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I am pretty sure he was against antisemitism, he was from a Jewish after all. Though I don't consider Jews a race, but some people do.
For the workers to realise their common class identity outweighs any racial divisions. A committed Marxist would also argue that racism is a response to inequality and disadvantage and that secure and comfortable people have no use for racism. They would see the Nazis (or to a lesser extent Trump) as a response to capitalism that was misdirected into racism instead of class struggle.
They'd also probably note how racial divides often map fairly closely to various forms of class oppression. Eg. colonialism was often pointed out as a way to "export" the negative effects of capitalism away from the Metropole: Allowing capitalists to temporarily defuse worker's demands for better condition by essentially exploiting the colonized peoples harder.
Marx did seem to consider racism (as most things, really) largely in economic terms: Racial discrimination was a way to play various segments of society against each other. He was strongly in favour of the abolition of slavery, for instance (and wrote quite a bit about the American Civil War, a lot of his analysis being fairly good).
Not exactly.
Closer.
One of Marx's earliest articles was on anti-Semitism:
Text in English: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/index.htm
TLDR: Civil rights movements, promoting toleration, repealing laws discriminating against Jews, re-writing constitutions to separate Church & State, secularism, etc. are all basically pointless. Anti-Semitism is pretty deeply rooted in society and there's nothing you can do politically/ideologically about it. Society (i.e. the underlying economy) has to change first.
But keep in mind that change also means no more Jews - as Judaism (like religion in general) becomes irrelevant and will shrivel & disappear. Race will be similarly become meaningless.
TLDR that: There is no solution to racism. Everything has to change first.
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The Nazis and fascism in general isn't a reaction against capitalism but an *intensification* of it, they're reactions against socialism. And well off folks are plenty racist themselves. I've heard this argument a lot though. The concept of false consciousness was never used like this, not by Engels in the one letter that he used it, or by Lukacs who in the same passage admits that the dialectical method does not permit the existence of a false consciousness, or by Marcuse. False consciousness is just the ideology of the working class that keeps them shackled, basically. It includes racism of course, but also a lot of other things. And it's not caused by inequality but by all the parts of the superstructure that maintains the false consciousness of the proletariat. If that makes sense. I don't think I've explained this very coherently but there you go
This
Not a reaction against capitalism, intensification thereof. Vocally anti-capitalist, demands state control of all aspects of life, heavily regulates economy to point of near collapse. Oxymoron.
Essentially here you're pulling the classic 'paint the Nazis' as everything I'm not without regard to their actual beliefs and actions.
Socialism here taken to mean the penultimate state of human development according to Marx and Capitalism taken to mean the exploitative forces which prevent humanity from ascending to this stage. In other words, corporatism/state capitalism is taken to be an intensification of the oppression of the proletariat which occurs under the capitalist mode of production rather than of capitalism as an economic system per se -- which, as you point out, is total nonsense.
It would be more accurate from Futo's pov to say that fascism is the intensification of the oppressive forces of capitalism, a "tightening of the screws" as it were. It is in Marxian terms what the bourgeoisie turn to when their preferred form of government (ie. any which endorses market liberalism) is no longer feasible, but it is not the form of government that most capitalists would consider desirable. Hence why Marxian historians of fascism like to refer to fascism as being the "last gasp" of capitalism.
Futo was right, he didn't explain his position as well as he could have.
Jeez. It's almost like Marxian approaches to history are fundamentally flawed or something.
You can't really expect a vision of History that simply puts your economic ideal as the final and inevitable stage of mankind and then tries to interpret everything else that happened earlier in terms of that to be very scientific or accurate. Whether that ideal is communism, feudalism, some free market utopia, or anything else.
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I think the real issue about "capitalism" is that the term itself is very vague and was actually invented by Marx himself. It was never used before from liberals to describe their ideals.
Marx used that term to describe the situation he observed in which mighty industrialists could use their power to keep down the workers. If you see "capitalism" as a term for describing a large influence of few rich people to prevent anyone endangering their position, you could even argue that fascism and national socialism were highly capitalistic. In both systems important industrialists could get even richer pretty easy once they were close to the political leadership while being also able to keep out any competitiors.
This has nothing to do with the aims of liberalism, though - the aim is that anyone can do his trade freely with anyone he choses to do so. This includes a pluralistic state, of course - any autocratic rule in which the ruler is able to simply change the laws unlimited will not lead to an economy envisioned by liberals.
The first idea to achieve liberalism was to simply remove as many economic barriers as possible. This approach was obviously flawed, though, as this lead to situations in which monopolies could be created and maintained by shutting down any wanna be competitors. This might could extend to be able to squeeze out anyone working for such a company, too. Basically this lead to a situation which Marx called "capitalism" - an economy ruled by robber barons who used their wealth to fight anyone dangerous to them.
Now liberals could repeat their chants of removing all those barriers and claim that "True liberalism has never been tried!". But some liberals used a different path and thought about it, and developped new ideas. New liberal schools promoted limited interventions to ensure that the market can actually work to provide anyone a chance to compete. This lead for eaxample to anti-trust laws which will reduce the power of a dominating company significantly.
So in short "Capitalism" is not the same as Liberalism! Capitalism you can see today in countries like in Russia or China where being close to the rulers means being able to make much money on the cost of everyone else. You won't see it in the "western" world as you can easily thrive there without being best buddy of the president, and you need to be on your toes all the time if you want to keep a leading position you may have gained.
Marx used that term to describe the situation he observed in which mighty industrialists could use their power to keep down the workers. If you see "capitalism" as a term for describing a large influence of few rich people to prevent anyone endangering their position, you could even argue that fascism and national socialism were highly capitalistic. In both systems important industrialists could get even richer pretty easy once they were close to the political leadership while being also able to keep out any competitiors.
This has nothing to do with the aims of liberalism, though - the aim is that anyone can do his trade freely with anyone he choses to do so. This includes a pluralistic state, of course - any autocratic rule in which the ruler is able to simply change the laws unlimited will not lead to an economy envisioned by liberals.
The first idea to achieve liberalism was to simply remove as many economic barriers as possible. This approach was obviously flawed, though, as this lead to situations in which monopolies could be created and maintained by shutting down any wanna be competitors. This might could extend to be able to squeeze out anyone working for such a company, too. Basically this lead to a situation which Marx called "capitalism" - an economy ruled by robber barons who used their wealth to fight anyone dangerous to them.
Now liberals could repeat their chants of removing all those barriers and claim that "True liberalism has never been tried!". But some liberals used a different path and thought about it, and developped new ideas. New liberal schools promoted limited interventions to ensure that the market can actually work to provide anyone a chance to compete. This lead for eaxample to anti-trust laws which will reduce the power of a dominating company significantly.
So in short "Capitalism" is not the same as Liberalism! Capitalism you can see today in countries like in Russia or China where being close to the rulers means being able to make much money on the cost of everyone else. You won't see it in the "western" world as you can easily thrive there without being best buddy of the president, and you need to be on your toes all the time if you want to keep a leading position you may have gained.
Does a “Marxist approach to history” require a total embrace of Marxism as a political ideology?
Not as such. A lot of people who tend to utilize it are out and out Marxists, but you get plenty of historians who aren't that still embrace a lot of the Marxist elements, and still a greater number who pursue social history in general (though this is more of an offshoot of Marxist thinking rather than necessarily containing specifically Marxist elements).
Kinda? It's focused on studying how social class and economics drive history, generally from a deterministic perspective of "people moving forward towards a classless society vs. reactionaries trying to defend their privileges".
While I guess it doesn't necessarily have to be deterministic and could focus on studying of the effects of social classes and evolution of economics, I'd say people who describe their approach as marxist tend to be marxists themselves. Others would just go "well duh, of course I have to analyse the economic system and economic evolution of a period of time to properly understand it".
I’ve met a fair number of historians who call themselves “Marxist historians” in the sense that they analyze history in a way that is strongly influenced by Marxist analysis, yet aren’t themselves political Marxists.
Define what you mean by "marxist analysis", and I may or may not disagree.
(I mean, the whole idea of analysing class dynamics and social changes from an economic perspective is fundamental to any good modern analysis, as is the idea of materialism and the analysis of the available means of production and so on, and AFAIK those were mostly introduced to the discipline by marxists; but I'm not sure if people focusing on those without Marx's "the final situation of mankind must and will be one of classlessness, and there are several phases of progress clearly differenciated from one another and where each stage is superior to the previous one" are usually called "marxist historians" in the discipline's lingo.)
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxist_historiography
Wikipedia is not a good source, etc, etc, but:
Historians who use Marxist methodology, but disagree with the mainstream of Marxism, often describe themselves as marxist historians (with a lowercase M). Methods from Marxist historiography, such as class analysis, can be divorced from the liberatory intent of Marxist historiography; such practitioners often refer to their work as marxian or Marxian.
Is more or less what I’m referring to.
Wikipedia is not a good source, etc, etc, but:
Historians who use Marxist methodology, but disagree with the mainstream of Marxism, often describe themselves as marxist historians (with a lowercase M). Methods from Marxist historiography, such as class analysis, can be divorced from the liberatory intent of Marxist historiography; such practitioners often refer to their work as marxian or Marxian.
Is more or less what I’m referring to.