DSW

Tough. You’re the one who’s gone off topic here into an area that qualifies as flame-bait.

Mark, compare to what I wrote:

“Marx, himself of Jewish decent…”

Having a rabbi as a grandfather makes that pretty much a cinch, so you’ll excuse me if I consider my point conceded.

How is your example:

“The chimerical nationality of the american is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general. The groundless law of the american is only a religious caricature of groundless morality and right in general, of the purely formal rites with which the world of self-interest surrounds itself.”

terribly different from:

“The business of America is business.”

when put next to:

“Money is the root of all evil.”

But, then you go on to accuse me of anti-semitism, which entails the loss of any remaining consideration I might have for your feelings:

“Yet, Scott, you at the minimum, and to be fair many other people, somehow all find this reasonable when the subject is jews. ”

Well, actually, there is a fair amount of criticism of the US both for its mercantilism and for its “groundless laws” and “religious caricatures”, and some of it is pretty fair. Like Marx, I’m an anti-nationalist. Jewish nationalism is “chimeral”, and it was even more so in Marx’ day since there was no Jewish state. What did Europe’s Jews have in common in that era? For Marx, mercantile ties are about it. Later, they had other things in common – namely the experience of having a dedicated and efficient tyrrant try to stamp them out, but in the 1840′s this is a fair criticism of Jewish nationalism, and in the context of the Hegelian terminology in use in the journal Marx was writing in, this criticism is harsh but far from anti-semitic, especially since Marx turns it around and accuses German Christians of being the same.

“You tell me that these paragraphs don’t mean what they seem to say because the words “Jew” and “Judaism” don’t have anything like their normal meanings.”

Marx was writting in the 1840′s in a journal of Hegelian philosophy. He is quite clear in his identification of “the everyday Jew” just what he is talking about, at least given the vocabulary and time of this article. You have identified “the everyday Jew” with “the secular Jew.” Marx has not. He is not interested in religious affiliations, he is interested in what people actually do. He is also indulging the stereotypes Bauer is putting forward – with what I would thought was obviously a fair amount of sarcasm – in order to turn them against him. Bauer alleges that Jews should not have civil rights because they are so identified with trade and the oppression of the market. Marx is saying that if Jews are this way then it is Christianity, Germany and capitalism’s fault.

Marx was an atheist, so it is hardly surprising that he didn’t beleive that Judaism has any existence except for the social and economic role it has. For an atheist, everything else about religion is superstition or eccentricity. This is no different than his opinion of Christianity or any other religion, and is a still quite common, mainstream conception of religion among atheists.

“We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development — to which in this harmful respect the Jews have
zealously contributed — has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate.”

“In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.”
Here again, Marx is turning Bauer’s notions of Judaism against him with a certain amount of sarcasm. Marx is alleging that the society that Bauer is trying to preserve by forcing Jews to abandon their Judaism is already fully Jewish. If Judaism is to be identified with mercantilism, as Bauer does and which Marx is taking and running with, then:

The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews.
Marx is trashing Bauer. If Jewish mercantilism has empowered Jews, then it is because Christianity has become Jewish. Bauer is an anti-semitic Christian theologian – for him these are fighting words. That is the context in which Marx can claim that “the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.” Marx is turning Bauer’s anti-semitism against him by making Christianity equivalent to Judaism.

They didn’t have emoticons in the 1840′s – Marx’ sarcasm was expected to come through in the text, and I imagine his original German does a better job of that than the English translation. Sarcasm trnaslates poorly not only across languages but across time. The disappearance of Marx’ indended audience, along with the relative obscurity of the book that he is trashing, may make that harder to see, but sentences like “Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew” ought to be an indicator that Marx is up to something. I don’t see any reading of Marx’ life, his connections to Judaism and his very straightforward atheism, that would lead him to ever talk about “the secret of the Jews” in any but a sarcastic manner.

I really would have thought that at least some of this would be apparent to someone who read the whole text for some purpose other than highlighting useful quotes.

“Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself
and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade, and the bankrupt trader deals in the Gospel just as the Gospel preacher who has become rich goes in for business deals.”
How do you think someone like Jerry Falwell would take this sort of thing? Marx is calling Christianity – and especially Christianity in the loose, non-denominational, evangelical form that Bauer supports – Jewish!

“Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist.”

Again, having rhetorically made Christianity the same as Judaism, Marx is tossing Bauer’s conception of Judaism in his face. For Marx the atheist anti-capitalist, money is the jealous God of everyone, in the face of which no other God may exist.

“Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in himself, which is contained in an abstract form in the Jewish religion, is the real, conscious standpoint, the virtue of the man of money. The species-relation itself, the relation between man and woman, etc., becomes an object of trade! The woman is bought and sold.”

Look at the first sentence again, but without the reference to the Jews: “Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in himself [...] is the real, conscious standpoint, the virtue of the man of money.” The man of money is contemptuous of theory, art, history and man himself. Bauer – who I suspect Marx is almost quoting – sees this as essentially Jewish. Marx is claiming that this contempt is “the virtue of the man of money”, reinforcing his claim that what Bauer sees as Jewish, Marx sees as intrinsically capitlaist. And even then, in this sardonic tone, he is still not claiming that Jews buy and sell women. He is claiming that “the man of money”, who has contempt for “man as an end in himself” is engaged in such a trade.

Have you completely missed that Marx is arguing against someone who wants to deny Jews legal equality? Marx denies that such procedural measures are adequate to human liberation, and he is making the argument on Bauer’s unhesitatingly anti-semitic terms. Nonetheless, he claims that political emancipation is the most the existing framework of society can offer Jews or anyone, and that it is better than nothing.

It is important to look beyond words to context, because words have no meaning outside of it. Bauer’s book is impossible to find on short notice, but there are summaries in several places. I should think the text being attacked has some bearing on the interpretation of the article.

Have you tried to read any commentary on this piece? Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxembourg never denied their Jewish identities, although neither thought them to be the most important aspect of themselves either. I would have thought they, along with the Marxist wing of the Zionist movement and the many tens of thousands of Jewish Communist party members over the years, might have said something if they thought Marx was a hardcore anti-semite.

I appreciate your long and articulate response, but
I do not appreciate the way you began.

Let’s look at that first sentence:

“I’m not quite sure where you’re going with the claim
that Marx had no connection to Judaism.”

And then compare it to what I wrote:

“Marx was a jew only by a racist’s standard. He certainly
wasn’t raised jewish and he didn’t perceive himself as jewish.
His parents did not see themselves as jewish, and unless
I’m greatly mistaken Marx would have been quite upset to
be called jewish.”

Now did I claim that Marx had “no connection to Judaism”?

In fact, I wrote no such thing. And my words seem fairly
clear; it’s hard to comprehend how they could be misunderstood.

So what’s going on here?

You are after all arguing with me. Rhetorically it seems
quite convenient to have your opponent make an absurd
claim and then in one sentence demolish it.

Anyway…I take it when you speak of Marx’s father
being a baptist you are admitting the greater part
of what I said above. I knew that Marx’s grandparents
were jewish and this is what I was referring to when
I said that by a “racist’s standard” Marx was jewish.

In my eyes Marx’s grandparents being jewish would be
relevant if he was raised by them or had a some great
amount to do with them. This was not the case. It’s
perhaps worth noting that religious conversions like
these were a bit bigger deal back then than they are
today. I have an relative that did something like
this in that time period and he and his family
never spoke again.

The nazis defined as a jew anyone that had one
great-great-grandparent that was jewish. How is that
different from claiming Marx as a jew despite
his personal beliefs and despite his upbringing?

But let’s ignore all that and suppose that Marx
was jewish.

Imagine some american wrote,

“The chimerical nationality of the american is
the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money
in general. The groundless law of the american
is only a religious caricature of groundless morality
and right in general, of the purely formal rites with
which the world of self-interest surrounds itself.”

And then suppose I were to comment, “That text
is pretty hostile towards americans.”

Somehow I don’t suppose anyone would think I was
brilliant to notice that. Rather it would be more
along the line, “Well duh! Like anyone thought
otherwise.”

But what if someone piped up and said, “You’ve
totally misunderstood, the writer is american
and no american would write anything anti-american.”

I would be amazed and I believe everyone on this
forum would be likewise amazed if they were to
observe such a thing.

Yet, Scott, you at the minimum, and to be fair many
other people, somehow all find this reasonable
when the subject is jews.

Moving on. Scott, I am intrigued by your interpretation
of this essay. It doesn’t agree with mine. I would
like to explore these differences, but before we get
to these interesting things I wish we could establish
a common framework. Something significant we agree about
or we disagree about and if we disagree something where
I have a good understanding of why we disagree.

Once we have a common point of understanding we can
build from there.

You are very lucid and articulate, I’m sure you don’t
need me to say that, but you’ve clearly put a lot
of work into writing that response. I am therefore
embarrassed to say that for the most part I don’t
get what you’re saying.

My hoped for point of departure was these three
paragraphs:

“The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of
the merchant, of the man of money in general.”

“The groundless law of the Jew is only a religious caricature
of groundless morality and right in general, of the purely
formal rites with which the world of self-interest surrounds
itself.”

[and]

“Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence
of Judaism — huckstering and its preconditions — the Jew will
have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer
has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical
need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between
man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence
has been abolished.”

You tell me that these paragraphs don’t mean what they
seem to say because the words “Jew” and “Judaism” don’t have
anything like their normal meanings.

Specifically, Scott, you say they mean something like
“economic place of Jews in German society” or
“social conditions of daily jewish life.”

But when I try to substitute these phrases in, it seems like
we get gibberish.

“The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of
the merchant, of the man of money in general.”

Why would one speak of the “chimerical nationality” of the
“economic place” or “social conditions”?

If I were to substitute ‘secular jew’ or “everyday jew” or
‘jew in the non-religious sense’ the sentence makes better
sense but it also ends up meaning more or less what I was
objecting to.

Ok, the next paragraph:

“The groundless law of the Jew is only a religious caricature
of groundless morality and right in general, of the purely
formal rites with which the world of self-interest surrounds
itself.”

Redone:

The groundless law of the economic place of the jew is only a
religious caricature of groundless morality and right in
general, of the purely formal rites with which the world of
self-interest surrounds itself. (?!!)

Scott, it seems to me that for your conjecture to work not
only does “Jew” have to have a different than normal meaning,
but the word’s meaning has to change from paragraph to paragraph.

You say I’m taking things out of context, but actually the
paragraphs I selected are surrounded by a heck of a lot of
paragraphs that look awfully similar.

For instance:

“Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion,
but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew.

“What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest.

“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering.
“What is his worldly God? Money.

“Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money,
consequently from practical, real Judaism, would be the
self-emancipation of our time.

“An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions
for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering,
would make the Jew impossible. His religious consciousness would
be dissipated like a thin haze in the real, vital air of society.”

I don’t follow every twist and turn of Marx’s mind, but
it sure looks like he’s saying that what Judaism is all
about is making money, that there isn’t really any religion
to Judaism, and that if Jews couldn’t “huckster” (or as you put
it, Scott, “bargain”) and make money, their “religious consciousness”
would dissipate “like a thin haze.”

For a text that’s allegedly about the “economic place of Jews
in German society” or “social conditions of daily jewish life,”
there sure seem to be a lot of assertions about the nature of
the religious jew.

Or how about this passage?

“We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social
element of the present time, an element which through historical
development — to which in this harmful respect the Jews have
zealously contributed — has been brought to its present high
level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate.”

“In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the
emancipation of mankind from Judaism.”

anti-social element –> Judaism
zealously contributed –> anti-social element

The wording is clumsy, but it looks like Marx is saying
Judaism is an anti-social element and that Jews have zealously
contributed to making it an anti-social element.

Zealously!

An interesting word, does this mean:

with great enthusiasm jews have made themselves anti-social
elements?

And then that’s followed by:

“In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the
emancipation of mankind from Judaism.”

What a line?! What does it mean and how does it work!?

Hmmm — the final analysis — hmmm.

Or how about this:

“Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of
Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous
and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself
and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade, and
the bankrupt trader deals in the Gospel just as the Gospel
preacher who has become rich goes in for business deals.”

You know it just keeps on coming. He’s an endless fount:

“Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other
god may exist.”

“Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in
himself, which is contained in an abstract form in the Jewish
religion, is the real, conscious standpoint, the virtue of
the man of money. The species-relation itself, the relation
between man and woman, etc., becomes an object of trade! The
woman is bought and sold.”

Jews buy and sell women!

Where does Karl Marx come up with this stuff?

Just about the only people I’ve ever encountered who see an anti-semitic screed in On the Jewish Question are those have already decided that Marx was evil, evil, evil.

So, we’ll go thorugh this slowly:

Marx is responding to an book by Bruno Bauer – a German theologian – called Die Judenfrage about the Prussian state’s efforts to extend a limited set of political and social rights to German Jews. Bauer is against this concession, on the grounds that either everyone – Jews and Christian alike – must abandon their religious allegiances, or else the emancipation of the Jews is a mere particularism. Bauer is putting forward an argument substantially identical to modern conservative arguments against gay and minority rights – that they are not, in fact, equal rights but special priviledges.

Marx summarises Bauer’s argument:

The Christian state knows only privileges. In this state, the Jew has the privilege of being a Jew. As a Jew, he has rights which the Christians do not have. Why should he want rights which he does not have, but which the Christians enjoy?

In wanting to be emancipated from the Christian state, the Jew is demanding that the Christian state should give up its religious prejudice. Does he, the Jew, give up his religious prejudice? Has he, then, the right to demand that someone else should renounce his religion?

By its very nature, the Christian state incapable of emancipating the Jew; but, adds Bauer, by his very nature the Jew cannot be emancipated. So long as the state is Christian and the Jew is Jewish, the one is as incapable of granting emancipation as the other is of receiving it.
Bauer has a conception of the state that resembles Chirac’s, at least according to the sections Marx quotes:

The Jew, for example, would have ceased to be a Jew if he did not allow himself to be prevented by his laws from fulfilling his duty to the state and his fellow citizens, that is, for example, if on the Sabbath he attended the Chamber of Deputies and took part in the official proceedings. [...] There is no longer any religion when there is no longer any privileged religion. Take from religion its exclusive power and it will no longer exist. [...] [T]he declaration that the law of the Sabbath is no longer binding on the Jew would be a proclamation abolishing Judaism.
Marx is less than enthralled with this logic:

Bauer, therefore, demands, on the one hand, that the Jew should renounce Judaism, and that mankind in general should renounce religion, in order to achieve civic emancipation. On the other hand, he quite consistently regards the political abolition of religion as the abolition of religion as such. The state which presupposes religion is not yet a true, real state. [...] At this point, the one-sided formulation of the Jewish question becomes evident. [...] If Bauer asks the Jews: Have you, from your standpoint, the right to want political emancipation? we ask the converse question: Does the standpoint of political emancipation give the right to demand from the Jew the abolition of Judaism and from man the abolition of religion?
On the question of this particular Prussian legal measure, Marx himself is not opposed per se, and makes that clear:

Political emancipation is, of course, a big step forward. True, it is not the final form of human emancipation in general, but it is the final form of human emancipation within the hitherto existing world order.
Marx’ disdain for the German theocracy is quite plain. He is no defender of the existing religious basis of the state:

The separation of the “spirit of the Gospel” from the “letter of the Gospel” is an irreligious act. A state which makes the Gospel speak in the language of politics — that is, in another language than that of the Holy Ghost — commits sacrilege, if not in human eyes, then in the eyes of its own religion. The state which acknowledges Christianity as its supreme criterion, and the Bible as its Charter, must be confronted with the words of Holy Scripture, for every word of Scripture is holy. This state, as well as the human rubbish on which it is based, is caught in a painful contradiction that is insoluble from the standpoint of religious consciousness when it is referred to those sayings of the Gospel with which it “not only does not comply, but cannot possibly comply, if it does not want to dissolve itself completely as a state”. And why does it not want to dissolve itself completely? The state itself cannot give an answer either to itself or to others. In its own consciousness, the official Christian state is an imperative, the realization of which is unattainable, the state can assert the reality of its existence only by lying to itself, and therefore always remains in its own eyes an object of doubt, an unreliable, problematic object. Criticism is, therefore, fully justified in forcing the state that relies on the Bible into a mental derangement in which it no longer knows whether it is an illusion or a reality, and in which the infamy of its secular aims, for which religion serves as a cloak, comes into insoluble conflict with the sincerity of its religious consciousness, for which religion appears as the aim of the world. This state can only save itself from its inner torment if it becomes the police agent of the Catholic Church. In relation to the church, which declares the secular power to be its servant, the state is powerless, the secular power which claims to be the rule of the religious spirit is powerless.
Marx concludes with a position quite contrary to Bauer’s. The political emancipation Bauer desires can only be had through the renunciation of Judaism. Otherwise, a Jew who demands civil rights is asking for a priviledged position in the Christian hierarchy of the state. He is legitimising a religion he does not believe in. Marx concludes, therefore, that political emancipation, while it may be progress, is not true, complete emancipation:

Therefore, we do not say to the Jews, as Bauer does: You cannot be emancipated politically without emancipating yourselves radically from Judaism. On the contrary, we tell them: Because you can be emancipated politically without renouncing Judaism completely and incontrovertibly, political emancipation itself is not human emancipation. If you Jews want to be emancipated politically, without emancipating yourselves humanly, the half-hearted approach and contradiction is not in you alone, it is inherent in the nature and category of political emancipation. If you find yourself within the confines of this category, you share in a general confinement. Just as the state evangelizes when, although it is a state, it adopts a Christian attitude towards the Jews, so the Jew acts politically when, although a Jew, he demands civic rights.

Marx grinds a few favourite axes when he criticises the sort of political emancipation that by the mid-19th century was already widely being demanded. He claims that this political liberation is no more than the abolition of feudalism. That is a desireable thing to be sure, but not a true liberation:

Political emancipation is, at the same time, the dissolution of the old society on which the state alienated from the people, the sovereign power, is based. What was the character of the old society? It can be described in one word — feudalism.
Marx advances the idea that post-feudal society has been about the separation of man unnaturally into two parts: the civil man, who has political rights but must set aside not only religion but his individual particularity in order to take the role of citizen; and the “egotistic” man (this was years before Freud – egotism merely meant unitary, not necessarily self-centred), who is completely cut off from his fellow man. The real liberation comes with the abolition of this false dichotomy:

Political emancipation is the reduction of man, on the one hand, to a member of civil society, to an egoistic, independent individual, and, on the other hand, to a citizen, a juridical person.

Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, only when man has recognized and organized his “own powers” as -social powers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in the shape of political power, only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.
Marx procedes to take Bauer to task for his conception of Judaism “only as crude religious criticism of Christianity”.

Accordingly, the relation between Jews and Christians becomes the following: the sole interest of the Christian in the emancipation of the Jew is a general human interest, a theoretical interest. Judaism is a fact that offends the religious eye of the Christian. As soon as his eye ceases to be religious, this fact ceases to be offensive. The emancipation of the Jew is, in itself, not a task for the Christian.
Marx does not like this theological conception of the “Jewish question.” He tends to favour materialist solutions, grounded in social science:

We are trying to break with the theological formulation of the question. For us, the question of the Jew’s capacity for emancipation becomes the question: What particular social element has to be overcome in order to abolish Judaism? For the present-day Jew’s capacity for emancipation is the relation of Judaism to the emancipation of the modern world. This relation necessarily results from the special position of Judaism in the contemporary enslaved world.
Marx is, therefore, going to discuss the position of Jews in a world which, in his mind, has a pretty screwed up world view. It is in this light that his statements about Jews need to be read.

Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew — not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.
Marx casts away at once all discussion of the history and theology of Judaism – all religious and theological questions – by dismissing the “Sabbath Jew.” For Marx, the secular basis of all human institutions is practical need. And everyone is culpable of self-interest. Marx is saying that the day to day preoccupation of Jews is precisely the economic role that he summarises with the word “huckstering.” Of course, Marx wrote in German. The word he uses is Schacher, which might be better translated as bargaining or haggling. It does not have quite the same negative connotation, since it does not imply “huckster” the way the translation does.

At that time, in Germany, shopkeeping and middleman function employed a disproportionate part of the Jewish population, and nealry all of its most politically visible members were involved in various commericial activities, rather than farming or manufacturing. Marx did not make it that way and is certainly not defending the anti-semitism that makes it so. However, his description of the economic place of Jews in German society is entirely accurate for theat time. Jews are not in this position for theological reasons, they are there because the anti-semitism of capitalist German society put them there. That is the “subjective basis of Judaism.”

Remember, we are not talking about Judaism as a faith but as a human condition with was lived under far from ideal circumstances and which was charcterised by a restricted range of economic roles. It is this Judaism that Marx tears down in the first quote you cite and seeks to abolish in the second:

Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism — huckstering and its preconditions — the Jew will
have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between
man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.
The Jew as a social and economic class will have ceased to exist under such conditions, and Judaism as an eccentricity of a few people who hold the Sabbath is of no interest to Marx. He is indifferent to the Jewish faith. It is in the abolition of the social conditions that form the real core of daily Jewish life that this “everyday Jew” is abolished, and only then can the Jews be genuinely free.

That is the meaning of this article as far as I can tell, and it is an excellent example of why quoting out of context is deceptive.

The interesting and important thing is that “Aryan nationalism” has never taken off in England, not even in the 1930s. Declared fascists and National Socialists have never been elected to Britain’s Parliament, unlike with elections in several mainland European countries in recent years.

In fact, we Brits aren’t very good on our own history – ask the average passer-by in the street about the Anglo-Saxons and it’s unlikely they will be able to tell you much, although many will probably be able to give 1066 as the year of the Norman Conquest when Harold, the last of the Saxon kings, was killed. For some reason, that date in British history has seared into Britain’s collective psyche far more than any other. Each year, on 5 November, we still celebrate the salvation from the attempt, by Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators, to blow up King and Parliament but I doubt many will be able to give the year in which that happened (1605).

The insight of Geoffrey Elton still applies:

“Now one of the most curious things about the English, I think . . is that they suppose themselves to be conscious of history and to be enveloped in History. They are not. They are both indifferent and ignorant as far as history is concerned. If you want a really historically conscious country you have to go to Central Europe, where they have too much history . . . or to the United States, where they have so little of it.” [Quoted in Norman Davies: The Isles (1999)]

Parts of Britain still celebrate their Celtic roots, which go back centuries before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons from the 5th century AD, after the Roman imperial administration had withdrawn. The trouble is that the Celts may have arrived as long as 2,000 years after the building of Stonehenge: http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/stonehenge/

Some estimates put the total number of circles of stone or wood in Britain, built around around the time of Stonehenge, at about as many as 900 so the ancient residents of these islands were formidable builders participating in a civilisation of a kind that was capable of substantial construction projects that required organisation on a huge scale. Unfortunately, they left no written records.

The truth of the matter is that Britain is an ancient nation of warriors, adventurers and asylum-seekers but no nation so ignorant about its past can be wholly bad.

Actually the title is “On the Jewish Question” and I’ve read
the whole thing twice. (I mistakenly left out the “On” earlier.)
I’m amazed that you don’t believe this is an anti-semitic essay.

Marx was a jew only by a racist’s standard. He certainly
wasn’t raised jewish and he didn’t perceive himself as jewish.
His parents did not see themselves as jewish, and unless
I’m greatly mistaken Marx would have been quite upset to
be called jewish.

You’re the first person I’ve ever run into that wanted to
defend this essay. I hope we can continue this conversation,
I have many questions.

May I begin with some of the quotes I made earlier?

“The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of
the merchant, of the man of money in general.”

“The groundless law of the Jew is only a religious caricature
of groundless morality and right in general, of the purely
formal rites with which the world of self-interest surrounds
itself.”

[and]

“Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence
of Judaism — huckstering and its preconditions — the Jew will
have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer
has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical
need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between
man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence
has been abolished.”

Perhaps I’m misunderstanding. Would you explain what
these words in particular mean?

As for the quotes, have you actually read The Jewish Question? It’s online right here. Marx, himself of Jewish decent, is making a quite important point about the social history and function of religion in general and Jewish religion is placed in that context. At no time will you find Marx advocating anything like anti-semitism. He complains that Christianity and Judaism are bound together in a symbiotic relationship that can only be broken by the abolition of capitalism, and that that relationship enslaves both Christians and Jews alike. In every case, it is capitalist civilisation, and German society in particular, which is identified as the problem.

It would be akin to suggesting that Palestinians and Israelis are both trapped by a system of nationalist ideology that enslaves them both in an eternal cycle of violence, and only by destroying the system can either one be genuinely free. Abolishing the nationalist system would at once abolish both Israel and Palestine, leaving them all as mere people.

That statement may or may not have merit, but even though it advocates the abolition of Israel and Jewish nationalism, I don’t think many folks would claim that it is anti-semitic. Marx’ choice of vocabulary is somewhat politically incorrect, even by his standards, but people often take greater liberties in describing their own.

MisterC – Thanks, I’m about to correct it.

I think you mean “is still there.”

Glad to see you back, Scott.