On the Jewish question

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Beginning of “On the Jewish Question” in the Franco-German yearbooks 1844, page 182

On the Jewish question is a review by Karl Marx, written in 1843, of two works written by Bruno Bauer , which was published in 1844.

Origin and publication history

Marx wrote the 34-page review between October and December 1843, after he had finished work on a bundle of manuscript sheets that had not been published during his lifetime and were later published under the title On the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right . At first he was in Kreuznach , where he married Jenny von Westphalen in June 1843 and spent his honeymoon , from October in Paris . The essay deals with two texts by Bruno Bauer published in 1843 , Die Judenfrage (1843) and the essay The ability of today's Jews and Christians to become free (1843). The text was first published in Paris in February 1844, in the only published edition of the Franco-German yearbooks edited by Marx and Arnold Ruge . A French translation by Hermann Ewerbeck appeared in Paris in 1850. For the first time Wilhelm Hasselmann tried to use Marx's work for his anti-Semitic purposes in his article Das Judentum Marx . In connection with the Berlin anti-Semitism dispute , Eduard Bernstein published the second part of the article in the Social Democrat in June and July 1881. The entire text appeared in October 1890 in the Berliner Volksblatt, edited by Wilhelm Liebknecht .

In the 1920s, the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) resorted to elements of anti-Semitic propaganda several times during political rivalries with the National Socialists . On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of Marx's death in March 1923, the KPD daily newspaper Die Rote Fahne reproduced an excerpt from the second part of On the Jewish Question, including the closing sentence "The social emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of society from Judaism", with the additional, Subtitle, not from Marx, The National Socialists in the Stammbuch . This publication has been described as a misinterpretation of the excerpt by the KPD with the aim of portraying itself as also anti-Jewish.

The oldest publication in the library catalog of the German National Library is an edition published by Stefan Großmann in Berlin's Rowohlt Verlag in 1919 as the fourth part of the pamphlet series Umsturz und Aufbau . The script is available in ten languages ​​in the Marxists Internet Archive . A manuscript of the script has not survived.

Theoretical and practical background

Marx's personal connection to Judaism

When Karl Marx was two or three years old, his father converted from the Jewish faith to Protestant Christianity because as a Jew he was not allowed to practice the profession of lawyer. Both grandfathers were rabbis and so were many other ancestors. At the age of six, on August 26, 1824, Karl Marx was baptized Protestant together with his six siblings in his parents' house . On March 23, 1834, he was also in the Protestant parish registers , confirmed .

His contemporaries were also aware of his Jewish descent, which is why some of them referred to his former religious affiliation and in some cases were very direct anti-Semitic against him, for example Bakunin , although Marx turned away from all religiosity and fundamentally criticized it. Since certain formulations in Marx were interpreted in the historically current context, within one's own ideological view and outside of the context in which it came about, criticism or positive complaints about alleged anti-Semitism often arose, including private letters from Marx to Engels in addition to the text On the Jewish Question belonged to Ferdinand Lassalle . In a letter to his uncle Lion Philips of November 29, 1864, Marx spoke of Benjamin Disraeli as a "tribal comrade". The relationship between Marx and Judaism is repeatedly discussed controversially, but seldom within 'Marxist theory formation', as Marx made only a few useful statements about Judaism in such a sense.

Franz Mehring writes in his biography of Marx that Marx's letters to his parents show no “trace of Jewish nature or bad manners”. He assumes that the father's resignation is that “the renunciation of Judaism ... was not only an act of religious emancipation under the times of the day, but also - and primarily - an act of social emancipation”. The enlightened, “freemanly” educated father, “freed from all Jewish bias”, would have left Marx “a valuable legacy” through the enlightened education he gave him. Dawid Ryazanov , on the other hand, paints a somewhat different picture. He points out that many important German thinkers for socialism in Germany, such as Marx, Lassalle , Heine, or Börne , were of Jewish origin, which he attributes to the double oppression that Jewish system critics were exposed to. This increasing discrimination had also induced Marx's father, although no longer religious for a long time, to change his denomination, as Mehring already indicated. Helmut Hirsch draws a case from 1843 in which Marx, at the age of 24, was asked by the Jewish community in Cologne to write a petition for the liberation from repression, which Marx was happy to sign, as Marx to Arnold Ruge on 13. March 1843 wrote. The Rheinische Zeitung had already taken a position against the oppression of the Jews on several occasions. While preparing the Marx-Engels Complete Edition , Hans Stein traveled to Trier in 1928 and interviewed contemporary witnesses. The widow Becker told about her father, who had worked for Heinrich Marx, and explained the reason for the change of religion: “Because Marx held a public office, he could not be a Jew”. Eleanor Marx wrote on October 21, 1890: “I shall be very glad to speak at that meeting […] the more glad, that my Father was a Jew”. And during the Dreyfus Affair , she said, “I am a Jewess”.

History of theory

In 1841 Marx earned his doctorate in philosophy with his work on ancient materialists (the difference between democratic and epicurean natural philosophy ), with whose dedication he praised an idealistic point of view. However, as early as 1837, in a private letter to his father, a view that turned away from the Hegelian system and idealism was found. At these times, Marx moved in Young Hegelian circles. After completing his studies, he worked as editor-in-chief of the newly founded Rheinische Zeitung from October 1842 , where he met Engels and for the first time “was embarrassed to have a say about so-called material interests”, including those of the proletariat. This prompted him to deal more with economic theories, especially classical economics . At this time he began to deal more with the Feuerbach materialism and to familiarize himself with the currents of the socialist and communist movements. After the Rheinische Zeitung was forced to stop publishing in March 1843, Marx and Arnold Ruge planned to publish the Franco-German yearbooks . In the course of his work for the Franco-German yearbooks , Marx wrote On the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law from March to August 1843 and, immediately thereafter, by December 1843, the work on the Jewish question . From an exchange of letters with Ruge, which was also published in the yearbooks , it becomes clear that Marx did not see himself as a socialist or a communist in September 1843. Regarding the Jewish question , he primarily deals critically with the theological idealism of the Young Hegelians, which Marx wanted to oppose real society. The same procedure is followed by his subsequent work, On the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law, which is also published in the yearbooks . Introduction containing Marx's famous criticism of religion and in which he for the first time elevates the proletariat to the role of revolutionary subject. In The Holy Family (1844), another confrontation takes place with the theme of writing the Jewish Question incorporating the same. Marx and Engels critically described Zur Judenfrage in Deutsche Ideologie (1845) as a "philosophical phraseology", but nevertheless principally materialistic script. In On the Critique of Political Economy of 1859, Marx noted with regard to German Ideology that he and Engels intended “to work out together the antithesis of our view against the ideological of German philosophy, in fact to settle it with our former philosophical conscience. The intention was carried out in the form of a criticism of the post-Hegelian philosophy, “which Marx had already dealt critically with before, but now opposed it for the first time with a dialectically materialistic - Marxist - theory that was new in terms of concept and content.

All the moments of origin of the Marxian theory, the confrontation with Hegel, Feuerbach, the political economy, the labor movement, can already be found in germinal form, but not in an elaborated form. The criticism of Hegel is most complete, while the Marxian discussion of political economy is only in its infancy and the turn to (and later the subsequent criticism of) Feuerbach's materialism does not clearly emerge in the writings. Central terms in later writings have not yet been worked out, nor has a “ historical-materialistic ” theory. With the economic-philosophical manuscripts written in 1844 , which are considered the first major political-economic work, and the theses about Feuerbach written in 1845 , such as the German Ideology , the Communist Manifesto , the Communist Manifesto , the Marxist economic theory , which was only fully elaborated in Capital , were still missing central theoretical elements that were of great importance in later writings. Thoughts and basic problems about the possibilities of human emancipation can already be found in this book , which Marx occupied for a long time throughout his work.

According to Urs Linder, the work on the Jewish question can be regarded as the “clearest rejection of the philosophical protagonist of the person as a private owner invented by [John] Locke” within Marx's early works.

content

"All emancipation is the return of the human world, the circumstances, to the human being."

In this book, Marx devotes himself to the question of political and human emancipation, whereby, as in the previously written work On the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, the contradictory relationship between the political state and civil society , and its solution, is central to the argument.

In the introduction, Marx presents Bruno Bauer's solution to the Jewish question . According to Marx, Bauer understood the Jewish question as a question of the relationship between religion and the state, of the contradiction between religious bias and political emancipation. Emancipation from religion would be “set as a condition, both for the Jews who want to be politically emancipated, and for the state, which should emancipate and be emancipated itself.” According to Marx, the question should not only be asked who should and who should be emancipated should also be asked: “What conditions are based on the nature of the required emancipation?” Bauer's mistake lies in the fact that “he only subjects the 'Christian state', not the 'state per se' to criticism, that he subjects the relationship to the political emancipation to human emancipation not examined ”. Marx uses concrete examples to point out that full political emancipation is entirely possible with the continued existence and practice of religion, as can be seen from the example of the separation of state and religion in the United States . “The state can thus have emancipated itself from religion, even if the overwhelming majority are still religious. And the overwhelming majority do not stop being religious ... ”The question arises:

“How does perfect political emancipation relate to religion? If we find even in the land of perfect political emancipation [note: USA] not only the existence , but also the fresh , vigorous existence of religion, then the proof is given that the existence of religion does not contradict the completion of the state. But since the existence of religion is the existence of a defect, the source of this defect can only be sought in the nature of the state itself. We no longer regard religion as the reason , but only as the phenomenon of worldly limitation. We therefore explain the religious bias of free citizens from their worldly bias. ... We claim that they lift their religious narrow-mindedness as soon as they lift their secular barriers. We do not turn worldly questions into theological ones. We turn theological questions into secular ones. After history has been resolved into superstition long enough, we shall resolve superstition into history. The question of the relationship between political emancipation and religion becomes for us the question of the relationship between political emancipation and human emancipation . "

This opposition, to which the Jewish question would ultimately be reduced, would be “the relationship of the political state to its prerequisites, whether these be material elements such as private property etc., or intellectual elements such as education, religion, the conflict between the general interest and private interests, the split between the political state and civil society - these worldly contradictions are allowed to exist by Bauer while he polemicises against their religious expression. "

Marx sums up: “The contradiction in which the adherent of a particular religion finds himself with his citizenship is only part of the general worldly contradiction between the political state and civil society. ... The emancipation of the state from religion is not the emancipation of real people from religion. So we are not saying to the Jews like Bauer: You cannot be politically emancipated without emancipating yourself radically from Judaism. Rather, we say to them: Because you can be politically emancipated without completely and without contradiction to renounce Judaism, that is why political emancipation itself is not human emancipation. "

While people would be the same in the bourgeois state, they would be unequal in society, and what is more, equality in the state perpetuates inequality in society. Law exists historically, as Marx seeks to illustrate using the example of feudalism and the bourgeois revolutions that followed, above all as a prerogative to secure privileges. In this context, Marx formulates a critique of human rights , although he regards this political emancipation as an important step towards human emancipation and as the last form of human emancipation “within the previous world order”. The right to freedom would not be given through the “connection of man with man, but rather [through] the separation of man from man”. He grasps this right primarily with regard to the freedom to private property , hence the “right, arbitrarily (à son gré), without relationship to other people, regardless of society, to enjoy one's property and to dispose of it, the right of self-interest. That individual freedom, as well as this use of it, form the basis of civil society. ”In civil society, the right to security does not rise above the egoism of its members, it would be“ rather the assurance of their egoism, ”for every member of society the“ preservation to guarantee his person, his rights and his property. ”The social cohesion of the individual members would only be justified by the preservation of“ their property and their selfish person ”.

According to Marx, the political revolution of the bourgeoisie on the one hand dissolved the political character of feudal society, with the smashing of all classes, corporations, privileges, "which were just as many expressions of the separation of the people from their community." On the other hand, it freed the political state from its " Mixing with bourgeois life and constituting it as the sphere of the community, the general popular affair with ideal independence from those special elements of bourgeois life. "Political emancipation led to the" reduction of man, on the one hand to a member of civil society, to the selfish independent individual, on the other hand on the citizen, on the moral person. ”“ It therefore smashed civil society ”into its simple components ... The specific life activity and the specific life situation sank to an only individual meaning. They no longer formed the general relationship between the individual and the state as a whole. ”The abolition of feudal relationships was thus“ the shedding of the bonds that kept the selfish spirit of bourgeois society tied up. Political emancipation was at the same time the emancipation of civil society from politics, "the" completion of the idealism of the state was at the same time the completion of the materialism of civil society. "

In order to overcome this circumstance, civil society must be fundamentally changed. “Only when the real individual person takes the abstract citizen back into himself ... only when the person has recognized and organized his 'forces propres' [note: 'own forces'] as social forces and therefore the social force is no longer in the form of political power separates from itself, only then is human emancipation complete. "

reception

Whether the script is anti-Semitic is controversial in research. Hannah Arendt calls it in her work Elements and Origins of Total Reign , published in German in 1955, a “classic work” of the “anti-Semitism of the left”. Even Edmund Silver from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem estimates Marx, among others, because of this document as anti-Semites. The historian Lars Fischer contradicts this : Marx was not concerned with attacks on Judaism, but with criticism of capitalism and the possibilities of social emancipation. In the Handbook of Antisemitism Matthias Vetter comes to the conclusion that Marx did not pursue any anti-Semitic comparative constructions with her; but his language, his comparisons and his intentions were indeed anti-Semitic. The little-received text could not be understood as the beginning of left anti-Semitism, but as the beginning of a left underestimation of hostility towards Jews and the view that "the only future of Judaism lies in its disappearance".

expenditure

See also

literature

  • The nineteenth century Israelite. A weekly for the knowledge and reform of Israelite life . 5 Vol. F. Schuster, Hersfeld 1844, pp. 257–260 digitized
  • Gotthold Salomon : Bruno Bauer and his insubstantial criticism of the Jewish question . Perthes-Besser & Mauke, Hamburg 1843 digitized
  • Wilhelm Freund (Ed.): On the Jewish question in Germany: From the standpoint of law and freedom of conscience . Veit and Comp., Berlin 1843 digitized
  • Karl Grün : The Jewish question. Against Bruno Bauer . Leske, Darmstadt 1844 digitized
  • Iring Fetscher : Marxists Against Anti-Semitism. First edition, Hoffmann and Campe Verlags-GmbH, Hamburg 1974, ISBN 3-455-09158-X .
  • Horst Ullrich: The first response to Karl Marx's “On the Jewish Question”. A contribution to the history of the impact of the “Franco-German Yearbooks” . In: German magazine for philosophy . 22nd year Berlin 1974, issue 8
  • Helmut Hirsch : “Marx and Moses. Karl Marx on the Jewish question and on Jews ”. Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M., Bern, Cirencester 1980. ISBN 3-8204-6041-1 (= Judaism and Environment Volume 2. Ed. By Johann Maier )
  • Heinz Monz : Justice with Karl Marx and in the Hebrew Bible. Correspondence, continuation and contemporary identification . With a foreword by Grand Rabbi Dr. Emmanuel Bulz, Luxembourg. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, Baden-Baden 1995. ISBN 3-7890-4083-5 , pp. 147–156.
  • Thomas Haury : Jewish question. In: Dan Diner (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Jewish History and Culture (EJGK). Volume 3: He-Lu. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02503-6 , pp. 228-233.

Web links

Wikisource: On the Jewish question  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Die Judenfrage (Braunschweig 1843) facsimile edition online
  2. ↑ New Social Democrat . Berlin from September 20, 1872.
  3. ↑ Edmund Silberner : Socialists on the Jewish question , Berlin 1962, pp. 107–159 based on Hasselmann.
  4. ^ Bert Andréas : Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels. The end of classical German philosophy. Trier 1983 ( writings from the Karl-Marx-Haus Trier 28) p. 25.
  5. ↑ (Eduard Bernstein): Karl Marx on the Jewish question . In: The Social Democrat . Zurich No. 27 of June 30, 1881; No. 28 of 7 July 1881.
  6. ↑ Berliner Volksblatt No. 236 of October 10, 1890; No. 238 of October 12, 1890; No. 240 of October 15, 1890; No. 242 of October 17, 1890; No. 244 of October 19, 1890.
  7. ↑ by Olaf Kistenmacher: “From 'Judas' to 'Jewish Capital': ( Memento of the original from September 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Antisemitic Forms of Thought in the German Communist Party (KPD) in the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933 ”, Engage-Journal 2 - May 2006 (English) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.engageonline.org.uk
  8. ↑ Lex Gans.
  9. ^ Frieder Lütticken: Karl Marx, A member of our community . In: Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Trier (ed.): Community letter, April 23, 2018 .
  10. ↑ "As a German and as a Jew, he is an authoritarian from head to toe." Quoted from Franz Mehring : Karl Marx - History of his life . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1963, p. 412 (Franz Mehring. Collected writings 3).
  11. ^ Marx to Lion Philips in Zalt-Bommel, London, November 29, 1864. MEW Vol. 31, p. 432. ( Online DEA archive )
  12. ^ Franz Mehring: Karl Marx. Story of his life . Dietz Verlag, Berlin, 1960, pp. 9-10. Franz Mehring. Collected Writings 3).
  13. ^ A b Franz Mehring: Karl Marx - History of his Life, Franz Mehring - Collected Writings, Volume 3. Berlin, 1960, p. 10.
  14. ↑ David Rjazanov, Marx and Engels - not just for beginners. Rise of Reason , No. 4. Der Funke: Wien, 2005, p. 24.
  15. ↑ Marx and Moses. Karl Marx on the "Jewish question" and on Jews . Peter Lang, Frankfurt a. M., Bern, Cirencester / UK 1980 (Johann Maier (Ed.): Judentum und Umwelt 2)
  16. ↑ Marx to Ruge.
  17. ↑ Helmut Hirsch, p. 98 ff.
  18. ↑ Hans Stein: The conversion of the Marx family to Protestant Christianity. In: Yearbook of the Cologne History Association. Vol. 14, Cologne 1932 here SS 126; Heinz Monz: Karl Marx. Trier 1973, p. 248. Eleanor Marx said, because “otherwise he would not have received any permission to practice as a lawyer.” (W. Liebknecht: Karl Marx zum Gedächtniß . Nürnberg 1896, p. 92.
  19. ^ Yvonne Kapp : Eleanor Marx. The crowed year. Vol II., Lawrence & Wishart, London 1976, p. 510 and facsimile p. 511)
  20. ↑ "Everyone who doubts the idea would like to be as happy as I am to admire an old man of youth who welcomes every progress of time with the enthusiasm and prudence of the truth and with that convincing, sunlit idealism that alone is the true word knows, before which all the spirits of the world appear, never before the cast shadows of the retrograde ghosts, before the often dark cloudy sky of time shook back, but with divine energy and masculine-confident gaze always looked through all pupations through the empyrean, which in the heart of the world burns. You, my fatherly friend, were always a living argumentum ad oculos that idealism is not an imagination, but a truth. ”Marx: Difference between the democritical and Epicurean natural philosophy. In: Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 51 (see MEW vol. 40, p. 260).
  21. ↑ “From the idealism, which, to put it casually , I compared and nourished with Kantian and Fichtean , I came to seek the idea myself in the real. If the gods had previously lived above the earth, now they had become its center. I had read fragments of Hegel's philosophy, the grotesque rock melody of which I did not like. I wanted to dive down into the sea again, but with the specific intention of finding the spiritual nature just as necessary, concrete and well-rounded as the physical, no longer practicing fencing, but holding the pure pearl to the sunlight. "Marx: Letter to the father. In: Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 13666 (cf. MEW vol. 40, p. 9)].
  22. ↑ Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy. In: Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 2900 (see MEW vol. 13, p. 7).
  23. ^ Marx / Engels: The German Ideology. Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 1668 (cf. MEW vol. 3, p. 217).
  24. ↑ Marx: On the Critique of Political Economy. Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 2904 (cf. MEW vol. 13, p. 10).
  25. ↑ Urs Lindner: Marx and philosophy. Scientific realism, ethical perfectionism and critical social theory . Stuttgart 2013, p. 96.
  26. ^ Marx: On the Jewish question. In: Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 441 (see MEW vol. 1, p. 353).
  27. ^ Marx: On the Jewish question. Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 463 (see MEW vol. 1, p. 364).
  28. ^ Marx: On the Jewish question. Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 463 (see MEW vol. 1, p. 365).
  29. ↑ a b Marx: On the Jewish question. In: Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 465 (see MEW Vol. 1, p. 366).
  30. ↑ a b c Marx: On the Jewish question. Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 469 (see MEW Vol. 1, p. 368).
  31. ↑ a b Marx: On the Jewish question. In: Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 473 (cf. MEW vol. 1, p. 370).
  32. ↑ a b Marx: On the Jewish question. Marx / Engels: Selected Works. P. 470 (see MEW vol. 1, p. 369).
  33. ^ Hannah Arendt: Elements and origins of total domination . Piper, Munich 1986, p. 96.
  34. ↑ Edmund Silberner: Socialists on the Jewish question. A contribution to the history of socialism from the beginning of the 19th century to 1914 . Colloquium, Verlin 1962, p. 125 ff.
  35. ^ Lars Fischer: The Socialist Response to Antisemitism in Imperial Germany . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, p. 43 et al.
  36. ^ Matthias Vetter: Marx, Karl. In: Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Vol. 2: People . De Gruyter Saur, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-44159-2 , p. 526.
  37. ↑ Printed in: the same: On the editing of bourgeois ideology on the emergence of Marxism . Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1976, pp. 9–32 and 85–88.