> Date sent: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 12:00:37 -0800
> Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> From: James Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
devine writes:
> Marx was also quite critical of _European_ societies. One of his mottoes
> was "ruthless criticism of all existing" and sometimes he took it to
> curmudgeonly extremes. If I remember correctly, he wrote a book about
> Gladstone (a British P.M.) and the Crimean War that was quite mean to those
> Brits. He also embraced the then-fashionable habit of using ethnic
> stereotypes, including those against two groups to which he himself
> belonged (Jews and Germans). (This fashion started becoming unfashionable
> only in the 1940s.)
Yes, Marx said many bad things about many people from
many places, including Europe. But this misses the whole point at
issue here: that Marx said many derogatory remarks about non-
European people IN THE NAME OF EUROPEAN COLONIZATION!
Still, I am glad you abandoned your rosy picture of Marx on
colonialism. Of course, there are some in pen-l who want to
whitewash the whole issue, or blame Hegel and Plato. Let me remind
them of some of the remarks Marx made about non-Europeans, all of
which are cited in an excellent article
by Nimni "Marx, Engels and the National Question" (S&S, 1989):
On Spaniards and Mexicans: "The Spaniards are indeed degenerate. But
a degenrate Spaniard, a Mexican that is the ideal. All vices of the
Spaniards - Boastfulness, Grandiloquence, and Quixoticism - are found
in the Mexicans raised to the third power."
On Chinese: "It is almost needless to observe that, in the same
measure in which opium has obtained the sovereinglty over the
Chinese, the Emperor and his staff of pedantic mandarins have become
dispossessed of their own sovereignty. It would seem as thought
history had first to make this whole people drunk before it could
rise them out of their hereditary stupidity"
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".
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.
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.
>
>
