[PEN-L:8691] Re: Marx and 19th century racism

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It is undeniable that racism is both a Western invention and a virus.
Associated with racism is a sense of scientific righteousness, that objective
observation necessarily leads to racist conclusions.  This association has not
disappeared in the 20th century and there are no signs that it is heading for
extinction in the 21st century.

I submit that imperialism is causally linked to racism.  When a European nation
appropriates European territories with European population, its occupational
policies are very different than those on non-European territories with
non-European population.

It is interesting to read Tang dynasty court documents on foreign lands.  They
read much like the writings of Marco Polo, with no sense of racist superiority,
only cultural difference.

The difference between Marx and Hegel/Kant, in my opinion, is that while all
were products of a racist culture, Marx sympathized with the oppressed while
Hegel/Kant regard underdevelopment as a result of a deficient faculty and
weakness as deserving oppression.  In fact, Hegel made this point repeatedly:
that the fear of being oppress should motivate non European people to lift
themselves toward national development.  So to Hegel, oppression has a
positive function of history.  In that sense, Hegel/Kant are read by nonwhites
to modify their cultural passivity toward unwelcome oppression instilled in
them by Buddhist acceptance.  As racism came to Asia from the West, militant
resistance to racism also came to Asia from the West.

American racism is different the 19th century European racism in that not only
does American racism is not intellectual, but institutional.  It regards
nonwhites not only as inferior, but that such inferiority forms the basis of of
American socioeconomic institutions, such as slavery, race laws on marriage and
occupation and segregation.  As such, American society considers the struggle
against racism both a threat against American values and a clear and present
danger to American institutions.

Henry C.K. Liu

Louis Proyect wrote:

> >I think it would be hard to find any major European thinker before the
> >twentieth century who did not write vile racist claptrap.  Marx may have
> >been better than some, but his comment (whose cite I can't recall at the
> >moment) about the "abundance" of the tropics inducing sloth and being
> >responsible for the lower level of economic development of the tropics
> >borders on VRC.
> >
> >Peter
>
> There is an important distinction. Marx and Engels wrote racist statements
> in their private correspondence. Tariq Ali made an interesting comment on
> this when he was touring NYC a while back. In the 1800s there were no
> telephones, so letters were the sole means of communication. If Marx called
> Lafargue a nigger or made disparaging remarks about Jews, he wasn't writing
> for posterity. Kant, on the other hand, was giving public lectures at a
> university filled with stenographers.
>
> There is an element of racism in Marx and Engels, but this has more to do
> with the general political inheritance of 18th century social science.
> Europe was considered more civilized than Asia, which was steeped in a
> backward mode of production. There was nothing racial per se here, but I
> agree strongly with Blaut that we are dealing with implicit racism. The
> best thing about Marx and Engels is that they provided a methodology which
> would allow a critique of all forms of racism to be mounted. On the other
> hand, 19th century idealist philosophy was the handmaiden of imperialism
> and helped to influence reactionary ideology in the 20th century. The main
> inheritance of idealism is that ideas determine material reality, rather
> than the other way around. This tends to bolster the status quo.
>
> Louis Proyect
>
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)