Marxism and Problems of Linguistics - From Marx to Mao

ourgeoisie” 2 that it is permeated with the spirit of mercantilismand huckstering. Certain comrades cite this passagewith the idea of proving that Marx believed in the “classcharacter” of language and denied the existence of a singlenational language. If these comrades were impartial, theyshould have cited another passage from this same articleSt. Max, where Marx, touching on the ways single nationallanguages arose, speaks of “the concentration of dialects intoa single national language resulting from economic and politicalconcentration.” 3Marx, consequently, did recognize the necessity of a singlenational language, as a higher form, to which dialects, aslower forms, are subordinate.What, then, can this bourgeois language be which Marxsays “is a product of the bourgeoisie”? Did Marx considerit as much a language as the national language, with a specificlinguistic structure of its own? Could he have considered itsuch a language? Of course, not. Marx merely wanted to saythat the bourgeois had polluted the single national languagewith their hucksters’ lingo, that the bourgeois, in other words,have their hucksters’ jargon.It thus appears that these comrades have misrepresentedMarx. And they misrepresented him because they quotedMarx not like Marxists but like dogmatists, without delvinginto the essence of the matter.References are made to Engels, and the words from hisThe Condition of the Working Class in England are citedwhere he says that in Britain “. . . the working class hasgradually become a race wholly apart from the English bourgeoisie,”that “the workers speak other dialects, have otherthoughts and ideals, other customs and moral principles, adifferent religion and other politics than those of the bour-13