Excerpt from: Deconstructing Karl Marx & Communism
Marx’ political activism was geared towards bringing down capitalism so as to end the exploitation of the proletariat. But his intentions were broader, reaching much further. He spoke of liberating mankind as a whole from the stupor of “false consciousness”; from the alienations that twisted the species into being selfish and domineering; and from the limitations that impeded mankind from reaching its full creative potential. Verily, few goals could be more noble than this. Hence, one might think that Marx had nothing but good intentions in mind for mankind, but to judge people solely on the basis of their professed intentions, is rather limited. Marx, in fact, would pay any price to see his vision come to life, even if it meant sacrificing millions of people in a global revolutionary war. You could argue that the victims, technically speaking, wouldn’t be real people – according to Marx’ philosophical view of the world, current humanity consisted of stupified, alienated beings ruled by false consciousness. Only through communism would these creatures be able to transform into real human beings, at one with their “species-nature”. Thus, was not any price for communism a good price?
On June 1st 1848 Marx founded the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, a newspaper radically outspoken against the Prussian and Austrian governments. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung was not simply a hotbed of polemic, it was in fact Europe’s most bellicose publication. Its agenda, as Engels summed it up many years later, consisted of “two main points: a single, indivisible, democratic German Republic, and war with Russia.”
Remembering how the French Revolution had led to the mobilization of the entire French nation, to the dictatorship of the Jacobins, and revolutionary unrest all over Europe, Marx and Engels felt that if only Germany would go to war – preferably with its most “reactionary” neighbor, Russia – somehow the petty backwardness of the German people they were always complaining about would be erased and a new, energetic Jacobin party would arise (they themselves: the Communist League). This party would unify the Germanies (Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Austria...) and lead the proletariat, initiating a revolutionary chain reaction across all of Europe – when the time was right.
As soon as the Neue Rheinische Zeitung was launched, Marx and Engels began their warmongering. On June 7th, the paper mentioned in passing that the German unification could “only arise” as the combined result of an internal “movement” and “war with the East.” Two weeks later: “The Germans, allied with the French and united with them, will wage the war of the West against the East.” Another three weeks after that: “Only a war with Russia is a war of a revolutionary Germany, a war in which it can wash away the sins of the past, in which it can become manly ... and free itself internally as it liberates abroad,” etc., etc. Marx’ and Engels’ arguments were based on a combination of military and historical understandings on the one hand, and a determined xenophobia against the Slavs on the other – a people whom they deemed barely worthy of existence (with exception of the Poles).
“Peoples which have never had a history of their own, which from the time when they achieved the first, most basic steps towards civilization already came under foreign domination, or which were forced to attain a first stage of civilization by means of a foreign yoke, are not viable to achieve any independence...”
(Perhaps Engels forgot that it was the Roman Empire that first brought a high degree of civilization to the Germanic tribes?) In any case, he showed no mercy in his warmongering against the Slavs – he even came out as a proponent of total genocide:
“... in history nothing is achieved without violence and implacable ruthlessness ... it turns out these ‘crimes’ of the Germans and Magyars against the said Slavs are among the best and most praiseworthy deeds our and the Magyar people can boast about in their history.”
“ ... fight [with the Slavs] for annihilation and ruthless terrorism – not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution!”
“All other large and small [Slavic] tribes and peoples have the mission to perish in the revolutionary world storm ... The general war that then breaks out will ... destroy all these little, bullheaded nations so that their very name will vanish. The coming world war will cause not only reactionary classes and dynasties to disappear from the face of the earth, but entire reactionary peoples too. And that too, will be progress.”
Marx, editor-in-chief of the newspaper, never expressed any aversion towards his friend’s ruthless opinions – he had his own fair share of them strapped firmly to his heart. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung (NRZ) had a circulation of about three to six thousand. A total of 301 issues were published before the paper was forced to shut down by the authorities. In its final and blood-red edition of May 19, 1849, Marx openly promised vengeance by means of communist “terror”.
As their later correspondence and writings reveal, the closing of the newspaper had no impact on their desire to see a German-Russian war come about. They supported the Crimean war of 1853-56, but their anger was mainly directed at the Western alliance for waging war against the Russian expansion “half-heartedly.” In 1860 Marx wrote to Lassalle:
“I think you are deceiving yourself about our relationship with Russia ... Everywhere in Germany there is this hatred of Russia, and as early as the first edition of the NRZ we proclaimed that the war against the Russians was the revolutionary mission of Germany. But hating and understanding are two different things.”
Lassalle warned him that his war phantasies might play out differently in real life, as a victory over Russia might not revolutionize or democratize Europe, but instead increase the German monarchy’s popularity. Marx and Engels refused to abandon the idea of war with Russia. In two anonymous pamphlets distributed in 1860, Engels warned that France and Russia might form an alliance against Germany. These pamphlets were so nationalistic in tone and so knowledgeable in military matters that it was widely believed they had been written by a Prussian general, a misconception that much pleased Engels: his knowledge of warfare and military tactics had earned him the nickname “General” among his friends.
When Marx famously called for “a ruthless criticism of all that exists” in a letter to Arnold Ruge, he gave expression to his foremost passion: criticizing. “All that exists” of course includes humankind. Rarely were Marx and Engels caught speaking with affection about peoples, nations or ethnicities (or even friends and acquaintances for that matter), but scorn and criticism they had in abundance. Engels:
“These wretched, ruined fragments of one-time nations, the Serbs, the Bulgars, Greeks and other robber bands ... feel obliged to cut each other’s greedy throats ... the lousy Balkan peoples.”
“Scandinavianism is enthusiasm for the brutal, grimy, pirate-like, Old Norse nationality, for that deep inner life that cannot express its exuberant ideas and feelings with words, but only in deeds, namely in brutality towards women, perpetual drunkenness and tearful sentimentality alternating with wild berserker rage... Obviously, the cruder a nation is ... the more 'Scandinavian' it must be.”
“He is a Slav through and through, sentimental in his frivolity and even in his beastliness, servile and arrogant; and he has nothing of the Englishman save in exaggerated – being a Russian, he must exaggerate – taciturnity.”
Marx:
“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? The practical need, the self-interest. What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Haggling. What is his worldly God? Money.”
“The bourgeois behaves to the institutions of his régime as the Jew does to the law; he circumvents them as often as is practicable in each individual case, but he wants all others to abide by them.”
“This splendid territory [the Balkans] has the misfortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of different races and nationalities, of which it is hard to say which is the least fit for progress and civilization.”
“Russia is a name usurped by the Muscovites. They are not Slavs, do not belong at all to the Indo-German race, but are des intrus [intruders], who must again he hurled back beyond the Dnieper.”
“The Spaniards have already degenerated. But as a degenerated Spaniard, a Mexican is the ideal. All the vices, boasting, loudmouthing and Donquixotry of the Spaniards to the 3rd power, but by no means the solidity they possess.”
“Lafargue has the nasty stigma of the Negro tribe: no sense of shame. By which I mean no modesty about making himself ridiculous.”
“It would seem as though history had first to make this whole people [the Chinese] drunk before it could raise them out of their hereditary stupidity.”
These, then, are the conclusions of Marx the historian. But to say that he was a racist is to not truly understand Karl Marx. His evaluation criterion for individuals and groups was determined by one variable, and one variable alone: are they helping the revolution? If they were not, there was nothing good about them and he would condemn them to oblivion. Given that Marx witnessed no successful communist revolutions come to fruition during his life, he could not but speak badly of most peoples. Yet when an ethnic group behaved like good revolutionaries, he would emerge as their biggest supporter. His utter disdain for the Slavs evaporated as soon as he heard of the strides the Russian revolutionaries had been making, and he was quick to commend their efforts (which included the assassination of the Russian emperor Alexander II). Marx had far less sympathy for Russian exiles like Plekhanov and Axelrod, who opposed terrorism and preferred to focus on propaganda instead of revolutionary force.
“They – mostly people (not all of them) who have left Russia voluntarily – in contrast to the terrorists who put themselves on the line – form the so-called party of propaganda. (To make propaganda in Russia – move to Geneva! What quid pro quo!) These gentlemen are against all political-revolutionary action. Russia must leap with a salto mortale into the anarchist-communist-atheist millennium!”
The phrase seems to reflect his poetry.
“I’ll dive into it, even if it means wrecking the world.”
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