What did Marx say about Racism? [Archive]

pastradamus

25th August 2012, 14:48

Recently in my school we have been having a fair amount of discussion regarding Racism & discrimination (Specifically in Australia), and I was just wondering if Marx touched upon racism and discrimination specifically and what his theories were regarding the causes of it.

Also, did Marx/Engels have anything to say regarding Homosexuals?

Marx simply believed concepts like slavery and such were there in order to segment the working class further. Ie by having slaves you not only produced an almost free source of labour for the capitalist class but also broke the working class into groups that prevented unity amongst them.

Marx didn't really say too much on racism to be honest. He did touch on it a few times though by proxy of his writings against capitalism and imperialism.

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of the continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins are all things that characterize the dawn of the era of capitalist production.One instance where we see Marx attacking capitalism and almost claiming that racism is a artificial invention of capitalism is:

What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. The one explanation is as good as the other. A Negro is a Negro. He only becomes a slave in certain relations. A cotton spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It only becomes capital in certain relations. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold by itself is money, or as sugar is the price of sugar.

So whatever he did say about Slavery and Black people he certainly felt they were exploited, treated unfairly and he despised slavery, so I think its fair to say that despite not writing about them as extensively as other subjects he certainly did sound like an anti-racist to me.

On the issue of Homosexuality, Marx and Engels have often been accused of being homophobic, this is a falsehood. Marx and Engels in their private correspondance often described certain people as being "fairies" or "nancy boys" but this kind of talk was common place back then and in my opinion had more to do with just insulting people rather than attacking homosexuality. There is no mention of homosexuality in the communist manifesto. Some early Communist movements supported gay rights, such as the German communist party during the 1920's. But like anything back then machismo and a certain political jingoism always bubbled below the surface and so it was probably not until the 60's or 70's that Homosexual rights became an important point of Leftist movements.