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== The Historical JQ and Marx's "On the Jewish Question" (1843) == | == The Historical JQ and Marx's "On the Jewish Question" (1843) == | ||
Historically speaking, the Jewish Question referred to the inability of the Jews to integrate into secularized European society, because for most of history, the Jews were actually marked by an '''exclusion''' from the main state, be it in the form of privileges, rights, duties and so forth, and many Jews had an agreement with the country that they resided in that they would live in Jewish ghettos that were to be governed by Mosaic Law. But with the French Revolution and the establishment of a Universal state, such carve-outs and prejudices became incompatible with the premise of that state: formal equality. The Jewish Question became the name of a contradiction latent in the bourgeois or universal state. To allow Jews to abide by Mosaic law would compromise the formal equality which is the basis of such a state, but to forcibly secularize them would violate freedom of religion. | Historically speaking, the Jewish Question referred to the inability of the Jews to integrate into secularized European society, because for most of history, the Jews were actually marked by an '''exclusion''' from the main state, be it in the form of privileges, rights, duties and so forth, and many Jews had an agreement with the country that they resided in that they would live in Jewish ghettos that were to be governed by Mosaic Law. But with the '''French Revolution''' and the establishment of a Universal state, such carve-outs and prejudices became incompatible with the premise of that state: formal equality. The Jewish Question became the name of a contradiction latent in the bourgeois or universal state. To allow Jews to abide by Mosaic law would compromise the formal equality which is the basis of such a state, but to forcibly secularize them would violate freedom of religion. | ||
In the text, Marx unequivocally blasts Bauer's demand that Jews renounce their religion, referencing contemporary societies like America where religious pluralism attended a secular state, revolutionary charters like that of 1791 which included civil rights and nowhere presupposed "the positive abolition of religion, and therefore Judaism,"<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20220327073019/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selected_Essays_by_Karl_Marx/On_The_Jewish_Question Better translation of "On the Jewish Question" than the one on Marxists.org]</ref> and even their old schoolmaster Hegel. In all cases his point is that abolition of religion qua the state means simply the end of recognition of religion by the state. No where is it required that all individuals give up their private belief. Once the state is blind to religion, this ''is'' bourgeois abolition. In this sense "the State as State annuls private property," merely by allowing men to vote irrespective of property. But of course religion remains as a private affair - as do private property and other differences. And this is the basic Marxist point. | In the text, Marx unequivocally blasts Bauer's demand that Jews renounce their religion, referencing contemporary societies like America where religious pluralism attended a secular state, revolutionary charters like that of 1791 which included civil rights and nowhere presupposed "the positive abolition of religion, and therefore Judaism,"<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20220327073019/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Selected_Essays_by_Karl_Marx/On_The_Jewish_Question Better translation of "On the Jewish Question" than the one on Marxists.org]</ref> and even their old schoolmaster Hegel. In all cases his point is that abolition of religion qua the state means simply the end of recognition of religion by the state. No where is it required that all individuals give up their private belief. Once the state is blind to religion, this ''is'' bourgeois abolition. In this sense "the State as State annuls private property," merely by allowing men to vote irrespective of property. But of course religion remains as a private affair - as do private property and other differences. And this is the basic Marxist point. | ||