Ricardo Duchesne:
>On Lasalle: "It is now perfectly clear to me that, as testified by his
>cranial formation and hair growth, he is descended from the negroes
>who joined Moses' exodus from Egypt (unless his paternal mother or
>grandmother was crossed with a nigger). Well this combination of
>Jewish and Germanic stock with the negroid substance is bound to
>yield a strange product".
>
What does this have to do with the question of colonialism? His remark
about Lasalle was made privately and has nothing to do with dialectical or
historical materialism. It is analogous to what has been called a "flame"
on the Internet.
>Now, Marx did also make derogatory remarks against Scandinavians and
>eastern Europeans - those outside mainstream European civilization -
>but they don't appear to have the same condescending manner. And, I
>might add, these citations listed above are pale by comparison to some
>other remarks Marx made against Africans.
>
How did we slip into the question of Marx's "racism" anyhow? This is the
sort of thread that anarchists love to start. They have a bunch of
pamphlets with all these scandalous quotes that they love to muddy the
waters with. "Love and Rage", one such group, is absolutely fixated on the
question.
The real problem is not hate speech. It is rather that people in Africa,
Asia and Latin America are exploited by imperialism. Marx's unfortunate
formulations are to some extent reflective of the prevailing prejudices of
the mid-19th century. They are also, as I pointed out in my discussion of
Nimni's book, a mistaken political concession to the bourgeoisie. Marx and
Engels viewed "lesser nationalities" as an obstacle to the bourgeois
revolution. They attacked Basque, Mexican and Slovenian nationalism, not
because they were chauvinists, but because they thought that they were
obstacles to the completion of the bourgeois revolution.
Marxism corrected itself on this question and began to understand that the
struggles of "lesser nationalities" were absolutely critical to the overall
struggle for socialism. Lenin's private and public writings on the colonial
and national questions are utterly devoid of the sort of chauvinist remarks
that appear in M&E. Indeed, Lenin decided to remove Stalin from the
leadership of the CP after he began treating the Georgian nationality in a
chauvinist manner.
Speaking of hateful speech, the most disgusting and racist remarks you can
find are in "Origins of the Working Class in England" where Engels
describes the Irish as a drunken, ignorant and lowly race over and over
again. The character of the book, however, remains emancipatory.
Louis Proyect
>Having said this, I would not jump to the conclusion that Marx was a
>racist in the sense that we understand that term today.
>
>ricardo
>
>
>> If Michael P. or someone else who knows this stuff can tell us, I'd
>> appreciate knowing what old Chuck's attitudes toward Europeans.
>>
>> Also, as Michael pointed out quite correctly, Marx did write a lot about
>> European colonialism in the "third world" beyond the "modern theory of
>> colonization" chapter at the end of CAPITAL, vol. I. But did Marx have a
>> _theory_ of looting and forced-labor colonialism as developed as his theory
>> (or Wakefield's theory) of settler colonialism? ("Looting" was typically
>> the first type of colonialism, followed by creation of forced labor
>> systems, as with the haciendas or encomiendas in the Spanish New World.)
>>
>>
>> in pen-l solidarity,
>>
>> Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> http://clawww.lmu.edu/1997F/ECON/jdevine.html
>> Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
>> 7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
>> 310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
>> "It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.
>>
>>
>
>
