181
edits
m
→Controversy over the second section
| Line 10: | Line 10: | ||
=== Controversy over the second section === | === Controversy over the second section === | ||
Idiots and liars like to jibber-jabber about the second part of the work. Taking quotes without context, it is easy to paint Marx as Anti-Semitic in these passages. "What is the secular cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his secular God? Money." But what is Marx actually getting at? It would be strange if, after carefully elaborating the ''material'' contradiction at the heart of bourgeois society, Marx suddenly turned around and made everything about religion again. Stale, pseudo-Hegelian religious criticism is precisely what Marx is breaking with during the 1840s. Put simply, Marx is making fun of Baur. He is making fun of him for presenting the Jewish Question as though it were a matter of serious theological criticism when in fact, in practical reality, the Jewish Question is a proxy for the place of property in bourgeois society generally.<blockquote>We will try to get rid of the theological conception of the question. The question of the capacity of the Jews for emancipation is from our standpoint transformed into the question, what particular social element has to be overcome in order to abolish Judaism? For the capacity for emancipation of the modern Jew is the relation of Judaism to the emancipation of the modern world. This relation is necessarily disclosed by the special position of Judaism in the modern subjugated world. </blockquote>This paragraph immediately precedes the infamous one cited above. So when Marx writes that "Emancipation from huckstering and from money, and therefore from practical, real Judaism would be the self-emancipation of our epoch," he is clearly not talking about something specific to Jews, but rather the "particular social element" (viz. private property) which undermines the Universal state generally, and of which Jews are merely a popular symbol due to their "special position," their historical association with usury. And when Marx talks about "practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world," he is again talking merely about this, the fact that "money has become a world power," something which has happened "with and without [the Jew's] cooperation." Marx references the popular association between Judaism and money-grubbing only to throw it in the face of the anti-Semite by pointing out, ironically, how even the Christians these days have become Jews. There are really only two ways to look at this. You can be stupid and claim that Marx really thinks there is an essential connection between Jews and Capitalism, and that he ''literally means'' that "bourgeois society continually creates Jews." Or you can accept that he is joking, that such an idea is on its face absurd, and that his point is rather that what people criticize in the Jew is in fact the social disintegration, the atomization and egoism attending Capitalism as such. | Idiots and liars like to jibber-jabber about the second part of the work. Taking quotes without context, it is easy to paint Marx as Anti-Semitic in these passages. "What is the secular cult of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his secular God? Money." But what is Marx actually getting at? It would be strange if, after carefully elaborating the ''material'' contradiction at the heart of bourgeois society, Marx suddenly turned around and made everything about religion again. Stale, pseudo-Hegelian religious criticism is precisely what Marx is breaking with during the 1840s. Put simply, Marx is making fun of Baur. He is making fun of him for presenting the Jewish Question as though it were a matter of serious theological criticism when in fact, in practical reality, the Jewish Question is a proxy for the place of property in bourgeois society generally.<blockquote>We will try to get rid of the theological conception of the question. The question of the capacity of the Jews for emancipation is from our standpoint transformed into the question, what particular social element has to be overcome in order to abolish Judaism? For the capacity for emancipation of the modern Jew is the relation of Judaism to the emancipation of the modern world. This relation is necessarily disclosed by the special position of Judaism in the modern subjugated world. </blockquote>This paragraph immediately precedes the infamous one cited above. So when Marx writes that "Emancipation from huckstering and from money, and therefore from practical, real Judaism would be the self-emancipation of our epoch," he is clearly not talking about something specific to Jews, but rather the "particular social element" (viz. private property) which undermines the Universal state generally, and of which Jews are merely a popular symbol due to their "special position," their historical association with usury. And when Marx talks about "practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world," he is again talking merely about this, the fact that "money has become a world power," something which has happened "with and without [the Jew's] cooperation." Marx references the popular association between Judaism and money-grubbing only to throw it in the face of the anti-Semite by pointing out, ironically, how even the Christians these days have become Jews. | ||
There are really only two ways to look at this. You can be stupid and claim that Marx really thinks there is an essential connection between Jews and Capitalism, and that he ''literally means'' that "bourgeois society continually creates Jews." Or you can accept that he is joking, that such an idea is on its face absurd, and that his point is rather that what people criticize in the Jew is in fact the social disintegration, the atomization and egoism attending Capitalism as such. | |||
== The Jewish Question today == | == The Jewish Question today == | ||