On the Jewish Question

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"On the Jewish Question" (German: "Zur Judenfrage") is an essay by Karl Marx written in autumn 1843 and first published in February 1844 in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher. It is one of Marx's first attempts to deal with categories that would later be called the materialist conception of history. The essay has been seen by some writers as prefiguring the anti Semitism of various communist regimes.^{[citation needed]}

A translation of Zur Judenfrage was published together with other articles of Marx in 1959 under the title "A World Without Jews".^[1] The editor Dagobert D. Runes intended to show Marx's alleged anti-Semitism.^[2] This edition has been critisized because the reader is not told that its title is not from Marx, and for distortions in the text.^[3]

Contents 1 Political and human emancipation 2 Interpretations 3 Karl Marx and Judaism 4 See also 5 Further reading 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Political and human emancipation

The essay criticizes two studies on the attempt by the Jews to achieve political emancipation in Prussia by another Young Hegelian, Bruno Bauer. Bauer argued that Jews can achieve political emancipation only if they relinquish their particular religious consciousness, since political emancipation requires a secular state, which he assumes does not leave any "space" for social identities such as religion. According to Bauer, such religious demands are incompatible with the idea of the "Rights of Man." True political emancipation, for Bauer, requires the abolition of religion. Marx criticizes Bauer for not going far enough. True political emancipation, for Marx, requires the forceful suppression of religion.^{[citation needed]}

In large part, the essay argues against religion in general, not Jews in particular, but it is nonetheless full of passages that are alleged to be anti-semitic:

We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development – to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed – has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate.

In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.

The Jew has already emancipated himself in a Jewish way.

“The Jew, who in Vienna, for example, is only tolerated, determines the fate of the whole Empire by his financial power. The Jew, who may have no rights in the smallest German state, decides the fate of Europe. While corporations and guilds refuse to admit Jews, or have not yet adopted a favorable attitude towards them, the audacity of industry mocks at the obstinacy of the material institutions.” (Bruno Bauer, The Jewish Question, p. 114)

This is no isolated fact. The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews.

Captain Hamilton, for example, reports:

“The devout and politically free inhabitant of New England is a kind of Laocoön who makes not the least effort to escape from the serpents which are crushing him. Mammon is his idol which he adores not only with his lips but with the whole force of his body and mind. In his view the world is no more than a Stock Exchange, and he is convinced that he has no other destiny here below than to become richer than his neighbor. Trade has seized upon all his thoughts, and he has no other recreation than to exchange objects. When he travels he carries, so to speak, his goods and his counter on his back and talks only of interest and profit. If he loses sight of his own business for an instant it is only in order to pry into the business of his competitors.”

Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade, and the bankrupt trader deals in the Gospel just as the Gospel preacher who has become rich goes in for business deals.

“The man who you see at the head of a respectable congregation began as a trader; his business having failed, he became a minister. The other began as a priest but as soon as he had some money at his disposal he left the pulpit to become a trader. In the eyes of very many people, the religious ministry is a veritable business career.” (Beaumont, op. cit., pp. 185,186.)

According to Bauer, it is

“a fictitious state of affairs when in theory the Jew is deprived of political rights, whereas in practice he has immense power and exerts his political influence en gros, although it is curtailed en détail.” (Die Judenfrage, p. 114)

Marx uses Bauer's essay as an occasion for his own analysis of liberal rights. According to Marx, if people are permitted to practice religion they are not free, if they can possess what they create, they are not free.^{[citation needed]} Marx predicts that Jews will disappear, will cease to be Jewish, once everyone is forbidden to practice religion, to own things, or to work for themselves.^{[citation needed]}

For Marx, it is not a question of who is to be emancipated or who is to bring it about; it is a question of the appropriate form of emancipation to be pursued. Marx argues that Bauer is mistaken in his assumption that in a "secular state" religion will no longer play a prominent role in social life, and, as an example refers to the pervasiveness of religion in the United States, which, unlike Prussia, had no state religion. In Marx's analysis, the "secular state" is not opposed to religion, but rather actually presupposes it, given that the Rights of Man are rights individuals possess insofar as they are viewed in abstraction from their particular identities. The removal of religious or property qualifications for citizens does not mean the abolition of religion or property, but only introduces a way of regarding individuals in abstraction from concrete particular identities that he assumes are just as illusory as religion.

And for Marx, real emancipation is abolition of religion and private property, which will produce many benefits, the elimination of Jews being one of them.^{[citation needed]}

[T]he political annulment of private property not only fails to abolish private property but even presupposes it. The state abolishes, in its own way, distinctions of birth, social rank, education, occupation, when it declares that birth, social rank, education, occupation, are non-political distinctions, when it proclaims, without regard to these distinction, that every member of the nation is an equal participant in national sovereignty, when it treats all elements of the real life of the nation from the standpoint of the state. Nevertheless, the state allows private property, education, occupation, to act in their way – i.e., as private property, as education, as occupation, and to exert the influence of their special nature. Far from abolishing these real distinctions, the state only exists on the presupposition of their existence; it feels itself to be a political state and asserts its universality only in opposition to these elements of its being. [1]

On this note Marx moves beyond the question of religious freedom to his real concern with Bauer's analysis of "political emancipation." Marx concludes that while individuals can be 'spiritually' and 'politically' free in a secular state, they can still be bound to material constraints on freedom by economic inequality, an assumption that would later form the basis of his critiques of capitalism.

[edit] Interpretations

Abram Leon in his book The Jewish Question (published 1946)^[4] examines Jewish history from a materialist outlook. According to Leon, Marx's essay states that one “must not start with religion in order to explain Jewish history; on the contrary: the preservation of the Jewish religion or nationality can be explained only by the 'real Jew', that is to say, by the Jew in his economic and social role”.

Isaac Deutscher (1959)^[5] compares Marx with Elisha ben Abuyah, Baruch Spinoza, Heinrich Heine, Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Trotsky, and Sigmund Freud, of who he thinks as heretics who transcend Jewry and still belong to a Jewish tradition. According to Deutscher, Marx's “idea of socialism and of the classless and stateless society” expressed in the essay is as universal as Spinoza's ethics and God.

Stephen Greenblatt (1978)^[6] compares the essay with Christopher Marlowe's play The Jew of Malta. According to Greenblatt, “[b]oth writers hope to focus attention upon activity that is seen as at once alien and yet central to the life of the community and to direct against that activity the anti-Semitic feeling of the audience”. Greenblatt is attributing Marx a “sharp, even hysterical, denial of his religious background”.

Y. Peled (1992)^[7] sees Marx shifting the debate over Jewish emancipation from the theological to the sociological plane, thereby circumventing one of Bauer's main arguments. In Peleds view, this was less than a satisfactory response to Bauer, but it enabled Marx to present a case for emancipation while, at the same time, launching his critique of economic alienation. He concludes that Marx's philosophical advances were necessitated by, and integrally related to, his commitment to Jewish emancipation.

Gordon Hull (1997)^[8] structurally compares contemporary questions of nationalism with Marx's ‘Jewish Question’. He reads Marx's early writings guided by Jacques Derrida's book Specters of Marx and Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities. This leads him to call into question the reproduction of the reduction of heterogenous ‘people’ into a homogenous ‘state’.

For Sociologist Robert Fine (2006)^[9] Bauer's essay “echoed the generally prejudicial representation of the Jew as ‘merchant’ and ‘moneyman’”, whereas “Marx’s aim was to defend the right of Jews to full civil and political emancipation (that is, to equal civil and political rights) alongside all other German citizens”. Fine argues that “(t)he line of attack Marx adopts is not to contrast Bauer’s crude stereotype of the Jews to the actual situation of Jews in Germany”, but “to reveal that Bauer has no inkling of the nature of modern democracy”.

While Sociologist Larry Ray in his reply (2006)^[10] acknowledges Fine's reading of the eassy as an ironic defence of Jewish emancipation, he points out the polyvalence of Marx's language. Ray translates a sentence of Zur Judenfrage and interprets it as an assimilationist position “in which there is no room within emancipated humanity for Jews as a separate ethnic or cultural identity”, and which advocates “a society where both cultural as well as economic difference is eliminated”. Here Ray sees Marx in a “strand of left thinking that has been unable to address forms of oppression not directly linked to class”.

[edit] Karl Marx and Judaism

An atheist as an adult, Marx was raised as a Lutheran, his father having converted when Marx was a child in order to escape discrimination by the Prussian state. Marx himself has been accused of being an anti-Semite, though most critical scholars today tend to reject this argument.^[11]

In On the Jewish Question Marx writes "What is the worldly cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money."; and continues, "[t]he social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism." [2]

These passages lead many to believe that Marx was a self-hating Jew.^{[citation needed]} Those who accuse Marx of anti-Semitism often cite these passages.^{[citation needed]} Those denying Marx was anti semitic complain that Marx is being quoted out of context, as in a sense he is, for he is primarily arguing that religion and a large economic control by a small section of society are bad, and merely employing the fact that Jews are supposedly part of the problem to illustrate his primary point.^{[citation needed]}

With a measure of irony, Marx goes on to link the emancipation of Jews to a general emancipation of society from huckstering and its conditions. Still, his focus was not on the Jewish religion, but rather on replacing “freedom to” with “freedom from”.^{[citation needed]} Instead of men being free to practice whatever religion they choose, they should be free from religion.^{[citation needed]}

From a letter to Arnold Ruge, written March 1843 ^[12], it follows that Marx was going to support a petition of the Jews to the Provincial Assembly. He explains that by this step he does not support Bruno Bauer's demand at the Jews to give up their religion.

[edit] See also

• Bruno Bauer
• Dialectical materialism
• German idealism
• Historical materialism
• Materialism
• Karl Marx
• Marxism
• Marxist theory
• Marxist philosophy
• Young Hegelians

[edit] Further reading

• Andrew Vincent, "Marx and Law", Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Winter, 1993), pp. 371-397.

[edit] References

1. ^ A World Without Jews, review in: The Western Socialist, Vol. 27 - No. 212, No. 1, 1960, pages 5-7
2. ^ Marx and Anti-Semitism, discussion in: The Western Socialist, Vol. 27 - No. 214, No. 3, 1960, pages 11, 19-21
3. ^ Draper 1977, Note 1
4. ^ Leon 1950, Chapter One, Premises
5. ^ Isaac Deutscher: Message of the Non-Jewish Jew in American Socialist 1958
6. ^ Stephen J. Greenblatt: Marlowe, Marx, and Anti-Semitism, in: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter, 1978), pp. 291-307; Excerpt
7. ^ Y. Peled: From theology to sociology: Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx on the question of Jewish emancipation, in: History of Political Thought, Volume 13, Number 3, 1992, pp. 463-485(23); Abstract
8. ^ Gordon Hull: The Jewish Question Revisited: Marx, Derrida, and Ethnic Nationalism, in Philosophy & Social Criticism 23,2,(1997) 47-77; Preprint (PDF)
9. ^ Robert Fine: Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Anti-Semitism in: Engage Journal 2, May 2006
10. ^ Larry Ray: Marx and the Radical Critique of difference in: Engage Journal 3, September 2006
11. ^ Shamir, Illana and Shlomo Shavit (General Editors), Encyclopedia of Jewish History: Events and Eras of the Jewish People, p. 118, pp. 210-216
12. ^ “(...) I have just been visited by the chief of the Jewish community here, who has asked me for a petition for the Jews to the Provincial Assembly, and I am willing to do it. However much I dislike the Jewish faith, Bauer's view seems to me too abstract. The thing is to make as many breaches as possible in the Christian state and to smuggle in as much as we can of what is rational. At least, it must be attempted--and the embitterment grows with every petition that is rejected with protestations”, postscript of a Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge in Dresden, written: Cologne, March 13 1843

[edit] External links

• "On the Jewish Question"
• "Zur Judenfrage"
• Hal Draper: Marx and the Economic-Jew Stereotype (1977)
• Abram Leon: The Jewish Question, A Marxist Interpretation (French 1946, English 1950)

The works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Marx: Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843), On the Jewish Question (1843), Notes on James Mill (1844), Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (1844), Theses on Feuerbach (1845), The Poverty of Philosophy (1845), Wage-Labor and Capital (1847), The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), Grundrisse (1857), Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Theories of Surplus Value, 3 volumes (1862), Value, Price and Profit (1865), Capital vol. 1 (1867), The Civil War in France (1871), Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), Notes on Wagner (1883)
Marx and Engels: The German Ideology (1845), The Holy Family (1845), Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Writings on the U.S. Civil War (1861), Capital, vol. 2 [posthumously, published by Engels] (1885), Capital, vol. 3 [posthumously, published by Engels] (1894)
Engels: The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1844), The Peasant War in Germany (1850), Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany (1852), Anti-Dühring (1878), Dialectics of Nature (1883), The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884), Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1886)