/lit/ - Literature

>wah wah people from the old days were racist

who cares

Those are his letters, yeah. And if he posted on 4chan, and we had access to that, he'd find a lot more than that. Of course, how men talk informally, in letters and on 4chan isn't properly a reflection of their actual attitudes. In fact, men are often inclined to talk as scandalously as possible for the sheer pleasure of breaking propriety. And I'm sure Marx had to deal with a lot of propriety running with the social justice crowd, and he himself was probably one of those folks who was always challenging white supremacy when someone espoused it, and I'm sure he wanted a break from that sometimes.

Since Marx wasn't a Christian, I doubt he thought there was anything immoral or sinful about personal jokes.

>>6586700
kek all this unethical backpedaling and apologism

This is somewhat embarrassing but not terribly - I can't think of a writer of the time who I wouldn't be surprised to see letters like this from. Even Mark Twain probably sloughed off some racial slurs when he figured nobody could hear him.

But I don't know what >>6586700 is doing trying to spin it as a positive for Marx, that's some bullshit

>>6587108
I don't care about positive image of Marx's writings, let alone Marx's positive image, it's just that I and many posters on this board say shit like that, I don't really think there's anything wrong with it apart from being immature. I'm quite sure Marx wouldn't have made such inane comments if he thought people would be reading it long after he was dead. Then again, I'm not a liberal.

>take letters written in German using the racial language common at the time
>translate it into English with as edgy a bias as possible
>???
>profit

The original letters used the word "Neger," which can be used pejoratively in modern German but was also used for simple "negro" at the time, and was the preferred noun to describe black people in polite company.

Well for one thing, it is not a reflection of his philosophy/thought in any sense.

>>6587108
>Even Mark Twain
What the fuck, of course he was racist. Just because he had a bit of compassion, doesn't mean he was a civil rights activist.

"It was bad times man" is a bullshit copout. You think he questioned the very foundations of society, but then turned into a fucking backwards bavarian beerhall racist as he put his pen down? please

I don't see why you were surprised when Marxism itself is and always has been racist (paternalistic at best and genocidal at worst).

>>6587159
>Well for one thing, it is not a reflection of his philosophy/thought in any sense.
This as well. Schopenhauer, for example, preached asceticism and kindness when he was actually a mean guy who seduced women and drank from time to time. Here's a quote from him:

>It is therefore just as little necessary for the saint to be a philosopher as for the philosopher to be a saint; just as it is not necessary for a perfectly beautiful person to be a great sculptor, or for a great sculptor to be himself a beautiful person. In general, it is a strange demand on a moralist that he should commend no other virtue than that which he himself possesses. To repeat abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts the whole inner nature of the world, and thus to deposit it as a reflected image in permanent concepts always ready for the faculty of reason, this and nothing else is philosophy."

>>6587177
Marxism is fatiguingly anti racist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Robinson_%28engineer%29

>>6587159
Neither is it a reflection of racism anymore than saying "he sounds like an old lady" is a reflection of aegism and racism.

>>6587190
It does seem to reflect "racial realism." He implies that their are inherent psychological differences between the races.

>>6587217
there*
fug

>>6587186
It's only antiracist in the idea that dividing us in subsections of society only weakens the class spirit, but he presents no real ideas related to inherent rejection between different tribes clashing with a modern state.

Considering he was the very definition of a self-hating Jew, I'd say yes.

>>6585850
you do undsertand that anti-racism is social construct that only a few people want to impose on the rest of the population ?

>>6587154
This.

>>6587167
I don't even know what position this post is taking

>surprised when reading some letters
>on The Jewish Question exists
How?

So, if I call OP a huge faggot, who got aids from taking it up the ass from at least 1000 different dudes, am I being homophobic? Can you even be sure I have a problem with promiscous gay men who had the misfortune of contracting hiv?

>>6587154
Pretty sure Marx actually used nigger. Because he really, really couldn't stand that Lasalle guy.

>>6587502
Dude, did you even read that text?

>>6587180

that's because Schopenhauer was a real motherfucker and the best philosophical mind in German history.

meanwhile Marx was a miserable little Jewish intellectual who only excelled at spending other people's money

>>6587266
this, it's bullshit. marx is just pointing out that this guy is annoying in a persistent way in the most offensive way possible as a joke. jews are whiny, black people are loud AND THIS GUY IS A JEWNIGGER
yeah, it's not nice, but if you're going to be nice your whole life that's pretty fucking boring

>>6585850
>fucking nigger kike
Kek.
Still, racism was pretty normal at those times. And since Marx was really mad at Lassalle he called him a nigger kike. Is he racist because of that?
Those were racial slurs, but does that imply Marx was racist?

>>6587154
Yeah. Look at south america. Many people still use "negro", but in spanish negro means black man, so there's nothing racist unless you imply being offensive. Of course Marx would have been using it as a racial slur, but then I really don't care that Marx is seen as a racist faggot or not.

>>6585850
>you now realise people talk like this when nobody will read what they write

Yikes, who would say something like that!

I'm anti-racist, I've led an anti-racist campaign in my small city, yet if you count how many times I've posted "nigger" or "kike" my whole nice guy who never insults image would have been fucked up.

The thing is, if you use racial slurs you are kind of racist since you are implying that being a nigger or a kike is something bad. It doesn't imply that you hate them or consider any other race to be superior. When you are angry, you act irrationally.

I can call you an idiot, but that doesn't mean I want to holocaust all low-IQ people because of that.

Before someone thinks I want to cover Marx image, I give a shit about Marx. I've only read Marx' Das Kapital, and just the first volume.

>>6587596
youre alright

>>6587596

>people talk like this when nobody will read what they write

I'd wager most non-racist people don't say "nigger" and "kike" regularly, even in private, but whatever makes you feel better.

>>6587647
You don't know many non-racist people then. Or maybe you just live in a place where everyone is anxious all the time about the person they talk to thinking they're racist, idk.

>>6587154
Even if that is true

> as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify

is still pretty damning.

>>6587152
>Then again, I'm not a liberal.
Fascism is just liberalism in decay.

>>6587154
>>6587401
>>6587582

I don't know why you are so retarded to not look it up, he in fact used the word 'nigger' in the German original text (see http://www.freiwilligfrei.info/archives/4576).).

You're a little late, although attacking Marx as racist is old news, the new cool thing is to say he was sexist and Engels a homophobe.

Pretty comical how liberals obsessed with identity politics and "fixing" history are managing to do what no conservative could: get left-wing circles to abandon Marx.

Btw just so you guys know there are no words harsh enough to describe Lassalle. Through his deals with Bismarck he almost single-handedly created the most efficient template of social liberalism as a tool against radical socialism we've seen. His legacy is almost as alive as Marx's. He is, with Orwell, the socialist of the rich.

>>6588258
>with Orwell, the socialist of the rich
>with Orwell
care to elaborate on that?

>>6587152
oytie you are 'fatiguingly' stupid to think that there is nothing wrong with racism beyond 'immaturity.'

>>6587814
Are you >implying that black people's hair and head shapes are not different to white peoples'?

>>6588268
well he is right that there is a difference between saying racist things publicly or in letters.

also
>oytie
disgusting

>>6588267
It's nonsense. Orwell, unlike certain other prominent Marxists, actually had faith in working-class individuals, and for that reason was strong democratic in leaning. Stalinists implicitly believe that working-class individuals are just stupid sheep. I guarantee that Orwell had more contact with the working-class than Marx or indeed the poster that you quoted.

>>6588279
That's what I thought. He might have a point about Lasalle, though.

>>6587553
>Schopenhauer
>best German philosophical mind
Pick one and only one

>>6588279
Oh yes, he had all the faith on working class individuals as long as he never interacted with them. He was a socialist from safe distance, more suited for the pages of the Partisan Review than actual grassroots workers' movements, not to mentionm an informer to McCarthy-like (that faithful democrat) anti-communist organizations, harming the reputations of dangerous Stalinists such as E. H. Carr and Isaac Deutscher.

>I guarantee that Orwell had more contact with the working-class than Marx

And I guarantee that your guarantee comes from nothing but blind speculation.

>>6588278
So he is, isn't that marvellous. However, I was taking issue with something else he said. Thanks anyway, bud.

Also, who gives a fuck - take your greekcocksuckingpseudointellectuallism elsewhere.

>>6588321
Well maybe he had witnessed the dangers of stalinism in revolutionary Barcelona, where he also could hardly have avoided contact with the empowered working class?

>modern college-educated people are actually unaware of how normalized racism was prior to ww2 or the 20th century

>>6588321
>he never interacted with them.
>from safe distance

Demonstrably false. Have you even read anything he wrote outside of Animal Farm?

>not to mentionm an informer to McCarthy-like (that faithful democrat) anti-communist organizations

He was a socialist and a patriot. He lived in a time of war. It's not necessarily anti-socialist to find the Soviet conception of communism, which is a form of totalitarianism, more threatening than the form of capitalism that existed in the UK at the time. Orwell saw that Soviet communism (totalitarianism) did not empower workers but in fact subjugated and disenfranchised them even more viscously than capitalism did.

>>6588327
First, if he had only learned the dangers of Stalinism in the late 30's he was not only a bad political theorist, a mediocre writer and a shit person but also a not very perspicacious one.

Second, the immense majority of the people he attacked had no ties with Stalinism whatsoever but that's besides the point.

Third, he didn't just reject Stalinism, Leninism and what have you, he used his influence to help destroy anything to the Left of labour - that is, any workers' movement that actually fought for autonomy and instead advocated wishful dependency upon bourgeois parties financed and sustained by everything that he, on paper, was against. This is not only betrayal if you consider how many people have to help you reach prominence as an artist if you're a socialist but also the type of political strategy that has lead to nothing but impotence. This is why he's the Socialist of the rich, he's one of the people that whenever a time of crisis arrive you start hearing a lot about, just like "didn't MLK say..." opens almost every stupid sentence on the news when black people get uppity.

>>6588341
>He was a socialist and a patriot

Contradicition

>He lived in a time of war.

That was after the war and hardly justifies it

> It's not necessarily anti-socialist to find the Soviet conception of communism, which is a form of totalitarianism, more threatening than the form of capitalism that existed in the UK at the time.

Funny thing is you could be apologizing for Orwell or McCarthyism in this one. So he, "unlike certain other prominent Marxists, actually had faith in working-class individuals" as long as they agreed with him, otherwise let's hope the government handles them. That positions resembles a Stalinist frame of mind a lot, I don't know if that irony has occurred to you.

>>6586700
Marx was raised in a Protestant household, dumbass. His father converted because of antisemitism.

Take off the name forever.

>Go to google
>"nigger" site:www.marxists.org/
>Will this triggering never end?

His nose looks mad niggerish. look at that flat brim. Besides almost everything he said was stupid as shit when looked at in todays context.

>>6588396
Where did this idea that the people who use Trigger Warnings and Marxists are the same group? If we had a venn diagram they'd barely intersect

>>6588362
>Contradicition

No it isn't. You act as if socialism was invented by Marx and Lenin. In fact, a sense of national identity is often strongest amongst working-class people.

His stance was not difficult to understand: he was pro-democracy and anti-totalitarianism. Totalitarianism with the veneer of communism was no more acceptable to him than capitalism. To him, a socialist directly or indirectly advocating totalitarianism was a class traitor.

>>6588402
Yeah, as someone who holds some Marxist views, I fucking despise SJWs.

>>6588401
>Besides almost everything he said was stupid as shit when looked at in todays context.

Literally no one who has read any of his work would say such a thing. Educate yourself, moron.

>>6586700
Oytie you're an apologist faggot. Get the fuck out you cuck dunce

>>6588433
Except everyone who isn't a teenage "political activist" who's mum drives them to protest parking meters as oppression. Literally noone who understands marxism has ever thought is was a practically good idea. Read Lenin's letters

>"While the theory is... dogshit... I believe we can win enough comrades to our cause and adopt a more realistic less stupid alternative when we replace the bourgeois establishment."

>>6588425
>No it isn't. You act as if socialism was invented by Marx and Lenin. In fact, a sense of national identity is often strongest amongst working-class people.
Unless you are going a pseudo national socialist route it is as internationalism is one of the key points of the project and reactionary thought is also often strongest amongst working class people.

>>6588433
>he thinks a man that believed in 'primitive communism' was worth listening to

anon what's it like being fucking retarded? do you have a tumblr account?

>>6588456
Yep, confirmed for having never read Marx. Pick up a copy of Capital, mate; it's pretty good.

>>6588469
Orwell holds the view that nations are not purely political apparatuses but organic communities bound together by a shared history and culture, and by that definition they do not preclude global emancipation nor vice versa.

>>6586700
>marx was only racist because he was so not-racist

>>6588402

google anime marxist

>>6588504
>but organic communities bound together by a shared history and culture
Yeah and the problem with that view is it ends up serving the ruling class by minimizing major differences in the population such as the "heroes" of the nations being the same guys who oppressed the working class or how the ruling class picked and choose cultural winners.

>>6585850
>Is this 'normal' stuff to say in 1860 or was Marx in fact a racist, even considering the historical background?

Yes, and yes.

>>6588425
>No it isn't. You act as if socialism was invented by Marx and Lenin. In fact, a sense of national identity is often strongest amongst working-class people.

And I wonder who you think invented socialism if your idea of it is that "working people do X, therefore X is good" clearly it must not allow for a critique of Ideology at all.

>His stance was not difficult to understand: he was pro-democracy and anti-totalitarianism. Totalitarianism with the veneer of communism was no more acceptable to him than capitalism. To

I feel like you'll just repeat the same point again and again so I think I'm done w/ you m8

>>6588541
You're implicitly reducing the working-class to a bunch of mindless sheep again. The ruling class may economically dominate them but working-class individuals are perfectly capable of thinking for themselves and defining their own values.

>>6588593
>your idea of it is that "working people do X, therefore X is good"

No, I only believe that working-class individuals are capable of thinking for themselves and determining their own values. If those values do not directly or indirectly contradict the wider emancipation of their class, then I believe they are entitled to them.

>I feel like you'll just repeat the same point again and again so I think I'm done w/ you m8

I'm not arguing with you, I'm explaining something to you.

>>6588596
>You're implicitly reducing the working-class to a bunch of mindless sheep again.
No I'm accounting for their ignorance and the way they are brought up. Your ability to "think for yourself" is limited by your knowledge and upbringing and going by research from political science they are staggeringly ignorant.

>>6588596
>working-class individuals are perfectly capable
demonstrably false

>>6588619
In other words, you think your bourgeois values are right and their proletarian values are wrong. You don't want to emancipate the working-class, you want to control them. Orwell's belief (and my own) was simply that we must end the economic and political oppression of the working-class. Leninist-Stalinist communism is even more suffocatingly oppressive than laissez-faire capitalism because it oppresses its people culturally also.

>>6588620
If you believe that, fine, but don't pretend to be our ally.

>>6587596
>controle of the mode of production
Stalin Detected.

>>6588645
>In other words, you think your bourgeois values are right and their proletarian values are wrong.

class consciousness does not arise organically from class structure itself, it often must be inserted from the outside. If that wasn't the case, no class society would ever last long. All the tools that shape the character of the working class in any class society such as the schooling system, the religious institutions, the artistic values and other means of psychological discipline are by design created by representatives of the upper classes

"proletarian values" are often the same as bourgeois values because ideology itself, which is the connective tissue between diverging class interests, is nothing but the projected consciousness of the upper class: those who own the culture industry own culture itself

"controlling the working class" can be achieved both by force or by the ballot if the choice of candidates is on the hands of owning classes, the material means of government do not belong to the people

soviet communism was also a system in the process of writing itself, adapting to conditions it met, including those (discussed to exhaustion) of war, dependence on foreign capital, economic isolation, encirclement and so on. I'm sure that if the Soviet took place in a condition enjoying the benefits of hegemony and interdependence, it would have turned out completely different

>>6588645
>In other words, you think your bourgeois values are right and their proletarian values are wrong.
No, the problem with "proletarian values" is they may not be proletarian at all as for example in the US south the lower level white laborers didn't come up with the idea of racism but after the ruling class bored it into them they defended it just as strongly. Your problem is like many you don't take ignorance seriously. The working class could of easily emancipated themselves by now by building cooperatives or mass mutual aid association but they didn't because they were either ignorant of those options, ignorant of how to run a business or those type of organizations, or absorbed the racism, sexism, and classim in their society splintering the working class.

>>6588649

i hoped nobody here gave you the impression that we pretend to be such a thing. we are the very opposite of your "allies" just like you're the very opposite of what you claim to be

>>6588504
>Orwell holds the view that nations are not purely political apparatuses but organic communities bound together by a shared history and culture, and by that definition they do not preclude global emancipation nor vice versa.

so orwell's concept of a nation is the dictionary definition of "nation"? i hope his head didn't hurt after arriving at such an insight

>>6588645
Not sure why people are arguing with you. We must have a bunch of Bolsheviks on this board.

>>6588713

i've noticed that the people who defend the sanctity, efficiency and fairness of liberal democracy never have criticisms of its plutocratic elements as much as they have of the few atomized, radical interpretations of it that exist out there

apparently defending democracy from the effects of culture industry, militarization, inequality and the corporate financing is not as pertinent as defending it from the perpetual threats of an imaginary Bolshevism

>>6585850
>racism is bad

Keep telling yourself that, buddy.

>>6588682
>>6588686
I think you are underestimating the primacy of actual lived experience in determining people's values. Every human individual, barring outlier cases who are regarded as literally insane, is endowed with enough sense and agency to determine something as elementary as their own values. Generalisations like racism arise out of inexperience or bad experience, not from prescriptions. Engaging in idealogical warfare against capitalism is necessarily totalitarian because it is pre- and proscriptive. The whole point of revolution is to liberate the individuals that constitute the working-class and give them control over their own lives, not to substitute one externally imposed, therefore limiting, ideology with a new one. The working-class does not need to be told how to think, it just needs its actual gaps in knowledge filled.

>>6588401
Dont marx's eyes look surprisingly like zizek's? You think zizek is a reincarnation of Karl? Maybe this whole letter was the type of dark humor and vulgarity that zizek employs to break tension.

>>6588732
>i've noticed that the people who defend the sanctity, efficiency and fairness of liberal democracy

Orwell espouses democratic socialism, not liberal democracy.

>>6588700
Yes, as opposed to the 'global communist' belief that nation states are merely a consequence of a class based mode of production, i.e. solely political apparatuses.

>>6588792
that people know what's best for themselves is true, that does not imply that by default they know enough of the machineries of government and economy to know how to achieve that.

examples of this are numerous. did the people under roosevelt who chose unions sponsored by the government and corporations over autonomous ones know that the minute they deserted their grassroots organizations the "benefits" of having links with politicians and businessmen would be gone forever? do the people who vote welfare out when tactics and schemes spoused by the likes of milton friedman that tell politicians to block funding for government programs and help provide with cheaper private initiatives are executed know that the minute they lose interest in defending such system, the "alternative" will drop its altruism altogether? we also have to address here the old question that voting is not the materialization of demands that you know are "the best for you" - they can only come into existence if they find common ground with the interests of those who generate money instead of those who earn it.

and yes, generalisations like racism can come from inexperience but inexperience must first be exploited by those who can benefit from it. but I honestly doubt I need to tell you that because I doubt you have such a naive view of how well the current system functions, and I'm sure you're more critical of it than you appear to be now when your pride is not at stake.

>all these butthurt kikes

Kek

>>6588792
>Every human individual, barring outlier cases who are regarded as literally insane, is endowed with enough sense and agency to determine something as elementary as their own values
This sounds nice but it has already been ripped about by books like "The Rationalizing Voter".

>Generalisations like racism arise out of inexperience or bad experience, not from prescriptions.
If racism wasn't the most intense among working class people in places people spent the most time elaborating on such ideas you may have a point.

>control over their own lives
Such control requires knowledge that they nor Orwell had so you have guys like this one http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1886024 asks why aren't there more labor managed firms given the advantages they have when the answer is simply because they are ignorant of such options.

>>6588792
>Engaging in idealogical warfare against capitalism is necessarily totalitarian because it is pre- and proscriptive.

I'm glad to see you at least dropped the ''I'm a socialist too'' act

>>6585850
Racism is a class based socio-economic system. Nowhere in his writings does Marx advocate any class systems, nevermind racism. Marx in fact wrote a congratulatory letter to Abraham Lincoln in which states in absolute clarity that racism's abolition is absolutely necessary.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm

As already noted, the translation of Neger to Nigger is a bit loose and he writes with incredible anger over this single person trying to take advantage of him. He actually seems to have more to say about Jews but, of course, labeling Marx as an antisemite might be difficult considering he was, himself, a Jew. That said, his comment about "nigger-like" behavior and stock is racist. As it turns out, Marx was a human being and not everything he ever said was correct or above criticism. Even though anti-Marxists are vocally obsessed with the idea, Marxists have never thought of Marx as an infallible prophet.

>>6588849
>This sounds nice but it has already been ripped about by books like "The Rationalizing Voter".

I haven't read that book, but I think it's self-evident that voting in a socialist democracy is a different kettle of fish to voting in a liberal democracy. And representative democracy is of course not the only form of democracy.

>If racism wasn't the most intense among working class people in places people spent the most time elaborating on such ideas you may have a point.

It's often most intense among working-class people in the most multicultural areas, which would point towards "bad experience".

>Such control requires knowledge that they nor Orwell had

Did you miss the part where I said "The working-class ... just needs its actual gaps in knowledge filled"?

>>6588865
>I'm glad to see you at least dropped the ''I'm a socialist too'' act

I already said that I am against Leninist-Stalinist communism, so if you hold that to be the only "true" form of socialism, then by your definition I am not one. I merely advocate the emancipation of the working class and oppose totalitarianism in all its guises.

>>6588865
>Self-described Orwellian "Leftist" pretending to be socialist when he openly states laissez-faire capitalism is better than actually existing socialism because "it oppresses people culturally also".

>>6588941
>I already said that I am against Leninist-Stalinist communism, so if you hold that to be the only "true" form of socialism, then by your definition I am not one. I merely advocate the emancipation of the working class and oppose totalitarianism in all its guises.

So you support "socialism" as long as it comes into existence through the apparatus of power of capitalism, 'kay, gotcha

>>6588865
Do you not understand what dictatorship of the proletariat is? Do you think the proletariat are going to emancipate themselves by not reversing the role of power against the capitalist dictatorship?

>>6588941
>I haven't read that book, but I think it's self-evident that voting in a socialist democracy is a different kettle of fish to voting in a liberal democracy. And representative democracy is of course not the only form of democracy.
The book is about how people process political and other types of information consciously and unconsciously. The type of democracy is irrelevant. You can find it here http://www.mediafire.com/view/7vgggiq092e45dg/Rationalizing_Voter.pdf

>It's often most intense among working-class people in the most multicultural areas, which would point towards "bad experience".
Not so. The point of books like "Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks" (http://www.mediafire.com/view/4jjc8avuukl64z5/Ethnic_Boundary_Making;_Institutions,_Power,_Networks.pdf) was to find out why does ethnicity matter in certain societies and contexts but not in others.

>>6588941
>Did you miss the part where I said "The working-class ... just needs its actual gaps in knowledge filled"?
Which will mostly likely require some sort of vanguard or leader.

>>6588991

You're preaching to the choir

>>6585850
Did he really write "nigger" though

>>6588968
No, I just think that the working class can be revolutionised without being brainwashed or being put under the yoke. You treat communism like a package deal, that for it to materialise every working person has to be politically uniform. I think that they only need to be on accord on the essential anti-capitalist theory and praxis, and that that will occur naturally once they are adequately informed and capitalism inevitably devours itself. The totalitarian bent of Leninist-Stalinist communism is the reason why "actually existing communism" always fails spectacularly.

>>6588996
>Which will mostly likely require some sort of vanguard or leader.

Sure, and their role is to inform and galvanise the working-class, not to control them.

I will make a note of your book recommendations.

>>6589112
>Sure, and their role is to inform and galvanise the working-class, not to control them.
Some amount of control will be necessary in the short term because of their ignorance and merely informing people only goes so far. As long as said control is limited, not entirely focused at a central point, is recognized as a temporary thing that will be gradually done away with, and people have ways to remove those in power things should be fine.

>>6587159
It does reflect his ignorance of history.