The Jewish Question - Karl Marx on...

[anti machine]

I recently read the essay "The Jewish Question" by Mr. Marx, an ethnic Jew himself, in which he critiques the message of Bauer concerning the Jews demanding equality in Germany. (an interesting omen to the Nazis, if you read it.) Bauer doesn't like the Jews. Marx sort of fudges...
He makes reference to the Jewish man's nature, of "haggling" being the way-of-the-walk for the Jewish community. He admits to their bourgeouis support. And he attributes it to the religion, concluding with "The Jew cannot be emancipated from society-society must be emancipated from the Jew."
His argument makes a hell of a lot of sense (as do, obviously, many of his other arguments.) Is anti-semitism "okay" if those sentiments are pertaining to the religion of Judaism?
Marx seems to think so. And we seem to follow his philosophy...

[Ian]

I don't believe that the article 'On the Jewish Question' is anti-semitic, at least I cannot recall it being so.

What I make of the article is that Marx concludes that society must emancipate itself from applying stereotypes and labels before the people who are actually being labelled can emancipate themselves.

Although I haven't read the article in a few months I thought it said Bauer was a jewish person?

[Saint-Just]

Bauer was a Jew.

Marx was not calling for anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is racism. The Semites are a race. The Nazis often referred to the Jews innacurately as a race. They liked to seperate Jews as a race, believing in race science as they did. But in fact Jews were exactly the same as ordinary Germans.

It is Naziistic to call Jews a racial group.

Marx was attacking the Jewish society that existed. He wanted to dispel the traditional bourgeois Jewish ways from society. He wanted to bring an end to a tradition of business, money-lending etc.

What evolved from that era is very pertinent to Marx's argument way back then. Now we have the old Jewish saying 'get involved, stay involved'.

He is certainly not saying we should be anti-Semitic. He is saying that the religion and way of life is a problem. I imagine that following a revolution, the conditions in society and society being purely atheistic would mean an end to this problem, Jews would no longer be Jews. They would simply be Semites, and we can live peacefully with Semites as all races can live together in peace.

I believe this sums up what Marx said:

'The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.'

(Edited by Chairman Mao at 3:53 pm on July 21, 2003)

[antieverything]

I think that Marxists would be better off if they simply accepted the fact that Marx (like almost all non-Jewish Europeans of the time) was anti-semetic. He felt that Jews were inferior and had made capitalism into the horrible creature that it was.

[elijahcraig]

Marx believed that Judaism (like Christianity) is one of the main problems which cause capitalism to be propped up. I don't consider him anti-semitic.

I am Jewish, and I always though Jews were a race. That's what I've always been told.

I find it hard to believe that Marx was an anti-semite if he was Jewish himself, that's not in his character.

[Ian]

Quote: from antieverything on 3:37 am on July 22, 2003
I think that Marxists would be better off if they simply accepted the fact that Marx (like almost all non-Jewish Europeans of the time) was anti-semetic. He felt that Jews were inferior and had made capitalism into the horrible creature that it was.


Please, antieverything back up your arguement, it isn't productive to say that we should just accept it, you must argue and convince us of it or we simply will not accept it.

After the continuing trend in the 1880's of right wing commentators calling socialism an anti-semitic movement Engels decided to refute this with by writing an letter to “Leaving aside Heine and Borne, Marx was a full-blooded Jew; Lassalle was a Jew. Many of our best people are Jews. My friend Victor Adler, who is now atoning in a Viennese prison for his devotion to the cause of the proletariat, Eduard Bernstein, editor of the London Sozialdemokrat, Paul Singer, one of our best men in the Reichstag—people whom I am proud to call my friends, and all of them Jewish! After all, I myself was dubbed a Jew by the Gartenlaube [a right-wing magazine] and, indeed, if given the choice, I’d as lief be a Jew as a ‘Herr von’.” [Collected Works, vol. 27, pp. 50-51]

OK, OK you guessed it I found this stuff here (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/corr-m29.shtml), an exchange of letters between two people, another good place ishere (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/corr-m13.shtml) it talks about [i]'On the Jewish Question'

Also here (http://www.marxmail.org/faq/antisemitism.htm)

[capitalistpigdog]

"This is what the Torah lays down as a matter of law:

The community has to provide ('lend') money to those who need it, free of interest.
All such loans, if outstanding, are to be cancelled every seventh year.
The country's wealth, and this applies particularly to productive capital such as land, belongs equally to all and needs to be shared out."

Unusual isnt it, considering Marx's comments regarding Judaism and his apparent belief that The Jewish religion accepts and perpetuates capitilism. It seems, to me that Marx was simply critising the practices and lifestyle of the Jewish people living in Germany at the time.

In no way was he being "anti-semetic". His comments are niether directed against the semite race or the Jewish religion.

[Severian]

Actually, Marx was arguing for Jewish emancipation. Bauer had said that Jews could only be emancipated if they gave up their religion. Part of an argument against religion in general by Bauer.

Marx did identify capitalism with the Jews. In this he made an error.

In pre-capitalist Europe and the Middle East, Jews were identified with commerce and moneylending. This was not capitalism, but rather a marginal commerical function necessary to the functioning of a"natural economy" where most production was for local use, not sale on the market. With the development of capitalism, most Jews were gradually displaced from this economic position.

When they really did dominate commerce and moneylending, in pre-capitalist society, it was harder to scapegoat the "Jewish bankers" as they had an essential function. Only after the Jews ceased to really represent "capital" did they become most vulnerable to scapegoating, blame for the effects of capitalism.

Other pre-capitalist societies also assigned commercial functions to distinct religious, caste, or national minorities. The "overseas Chinese" in southeast Asia and Indonesia, for example.

On the other hand, Marx's materialist method indicated the right direction to look, the right questions to ask, in order to gain this understanding of the social situation of the Jewish people and the roots of anti-Semitism. As Marx put it in "On the Jewish Question": One must not look for the secret of Jewish survival in the Jewish religion, but for the secret of the Jewish religion in the real Jew.

In reading "On the Jewish Question", one should keep in mind that it is a pre-1948 document. That is, Marx had not yet been recruited to a workers' organization, The League of the Just, had not fully become a communist.

A good book giving a materialist understanding of Jewish history and the roots of anti-Semitism:
The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation by Abram Leon.