On the Jewish Question

On the Jewish Question is a 1843 review written by Karl Marx on two of Bruno Bauer published work, which was published in 1844.

Creation and publication history

Marx wrote the 34 -page review from October to December 1843 after he had finished work on an unpublished during his lifetime bundle of manuscript sheets, which were later published under the title Critique of Hegel 's Philosophy of Right. At first he was doing in Kreuznach, where he married Jenny von Westphalen in June 1843 and spent his honeymoon, starting in October in Paris. The paper deals with two 1843 published texts by Bruno Bauer, The Jewish Question (1843 ) and the essay The ability of today's Jews and Christians to be free ( 1843). The text was first published in February 1844 in Paris, in the only published edition of the published by Marx and Arnold Ruge German - French Yearbooks. A French translation by Hermann Ewerbeck appeared in 1850 in Paris. For the first time Wilhelm Hasselmann tried in his article "Judaism " Marx's work to use for his anti-Semitic purposes. In the context of the Berlin Antisemitism dispute Eduard Bernstein published in the Social in June and July 1881 the second part of the essay. The entire text was published in October 1890, edited by Wilhelm Liebknecht Berlin People's Journal.

In the 1920s, the Communist Party of Germany ( KPD) attacked during a political rivalry with the Nazis repeatedly reset itself to elements of the anti-Semitic propaganda. On the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of the death of Marx in March 1923, the Communist Party daily newspaper reproduced the Red Flag is an excerpt from the second part of the Jewish question, including the finale " The social emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of society from Judaism ", provided with the additional not derived from Marx subtitled " the Nazis in the family album ". This publication has been described as a misreading of the statement by the Communist Party with the aim to present itself as also anti-Semitic.

The library catalog of the German National Library is to be found the oldest publication in 1919 by a Stefan Grossman in Berlin Random House published the fourth edition of the pamphlets series coup and construction. The Marxists Internet Archive Scripture is available in ten languages. A manuscript of Scripture is not known.

Theoretical and practical background

Marx's personal connection to Judaism

When Karl Marx was two or three years old, his father converted from Judaism to the Protestant Christianity because he was not allowed to practice the profession of a lawyer as a Jew. Both grandfathers had been rabbis and many other ancestors also. On August 26, 1824 Karl Marx was baptized Christian with his six siblings. This fact was also aware of his contemporaries, which is why some contemporaries refer to his former religious affiliation and it more or less directly hostile to anti-Semitic, as Bakunin, although he quickly turned away from every religion and criticized this fundamental. Because certain formulations in Marx in each historically present context, within their own ideological outlook and outside the development context were interpreted frequently criticism or positive complaint regarding an alleged anti-Semitism in Marx came on, which includes not only writing the Jewish Question and private letters from Marx to Engels were about Ferdinand Lassalle. In a letter to his uncle Lion Philips from November 29, 1864, Marx said, in reference to Benjamin Disraeli by a " tribesman " n. The relation of Marx to Judaism will always be controversial, but rarely within, Marxist theory ', as Marx met a few actionable statements about Judaism in such a sense.

Franz Mehring wrote in his biography of Marx, that the letters of Marx to his parents have no " trace of Jewish-style or bad habit ." The outlet of the father he believed that " the defection from Judaism ... under prevailing time Läuften not only an act of religious, but also - and primarily - an act of social emancipation " was. The enlightened, "free human " educated father " of all Jewish prejudices [ exempt ], " Marx would " leave valuable heritage " by the enlightened education, which he sent to him a. David Ryazanov, however, paints a slightly different picture. He points out that many important German thinkers for the German socialism, as Marx, Lassalle, Heine and Borne, Jewish origin, which he attributes to the double oppression, were exposed to the Jewish critics of the system. This worsening discrimination have also Marx's father, though long gone religiously, motivated you to change the denomination, as already hinted Mehring. Helmut Hirsch draws a case from 1843 in which it was Marx asked at the age of 24 years by the Jewish community in Cologne aim is to submit a petition for relief from repression by Marx gladly signed, as Marx to Arnold Ruge on 13 March 1843 wrote. Even the Rheinische Zeitung had repeatedly taken a stand against the oppression of the Jews. In preparing the Marx- Engels Collected Edition Hans Stein traveled to Trier in 1928 and interviewed witnesses. The Becker 's widow told by her father, who had worked with Heinrich Marx, and explained to the basic change of religion " because Marx a public office, he could not be a Jew ." Eleanor Marx wrote on October 21, 1890 I shall be very glad to speak at meeting did [ ... ] the more glad, did my Father was a Jew. And during the Dreyfus affair, she said: I am a Jewess.

History of Theory

1841 doctorate Marx with his work on ancient materialists ( difference between the demo and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature ), in which he at least in his dedication took an idealistic point of view, as a doctor of philosophy. However, in 1837 takes place in a private letter to his father from a Hegelian system and the idealism facing away from view. At these times, Marx moved at least in Hegelian circles. After his studies he was from October 1842 in the newly founded Rheinische Zeitung worked as chief editor, where he met Engels, and for the first time in " the embarrassment [ came ], via so-called material interests " to those of the proletariat must also have a say. This prompted him to become more and more with economic theories, especially of classical political economy, deal. At this time, he began increasingly to also deal with the feuerbach materialism and to familiarize yourself with the currents of the socialist and communist movements. After the forced stop publication of the Rheinische Zeitung in March 1843 with Arnold Ruge, Marx planned the publication of the German - French Yearbooks. In the course of work on the German - French Yearbooks Marx wrote from March to August 1843 Contribution to the Critique of Hegel 's Philosophy of Right and immediately thereafter to December 1843, the writing On the Jewish Question. From correspondence with Ruge, which was also published in the yearbooks, it is clear that Marx did not understand in September 1843 as a socialist or communist. On the Jewish Question is comprised primarily critical of the theological idealism of the Young Hegelians apart, Marx wanted to oppose the real society. At that approach his subsequent and also published in the yearbooks font is to the Critique of Hegel 's Philosophy of Right. Introduction, which includes Marx famous critique of religion, and in which he for the first time the proletariat rises to the revolutionary subject. In The Holy Family (1844 ), a further discussion of the topic of writing On the Jewish question within a framework involving the same. Marx and Engels referred to the Jewish Question in the German Ideology (1845 ) critical than in a " philosophical phraseology " wrote, but still basically materialistic font. In the Critique of Political Economy of 1859 Marx noted with respect to the German ideology that he and Engels had in mind, " to our conception as opposed the ideological one of German philosophy to develop, settle, in fact, with our former philosophical conscience. The intention was carried out in the form of a critique of post-Hegelian philosophy, " with which Marx had previously dealt critically in his previous work, but this is now a conceptual and content new, dialectical materialist first time - opposed theory - Marxist.

All development moments of Marx's theory, the confrontation with Hegel, Feuerbach, political economy, the labor movement, are already found in embryo, but not in elaborated form. The most criticism of Hegel is completed, while the Marxist analysis of the political economy is still in its infancy, and the attention to ( and later, following criticism from ) Feuerbach's materialism in the scriptures does not stand out decidedly. Central concepts in later writings are not worked out, nor a " historical materialist " theory. Written with the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, which are considered as first major politico -economic work, and in 1845 wrote theses on Feuerbach, as the unpublished in his lifetime German Ideology, The Communist Manifesto, the Marxist economic theory, which was developed only in the capital in full, still lacked central theoretical moments, which were in later writings of great importance. Nevertheless, many thoughts and basic issues about the possibilities of human emancipation find yourself already in this document, which Marx employed his entire oeuvre long.

The writing On the Jewish question can be considered " private owners clearest rejection invented by [ John ] Locke actor philosophical figure of the person " in the opinion of Urs Linder as within the early works of Marx.

Content

" All emancipation is recycling the human world, the relationships, the people themselves "

Marx devoted himself in Scripture the question of political and human emancipation, which, is central as in the previously written script to the Critique of Hegel 's Philosophy of Right, the contradictory relationship between the political state and civil society, as its solution for reasoning.

Introduction presents Marx Bruno Bauer solve the Jewish question dar. According to Marx, Bauer summarize the Jewish question than a question of the relation of religion to the state, of the opposition of the religious bias and political emancipation. The emancipation from religion would " set as a condition, both to the Jew who wants to be emancipated politically, as to the state, the emancipate and to be emancipated themselves. " Would have to be not only asked who should emancipate According to Marx, and who should be emancipated, as would have to be asked, " What conditions are rooted in the nature of the required emancipation " Bauer's error lies in the fact that he " only " Christian state, " not the " state par excellence "of criticism submits that he, the ratio of political emancipation to human emancipation not been studied. " Marx turns out with concrete examples that full political emancipation with the continuing existence and practice of religion is quite possible, as would be seen on the example of the separation of state and religion in the United States. "The State therefore may have emancipated from religion, even if the vast majority is still religious. And the vast majority do not listen to thereby to be religious ... " It therefore raises the question:

" How is the consummate political emancipation to religion? If we find yourself in the land of perfect political emancipation [Note: United States ] not only the existence, but the live fresh, the vigorous existence of religion, is the evidence out that the existence of the religion of the completion of the State does not object. However, since the existence of religion is the existence of a defect, can be the source of this defect only in the nature of the state itself be sought. The religion is not more than the base, but only as the phenomenon of secular narrowness applies to us. We therefore explain the religious bias of the free citizens of their secular bias. We ... claim that they cancel their religious narrowness once they pick up their worldly barrier. We do not transform the mundane into theological questions. We transform the theological questions into secular. After the story has been long enough dissolved into superstition, we will solve the superstition in history. The question of the relation of political emancipation to religion is for us the question of the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation. "

This opposition, to which the Jewish question finally reducing, would be " the ratio of the political state to its requirements, this may now be tangible elements, such as private property, etc., or mental, such as education, religion, the conflict between the public interest and the private interest, the division between the political state and civil society, these worldly opposites can exist Bauer, as he argues against their religious expression. "

Marx summarizes: " The contradiction in which the followers of a particular religion is his citizenship, is only a part of the general secular contradiction between the political state and civil society. ... The emancipation of the state from religion is not the emancipation of the real man of religion. So we do not say with Bauer the Jews, you can not be emancipated politically without emancipating yourselves radically from Judaism. We tell them, rather, because you can be emancipated politically without renouncing to you completely and without objection from Judaism, so the political emancipation itself is not human emancipation ".

While people in the bourgeois state would be the same, so they would be unequal society, even more, the equality in the state perpetuate inequality in society. Law existed historically, as Marx seeks to illustrate the example of feudalism and the subsequent bourgeois revolutions, especially as a privilege, to secure privileges. In this context, Marx formulated a critique of human rights, even though he considers this political emancipation as an important step towards human emancipation and the last form of human emancipation " within the prevailing order." The right to freedom would not be provided by the "link between man and man, but rather [ the ] separation of man from man ." He summarizes this law primarily in terms of freedom to own private property, so the " right to arbitrarily ( à son gré ), without relation to other men, regardless of the society to enjoy his property and to dispose of the same, the right of self-interest. Those individual freedom, as this practical application of them, form the basis of civil society. "The right to security to rise up in civil society, not the selfishness of its members, it would be" rather the insurance of their selfishness, " to every member of society " Conservation his person, to guarantee his rights and his property. "the social cohesion of the individual members would be only through obtaining " justified their property and selfish person. "

According to Marx, the political revolution of the bourgeoisie replaced the one hand, the political character of feudal society, with the destruction of all estates, corporations, privileges, " which were so many expressions of the separation of the people from his community. " On the other hand, they freed the political state of his " mixing with the civilian life and constituted him as the sphere of the community, the general people matter in an ideal independence of those peculiar elements of civil life. " political emancipation led to the " reduction of man, on the one hand to the member of civil society, on the selfish independent individual, on the other hand to the citizen, the moral person. " " They smashed the bourgeois society " therefore " in their simple components, ... the particular life activity and the specific life situation slumped to only individual meaning. You no longer formed the general relationship of the individual to the state as a whole. "Repeal of feudal relations was thus " the throwing off of the gang that held the selfish spirit of bourgeois society bound. Political emancipation was also the emancipation of civil society from politics, " was" the completion of the idealism of the state at the same time the completion of the materialism of bourgeois society. "

To overcome this fact, the civil society must be fundamentally changed. " Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen ... only when man his" forces propres ': has [note " own forces" ] recognize as social powers and organized and therefore the social force is no longer in the shape of the political force separates from itself, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished. "

Expenditure

• Karl Marx: The Jewish Question. In: German - French Yearbooks, Paris 1844, pp. 182 ff (google books)
• Marx- Engels -Werke Bd 1, pp. 347-377 DEA Archive
• Marx- Engels Collected Edition Vol 2 Division I, Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1982, pp. 141-169 and 648-667