Author’s Note: I have referenced RC Tucker’s 1972 translation (and commentary) of ‘On the Jewish Question’ by Karl Marx. The central content of this article is comprised of two texts penned by Bruno Bauer (published in 1843) – and which are critiqued by Karl Marx. Both Bauer and Marx are engaged in the discussion of what philosophical changes might have to occur in the minds of ethnic Germans for a successful Bourgeois Revolution to take place in the material environment. In 1843, Germany was still a Feudal State ruled by an absolute monarch and dominated by a State Religion. People like Marx and Engels looked toward France and England – two countries that had already experienced a Bourgeois Revolution – and which had successfully exported that Revolution to the Americas! What must Germans do to replicate this transformation? How could a religious State become an irreligious State? How could Christians and Jews accommodate these inner and outer changes whilst retaining their religious identity without hindering the Revolutionary process? These are the issues that Marx and Bauer investigate. This is NOT a text of ‘anti-Semitism’. Neither Marx nor Bauer advocate the suppression of the Judaic religion or the physical destruction of the Jewish people. This is a text that logically examines how Christians and Jews might accommodate a set of political and cultural changes never before experienced in the history of these two religions. Questioning the mythology of religion is an important and vital aspect of ‘freedom of thought’ and does not constitute an ‘attack’ upon religiosity. Questioning the legitimacy of religious belief is an important component of a liberal society as it prevents religious groupings from ‘justifying’ criminal acts based solely upon the idea that an ‘immunity’ from prosecution is in effect premised upon the mere holding of a ‘religious’ belief! A ‘religious’ and ‘irreligious’ individual, (living within a Bourgeois State), should be held liable for their actions in front of exactly the same Secular Law. To this end, this is a text rich in insight written by a young Karl Marx just out of University and on the brink of marrying Jenny Westphalia. Perhaps there is something of the love and light euphoria of those times – which emanates from the pen of Marx! ACW (2.7.2023)
The manner in which Bourgeois academics are trained to approach the matter of the intellectual output of Karl Marx is to:
a) Allow this body of Marxian work to be available in the public domain –
Whilst:
b) Continuously working to ‘distort’ the deep (and surface) meaning of these texts – so as to sabotage and prevent any working-class mass movements forming around their core anti-capitalist content.
In this ongoing project of working-class disempowerment, all the tricks of the trade are employed, aided and abated by the deception associated with the Trotskyite movement. The basis of this approach involves the simplistic ‘inversion’ of the work of Karl Marx at its source. For the deceivers, Marx the anti-racist is presented as Marx the ‘racist’ – and this is very much how the 1843-1844 (Marxian) text – usually entitled ‘On the Jewish Question’ – is presented. This is the text the Bourgeois Establishment uses to convince the working-class that ‘Marx was an anti-Semite’. This sleight of hand begins with the very title itself.
This is a text written in two-parts. This is because Marx is critiquing ‘two’ separate texts written by his fellow Young Hegelian – Bruno Bauer – both of which contain an assessment of Jewish religious and business practice. The title of this Marxian text – ‘On the Jewish Question’ – derives only from the first of Bruno Bauer’s two articles, with this fact demonstrating that much of the content of this Marxian text does not derive from Marx himself. Marx is ‘reacting’ to the established comments of Bruno Bauer, and this is important to remember when those criticising Marx erroneously associate the personage of Marx with the intellectual output of Bruno Bauer, when they are attempting to build a narrative disingenuous to Marx. The Marxian text known as ‘On the Jewish Question’ is constructed in the following manner:
Part I – Bruno Bauer ‘On the Jewish Question’ (Die Judenfrage)
The criticism of politics is developed throughout Part I – leading to the conclusion that human emancipation requires the ending of the division between man as an egoistic being in a “civil society” – and man as an abstract citizen in the State.
Reference: Bruno Bauer – ‘Die Judenfrage’ – (The Jewish Question) [Braunschweig, 1843 – Marx]
Part II – Bruno Bauer ‘The Ability of Today’s Jews and Christians to Become Free!’ (Die Fahigkeit der heutigen Juden und Christen frei zu werden)
Marx proceeds in Part II to critique economics or commerce – which he equates with “Judaism.” His concluding call for “the emancipation of society from Judaism” (which has been seen on occasion as a manifesto of anti-Semitism) is in fact a call for the emancipation of society from what he calls “huckstering”, or from what he would subsequently refer to as “capitalism”.
Reference: Bruno Bauer ‘Die Fahigkeit der heutigen Juden und Christen frei zu werden’ (The Ability of Today’s Jews and Christians to Become Free) [Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz – ‘Twenty-One Sheets from Switzerland’ (Ed. G. Herwegh) Pages 56-71 – Marx]
Karl Marx penned this German-language article in the autumn of 1843 – with it first being published during 1844 (in the pages of the ‘Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher’ (or the ‘German-French Yearbook’). This text is usually known in its English language translation as ‘On the Jewish Question’ (Die Judenfrage) – but should more properly be rendered as ‘The Jewish Question’.
Marx was 25-years old when writing in 1843 (just three-years prior to the Mexican-American War) – and makes much of the so-called ‘Free States’ of North America and the fact that the US Constitution separates Church from State! Marx is inspired by the US Constitution so as to advocate the separation of Church and State – a principle that all genuine Marxist-Leninist States adhere to. It is perhaps doubly ironic that US ideologues continuously refer to this ‘Socialist’ application of this American political principle as constituting the ‘oppression’ of religion! Nevertheless, Marx (in Part I) is convinced that the rampant ‘individualism’ generated in the Bourgeois State is a mistake that diverts humanity – through many contrivances (including ‘religion’) – away from its genuine (collective) essence. It is from the realisation of this collective essence that a genuine individualism will eventually arise. This is a process that has bearing upon the dogma of conventional religion (an ideology that is very much out-of-date). Marx is not so much attacking the individual ‘Jew’ or the ‘Jewish’ identity in Part I – but is rather attempting to ‘uproot’ and ‘dislodge’ the very strong religious structures that bind these people together – strengthened as they have been over the centuries by the forces of external oppression. Marx states:
‘The perfected political state is, by its nature, the species-life (1) of man as opposed to his material life. All the presuppositions of this egoistic life continue to exist in civil society outside the political sphere, as qualities of civil society. When the political state has attained to its full development, man leads, not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, in life, a double existence – celestial and terrestrial. He lives in the political community, where he regards himself as a communal being, and in civil society where he acts simply as a private individual, treats other men as means, degrades himself to the role of a mere means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers. The political state, in relation to civil society, is just as spiritual as is heaven in relation to the earth. It stands in the same opposition to civil society, and overcomes it in the same manner as religion overcomes the narrowness of the profane world; i.e., it has always to acknowledge it again, re-establish it, and allow itself to be dominated by it. Man, in his most intimate reality, in civil society, is a profane being. Here, where he appears both to himself and to others as a real individual, he is an illusionary phenomenon. In the state, on the contrary, where he is regarded as a species-being, man is the imaginary member of an imaginary sovereignty, divested of his real, individual life, and infused with an unreal universality.’*
*(Robert C Tucker: The Marx-Engels Reader – 2nd Edition – Norton, [1978], Pages 33-34)
In Footnote (1) – RC Tucker explains:
‘The terms “species-life” (Gattungsleben) and “species-being” (Gattungswesen) are derived from Feuerbach. In the first chapter of Das Wesen des Christentums [The Essence of Christianity], Leipzig, 1841, Feuerbach discusses the nature of man, and argues that man is to be distinguished from animals not by “consciousness” as such, but by a particular kind of consciousness. Man is not only conscious of himself as an individual; he is also conscious of himself as a member of the human species, and so he apprehends a “human essence” which is the same in himself and in other men. According to Feuerbach this ability to conceive of “species” is the fundamental element in the human power of reasoning; “Science is the consciousness of species.” Marx, while not departing from this meaning of the terms, employs them in other contexts; and he insists more strongly than Feuerbach that since this “species-consciousness” defines the nature of man, man is only living and acting authentically (i.e. in accordance with his nature) when he lives and acts deliberately as a “species-being,” that is, as a social being.’
Within Part I, Marx juxtaposes the work of Bruno Bauer with that of Hegel, Feuerbach, Robespierre, and Rousseau, emphasising that the Bourgeois Revolution – which spawned the capitalist system across the world – granted certain freedoms which inevitably led to a ‘Secular State’ – or a State that frees itself of direct, religious domination. This Bourgeois State grows out of the Feudal State – the latter being dominated by religious thinking and religious subordinated political structures. The Feudal State is limited to the ‘King’ (or absolute monarch) and his servants – not extending to the masses – which only exist in a subjugated and disempowered opposition to the will of the King. By comparison, the Bourgeois State extends its privileges into the masses of people (within a ‘qualified’ format) – with Marx comparing North America, Great Britain and France (three very advanced and well-developed liberal democracies) with that of the still feudally-controlled (and religiously-dominated) country of Germany! Marx describes what Germany is seeking through a Bourgeois Revolution:
‘Thus man was not liberated from religion; he received religious liberty. He was not liberated from property; he received the liberty to own property. He was not liberated from the egoism of business; he received the liberty to engage in business.’*
*(Robert C Tucker: The Marx-Engels Reader – 2nd Edition – Norton, [1978], Pages 45)
Part II assesses Judaism as a) a conventional religion as juxtaposed to the Christianity that emerged from it – and a mode of social existence (which Marx defines as the need to dominate commerce). Marx observes that the Jews wherever they have settled invariably remain politically disempowered on the local level – whilst dominating commerce and finance at the international level. This is a peculiar example of legal disempowerment on the one-hand (caused by anti-Jewish racism within the host countries) – and the Ingenious compensation on the other of the Jewish businessman to take control of the money the oppressors rely on to run their countries. The implication (not realised in 1843) is that if the Jewish community ever managed to secure political and judicial influence within the countries they reside – then a decisive power could be influenced by world Jewry against the populations that discriminate against them. Nevertheless, although the Jews were disempowered legally, the Christians developed a legal system premised upon what they termed the ‘Old Testament’ (or ‘Torah’ in Hebrew). This is where the term ‘Judiciary’ derives – signifying the ‘legal system of the Jews’ – even though this convention had no direct association with the Jews themselves. A similar term is ‘Jewellery’ – denoting the owning of material wealth by non-Jews in the form of precious stones and rare metals, etc. The assumption is that the Jewish people spend their time accumulating such valuable items regardless as to whether such an assumption is true. A complication arises when a prejudice receives reinforcement from the fact that non-Jews have historically purchased such items from Jewish businessmen. Did the Jews start this association – or did they cleverly manipulate an existing prejudice to their benefit? This is what Marx has to say:
‘The monotheism of the Jews is, therefore. In reality a polytheism of the numerous needs of man, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory an object of divine regulation. Practical need. Egoism, is the principle of civil society, and is revealed as such in its pure form as soon as civil society has fully engendered the political state. The god of practical need and self-interest is money.
Money is the jealous god of Israel, beside which no other god may exist. Money abases all the gods of mankind and changes them into commodities. Money is the universal and self-sufficient value of all things. It has, therefore, deprived the whole world, both the human world and nature, of their own proper value. Money is the alienated essence of man’s work and existence; this essence dominates him, and he worships it.
The god of the Jews has been secularised and has become the god of this world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusionary bill of exchange.’*
*(Robert C Tucker: The Marx-Engels Reader – 2nd Edition – Norton, [1978], Pages 50)
Marx associates the world finance (allegedly controlled by the Jews) with the international capitalist system of the Bourgeoisie. The means of continuously amassing profit as wealth (the essence of the capitalist system) is referred to by Marx as being symbolised by the ‘huckstering’ he associates with the Jewish system of doing business. What is a universal system of class exploitation perpetuated by the Bourgeoisie – is narrowed by Marx into an assessment of the Jewish mode of existence. Why is this? I am of the opinion that this is because Marx – whose father was a ‘Jew’ – is an example of a Jew who has progressed (or ‘transitioned’) into the status of a ‘non-Jew’ or a ‘secularised’ Jew. Marx symbolises the very point he is trying to make by using the work of Bruno Bauer as a creative platform. Marx limits himself to working within the framework of the established views and opinions regarding the Jews – perpetuated by the society that has produced him and which he wilfully exists within. Marx reflects the existing prejudice of his time – he does not generate or perpetuate it. Regardless as to whether any of the views regarding the Jews are true – the entire process (and the thinking behind it) must be fully transitioned for Judaism to be rescued. Marx disguises this objective within his general critique of the capitalist system. This is an interesting attempt to co-opt non-Jews into the rescue of Jews as part of the general habit of Revolutionising society. If the external pressures that cultivated various aspects of contemporary (and historical) Judaism are resolved and removed from a Revolutionising society – then the corresponding constructs developed within Judaism (as a self-defensive response) would have no reason to exist. These elements of Judaism would die-away during the firmament of the transitioning process.
English Language Reference:
RC Tucker: The Marx-Engels Reader – 2nd Edition – Norton, (1978), Part I – Early Marx – ‘On the Jewish Question’ – Pages 26-52
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 