Marx's niggers
Sir: It is ironic that the word 'nigger', employed as a term of abuse (Letters, 30 June), was a favourite of both Marx and Engels — the mentors of many of those who have turned the concept of racial equality into a theatre of the absurd.
For example, on 26 April 1887 Engels wrote of Paul Lafargue (who was a candidate for the Paris municipal council district which contained the zoo): 'Paul, the candidate of the Jardin des Plantes — and the animals ... being in his quality as a nigger a degree nearer to the rest of the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district.' Marx wrote of 'The Jewish Nigger Lassalle ... [who] descends from the Negroes who had joined Moses' exodus from Egpyt (assuming his mother or grandmother on the paternal side had not interbred with a nigger).' Or again, on 7 August 1866 Marx commended the works of P. Tremaux to Engels, saying that the author had proved 'that the common negro type is only a degeneration of a much higher one.'
Why are the activists of the race relations industry not demanding the removal of the writings of Marx and Engels from our municipal libraries, or, indeed, from the counters of Collet's Bookshop?
Thom Robinson
114a Victoria Park Road, London E9
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