system
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human
Origins of Marx's quote about California and Mexico?

"Is it a misfortune that magnificent California was seized from the lazy Mexicans who did not know what to do with it?"

This line is heralded on the Internet as a reason Marx is/was racist. I remember having found it once and this seemed to very clearly be wrong. I'm only finding sources on it that display this one quotation out of context, though.
gpt
The paper *Were Marx and Engels White Racists: The Prolet-Aryan Outlook of Marxism* by Carlos Moore (1974) includes the quote, saying it was written by Engels (not Marx himself, although reportedly expressing their joint view) for an article in the February 15 1849 copy of Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and citing it as:

> Marx and Engels, Gesamtausgabe (published by the Institute for Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1959), Vol. 6, pp. 273-271 (Quoted in: Gustavo Beyhaut, Raices de America Latina [Eudeba Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1964], Chapter II, p. 74, our translation and emphasis).

I don't know if the entire article is available anywhere in English, but for slightly more context the full quote included in that paper is:

> Is it a misfortune that the wonderful California was wrested from the lazy Mexicans, who did not know what to do with it?... All impotent nations must, in the final analysis, be grateful to those who, obeying historical necessities, attach them to a great empire, thus allowing them participation in a historical development which would otherwise be unknown to them. It is self-evident that such a result could not be obtained without crushing some sweet little flowers. Without violence, nothing can be accomplished in history...

Another quote by Engels on the same topic from an article in Deutsche-Brüsseler Zeitung from January 23 1848 (republished in the same source as the above) is also provided:

> ...we have been spectators of the conquest of Mexico and have rejoiced in it. It is progress that a country which, up till now, was concerned exclusively with itself, torn asunder by eternal civil wars and alien to any form of development...should have been propelled, through violence, to historical development. It is in the interest of its own development that it shall, in the future, be placed under the tutelage of the United States. It is in the interest of the whole of America that the United States, thanks to the conquest of California, should achieve mastery over the Pacific Ocean.