Has Marx said this about Jews ?

[artanis17]

Well not a much important thread but I was too curious.

In a book I read such a quote from Marx:

"Jews can find salvation only when they leave Judaism"

Has he really said this ?

I translated this from my language, his actual words might have been different.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Can you post the quote untranslated?

Seems like it might have been paraphrasing what he said here:


Thus, Bauer here transforms the question of Jewish emancipation into a purely religious question. The theological problem as to whether the Jew or the Christian has the better prospect of salvation is repeated here in the enlightened form: which of them is more capable of emancipation. No longer is the question asked: Is it Judaism or Christianity that makes a man free? On the contrary, the question is now: Which makes man freer, the negation of Judaism or the negation of Christianity?

[artanis17]

Can you post the quote untranslated?

Seems like it might have been paraphrasing what he said here:

I don't remember that quote and it was in turkish so I doubt it would be useful. Logic tells me that Marx must have thought like that. Religion contradicts with the idea of communism at all and judaism also has fanatical tendencies. Due to being bound to a certain ethnical group only the intensity of fanaticism it can produce may even increase. So jews should get rid of judaism as well as other people get rid of their own religions.

[ColonelCossack]

I heard it speculated that he may have meant that, if jews abandon Judaism, they'll be free of all the anti-semitism etc. that is attached to it. that's only what I heard though. Might be wrong.

[Rooster]

I heard it speculated that he may have meant that, if jews abandon Judaism, they'll be free of all the anti-semitism etc. that is attached to it. that's only what I heard though. Might be wrong.

Where did you hear that? In any case, I think you're wrong. Marx didn't think that the problem didn't involve Jews being Jews, but rather the economic system, so that to solve anti-Semitism would mean to change the economic system. Unless what you're talking about is from a really early philosophic text that I've never read.

[ColonelCossack]

Where did you hear that? In any case, I think you're wrong. Marx didn't think that the problem didn't involve Jews being Jews, but rather the economic system, so that to solve anti-Semitism would mean to change the economic system. Unless what you're talking about is from a really early philosophic text that I've never read.

I can't remember where I read it, and it was yeeeeeeaaaaarrrrrrsssss ago when I was 13 that I read it, and I only just vaguely dug it out of my memory. So yeah, it's probably innacurate.


Your explanation makes more sense to me anyway! :P

[Caj]

"Jews can find salvation only when they leave Judaism"

It's probably from "On the Jewish Question", an early work of Marx written in the fall of 1843.

[Drosophila]

Well, since he was an atheist I don't see the problem. He probably meant "Jews can only find salvation once they leave religion."

[gorillafuck]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/

I can't find that quote in there.

[daft punk]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/

Works of Karl Marx 1844
On The Jewish Question



This is a tricky one to understand and people have debated it for years. Here is a discussion about it:

http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=460

or see wiki

"Abram Leon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Leon) in his book The Jewish Question (published 1946)[16] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question#cite_note-15) 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”."

"
David McLellan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McLellan_%28academic%29), however, has argued that "On the Jewish Question" must be understood in terms of Marx's debates with Bruno Bauer over the nature of political emancipation in Germany. According to McLellan, Marx used the word "Judentum" in its colloquial sense of "commerce" to argue that Germans suffer, and must be emancipated from, capitalism. The second half of Marx's essay, McLellan concludes, should be read as "an extended pun at Bauer’s expense."[23] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question#cite_note-22)"


"Hal Draper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Draper) (1977)[24] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question#cite_note-23) observed that the language of Part II of On the Jewish Question followed the view of the Jews’ role given in Jewish socialist Moses Hess (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Hess)' essay On the Money System."


"Also, McLellan and Francis Wheen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Wheen) argue readers should interpret On the Jewish Question in the deeper context of Marx's debates with Bruno Bauer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Bauer), author of The Jewish Question (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jewish_Question), about Jewish emancipation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_emancipation) in Germany. Francis Wheen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Wheen) says: "Those critics, who see this as a foretaste of 'Mein Kampf', overlook one, essential point: in spite of the clumsy phraseology and crude stereotyping, the essay was actually written as a defense of the Jews. It was a retort to Bruno Bauer, who had argued that Jews should not be granted full civic rights and freedoms unless they were baptised as Christians""


and so on!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question#Publications_by_Marx_relate d_to_the_essay


here is a brief summary from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy


"In this text Marx begins to make clear the distance between himself and his radical liberal colleagues among the Young Hegelians; in particular Bruno Bauer. Bauer had recently written against Jewish emancipation, from an atheist perspective, arguing that the religion of both Jews and Christians was a barrier to emancipation. In responding to Bauer, Marx makes one of the most enduring arguments from his early writings, by means of introducing a distinction between political emancipation — essentially the grant of liberal rights and liberties — and human emancipation. Marx's reply to Bauer is that political emancipation is perfectly compatible with the continued existence of religion, as the contemporary example of the United States demonstrates. However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings. Therefore liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility — for Marx, the fact — that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. So insisting on a regime of rights encourages us to view each other in ways which undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation. Now we should be clear that Marx does not oppose political emancipation, for he sees that liberalism is a great improvement on the systems of prejudice and discrimination which existed in the Germany of his day. Nevertheless, such politically emancipated liberalism must be transcended on the route to genuine human emancipation. Unfortunately, Marx never tells us what human emancipation is, although it is clear that it is closely related to the idea of non-alienated labour, which we will explore below."


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#2.1