Brooke at a Fistful of Euros

I find Scott’s discussion a very lucid outline of what Marx has meant on his writings vis-à-vis “the Jewish Question”. How somebody could see the latter as a piece of anti-Semitism, is quite frankly beyond me, unless a wilful misinterpretation is going on. It will of course, give Zionists no comfort but then that is unsurprising, given the general attitude of Marx towards questions of nationalism. On the other hand we must take care to explore the full extant of the issue at hand; 19th century Germany and Europe was in many ways a time and place suffuse with a lot of ethnic and religious bigotry and an inherent problem of the European project of nation-state construction was its inability to do so without stigmatising and generating forms of chauvinism in most cases directed towards de-territorialised minorities on the mainland and towards colonial non-European peoples outside the continent. As part of the former category: Jews, Roma and Armenians were some of the minorities most at risk from rightwing and chauvinist forms of nationalism. Within the ambit of German Nationalism at the time, moreover, this was a poisoned chalice, as Philip Roth remarked “Jews are people who are not what anti-Semites say they are”. It was frequently these chauvinistic anti-Semitic European nationalists who called upon the Jews to prove the charges against them (of being secretive, clannish etc.) were untrue but it was these very same anti-Semitic chauvinists who insisted on being the one who would pronounce of the cogency of the proofs. Both the call to assimilation and the utter improbability of answering it properly (i.e. in a manner which would find acceptance) stemmed from the same source: the power structure of cultural and social domination, which had rendered all the more overwhelming and less changeable by the abolition of legal differentiation and the declaration of political equality. For individuals aspiring to being admitted to the company of the elect nationalism, the world turned into a testing ground and life into a permanent trial period. It became largely a social life under scrutiny, undergoing a life-long and never conclusive examination. The aspirants soon learnt if they did not know before, that they were under observation, that the observation would never lead to a final and irrevocable judgement and that passing the successive trial with flying colours would not exempt them from further tests. It was understood, that they would have no influence on the content of the examination and on the standards by which the results were to be marked. These were set examinations and the standing board of examiners had full freedom to change the papers and the rules of marking without notice.

The career of Heinrich Heine demonstrates the high psycho-social costs this exacted; despite his best attempts, the louder he proclaimed his emancipation from his Jewishness, the more his Jewishness seemed to be evident and protruding. As in so many cases, the very display of assimilatory passion was taken to be the most convincing proof of his Jewish identity. To the Frenchmen among whom Heine in the end settled as the self-appointed ambassador and champion of German culture, he might have been a German. To the German, he was unredeemably a Jew. Nothing Heine did and could do helped him. Some level of internalisation in this environment was unavoidable and how different Jewish communities related to each other could not but play a role in it; wrt Marx, while it is not possible to impugn him as some sort of anti-Semite or racist; he certainly was a product of his environment; hence his radical views on social and economic emancipation nowitstanding; his private correspondence to Engels reveals in the very use of insults against other Socialist figures of the time – such as the epithet “Jewish nigger” when referring to Lasalle and the use of stereotyped descriptions and portraits on occasion could only be made possible in an environment which was permeated with this kind of discriminatory thinking and which created a internal split in the inner lives and self-perception of those subjects so discriminated against.

Scott, just to say I agree with most of what you say and found your exposition of Marx’s essay on the ‘Jewish question’ an excellent summary. I found it quite disturbing that someone could argue that this particular essay of Marx’s was anti-Semitic, as it is not even remotely so. What I do perhaps find myself concerned with is some of the more general descriptive language and comments Marx makes, mostly in his private and personal writings/comments, which were not meant for publication. I accept what you say and the need for context etc. but what I am a little bit disturbed by, is the specific way some of these tend to occur. I suppose in a way I am subscribing to a variant of the ‘Only Jews are allowed to make Jewish jokes’ syndrome; obviously today I can find it acceptable (if not particularly comfortable) when I walk down the street and hear two South Asians call each other ‘paki’ whereas when the ethnicities are mixed this term takes on a different connotation and would probably be met by a smack in the face from me to the person saying it. Similarly, I can see that certain forms of insults can be appropriated by discriminated communities such as homosexuals and de-nuded of their charge by internal use, in a somewhat different fashion some of the most explicit anti-Semitic tropes and imagery is used in the controversy and conflict between different Jewish communities as the extreme of the Ultra-Orthodox and the more secular wings indicate. However, I don’t think we have reached here, anywhere near the level of social relations where such terms can be used in a good-natured way, on a broad level amongst mixed groups (i.e. when one hasn’t know the person for a long, significant period of time) a reflection of the stratificiations and inequalities within society as a whole and what troubles me about Marx’s language is precisely that I seemed to detect an element of internalisation of this kind sentiment and expressed it, quite frequently to Gentile interlocutors such as Engels, in a manner that strikes me as almost seeking to establish his credentials. Maybe this is too harsh, but these kinds of discourses can frequently become easily internalised; the so-called martial race theory of the Raj in India being an example; it is bizarre to see how this has in different ways impinged on the self-image of the (largely) Hindu elite of post-colonial India and how it has become embedded in the political discourse and consciousness so much so, despite great evidence to the contrary, that it can still strike a chord when some saffronist demagogue gets up on his soapbox to indulge in some Muslim scapegoating.

None of this makes Marx “anti-Semitic” as such; though as you point out, his views on proletarian culture and race would be regarded with some suspicion in today’s environment; the broader problem as I see it, is how Jewish self-identity and cultural/collective life was subject to a high level of pressure in the period discussed and how without being itself racist or chauvinist; it mimicked in a disconcerting fashion the prevailing prejudices of its time.

nice post