributions to the literary arsenal of scientific
socialism include, among other, THE CONDITION OF THE WORKING
CLASS IN ENGLAND IN 1844 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/index.htm), ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY, PRIVATE PROPERTY
AND THE STATE (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm), and ANTI-DUHRING (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume25/index.htm). Three chapters from the latter
form what may be his most famous independent work, SOCIALISM:
FROM UTOPIA TO SCIENCE (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/index.htm). He was also co-author, with Marx, of the
immortal COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.

Despite these achievements, Engels was extremely modest about his
own contribution to the development of socialist science. Franz
Mehring (http://www.marxists.org/archive/mehring/index.htm) wrote of Engels in his biography of Karl Marx:

"On one occasion he [Engels] declared that Marx had given his
economic writings 'their final shape and form,' on another
occasion that 'Marx was greater, saw farther, saw more and saw
more quickly than all of us,' and on a third occasion that Marx
would have discovered what he, Engels, had discovered in any
case. However, the fact remains that in the beginning Engels gave
and Marx received on that field [economics] on which in the last
resort the decisive struggle must be fought out and is being
fought out."

We dip our banner once again in tribute to this intellectual
giant and working-class champion.

http://www.slp.org/tp2.htm

[Dave B]

I think it is a little bit absurd criticising people from 1850 for being racist by our 20th century standards.


If you are looking for anti racists heroes from circa 1850 you will have to look long and hard I think and end up condemning all of them.

I think the position that Marx and Engels took towards ‘Jews’ and ‘Slavs’ was an attack on the cultural and socio-economic ideology or super structure that was typically associated with those particular groups of people.

For that to be ‘formal’ racism I think you would need to establish that they considered that was in some way congenitally and genetically influenced, in a pre-Darwinian age. Given their perhaps later ideas that culture and ideology was based on non-congenital, material and economic conditions, then the object of their bigotry was not their victims nature but their nurture or the alleged consequences of it.


There is I think ‘informal’ racism which might be better described as Xenophobia where you just have a load of unpleasant prejudices concerning a culturally different group without any particular concern as to whether the alleged defects are congenital or not.



Thus you can have a mutual hatred between communities eg Northern Ireland Protestants and Catholics without any serious claims as regards congenital differences apparently playing much of a part.

That is not to say that the consequences are not as equally objectionable.

[LeninKobaMao]

It's what happens when all you're looking for is a hero.

I'm not just looking for a hero. I am a Marxist and I acknowledge that Marx's work probably would never even been printed if it wasn't for Friedrich Engels and pretty much saved Marx's life.

[punisa]

. . . hatred of Russia was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution, hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution."


I'm a Croat myself and find this quote rather weird, taking into account Croatia was not an existing country back in those times. It was part of Austrian Empire and later Austro Hungarian Empire (1867).

Mentioning them as representative Slavs here is not just racist, but rather dumb I'd say.
Because during those times Croats still lived "peacefully" in a big empire without any political revolts.
And the alleged hatred of Germans towards Croats is completely absurd.
As a matter of fact these two nations collaborated under almost all regimes there were.

- In Austro Hungary, Croatia was always aligned more to Austria and Germany, being heavily exploited by Hungarians.
- Croatia was one of the first nations to join the axis.
- Germany was one of the first nations to acknowledge Croatia's independence in 1991
- during Yugoslavia many Croats went for part time work in Germany and were always greeted as national friends, although as we see - ideologies and regimes changed

The relations stretch even deeper into history, but I need to find some sources before.

All in all, I think Engels screwed up like all lefties do - they say crap that will eventually be turned against them. In other words - sometimes they say too much.
But if that is something that will make you discard ALL the rest, then you can denounce everyone - From Mao to Chomsky.
Cause all of them carry a quote that is out of order, you just need to spend some time and I'm sure you'll find it.

We all say stupid stuff at some point in life, but let us measure our quality by the will to upgrade these ideas into something more meaningful and more socialist.

[ComradeOm]

I'm a Croat myself and find this quote rather weird, taking into account Croatia was not an existing country back in those times. It was part of Austrian Empire and later Austro Hungarian Empire (1867)Then surely you'll know that Croatia continued to exist under Hapsburg and Hungarian domination as the Kingdom of Croatia (later part of the Triune Kingdom). You'll also know that the Croats under Jelačić came out strongly in favour of the Hapsburgs during the Revolutions of 1848. What Engels was sharply criticising in 1849 was the idea that this obviously counter-revolutionary movement (which included Tsarist Russia) was, as Bakunin suggested, somehow revolutionary