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I have begun work on an homage to this comrade who died recently. The
last communications I got from him were about my CounterPunch article
about Project 1619 that got into the divisions between the Victoria
Woodhull and Friedrich Sorge wings of the First International. Drawing
from Timothy Messer-Kruse, who told me that he has his own article for
CounterPunch on this stuff in the works, I pointed out that Sorge's
views on race were pretty awful.
He told me that he had worked on a book about Karl Marx and racism that
only remained a work in progress. He sent me 3 chapters that I will be
posting as part of the memorial. This is the start of chapter one:
GETTING PAST THE “N” WORD: MARX AND RACISM
“The Jewish Nigger Lassalle, who fortunately departs at the end of this
week, has luckily again lost 5,000 taler in a fraudulent speculation.
The fellow would rather throw his money into the muck then lend it to a
‘friend,’ even if the interest and capital were guaranteed.”
- Marx to Engels, 30 July 1862.
“Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries, would
be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe North America off the
map of the world, and you will have anarchy – the complete decay of
modern commerce and civilization. Cause slavery to disappear and you
will have wiped America off the map of nations.”
– Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy.
Some years ago a friend commented on the problem of talking with a
Christian fundamentalist. She noted that no matter what the initial
subject of the conversation was, say the weather or traffic, sooner or
later as the conversation evolved it was almost certain that the name
“Jesus” was going to be mentioned with testimony about what how he was
really a great guy.
A similar fate all too often awaits readers of books written by devout
Marxists. No matter what the ostensible subject under discussion with
regard to Marx’s view of this or that, time and time again the reader
will discover just how great Karl Marx really was. In fact it is
virtually impossible to read any tome produced in (for example) either
the former East Germany or the Soviet Union that came to any other
conclusion. Needless to say, neither the Russians nor the East Germans
failed to see any irony in the fact that any author who tried to argue
otherwise would never see a word of his argument in print even as both
states assured the readers that they embodied Marx’s democratic heritage
unlike their capitalist scoundrel rivals in the West.
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