Karl Marx: Radical Antisemitism

Post by Michael Ezra

In a review of the recently published book, Antisemitic Myths: A
Historical and Contemporary Anthology, edited by Marvin Perry
and Frederick M. Schweitzer, David Hirsh has argued that it is a
standard misreading of Marx to say that Marx was an
antisemite. With this, he concurs with Robert Fine, who attempted
to explode the myth of Marxs antisemitism. As far as Professor
Fine is concerned, those who believe this myth have an inability
to read Marx or comprehend Marxs ironic style of writing.
What truth is there in this argument? Marxs essay, On the Jewish
Question, originally published in 1844 contains the following:
What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his
worldly God? Money.. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of
which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man
and turns them into commodities. The bill of exchange is the
real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange.
Thechimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the
merchant, of the man of money in general.
Marx argues that, In the final analysis, the emancipation of the
Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism. Larry
Rayexplains, Marxs position is essentially an assimilationist one in
which there is no room within emancipated humanity for Jews as a
separate ethnic or cultural identity. Dennis Fischman puts it,
Jews, Marx seems to be saying, can only become free when, as
Jews, they no longer exist.
The British journalist and historian Paul Johnson has argued that
The second part of Marxs essay is almost a classic anti-Semitic
tract, based upon a fantasied Jewish archetype and a conspiracy to
corrupt the world. The American historian, Gertrude
Himmelfarb argued that it cannot be denied that in his essay On
the Jewish Question, Marx expressed views that were part of the

classic repertoire of anti-Semitism.

And so it goes on. Noted expert on antisemitism, Robert Wistrich,
declared, (Soviet Jewish Affairs, 4:1, 1974) the net result of Marxs
essay [On The Jewish Question] is to reinforce a traditional antiJewish stereotype - the identification of the Jews with moneymaking - in the sharpest possible manner. In his book, Political
Discourse in Exile: Karl Marx and the Jewish Question , Denis
Fischman comments that in the second section of his essay, Marx
seems fairly to bristle with anti-Jewish sentiments.
Even the anti-Zionist Joel Kovel, whose political views I normally
have no time for, has said:
By anti-Semitism I mean the denial of the right of the Jew to
autonomous existence, i.e., to freely determine his/her own being
as Jew. Anti-Semitism therefore entails an attitude of hostility to
the Jew as Jew. This is an act of violence, addressed to an essential
property of humanity: the assertion of an identity, which may be
understood as a socially shared structuring of subjectivity. To attack
the free assumption of identity is to undermine the social foundation
of the self. Judged by these criteria, OJQ [On the Jewish Question]
is without any question an anti-Semitic tract - significantly, only in
its second part, Die Fhigkeit. No attempt to read these pages as
a play on words can conceal the hostility which infuses them, and is
precisely directed against the identity of the Jew.
In fact, so commonly held is the view that Marx was an anti-Semite
that in 1964, Shlomo Avineri, a leading commentator on Marx,
stated (Marx and Jewish Emancipation, Journal of the History of
Ideas, 1964) That Karl Marx was an inveterate antisemite is today
considered a commonplace which is hardly ever questioned.
Despite the opinions of numerous commentators, for Professor Fine,
Marxs stated views are not anti-Semitic but witty and ironic.
In On the Jewish Question, Marx discusses the practical domination
of Judaism over the Christian world. I am not sure whether this is
witty or ironic. Perhaps Professor Fine would like to explain.
Marxs essay also contains accusations against the Jewish religion

which Marx says has Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man
as an end in himself. Witty? Ironic? I think not.
To the credit of Professor Fine, he does not exonerate the left:
modern, political anti-Semitism is a creature of the left as well as
the right but what he does seem to do is disassociate left
antisemitism from Marx.
Ulrike Meinhof of the Marxist Red Army Faction posed the question
How was Auschwitz possible, what was anti-Semitism? and stated
the opinion that Auschwitz means that six million Jews were
murdered and carted on to the rubbish dumps of Europe for being
that which was maintained of themMoney-Jews. As far as she
was concerned, hatred of Jews was actually the hatred of capitalism
and hence the murder of the Israeli Olympic team, at 1972 Munich
Olympics, was not only justified but something that could be
praised. Whilst Meinhofs explanation is perverse, it seems to me
that such an interpretation can be explained if ones understanding
of how Marxists should view Jews is obtained from Marxs own
essay,On the Jewish Question.
When considering Marx and his views towards Jews, one must go
further than his infamous essay, his correspondence also needs to
be considered. Marx used the Bambergers to borrow money
but showed contempt for them. In a derogatory fashion he
referred to the father and son as Jew Bamberger or little Jew
Bamberger. Similarly, Spielmann, whose name appears frequently
in correspondence between Marx and Engels was referred to as
Jew Spielmann. When on holiday in Ramsgate in 1879, Marx
reported to Engels that the resort contained many Jews and fleas.
In an earlier letter to Engels, Marx referred to Ferdinand Lassalle as
a Jewish nigger. Professor Fine has not discussed this but I do not
see such comments as witty or ironic, they are simply racist.
If they are not ignoring such expressions, apologists for Marx will

even try and whitewash them. In a 1942 Soviet English language

publication of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected
Correspondence, 1846-1895, such terminology could not be ignored
and the following note (cited by Diane Paul, In the Interests of
Civilization: Marxist Views of Race and Culture in the Nineteenth
Century, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1981) was included:
With reference to the use of the word nigger which occurs in this
book: Marx used the word while living in England, in the last
century. The word does not have the same connotation as it has
now in the U.S. and should be read as Negro whenever it occurs
in the text.
The excuse seems to be along the lines of: Yes, a racist term is
used, but pretend that a non racist term was used instead. It is a
simply ludicrous excuse and it exposes the depths to which
apologists of Marx will sink.
It was in his article, The Russian Loan, published in the New-York
Daily Tribune on January 4, 1856, that the grotesque antisemitism
of Karl Marxs writing was on full display:
Thus we find every tyrant backed by a Jew, as is every pope by a
Jesuit. In truth, the cravings of oppressors would be hopeless, and
the practicability of war out of the question, if there were not an
army of Jesuits to smother thought and a handful of Jews to
ransack pockets.
the real work is done by the Jews, and can only be done by them,
as they monopolize the machinery of the loanmongering mysteries
by concentrating their energies upon the barter trade in securities
Here and there and everywhere that a little capital courts
investment, there is ever one of these little Jews ready to make a
little suggestion or place a little bit of a loan. The smartest
highwayman in the Abruzzi is not better posted up about the locale
of the hard cash in a travelers valise or pocket than those Jews
about any loose capital in the hands of a trader The language
spoken smells strongly of Babel, and the perfume which otherwise
pervades the place is by no means of a choice kind.

 Thus do these loans, which are a curse to the people, a ruin to

the holders, and a danger to the governments, become a blessing
to the houses of the children of Judah. This Jew organization of
loan-mongers is as dangerous to the people as the aristocratic
organization of landowners The fortunes amassed by these loanmongers are immense, but the wrongs and sufferings thus entailed
on the people and the encouragement thus afforded to their
oppressors still remain to be told.
The fact that 1855 years ago Christ drove the Jewish
moneychangers out of the temple, and that the moneychangers of
our age enlisted on the side of tyranny happen again chiefly to be
Jews, is perhaps no more than a historical coincidence. The loanmongering Jews of Europe do only on a larger and more obnoxious
scale what many others do on one smaller and less significant. But
it is only because the Jews are so strong that it is timely and
expedient to expose and stigmatize their organization.
A Marxist website has provided a list of articles written by Karl
Marx between 1852 and 1861 for the New York Daily Tribune. It
does not surprise me that The Russian Loan does not appear on
this list. When apologists for Marxs antisemitism run out of
explanations, they simply ignore his words.
Source
Note from JR: The Marx article referred to immediately above was
however reprinted in "Karl Marx, The Eastern Question" (ed. by
Eleanor Marx & Edward Aveling, 1897: new ed. 1969). pp. 600-606.
I have also previously excerpted it here

posted by JR at 11:41 PM

Sunday, February 03, 2008

MARX THE HATER
From my own readings of Marx, what stood out was how he
despised just about everybody. So I thought the small excerpt
below from David Hulme about Marx was to the point:
A violent man will beget violent ideas. As noted earlier, Bruno Bauer
had taught that a world catastrophe was in the making. From an
early age Marx was possessed of the idea that Doomsday was
around the corner. Johnson notes that Marx's poetry includes
expressions of "savagery . . . intense pessimism about the human
condition, hatred, a fascination with corruption and violence, suicide
pacts and pacts with the devil." A poem about Marx, variously
attributed to Engels and to Bauer's brother Edgar, describes him as
"A dark fellow from Trier, a vigorous monster, / . . . / With angry fist
clenched, he rants ceaselessly, / As though ten thousand devils held
him by the hair."
In Marx's personal life, violence was never far from the surface. He
was verbally abusive, and arguments were common within his
family. According to an Encyclopedia Britannica account on Marx, his
father even expressed fears that Jenny von Westphalen was
"destined to become a sacrifice to the demon that possessed his
son." Jenny commented early about the rancor and irritation she
often experienced in dealing with her fiance.
Summarizing Marx's animosities, the late British historian Sir Arthur
Bryant wrote: "Among his innumerable hates were the Christian
religion, his parents, his wife's uncle'the hound'his German
kinsfolk, his own race'Ramsgate is full of fleas and Jews', the
Prussian reactionaries, the Liberal and utopian Socialist allies, the
labouring population'Lumpenproletariat' or 'riff-raff'democracy
'parliamentary cretinism'and the British royal family'the
English mooncalf and her princely urchins,' as he called them. His
self-imposed task he defined as 'the ruthless criticism of everything
that exists.'"

Source
Marx did of course have a nasty skin disease (hidradenitis
suppurativa) which would probably have made most people pretty
grumpy.
And Karl's father, Heinrich, was a real gentleman. You can read his
letter to Karl about Jenny von Westfalen here
posted by JR at 1:54 PM
Saturday, July 07, 2007
A COMPREHENSIVE LOOK AT MARX THE ANTISEMITE
(The article below is from Encounter of July 1975, pages 18-23. The
authors, W. O. Henderson and W. H. Chaloner, translated and edited
a 1971 edition of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in
England. The article below was part of a "Men and Ideas" series.
You can see a photocopy of the original article here. The quotations
given are fairly fully footnoted except for the initial selection, which
mostly come from Zur Judenfrage. Zur Judenfrage is available in
German here and in English here. Online links for most of the
quotes can be found via Google once allowance for differences in
translation are made. The translations below are generally very
elegant. Where Google does not satisfy, most works by Marx and
Engels can be found online in order of date at theMarx/Engels
library)
Marx/Engels and Racism
By W. H. Chaloner & W. O. Henderson
WHILE Scholars on the Continent have long been aware of the fact
that Karl Marx held anti-Semitic views, the same cannot generally
be said of their colleagues in England and America.

Marx was a Jew; and when he was growing up in Trier the Jews,
though not persecuted, were treated as second-class citizens and
excluded from certain professions. No Jew could hold a commission
in the Prussian army or practise as a lawyer at the bar. To continue
as a member of the legal profession Marx's father became a
Christian and was baptised by a Lutheran army chaplain.
As a boy Marx realised that he was different from his fellows. He
had been baptised, but he was "a Jew by race" and suffered from
the anti-Semitism prevalent in Germany in his day. His reaction to
the situation was an extraordinary one. He ranged himself with the
anti-Semites and denounced his own people in a most violent
fashion. [1]
His attitude towards the Jews was made clear in two articles which
he wrote in 1843 at the age of 25. They were reviews of a book and
an article by Bruno Bauer on the Jewish question, and they
appeared in the Deutsch-Franzoesische Jahrbuecher (published in
Paris in 1844) [2]. Marx regarded capitalism, as operated by the
middle classes, as inherently evil; and he argued that Jewish
money-making activities lay at the very heart of the obnoxious
capitalist system. The following extracts from Marx's articles
indicate his point of view of the Jewish question in his day.
"What is the worldly raison d'etre of Jewry [Judaism]? The practical
necessity of Jewry is self-interest."
"What is the worldly religion of the Jews? It is the petty haggling of
the hawker."
"What is his worldly God?" "It is money."
"So in Jewry we recognise a contemporary universal anti-social
phenomenon, which has reached its present pitch through a process
of, historical development in which the Jews have zealously cooperated. And this evil anti-social aspect of Jewry has grown to a
stage at which: it must necessarily collapse."

"The Jews have emancipated themselves in a Jewish fashion. Not

only have they mastered the; power of money but - with or without
the Jews - money has become a world power. The Jews have
emancipated themselves by turning Christians into Jews:"
"Money is the most zealous God of Israel and no other God can
compete with him. Money debases all human Gods and turns them
into goods. Money is the universal value of everything."
"The God of the Jews has become secularised and bas become a
World God. The bill of exchange is the real God of the Jews."
"Jewry reaches its climax in the consummation of bourgeois society
- and bourgeois society has reached its highest point in the
Christian world."
In 1845, in The Holy Family, Marx claimed that in his articles in
the Deutsch-Franzoesische Jahrbuecher he had "proved that the
task of abolishing the essence of Jewry is in truth the task of
abolishing Jewry in civil society, abolishing the inhumanity of today's
practice of life, the summit of which is the money system." [3]
In 1849 an article in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (of which Marx
was the editor) criticised the notion that Jews living in Prussia's
Polish provinces should be regarded as Germans. The article
declared that these Jews were "the filthiest of all races." "Neither by
speech nor by descent - but only by their greed for profit - can they
be looked upon as relatives of the Germans in Frankfurt."
One of Marx's critical biographers has remarked: "this solution of
the Jewish question was not very different from Adolf Hitler's, for it
involved the liquidation of Judaism.." [4]
THERE ARE NUMEROUS uncomplimentary references to Jews in Karl
Marx's letters to his close friend Friedrich Engels in the 1850s and
1860s. At that time Marx was living in London and his earnings as a
free-lance journalist - he was a regular contributor to the New York
Daily Tribune - were quite insufficient for his needs. Engels, then
employed as a clerk by the firm of Ermen & Engels in Manchester,

sent him small remittances whenever he could. Even so Marx failed

to make ends meet and - when there was nothing more to pledge at
the pawnbrokers - he borrowed money from anyone who would lend
it.
He had many dealings with Jewish financial agents in the City of
London. The Bambergers (father and son) [5], as well as Stiefel and
Spielmann, were German Jews whose names frequently crop up in
the Marx-Engels correspondence. Marx made use of the Jews to
raise small loans and, to discount bills of exchange received from
Charles A. Dana (editor of the New York Tribune) in advance
payment of articles which Marx had agreed to write. Marx
complained bitterly that the Jews would not discount his bills until
confirmation from Dana had been received; [6] and he was furious
when they pressed him to honour debts due-for repayment. Marx
showed his contempt by always referring to them as "Jew [or "little
Jew"] Bamberger" and "Jew Spielmann", or by imitating the nasal
twang characteristic of the way in which some Jews from Eastern
Europe spoke German. [7]
Yet Marx had cause to regret the day when the Bambergers were
not in business in London any more and were no longer available to
discount his bills of exchange. In 1859 he wrote to Engels: "it is the
devil of a nuisance that I have no Bamberger in London any more.."
[8]
MARX'S ANTI-SEMITISM may be illustrated by examining his
attitude towards Ferdinand Lassalle, who was a Jew from Breslau in
Silesia. As. a young man Lassalle had led the workers of
Duesseldorf during the revolution of 1848. But he had never been a
member of the Communist League, since his application to join the
Cologne branch had been turned down: and he had taken no part in
the risings in Germany in 1849 in support of the Frankfurt
constitution, since he had been in jail at that time.
Consequently in the 1850s, while nearly all the former supporters of
the revolution were either in prison or in exile, Lassalle was able to
live in Duesseldorf, without being unduly molested by the
authorities. It was to Marx's advantage to keep in touch with

Lassalle, who gave him news of the underground workers'

movement "in the Rhineland. And through his aristocratic
connections - he was a close friend of the Countess of Hatzfeld - he
was sometimes able to provide Marx with useful political information
which he could use in articles contributed to the New York Tribune
and Die Presse. But while Marx regarded himself as the head or a
great politica1 movement who should be obeyed by his followers,
Lassalle declined to be a mere disciple and was determined to be a
leader of the German workers in his own right.
The correspondence between Marx and Lassalle [9] suggests that
the two men were colleagues who - despite certain differences of
opinion - were collaborating to achieve a common aim. But the
letters exchanged between Marx and Engels tell a very different
story. Here Marx showed his contempt for the Jew who presumed to
have opinions and ambitions of his own. When Lassalle was Marx's
guest in London in 1862 Marx wrote to Engels:
"It is now perfectly clear to me that, as the shape of his head and
the growth of his hair indicate, he is descended from the negroes
who joined in the flight of Moses from Egypt (unless his mother or
grandmother on the father's side was crossed with a nigger). Now
this union of Jewishness to Germanness on a negro basis was
bound to produce an extraordinary hybrid. The importunity of the
fellow is also niggerlike." [10]
Marx referred to his guest as a "Jewish nigger" who was "completely
deranged." He frequently used derogatory epithets when writing
about Lassalle, such as "Itzig" (Ikey), "Ephraim Gescheit" and
"Judel Braun." And Marx's wife, in a letter to Engels, called Lassalle
"the little Berlin Jew."
AFTER LASSALLE'S DEATH in 1864 there are fewer
uncomplimentary remarks about Jews in the Marx-Engels
correspondence than before. In that year Engels became a partner
in the firm of Ermen & Engels, and from 1867 onwards he paid Marx
an annual allowance of 350 pounds. So, although Marx's financial
problems were by no means solved, he had less need than formerly
to try to borrow money from Jews - such as Ignaz Horn [12] and

Leo Frankel [13].

He wrote to Engel's in 1875 that he had got into conversation with
"a sly looking Yid" on a journey from London to Rotterdam. He was
clearly delighted to be able to report that his loquacious Jewish
travelling companion had been the victim of some sharp practice in
a business deal [14]. And in his old age when on holiday in
Ramsgate, Marx declared that there were "many Jews and fleas" at
the resort [15].
IT WAS NOT ONLY in private letters to his closest friend that Marx
indulged in anti-Semitic outbursts. In an article in the New York
Tribune (4 January 1856), in which he discussed an international
loan to be raised by the Russian government to finance the war in
the Crimea, Marx savagely attacked the Jewish financiers who cooperated to place the loan [16]. Marx wrote:
"This loan is brought out under the auspices of the house of
Stieglitz at St Petersburg. Stieglitz is to Alexander what Rothschild
is to Francis Joseph, what Fould is to Louis Napoleon. The late Czar
Nicholas made Stieglitz a Russian baron, as the late Kaiser Franz
made old Rothschild an Austrian baron, while Louis Napoleon has
made a cabinet minister of Fould, with a free ticket to the Tuileries
for the females of his family. Thus we find every tyrant backed by a
Jew. as is every Pope by a Jesuit. In truth, the cravings of
oppressors would be hopeless, and the practicability of war out of
the question, if there were not an army of Jesuits to smother
thought and a handful of Jews to ransack pockets."
Hope & Co. of Amsterdam played an important role in placing the
Russian loan. This was not a Jewish firm, but Marx declared that
"the Hopes lend only the prestige of their name; the real work is
done by Jews, and can only be done by them as they monopolise
the machinery of the loan-mongering mysteries by concentrating
their energies upon the barter-trade in securities, and the changing
of money and negotiating of bills in a great measure arising there
from.

Take Amsterdam for instance, a city harbouring many of the worst

descendants of the Jews whom Ferdinand and Isabella drove out of
Spain, and who, after lingering a while in Portugal, were driven
thence also, and eventually found a safe place of retreat in Holland.
In Amsterdam alone they number not less: than 35,000, many of
whom are engaged in this gambling and jobbing of securities...
Their business is to watch the monies available for investment and
keenly observe where they lie. Here and there and everywhere that
a little capital courts investment there is ever one of these little
Jews ready to make a little suggestion or place a little bit of a loan.
The smartest highwayman in the Abruzzi is not better posted about
the locale of the hard cash in a traveller's valise or pocket, than
those Jews about any loose capital in the hands of a trader."
Marx went on to attack the Jewish finance houses of Koenigswarter,
Raphael, Stem, Bischoffsheim, Rothschild, Mendelssohn,
Bleichroeder, Fould and many others. He declared that many of
these families were linked by marriage and he observed that
"the loan mongering Jews derive much of their strength from these
family relations, as these, in addition to their lucre affinities, give a
compactness and unity to their operations which ensure their
success."
Marx concluded his article as follows:
"This Eastern war is destined at all events to throw some light upon
this system of loan-mongering as well as other systems. Meanwhile
the Czar will get his fifty millions and let the English journals say
what they please, if he wants five fifties more, the Jews will dig
them up. Let us not be thought too severe upon these loanmongering gentry. The fact that 1855 years ago Christ drove the
Jewish money-changers out of the temple, and that the moneychangers of our age enlisted on the side of tyranny happen again
chiefly to be Jews, is perhaps no more than a historical
coincidence.
The loan-mongering Jews of Europe do only on a larger and more
obnoxious scale what many others do on one smaller and less

significant. But it is only because the Jews are so strong that it is

timely and expedient to expose and stigmatise their organisation."
There was a kind of bitter justice in the fact that Marx, who
detested his own race, should have suffered from the anti-Semitic
views of others. There were those who attacked Marx because he
was a Jew and who branded the political movement that he led as a
Jewish conspiracy. [16a]
ENGELS' ATTITUDE towards the Jews was quite different from that
of Marx. [17] He had never denounced the Jews as a race of petty
traders and money-lenders and as Marx had done in his youthful
article in the Deutsch-Franzoesische Jahrbuecher [18]. Indeed he
later declared that anti-Semitism was the mark of a backward
culture and was confined to Russia, Austria and Prussia [19].
In 1881 Eduard Bernstein sent Engels some examples of antiSemitic propaganda in Germany. Engels replied that he had never
seen anything so stupid or childish. He praised the SozialDemokrat - the leading socialist paper in Germany at the time of
Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Law - for coming out firmly against antiSemitism. Engels quoted with approval a passage from a letter
which he had recently received from a Jewish correspondent (Carl
Hirsch), who had just been to Berlin. Hirsch had written that "the
official press which prints anti-Semitic articles has few readers."
"While it is true that the Germans have a natural antipathy towards
the Jews, it is also a fact that the working class, the radical petty
bourgeoisie, and the middle-class philistines hate the government
far more than they hate the Jews."
Bernstein, however disagreed with "Hirsch and claimed that antiSemitic propaganda was falling upon fertile soil in Germany as far
as civil servants, teachers, craftsmen, and peasants were
concerned.
Ten years later Engels wrote to August Bebel that he was glad to
learn that new Jewish recruits were joining the German Social
Democrat Party. But he warned Bebel that socialists would have to

keep a watchful eye on these Jewish colleagues because they were

cleverer than the average bourgeois socialist and were - owing to
centuries of oppression - in the habit of pushing themselves
forward! [20]
ALTHOUGH ENGELS DISAPPROVED of anti-Semitism and welcomed
Jews like Karl Kautsky and Alfred Adler as party colleagues, he did
criticise particular Jews and groups of Jews. For example, in a
comment on English politics in 1852 he contemptuously dismissed
Disraeli as a "Jewish swindler." A few years later when he wished to
express his disapproval of Lassalle's conduct, he referred to him as
"a real Jew from the Slav frontier" and as "a greasy Jew disguised
under brilliantine and flashy jewels." [22] In 1862, in a letter to Carl
Siebel, he attacked the Jewish members of a German club (the
Schiller Anstalt) in Manchester. He declared that he seldom visited
this veritable "Jerusalem Club" any more because the noisy
behaviour of the Jews inconvenienced other members.
"What has happened is what always happens when Jews are about.
At first they thank God that they had a Schiller Anstalt, but hardly
had they got inside than they declared that it was not good enough
for them and that they wanted to build a bigger club house - a true
temple of Moses - to which the Schiller Anstalt could be moved.
This would indeed be the quickest road to bankruptcy . Look out! In
a year or two you will get a circular reading like this: 'In view of the
bankruptcy of the late Schiller Anstalt'" [23]
A few years later, however, when he was President of the Schiller
Anstalt, Engels played a leading part in securing the larger premises
that the Jewish members desired.
In 1864, during the crisis in the Lancashire cotton industry at the
time of the American Civil War, Engels complained of the vexations
that he had to endure in the office of Ermen & Engels because of
"Jewish chicaneries." [24] In October 1867 and again in May 1868,
Engels complained that his time was being wasted by visits from
"that damned old Jew" Leibel Choras, who was a refugee from
Moldavia where the Jews were being persecuted [25]. Engels
obviously had little sympathy for Leibel Choras. And in 1870 Engels

dismissed Leo Frankel as "a real little Yid" [26]

In 1892 in a letter to the French socialist leader Paul Lafargue Marx's son-in-law - Engels even expressed a certain sympathy for
the anti-Jewish movement in France. He wrote:
"I begin to understand French anti-Semitism when I see how many
Jews of Polish origin with German names intrude themselves
everywhere to the point of arousing public opinion in the ville
lumiere, of which the Parisian philistine is so proud and which he
believes to be the supreme power in the universe." [27]
Engels also expressed his contempt for the Polish Jews who were, in
his view, "caricatures of Jews" [27]. He wrote to Laura Lafargue:
Business principle of the Polish Jew to ask much so as to be able to
rebate, as for instance: "How much is a yard of this cloth?" "15
groschen." "He says 15, he means 12.5, he would take 10, and the
cloth is worth 7.5. I am prepared to pay 5 so I will offer him 2.5
groschen." [29]
JUST AS ENGELS RARELY SHOWED any antipathy towards the Jews,
so he had no prejudices against coloured peoples. He rejected the
view commonly expressed by explorers and missionaries in his day
that native peoples were "heathen savages" who were obviously
inferior to white races. Indeed he argued that primitive peoples
were superior to modern Europeans because they did not recognise
private property or capitalism, or the state. In 1884 in his book
on The Origin of the Family - based upon the researches of the
American anthropologist L. H. Morgan - Engels gave a lyrical
account of the "wonderful child-like simplicity" of the way of life in
the Iroquois Indian tribes.
"Everything runs smoothly without soldiers, gendarmes, or police;
without nobles, kings, governors, prefects, or judges, without
prisons, without trials. All quarrels and disputes are settled by the
whole body of those concerned. The household is run in common
and communistically by a number of families, the land is tribal
property, only the small gardens being temporarily assigned to the

households. Not a bit of our extensive and complicated machinery

of administration is required. There can be no poor or needy - the
communistic household and the gens know their obligations
towards the aged, the sick, and those disabled in war. All are free
and equal - including the women. There is, as yet, no room for
slaves nor, as a rule, for the subjugation of alien tribes." [30]
As an admirer of primitive races, Engels (like Marx) was strongly
opposed to the exploitation of native peoples by white colonists. He
denounced the expansion of the empires of European states in
India, Java, Algiers and elsewhere. For Marx and Engels the rising in
India in 1857 was no mere mutiny of Sepoy troops but a national
revolt against the English oppressors. In a series of articles in
theNew York Tribune they analysed the causes and events of the
Mutiny, which they regarded as an illustration of the "general
disaffection exhibited against English supremacy on the part of the
great Asiatic nations." [31]
In view of Engels's attitude towards the Jews, the Iroquois, and the
natives in colonial territories, his attitude towards some of the Slavs
is difficult to understand. When a Pan-Slav movement developed
with Russian support in central and eastern Europe during the
revolution of 1848 Engels rejected the demands of the Czechs,
Serbs, Croats, and Ruthenians for independence from Habsburg or
Turkish rule. Early in 1849 (in two articles in the Neue Rheinische
Zeitung [32]) he argued that these peoples had no natura1 capacity
for self-government and were for ever doomed to be ruled by more
advanced nations. They were "peoples without any history."
Engels asserted that these peoples would always be subject races
and would "never achieve national independence." "They are
peoples who were either already under foreign rule when they
entered into the first primitive phase of civilisation or who were
actually forced into earliest phase of civilisation by their foreign
masters." In the true spirit of Pan-Germanism, Marx and Engels
considered the Czechoslovakian peoples and the South Slavs to be
"ethnic trash."
TWO THINGS EMERGE from this study. The first is the extent to

which Marx's anti-Semitism has been played down, or even ignored,

in some popular socialist accounts of Marx's career and doctrines
published in the West and intended for radical and socialist
consumption. Thus, readers of Franz Mehring's Karl Marx (first
published in English translation in 1936) will find little to enlighten
them on Marx's anti-Semitism.
There may not be exactly a conspiracy of silence but attention may
be drawn to the fact that there is a difference between telling the
truth and telling the whole truth. Deception by omission is still
deception. Western commentators, too, with a few honourable
exceptions, have tended to dodge the issue or to gloss over
unwelcome facts. Scholars unfamiliar with the German language,
who rely only upon English translations of the writings of Marx and
Engels, may be led astray if they use selections compiled by
Marxists who are prepared to suppress evidence which might
display their hero in a somewhat unfavourable light.
The second point is the striking contrast between Marx's benevolent
desire to liberate the toiling masses from the tyranny of their
capitalist exploiters and his ferocious attacks upon those; who
appeared to stand in the way of his messianic hopes - the "idiotic"
peasants and the "rapacious" Jews for example. Long after Marx's
death his followers in Soviet Russia were acting quite in accordance
with their master's views when they eliminated the Kulaks and
persecuted the Jews.

FOOTNOTES:
1. Arnold Kuenzii has examined the psychological roots of Marx's
anti-Semitism in Karl Marx: eine Psychographie (Vienna, 1966),
esp. pp. 33-169, 195-226, 289-93. See also Camillo Berneri, Le Juif
anti-Semite (Paris, 1935).
Yet even in West Germany an attempt is apparently being made to
counter this realist view. There has recently been published in

Hamburg a selection of Marxist pronouncements on the Jewish

question (but omitting Marx's "Zur Judenfrage" of 1844 on the
grounds that it is "easily available" elsewhere) - see: Marxisten
gegen Antisemitismus (Hoffmann & Campe, 1974), with heavily
pro-Marxist introductions by Iring Fetscher and Ilse Yago-Jung. One
wonders whether a more appropriate title for this volume might not
have been Marxisten gegen Judentum und Zionismus.
2. Karl Marx, "Zur Judenfrage" in Deutsch-Franzoesische
Jahrbuecher (Paris, 1844), reprinted in Karl Marx/Friedrich 'Engels,
Werke, Vol. 1 (1964), pp. 347-377; A World without Jews (tr. D.D.
Runes, 1959). The first article reviewed Bruno Bauer, Die
Judenfrage (1843), the second Bruno Bauer's article on "Die
Fahigheit der heutigen Juden und Christen frei zu werden"
in Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz (ed. Georg Herwegh,
1843, pp.56-71). A reprint of the D-.F. Jahrbuecher has recently
been issued in Leipzig, Verlag Reclam (1973); Marx's article appears
on pp. 295-333.
The most recent discussion of Marx's views is R. S. Wistrich, "Karl
Marx and the Jewish Question", Soviet-Jewish Affairs, vol. IV, No. 1
(Spring 1974), pp. 53-60, which contains copious documentation.
See, especially, Arthur Prinz., "New Perspectives on Marx as a
Jew" Leo Baeck Year Book (1970), pp. 107-25; it includes the
revealing text of a letter by Heinrich Graetz, the Jewish historian
and a friend of Marx.
3. Marx/Engels, The Holy Family (1845; Foreign Languages
Publishing House, Moscow, 1956), p.148.
4. Neue Rheinische Zeitung (No. 285 Sunday 29 April 1849), p. 1,
col. 1. Marx was probably the author of the article. The Unknown
Karl Marx; Documents concerning Karl Marx (ed. R. Payee. 1972),
pp.14-15.
5. A small colony of Bambergers can be traced in the City of London
during the mid-1850s, based on King Street, Snowhill. Zacharias
Bamberger (of 19 King Street, ship and commission agents) was a
partner in the firm of Prager & Bamberger, 84 Lower Thomas Street,

while Louis Bamberger and Co., merchants, and Abraham

Bamberger & Co., wholesale boot manufacturers, both operated
from 20 King Street., Snowhill. See: Kelly & Co., Post Office London
Directory (1855), p. 813. Of these Zacharias Bamberger seems
most likely to have been Marx's money-lender.
6. See Marx to Engels, 31 July 1851, in Marx-Engels
Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. I, p. 224; and 21 January 1852, p.
444.
7. For example: "Spielmann always sends one away with the nasal
Jewish remark 'Kaine Nootiz da' [i.e. Keine Notiz da]": Marx to
Engels, 18 August 1853 in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii,
Vol. 1. p.492. The word Yiddish, used to describe this form of
speech, is noted as first appearing in print in English in the mid1880s (Oxford English Dictionary).
8. Marx to Engels, 21 September 1859, in Marx-Engels
Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 2, p. 416.
9. Gustav Mayer, Der Briefwechsel zwischen Lassalle und Marx, Vol.
3 of Ferdinand Lassalle: Nachgelassene Briefe und Schriften(first
edition 1922; new edition issued by the Historical Commission of
the Bavarian Academy of Science, 1967).
10. Marx to Engels, 30 July 1862, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe ,
Part iii. Vol. 3, pp. 82-84. On Marx as "at once a racialist himself
and the cause of racialism in others", see George Watson, The
English Ideology (1973), p. 211.
11. Jenny Marx to Engels, 9 April 1858, in Marx-Engels
Gesamtausgabe , Part iii. Vol. 2, p. 314. See also the malicious and
anti-Semitic gossip about Moses and Sybille Hess, in Marx to
Engels, 22 September 1856, Part iii, Vol. 2, p. 147.
12. Marx to Engels, 10 February 1865 ("Jud Horn") and 14
November 1868 ("Rabbi A Einhorn generally known by the name of
A. E. Horn") in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 3, p.232;
and Vol. 4, p. 124.

13. Marx to Engels, 14 April and 8 July 1870 ("little Jew Leo
Frankel") in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 4, pp. 302,
338.
14. Marx to Engels, 21 August 1875, in Marx-Engels
Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 4, pp. 428-9.
15. Marx to Engels, 25 August 1879 in Marx-Engels
Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 4, p.490.
16. Reprinted in Karl Marx, The Eastern Question (ed. by Eleanor
Marx & Edward Aveling, 1897: new ed. 1969). pp. 600-606.
16a. See, for example, Edward von Mueller-Tellering, Vorgeschmack
in die kuenftige deutsche Diktatur von Marx und Engels(1850).
17. For the attitude of socialists to the Jews, see E.
Silberner, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage (1962) and George Lichtheim,
"Socialism and the Jews" in Dissent (New York), July-August 1968.
18. Karl Marx, "Zur Judenfrage", in the Deutsch Franzoesische
Jahrbuecher (1844), reprinted in Marx/Engels, Werke, Vol. 1
(1964), pp, 347-77. See also, Marx/Engels, The Holy
Family (Moscow, 1965), pp.149-150.
19. Engels to a correspondent in Vienna, 19 April 1890,
in Marx/Engels, Werke, Vol. XXII, p. 49. See, however, Engels' 1892
preface to the London edition of his Condition of the Working Class
in England (1845), where he refers to "the pettifogging business
tricks of the Polish Jew, the representative: in Europe of commerce
at its lowest stage" (p. 360 in 1971 edition by Henderson &
Chaloner).
20. Engels to Bernstein, 17 August 1881, in Eduard
Bernsteins Briefwechsel mit Friedrich Engels (ed. Hirsch, 1970), pp.
28-29. Bernstein to Engels, 9 September 1881: Briefwechsel, p. 37.
Engels to Bebel. 1 December 1891, in August Bebels Briefwechsel
mit Friedrich Engels (ed. Blumenberg, 1965), p. 487.

21. Engels to Marx, 24 September 1852, in Marx-Engels

Gesamtausgabe , Part iii. Vol. 1, p. 405.
22. Engels to Marx, 7 March 1856 in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe ,
Part iii, Vol. 2, p. 122. English translation: Engels: Selected Writings
(ed. Henderson. Penguin, 1967), pp. 129-30.
23. Engels to Carl Siebel, 4 June 1862, in Friedrich Engels
Profile (ed. Hirsch, 1970) p. 250.
24. Engels to Marx, 2 November 1864, in Marx-Engels
Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 3, p. 192.
25. Engels to Marx, 11 October 1867 and 6 May 1868, in MarxEngels Gesamtausgabe , Part iii, Vol. 3. p. 432 and Vo1. 4, p. 52. It
has not proved possible to identify Choras further.
26. Engels to Marx, 15 April 1870, in Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe ,
Part iii, Vol. 4, p. 305.
27. Engels to Paul Lafargue, 22 July 1892, in F.Engels - Paul and
Laura Lafargue: Correspondence (Moscow). Vol. iii, 1891-95,
p.184.
28. Engels to Pau1 Ernst, 5 June 1890, in Engels Profile, p. 190.
29. Engels to Laura Lafargue, 27 October 1893, in Engels-Lafargue:
Correspondence, Vol iii, 1891?95, p.307.
30. Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigentums und des
Staates (1884: new ed., 1962), p.96. English translation:Engels,
The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (Moscow),
p. 159. Engels' book was based upon Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient
Society, or Researches in the Line of Human Progress from
Savagery through Barbarism to Civilisation (1877). Engels also
made use of the notes which Karl Marx had made (probably in the
winter of 1880-1) on Morgan's book, The Ethnological Notebooks of
Karl Marx (ed. Lawrence Krader, 1972).

31. For selections of articles and letters written by Marx and Engels
on colonisation, see Marx/Engels, On Colonisation (Moscow) andThe
First Indian War of Independence, 1857-1859 (Moscow; London,
1960).
32. Engels, "Der magyarische Kampf" and "Der demokratische
Panslavismus", in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 13 January and 15
February 1849; reprinted in Karl Marx/Engels Werke, Vol. VI p. 165
ff. P. W. Blackstock and B. F. Hoselitz have translated and edited a
useful anthology of these in Marx/Engels, The Russian Menace to
Europe (1952). Pages 56-9, and 241 are important for "peoples
without a history."
posted by JR at 11:08 PM
Monday, January 29, 2007
ANOTHER COLLECTION OF QUOTES FROM MARX AND HIS
EARLY FOLLOWERS
Note the open avowal of terrorism
"As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects.
The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do
not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct
slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the
southern regions of North America. Direct slavery is as much the
pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are
machinery, credit, etc. Slavery is therefore an economic category
of paramount importance."
- Karl Marx
(Letter to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, December 28, 1846)
" the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the
nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death
agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new
society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way
is revolutionary terror."

- Karl Marx
("The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna," Neue Rheinische
Zeitung, November 7, 1848)
"All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined
to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm these
residual fragments of peoples always become fanatical standardbearers of counter-revolution and remain so until their complete
extirpation or loss of their national character [A general war will]
wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very
names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the
face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but
also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward."
- Friedrich Engels
("The Magyar Struggle," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, January 13,
1849)
" only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav
peoples can we [Germans], jointly with the Poles and Magyars,
safeguard the revolution there will be a struggle, an inexorable
life-and-death struggle, against those Slavs who betray the
revolution; an annihilating fight and ruthless terror - not in the
interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution!"
- Friedrich Engels
("Democratic Pan-Slavism, Cont.," Neue Rheinische Zeitung,
February 16, 1849)
"We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you.
When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror."
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
("Suppression of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung," Neue Rheinische
Zeitung, May 19, 1849)
"Psychologically, this talk of feeding the starving is nothing but an
expression of the saccharine-sweet sentimentality so characteristic
of our intelligentsia."
- V. I. Lenin
(Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow [London: Arrow Books,
1988], p234)

"... whoever recognizes class war must recognize civil wars, which
in any class society represent the natural and, in certain
circumstances, inevitable continuation, development and sharpening
of class war."
- V. I. Lenin
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy [London: HarperCollins,
1994], p196)
"Until we apply terror to speculators - shooting on the spot - we
wont get anywhere."
- V. I. Lenin
(George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenins Political Police [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981], p55)
"Let them shoot on the spot every tenth man guilty of idleness."
- V. I. Lenin
(George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenins Political Police [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981], p55)
"Surely you do not imagine that we shall be victorious without
applying the most cruel revolutionary terror?"
- V. I. Lenin
(George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenins Political Police [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981], p57)
"You can tell Ter [a local Cheka commander] that if there is an
offensive, he must make all preparations to burn Baku down totally,
and this should be announced in print in Baku."
- V. I. Lenin
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy [London: HarperCollins,
1994], p202)
"Merciless war against these kulaks! Death to them!"
- V. I. Lenin
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy [London: HarperCollins,
1994], p197)
"... carry out merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and

White Guards; unreliable elements to be locked up in a

concentration camp outside the town."
- V. I. Lenin
(George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenins Political Police [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981], p103)
"I am confident that the suppression of the Kazan Czechs and White
Guards, and likewise of the bloodsucking kulaks who support them,
will be a model of mercilessness."
- V. I. Lenin
(George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenins Political Police [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981], p119)
"When we are reproached with cruelty, we wonder how people can
forget the most elementary Marxism."
- V. I. Lenin
(Robert Conquest, The Human Cost of Soviet
Communism [Washington: Committee on the Judiciary, US Senate,
91st Congress, 2nd Session, 1970], p10)
"... catch and shoot the Astrakhan speculators and bribe-takers.
These swine have to be dealt [with] so that everyone will remember
it for years."
- V. I. Lenin
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy [London: HarperCollins,
1994], p201)
"Russians are too kind, they lack the ability to apply determined
methods of revolutionary terror."
- V. I. Lenin
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: Life and Legacy [London: HarperCollins,
1994], p203)
"Dictatorship is rule based directly on force and unrestricted by any
laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won
and maintained through the use of violence by the proletariat
against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws."
- V. I. Lenin
(Stephan Courtois, "Conclusion," in The Black Book of Communism,

ed. Stephane Courtois [Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

1999], p741)
"I come to the inescapable conclusion that we must now launch the
most decisive and merciless battle against the Black Hundreds
clergy and crush their resistance with such ferocity that they will not
forget it for several decades... The bigger the number of reactionary
clergy and reactionary bourgeois we manage to shoot in the
process, the better."
- V. I. Lenin
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary [London:
HarperCollins, 1996], p227)
"But couldnt this correlation [of political and social forces] be
altered? Say, through the subjection or extermination of some
classes of society?"
- Feliks Dzerzhinsky
(George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenins Political Police [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981], p252)
"Do not believe that I seek revolutionary forms of justice. We dont
need justice at this point... I propose, I demand, the organization of
revolutionary annihilation against all active counterrevolutionaries."
- Feliks Dzerzhinsky
(Michel Heller and Aleksandr Nekrich, Utopia in Power: A History of
the USSR From 1917 to the Present [London: Hutchinson, 1986],
p54)
"[The Red Terror involves] the extermination of enemies of the
revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or of their prerevolutionary roles."
- Feliks Dzerzhinsky
(George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenins Political Police [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981], p114)
"In not more than a months time terror will assume very violent
forms, after the example of the great French Revolution; the
guillotine... will be ready for our enemies... that remarkable
invention of the French Revolution which makes man shorter by a

head."
- Leon Trotsky
(George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenins Political Police [Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981], p54)
"Root out the counterrevolutionaries without mercy, lock up
suspicious characters in concentration camps... Shirkers will be
shot, regardless of past service..."
- Leon Trotsky
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary [London:
HarperCollins, 1996], p213)
"We have to run a hot iron down the spine of the Ukrainian kulaks that will create a good working environment."
- Leon Trotsky
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary [London:
HarperCollins, 1996], p183)
"As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and
vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sacredness of human life."
- Leon Trotsky
(Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky [London: New
Park Publications, 1975], p82)
"The Red Terror is a weapon utilized against a class, doomed to
destruction, which does not wish to perish... the Red Terror hastens
the destruction of the bourgeoisie."
- Leon Trotsky
(Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky [London: New
Park Publications, 1975], p83)
"... the road to socialism lies through a period of the highest
possible intensification of the principle of the state Just as a lamp,
before going out, shoots up in a brilliant flame, so the state, before
disappearing, assumes the form of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, i.e., the most ruthless form of state, which embraces
the life of the citizens authoritatively in every direction..."
- Leon Trotsky
(Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky [London: New

Park Publications, 1975], p177)

"... the very principle of labour conscription has replaced the
principle of free labour as radically and irreversibly as socialization
of the means of production has replaced capitalist ownership."
- Leon Trotsky
(Dmitri Volkogonov, Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary [London:
HarperCollins, 1996], pp216-7)
Source

posted by JR at 5:19 PM
Monday, May 16, 2005
ENGELS PREFERRED TO BE IN TROUBLE WITH THE POLICE
RATHER THAN WORK
"I have allowed myself to be persuaded by the arguments of my
brother-in-law [Emil Blank] and the doleful expression on both my
parents faces to give huckstering another trial and for [...] days
have been working in the office. Another motive was the course my
love affair was taking. But I was sick of it all even before I began
work; huckstering is too beastly, Barmen is too beastly, the waste of
time is too beastly and most beastly of all is the fact of being, not
only a bourgeois, but actually a manufacturer, a bourgeois who
actively takes sides against the proletariat. A few days in my old
mans factory have sufficed to bring me face to face with this
beastliness, which I had rather overlooked. I had, of course,
planned to stay in the huckstering business only as long as it suited
me and then to write something the police wouldnt like so that I
could with good grace make off across the border, but I cant hold
out even till then."

Source
posted by JR at 11:41 PM
Monday, May 02, 2005
I expect that this will be the last post on this blog for a while but
readers with interesting quotes are welcome to send them in for
possible posting.
GARY NORTH'S SUMMARY OF MARX:
The summary below accords with my reading of Marx. He hated
everybody and that angry hatred has always been his chief
attraction to Leftists. They instinctively recognize in him a kindred
spirit.
"Karl Marx was the foremost hater and most incessant whiner in the
history of Western Civilization. He was a spoiled, overeducated brat
who never grew up; he just grew more shrill as he grew older. His
lifelong hatred and whining have led to the deaths (so far) of
perhaps a hundred million people, depending on how many people
perished under Maos tyranny. We will probably never know.
Whiners, if given power, readily become tyrants. Marx was seen by
his contemporaries as a potential tyrant. Giuseppe Mazzini (180572), the Italian revolutionary, and a rival of Marxs in the
International Workingmens Association in the mid- 1860s, once
described Marx as a destructive spirit whose heart was filled with
hatred rather than love of mankind . . . extraordinarily sly, shifty
and taciturn. Marx is very jealous of his authority as leader of the
Party; against his political rivals and opponents he is vindictive and
implacable; he does not rest until he has beaten them down; his
overriding characteristic is boundless ambition and thirst for power.
Despite the communist egalitarianism which he preaches he is the
absolute ruler of his party; admittedly he does everything himself
but he is also the only one to give orders and he tolerates no

opposition"
Source (PDF)
posted by JR at 5:46 PM
Sunday, May 01, 2005
THE PROPHETIC WORDS OF (ANARCHIST) MIKHAIL
BAKUNIN
Written in 1872
The reasoning of Marx ends in absolute contradiction. Taking into
account only the economic question, he insists that only the most
advanced countries, those in which capitalist production has
attained greatest development, are the most capable of making
social revolution. These civilized countries, to the exclusion of all
others, are the only ones destined to initiate and carry through this
revolution. This revolution will expropriate either by peaceful,
gradual, or by violent means, the present property owners and
capitalists. To appropriate all the landed property and capital, and to
carry out its extensive economic and political programs, the
revolutionary State will have to be very powerful and highly
centralized. The State will administer and direct the cultivation of
the land, by means of its salaried officials commanding armies of
rural workers organized and disciplined for this purpose. At the
same time, on the ruins of the existing banks, it will establish a
single state bank which will finance all labor and national
commerce.
It is readily apparent how such a seemingly simple plan of
organization can excite the imagination of the workers, who are as
eager for justice as they are for freedom; and who foolishly imagine
that the one can exist without the other; as if, in order to conquer
and consolidate justice and equality, one could depend on the
efforts of others, particularly on governments, regardless of how
they may be elected or controlled, to speak and act for the people!
For the proletariat this will, in reality, be nothing but a barracks: a

regime, where regimented workingmen and women will sleep,

wake, work, and live to the beat of a drum; where the shrewd and
educated will be granted government privileges; and where the
mercenary-minded, attracted by the immensity of the international
speculations of the state bank, will find a vast field for lucrative,
underhanded dealings.
There will be slavery within this state, and abroad there will be war
without truce, at least until the inferior races, Latin and Slav, tired
of bourgeois civilization, no longer resign themselves to the
subjection of a State, which will be even more despotic than the
former State, although it calls itself a Peoples State.
Context here
posted by JR at 6:06 PM
Saturday, April 30, 2005

I have now finished the quotes from Marx that I wanted to put up
but I still have a few quotes about Marx from others that may be of
interest:
EVEN MARX'S KINDLY FATHER SUSPECTED THAT KARL WAS
NOT MUCH OF A HUMAN BEING
Written when Karl was still only 19. Heinrich seems to have been a
decent and generous guy. It must have pained him greatly to see
how his son turned out.
Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, written in Trier, March 2,
1837: "It is remarkable that I, who am by nature a lazy writer,
become quite inexhaustible when I have to write to you. I will not
and cannot conceal my weakness for you. At times my heart
delights in thinking of you and your future. And yet at times I
cannot rid myself of ideas which arouse in me sad forebodings and
fear when I am struck as if by lightning by the thought: is your

heart in accord with your head, your talents? Has it room for the
earthly but gentler sentiments which in this vale of sorrow are so
essentially consoling for a man of feeling? And since that heart is
obviously animated and governed by a demon not granted to all
men, is that demon heavenly or Faustian? Will you ever -- and that
is not the least painful doubt of my heart -- will you ever be capable
of truly human, domestic happiness? Will -- and this doubt has no
less tortured me recently since I have come to love a certain person
[Jenny von Westfalen] like my own child -- will you ever be capable
of imparting happiness to those immediately around you?
What has evoked this train of ideas in me, you will ask ? Often
before, anxious thoughts of this kind have come into my mind, but I
easily chased them away, for I always felt the need to surround you
with all the love and care of which my heart is capable, and I always
like to forget. But I note a striking phenomenon in Jenny. She, who
is so wholly devoted to you with her childlike, pure disposition,
betrays at times, involuntarily and against her will, a kind of fear, a
fear laden with foreboding, which does not escape me, which I do
not know how to explain, and all trace of which she tried to erase
from my heart, as soon as I pointed it out to her. What does that
mean, what can it be? I cannot explain it to myself, but
unfortunately my experience does not allow me to be easily led
astray.
Context here
posted by JR at 6:13 PM
Friday, April 29, 2005
ENGELS ADVOCATES THAT GERMANY DEFEAT FRANCE BY
ANY MEANS POSSIBLE
Engels to August Bebel In Berlin, 19 September, 1891: "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...."
Context here
posted by JR at 5:27 PM
Thursday, April 28, 2005
ENGELS FORESAW AND WELCOMED WORLD WAR
Engels, London, December 15, 1887: . . . No war is any longer
possible for Prussia-Germany except a world war and a world war
indeed of an extent and violence hitherto undreamt of. Eight to ten
millions of soldiers will massacre one another and in doing so
devour the whole of Eurepe until they have stripped it barer than
any swarm of locusts has ever done. The devastations of the Thirty
Years War compressed into three or four years, and spread over the
whole Continent; famine, pestilence, general demoralisation both of
the armies and of the mass of the people produced by acute
distress; hopeless confusion of our artificial machinery in trade,
industry and credit, ending in general bankruptcy; collapse of the
old states and their traditional state wisdom to such an extent that
crowns will roll by dozens on the pavement and there will be no
body to pick them up; absolute impossibility of foreseeing how it
will all end and who will come out of the struggle as victor; only one
result is absolutely certain: general exhaustion and the

establishment of the conditions for the ultimate victory of the

working class.
This is the prospect when the system of mutual outbidding in
armaments, taken to the final extreme, at last bears its inevitable
fruits. This, my lords, princes and statesmen, is where in your
wisdom you have brought old Europe. And when nothing more
remains to you but to open the last great war dancethat will suit
us all right (uns kann es recht sein ). The war may perhaps push us
temporarily into the background, may wrench from us many a
position already conquered. But when you have unfettered forces
which you will then no longer be able again to control, things may
go as they will: at the end of the tragedy you will be ruined and the
victory of the proletariat will either be already achieved or at any
rate (doch ) inevitable".

Some context here

posted by JR at 8:24 PM
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
MARX SAW FUTURE WARS AS RACE WARS
And Hitler again waged exactly the war that Marx predicted
Marx, SECOND ADDRESS On The War To the Members of the
International Working-Mens Association, 1870: "If the fortune of
her arms, the arrogance of success, and dynastic intrigue lead
Germany to a spoliation of French territory, there will then only
remain two courses open to her. She must at all risks become the
avowed tool of Russian aggrandisement, or, after some short
respite, make again ready for another defensive war, not one of
those new-fangled localised wars, but a war of races a war with
the combined Slavonian and Roman races".

Context here
posted by JR at 8:24 PM
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
MARX: GERMANS SHOULD THRASH THE FRENCH
I guess Hitler got that message too
Marx to Engels, July 20, 1870: "The French need a thrashing. If the
Prussians win, the centralisation of the state power will be useful for
the centralisation of the German working class. German
predominance would also transfer the centre of gravity of the
workers' movement in Western Europe from France to Germany,
and one has only to compare the movement in the two countries
from 1866 till now to see that the German working class is superior
to the French both theoretically and organisationally. Their
predominance over the French on the world stage would also mean
the predominance of our theory over Proudhon's, etc."
Context here
posted by JR at 5:47 PM
Monday, April 25, 2005
WAR AGAINST RUSSIA A GOOD THING FOR GERMANY
And Hitler carried it out
Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 42, July 12, 1848: "Only a war against
Russia would be a war of revolutionary Germany, a war by which
she could cleanse herself of her past sins, could take courage,
defeat her own autocrats, spread civilisation by the sacrifice of her
own sons as becomes a people that is shaking off the chains of
long, indolent slavery"

It is not clear whether it was Marx or Engels that wrote this.

Context here
posted by JR at 8:04 PM
Sunday, April 24, 2005
MARX THOUGHT WAR WAS A GOOD THING
As did many others in the 19th and early 20th centuries -- including
Mussolini, Hitler and "Progressive" U.S. President Theodore
Roosevelt
Marx, Sept 24, 1855: "The redeeming feature of war is that it puts
a nation to the test. As exposure to the atmosphere reduces all
mummies to instant dissolution, so war passes supreme judgment
upon social systems that have outlived their vitality".
(Full context for this quote does not appear to be available online
but it is mentioned in various places on the net -- e.g. here. See
also Collected Works, vol. 14, p. 516)
posted by JR at 5:07 PM
Saturday, April 23, 2005
ENGELS MAKES IT CLEAR WHAT HE MEANS BY "NIGGER"
Marx's second daughter, Laura, married Paul Lafargue who, Engels
said, had "one eighth or one twelfth Nigger blood". In 1887, Paul
was a candidate for the Paris Municipal Council, in a district which
contained the Jardin des Plantes and the Zoo. In a letter to Laura
(April 26, 1887), Engels referred to:
"Paul, the candidate of the Jardin des Plantes - and the animals"

and added: "Being in his quality as a nigger a degree nearer to the

rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly
the most appropriate representative of that district."
This letter (in German translation) is in Marx & Engels Werke vol.
36, 1967, p. 645. It is not online but is mentioned here
posted by JR at 5:42 PM
Friday, April 22, 2005
ENGELS WAS CONTEMPTUOUS OF "NIGGERS"
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."
(Not fully online. Source: Quoted by Diane Paul, "'In the Interests of
Civilization': Marxist Views of Race and Culture in the Nineteenth
Century", Journal of the History of Ideas, Jan-March 1981, p 123.
[Werke, Vol. 31, p 256.])
Note that Engels uses both the neutral term "negroes" and the
derogatory "nigger". So he clearly knew what the different
implications of the two terms were. "Nigger" was not as verboten in
the 19th century as it is now but it was still derogatory -- and it is
presumably because of that aspect of the word that both Marx and
Engels used what is after all an English word in their German
writings.

To undersrtand what Engels was talking about, one needs to realize

that both Marx and Engels were Lamarckians -- they believed that
acquired characteristics could be inherited. That fact is no doubt
part of the reason why Stalin so heavily sponsored the ideas of the
Lamarckian Trofim Lysenko right into the 20th century -- long after
Lamarckian theories had been generally discredited in the West.
And the particular strand of Lamarckian thinking that appealed most
strongly to both Marx and Engels was that the type of soil and
landscape in which a nation grew up could influence their national
character. Just what the relationship between geology and national
characteristics was, however, they did not fully agree. The following
commentary on the matter may also be helpful:
To cite one final anecdote, the scholarly literature frequently cites
Marx's great enthusiasm (until the more scientifically savvy Engels
set him straight) for a curious book, published in 1865 by the now
(and deservedly) unknown French explorer and ethnologist Pierre
Tremaux, Origine et transformations de l'homme et des autres
etres(Origin and transformation of man and other beings). Marx
professed ardent admiration for this work, proclaiming it "einen
Fortschritt uber Darwin" (an advance over Darwin). The more sober
Engels bought the book at Marx's urging, but then dampened his
friend's ardor by writing: "I have arrived at the conclusion that
there is nothing to his theory if for no other reason than because he
neither understands geology nor is capable of the most ordinary
literary historical criticism."
I had long been curious about Tremaux and sought a copy of his
book for many years. I finally purchased one a few years ago--and I
must say that I have never read a more absurd or more poorly
documented thesis. Basically, Tremaux argues that the nature of the
soil determines national characteristics and that higher civilizations
tend to arise on more complex soils formed in later geological
periods. If Marx really believed that such unsupported nonsense
could exceed the Origin of Species in importance, then he could not
have properly understood or appreciated the power of Darwin's
facts and ideas.
More here

posted by JR at 6:19 PM
Thursday, April 21, 2005
MARX SUPPORTED BLACK SLAVERY IN AMERICA
Letter from Marx to Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov, 1846: "As for
slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The
only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not
mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct
slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the
southern regions of North America.
Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day
industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery
there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern
industry. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, it is the
colonies which have created world trade, and world trade is the
necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Consequently,
prior to the slave trade, the colonies sent very few products to the
Old World, and did not noticeably change the face of the world.
Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount
importance. Without slavery, North America, the most progressive
nation, would he transformed into a patriarchal country. Only wipe
North America off the map and you will get anarchy, the complete
decay of trade and modern civilisation. But to do away with slavery
would be to wipe America off the map. Being an economic category,
slavery has existed in all nations since the beginning of the world.
All that modern nations have achieved is to disguise slavery at
home and import it openly into the New World"

Context here
posted by JR at 5:02 PM
Wednesday, April 20, 2005

ENGELS APPROVES OF ANTISEMITISM

Engels to Paul Lafargue, July 22, 1892: "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."
(Not online but found in Frederick Engels, Paul and Laura
Lafargue, Correspondence, Vol iii, Moscow. p 184.)
posted by JR at 8:19 PM
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
ENGELS: POLISH JEWS GET A BLAST
Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1886
Appendix to the American Edition: "The pettifogging business-tricks
of the Polish Jew, the representative in Europe of commerce in its
lowest stage, those tricks that serve him so well in his own country,
and are generally practiced there, he finds to be out of date and out
of place when he comes to Hamburg or Berlin"

Context here
posted by JR at 4:58 PM
Monday, April 18, 2005
MARX SUPPORTED BRITISH RULE OVER INDIA
Marx, New-York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853: "England, it is true,
in causing a social revolution in Hindoostan, was actuated only by
the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing

them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind
fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state
of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she
was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that
revolution".