http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/02/15.htm
Engels>..Just a word about "universal fraternal union of peoples" and the drawing of "boundaries established by the sovereign will of the peoples themselves on the basis of their national characteristics". The United States and Mexico are two republics, in both of which the people is sovereign.
How did it happen that over Texas a war broke out between these two republics, which, according to the moral theory, ought to have been "fraternally united" and "federated", and that, owing to "geographical, commercial and strategical necessities", the "sovereign will" of the American people, supported by the bravery of the American volunteers, shifted the boundaries drawn by nature some hundreds of miles further south? And will Bakunin accuse the Americans of a "war of conquest", which, although it deals with a severe blow to his theory based on "justice and humanity", was nevertheless waged wholly and solely in the interest of civilization? Or is it perhaps unfortunate that splendid California has been taken away from the lazy Mexicans, who could not do anything with it? That the energetic Yankees by rapid exploitation of the California gold mines will increase the means of circulation, in a few years will concentrate a dense population and extensive trade at the most suitable places on the coast of the Pacific Ocean, create large cities, open up communications by steamship, construct a railway from New York to San Francisco, for the first time really open the Pacific Ocean to civilization, and for the third time in history give the world trade a new direction? The "independence" of a few Spanish Californians and Texans may suffer because of it, in someplaces "justice" and other moral principles may be violated; but what does that matter to such facts of world-historic significance?
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/01/13.htm
Engels>...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.
Response by August Nimtz.
http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj96/nimtz.htm
>...Were Marx and Engels Eurocentrists?
The failure of the 1848 revolutions allowed Marx and Engels to give more detailed attention to developments beyond Europe. Three settings are instructive for purposes here--Algeria, India and Mexico. Regarding the first, a month before the Manifesto was published Engels applauded the French conquest of Algeria and defeat of the uprising led by the religious leader Abd-el Kader, saying that it was 'an important and fortunate fact for the progress of civilisation'.30 Nine years later in 1857 he had completely reversed his stance, and now severely denounced French colonial rule and expressed sympathy for religious-led Arab resistance to the imperial power.31 Their historical materialist perspective explains Engels's initial position. However, the real movement of history, especially the lessons of 1848, had taught that however progressive French imperialism may have been prior to then, it had outworn its usefulness--the opposition of the colonial subjects was now the movement to be supported. Shortly before his death in 1883 Marx visited Algeria in the hope that its climate would improve his health. A comment to his daughter Laura about the situation of the colonised reveals that his identification with them as fellow fighters had not waned: 'They will go to rack and ruin without a revolutionary movement'.32
Marx's first sustained writing on India strikes a similar tone to that sounded by Engels about Algeria in 1848. He described in 1853 Britain's undermining of local industries and social structures as 'causing a social revolution', however 'sickening...it must be to human feeling to witness' the effects of such policies.33 But by the time of the Sepoy Mutiny against British rule in 1857-1859, Marx and Engels's sympathy for the anti-colonial struggle was unquestionable. As Marx told his partner: 'In view of the drain of men and bullion which she will cost the English, India is now our best ally'.34 For both of them, therefore, the uprisings in these countries were exactly what Marx had forecast at the end of 1848 about the global interdependency of the revolutionary movement. Later in 1871, the International Working Men's Association, which Marx effectively headed, reported that a request had come to it from Calcutta to establish a branch of the body in the city. The secretary for the organisation's executive committee in London, the General Council, 'was instructed...to urge the necessity of enrolling natives in the association', thus making clear that the new affiliate was not to be an exclusively expatriate branch.35
Finally, there is the case of Mexico. For Engels in 1849 the US conquest of northern Mexico was 'waged wholly and solely in the interest of civilisation', particularly because the 'energetic Yankees'--unlike the 'lazy Mexicans'--would bring about the 'rapid exploitation of the California goldmines', and hence for the 'third time in history give world trade a new direction'.36 Subsequent history and research forced them to qualify this assessment. With the American Civil War looming, Marx wrote in 1861 that in 'the foreign, as in domestic, policy of the United States, the interests of the slaveholders served as the guiding star'. The seizure of northern Mexico had in fact made it possible to 'impose slavery and with it the rule of the slaveholders' not only in Texas but later in what are now New Mexico and Arizona.37 The benefits that came with California were compromised by the 'barbarity' of slavery's extension.
Hardt and Negri's failure to acknowledge Marx's embrace of the Sepoy mutineers allows them to point to his earlier position in 1853 on India as symptomatic of his 'Eurocentrism'. According to them, 'Marx can conceive of history outside of Europe only as moving strictly along the path already travelled by Europe itself'.38 If the suggestion is that Marx intended his description of the emergence of capitalism in Western Europe to be a model for elsewhere, they should know better. In his well known letter to Russian revolutionaries in 1877 Marx rejected just such a spin on his analysis made by a critic who 'insists on transforming my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the general path of development prescribed by fate to all nations, whatever the historical circumstances in which they find themselves'. He then stressed the importance of treating social formations as concrete entities with 'different historical surroundings'. The comparison of these formations can yield key insights but, as Marx warned, 'one will never arrive there by using as one's master key a general historico-philosophical theory, the supreme virtue of which consists in being supra-historical'.39 Marx's point, therefore, constitutes another rejoinder to Hardt and Negri's 'deterministic' Marx. <SNIP>
-- Michael Pugliese