Jewish Question: Difference between revisions

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Historically speaking, the Jewish Question referred to the inability of the Jews to integrate into secularized European society, because for most of history, the Jews were actually marked by an '''exclusion''' from the main state, be it in the form of privileges, rights, duties and so forth, and many Jews had an agreement with the country that they resided in that they would live in Jewish ghettos that were to be governed by Mosaic Law. But with the French Revolution and the establishment of a Universal state, such carve-outs and prejudices became incompatible with the premise of that state: formal equality. The Jewish Question became the name of a contradiction latent in the bourgeois or universal state. To allow Jews to abide by Mosaic law would compromise the formal equality which is the basis of such a state, but to forcibly secularize them would violate freedom of religion.

In the text, Marx unequivocally blasts ~~Baur~~'s demand that Jews renounce their religion, referencing contemporary societies like America where religious pluralism attended a secular state, revolutionary charters like that of 1791 which included civil rights and nowhere presupposed "the positive abolition of religion, and therefore Judaism,"<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20220327073019/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selected_Essays_by_Karl_Marx/On_The_Jewish_Question Better translation of "On the Jewish Question" than the one on Marxists.org]</ref> and even their old schoolmaster Hegel. In all cases his point is that abolition of religion qua the state means simply the end of recognition of religion by the state. No where is it required that all individuals give up their private belief. Once the state is blind to religion, this ''is'' bourgeois abolition. In this sense "the State as State annuls private property," merely by allowing men to vote irrespective of property. But of course religion remains as a private affair - as do private property and other differences. And this is the basic Marxist point.

In the text, Marx unequivocally blasts Bauer's demand that Jews renounce their religion, referencing contemporary societies like America where religious pluralism attended a secular state, revolutionary charters like that of 1791 which included civil rights and nowhere presupposed "the positive abolition of religion, and therefore Judaism,"<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20220327073019/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selected_Essays_by_Karl_Marx/On_The_Jewish_Question Better translation of "On the Jewish Question" than the one on Marxists.org]</ref> and even their old schoolmaster Hegel. In all cases his point is that abolition of religion qua the state means simply the end of recognition of religion by the state. No where is it required that all individuals give up their private belief. Once the state is blind to religion, this ''is'' bourgeois abolition. In this sense "the State as State annuls private property," merely by allowing men to vote irrespective of property. But of course religion remains as a private affair - as do private property and other differences. And this is the basic Marxist point.

~~Baur~~ is anxious that the Jew, granted the rights of man, "is and remains a Jew, in spite of the fact that he is a citizen and lives in general human relationships: his Jewish and limited nature always and eventually triumphs over his human and political obligations." For Marx, however, '''"the incompleteness, the contradiction, lies not only in [the Jew], but it also resides in the essence and the category of political emancipation."''' This is because political emancipation frees the bourgeois state from the material world in the same way an ostrich frees itself from a predator by sticking its head in the sand. <blockquote>The political State is related to bourgeois society as spiritualistically as heaven is to earth. It occupies the same position of antagonism towards bourgeois society; it subdues the latter just as religion overcomes the limitations of the profane world, that is, by recognizing bourgeois society and allowing the latter to dominate it. </blockquote>~~Baur~~ feared the double-nature of the Jew; Marx only chuckles and bids him welcome to the essential contradiction of the bourgeois state generally: <blockquote>... the completion of the idealism of the State was at the same time the completion of the materialism of civic society. The throwing off of the political yoke was at the same time the throwing off of the bond which had curbed the egoistic spirit of civic society. The political emancipation was at the same time the emancipation of civic society from politics, from even the semblance of a general content.</blockquote>Men are forced into a double life, the citizen an "imaginary member of an imaginary sovereignty .... robbed of his real individual life and filled with an unreal universality," and the private person, "regarding other men as a means, degrading himself into a means and becoming a plaything of alien powers." It is not simply the Jew, Marx writes, but modern bourgeois society in general which finds itself split between the universal state and the private caprices of civil society.

Bauer is anxious that the Jew, granted the rights of man, "is and remains a Jew, in spite of the fact that he is a citizen and lives in general human relationships: his Jewish and limited nature always and eventually triumphs over his human and political obligations." For Marx, however, '''"the incompleteness, the contradiction, lies not only in [the Jew], but it also resides in the essence and the category of political emancipation."''' This is because political emancipation frees the bourgeois state from the material world in the same way an ostrich frees itself from a predator by sticking its head in the sand. <blockquote>The political State is related to bourgeois society as spiritualistically as heaven is to earth. It occupies the same position of antagonism towards bourgeois society; it subdues the latter just as religion overcomes the limitations of the profane world, that is, by recognizing bourgeois society and allowing the latter to dominate it. </blockquote>Bauer feared the double-nature of the Jew; Marx only chuckles and bids him welcome to the essential contradiction of the bourgeois state generally: <blockquote>... the completion of the idealism of the State was at the same time the completion of the materialism of civic society. The throwing off of the political yoke was at the same time the throwing off of the bond which had curbed the egoistic spirit of civic society. The political emancipation was at the same time the emancipation of civic society from politics, from even the semblance of a general content.</blockquote>Men are forced into a double life, the citizen an "imaginary member of an imaginary sovereignty .... robbed of his real individual life and filled with an unreal universality," and the private person, "regarding other men as a means, degrading himself into a means and becoming a plaything of alien powers." It is not simply the Jew, Marx writes, but modern bourgeois society in general which finds itself split between the universal state and the private caprices of civil society.

=== Controversy over the second section ===

Idiots and liars like to jibber-jabber about the second part of the work. Taking quotes without context, it is easy to paint Marx as Anti-Semitic in these passages. "What is the secular cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his secular God? Money." But what is Marx actually getting at? It would be strange if, after carefully elaborating the ''material'' contradiction at the heart of bourgeois society, Marx suddenly turned around and made everything about religion again. Stale, pseudo-Hegelian religious criticism is precisely what Marx is breaking with during the 1840s. Put simply, Marx is making fun of ~~Baur~~. He is making fun of him for presenting the Jewish Question as though it were a matter of serious theological criticism when in fact, in practical reality, the Jewish Question is a proxy for the place of property in bourgeois society generally.<blockquote>We will try to get rid of the theological conception of the question. The question of the capacity of the Jews for emancipation is from our standpoint transformed into the question, what particular social element has to be overcome in order to abolish Judaism? For the capacity for emancipation of the modern Jew is the relation of Judaism to the emancipation of the modern world. This relation is necessarily disclosed by the special position of Judaism in the modern subjugated world. </blockquote>This paragraph immediately precedes the infamous one cited above. So when Marx writes that "Emancipation from huckstering and from money, and therefore from practical, real Judaism would be the self-emancipation of our epoch," he is clearly not talking about something specific to Jews, but rather the "particular social element" (viz. private property) which undermines the Universal state generally, and of which Jews are merely a popular symbol due to their "special position," their historical association with usury. And when Marx talks about "practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world," he is again talking merely about this, the fact that "money has become a world power," something which has happened "with and without [the Jew's] cooperation." Marx references the popular association between Judaism and money-grubbing only to throw it in the face of the anti-Semite by pointing out, ironically, how even the Christians these days have become Jews.

Idiots and liars like to jibber-jabber about the second part of the work. Taking quotes without context, it is easy to paint Marx as Anti-Semitic in these passages. "What is the secular cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his secular God? Money." But what is Marx actually getting at? It would be strange if, after carefully elaborating the ''material'' contradiction at the heart of bourgeois society, Marx suddenly turned around and made everything about religion again. Stale, pseudo-Hegelian religious criticism is precisely what Marx is breaking with during the 1840s. Put simply, Marx is making fun of Bauer. He is making fun of him for presenting the Jewish Question as though it were a matter of serious theological criticism when in fact, in practical reality, the Jewish Question is a proxy for the place of property in bourgeois society generally.<blockquote>We will try to get rid of the theological conception of the question. The question of the capacity of the Jews for emancipation is from our standpoint transformed into the question, what particular social element has to be overcome in order to abolish Judaism? For the capacity for emancipation of the modern Jew is the relation of Judaism to the emancipation of the modern world. This relation is necessarily disclosed by the special position of Judaism in the modern subjugated world. </blockquote>This paragraph immediately precedes the infamous one cited above. So when Marx writes that "Emancipation from huckstering and from money, and therefore from practical, real Judaism would be the self-emancipation of our epoch," he is clearly not talking about something specific to Jews, but rather the "particular social element" (viz. private property) which undermines the Universal state generally, and of which Jews are merely a popular symbol due to their "special position," their historical association with usury. And when Marx talks about "practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world," he is again talking merely about this, the fact that "money has become a world power," something which has happened "with and without [the Jew's] cooperation." Marx references the popular association between Judaism and money-grubbing only to throw it in the face of the anti-Semite by pointing out, ironically, how even the Christians these days have become Jews.

There are really only two ways to look at this. You can be stupid and claim that Marx really thinks there is an essential connection between Jews and Capitalism, and that he ''literally means'' that "bourgeois society continually creates Jews." Or you can accept that he is joking, that such an idea is on its face absurd, and that his point is rather that what people criticize in the Jew is in fact the social disintegration, the atomization and egoism attending Capitalism as such.

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 Historically speaking, the Jewish Question referred to the inability of the Jews to integrate into secularized European society, because for most of history, the Jews were actually marked by an '''exclusion''' from the main state, be it in the form of privileges, rights, duties and so forth, and many Jews had an agreement with the country that they resided in that they would live in Jewish ghettos that were to be governed by Mosaic Law. But with the French Revolution and the establishment of a Universal state, such carve-outs and prejudices became incompatible with the premise of that state: formal equality. The Jewish Question became the name of a contradiction latent in the bourgeois or universal state. To allow Jews to abide by Mosaic law would compromise the formal equality which is the basis of such a state, but to forcibly secularize them would violate freedom of religion.
-In the text, Marx unequivocally blasts Baur's demand that Jews renounce their religion, referencing contemporary societies like America where religious pluralism attended a secular state, revolutionary charters like that of 1791 which included civil rights and nowhere presupposed "the positive abolition of religion, and therefore Judaism,"<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20220327073019/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selected_Essays_by_Karl_Marx/On_The_Jewish_Question Better translation of "On the Jewish Question" than the one on Marxists.org]</ref> and even their old schoolmaster Hegel. In all cases his point is that abolition of religion qua the state means simply the end of recognition of religion by the state. No where is it required that all individuals give up their private belief. Once the state is blind to religion, this ''is'' bourgeois abolition. In this sense "the State as State annuls private property," merely by allowing men to vote irrespective of property. But of course religion remains as a private affair - as do private property and other differences. And this is the basic Marxist point.
+In the text, Marx unequivocally blasts Bauer's demand that Jews renounce their religion, referencing contemporary societies like America where religious pluralism attended a secular state, revolutionary charters like that of 1791 which included civil rights and nowhere presupposed "the positive abolition of religion, and therefore Judaism,"<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20220327073019/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selected_Essays_by_Karl_Marx/On_The_Jewish_Question Better translation of "On the Jewish Question" than the one on Marxists.org]</ref> and even their old schoolmaster Hegel. In all cases his point is that abolition of religion qua the state means simply the end of recognition of religion by the state. No where is it required that all individuals give up their private belief. Once the state is blind to religion, this ''is'' bourgeois abolition. In this sense "the State as State annuls private property," merely by allowing men to vote irrespective of property. But of course religion remains as a private affair - as do private property and other differences. And this is the basic Marxist point.
-Baur is anxious that the Jew, granted the rights of man, "is and remains a Jew, in spite of the fact that he is a citizen and lives in general human relationships: his Jewish and limited nature always and eventually triumphs over his human and political obligations." For Marx, however, '''"the incompleteness, the contradiction, lies not only in [the Jew], but it also resides in the essence and the category of political emancipation."''' This is because political emancipation frees the bourgeois state from the material world in the same way an ostrich frees itself from a predator by sticking its head in the sand. <blockquote>The political State is related to bourgeois society as spiritualistically as heaven is to earth. It occupies the same position of antagonism towards bourgeois society; it subdues the latter just as religion overcomes the limitations of the profane world, that is, by recognizing bourgeois society and allowing the latter to dominate it. </blockquote>Baur feared the double-nature of the Jew; Marx only chuckles and bids him welcome to the essential contradiction of the bourgeois state generally: <blockquote>... the completion of the idealism of the State was at the same time the completion of the materialism of civic society. The throwing off of the political yoke was at the same time the throwing off of the bond which had curbed the egoistic spirit of civic society. The political emancipation was at the same time the emancipation of civic society from politics, from even the semblance of a general content.</blockquote>Men are forced into a double life, the citizen an "imaginary member of an imaginary sovereignty .... robbed of his real individual life and filled with an unreal universality," and the private person, "regarding other men as a means, degrading himself into a means and becoming a plaything of alien powers." It is not simply the Jew, Marx writes, but modern bourgeois society in general which finds itself split between the universal state and the private caprices of civil society.
+Bauer is anxious that the Jew, granted the rights of man, "is and remains a Jew, in spite of the fact that he is a citizen and lives in general human relationships: his Jewish and limited nature always and eventually triumphs over his human and political obligations." For Marx, however, '''"the incompleteness, the contradiction, lies not only in [the Jew], but it also resides in the essence and the category of political emancipation."''' This is because political emancipation frees the bourgeois state from the material world in the same way an ostrich frees itself from a predator by sticking its head in the sand. <blockquote>The political State is related to bourgeois society as spiritualistically as heaven is to earth. It occupies the same position of antagonism towards bourgeois society; it subdues the latter just as religion overcomes the limitations of the profane world, that is, by recognizing bourgeois society and allowing the latter to dominate it. </blockquote>Bauer feared the double-nature of the Jew; Marx only chuckles and bids him welcome to the essential contradiction of the bourgeois state generally: <blockquote>... the completion of the idealism of the State was at the same time the completion of the materialism of civic society. The throwing off of the political yoke was at the same time the throwing off of the bond which had curbed the egoistic spirit of civic society. The political emancipation was at the same time the emancipation of civic society from politics, from even the semblance of a general content.</blockquote>Men are forced into a double life, the citizen an "imaginary member of an imaginary sovereignty .... robbed of his real individual life and filled with an unreal universality," and the private person, "regarding other men as a means, degrading himself into a means and becoming a plaything of alien powers." It is not simply the Jew, Marx writes, but modern bourgeois society in general which finds itself split between the universal state and the private caprices of civil society.
 === Controversy over the second section ===
-Idiots and liars like to jibber-jabber about the second part of the work. Taking quotes without context, it is easy to paint Marx as Anti-Semitic in these passages. "What is the secular cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his secular God? Money."  But what is Marx actually getting at? It would be strange if, after carefully elaborating the ''material'' contradiction at the heart of bourgeois society, Marx suddenly turned around and made everything about religion again. Stale, pseudo-Hegelian religious criticism is precisely what Marx is breaking with during the 1840s. Put simply, Marx is making fun of Baur. He is making fun of him for presenting the Jewish Question as though it were a matter of serious theological criticism when in fact, in practical reality, the Jewish Question is a proxy for the place of property in bourgeois society generally.<blockquote>We will try to get rid of the theological conception of the question. The question of the capacity of the Jews for emancipation is from our standpoint transformed into the question, what particular social element has to be overcome in order to abolish Judaism? For the capacity for emancipation of the modern Jew is the relation of Judaism to the emancipation of the modern world. This  relation is necessarily disclosed by the special position of Judaism in the modern subjugated world. </blockquote>This paragraph immediately precedes the infamous one cited above. So when Marx writes that "Emancipation from huckstering and from money, and therefore from practical, real Judaism would be the self-emancipation of our epoch," he is clearly not talking about something specific to Jews, but rather the "particular social element" (viz. private property) which undermines the Universal state generally, and of which Jews are merely a popular symbol due to their "special position," their historical association with usury. And when Marx talks about "practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world," he is again talking merely about this, the fact that "money has become a world power," something which has happened "with and without [the Jew's] cooperation." Marx references the popular association between Judaism and money-grubbing only to throw it in the face of the anti-Semite by pointing out, ironically, how even the Christians these days have become Jews.
+Idiots and liars like to jibber-jabber about the second part of the work. Taking quotes without context, it is easy to paint Marx as Anti-Semitic in these passages. "What is the secular cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his secular God? Money."  But what is Marx actually getting at? It would be strange if, after carefully elaborating the ''material'' contradiction at the heart of bourgeois society, Marx suddenly turned around and made everything about religion again. Stale, pseudo-Hegelian religious criticism is precisely what Marx is breaking with during the 1840s. Put simply, Marx is making fun of Bauer. He is making fun of him for presenting the Jewish Question as though it were a matter of serious theological criticism when in fact, in practical reality, the Jewish Question is a proxy for the place of property in bourgeois society generally.<blockquote>We will try to get rid of the theological conception of the question. The question of the capacity of the Jews for emancipation is from our standpoint transformed into the question, what particular social element has to be overcome in order to abolish Judaism? For the capacity for emancipation of the modern Jew is the relation of Judaism to the emancipation of the modern world. This  relation is necessarily disclosed by the special position of Judaism in the modern subjugated world. </blockquote>This paragraph immediately precedes the infamous one cited above. So when Marx writes that "Emancipation from huckstering and from money, and therefore from practical, real Judaism would be the self-emancipation of our epoch," he is clearly not talking about something specific to Jews, but rather the "particular social element" (viz. private property) which undermines the Universal state generally, and of which Jews are merely a popular symbol due to their "special position," their historical association with usury. And when Marx talks about "practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world," he is again talking merely about this, the fact that "money has become a world power," something which has happened "with and without [the Jew's] cooperation." Marx references the popular association between Judaism and money-grubbing only to throw it in the face of the anti-Semite by pointing out, ironically, how even the Christians these days have become Jews.
 There are really only two ways to look at this. You can be stupid and claim that Marx really thinks there is an essential connection between Jews and Capitalism, and that he ''literally means'' that "bourgeois society continually creates Jews." Or you can accept that he is joking, that such an idea is on its face absurd, and that his point is rather that what people criticize in the Jew is in fact the social disintegration, the atomization and egoism attending Capitalism as such.