Karl Marx

by Shlomo Avineri

  Yet the enormous gap between the two parts of Marx’s essay still raises a number of troubling questions. After all, the theoretical and political thrust of the essay is in Part 1, where Marx supports Jewish emancipation and attacks Bauer for his demand that Jews convert before being granted equal rights. Why, after such a spirited defense, would Marx then launch into a far-reaching attack on Judaism? True, as one learns even from Thomas Macaulay’s On the Civil Disabilities of the Jews in Britain, a classical liberal argument from 1833 supporting equal rights for Jews, one does not have to particularly like Jews or Judaism in order to support their equal rights as citizens. Yet the rhetoric of Marx in Part 2 is laced with so much hyperbole and venom that it gives cause to pause and wonder.

  One cannot find a satisfying answer to these questions from Marx’s own writings, manuscripts, or correspondence. But perhaps one can speculate: because the argument followed by Marx in Part 1 for equal rights is so powerful, he might have felt that he had to bend over backward and distance himself as much as possible from Jews and Judaism so as not to be accused of supporting Jewish rights because of his own Jewish background. Perhaps the echoes of his own family’s conversion to Christianity due to discriminatory views and Christian prejudices, as expressed by Bauer, were so strongly reverberating in Marx’s consciousness that he defensively sought to dissociate himself from even a whiff of lingering identification with Judaism, to prove that his anti-Bauer argument was unrelated to his family’s background.

  In other words: is the tension between the two parts of “Zur Judenfrage” an expression of some Zerrissenheit, or inner turmoil, in Marx’s own consciousness, of a Faustian innermost struggle so memorably expressed by Goethe:

  Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast,

  And each seeks to break away from the other.

  [Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in meiner Brust,

  Die eine will sich von der andern trennen.]

  We may never know, nor is it possible to reconstruct Marx’s own views on the complex circumstances of his father’s conversion. Was there anger, or even shame, connected with it? Perhaps in writing as he did, he was exhibiting not only the two souls dwelling within his breast but also expressing, in a painful and convoluted way, two burdens: that of his Jewish background as well as that of his family’s conversion to Christianity, which lacked any spiritual or religious conviction but was ultimately motivated by purely professional if not pecuniary considerations. We do not know, but it would be wrong to divorce the complexity of Marx’s arguments in his essay from his own family history, despite the fact that it was never acknowledged publicly.

  ANOTHER DEFENSE OF JEWISH EMANCIPATION

  There is, however, a sequel to the essay “Zur Judenfrage,” yet it is mostly overlooked, even though it may supply a further insight into Marx’s inner tensions connected with his Jewish background. He came back to the issue in this slightly later work, Die heilige Familie [The Holy Family], written together with Friedrich Engels and published in 1845. That this book has been generally ignored should not be surprising, as it is not one of the best written works by Marx and Engels: it is a lengthy, tedious, and pedantic criticism of various Young Hegelians, basically an in-family polemic where esoteric arguments about minor and petty differences are raised to world-historical dimensions. Among the thinkers subjected to what is sometimes acerbic yet highly scholastic petty criticism in its three hundred pages of disjointed essays are Bruno Bauer, his brother Edgar Bauer, Max Stirner, and others. The volume may have been extremely significant for Marx and Engels in distancing themselves from other Young Hegelians, yet most of it is rightly forgotten.

  For our purposes, however, some of it is meaningful. Three sections of Chapter 6 are each titled “Zur Judenfrage”; the volume’s original table of contents identifies which of the two authors wrote each section, and all three of these sections are explicitly attributed to Marx.

  Marx opens by referring to two further articles by Bauer published in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, in which he responded to some Jewish writers who reacted to his initial essays on the Jewish question.

  Each of Marx’s three sections is actually a short independent essay, and two aspects stand out: first of all, the extreme criticism of Judaism in Part 2 of “Zur Judenfrage” is totally absent and is not repeated; second, Marx refers approvingly, and in some detail, to a number of Jewish polemicists against Bauer (Gustav Philippson, Samuel Hirsch, Gabriel Riesser). In each case Marx supports their views and calls them “liberal and rationalist Jews.” Already living at that time in exile in Paris, and having become acquainted with French conditions, Marx widens the scope of his argument to include references to the Jews in France. He goes out of his way to support positions taken by the French Jewish leader Adolphe Crémieux, the founder of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, one of the first modern, transborder Jewish organizations.

  Marx’s general argument here against Bauer and in support of Jewish emancipation follows the line he took in Part 1 of his original essay: that Bauer’s exclusion of Jews from civic rights and equal citizenship reflects traditional Christian theological anti-Judaism. Marx quotes approvingly Philippson’s contention that Bauer projects an “ideal philosophical state,” overlooking the fact that the question of Jewish civic rights has to be approached in the context of existing society; and given its principles there can be no argument against granting the Jews equal rights.

  Marx then describes in some detail the acrimonious debate between Bauer and the Dessau rabbi Samuel Hirsch. When Hirsch, in a typical Jewish apologetic argument, maintained that after all, the Jews did contribute something to history and “modern times,” Bauer dismisses this by apparently agreeing but then adding that the Jews have always been “an eyesore” to Christian society. Marx’s response to this is vehement, as if he has been personally offended:

  Something that has been an eyesore to me from birth, as the Jews have been to the Christian world, and which persists and develops with the eye is not an ordinary sore, but a wonderful one, one that really belongs to my eye and must even contribute to a highly original development of my eyesight. … [This] revealed to Herr Bruno [Bauer] the significance of Jews in “the making of the modern times.”

  Marx then supports the position of Gabriel Riesser—the most outspoken Jewish proponent of emancipation—in his polemic against Bauer.

  Mr Riesser correctly expresses the meaning of the Jews’ desire for recognition of their free humanity when he demands, among other things, the freedom of movement, sojourn, travel, earning one’s living, etc. These manifestations of “free humanity” are explicitly recognized in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man.

  Perhaps one should not read too much into the reference to the right “of earning one’s living,” and connecting this to the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, under which Jews in France (and in French-controlled Rhineland) were emancipated—the precise context of his own father’s conversion after the post-1815 revocation of these rights. This may, however, be the only reference—oblique as it is—to his family history and what must have been a humiliating memory.

  Marx provides a wider dimension to the question of Jewish emancipation when he refers to a debate in the French Chamber of Deputies, when Deputy Adolphe Crémieux declared that French Jews should accept the public observance of Sunday as an official day of rest “out of respect for the religion of the majority of Frenchmen.” But then Marx adds a surprisingly critical note, bringing out the dilemmas of Jews even in a liberal state that grants them equal rights. This is how he puts it:

  Now according to free theory, Jews and Christians are equal, but in practice Christians have a privilege over Jews; for otherwise how could the Sunday of the Christians have a place in a law made for all Frenchmen? Should not the Jewish Sabbath have the same rights?

  It is perhaps ironic that after having written what he did in his original essay about Judaism, Marx comes out here, even if only for the sake of argument, in defense of the
Jewish Sabbath. Yet it is clear to him that while Jews should have equal rights in existing society, the French case suggests how even in relatively liberal societies, full equality can be achieved: only in a state of “human emancipation,” which would transcend the alienation inherent in bourgeois society, only when no religious creed—neither Christian nor Jewish—would be necessary anymore to give solace to human suffering.

  Summing up his position contra Bauer, Marx states unequivocally that “the Jew who demands freedom and nonetheless is not willing to give up his religion … is making a demand which does not contradict political freedom.” This is quite an extraordinary argument made by Marx, calling for respect for Jewish religious cultural self-determination.

  Moreover: the civic status of the Jews becomes for Marx a criterion by which to judge a country’s general politics: “The states which cannot yet emancipate the Jews politically have to be judged against the fully developed political states—and found wanting.”

  It is not totally clear why Marx found it necessary to revisit in such great detail his polemic against Bauer on Jewish emancipation, and devote to it three separate sections of Die heilige Familie, quoting so extensively and supportively Jewish polemicists against Bauer. The very fact that he followed the writings of Bauer’s Jewish critics and was familiar with their arguments suggests that the issue remained important to him. Was he perhaps a bit uneasy about the way his extreme attacks on Judaism in Part 2 of his initial “Zur Judenfrage” could be misconstrued and used against granting Jews full equal rights and thus undermine his own support for Jewish emancipation? Did he feel that his equation of Judentum with modern capitalism was misguided? Did he want—now living in France—to distance himself from French socialists, like Charles Fourier and some of his disciples, who viewed French Jewish bankers and financiers as the symbols of capitalism? There is no clear answer to these questions. Yet the extensive discourse in Die heilige Familie clearly shows the double dimension of Marx’s views on the issue: a radical critique of Judaism (and, incidentally, of Christianity) as a religion, coupled with unequivocal support for civic equality for Jews and their right to retain their religion without having to convert in order to enjoy equal rights and full citizenship.

  Marx followed this theoretical position during the revolutionary atmosphere of 1848, when serving as editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. He reported about a delegation of Jewish leaders from Cologne who came to ask for his support for granting full equal rights to the Jews. As in his theoretical writings, his response was indicative of his separating his views about Judaism from his support for Jewish emancipation: in a letter to Arnold Ruge he says that he will of course support the Jewish leaders’ petition for equal rights out of political principle, despite the fact that “their religion has always been distasteful [widerlich] to me.”

  A few years later, Marx took a similar position when discussing the election of the first Jewish member to the British parliament in 1853. The banker Lionel Rothschild was elected to the House of Commons for the City of London but could not take his seat, because incoming MPs were required to take a Christian oath on entering office. In a newspaper article Marx did not miss the opportunity to refer to Rothschild as a usurer, but concluded that it would be “an absolute absurdity” to deny him his seat because of his Jewishness “after the spirit of usury has so long presided in the British Parliament.”

  Marx’s journalistic writings also reflect his theoretical position on the relationship between Jewish emancipation and the modern liberal state. When in late 1848 the achievements of the first heady months of the revolution in Germany were slowly being reversed, Marx twice commented in the NRZ that one indication that reactionary power was reasserting itself was the abolition of steps leading to Jewish emancipation and equal citizenship rights: such steps were a clear sign that the revolutionary liberal wave was on its way out. As in his earlier essays, Jewish equal rights are a criterion by which the modern state has to be judged.

  As for Bruno Bauer, in 1863 he published a violent anti-Jewish tract called Das Judentum in der Fremde, arguing how alien Judaism was to the German spirit; in his later years he became a supporter of Bismarckian policies and a spokesman for German expansionist nationalism.

  4

  Paris and Brussels: Formative Years

  THAT THE YOUNG MARX made an enormous impression on his contemporaries is reflected in an unusually adulatory letter written by Moses Hess in 1841 to another Rhenish Jewish author, Berthold (Baruch) Auerbach. In 1837, Auerbach had published the first modern German biography of Spinoza, who came to symbolize for many emancipated and educated Jews the idea that one could be a member of the European republic of letters while still retaining one’s Jewish identity, albeit in a critical way. Hess was several years Marx’s senior; he had already published two philosophical books advocating communism (The Holy History of Mankind and The European Triarchy), and it was he who had introduced Marx to some of the Rhenish radicals in Bonn and Cologne. So his willingness to defer to what he saw as Marx’s genius was not empty praise. After reporting about some personal matters, Hess advised Auerbach on 2nd September 1841:

  Be prepared to meet the greatest, perhaps the only real philosopher living now. When he will appear in public (both in his writings as well as at the university), he will draw the eyes of all Germany upon him. … He goes beyond Strauss and even beyond Feuerbach. … Such a man I always wanted to have as my teacher in philosophy. Only now do I feel what an idiot in philosophy I have been …

  Dr Marx—this is the name of my idol—is still a young man, barely 24 years old, but he will give the final blow to all medieval religion and politics; he combines the deepest philosophical seriousness with a cutting wit. Can you imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine, and Hegel combined—not thrown together—in one person? If you can—you have Dr Marx.

  The academic career was not to be, and the trajectory of Marx’s life took a different turn; yet Marx’s writings did indeed eventually “draw the eyes” not only of “all Germany” on him.

  Yet the singularity of Marx’s intellectual brilliance and learning also carried a hidden curse that accompanied him for most of his life: because he was so intellectually superior to many of his colleagues in the socialist movement, he could not stop himself from pointing out the inconsistencies in their writings, their occasional muddled thoughts, and sometimes their sheer ignorance. As a consequence, many of his polemical writings were aimed, harshly and unsparingly, at his comrades-in-arms. This made Marx a brilliant polemicist, but not exactly a pleasant or accommodating member in a movement where solidarity and collegiality were crucial. Not only Bruno Bauer and other Young Hegelians, but also Moses Hess himself, as well as Proudhon, Arnold Ruge, Bakunin, and many, many others found themselves victims of Marx’s acid tongue and acerbic intellectual wit. Not taking prisoners was a signature of Marx’s writings, and it certainly did not endear him to his closest colleagues, whom he consistently made into his enemies. This trait followed him most of his life: he was perhaps his own worst enemy, and therefore he had little impact on social and political developments during his lifetime. Posthumously, of course, things would develop differently, mainly thanks to the unwavering efforts of Engels.

  The 1840s were not only Marx’s most productive years, but also his most formative ones. Through extensive reading, processed through his critical mind, he was able to form his own theories, in many cases through harsh criticism of some of his closest friends and colleagues.

  After leaving Germany in October 1843, Marx lived in Paris among the growing German community of radical exiles. His activities were monitored by the Prussian authorities, who succeeded in convincing the French government to expel him in February 1845. He moved to Brussels, where he lived until the revolutions of 1848 upended European politics and his own life. Before leaving Paris, he hastily penned a goodbye note to Heinrich Heine—the doyen of German radical exiles in the French capital—saying that, of all he was being for
ced to leave behind in the city, Heine was the dearest and most cherished.

  Yet as an exile in Brussels, Marx’s position remained precarious. He had to petition the Belgian authorities for a residence permit, and was granted one only after formally signing a document pledging “on my word of honor not to publish in Belgium any work on current politics.” Marx constantly felt that he might be expelled from Belgium as well, and his fears led him even to consider emigrating to the United States. In the summer and autumn of 1845 he started making enquiries in this direction and tried to obtain the necessary documents required, including a certificate confirming his medical exemption from Prussian military service. Nothing came of these attempts, and after the initial uncertainties it appears that Marx found Brussels a relatively safe haven—although one may be tempted to speculate about the possible consequences if Marx had spent the rest of his life in America.