Jewish People
“It is by no means sufficient to ask: Who should emancipate and who should be emancipated? Criticism has to be concerned with a third question. It must ask: What kind of emancipation is involved and what are the underlying conditions? Criticism of political emancipation itself is primarily the final critique of the Jewish question and its true resolution into the 'universal question of the age'.” (pp. 220-221)
“Bauer asks the Jews: Have you the right to demand political emancipation from your standpoint? We ask on the contrary: Has the standpoint of political emancipation the right to demand from the Jews the abolishment of Judaism and from man the abolishment of religion?” (p. 221)
There are two separate counter-arguments advanced by Marx against Bauer's
position. The first claims that the existence of religion is not incompatible
with the full development of the state, and that the criteria for the
acquisition of civic rights in a truly political state should not include any
demands regarding one's religion. Marx takes the case of North America to
buttress this point, and claims that the order of things in the political
realm is far from necessary and fixed, as Bauer assumes. As Marx puts it, in
those states of America where the Jewish question ceases to be treated
theologically the state is foreign to all faiths and the question of political
rights is no longer treated as a privilege granted to a minority group either
by the good will of a monarch or by a decision of a majority defined by its
commitment to a religion.
The second counter-argument deals with the general issue of human
emancipation: it explains “what it is like to be humanly emancipated” and
shows how human emancipation is connected to political emancipation. Starting
from the bottom line of Marx's resolution of the Jewish question, his
immediate message to the Jews is this:
“We thus do not say with Bauer to the Jews: You cannot be politically emancipated without emancipating yourselves from Judaism. Rather we tell them: Because you can be emancipated politically without completely and fully renouncing Judaism, political emancipation by itself is not human emancipation. If you Jews want to be politically emancipated without emancipating yourselves humanly, the incompleteness and contradiction lies not only in you but in the essence and category of political emancipation” (p. 232)
Soon, we will explain what these two types of emancipation are, and what
sort of contradiction that precludes the political emancipation of the Jews
Marx was talking about. According to Marx's argument, because Bauer's demand
has been proved to be logically untenable, political emancipation as the
receiving of political rights does not require the renunciation of one's
religious creed. This right can be exercised equally well with the others, for
they make sense and can be realized only within a society.
However, the matter of the freedom of creed does not stand alone in Marx's
thinking. The emptiness of his seemingly favorable approach becomes evident
when Marx claims that the political elevation of man above religion shares all
the defects and advantages of any political elevation: the commitment to
religion should be eliminated as a relevant factor for entering into the
political realm and making claims for rights, just as private property had
been discarded as a factor according to which persons could enter the
political realm (ibid., p. 224). The consequences of this comparison should
not be overlooked. To compare the right to private property to the right of
the freedom of creed, one must be either extremely ignorant or bold in the
same degree. In what sense is the right to the freedom of creed similar to the
former? The first right is of an essentially social nature and in many senses
one's creed seems to be truly decisive in respect to one's self-identification
and belonging to an encompassing group. For example, being a Jew, whatever
quarrels this question might trigger, remains a question of cultural origin,
and whatever differentiation one may discover within the Jewish people there
is still a wide common denominator which distinguishes it from other peoples
and gathers them into one group.
What could be more dissimilar to it than the right to private property, which
is only contingent and does not seem to importantly define one's cultural
identity? Right now we are close to the answer to the question we set out to
explore. Marx treated both rights equally, claiming that they are both
politically irrelevant to human emancipation. And so he killed the Jewish
question by neutralizing the very content of the right of the freedom of creed
and ignoring its importance in shaping the different identities of different
groups in civil society. Any final doubts about the accuracy of this diagnosis
fade away when the issue of human emancipation is considered.
The rights of man, according to Marx, are those interests which stem from the
very human condition, which, at the most fundamental level, is the same for
everyone. The rights of man are only the rights of a member of civil society,
that is, of egoistic man separated from other men and from the community. On
the most fundamental level man is as a monad withdrawn to himself, who has the
right to equality, liberty, security and property, while the goal of all
political association is the preservation of these rights, which are natural
and imprescriptible. These sketchy considerations are sufficient for
understanding what Isaiah Berlin meant in saying that Marx decided to kill the
Jewish question. What he meant was that Marx neutralized the Jewish question
by making it a universal question: not the questions of Jews per se, but
rather the question of general human and political conditions. Everything
which had somehow to do with the question of Jewish identity was of no
interest for Marx, or at least, not in the spectrum of factors to be taken
into account.
Let me now explain in what sense Marx's account of the Jewish question is
relevant today. I shall start from the suggestive and obvious - the historical
point of view. Given that Marx's ideas lie at the heart of the left-wing
movement as such and socialism in general, one may assume that they might
somehow find an expression in their ideology, rhetoric and actions. Many
aspects in the history of the founding and running of the state of Israel
point in this direction. Two examples: firstly, the very idea of kibbutz –
liberation through collective work, abolishment of private property, and an
attempt to overcome the natural alienation of man within a collective
framework. Second, the very conception of the melting pot as integration and
the forming of a collective identity, which proved to be unsuccessful in
Israel in respect to Sefardi Jews (for its being in essence insensitive to
different cultural identities), but the effects of which are still very
tangible. However, I will not discuss these heavy issues here. I merely refer
to them as the most natural and straightforward loci of the implementation of
Marx's ideas in the recent past.
What I do want to point out is the connection between the familiar views about
the desirable character of Israel as a normal, democratic, liberal, Western,
constitutional state and Marx's discussion of the Jewish question. To recall,
what lies at the heart of his solution is the equalization and
universalization of all men at the expense of ignoring their different
identifications with different groups, and their different identities thus
acquired. The cost of this proposal should not be underestimated, for speaking
in Marx's parlance, the shape of one's identity is largely independent of
one's will, and is therefore natural and imprescriptible. I claim that this is
the same problem that lies at the heart of contemporary left-wing movements
that hold on to the dream referred to above. This dream can only come true if
the state “will be foreign to all faiths” and will treat everyone
according to the unique criteria of social justice, which, again should not
take the matter of faith and cultural identity into account. It is in this
sense that Israel will become the state of all its citizens, with a unique
constitution, and the removal of what has always been treated as the dictate
of religion from the public sphere to the sphere of private right.
I am not going to extend the modest goal I have set myself to achieve here.
Namely, I will not discuss whether the view just mentioned is totally wrong,
for the spectrum of issues and problems to be dealt with extends the limits of
this composition. I suggest that the reader to reflect upon it. If I have
succeeded in pointing out the relevance and value of Marx's views today, and
showing that the claim about his anti-Semitism has far reaching consequences,
I shall be satisfied.