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On the Jewish Question (Readings in Modern Jewish History)

Karl Marx

3.43 · Rating details · 661 ratings · 76 reviews

Karl Marx's views on the Jews Question and Zionism...

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Published by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (first published 1844)

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Apr 01, 2018 Kent rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: semitic-studies

Good discussion on the relationship between church and state, suffrage, and sovereignty. Marx gives a brief analysis of Hegel's "Philosophy of Right" and "The Declaration of the Rights of Man". It's not as sensational as Arthur Kemp purports; nevertheless, Marx was definitely aware of the problems of Jewish culture, which is described in part two of this book: "The Capacity of Present-day Jews and Christians to Become Free". The articles Marx wrote while working at the New York Tribune would mak ...more

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Mar 13, 2015 Andrew rated it did not like it · review of another edition

It's definitely important to be critical about Marx's very dubious and prejudiced portrait of Jewishness in his pamphlet "On the Jewish Question". But the presentation in this little book isn't critical so much as slanderous.

I'm not sure where the title " A world without Jews" comes from, but the title Marx gave to the essay which is reprinted here is fairly straightforwardly translated to "On The Jewish Question". The Jewish Question was a book written by young Hegelian Bruno Bauer which Marx i It's definitely important to be critical about Marx's very dubious and prejudiced portrait of Jewishness in his pamphlet "On the Jewish Question". But the presentation in this little book isn't critical so much as slanderous.

I'm not sure where the title " A world without Jews" comes from, but the title Marx gave to the essay which is reprinted here is fairly straightforwardly translated to "On The Jewish Question". The Jewish Question was a book written by young Hegelian Bruno Bauer which Marx is directly responding to. At some point someone decided to change Marx's title, probably deliberately done so people would come to a misconception about Marx without actually reading him.

The introduction is interesting. First the author concedes the point that Marx is thinking about Jewishness or Judaism not in racial terms, but rather as a political and/or social question. He also accepts that Marx was echoing popular prejudices of the times.
However he then goes on to draw parallels between Marx and 20th century antisemitism " of the Marx-Hitler kind". This involves prejudices about Jews as self interested "hucksters" (something which is certainly present in Marx's text) but also talk of global conspiracies centred in Jerusalem (something Marx never says). The rest of the introduction recalls the anti Semitic crimes of Stalinist regimes, for which Marx is apparently guilty.

The introduction never mentions the fact that Marx was actually arguing, against Bauer, for the political emancipation of Jews. Nor does it mention that Marx saw, in the end, Jewish liberation as unachievable without human liberation. Which to him meant leaving questions of political emancipation, hence Jewish rights, behind. In fact the introduction doesn't really engage with Marx's substantive argument at all, except to suggest that Marx blames capitalism on Jews. Which is a fairly crude and uninsightful interpretation.

The vast bulk of Marx's text is aimed at philosophically criticising Bauer's conception of the state and political emancipation, which Marx thinks doesn't get to the nub of the issue. That being that social being determines consciousness, not the other way around. I.e. it is pointless to argue that Jews (or anyone else) should stop practising their particular religion and join the political community as equal citizens, because social divisions (I.e. different religions) are a result of a monetised alienated society, not the other way around.

However, the focus of this translation is definitely on the rather brief part 2 of the essay, where Marx makes his polemic against Judaism clear. This is definitely the weakest part of Marx's text, and demonstrates him descending into prejudices which only obscure the much more interesting things he had to say in part 1. All the dodgy bits are enlarged here and in bold text, presumably so the reader can skip to them and avoid confusing matters by reading them in their dense argumentative context.

Marx's main gripe with Jews has nothing to do with their ancestry or their religious practices (seeing "The Jewish Question" in these terms is what he is arguing against here), but rather that he sees Jewishness as a social phenomena, and as the precursor of bourgeois civil society. Namely that a group of people could absolve themselves of general political matters, of the general political questions of the time, and become focussed on their insular community and their private self interest.

Marx moreover argues that political liberalism perfects this by estranging the citizen, or the abstract political subject, from civil society, or the private individual. According to Marx, if Jews truly want emancipation, they need to go beyond demanding political rights which merely guarantee their atomised privacy, hence retaining this division and even deepen it. Instead they must demand the abolition of the material conditions of alienation --- money, capital, etc. --- the "intermediaries" which maintain human estrangement, and especially the estrangement of the Jew from the rest of humanity. As Marx sees Jewishness as essentially a matter of money worship, the Jew is the man of monetary accumulation par excellence, and he thinks that making the step into human emancipation therefore means ceasing to be a Jew. At no point does he, nor would he, suggest physical elimination of Jews; however the translation in this volume has been manipulated to permit that interpretation.

Essentially what Marx is saying is that Jews can have their political recognition, but unless they become socialists and stop relating to the whole world simply as a means to make more money for themselves, they won't enjoy anything better than an alienated abstract and contentless freedom. His point against Bauer is to underline that this is a social rather than a religious or ethnic issue. He also argues that Jews are merely the paradigmatic case, and the same thing goes for everyone living in bourgeois civil society.

I'm not going to defend Marx's comments here, because I think he was wrong to portray Judaism as essentially a cult of greed and self interest. He is also completely insensitive to cultural differences, and how these might actually matter to people. To our 21st century eyes these comments are unquestionably antisemitic, they moreover voice the kinds of stereotypes which Nazis used to justify genocide; but we have the burden of some rather terrifying hind sight that Marx did not.

To lump Marx together with Hitler based on these remarks is dishonest and absurd. Marx makes it repeatedly clear that pluralistic religious difference (which is what modern religion becomes) is something that forms barriers between human beings, that it is a manifestation of a divided, atomised society. Something he wants to overcome. He makes it clear that attacking religion on its own terms is treating the symptom rather than the cause, and only confuses matters. The conclusions of this essay couldn't be more cosmopolitan. To suggest that these ideas have anything to do with Nazism, which was all about elevating a certain race to the position of domination over all humankind and exterminating others, is either a sign of woeful ignorance or a deliberate attempt to mislead and deceive readers.

Hence I can only conclude that this book is little more than cold war propaganda, trying to construct a demonized picture of Marx as some sort of proto Nazi. ...more

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May 22, 2019 E. rated it did not like it

Shelves: philosophy

So Karl Marx was evidently an Anti-Semite. His argument is actually pretty predictable--religion in general is messed up, and the Jewish religion in particular is really just about capitalism, so once capitalism has been gotten rid of, Judaism will go away, and then Jewish people won't have to worry about being discriminated against. The core of this piece is just anti-Jewish propaganda with a Communist twist. Makes Nazi associations of Jews with Communists all the more ironic.

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Dec 14, 2011 Marina rated it it was ok

Writen in 1842, Marx, with this critique on Bauer's "The Jewish Question", develops a theoritical approach on the nature of the rights of the man. These rights in the industrialised society are divided in political rights and human rights, reflecting the division in the living of the man of the feudal system, where all of its aspects were included in the public/state life and were in part political. After the shutering of that system, while the political rights stand for all people as equals and ...more

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Dec 16, 2012 Maurice Lacerda rated it did not like it

The conclusive proof the Marx was an idiot...

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Oct 04, 2020 Lucas Chance rated it liked it

This is an interesting argument if an idealistic one and one that does not necessarily see the colonial views it has. Why it does it being up the point that the leveling of the playing field through the abolition of religion as a whole does not really factor the ethnic and cultural differences. Instead, it views the law as the ideal and universal without really analyzing the power in that position and how the law can inherently be used against them even if a marginalized group conforms to a larg ...more

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Jul 10, 2019 T rated it liked it

"And how is religious opposition made impossible? By abolishing religion. As soon as Jew and Christian come to see in their respective religions nothing more than stages in the development of the human mind—snake skins which have been cast off by history, and man as the snake who
clothed himself in them—they will no longer find themselves in religious opposition, but in a purely critical, scientific and human relationship. Science will then constitute their unity"

A decent, albeit brief, essay whi ...more

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Jul 01, 2020 Duarte rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy, politics, good, religion, german-literature, marxism

This is a decent essay by Marx, about Bruno Bauer's (a prominent Young Hegelian) book The Jewish Question. Despite this, Marx here is remarkably not very concerned with race, ethnicity or religion, but rather with the State, with Law, with what emancipation means.

The second chapter (there's only two) does include some pretty anti-Semitic language, largely due to the fact that Marx equates the Jewish petit-bourgeoisie with the real, material core of Judaism as a religion.

Despite this, however, ...more

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Jan 03, 2019 T rated it did not like it

Hitler and his German socialism obtained sick ideas from Marx and this publication. Soviet socialism obtained similar ideas from Marx and this publication. Hitler and German socialism obtained sick ideas from Soviet socialism. Soviet socialism created the "Jewish Autonomous Olbast" (JAO) in 1936. Two years after the JAO was founded, Stalin targeted Jews living in the JAO in purges. Of course, a few years later, in 1939, German socialism & Soviet socialism joined to launch the WWII, invading Pola ...more

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May 16, 2020 Brice Karickhoff rated it did not like it · review of another edition

FIRST OFF: The title of this book is unfair. moving on...

I read this book (like my previous Marx review) because the bulk of it was contained within the text of another book I was reading, so I figured I should just go ahead and plow through the whole thing. This was an odd read for sure. I almost give it two stars just because Marx is an eloquent writer and great arguer, BUT, when the dust settled on this book, I disliked it pretty good. So 1 star.

Now things get pretty heady, but such is Marx:

H FIRST OFF: The title of this book is unfair. moving on...

I read this book (like my previous Marx review) because the bulk of it was contained within the text of another book I was reading, so I figured I should just go ahead and plow through the whole thing. This was an odd read for sure. I almost give it two stars just because Marx is an eloquent writer and great arguer, BUT, when the dust settled on this book, I disliked it pretty good. So 1 star.

Now things get pretty heady, but such is Marx:

He wrote this book as a response to the Bauer book, "The Jewish Question", in which Bauer discusses how Jews could be emancipated politically. Marx agrees with Bauer that Jews ought to be liberated, but disagrees with how Bauer thinks this ought to play out. Bauer argues that Jews should be given equal access to the political community, but Marx refutes this notion, asserting that the entire political community itself is only rife with class divisions, and an alienated monetized society. Thus for the Jews to be truly emancipated, we must emancipate ourselves from the religious and political superstructures we hold onto as a society. According to Marx, if Jews truly want to be free from the shackles that bind them, their actual business is to eliminate the very concepts which force society to descend into discrimination, namely religion, money, capital, and capitalism.

In part 2, Marx takes things a step further, but along the way he descends into terrible prejudice (1 star book). Why do Jews necessarily need to see the end of privately held capital? Because they as a race are the self-interested capital hoarders, he says. A capitalistic society is bound to despise them! Only in the Marxist Utopia will Jews (in whatever since they are still Jewish at that point) finally experience emancipation. And what will that utopia be like? Heres a snippet:

"The state emancipates itself from religion, both as to form and content, by emancipating itself from any state religion - that is, by professing no religion except its own statehood". Marx was by no means the proto-Nazi that some of his critics try to paint him as. That being said, what does history make of his claim here? The two societies who have by far committed the greatest genocide against Jews (or genocide in general for that matter), the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, are the SAME TWO SOCIETIES who went the FURTHEST to "profess no religion except its own statehood". Thats not to say that a "state religion" is a good thing per se. Separation of church and state is another matter. But so far, Godless societies have a pretty bad track record for how they treat Jews.

In general, in my pursuit to understand Marx, I've found that there's some insight in his diagnosis of problems, and in FORM the solutions he suggests possess some value. But the solutions he poses in FUNCTION can lead to atrocity (whether he intended that or not). As a Christian, I fundamentally disagree with his basic philosophy, but as long as his writings stay in the air, they're like 3-4 star material to me. But when they come down to the ground, you get the rare 1 star review. ...more

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May 22, 2019 Sam Thomas rated it liked it

He's still quite wedded to Hegel at this point, though the ending does hint of greatness to come.

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May 07, 2018 Abraham Lewik rated it it was ok

Shelves: real, intellectual

A two-fold criticism, about the purpose of a secular state, and the difference betterment general (a Jew) and specific (that Jew)types of person. There are no quotes from The Jewish Question indicative of the shoah to come. There are many citations and excerpts.

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Oct 01, 2018 Michael Boyte rated it really liked it

Lit. Early Marx, sharp and polemical articulating the relationships between democratic struggles (political emancipation) and the communist horizon (human emancipation). Particularly relevant in the context of current debates about Identity politics and the relevance of universal emancipatory politics.
Not the easiest read outside of familiarity with the debates of the times, I recommend reading the wiki entry before tackling it.

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Jun 09, 2018 Anya Leninjav rated it really liked it

Shelves: capitalism

Typically dismissed as a 'self-hating Jew', Karl Marx brings out the egotism, self-aggrandizement, paranoia and self-inflicted persecution of the Jewish religion and people. Doubtless this would be dismissed as 'anti-semitism' in today's media, despite the fact that it is (like many things 'anti-semitic') entirely correct.

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Nov 16, 2017 Maryam rated it liked it

I have read this book for two different purposes: First for political philosophy module to explore the idea of freedom in early writings by Marx; the Secondary purpose was another module to identify anti-semitic examples in the literature of 19th century.

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Aug 19, 2017 Stoa rated it liked it · review of another edition

Younger Marx is really fun and at the same time a total pain to wade through. Man this was annoying to read.

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Feb 21, 2019 Louisa added it

Shelves: phil, marx

"The riddle has a simple solution" I MEAN

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May 26, 2019 Ayn Doe rated it liked it

Shelves: post-oct-2018-reads

A response by Marx essentially critiquing Bauer's conflation of what Marx believed was an important distinction between political and human emancipation for Jew and Christian alike. Political emancipation being a step towards human emancipation in that it creates a sharp seperation from civil society (where non-political human activity takes place) and the state, allowing the state to no longer be subservient to a dominant religion and therefore be able to relegate the religious lives of the cit ...more

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Jun 28, 2018 Karl Hallbjörnsson rated it did not like it · review of another edition

This edition is a childish piece of propaganda by the translator in question, Dagobert D. Runes. The title and presentation, as well as the embarrassingly incompetent introduction and appendix demonstrate, are quite obviously driven by ideological fervor and not by a passion for fair treatment. Another (one star) review of this edition by a user called "Andrew" (which you can find here: Read Andrew's 1-star review of A World without Jews by Karl Marx
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) perf ...more

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Dec 18, 2017 Hyun Suh rated it it was ok

I don't know why Jews would publish this when this book goes against Judaism. He was a Jew who concluded that the only way to get rid of judaism is to get it out of society. I am he agrees with the conclusion of Bauer that the only way to get rid of this materialist society is get rid of religion but I could see why this work has influenced in his other works.

The Young Hegelians were retards and so was most of the socialists.

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Apr 29, 2019 Diogo Jesus rated it liked it · review of another edition

Essay on the emancipation of jews already showing some of the ideas Marx would come to develop. Very much his own style. Using many common places, things people say and criticing or starting his points by stating someone's view/argument (here he quotes specially Bruno Bauer). Appeals to the fact that they are also exploited and religion and statehood emancipation are neither possible or coherent but if they assume their condition. Shows (unsurprisingly) a materialistic view of religion

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Sep 27, 2017 Мануэль rated it really liked it

With the exception of the dreadfully anti-semitic second section, the first half of this text is an excellent example of Marx, early on, demonstrating his use of "immanent critique" to question the assumptions of Liberalism, Hegel, and the Young Hegelians. It is a great text to get a sense of the dialectical method and how it can be applied in practice.

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Feb 20, 2019 Aaron Schuschu rated it liked it

Shelves: marx

Not sure what to think. It was racist against Jews, but, at the same time, it said that it wouldn’t compromise a religious person’s morality to keep religion in the private sphere and to respect other religions.

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Sep 11, 2017 Eyüp Eren rated it it was amazing

After all those years of wars, the questions raised in this piece still remain as inquiries of the modern world.

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Nov 19, 2017 Amber Manning rated it did not like it

No.

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May 07, 2019 Dr.Abhisek Mondal rated it really liked it

Nice😊😊😊

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Oct 15, 2019 Chris Baitz rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: socialism-or-marx

Big yikes on section 2, but is otherwise an interesting look at how the young Marx viewed religion, civil society, and the state.

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Nov 19, 2019 Alana Araújo rated it did not like it

Shelves: german, non-fiction, jewish

“oh, you don’t like antisemitism? stop being a jew, then.”

seriously, i thought i was reading ‘the international jew’ at times.

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Nov 21, 2019 Derek rated it liked it

Im now woke on the JQ

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Mar 11, 2012 Mario García rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: nobody

I have delayed for long time a more serious and balanced study of Marx's thought. At this time it is impossible for me to evaluate properly the original in German, thus, the best Anglosaxon based translation I found was from "The Works Of Marx and Engels" (Mobile Reference).

For a clean guide in English (with German references from the original), check out marxists.org version.

For me, "On The Jewish Question" was quite a forced critique on Bauer's "The Jewish Question". Which leads me to he concl ...more

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About Karl Marx

Karl Marx

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Karl Marx, Ph.D. (University of Jena, 1841) was a social scientist who was a key contributor to the development of Communist theory.

Descended from a long line of rabbis, Marx born in Prussian Rhineland. His father converted to Protestantism shortly before Karl's birth. Educated at the Universities of Bonn, Jena, and Berlin, Marx founded the Socialist newspaper Vorwarts in 1844 in Paris. After bein ...more

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“Money is the universal, self-constituted value of all things. Hence it has robbed the whole world... of its proper value. Money is the alienated essence of man's labour and life, and this alien essence dominates him as he worships it.” — 21 likes

“Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in himself, which is contained in an abstract form in the Jewish religion, is the real, conscious standpoint, the virtue of the man of money. The species-relation itself, the relation between man and woman, etc., becomes an object of trade! The woman is bought and sold.” — 3 likes

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