Marx accepted completely the savagely anti-Semitic context of Bauer’s argument, which he said was written ‘with boldness, perception, wit and thoroughness in language that is as precise as it is vigorous and meaningful’. He quoted with approval Bauer’s maliciously exaggerated assertion that ‘the Jew determines the fate of the whole [Austrian] empire by his money power . . . [and] decides the destiny of Europe’. Where he differed was in rejecting Bauer’s belief that the anti-social nature of the Jew was religious in origin and could be remedied by tearing the Jew away from his religion. In
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