[lbo-talk] Marx and Engels on the lazy Mexicans, Slavs, Scots, Basques, Bretons, native Americans

[Chris Doss]

The assessment of primitive societies doesn't really bother me. What is creepy is the idea of "peoples who are bearers of progress" and "counterrevolutionary peoples." When did "the working class" become "the Germans," Fred? His gloating that one day there will be no Slavs in southern Austria ("not even their names will remain") and description of the Irish as a race of drunks are not pleasant to read either. Or that the oppressed (!) Germans (!) of Austria (!) must use "ruthless terrorism" against the Croatians (!) to liberate themselves.

At any rate, the original question was whether or not M&E viewed industrial "civilized" societies as better than others, which clearly they did. Americans spread civilization and so are progressive; therefore they are justified in taking California from the backward Mexicans, who never did anything with it because they were lazy, ahem, a counterrevolutionary people. How dare Bakunin object to the march of progress in the name of this silly idea of justice.

These views aren't exactly exceptional for 19th-century Enlightenment-types, but they are there.

--- On Fri, 11/7/08, Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:


> Fortunately, M and E had the ability to learn and develop
> their thinking throughout their adult lives, and by the time
> of Marx's ethnological notebooks and  _The Origin of the
> Family, Private Property and the State_, they had a better
> idea of the nature of "primitive" cultures. 
> Engels even added an ethnological footnote to the first
> sentence of _The Manifesto of the Communist Party_
> 
> Charles