MARX AND ENGELS IN ARIZONA
“My papa is dead.”
“Yes, you said. I’m sorry. Truly. But whoever in your household is taking part in this wretched business needs to be warned off. Do they realize that Joseph Ettor is an anarchist? That means, Rosa, he doesn’t believe either in God or the law. He’s”–she lowered her voice and her head and said, almost in a whisper–“he’s a Marxist.”
–Bread and Roses by Katherine Paterson
BACKGROUND:
In the middle of the nineteenth century, with the struggles against Slavery and for the rights of the working class intensifying, the two men did something unusual: they identified with the poor and dispossessed, with the exploited and the impoverished, rather than with the rich and powerful and the entrenched powers of their day. They threw their lot in with the rising tide of democratic revolutionary fervor sweeping through Europe to fight for human rights for all working people everywhere!
Yes, they consciously chose a path that would in time get them and their followers denounced as wild-eyed radicals. In passing, it should be noted that Marx held a doctorate which could have led to a professorship had he so chosen to be part of the Status Quo, but he did not. He could read and write in several languages other than German, including English, French, Greek, and Russian.
Marx would later spend twenty years at the British Museum researching his views on historical development and class struggle. Engels was not as formally well-educated as his friend but was so widely read that he was considered one of the most knowledgeable men of his era.
They are not always easy to read; the style of the day produced long sentences embedded in even longer passages; there are entire pages with no paragraphs! While there are passages of Marx and Engels that require considerable fortitude to comprehend, both men occasionally simplified their philosophy’s complexity with shorter pungent expressions, such as:
- “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains!”
- “Philosophers have only described the world; the point is to change it.”
- “Labor in a white skin cannot be free while labor in a black skin is branded.”
A list of specific demands, such as limiting the work day to ten hours and free universal education for all, first appears in their revolutionary 1848 Manifesto.
Marx also worked to support President Lincoln and Union during the American Civil War. To support the fight to end slavery, he helped lead the effort among British workers to refuse to process cotton from the South as part of an organized boycott. These workers would let the looms of the mills fall idle, even at the cost of their own livelihood.
Marx (as secretary of the International Workingmen’s Association) once wrote to President Lincoln offering encouragement; Lincoln replied in kind, acknowledging the sacrifice the British workers were making in the greater cause of freedom.
Their views grew out of the actual struggles of their own day. Their writings, to which the sages of Arizona’s thought police take such umbrage, were closely connected with the great movements of the nineteenth century for freedom for Black slaves, for equality for women, for emancipation of the serfs of Russia (1861) and the most oppressed classes generally, lost in poverty and deprived of the political rights enjoyed by the upper social classes.
The lives of these two men should not be simplified or caricatured to such an extent as to become unrecognizable—if the educators and politicians of Arizona had received a better education themselves, perhaps they would not have to struggle to understand this point.
CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE
The author has no intention of turning this essay into a treatise defending the views of Marx and Engels but merely wishes to point out they expressed a serious point of view for the mid-19th century. This radical new viewpoint identified strongly with the popular uprisings just then reaching a combustible stage in continental Europe during the late 1840’s.
(Many of the refugees from the crushed rebellions fled to America, some to play an important role in the coming Civil War and in American society more generally, bringing with them a fiery spirit to rekindle democratic passions.)
Both men supported social movements for justice in America–nor did they ignore the stirrings for independence in India and elsewhere. One need not agree with every precept they authored to acknowledge the relevance of their thinking for understanding some of the fissures, frictions, and fracking points within today’s society.
Critical historical analysis is necessary for understanding the development and complexity of modern society. The writings of Marx and Engels suggest that such study will produce a quite incomplete understanding of history if it fails to include propertied class arrangements.
Most writers ignore the existence of distinct social classes and the antagonisms that exist between them; not Marx and Engels. If they are still studied, it is because of the depth and cogency of their thought based on real life struggles for human rights in their own day and time.
Besides their analytical accomplishments, readers should recognize the value of pithier literary formulations which make them eminently worthy of quoting on occasion—yes, even today. They were humanists as well as revolutionaries who expressed themselves on a wide range of topics, returning to their main theme time and time again: the exploitative class nature of capitalism.
They concluded that there was a historical need for the working class to transform existing society into a socialist society that would eliminate such exploitation once and for all.
That was their dream and their work of a lifetime. Whether we find such thoughts inspiring today and historically predictive or not, the fact remains both men strove with all their might to address the misery and poverty they saw all around them.
They wished to help end social ills such as war and militarism, discrimination and racism, poverty and oppression: social phenomena that cut lives short. They fought for a revamped society where the majority of human beings could begin new lives liberated from the shackles of oppression in order to enjoy lives of freedom, dignity, and creativity.
They are quoted for their analysis of class struggle as a motive force in history; they are studied for their description of the historical causes that gave rise to modern forms of inequality and injustice.
They are read, and well-quoted, for their visions of a brighter future in which all great humanity is liberated in order for the working class—the common people–to enjoy the dawning of a new and better day.
The governors and public school superintendents of Arizona will come and go, the prejudices against minorities will rise and fall within the state, but the analysis of these two men will remain.
Their writings help students understand the class nature of the struggle behind the political roles these conservative lawmakers have adopted for themselves.
Indeed, Marx and Engels helped developed a new historical viewpoint that will remain with us long after the noise from Arizona’s self-appointed censors has crested and subsided.
It may seem that the events of Arizona have nothing in common with these two nineteenth century thinkers, but that’s the point they keep missing in Arizona, isn’t it?
Or, put another way, perhaps that’s the connection the Arizona lawmakers have gone to great lengths to bury; they want to ensure that no teacher or student ever makes such a connection within Mexican-American Studies!
Such classes, sadly, may be defunct now, but valuable independent ideas are not so easily eliminated. As Dr. King noted, “Truth crushed to earth will rise again!”
Historically speaking, if we take the long view, the Arizona Legislators still remain on a collision course with the predictions of Marx and Engels. None of their little bigoted temper tantrums in the state legislature will change this truth one iota. Wait and see!