Re: [Marxism] Richard Rodriguez, Karl Marx, and California

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> It's pretty astounding to me that Rodgriguez dropped Marx's name at all 
> but the peculiarity of the statement he attributed to the old man was even 
> more baffling.
>
> Paul


From ch. 7 of Franz Mehring's biography of Karl Marx:

The first three numbers of the [Neue Rheinische] Revue also contained an 
amusing contrast to this, but it was one not without its own tragic upshot. 
It was the sketch of a petty-bourgeois revolution which Engels drew in his 
description of the Reich Constitution campaign in Germany. The reviews of 
the month, which were drawn up by Marx and Engels jointly, dealt chiefly 
with the course of economic events. In the February number they referred to 
the discovery of the Californian gold fields as a fact of ?even greater 
importance than the February revolution? and one which would have even 
greater and more far-reaching results than the discovery of America: ?A 
coastal stretch of 30 degrees latitude, one of the most beautiful and 
fertile areas in the world, and practically unpopulated up to the present, 
is now turning before our eyes into a rich and civilized country thickly 
populated with men of all races, from the Yankee to the Chinese, the Negro 
to the Indian and the Malayan, the Creole and Mestizo to the European. 
Californian gold is pouring in streams over America and over the Asiatic 
coasts of the Pacific, sweeping the unwilling barbarian peoples into the 
orbit of world trade, into the province of civilization. For the second 
time world trade is receiving a new alignment ... Thanks to the gold of 
California and to the tireless energy of the Yankees, both coasts of the 
Pacific will soon be as thickly populated, as highly industrialized and as 
open for trade as the coast from Boston to New Orleans is now. The Pacific 
Ocean will then play the role the Atlantic Ocean is playing now and the 
role that the Mediterranean played in the days of classical antiquity and 
in the middle ages ? the role of the great water highway of world 
communications ? and the Atlantic Ocean will sink to the level of a great 
lake such as the Mediterranean is to-day. The one chance which the 
civilized countries of Europe have to avoid falling into the same 
industrial, commercial and political dependence as Italy, Spain and 
Portugal lies in a social revolution whilst there is still time. Such a 
revolution should transform the mode of production and intercourse in 
accordance with the needs of production arising from the nature of modern 
productive forces, thus making possible the development of new forces of 
production which would maintain the superiority of European industry and 
counteract the disadvantages of the geographical situation.? All that 
needed to be added to this magnificent perspective, as its authors were 
soon to discover, was that the chances of any immediate revolution 
foundered on the discovery of the Californian gold fields.

full: http://www.marxists.org/archive/mehring/1918/marx/ch07.htm

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