Ian Donovan: READINGS ESSENTIAL TO DISCUSSING THE JEWISH QUESTION – WITH COMMENTARY

"Ian Donovan is a long-time Marxist, currently independent of the putative Marxist organisations, but active in the Left Unity broad left party as well as a signatory to its Communist Platform. This list was issued to encourage others on the left to read about the Jewish question as preparation for a discussion in the near future."

READINGS ESSENTIAL TO DISCUSSING THE JEWISH QUESTION – WITH COMMENTARY
1.    Karl Marx: The Jewish Question (1844)

[image error]

One of Marx’s earliest published essays. This is in two parts: the first of which ought to be uncontroversial, as in replying to Bruno Bauer it puts forward a simple call for political emancipation of the Jews and freedom of religion. The second part, however, is highly controversial, as it contains passages such as:

“What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.

“An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would be dissipated like a thin haze in the real, vital air of society. On the other hand, if the Jew recognizes that this practical nature of his is futile and works to abolish it, he extricates himself from his previous development and works for human emancipation as such and turns against the supreme practical expression of human self-estrangement.