MICHAEL MAIDAN
M A R X ON T H E J E W I S H Q U E S T I O N : A META-CRITICAL
ANALYSIS
1. I N T R O D U C T I O N
Marx' article, 'On the Jewish Question', is an important stage in the development of his philosophical and social outlook. As A. Cornu stated in his biographical study of the early Marx, the article can be considered as Marx' breaking-point with his former radical democratic and Hegelian concept of social life, and the decisive step toward the elaboration of his own distinctive social philosophy. 1 At the same time, Marx' essay stands at the heart of a fierce controversy, a controversy which has prevented many critics from perceiving its truly biographical and intellectual value. This controversy centers both on the subject chosen by Marx for the development of his first open attack on Left Hegelian philosophy, and on the manner in which he conducts it. In bringing Marx' essay again to the fore, we intend to illuminate its intrinsic value for the greater understanding of Marx' earlier intellectual development. Nevertheless, it will be impossible to ignore the controversial nature of this piece to which we have already alluded. We will therefore deal briefly with the Jewish content of Marx' article in the first section of our paper; and we will refer later to the conceptual model employed by Marx together with its roots in the early development of his thought.
2. W A S M A R X A N T I - S E M I T I C ?
Even the most sympathetic reader of Marx' article, 'On the Jewish Question', or of the related sections in The Holy Family cannot fail to be shocked by the harshness of Marx' remarks concerning Judaism. When such remarks are considered in the context of what Marx had to say about Jews in other parts of his work z, it is difficult not to conclude that Marx had deeply anti-Jewish prejudices. Some critics have tried to relate his hostility towards Jews and Studies in Soviet Thought 33 (1987), 27--41. © 1987 by D. Reidel Publishing Company.
28
MICHAEL MAIDAN
Judaism to the fact that he, himself, born Jewish, was converted to Christianity. Along these lines, Robert S. Wistrich argued that Marx' "intransigent hostility to Judaism should not blind one to the role which insecurity about his origins played in shaping the intellectual and moral character of his outlook". 3 From here, there is only one step to the claim that Marx' concept of history as a whole was nothing but the projection of an inner conflict, namely, an ideology or rationalization of his own rootlessness and confused self-identity. 4 This thesis can be further extended to the lives of other Jewish revolutionaries with similar background, s On the other hand, when we consider the political intention underlying Marx' early and only treatment of the 'Jewish Question', it is undeniable that Marx supported Jewish emancipation. In addition, we can claim with Helmuth Hirsch that Marx not only endorsed the aspirations of the Jewish community for equality of civil and political rights as opposed to Bauer and other citics, but also indulged in a sophisticated exercise of homeopathic fight against anti-Semitic stereotypes, namely, in what Hirsch called a "dislocative didactic means to overcoming prejudices". 6 In their proper historical context, Marx' remarks are less striking. His argument starts with the assumption that the Jewish phenomenon cannot be explained in religious terms, but in the light of the real practical life of the individual Jew. Such a life is nothing but 'egoistic activity', i.e., commercial and financial practices, which are not the sole monopoly of Jews, but form the basis for today's society. It follows, according to Marx, that de facto there is no real difference between Jews and Christians. The fight for the political emancipation of the Jews is nothing but the struggle to overthrow the already obsolete remnants of medieval society. The fight for the de jure emancipation of the Jews is, therefore, closely related and indissolubly linked to the fight against absolutism. But the anti-absolutist fight is only one stage in the fight for human emancipation. The final victory for mankind will be emancipation from commercial activity itself, or, according to Marx' analqgy between Judaism and capitalism, "emancipation of society from Judaism". 7 Even granting that it is not very flattering for the Jewish people to be regarded as the epitome of the commercial spirit, it must be conceded
MARX ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
29
that Marx has not restricted egoism exclusively to the Jewish people. On the contrary, he castigated the society of his time as being permeated with capitalistic practices. The difference, therefore, between the Jew and the non-Jew becomes an illusion which, in due course, would be explained as a reflection of social life. T h e main practical consequence of this double-edged analogy was for Marx that the Jews should be emancipated u n c o n d i t i o n a l l y . Emancipation should not be regarded either as a reward to be granted individually or even collectively to the Jews after they had fulfilled certain conditions, or as an encouragement to assimilate into society, but rather as the recognition by the state of its own nature as a m o d e r n capitalistic state. It is worth noting that Marx implicitly rejects two main ideological streams which clashed on the issue of Jewish emancipation. Those streams, which in principle favored the emancipation of the Jews (there were others who rejected any emancipation altogether or even preached, like Fries, the eviction of the Jews f r o m Germany), can b e categorised as follows: (a) the 'progressive' or 'enlightened' stream, which advocated the emancipation of the Jews as a means towards their integration into G e r m a n society. Wilhem von Humbolt, a leading m e m b e r of this tendency, summarized his approach as follows: If you will endeavor to loosen the links between the individual Jewish churches and do not foster a single orthodoxy among the Jews but rather further schisms through a natural and justifiable tolerance, the Jewish hierarchy will fall apart of itself. Individuals will come to realize that theirs is only a ceremonial order but not really a religion, and they will turn towards the Christian faith, driven by the innate desire for a higher belief •.. Their conversion then.., will become desirable, enjoyable and charitable? (b) the 'conservative' stream, which d e m a n d e d from the Jews to m e n d their ways before they could expect to be admitted into the G e r m a n nation (which is a nice example of a political tautology!). The Berlin historian F. Rhus clearly expressed this view: A foreign people cannot obtain the rights which Germans enjoy partly through being Christians . . . [It is] forbidden by the very justice of Christians vis-d-vis each other... Everything should be done to induce them [the Jews], in various mild ways, to accept Christianity and through it be led to a true acquisition of German ethnic characteristics and thus to effect the destruction of the Jewish people? Both parties, agree, however, on the point of accepting the Jew in so-
30
MICHAEL MAIDAN
ciety provided that he renounce most or even all the characteristics generally associated with his Jewishness. This premise is utterly rejected by Marx. As already noted, he thought that the fact that the State was unable to grant the Jews the political emancipation they had already achieved socially revealed a serious inadequacy of German political structures vis-&vis the general course of European history. The practical consequence of Marx' premise is that neither baptism, nor conversion to the atheistic critical ideology as demanded by Bauer, or any other reforms, should be demanded or expected from the Jews in exchange for their rights. Before we proceed to an analysis of the internal structure of Marx' essay, we should deal briefly with one last point; it concerns Marx' denial of a national existence to the Jewish people. Marx wrote of the Jewish nationality as being only a fantasy: "the chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general".1° Marx not only denies the existence of a Jewish People ('chimerical nationality') in the present, but makes this negation an eternal truth, valid for all time. Silberner rightly points out that this is a gratuitous affirmation from an historical point of view. ~ Further Marx' denial contradicts his own stated principle of understanding consciousness (religion) by way of practical activity. If the Jewish practical activity, at least at this stage, is the same as the practical activity of the Christian members of society, why is their consciousness (religion) not the same? Why do the Jews cling to their 'chimerical nationality'? Or, reversing Max Weber's thesis about the links between earlier Protestantism and the rise of capitalism, why should Protestant Christianity and not Judaism become the religious consciousness of capitalism? We can point out, at this stage, only the following: Marx had at least to disclaim the notion of a separate nationality because that was one of the central arguments of the anti-Semite avant la lettre who bitterly opposed any kind of emancipation. Furthermore, the very concept of a Jewish nation (in the modern meaning of the term) would not arise until many years later, under the influence of the nationalistic movements of the second half of the 19th century.
MARX ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
3l
3. THE INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF MARX' 'ON THE JEWISH QUESTION'
3.1. The Place of 'On the Jewish Question' in Marx' Development Marx' project of writing an essay dealing with the emancipation of the Jews seems to date from 1842. A t that time Marx, then chief editor to the Cologne-based Rheinische Zeitung, started a polemic with Karl Heinrich Hermes, chief editor of the KOlnische Zeitung. The main subject of Marx' article was the relationship between journalism, philosophy, religion, and the state or, in other words, the question of whether a newspaper could serve as a forum for a philosophical O.e., critical) discussion of the relationship between Church and state. 12 This early skirmish with the conservative K6lnische Zeitung was used by Marx as a means to emphasize two central Left Hegelian doctrines; namely, that philosophy must be endowed with an educational role in order to bring forth the 'rational' to 'concrete existence' and, that in a 'rational' (i.e., modern) state, the Church must be separated from the state. This last subject is closely related to the p r o b l e m of emancipation, and opposed to the official ideology of the Prussian state, according to which Prussia was a 'Christian state'. In a key passage which deals with the relationship between religion and the stability of the state and which clearly anticipates the methodology later introduced in ' O n the Jewish Question', Marx claims against Hermes: that with the downfall of the ancient states their religion also disappeared requires no further explanation, for the 'true religion' of the ancients was the cult of 'their nationality', of their state. It was not the downfall of the old religions that caused the downfall of the ancient states, but the downfall of the ancient states that caused the downfall of the old religions.13 It seems that Marx never wrote the article in which he had intended to challenge H e r m e s on the issue of Jewish emancipation. Then, in 1843, when the differences between Marx and Bauer had b e c o m e m o r e and m o r e p r o n o u n c e d ] 4 Marx decided to link his criticism of Bauer with his former project of a treatment of the emancipation problem. Marx' separation f r o m Bauer was a long and difficult process. It had already started in 1842 when Marx undertook the editing of the Rheinische Zeitung, and b e c o m e m o r e acute when Marx, after the closing of his
32
MICHAEL MAIDAN
journal by Prussian censorship, engaged in a critical examination of his former world view and, in particular, of the Hegelian concept of the modern state. The outcome of this assessement -- known as the 'Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law -- contains some serious reservations not only about Hegel's political philosophy, but also about his philosophy in general. Marx' critique employs a central Feuerbachian concept, the concept that, like a mirror or a photographic camera, speculative philosophy inverts realityY On the other hand, no major Bauerian concept appears in the 'Contribution ...'. This is not to say that in 1843 Marx completely rejected Bauer's philosophy of consciousness. As has been conclusively shown in Zvi Rosen's comparative study of Bauer's and Marx' thought, there is a persistent and pervading influence of Bauer on Marx. 16 The mere fact that Marx had to devote, not only the 'Jewish Question', but also The Holy Family and The German Ideology to fight Bauer's thought clearly indicates the extent of Bauer's influence on Marx.iV At about the same time that Marx was launching himself into the criticism of Hegelian and Left Hegelian philosophy, Bauer was also engaged in a revision of some of his former assumptions. Bauer diagnosed the failure of the oppositional press to the unenlightened character of the public (the 'mass', in Bauer's terms), and to the remainder of a 'massive' element within the oppositional party itself. Appropriately enough, Bauer chose as his new target the oppositional movement, whose lack of critical insight provoked its misfortune. In this light, we can understand why the articles on the Jewish problem, and related articles of this period are especially directed against the liberals and therefore reinforce, at least apparently, the conservative party. Marx, on the other hand, drew from the same facts the conclusion that the defeat of the Left Hegelian movement was the consequence, first of all, of the backwardness of Germany. 18 Because of that, the immediate task of the radicals would be directed toward a better understanding of the nature of modern state and society. So, while Bauer was developing an elitist philosophy which comforted him and his group in their isolation from public life (namely, from the bourgeoisie), Marx side-stepped the obstacle by adopting Communism as an ideal, and the proletarians as the material element of the revolution.
MARX ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
33
It is striking to notice that those two processes, arising from the same political experience and the same ideological background, developed into two widely divergent movements. The result was a violent clash between the two former friends, which gave rise to, inter alia, Marx' article on the Jewish question. 3.2. Political Versus Human Emancipation One of the central tenets of Marx' criticism of Bauer is that the latter confuses 'political' with 'human' emancipation. 19 Because of this confusion Bauer asks that certain conditions be fulfilled before political emancipation be granted; such conditions were considered by Marx as irrelevant. In order really to clarify the matter, writes Marx, what is needed is a better understanding of the nature of the modern state. In fact, Marx partly misinterprets Bauer's argument. Bauer makes two claims. On the one hand, he claims that so long as the state is a Christian one, and so long as the Jews persist in their isolated existence, the state can relate to them only as a privileged minority, namely as one with particular rights and duties which are different from those of other categories of subjects. This state of affairs would last until the Jews renounce their privilege to be considered as Jews, and until the state relates to all of its members qua citizens, qua men. Bauer considered that this aim had not been reached in his day, and, therefore, to ask for the emancipation of the Jews in such a context would be a contradictio in objecto, i.e., a request for emancipation to be granted as a special status, as a privilege. On the other hand, Bauer observes that in social life Jews and Christians face each other not as men in general, but as members of particular faiths, z° Therefore, even if Jews were emancipated on a human basis, as demanded by the supporters of the 'natural law' school, this kind of emancipation would have no real effect on social life. According to his basic presupposition the antecedent for general emancipation -- Jewish emancipation being but one single aspect of it -- is an upheaval in the self-consciousness of Jews and of Christians alike. Such a change implies that they would recognize their specific self-consciousness as only one stage in the development of the universal self-consciousness. In other words, emancipation de facto would take
34
MICHAEL
MAIDAN
place only when Jews and Christians could acknowledge that their religious identities are but stages in the development of humanity, stages which had already been left behind by history. There is a significant grain of troth in Bauer's remarks. As we know from recent history, a change only in the political level would not automatically ensure the Jews real emancipation, without a correlative change of mentalities, a change which has no chance of taking place so long as various groups of citizens cling to their religious or ethnic identities. Marx' main purpose is to criticize Bauer's concept of the state. According to Bauer who, at this point, follows Hegel's teachings, the state is a realm of universality in which particularity is sublated. Actually, the Hegelian concept' does not preclude particularity. On the contrary, Hegel clearly states that the main feature of the modem state is its ability to integrate individuality within itself, even if he restricts this integration to the domain of 'civil society'. 21 On this particular point, it seems that Marx' concept is more faithful to Hegel than is Bauer's. In what we may well call a 'critical turn' of the problem, Marx transforms the problem of emancipation from its original meaning -namely, that of granting rights to a particular sector of society -- into one about how the modern state is constituted. According to Marx, the modem state constitutes itself by emancipating, i.e., by depoliticizing, various areas of social life. Through this process the state becomes a realm of ideal universality, in contrast to the fragmentation of 'civil society'. But, in opposition to Hegel's concept, Marx conceives of the state's as an illusory existence, in a manner akin to the characterization of God in Feuerbach's thought. Marx' changing attitudes toward the Hegelian concept of the modern state can be more clearly seen in his Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, written in 1843 before he started working on his critical review of Bauer's contribution to the emancipation debate. In a central passage, Marx notes that Hegel starts f r o m the state a n d m a k e s m a n the subjectified state; d e m o c r a c y starts from m a n and m a k e s the state objectified man. Just as it is not religion which creates m a n b u t m a n who creates religion, so it is not the constitution which creates the people, b u t the people which creates the constitution. In a certain respect the relation of d e m o c r a c y to all other f o r m s of the state is like the relationship of Christianity to all other religions.
MARX ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
35
Christianity i s . . . the essence of religion, deified man as a particular religion.Similarly, democracy is the essence of all state constitutions -- socialized man as a particular state constitution.22 According to Feuerbach, God is the projection of man's generic existence, "nothing else that the human being, or rather, the human being purified, freed from the limits of the individual men, made objective -- i.e., contemplated and revered as another, a distinct being". 23 Along the same line of thought, Marx writes that "what distinguishes the modern state is n o t . . , that the various elements of the constitution have been developed into a particular actuality, but that the constitution itself has been developed into a particular actuality alongside the actual life o f the people". 24 In the 'Jewish Question', Marx continues this line of thought. The "perfect political state" is by nature "man's species life, as opposed to his material life".25 This is the opposition between man's existence as a private individual, and his ideal existence as a citizen. This opposition is generated in a way similar to that by means of which religion is produced, i.e., by an inversion between reality and ideality. The ideal existence, that as a mere 'member of the state', acquires the characteristics of the real man. The concrete relationship as a member of the -'civil society' becomes merely accidental. The perfect state is therefore one which considers Man only as a citizen, and makes abstraction of any specific determination in respect of property, profession, religious faith, etc. Imperfect states, of course, can be infected at varying levels by these particular elements. The main point of contention between Marx and Bauer on this issue is that whereas Bauer thinks that a 'perfect state' is one based on the real abolition of those particular traits which separate and set one citizen against another, Marx considers the 'perfect state' as one in which a complete divorce takes place between private and public, between civil society and its ideological reflection. The perfect state therefore, is only the projection of the complete transformation of civil society into a private, egoistic, namely, capitalistic one: "The decomposition of man into Jew and citizen, Protestant and citizen, religious man and citizen, is neither a deception directed against citizenhood nor is it a circumvention of political emancipation, it is political emancipation itself, the political method of emancipating oneself from religion". ~6
36
MICHAEL MAIDAN
From this point of view, the Jewish question becomes a yardstick for the lack of development of the Prussian state in existence at the time. Marx arrives at the same conclusion when he considers the different forms in which this question appears in various modern states. In Germany, the 'Jewish question' appears as a theological problem, inasmuch as the state presents itself as a theological state, as a particular sphere in opposition to other private spheres. In the United States, or at least in some of the states of the Union, the divorce between the state and religion, between state and society has, on the contrary, been completely achieved. 27 It is reasonable to expect that in such a social setting no 'Jewish' problem will arise. Accordingly, Marx conceives of the opposition between Jew and non-Jew as that between individuals in real economic and social life, an opposition which not only is not abolished in the modern developed state but, on the contrary, is its very pre-condition. It follows that the abolition of this opposition in civil society is also the pre-condition for the abolition of the modern state, and of the state in general. 28
3.3. Ideology and Reality The 'On the Jewish Question' can be considered as the first formulation of the Marxian theory of ideology. This claim is based on Marx' affirmation according to which, in order to understand the Jewish problem it is necessary to "consider the actual, wordly Jew, not the Shabbath J e w . . . not to look for the secret of the Jew in his religion but • . . for the secret of his religion in the real Jew". 29 Although there is some truth in this interpretation, it is necessary to qualify it, and to consider it in its own context. Marx explains the ideal in terms of the real, in terms of the actual social practice, but his explanation is seriously impaired by the fact that he had not yet developed his distinctive concept of social practice. Here, Marx is applying the Feuerbachian model, according to which ideal entities (such as God, the state,) are only projections of human consciousness or, to be more precise, projections of the 'form' of human consciousness. Marx' remarks in The German Ideology and in his 'Theses on Feuerbach', which contain a great deal of self-criticism as well as
MARX ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
37
polemics against former associates, show the distance between those preliminary insights and his fully developed outlook. In particular, the fourth 'Thesis', reveals many of the shortcomings of Marx' stand while writing 'On the Jewish Question': Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-estrangement, of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. But that the secular basis lifts off from itself and establishes itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by the inner strife and intrinsic contradictoriness of this secular basis.3° According to this criticism, there is something lacking in Marx' early efforts to clarify along Feuerbachian lines subjects so heterogeneous as the emergence of the modern state, the genesis of religion in general, of the Jewish religion in particular, of 'Jewish chimerical' nationality; and what is lacking is an adequate characterisation of what Marx calls the 'secular' basis. Hence, Marx' explanations in 'On the Jewish Question' are only crude extrapolations, which not only reveal his inadequate account of the nature of the civil society, but also his ignorance about the particular superstructural formations he is attempting to explain. In particular, Marx' explanation, being totally formal, lacks any discrimination; it is unable to show the differences between Jews and Christians, something that Bauer could do easily in terms of stages in the development of self-consciousness. At this point, he was unable even to indicate the differences between religion and the state. 3.4.
Egoism
According to Marx, 'practical need', 'egoism', 'self-interest' are the basis of Jewish religion? I Jewish monotheism is regarded by Marx as the projection of the "polytheism of many needs" 32, and the zealous god of the Old Testament is seen as only the projection or idealization of money. Let us leave aside the superficial identification of the Jewish god with Mammon; it is based on c o m m o n prejudices against Judaism, and is not worth dealing with. The substance of Marx' argument seems to be as follows: money is the abstraction of need because, by means of money, we can satisfy any practical need. Hence, money may be considered as the general form of the qualitatively different forms of human activity.
38
MICHAEL MAIDAN
Money, nonetheless, represents the diversity of human activity only in an abstract form and, therefore, man cannot recognize either his activity or himself in money. Money is an estranged or alienated form of human activity. The same holds good, according to Marx, for the Jewish concept of God. In polytheism, man recognized his potentialities in a fragmented form through a plurality of forms. Jewish monotheism recognizes the unity of man, but this unity is limited because of its links to a particular people, for the one God is the God of Israel. Man as such, humanity, is caught only in Christianity. Man regards himself, as it were, through the mirror of Christ and, for the first time in history, achieves an adequate, albeit celestial, image of himself.33 It is worth noting that the logic of Marx' argument implies that on this issue we face a double process of reflection. Money is the reflection of egoistic practice. God is the reflection of money, namely, the reflection of a reflection: "The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange".34 Unfortunately, Marx gives us no hint as how this hierarchy of reflections (money, god, the state) is generated; nor does he clarify the problem of their co-ordination. As a long shot, we can infer that Marx is referring here for the first time to the distinction between 'fetishism' and 'ideology', a distinction which he develops, albeit along very broad lines, in Das Kapital. It should be pointed out that the claim about an ontological link between gods and money already occurs in the preparatory materials for his doctoral dissertation, in the context of a discussion about the ontological proofs for the existence of God. 35 The idea that the phenomenon of money can be clarified according to the general model of religious alienation developed by Feuerbach, was sketched at about the same time by Moses Hess. Marx surely read Hess' article, from which he probably took some of the derogatory remarks toward Judaism found in 'On the Jewish Question'. 36 Even if it is difficult to establish with certainty the paternity of the specific idea, it is more than probable that Marx' treatment of money in terms of the alienation of men's self-activity is heavily indebted to the original ideas of Hess. To the best of my knowledge, nothing similar is found either in Bauer or in Feuerbach. In what sense is egoistic activity alienated in money, and what are the causes of this alienation? In a key passage, Marx hints at the causes of
MARX
ON THE JEWISH
QUESTION
39
alienation, saying that in civil society man "acts as a private individual, regards other men as means, degrades himself into a means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers". 37 Marx does not state any causal priority between 'acting', 'regarding', 'degrading himself' and 'becoming', but the order in itself is significant. In his 'Comments on James Mill', Marx presents this idea in a more developed form. Commenting on Mill's argument, Marx observes: The essence of money is not, in the first place, that property is alienated in it, but that the mediating activity or movement, the human, social act by which man's products mutually complement one another, is estranged from man and become the attribute of money, a material thing outside man. Since man alienates his mediating activity itself, he is active here only as a man who has lost himself and is dehumanised; the relation itself between things, man's operation with them, becomes the operation of an entity outside man and above man . . . . This mediator now becomes a real God, for the mediator is the real power over what it mediates to me. Its cult becomes an end in itself. 38
We find here, more or less, the same model as used by Marx in 'On the Jewish Question', with the significant difference that here Marx gives priority to self-alienation, and regards it as the ground or cause of alienation. At the same time, it is important to stress that this activity is seen not in terms of production, but of exchange. Production itself is conceived in terms of exchange: exchange, both of human activity within production itself (i.e., exchange with nature, M.M.) and of human products against one another. 39 Because exchange (regarded at this stage as identical with the activity of man as a species-being) is alienated, his own activity appears to the actor as the activity of a foreign agent, money. This alienation, however, is not an eternal fate of mankind, but only the result of the fact that production is not organized on a human basis. In a society which is truly organized according to human needs, our activity is not alienated, and therefore becomes the confirmation of our universal existence. Here Marx seems to hint at a society in which the division of labour is consciously mastered by man. 40
NOTES 1 August Cornu, KarlMarx etFriedrich Engels, Paris, 1958, vol. 2, p. 274.
40
MICHAEL
MAIDAN
2 Edmund Silberner, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sozialismus von Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 1914, Berlin, 1962, pp. 107--142. 3 Robert S. Wistrich, Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky, London, 1976, p. 27. 4 Arnold Kunzli, Karl Marx, Eine Psychographie, Wien, 1966. 5 Wistrich, op. cir., p. 8. Helmuth Hirsch, 'Karl Marx zu 'Judenfrage' und zu Juden: Eine weiterfuehrende Metakritik', in: Walter Grab und Julius H. Schoeps (ed.), Juden in Vorm&z und in der Revolution yon 1848, Institut fuer Deutsche Geschichte, Universitaet Tel Aviv und Burg Verlag, Stuttgart--Bonn, 1983, p. 208. 7 Karl Marx 'On the Jewish Question', Collected Works, vol. 3, p. 174. As cited and translated by H. G. Adler, The Jews in Germany, from the Enlightenment to National Socialism, Notre Dame, Indiana, 1969 p. 36; cf. also Richard H. Popkin, 'The Philosophical Basis of Eighteenth-Century Racism', in: E. Pagliaro (ed.), Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture: Racism in the Eighteenth-Century, Cleveland and London, 1973, p. 250. 9 As cited and translated by H. G. Adler, op. cit, p. 41. "~ 'On the Jewish Question', C. W., vol. 3, p. 172. 11 Silberner, op. cit., p. 121; Cf. also Marx' letter to D. Oppenheimer, C.W., vol. 1, p. 391--392. 12 Karl Marx, 'The Leading Article in No. 179 of the Koelnische Zeitung', C. W., vol. 1, pp. 184--201. 13 IbM.,p. 189. ~4 Cf. Marx' letter to Ruge of March 13, 1843, C. W, vol. 1, p. 400. 15 Karl Marx, 'A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law', C. W., vol. 3, p. 23--24; el. Ludwig Feuerbach, 'Provisional Thesis for the Reformation of Philosophy', in: Lawrence S. Stepelevitch (ed.), The Young Hegelians, Cambridge, 1983, p. 156. t6 Zvi Rosen, Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx." The Influence of Bruno Bauer on Marx's Thought, The Hague, 1977. t7 Engels himself was amazed at the amount of work that Marx bad devoted to his criticism of Bauer. The Holy Family, which had been originally intended as a humoristic pamphlet, grew under Marx' direction to become a fair-sized book. Cf. Engels' letter to Marx, January 20, 1845, in: Werke, Berlin 1965, vol. 27, pp. 16--17. 18 In this context compare Marx' opening statements in his 'Introduction to the Critique of the Philosophy of the State of Hegel' (C. W., vol. 3, p. 173) and his letters to Ruge from March 1843 (op. cit., pp. 133--145), both of which were published together with the essay 'On the Jewish Question' in the Deutsche Franz&ische Jahrbacher. 19 C.W., vol 3, p. 149. 2o Bauer, Bruno: Die Judenfrage, Braunschweig, 1843, p. 19. 21 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, p. 270, Remark, Oxford, 1952, p. 170. 22 Karl Marx, 'Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law', C. W., vol. 3, pp. 29--30. 23 Ludwig Feuerbach, 'The Essence of Christianity', in: Lawrence S. Stepelevitch, (ed.), op. cir., p. 140. 24 Marx, 'Contribution...', C. W., vol. 3, pp. 32--33. z5 Marx, 'On the Jewish Question', C. W., vol. 3, p. 153. 26 Ibid.,p. 155. 27 Ibid., p. 150.
MARX ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
4]
2s Ibid., p. 168. 29 'On the Jewish Question', p. 169. 30 Karl Marx, 'Theses on Feuerbach', C.W., vol 5, p. 7; Compare the following methodological remarks: "It is in reality, much easier to discover by analysis the earthly core of the misty creations of religion, than c o n v e r s e l y . . , to develop from the actual relations of life the corresponding celestialised forms of those relations. The latter method is the only materialistic and therefore the only scientific". Karl Marx, Capital, Moscow, Progress Publishers, vol I, p. 372, Note 3. 31 'On the Jewish Question', C.W., vol. 3, p. 171. For a genealogy of this concept in Hegelian thought, cf. Elisabeth de Fontenay, Les Figures Juives de Marx, Paris, 1973, pp. 47--56. Cf. also Julius Carlebach, Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Judaism, London, 1978, pp. 99--147. 32 Ibid., pp. 171--172. 33 Cf. my article 'Marx on the Jewish Question', Jewish Frontier, November 1983, p. 19. 34 'On the Jewish Question', p. 172. 35 Karl Marx, 'Doctoral Dissertation', Appendix, C W., vol. 1, p. 104. 36 Moses Hess, Philosophische und Sozialistische Schrifien, Herausgegeben von A. Cornu und W. Moenke, Berlin, 1961, p. 345; Cf. also Z. Rosen, 'Moses Hess' Einfluss auf die Entfremdungstheorie von Karl Marx', in: Walter Grab und Julius H. Schoeps, op. cit.,pp. 183--184. 37 'On the Jewish Question', p. 154. 38 'Comments on James Mill', C W., vol. 3, p. 212. 39 Ibid., p. 216. a0 Marx would later reject this notion of the organization of labour altogether, claiming instead that alienation would disappear only through the 'abolition of labour': "the abolition of private property will become a reality only when it is conceived as the abolition of labour . .. A n 'organisafion of labour', therefore, is a contradiction. The best organlsation that labour can be given is the present organisation" (Cf. 'Critique of List', C IV., vol 4, p. 279). Returning later to this problem in the third volume of Das Kapital, Marx recognized the utopian element in his former claim supporting the abolition of labor but reaffirms, nevertheless, that the realm of freedom starts only beyond the yoke of labor. Cf. Capital, Moscow, 1966, vol III, p. 820.
Haifa University, Philosophy Department, Mount Carmel, 31999 Haifa, Israel.