Marx-Engels Correspondence 1862
Marx To Engels In Manchester
Source: MECW Volume 41, p. 388;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, Stuttgart, 1913, and in full in MEGA, Berlin, 1930.
A Note from History Is A Weapon: It has come to our attention that this page is very popular with right-wingers who delight in Marx and Engel’s use of racial slurs to discredit Marxist thought. Unfortunately, Marx and Engels were Europeans of the nineteenth century and in that period of time, racism was commonplace and permeated the political, scientific, religious, literary, and social spheres. Marx contained multitudes: there are other letters from Marx that, for example, congratulate Abraham Lincoln on his re-election as “the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.” This isn’t an excuse for Marx or Engels’ racism, but a challenge to all of us: for the left, we must create a revolutionary marxism that demands a totalizing liberation of all from any and all oppressors in the same way that capitalism steels itself in racism, heterosexism, colonialism, and patriarchy; for the right, maybe don’t limit yourself to a cynical ctrl-F for the N word and dismiss all marxist thought as racist because Marx and Engels had flaws.
We who would overthrow the kingdom need…
