Why Marxism Is Racist

by Zoltanous

Introduction

I contend that the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, while ostensibly centered on class struggle, embeds a racialized framework that privileges Germanic identity and marginalized groups such as Slavs and Jews as historical detritus. Far from a mere artifact of their 19th-century context, this dimension — evident in Marx’s anti-Slavic rhetoric in The Eastern Question and Engels’ call to eradicate “reactionary peoples” in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung — intersects with their critique of capitalism, notably in Marx’s On The Jewish Question, where Judaism is controversially tied to economic exploitation. Their embrace of Darwinian evolution, as Engels’ nod to On The Origin of Species suggests, amplifies this racial lens, casting humanity in hierarchical terms that belie Marxism’s universalist claims. Such an analysis is imperative not only to unpack the internal contradictions of their ideology — compounded by Marx’s own Jewish heritage — but also to trace its influence on later racialized doctrines, challenging the orthodox separation of Marxism from the supremacist racism it ostensibly opposed. This article thus seeks to illuminate these overlooked threads and their enduring implications.

“The racial worldview… recognizes the significance of race and personal worth… If the National Socialist Movement should fail to understand this, it would merely compete with Marxism on its own ground.”

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The White Supremacy of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Marxist historical materialism frames the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and ultimately to socialism, as a process in which certain races — deemed relics of an obsolete feudal order — would be sidelined in a socialist future. In this schema, races incapable of adapting to socialism were cast as expendable, with Engels infamously labeling them “racial trash” destined for history’s “dung-heap.” This racialized worldview emerges starkly in The Eastern Question, a collection of Marx’s letters from 1853 to 1856, where he adopts a vehemently anti-Slavic stance, rooted in a belief in Germanic superiority.

“The Scandinavians and the Germans have thus made the experience that they must not base their respective national claims on the feudal laws of royal succession. They have made the better experience, that by quarreling amongst themselves, instead of confederation, Germans and Scandinavians, both of them belonging to the same great race, only prepare the war for their hereditary enemy, the Slav.”

— Karl Marx, The Eastern Question

In their contributions to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx and Engels articulate a revolutionary strategy that hinges on the subjugation of Slavic peoples, whom they brand as inherently counter-revolutionary. Marx advocates the use of terror against Slavs — Russians, Czechs, and Croats chief among them — to secure the revolution’s triumph, framing them as existential threats to progress. Engels complements this by arguing that numerous ethnic groups and nationalities are doomed to vanish in the crucible of revolutionary upheaval, their elimination a necessary cleansing to advance history. Together, they present the erasure of these “reactionary peoples” as both inevitable and desirable for the construction of a new social order.

“To the sentimental phrases about brotherhood which we are being offered here on behalf of the most counter-revolutionary nations of Europe, we reply that hatred of Russians was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution. We know where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated, viz. in Russia and the Slav regions of Austria, and no fine phrases, no allusions to an undefined democratic future for these countries can deter us from treating our enemies as enemies.”

— Karl Marx, Neue Rheinische Zeitung

Engels doubles down on this racial hierarchy:

“All the other large and small nationalities and people are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. For that reason they are our counter-revolutionaries.”

“The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes in dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.”

— Friedrich Engels, Neue Rheinische Zeitung

Marx further contends that the term “Russia” is a misnomer usurped by Muscovites, whom he denies authentic Slavic or Indo-European lineage, instead portraying them as Mongol or Finnic interlopers. In a letter to Engels, he endorses the work of Franciszek Duchinski, a Polish scholar who argued that Great Russians were not Slavs but Asiatic impostors, proposing their expulsion beyond the Dnieper River. Marx dismisses Russian pan-Slavism as a fabricated tool of imperial manipulation, reinforcing his vision of a Germanic-led revolutionary order.

“Ad vocem Poland, I was most interested to read the work by Elias Regnault (the same who wrote the ‘Histoire des Principautés Danubiennes’), ‘La Question Européenne, faussement nommée La Question Polonaise.’ I see from it that Lapinski’s dogma that the Great Russians are not Slavs has been advocated on linguistic, historical, and ethnographical grounds in all seriousness by Monsieur Duchinski (from Kiev, Professor in Paris); he maintains that the real Muscovites, i.e., inhabitants of the former Grand Duchy of Moscow, were for the most part Mongols or Finns, etc., as was the case in the parts of Russia situated further east and in its south-eastern parts. I see from it at all events that the affair has seriously worried the St. Petersburg cabinet (since it would put an end to Pan-Slavism in no uncertain manner). All Russian scholars were called upon to give responses and refutations, and these, in the event, turned out to be terribly weak. The purity of the Great Russian dialect and its connection with Church Slavonic appear to lend more support to the Polish than to the Muscovite view in this debate. During the last Polish insurrection, Duchinski was awarded a prize by the National Government for his ‘discoveries.’ It has also been shown geologically and hydrographically that a great ‘Asiatic’ difference occurs east of the Dnieper, compared with what lies to the west of it, and that (as Murchison has already maintained) the Urals by no means constitute a dividing line. Result as obtained by Duchinski: Russia is a name usurped by the Muscovites. They are not Slavs; they do not belong to the Indo-Germanic race at all; they are des intrus [intruders], who must be chased back across the Dnieper, etc. Pan-Slavism in the Russian sense is a cabinet invention, etc.”

— Karl Marx, Marx-Engels Correspondence 1865, Marx to Engels in Manchester

Marx’s Germanic chauvinism crystallizes in his call for war against Russia as a matter of national honor:

“The only possible solution that will preserve Germany’s honor and interests is, we repeat, a WAR AGAINST Russia.”

— Karl Marx, Gesamtausgabe, Erste Abteilung vol. 7

Engels, meanwhile, champions the assimilation of smaller Germanic groups into a cohesive German identity, viewing it as a strategic bulwark against the rising Slavic threat. His writings reveal a deep-seated disdain for non-Germanic peoples, including the French, whom he accuses of threatening German nationhood with their claims to the Rhine.

“True, it is a fixed idea with the French that the Rhine is their property, but to this arrogant demand, the only reply worthy of the German nation is Arndt’s: ‘Give back Alsace and Lorraine.’ For I am of the opinion, perhaps in contrast to many whose standpoint I share in other respects, that the reconquest of the German-speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honor, and that the Germanization of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the east?”

— Friedrich Engels, Telegraph für Deutschland No. 2, January 1841

This racial animus extends to individuals, as seen in Marx’s vitriolic attacks on Ferdinand Lassalle, a revolutionary of Jewish and German descent. Marx mocks Lassalle with racial slurs, speculating that his physical traits — skull shape and hair — betray African ancestry, blending anti-Semitic and anti-Black prejudice into a crude caricature.

“The Jewish nigger Lassalle who, I’m glad to say, is leaving at the end of this week, has happily lost another 5,000 talers in an ill-judged speculation. The chap would sooner throw money down the drain than lend it to a ‘friend’, even though his interest and capital were guaranteed. In this he bases himself on the view that he ought to live the life of a Jewish baron, or Jew created a baron (no doubt by the countess).”

“It is now quite plain to me—as the shape of his head and the way his hair grows also testify—that he is descended from the negroes who accompanied Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or paternal grandmother interbred with a nigger). Now, this blend of Jewishness and Germanness, on the one hand, and basic negroid stock, on the other, must inevitably give rise to a peculiar product. The fellow’s importunity is also nigger-like.”

— Karl Marx, Marx-Engels Correspondence 1862

This racial lens aligns with the Darwinian underpinnings of Marx and Engels’ worldview. Rejecting the Christian notion of humans as bearers of the imago Dei, they instead draw on evolutionary ideas, likening humanity to apes. This perspective fuels their derogatory treatment of Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, a Cuban-born socialist. Marx derides Lafargue as “Negrillo” or “The Gorilla,” while Engels muses about his possible African ancestry, pegging it at “one eighth or one twelfth nigger blood.” Engels even mocks Lafargue’s candidacy in a Paris district with a zoo:

“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.”

— Friedrich Engels, quoted in Did you know that Karl Marx was a racist and an anti-Semite? by Walter E. Williams

Far from incidental, these attitudes reflect a coherent thread of white supremacist logic in Marx and Engels’ thought. Their vision of revolutionary progress — steeped in Germanic chauvinism, anti-Slavic hostility, and racialized contempt — stands in stark opposition to any claim of universal equality, exposing racist undercurrent beneath their critique of capitalism.

Was Karl Marx Anti-Semitic?

Karl Marx’s Jewish ancestry, set against his sharp critiques of Judaism, reveals a striking paradox at the core of his ideological mission, undermining the idea that his anti-Semitic leanings were merely a reflection of his time or a misread call for justice. Born into a family steeped in Jewish tradition, Marx grew detached from this legacy after his family’s conversion to Lutheranism — a pragmatic move for social acceptance that nonetheless severed his ties to Judaism. This fraught connection to his roots echoes through his writings, where anti-Semitism surfaces, woven with religious, cultural, and racial prejudices. Moreover, Marx’s assault on capitalism, which he provocatively tied to Judaism, sowed seeds for Nazism — that fused anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist threads. In his pivotal essay, On The Jewish Question, Marx’s remarks about Judaism and Jews have drawn scrutiny as anti-Semitic, showing how his personal prejudices.

"We discern in Judaism a universal anti-social element of the present age."

— Karl Marx, On The Jewish Question

In his vision for societal change, Marx argued that:

"As soon as society succeeds in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism—huckstering and its preconditions—the Jew becomes impossible because his consciousness no longer has an object... the social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism."

— Karl Marx, On The Jewish Question

Beyond his criticism of Judaism as a faith, Marx also aimed remarks at specific Jewish individuals, such as Joseph Moses Levy, the publisher of the Daily Telegraph, which have been interpreted as personal and anti-Semitic:

"The Weekly Mail maintains that although Levy really fools no one, he has changed 'i' into 'y.' It is true that among the 22,000 Levites whom Moses counted on the journey through the wilderness, there was not a single Levi who spelled his name with a 'y.' Just as Edmund Simon spares no effort to be regarded as belonging to the Romance people, so Levy is determined to be an Anglo-Saxon. Therefore, at least once a month he attacks the un-English policies of Mr. Disraeli, for Disraeli, 'the Asiatic mystery,' unlike the Telegraph, is not an Anglo-Saxon by descent. But what does it profit Levy to attack Mr. Disraeli and to change 'i' into 'y,' when Mother Nature has inscribed his origins in the clearest possible way right in the middle of his face. The nose of the mysterious stranger of Slawkenbergius (see Tristram Shandy) who had got the finest nose from the promontory of noses was just a nine days' wonder in Strasbourg, whereas Levy's nose provides conversation throughout the year in the City of London."

— Karl Marx, Herr Vogt

Passages from Karl Marx’s works reveal his critical stance toward Judaism, intertwining social commentary with what appears to be personal anti-Semitic sentiment. This perspective aligns with the broader scope of Marx’s critique, where he often merges economic theories with observations about race and religion. The website marxists.org has praised his efforts in this domain, describing them as “one of the most brilliant of Marx’s writings.”

“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.…. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man–and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general."

— Karl Marx, On The Jewish Question

To fully comprehend this, one must first understand Marx’s perspective on money. In Das Kapital vol. 1, he repeatedly argues that money itself is a commodity, noting, “money as a commodity is therefore a new discovery.” He explains that when money is used to trade commodities, it transforms into capital, and the relentless drive to amass more money characterizes a capitalist. In this light, Marx provocatively links Judaism to capitalism, implying that for Jews, wealth accumulation is a religious endeavor. This reading gains clarity when paired with another of Marx’s statements:

"The capitalist knows that all commodities, however scurvy they may look, or however badly they may smell, are in faith and in truth money, inwardly circumcised Jews, and what is more, a wonderful means whereby out of money to make more money."

— Karl Marx, Das Kapital vol. 1

Grasping Marx’s view that capitalists are synonymous with Jews and commodities represent their “offspring,” this statement can be reframed to suggest that Jews see their goods as both an expression of their faith and a tool for amassing wealth. Additionally, Marx employs the term “Pharisee” — a nod to an ancient Jewish sect — to denounce capitalists:

"The Pharisee of a capitalist, represented by one of his servants, accompanies this action, of course, with the unctuous phrase: 'that's for mother,' yet he knows well enough that the poor children must sit up and help."

— Karl Marx, Das Kapital vol. 1

This criticism connects to Marx’s larger argument, where he provocatively merges religious identity with economic behavior, implying a critique that extends beyond capitalism to target Jewish religious and cultural practices as he understood them. Karl Marx posits an intrinsic “Jewishness” in capitalist tendencies, especially in the way capitalists exploit labor. He expands on this by pointing to the severe mistreatment of women and children in factory settings:

"In striking contrast with the great fact, that the shortening of the hours of labor of women and children in English factories was exacted from capital by the male operatives, we find in the latest reports of the Children's Employment Commission traits of the operative parents in relation to the traffic in children, that are truly revolting and thoroughly like slave dealing. But the Pharisee or Jewishness of a capitalist, as may be seen from the same reports, denounces this brutality which he himself creates, perpetrates, and exploits, in which he moreover baptizes 'freedom of labor.' 'Infant labor' has been called into aid... even to work for their own daily bread. Without strength to endure such disproportionate toil, without instruction to guide their future life, they have been thrown into a situation physically and morally polluted."

— Karl Marx, Das Kapital vol. 1

Marx then draws a parallel to historical events to underscore his point:

"The Jewish historian has remarked upon the overthrow of Jerusalem by Titus that it was no wonder it should have been destroyed, with such a signal destruction, when an inhuman mother sacrificed their own offspring to satisfy their cravings of absolute hunger."

— Karl Marx, Das Kapital vol. 1

In these instances, Marx contends that the exploitative nature of capitalism is inherently tied to traits he associates with Jewish identity, implying that Das Kapital vol. 1 contains anti-Semitic undertones. Marx also elaborates on the dynamic between capitalists and their industries:

"It is not because he is a leader of industry that a man is a capitalist; on the contrary, he is a leader of industry because he is a capitalist. The leadership of industry is an attribute of capital, just as in feudal times the functions of general and judge were attributes of landed property."

— Karl Marx, Das Kapital vol. 1

At first glance, this claim may appear perplexing, but when interpreted through the framework of Marx’s earlier arguments, it suggests that Jewish capitalists hold prominent roles not through skill or achievement, but because their faith — linked in Marx’s view to money and capital — automatically elevates them. Beyond this, Marx also challenges the notion of harmonious collaboration between capitalists and workers, as evident in this context:

"That Philistine paper, the Spectator, states that after the introduction of a sort of partnership between capitalist and workmen in the 'Wirework Company of Manchester,' the first result was a sudden decrease in waste the men not seeing why they should waste their own property any more than any other master’s, and waste is, perhaps, next to bad debts, the greatest source of manufacturing loss. The same paper finds that the main defect in the Rochdale cooperative experiments is this: 'they showed that associations of workmen could manage shops, mills, and almost all forms of industry with success, and they immediately improved the condition of the men; but then they did not leave a clear place for masters.' Quelle horror!"

— Karl Marx, Das Kapital vol. 1

Marx’s dismissal of the Spectator as “Philistine” reveals his disdain for views that ignore capitalism’s exploitative roots, reinforcing his broader attack on capitalist systems and their intrinsic injustices. This critique opens the door to a controversial theory: that Marx’s condemnation of capitalism, particularly in Das Kapital, carries anti-Semitic undertones. In this view, Marx subtly equates capitalism with Jewishness, using “capitalist” as a stand-in for Jews, thus weaving anti-Semitism into his economic analysis. Proponents of this theory point to historical context and Marx’s own words, arguing that he frames capitalism as an embodiment of traits he associates with Jews, especially around money and commerce.

Central to this debate is Marx’s “Philistine” jab, which some interpret as a coded expression of anti-Jewish prejudice. This perspective sees his critique of capitalism — paired with sarcastic remarks about the absence of Jewish figures in socialist leadership — as fueling anti-Semitic tendencies within socialism. The argument leans on history: in medieval Europe, anti-Semitic restrictions forced Jews into roles like moneylending, barred to Christians under usury laws. This backdrop, critics claim, shapes Marx’s attack on the bourgeoisie and capitalism as an implicit targeting of Jews, tied to an old stereotype linking them to finance and urban life (with “bourgeoisie” tracing back to “boroughs” or towns).

This narrative goes further, charging Marx with reinforcing these anti-Semitic tropes by suggesting Das Kapital equates capitalism — and thus capitalists — with Judaism, forging a latent connection between anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism in socialist ideology. His criticism, in this light, intertwines with anti-Semitic currents, given the historical association of Jews with urbanization, trade, and lending due to societal barriers. This interpretation draws on various statements by Marx, seen as blurring the lines between capitalism and Jewishness. For instance, Marx wrote:

“The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital..."

— Karl Marx, Communist manifesto

In this context, critics argue that if Marx believed "capital" to be synonymous with the "jealous god of Israel," then by extension, the bourgeoisie, who are the primary accumulators of capital, could be considered "Jewish" in faith. This interpretation suggests that Marx saw the bourgeoisie as embodying traits he associated with Judaism. Moreover, Marx's discussion of German socialism and its relationship to anti-Semitism further complicates his stance.

“While this 'True' Socialism thus served the government as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of German Philistines."

— Karl Marx, Communist manifesto

The term "Philistine" has been interpreted as a reference to ethnic anti-Semites, setting them apart from what is perceived as Marx's own version of "spiritual" anti-Semitism. From this perspective, Marx's critique was aimed at a particular strand of German socialism which, despite its apparent opposition to the Jewish bourgeoisie, inadvertently advanced the objectives of "German racist anti-Semites.” These individuals, according to this interpretation, were not genuine socialists but rather camouflaged bourgeois — capitalists at their core, despite adopting an anti-Semitic posture. Marx elaborated on his disapproval of this erroneous socialist movement within Germany, articulating his observations as follows:

"And on its part German socialism recognized, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine."

— Karl Marx, Communist manifesto

He charged this movement with masquerading as socialism while secretly pursuing bourgeois goals, thus undermining the core of communist ideals. This viewpoint has sparked controversy, with some critics arguing that it reveals a strain of anti-Semitism embedded in Marx’s thought. They see his push to dismantle the bourgeoisie as a coded demand for the elimination of Jews, linking his rejection of bourgeois property and bourgeois family to an assault on Jewish wealth and households — given the historical tie between Jews and capitalism.

This raises a further question: what role would a state central bank play in a society where money is deemed obsolete? The critique posits that, under Marxist rule, money wouldn’t vanish entirely; instead, the focus would shift to eradicating what was seen as the Jewish practice of profit-driven speculative trading. In this view, a state central bank would aim to dismantle this Jewish wealth accumulation, framing socialism as inherently anti-capitalist and, by extension, anti-Semitic. Such a narrative aligns with later claims, like Goebbels’ assertion that “all socialism is anti-Semitism.”

“Hitler violently objected to international capitalism even when it was not Jewish, but he assigned the Jews a particularly malevolent role within the global capitalist system; this remained the principal root of his anti-Semitism. In Mein Kampf, as in his earlier rhetoric, Jews were inseparably linked with money and the whole capitalist system as ‘traders’, as ‘middlemen’, who levied an ‘extortionate rate of interest’ for their ‘financial deals’. Jewry, he claimed, aimed at nothing less that the ‘financial domination of the entire economy’.”

— Brendan Simms, Hitler: A Global Biography

According to this interpretation, both Marx and Hitler shared the belief that capitalism and Jewish identity were inseparable — condemning capitalism as destructive due to its Jewish ties and vilifying Jews for their capitalist leanings. They imagined defeating this “Judeo-Capitalism” through a centrally planned economy that nullified monetary exchange and, with it, Jewish influence. Yet, by erasing money and enforcing centralized control, such a system could be seen as an attempt to purge Jews from society entirely. Through this perspective, Marx’s ideas, much like Hitler’s, might be construed as endorsing the exclusion of Jews from the social order.

"Christ expelled the Jewish money-changers from the temple, and that the money-changers of our age, enlisted on the side of tyranny, happen again to be Jews, is perhaps no more than a historic coincidence."

— Karl Marx, On The Jewish Question

“When (Jesus) found it necessary, He drove those enemies of the human race out of the Temple of God; because then, as always, they used religion as a means of advancing their commercial interests.”

— Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The Darwinian and Marxist Connection

According to Marx and Engels, Charles Darwin served as a more significant influence than God, as they asserted that God did not actually exist. This view was exemplified when Engels, following Marx's passing in March 1883, turned to Darwin for inspiration.

“Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history.”

— Friedrich Engels quoted in Marx and Engels… and Darwin? The essential connection between historical materialism and natural selection, by Ian Angus

Those who deeply engage with the writings of Marx, Engels, and Darwin will recognize — irrespective of their own beliefs — that Marx displayed remarkable foresight when he claimed that On The Origin of Species “contains the basis in natural history for our view.” To fully appreciate Marx’s stance, one must first understand Darwin’s contributions.

Charles Darwin, a British naturalist born in 1809, reshaped scientific thought with his theory of evolution and natural selection, most famously articulated in On The Origin of Species. His work revealed how species adapt and evolve over time in response to their environments, establishing the cornerstone of modern evolutionary biology. Darwin’s death in 1882 marked the end of his life but not his influence, which endures in science to this day.

In On The Origin of Species, Darwin laid out a compelling case for how new species emerge through three key processes: population pressure, variation and inheritance, and natural selection.

• Population pressure: Organisms tend to produce more offspring than their environment can sustain, sparking a struggle for limited resources. As a result, many fail to survive or reproduce.

• Variation and heritability: Individuals within a population exhibit diverse traits, some of which are passed to their offspring. While traits like eye color may be trivial, others can significantly affect survival and reproductive success.

• Natural selection: Those with beneficial traits are more likely to thrive and reproduce, gradually increasing the prevalence of these advantages in the population while less favorable traits fade over time.

Darwin immersed himself in practical research, dissecting animals, studying inheritance through pigeon breeding, and exploring plant germination and seed dispersal. His scientific approach, grounded in materialist methods, challenged prevailing social and political norms during a period of heightened revolutionary fervor in England. Despite his reluctance to engage directly in political matters, Darwin, a member of the affluent middle class, found himself amidst societal upheaval. To safeguard his reputation and avoid association with radical ideologies, Darwin discreetly penned his evolutionary theory in 1844, only revisiting and ultimately publishing On The Origin of Species in 1859 following encouragement from colleagues and the convergence of favorable circumstances.

Darwin dismissed essentialism, treating species classification as a practical label rather than a rigid category. He saw a species as a fluid population of individuals, where variations reflect nature’s intrinsic diversity. For Marxists, truth resides in the concrete reality of material existence. Species change over time, following a real historical path that demands analysis of their development across eras. Additionally, Darwin rejected teleological interpretations, a stance echoed by his colleague Thomas Huxley, who dismissed the notion that cats exist merely to master catching mice.

“Darwinism supposes that cats exist because they catch mice well—mousing being not the aim, but the condition of their existence.”

— Thomas Huxley, Criticisms of On The Origin of Species

Living organisms evolve and have evolved through natural processes without any preset goal or purpose. A giraffe, compared to its shorter ancestors, isn’t inherently “better” or “perfect”; it’s simply more suited to its current environment. Yet, this advantage could vanish if its surroundings change unexpectedly.

Much like Marx and Engels reshaped the understanding of human society, Darwin redefined nature by rejecting teleology and essentialism, laying the groundwork for a materialist view of evolution. Marx’s praise for Darwin’s On The Origin of Species as a cornerstone of their worldview highlights its pivotal role in natural history. While Darwin quietly developed his ideas on natural selection, Karl Marx was in Paris during 1844, sharpening his critique of modern political and philosophical thought. In his private notes from that year, Marx explored:

“History itself is a real part of natural history and of nature’s development into man. Natural science will, in time, incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.”

— Karl Marx, Marx/Engels Collected Works

In the subsequent year, Marx and Engels penned The German Ideology, marking the inaugural comprehensive exposition of dialectical materialism. Initially presenting a passage akin to the 1844 declaration, this text encapsulated a more elaborate articulation of their evolving ideological framework.

“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist.”

— Karl Marx, Marx/Engels Collected Works

Marx and Engels opted to omit a particular paragraph from their final draft, acknowledging their limited capacity to thoroughly explore and address the subject at hand. The quotes underscore Marx and Engels' profound admiration for Darwin's work, emphasizing the crucial intersection of historical and materialist perspectives in shaping their worldview. Prior to the publication of On The Origin of Species, Marx and Engels had already recognized the potential for explaining nature through historical and materialist principles, a foundation further solidified by Darwin's meticulous research and compelling arguments. In essence, Darwin's book served as a definitive confirmation of the compatibility between dialectical materialism and the study of natural history. Engels, in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, reflected on this symbiosis:

“Nature works dialectically and not metaphysically… she does not move in the eternal oneness of a perpetually recurring circle, but goes through a real historical evolution. In this connection, Darwin must be named before all others. He dealt the metaphysical conception of Nature the heaviest blow by his proof that all organic beings, plants, animals, and man himself, are the products of a process of evolution going on through millions of years.”

— Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

The notion that natural selection theory could serve as a foundation for comprehending and managing human societies originated from Herbert Spencer, an English liberal philosopher credited with coining the term "survival of the fittest." Spencer advocated for a societal structure where natural selection would lead to the creation of an ideal community, contingent upon the unimpeded removal of the unfit. His opposition extended to public education, compulsory vaccination against smallpox, access to free libraries, workplace safety regulations, and aid for the "undeserving poor." These beliefs, eventually labeled as "Social Darwinism," found favor among proponents of unrestrained capitalism. John D. Rockefeller famously justified the growth of large businesses as a manifestation of the survival of the fittest, drawing parallels with the cultivation of the American Beauty rose through the sacrifice of surrounding buds.

In contrast, Marx and Engels vehemently criticized the application of biological principles to human society:

“All that the Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence boils down to is an extrapolation from society to animate nature of Hobbes’ theory of the bellum omnium contra omnes [war of all against all] and of the bourgeois-economic theory of competition together with the Malthusian theory of population. Having accomplished this feat… these people proceed to re-extrapolate the same theories from organic nature to history, and then claim to have proved their validity as eternal laws of human society. The puerility of this procedure is self-evident, and there is no need to waste words on it.”

— Friedrich Engels, Marx/Engels Collected Works

Engels determined that these individuals who adhere to political Darwinism exhibit characteristics of incompetence in both economic analysis and in understanding natural sciences and philosophical principles. Back in 1845, Marx and Engels posited in The German Ideology that the unique human trait lies in their capacity to create the necessities of life, setting them apart from other creatures;

“Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization. By producing their means of subsistence they are indirectly producing their material life.”

— Karl Marx, The German Ideology

In the late 1870s, Engels revisited and expanded upon this argument in his unfinished work titled Dialectics of Nature:

“Let us accept for a moment the phrase “struggle for existence,” for argument’s sake. The most that the animal can achieve is to collect; man produces, he prepares the means of subsistence, in the widest sense of the words, which without him nature would not have produced. This makes impossible any unqualified transference of the laws of life in animal societies to human society.”

— Friedrich Engels, Dialectics of Nature

Engels reasserted a fundamental aspect of Marxist philosophy regarding nature, stressing the unique scientific laws that regulate different forms and levels of matter. He pointed out that the principles directing atoms and molecules diverge from those dictating the motion of billiard balls, demonstrating a keen awareness of the diverse laws at play in various domains. Contemporary astrophysics, through concepts like dark matter and dark energy, supports this by revealing distinct laws governing galactic dynamics. Although the laws of inorganic matter extend to living organisms, biological rules enhance and frequently supersede them, forming a separate framework that transcends the scope of Newtonian physics alone. Humans, as entities both physical and biological, adhere to the same laws as other organisms, yet their social nature introduces an additional dimension that surpasses pure physics and biology in explaining their existence and historical development. Consistent with these ideas, Engels expressed:

“The conception of history as a series of class struggles is already much richer in content and deeper than merely reducing it to weakly distinguished phases of the struggle for existence.”

— Friedrich Engels, Marx/Engels Collected Works

Marx and Engels primarily examined social Darwinism through the lens of political and social analysis, focusing on class conflict. However, one could explore whether their views might align with a refined version of social Darwinism that emphasizes biological competition as a driving force, while also recognizing mutual aid within society. This perspective suggests that competition occurs more between nations or races than among individuals of the same racial or ethnic group within a nation. It further implies that political systems based on private property are artificial and misrepresent true Darwinian struggles. Interestingly, both Marx and Engels made remarks that could be interpreted as supporting White supremacist or anti-Semitic ideas. This raises the question of whether their engagement with Darwinian ideas shaped these views, particularly considering the influence of Ludwig Woltmann, a Nordicist Marxist who later impacted Nazi ideology. Such reflection leads to the conclusion that Darwin himself endorsed a subtle form of social Darwinism, as evident in his work, The Descent of Man.

“The variability or diversity of the mental faculties in men of the same race, not to mention the greater differences between the men of distinct races, is so notorious that not a word need be said here.”

“But since he attained to the rank of manhood, he [mankind] has diverged into distinct races, or as they may be more fitly called, subspecies. Some of these, such as the Negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species.”

“If a naturalist, who had never before seen a Negro, Hottentot, Australian, or Mongolian, were to compare them, he would at once perceive that they differed in a multitude of characters, some of slight and some of considerable importance. On enquiry he would find that they were adapted to live under widely different climates, and that they differed somewhat in bodily constitution and mental disposition. If he were then told that hundreds of similar specimens could be brought from the same countries, he would assuredly declare that they were as good species as many to which he had been in the habit of affixing specific names.”

“Differences of this kind between the highest men of the highest races and the lowest savages, are connected by the finest graduations.”

“It must not be supposed that the divergence of each race from the other races, and of all the races from a common stock, can be traced back to any one pair of progenitors.”

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races.”

— Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

Darwin’s study of human evolution proposed that all races shared a common origin, yet he viewed some, such as his own “White” race, as more advanced and superior. He labeled others as “savage,” “low,” or “degraded” to signify their supposed lesser development. His ranking of races and belief in a hierarchical progression of humanity stood out as bold, even in his era. While acknowledging racial and cultural distinctions, Darwin also hinted at the possibility of “barbarians” improving and “civilized peoples” declining. This perspective underpins eugenics and selective breeding, rooted in a fundamentally racist outlook. Though I’ve highlighted Darwin’s racism, some might counter that his abolitionist views paint him as progressive. Yet, opposing slavery doesn’t equate to championing racial equality. Many abolitionists, like Abraham Lincoln, harbored white supremacist attitudes. Lincoln, for instance, ended slavery after the Civil War but considered deporting all African-Americans to Africa, arguing their alleged inferiority made integration into white society unfeasible.

"Such separation, is ever effected at all, must be effected by colonization; and no political party, as such, is now doing anything directly for colonization. Party operations at present only favor or retard colonization incidentally. The enterprise is a difficult one; but ‘when there is a will there is a way;’ and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be. The children of Israel, to such numbers as to include four hundred thousand fighting men, went out of Egyptian bondage in a body."

— Abraham Lincoln speech at Springfield, June 26, 1857

The boundary between Darwinism and social Darwinism is often so subtle that the two can appear nearly identical. In reality, their differences are minimal, with social Darwinism distinguishable mainly by two key features, as outlined in Richard Weikart’s Was Hitler a Darwinian,

Darwinism:

1. Views human races as separate population groups, similar to subspecies.

2. Extends natural laws to both animals and humans.

3. Identifies a struggle between different human groups.

4. Posits that some human groups are racially more primitive.

Social Darwinism:

5. Permits dominant races to preserve order within their group by removing those considered inferior, with the goal of fostering desirable genetic traits.

6. Endorses the notion that superior races may eradicate inferior ones in the fight for survival.

Although Darwin didn’t explicitly champion or advocate for social Darwinist ideas, he also didn’t clearly reject them. As shown in the quotes I’ve referenced earlier, he anticipated that such interpretations might emerge, reflecting a degree of ambivalence. Darwin appeared to recognize that his theory could naturally give rise to these conclusions. Stephen Jay Gould, in Ontogeny and Phylogeny, notes that biological rationales for racism existed before 1850 but surged dramatically after Darwin’s evolutionary theory gained traction. Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, coined “eugenics” to describe a scientific effort to improve humanity by deliberately guiding evolution.

"The study of all agencies under human control which can improve or impair the racial quality of future generations.”

— Francis Galton, Inquiries Into Human Faculty and Its Development

Richard Weikart underscored the blurred boundary between Darwinism and social Darwinism, with the latter marked by its advocacy for actively eliminating the “inferior” to mold society — a step beyond Darwin’s framework that Darwin neither fully endorsed nor rejected. This ambivalence allowed figures like Francis Galton, who coined “eugenics,” and Thomas Huxley, dubbed “Darwin’s bulldog,” to embrace and expand these ideas, as evident in Huxley’s essay Emancipation – Black and White. Their interpretations, treating Darwinism and social Darwinism as effectively synonymous, cast humans as animals in a relentless survival struggle, fueling radical policies like forced sterilization and genocide among some adherents. This intellectual current set the stage for Ludwig Woltmann, a neo-Kantian Marxist, to fuse Marxism with Darwinian scientific racism, blending class struggle with racial hierarchy.

Yet, Friedrich Engels’ later rejection of such hierarchies — rooted in dialectical materialism’s focus on mutable material conditions over fixed essences — stands in sharp contrast to the racialized stances Marx and Engels previously held. Both of them call for Slavic subjugation, assertions of German supremacy, and anti-Semitic depiction of Jews as capitalism’s embodiment clash with subsequent claims that human history transcends biological determinism. This contradiction, stemming from idealistic adaptability, exposes a fundamental fracture. This undermines their later critique of racial hierarchy, leaving their synthesis with Darwinian thought unstable and open to correction.

A Racist Heterodox Marxism?

In my study of 19th-century intellectual currents, I’ve been struck by how Charles Darwin’s On The Origin of Species reshaped not only science but also political thought during a transformative period in Europe. Published after the 1848 revolutions destabilized monarchies from France to the German states, Darwin’s theory of natural selection — explaining species differentiation through competition and adaptation — revolutionized scientific understanding. By the late 19th century, s Darwinism had recast historical progress as a racial contest, resonating with Europe’s colonial expansion and the nationalist zeal following Germany’s 1871 unification under Otto von Bismarck and Italy’s under Victor Emmanuel II. Marxists, who saw history as a dialectical clash of forces, found Darwin’s model a natural parallel to their materialist framework. Ludwig Woltmann and Enrico Ferri harnessed this convergence, melding Darwinian principles with Marxism to create a racialized ideology that diverged from Lenin’s universalism and foreshadowed National Socialism.

The post-1848 landscape, defined by the erosion of feudalism and the ascent of industrial capitalism, birthed Marxism as a critique of socioeconomic dislocation. In The Communist manifesto, Marx and Engels cast class struggle as history’s driving force. Darwin’s evolutionary ideas, unveiled as Britain solidified its Indian empire and Prussia forged Germany, offered a biological lens for this dialectic. Ludwig Woltmann, born in 1871 in Solingen during Bismarck’s unification drive, entered this intellectual crucible. Initially a physician, he later embraced anthropology, blending Kantian philosophy, Marxism, and Arthur de Gobineau’s racial hierarchy from Inequality of The Human Races. Amid Germany’s industrial boom and the Wilhelmine fixation on national destiny, Woltmann reenvisioned Marxism as a racially Germanic mission, asserting that “the Germanic peoples alone have a duty to realize socialism, for only they possess the racial capacity for it.”

Two photos of Woltmann

Woltmann’s theories took root as Nordicist ideas swept German academia, propelled by the Kaiserreich’s colonial pursuits in Africa and the Pacific and the 1905 founding of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene. He contended that technological innovation — pivotal to Marx’s dialectical materialism — stemmed from innate, genetically determined talents, challenging the primacy of economic determinism. Unlike Marx, who treated race as one economic factor among others (alongside education and environment), Woltmann reduced it to the predominant driver, sidelining nurture for nature. He recast Marxism as a bio-economic paradigm, weaving in Darwinian laws — selective variation, inheritance, adaptation, and racial evolution — as the engines of social change. Distinct from Joseph Dietzgen, who saw Darwinism as a broad scientific bolster for Marxism, Woltmann fixated on racial heredity as history’s key. His research, drawing on contemporary social sciences, led him to proclaim the Nordic race, with its unmatched creativity, the architect of technological and cultural progress across civilizations — from India and Persia to Europe — as outlined in his Politische Anthropologie and its “racial theory of history.” He wrote:

“Socialism must be brought into closer relationship with the teaching of natural evolution than has hitherto been the case.”

— Ludwig Woltmann, quoted in The Darwinian Theory and Socialism by August Bebel

This heterodox Marxism replaced class struggle with racial biology, finding echoes in Marx and Engels’ own texts, which labeled groups like the Chinese as burdened by “hereditary stupidity” and Slavs as “ethnic trash” — “historyless” peoples fated to be subsumed by more dynamic forces, such as Germans. Woltmann seized on this, crowning Nordics as civilization’s saviors and insisting their biological preservation was a moral necessity for Marxist progress. He attacked capitalism not only for its exploitation but also for its dysgenic toll — degrading workers, shrinking birth rates, and swelling urban populations with the “unfit.” He championed eugenics, preferably through persuasion but by force if required, and cast Jews as an “alien” race, their hereditary traits a peril to Nordic purity forged by millennia of survival. He further argued:

“In order to comprehend the progress in human culture, considerations, other than economic, must be taken into account, and these can be furnished by physiology and general biology, e.g., the comprehension of the laws of differentiation, adaptation, and transmission, and at least a special study is necessary to find: whether natural selection has exerted its influence in the individual and class struggle, why it has been inoperative, and what may have taken its place. These questions have not been considered by Marx and Engels.”

— Ludwig Woltmann, quoted in The Darwinian Theory and Socialism by August Bebel

Woltmann’s racial Marxism collided with Vladimir Lenin’s internationalism, forged amid Russia’s 1905 Revolution and Tsarist oppression. Lenin scorned racial hierarchies as vestiges of bourgeois ideology, advocating a global proletariat. The official Soviet view was:

“National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism.”

— Joseph Stalin, Pravda, No. 329, November 30, 1936

Marxist-Leninism branded Woltmann a revisionist and idealist, but this dismissal unravels under scrutiny. Dialectical materialism posits that material conditions — including natural processes — propel history via conflict. Lenin narrowed this to class, but Woltmann broadened it to biology, noting that in antiquity, class often mirrored race (e.g., Roman slaves as racially distinct “barbarians” vs. citizen elites). By fusing class conflict with racial competition, Woltmann forged a consistent racial theory of history, enriched by his connection to Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In The Foundations of The Nineteenth Century, Chamberlain framed history as a Nordic-led racial saga, a narrative Woltmann mirrored by tying socialism to Germanic biological supremacy. Dialectics’ elasticity — its ability to encompass any material realm — underpins this leap, aligning race with Marx’s vision of a unified science of nature and history. The Marxist-Leninist rejection of race as a bourgeois relic overlooks this versatility, misjudging Woltmann’s logic as erratic when it flows logically from materialism. Bebel noted Woltmann’s philosophical stance:

“Woltmann is of opinion that the logical help which modern Socialism has received from Hegelian philosophy is not sufficient, and that Socialism would obtain greater scientific power if it returned, so far as its abstract propositions are concerned, to the philosophy of Kant.”

— August Bebel, The Darwinian Theory and Socialism

Despite Ludwig Woltmann’s emphasis on racial determinism, his work includes a sophisticated critique of overly simplistic applications of Darwinian principles to human society. He strongly cautioned that extending Darwinian principles to human social systems could lead to profound mistakes, rejecting the interpretations of “bourgeois Darwinists” who equated human behaviors — such as unregulated market competition—with the struggle for existence characteristic of the animal world. Woltmann deemed such parallels as flawed as attempts to impose social norms on the foundations of human reasoning. He argued that the transition of early humans from spontaneous, instinctual groupings to organized societies marked a qualitative change in the processes governing their association. In contrast to biological evolution, he maintained that social evolution among human beings was, in his judgment, qualitatively different, governed by its own unique regularities. Furthermore, he asserted that complex human thought cannot be reduced to a mere reflection of either biological or social evolutionary processes, citing examples like the Stoics, early Jews, and Christians, who advanced “premature” ideals — such as universal equality and peace — well before any “mature economic base” could sustain them.

Woltmann’s stance on human volition reveals additional complexity. He posited that human volition, the product of human thought and moral judgment, was not determined, although it might be conditioned, by economic factors. He challenged the notion that thought slavishly followed socioeconomic patterns, arguing that it could not be shown with any degree of empirical plausibility that human thought submissively followed socioeconomic laws of motion. Instead, he contended that every piece of evidence available indicated that human thought and human will were governed by processes peculiar to themselves. He further emphasized that human thought was governed by epistemological criteria of its own — and the truth that emerged informed the will — and while human beings possessed of truth certainly did not always prevail in history, they did, on occasion, and under certain circumstances, significantly influence its passage. This suggests that truths arising from independent thought could shape human action and, under specific conditions, leave a notable imprint on historical developments.

This perspective on thought and volition, however, operates within Woltmann’s broader framework of biological determinism, which forms the cornerstone of his racialized Marxism. While granting human thought and will a measure of autonomy, he viewed the capacity for such faculties — particularly the intellectual and creative abilities driving historical progress — as biologically determined and unevenly distributed across races. Within this framework, economic conditions serve as a conditioning factor but remain subordinate to inherited traits. Woltmann held that the Nordic race’s superior genetic endowment enabled it to spearhead technological and cultural advancements, with economic structures acting as a platform through which these biologically rooted capacities were expressed.

Woltmann’s premature death in 1907 halted his direct contributions, yet his ideas reverberated through racialist circles that shaped National Socialism. Ernst Lange reflected in 1936:

“In the spring of 1907, German and Western racial research lost one of its boldest and most promising pioneers in [Ludwig] Woltmann. He drowned while bathing in the southern sea. He had travelled to Italy to collect new material for a necessary new edition of his Renaissance work Image Image A tragic fate left his further plans unfulfilled. His friends could not even decorate his grave mound; the sea kept the researcher. Numerous researchers at home and abroad paid Woltmann undivided recognition for his great importance, regardless of differing or opposing viewpoints And we today understand [Houston Stewart] Chamberlain, who was not able to agree with Woltmann on all issues, when he wrote in a letter: "I too felt Ludwig Woltmann's death as the loss of something in the literal sense unforeseeable."”

— Ernst Lange, "Ludwig Woltmann," Wille und Macht: Führerorgan der nationalsozialistischen Jugend

Chamberlain, a British-born philosopher who became a German citizen, profoundly influenced Adolf Hitler. Meeting Hitler in 1923 at Bayreuth as a Nazi Party member, Chamberlain hailed him as Germany’s destined leader, his ideas of Nordicism and anti-Semitism echoing in Mein Kampf. Chamberlain’s friendship with Woltmann, despite their differences, ties Woltmann’s racial Marxism to Nazism’s intellectual roots. Woltmann’s materialist racialism complemented Chamberlain’s cultural Nordicism, offering a scientific scaffold that bridged Marx’s dialectic to Hitler’s worldview, cementing Marxism’s plasticity as a precursor to Nazism.

Ernst Haeckel, born in 1834 in Potsdam, amplified this trajectory as Germany’s foremost Darwinian during the Second Reich. A biologist at Jena University, Haeckel’s The History of Creation cast racial differences as evolutionary outcomes amid Germany’s colonial push:

“The Caucasian, or Mediterranean, man has from time immemorial been placed at the head of all races of men, as the most highly developed and perfect.”

— Ernst Haeckel quoted in The Evolution of Genocide by Rebecca Messall

Haeckel’s eugenics advocacy, influential by the early 20th century, dovetailed with Woltmann’s ideas, lending scientific weight to Nazi initiatives like the 1939 T4 euthanasia program targeting the disabled. Though not a Marxist, Haeckel bolstered the Darwinian foundation of National Socialist ideology.

Enrico Ferri, born in 1856 in San Benedetto Po, Italy, mirrored Woltmann by integrating Darwinism into Marxist criminology during Italy’s unification under Garibaldi and Cavour. A socialist parliamentarian until aligning with Mussolini’s Fascism in the 1920s, Ferri’s Socialism and Modern Science grappled with post-Risorgimento fractures. He thought that “struggle for existence is the fundamental law of evolution, and socialism must adapt this law to human society by eliminating the unfit.” Ferri’s Fascist shift reinforced eugenic ties to National Socialism, influencing Italy’s 1938 racial laws against Jews and minorities, veering from Lenin’s economic focus.

Woltmann’s influence extended to Nazi anthropologists like Hans F. K. Günther, who called him “the scientific successor to Gobineau” in Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, and Otto Reche, who republished Woltmann’s Politische Anthropologie in 1936, noting that “every page was influenced by the spirit of Darwin.” Reche’s work, including racial policies in occupied territories, reflected Woltmann’s legacy, as did the broader racial science underpinning the Third Reich’s laws and genocides, from the Hunger Plan to the Generalplan Ost.

This fusion of racial science and nationalism upends the Marxist-Nazi dichotomy, revealing a shared Nordic supremacism. A. James Gregor underscores this lineage:

“In our own time, Woltmann’s intimate association with Marxism is rarely, if ever, cited—and one of the principal sources of the revolutionary racism of the twentieth century thereby obscured. It was the decay of classical Marxism that contributed racism to the mix of revolutionary ideas that were to torment our time. Neither Moses Hess nor Ludwig Woltmann can be dismissed as anomalies. As the subsequent history of revolutionary Marxism was to reveal, racist and reactive nationalist variants of Marxism were to inspire revolutions throughout the doleful history of our most recent past.”

— A. James Gregor, Marxism, Fascism, And Totalitarianism

Dr. Walter Gross further contextualizes this intellectual shift, highlighting the biological view of history that Woltmann helped pioneer:

"With this thought in terms of generations, a decisive turning point has been reached, both intellectually and in terms of practical politics, and this seemingly simple and obvious idea has consequences that are important amid the political debates of the present. Thus, the concept of 'people' has taken on a character that is fundamentally different from the meaning still associated with the word in international law today. It is evident that belonging to a people, in the sense of origin developed—that is, blood and historical affiliation—is decisive. In the political world, the term 'people' was and is understood as something entirely different; far more superficial things determine who belongs to a people. First and foremost, even today, it is formal legal affiliation to the state. Thus, it is possible that, nowadays, state borders run through the center of ethnic units, which must be maintained rigidly and inviolably and are considered historically justified and therefore politically necessary—not only out of political calculation but also out of fundamental ideological conviction. For formal legal thought, the Galician Jew was a member of the German people as soon as he paid his taxes here instead of in Lodz, and he should have become a Frenchman or an Englishman if he had been naturalized in Paris or London. As nonsensical as this view may be, it still lives among us today, albeit weakened, in all bourgeois minds that now, of course, deny with us the importance of a citizenship certificate for determining ethnicity, but which nevertheless believe in the decisive role of language, for example, in determining ethnic affiliation. Those who, as the scientific literature of democracy has attempted to do, conceive of a people merely as a linguistic and cultural community, completely disregarding the connections related to blood, are equally far removed from our organic—that is, blood-related, biological—concept of a people.

And here we reach the point where ideas and scientific concepts enter into a relationship with the political and historical thought of the new era. While in the past all state life was a matter of more or less formal law detached from man, and man himself was, at the same time, a phenomenon belonging to the realm of the purely spiritual or religious and ecclesiastical ideas, today we see man again as the creator and bearer and thus as the essential content of the state. But at the same time, man and the nation form a physical, spiritual, and mental unity that can never be understood if we try to approach it exclusively from the side of pure spirit. Thus, we realize that the physical, biological, and scientific facts of human and national life also belong to the circle of all considerations that seek a complete understanding of historical life. In addition to intellectual and cultural history, the natural history of man is therefore an indispensable prerequisite for a worldview and history that does justice to the practical and spiritual needs of our time.

It should only be briefly mentioned here that the beginnings of this approach are fundamentally ancient. Since Plato wrote about the state 3,000 years ago, various clear minds have repeatedly recognized that the life of the state is inconceivable without physical health. With the increase of scientific knowledge in the last century, more and more attention was paid to these connections. While [Arthur de] Gobineau made the first great attempt to explain the diversity of cultural and historical phenomena through the racial diversity of creative peoples, and at the same time the kinship of great cultural achievements through elements of the same blood, [Francis] Galton laid the foundations for understanding the biological destruction of peoples and, at the same time, made scientifically grounded demands to prevent such outcomes. Thus, he became the founder of 'eugenics,' which we in Germany have called 'racial hygiene' for decades. And while the natural sciences rapidly deepened all the scientific discoveries that had remained partially unproven during these initial attempts at an entirely new way of thinking, the first heralds of the new biological view of history emerged among thinkers. [Friedrich] Nietzsche made passionate and repeated demands that corresponded to this new spirit; [Ludwig] Schemann and [Ludwig] Woltmann continued Gobineau’s work; and on the threshold of the 20th century, Houston Stewart Chamberlain gave us the first great outline of a racial view of history in his Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which remained a decisive work for two decades, dividing opinions.

And while natural science once again brings new insights, a fundamentally new picture of the forces and forms of historical life grows in the minds and hearts of the newly awakened people—often unconsciously and only slowly becoming clearer—which then finds its political and practical expression in the National Socialist movement of Adolf Hitler, but at the same time in Alfred Rosenberg’s The Myth of the Twentieth Century. This biological view of history, however, represents a large-scale revolution of the mind when compared to previous ideas."

— Dr. Walter Gross, Der Schulungsbrief

Woltmann’s racial Marxism, far from an outlier, exposes the inherent plasticity of Marx’s materialism. By elevating race over education and environment as the decisive economic factor, he bridged Darwinian biology and socialist ideology, igniting the 20th century’s most extreme racial worldview: German National Socialism. His ideas, cut short by his 1907 drowning in Italy, lived on through Chamberlain’s influence on Hitler, linking Marx to Nazism with precision.

Conclusions

I argue that Ludwig Woltmann’s synthesis of Darwinian evolution with Marxism, echoed by Enrico Ferri and the work of Ernst Haeckel, redefines National Socialism and Fascism as heterodox extensions of Marx, a thesis supported by A. James Gregor. This traces Marx and Engels’ racialized views — implicit in their mid-19th-century anti-Slavic writings — through its amplification by Darwinian racial struggle into 20th-century totalitarian racial policies, shifting Marxism’s socioeconomic class war to a biologically grounded class war. Marx and Engels framed history as a dialectical struggle, extending beyond class to racial dynamics, notably their anti-Slavic stance in the 1848 Neue Rheinische Zeitung, casting Slavs as counter-revolutionary. In the late Wilhelmine era, Woltmann transformed this into a racial hierarchy with Germans as history’s vanguard, laying a critical intellectual foundation for National Socialist racial ideology that influenced policies like the Generalplan Ost, which aimed to displace 31 million Eastern Europeans, partially enacted through mass starvation and deportations. Woltmann’s works significantly shaped later racial theorists, as evidenced by their extensive citations among prominent NSDAP and SS anthropologists. Hans F. K. Günther, in his seminal work Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, repeatedly references Woltmann’s contributions, crediting him with advancing racial historical studies. Günther wrote in Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes "the scientific successor to Gobineau"‬

Similarly, Otto Reche, a University of Leipzig anthropologist and self-proclaimed follower of Woltmann, hailed him as a foundational figure, arguing that he was a bold forerunner of the völkisch movement and scientific racism, the foundation of the National Socialist worldview. In 1936, Reche republished Woltmann’s Politische Anthropologie, noting in the foreword: "every page was influenced by the spirit of Darwin."‬ Reche’s devotion to Woltmann’s evolutionary racial anthropology was evident even before his 1937 NSDAP membership. As early as 1933-34, he lectured at the State Academy for Physicians’ Continuing Education in Dresden, training 4,000 professionals in racial ideology, with his first of three lectures devoted entirely to human and racial evolution. Later, Reche offered his expertise to shape racial policy in the occupied Eastern territories, using blood type research to justify Polish genocide and Slavic inferiority, aligning with the 1939 invasion and Generalplan Ost.

Woltmann’s influence extended beyond Günther and Reche to a wide array of NSDAP and SS racial anthropologists, including Gerhard Heberer, Christian von Krogh, Wilhelm Gieseler, Karl Astel, and Hans Weinert (all SS members except Reche), who built upon the works of earlier pioneers like Gobineau, Haeckel, Woltmann, and Günther. This vast body of racial science underpinned the Third Reich’s racial laws and policies, a subject so expansive it could occupy a decade of study. In Ukraine, Erich Koch’s brutal policies under Hitler’s vision of Slavic subjugation — executed via the “Hunger Plan” and mass killings — aligned with Alfred Rosenberg’s racial extermination campaigns, for which he was convicted at Nuremberg in 1946. Haeckel’s eugenic Darwinism further fueled this ideology, driving the T4 program’s murder of over 70,000 disabled individuals.

Enrico Ferri’s Marxist criminology, evolving into Fascist ideology under Mussolini, endorsed eugenics and racial laws against Jews, as well as anti-Slavic massacres in Yugoslavia during WWII, reflecting a parallel Marxist-Darwinian racial struggle. Marx’s materialist dialectic, fused with racial science through Woltmann’s framework, thus underpins not only the economic disasters of Marxist states — Soviet famine (7 million dead) and Mao’s Great Leap Forward (30 million dead) — but also the genocidal terror of Nazism and Fascism.

Nazism and Fascism emerge as Marxism’s unorthodox offshoots, not opposites, via Woltmann’s fusion of Marx’s dialectic with Darwinian racialism. This anti-Slavic lens drove Rosenberg’s and Reche’s policies, mirrored by Ferri’s Fascist shift, transforming Marx’s framework into racial totalitarianism. Despite pragmatic wartime alliances with Slavic states, the racial core persisted. Though Hitler in Mein Kampf asserts a divergence from Marxism, Nazism and Fascism redirect Marxism’s class struggle, proletarian socialism, and collectivism into a racist, proletarian-infused totalitarian nationalism, revealing themselves as heterodox Marxists.

“National Socialism is what Marxism might have been if it could have broken its absurd and artificial ties with a democratic order.”

— Adolf Hitler quoted in Nietzsche and The Nazis by Stephen R. C. Hicks