The Jewish Question... By Marx!?

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Have any of you read the Jewish Question? Someone I was debating posted it on another forum I post on and claimed that Marx was an anti-semite but I pointed out that Marx was jewish. Still was Marx anti-semitist?

[More Fire for the People]

Marx was speaking of the Jewish religion and not the ethnic group. The accusation of being ‘anti-semetic’ is only brought up by anti-communists who want to mud Marx’s name. He criticised German Jews for wanting ‘emancipation’ in the form of '[c]ivic, political emancipation.’ This form of emancipitation would equalise Christians and Jews before the eyes of the state. This form of emanicpitation is impossible because the Christian state is incapable of creating equality and would alienate the Jew from his or her being. The Jews could not claim secular citizenship because citizenship did not exist in Germany at the time.

The only emancipitation of the Jewish people could be through social emancipitation but the Jewish religion, at least of time, was an obstruction to this emancipitation.

[Okocim]

Originally posted by Hopscotch [email protected] 18 2006, 09:47 PM
Marx was speaking of the Jewish religion and not the ethnic group. The accusation of being ‘anti-semetic’ is only brought up by anti-communists who want to mud Marx’s name. He criticised German Jews for wanting ‘emancipation’ in the form of '[c]ivic, political emancipation.’ This form of emancipitation would equalise Christians and Jews before the eyes of the state. This form of emanicpitation is impossible because the Christian state is incapable of creating equality and would alienate the Jew from his or her being. The Jews could not claim secular citizenship because citizenship did not exist in Germany at the time.

The only emancipitation of the Jewish people could be through social emancipitation but the Jewish religion, at least of time, was an obstruction to this emancipitation.
that's true about christian states, but surely it applies equally to jewish states - there can be no equality in religious states regardless of the religion of it.

although, that wasn't all that Marx wrote, there was some digs at jews as a race as wel if I remember rightly.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Hopscotch [email protected] 18 2006, 02:47 PM
Marx was speaking of the Jewish religion and not the ethnic group. The accusation of being ‘anti-semetic’ is only brought up by anti-communists who want to mud Marx’s name. He criticised German Jews for wanting ‘emancipation’ in the form of '[c]ivic, political emancipation.’ This form of emancipitation would equalise Christians and Jews before the eyes of the state. This form of emanicpitation is impossible because the Christian state is incapable of creating equality and would alienate the Jew from his or her being. The Jews could not claim secular citizenship because citizenship did not exist in Germany at the time.

The only emancipitation of the Jewish people could be through social emancipitation but the Jewish religion, at least of time, was an obstruction to this emancipitation.
Actually, no. That's Bruno Bauer's view, which Marx was arguing against in the article. Marx was arguing that Jews can and should demand civil and political equality, today, under capitalism. He points to the bourgeois-democratic republics in France and America, where Jews and everyone else had civil and political rights - without social emancipation. He points out this shows the limits of mere civil equality.

It's easy to misunderstand this since Marx summarizes Bauer's views at the beginning of the article, before arguing against them.

It should also be kept in mind that this is one of Marx's early articles, written before he became a communist, a revolutionary activist. It has its problems, most glaringly the error of linking Judaism with capitalism.

Its greatest merit, really, is as an early statement of the materialist method Marx was developing: "The secret of the real Jew is not to be found in his religon; rather the key to understanding the Jewish religion is to be found in the real Jew." Or something like that.

For an application of that materialist method to the history of the Jewish people, I recommend "The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation" by Abram Leon.

[OneBrickOneVoice]

Wait but Hopscotch, in the begining he says he's speaking about the wordly jew not the sabath jew. That means jews as a people. Also it sorta seems like he was critizing them and that their materialistic. Correct me where I'm wrong.

[jaycee]

Marx connecting jews and capitalism reflected a basic truth. The jews were forced into money handling and mercantalism (i think thats the right word for merchants) by Feudal/Christian laws. This meant that jews did play a role in the emergence of capitalism. Marx saw this as progressive, therefore it doesn't seem anti semitic to me.

The main argument in 'the Jewish Question' is against the bourgeois view of civic liberties as oppossed to social liberty.

I haven't read the entire thing though, there may be some phrases and stuff which sound dodgy but the core of the message is generally positive and worth reading.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2006, 05:47 AM
Marx connecting jews and capitalism reflected a basic truth. The jews were forced into money handling and mercantalism (i think thats the right word for merchants) by Feudal/Christian laws. This meant that jews did play a role in the emergence of capitalism.
Nah. As you say, Jews were assigned a commercial/moneylending role in feudal society. (Which doesn't mean all Jews were rich, of course; many were small traders, peddlers and so forth; also professionals, artisans, sailors.) Other precapitalist societies assigned this necessary but despised role to other castes, ethnicities, and religious minorities. (e.g. overseas Chinese in southeast Asia and Indonesia)

This kind of commerce, which precedes the capitalist mode of production, should not be identified with it. The rise of capitalism saw the rise of Christian merchants, moneylenders, etc. Some Jews became part of the new capitalist class; others were pushed out of their traditional livelihoods. This competition explains why anti-Jewish persecution took new and sometimes more vicious forms in the modern world.

I really recommend Abram Leon's book on all of this.

So. The young Marx was wrong to identify Judaism with capitalism, say that civil society had to be emancipated from the "Jewish spirit" - meaning capitalism, etc.

It's not surprising that this philosophy student, starting out with no experience in the real movement, did make a lot of mistakes and write a lot of things he later corrected based on experience and the lessons of events.

[Alf]

Severian is right on this point about Judaism and the origins of capitalism, and Avram Leon is certainly worth reading, a point made in the ICC's article on Marx and the Jewish Question
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/114_jewish_question.html.

What's truly enduring about Marx's article is the fact that while it recognises (against Bauer) that political emancipation and political democracy would have been a big step forward in semi-feudal Germany, it is already making a critique of the limitations of 'democratic' ideology and is looking forward to a real social emancipation, a real human community. Marx's polemic against the notion of the "rights of man" is particularly eloquent:

"None of the so-called rights of man goes beyond the egoistic man, the man withdrawn into himself, his private interest and his private choice, and separated from the community as a member of civil society. Far from viewing man here in his species-being, his species life itself – society – rather appears to be an external framework for the individual, limiting his original independence. The only bond between men is natural necessity, need and private interest, the maintenance of their property and egoistic interest”.