On the Jewish Question

"On the Jewish Question" (German: "Zur Judenfrage") is an essay by Karl Marx criticizing the work of his fellow Young Hegelian Bruno Bauer, particularly his essays "The Jewish Question" and "The Capacity of Present-day Jews and Christians to Become Free". Marx wrote the piece in 1843, and it was first published in Paris in 1844 in the Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher.

Bauer, a student of religious criticism and Biblical criticism, analyzes the Jewish question and concludes that Jewish emancipation is impossible without the emancipation of society from religion and from the distinction between Judaism and Christianity as such. Marx criticizes Bauer for having a narrow view of human emancipation, arguing that political freedom is only one element of the total liberation of humankind, and argues that civil society can exist without the abolition of religion.

"On the Jewish Question" is among the most cited works of Marx by his critics, even those who have not read any of his works, because it is considered to contain anti-Semitic views. Some Marxists have agreed that the work constitutes a latent anti-Semitism on the part of Marx which was typical of his time, while others, both Marxist and non-Marxist, argue that it is does not constitute anti-Semitism or that the use of language is an argumentative tactic against the antisemitic Bauer. Marx almost never referenced Jews in his critique of capitalist society, only mentioning them in passing when describing their role in the history of mercantile trade in Europe and the origin of antisemitism as a form of nascent anti-capitalism. In any case, "On the Jewish Question" is important among Marxist literature in its own right, as Marx uses the topic of the Jewish question to present a larger debate about the difference between "political emancipation" and "human emancipation."

Summary

I. "The Jewish Question"

Bauer criticizes the Jewish struggle for political emancipation by arguing that the Jews seem to care only for their own freedom rather than the freedom of Gentiles, since they argue their case for emancipation while all Germans are under the collective oppression of Prussian absolutism. As he says, "Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?" He also notes that since Prussia enforced a state church of Christianity, making it a Christian State, it would be impossible for the state to grant the Jew emancipation, except "the Christian state can behave towards the Jew only in the way characteristic of the Christian state – that is, by granting privileges, by permitting the separation of the Jew from the other subjects, but making him feel the pressure of all the other separate spheres of society, and feel it all the more intensely because he is in religious opposition to the dominant religion."

Marx responds to Bauer's analysis by pointing out that "only the criticism of political emancipation itself would have been the conclusive criticism of the Jewish question and its real merging in the general question of time." Marx writes how Bauer never brings the question to this level of complexity, and at many points simply criticizes the Jew as a person, rather than his actual emancipation. The central error is that Bauer "subjects to criticism only the 'Christian state', and not the 'state as such,' that he does not investigate the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation." Marx argues against Bauer's position that the renouncement of non-state religion is necessary for any group to achieve political emancipation (specifically referring to the French "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen"), citing observations of the secular government of the United States, which, while its inhabitants and even much of the government maintains its religiosity, political freedom is available to all regardless of religious denomination.

However, Marx also uses the opportunity to argue that political emancipation is only a form of emancipation, and total, complete human emancipation could come "Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being (a term from Feuerbach's philosophy, meaning the point a human capable of shaping his or her own nature independent of other forces) in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his own powers as social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished." In other words, only when man could shape his own will, personality, and existence only to what he as a human being is capable of. Marx also outlines how a man's true freedom is often determined by economic factors rather than simply political ones, which would form part of the basis of his critique of capitalism in the future.

Therefore, the first section of his work is essentially a critique of both Bauer's narrow minded, anti-theistic view of freedom, as well as a stage for Marx's own critique of liberalism on the grounds that the "Rights of Man", even when applied to their fullest extent, do not fully guarantee freedom.

II. "The Capacity of Present-day Jews and Christians to Become Free"

The second section of his work is the section considered more antisemitic. Marx challenges Bauer's view of Judaism, which Bauer argues is a primitive stage of Christianity, and having "at the end of his work on the Jewish Question, had conceived Judaism only as a crude religious criticism of Christianity, and therefore saw in it 'merely' a religious, it could be foreseen that the emancipation of the Jews, too, would be transformed into a philosophical-theological act." Marx writes that Judaism does not need to be viewed so complexly, as it is simply the spiritual expression of "practical need and self-interest." Marx then launches into a prejudiced description of European Jewry in which he regards them as "hucksters" and that "practical Judaism", which to him was greed and self-interest, was the backbone of capitalist society, and that therefore, "the social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism."

Controversy

See also: Views of Karl Marx on Jews

In "Marx and the Economic-Jew Stereotype", Marxist Hal Draper argued that Marx's views constituted a typical form of antisemitism for his time.

See also

• Views of Karl Marx on Jews

External links

• Online version at Marxists Internet Archive