At long last, after endless preparation, at 1 PM this afternoon I will meet my class on “Marx, Freud, Marcuse: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.” At this point I have 20 students enrolled – several graduate students, several exchange students, and a group of juniors and seniors. Lord knows, I have given the first lecture in my head so often that I sometimes think I have already delivered it. This will be a very unusual course, ranging as it does over philosophy, economic history, mathematical economics, psychology, sociology, politics, and literary criticism. I will report back to let you know how it goes.
Meanwhile, of course, I watch the rapid unfolding of the
Justice Department’s investigation of Donald Trump’s cache of classified
documents in Mar-a Lago. I remain convinced that Merrick Garland has evidence
of some sort showing that Trump intends or intended to monetize those documents
in some way.
I simply adore Trump’s claim that in his mind he
declassified every document that he took back to his quarters in the White
House, even though he may not have actually revealed this intention to anyone
until now. It reminds me of the “think method” of playing band instruments that
Prof. Harold Hill articulates in that great old movie The Music Man.
I cannot believe that Garland would have done all of this
without intending to charge Trump, nor do I believe that when the charges come
down they will be restricted to a mere mishandling of classified documents.
Obviously, I could be wrong, but I live each day in the hope that it will be
revealed via intercepted phone messages or whatever that Trump was trying to
sell state secrets to foreign governments for cash. We shall see.
157 comments:
According to Michael Cohen, Trump's method was always to give verbal orders to underlings to make calls, and perhaps Trump forced Jared or Ivanka to make calls to Russia in order to continue developing real estate deals and offered to trade classified information as part of the deal so he could make billions in the Moscow developments. Forcing his children into his criminal deals might have been the last straw, and perhaps the death of Ivana also triggered a reaction to Trump's shameless dealings for his own profits while selling an image of American patriotism to his followers was too much psychologically for Ivanka and she did the right thing (called the FBI to stop her father implicating her in a rotten Russian deal). Some one inside Trump's inner circle was triggered by recent events and broke, it seems.
Please keep reporting on your final course experiences, as many professors are probably looking forward to their own finale or performance in the ever evolving higher education classroom with its new species of students trying to test their arguments on knowledge lovers and critical theorists. By rough count, I have taught about 173 full courses in 29 years at UPEI and will probably make it to 200 courses completed. The workload involved in each course has increased dramatically due to the Internet and use of online resources alongside the classroom experience and normal socializing, and it is burning me out especially due to many more struggling and distracted students.
Using comedy, a prof in 2022 can make Marx interesting despite him being stuck in the British Museum reading economic data and writing racist and anti-Semitic letters to Engels. as a more materialist reading of history has stood up to the test of time and made us understand more ideology as it is used in political economy and class domination.
I am not sure what parts of Freud you use, but Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious could be the right lighter material for today's students in exploring the topic of repression and interpretation of jokes/art. But Freud was stuck in his Vienna's doctor office listening to loafers interpret themselves and their identity crises, so fixated on studying repression that he could not free himself or his patients.
Marcuse escaped the sedate study halls of European tradition and migrated rootlessly to America, land of the legendary freedom which contained the repressive dreams of happy slavery and unruly youth culture, growing up absurd. But Marcuse was stuck in the crowd of protestors marching on the streets of the 1960's, theorizing the indefinite containment of social change but dreaming of a new process of youth liberation movements which would resolve the sexual repression, economic inequality and wasted human potential. Marcuse promised a method of determining the difference between progressive and regressive, what was genuinely politically true versus what was objectively false, not just in the 1960's situation that he was trapped in, but in future societies such as 2022. What was politically true in 1964 is not determined by the same philosophical process or methods as in 2022, because reason has been eclipsed and it is no transcendental authority to guide us out of time. The people of 2022 create their progressive actions on the basis of their own art and existence, not by trying to re-live or re-create the previous cycle of unfinished revolutions, and no generation ever completes all the revolutions according to Paul Goodman, the resistance keeps going and growing in its own directions, independent of the authority of philosophers and reason itself.
I must confess my ignorance. Upon reading Prof. Couture’s comment above, I was surprised to read that Marx – the grandson of rabbis on both his maternal and paternal sides, but whose father had converted the family to Christianity – harbored anti-Semitic views. So, I did some research and discovered that he wrote a manuscript in 1854 titled “On The Jewish Question,” in which he wrote the following:
“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.…. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities…. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange…. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.”
These are despicable, reprehensible statements, and it is frankly sickening that Marx espoused them. They repeat anti-Semitic stereotypes that have been used by non-Jews to persecute Jews for centuries, and display a total ignorance of the history of laws which excluded Jews from practicing trades which were reserved exclusively for non-Jews, laws, for example which precluded Jews from owning land and which precluded non-Jews from engaging in banking, because the accumulation of interest was deemed to be the work of the devil, leaving the work of the devil to be performed by Jews. Efforts by some academics and Marxists to excuse or dispute Marx’s anti-Semitism as a myth are fatuous: https://www.philosophersmag.com/opinion/30-karl-marx-s-radical-antisemitism.
This newly-acquired knowledge has significantly depreciated my opinion of Marx, and the excuse that the validity of a thinker’s theories should not be judged by their personal idiosyncrasies, in this case, does not cut it for me.
I would hope, Prof. Wolff, that during your lectures on Marx that you would address his anti-Semitism and condemn it.
Perhaps not so fast respecting a much debated/analysed topic? For starters:
https://thecharnelhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Marcel-Stoetzler-ed.-Antisemitism-and-the-Constitution-of-Sociology-2014.pdf#page=148
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David-Ingram/publication/226380799_Rights_and_Privileges_Marx_and_the_Jewish_Question/links/5bfdaf354585157b81729c64/Rights-and-Privileges-Marx-and-the-Jewish-Question.pdf
PS. I think it was written about a decade before 1854.
I agree with your views on Trump, and I HOPE that you are right about Garland. Concerning Freud, have you read The Psychoanalytic Movement by Ernest Gellner? I have read a lot in the Freud literature, including Marcuse, but this Gellner book is the best one on Freud. See my Amazon review. Good luck on your course!
Anonymous’s references demonstrate that there is no lack of academic apologists who are willing to rationalize Mars’s flagrant anti-Semitism as something of an exaggeration. Here is another essay, “Marx and the Economic-Jew Stereotype,” extracted from Hal Draper’s “Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution,” https://www.marxists.org/subject/marxmyths/hal-draper/article.htm in which the author writes of Marx’s essay “The Jewish Question”:
“Few discussions of the essay explain clearly its political purpose and content in connection with the Jewish emancipation question, or even accurately present the views of its target, Bauer. Mainly, the allegation is supported by reading the attitudes of the second half of the twentieth century back into the language of the 1840s. More than that, it is supported only if the whole course of German and European anti-Jewish sentiment is whitewashed, so as to make Marx’s essay stand out as a black spot.”
So, Marx’s expressions of anti-Semitism are not so bad given the endemic background of anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe generally. This would be a great excuse for the racist views of the Ku Klux Klan, given the general racist views which have permeated the South. And how is Marx’s essay supposed to “emancipate” the Jews, by vilifying them as capitalist money-mongers, generally?
The author writes later in his scholarly analysis:
“After the rise of Hitlerism, it became de rigeur to play down the Jews’ significance for capitalism, since the Nazis used it for their onw purposes. But eminent Jewish historians have proudly lauded their role. In his introduction to Ruppin’s The Jews in the Modern World, for example, Professor L.B. Namier, writing militantly as a Zionist Jew [yes, writing as a militant Zionist Jew] and a true-blue Englishman, boasted: ‘Two races [sic] headed the movement [of progress in the capitalist system] though under vastly different conditions – the British and the Jews; they were the pioneers of capitalism, and its first, and perhaps chief, beneficiaries.”
Really, the chief beneficiaries? How about Henry Ford? How about John D. Rockefeller? How about Andrew Carnegie? To the best of my knowledge, none of these tycoons and captains of industry – who clearly were also the “beneficiaries of capitalism” – were either Jewish or Britiish.
We who purport to be educated and fair-minded, we who espouse liberal values, have an obligation to call out racism in whatever form we find it – whether it be racism against African-Americans, or racism against Asians, or anti-Semitism. This is also true of professors who are teaching courses about the works of great thinkers, who, regardless the profundity of their writings, also espoused racism in their writings.
Marc Susselman,
Will you also expect Prof Wolff to discuss Freud's antisemitism?
Long before he felt anti-Semitism to be closing in on him, Freud allowed it to exert an influence over his own perceptions.... The implicit goal of his self-improvement was to distance himself from his origins. Thus he was perturbed whenever he encountered Jews who struck him as "too Jewish" in their appearance and deportment.
...
[T]his tightening of Freud's bond with worldly, philanthropic Jews would be accompanied by a hardening of his antipathy to Jewish religion in all of its outward forms. He even briefly considered declaring himself a Christian simply in order to avoid a rabbinical wedding. His bride, the pious granddaughter of a distinguished Hamburg rabbi, would be admonished that no religious observances could be tolerated in his household. He would arrive late at his father's religious funeral and would skip his mother's altogether. His sons would not be circumcised, and it is said that none of his children, while living at home, ever entered a synagogue. At Christmas they would gather around the traditional German tree and exchange gifts in the manner of the Christians. And at the end of Freud's life, on the eve of the Holocaust, he would publish Moses and Montheism, wherein it would be maintained that the great leader and teacher of the Hebrews—a 'Freud figure,' as every reader has noticed—was no Jew but an Egyptian prince, murdered by the ignorant idolators whom he had tried to enlighten.
Frederick Crews, Freud: The Making of an Illusion
The chapter includes quotes from Freud's letters, in which he describes a new acquaintance as "undoubtedly brilliant, but unfortunately a Polish Jew" and expresses contempt for the speaker at a funeral for having shown "the ardor of the savage, merciless Jew."
Post-script:
I have to clarify that the first bracketed language in the quotation above was my editorialization. The second brackets were in the original.
Marc,
I agree that there's a double standard at work here. If we were to discover similar anti-semitic remarks coming from Jefferson Davis, we'd jump to point out that not only was he in favor of slavery, but also was an anti-semite.
However, as you know, almost everyone was anti-semitic in the 19th century. Look at Dickens and Dostoyevsky. If you read Wittgenstein's "Culture and Value" (taken from his notebooks), it's full of anti-semitic remarks (not as strong as those of Marx).
Let's see. George Eliot liked the Jews, I believe that Mill was not anti-semitic and
Nietzsche declared himself to be an "anti-anti-semite". I can't think of other examples off hand, but I'm sure that there were some. Zola also comes to mind.
By the way, Marx was also a sexist, he got the maid pregnant and had his pal Engels take the blame for it. Engels seems to have been a nicer person in general.
Eric,
Yes, and why not, if Freud’s expressions of anti-Semitism in any way informed or influenced his theories on the interpretation of dreams or psychanalysis.
It is apparent that Marx’s expressions of snit-Semitism were a central aspect of his theory regarding capitalism and the exploitation of workers, so yes, it should be discussed in any class analyzing Marx’s economic theory, warts and all, and should be condemned for what it is. Otherwise, we intellectuals who purport to be open and fair-minded are engaging in hypocrisy, criticizing the biases of those whose theories we reject, but avoiding comparable criticism of those whose theories we value as being meritorious.
For some real jaw-droppers from the great philosophers, try Aristotle on women and slaves in the Politics, or Kant on 'African negroes' in 'Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime' or 'On the Different Races of Man'. Part of my initial reaction to reading these sorts of things is to wonder which of my views will come to be considered obviously grotesque and vicious stupidities by later generations.--From the unsurveyably vast literature on Freud: For a broadly humanist, intelligent, and nuanced perspective, I would recommend Philip Rieff's (and Susan Sontag's?) Freud: The Mind of a Morality. For Freud as an empirically-informed and ever-developing theorist, I've never read anything better than Richard Wollheim's monograph.
In other news, this chap was a patient of mine when he lived in New York. He actually asked me for help when he was preparing for one of his early appearances on Oprah, before he got his own show. I had had no idea that he had been appearing on Oprah (I never watched her show), or that he was interested in becoming a media figure.
https://twitter.com/umichvoter/status/1559011904076529664
The first thing that struck me in watching the clip is that if you're going to hold yourself up as a promoter of eating well, why not just grab a few more ingredients and make the salsa and guacamole from scratch?
But more seriously, at least Trump never tried to act like he wasn't outrageously wealthy. Trump, in fact, argued that he would be an even better officeholder than his competitors because he was so rich that he couldn't be bought. While that claim was, of course, a total lie, it was more believable than what the guy in the clip is trying to pretend: that the insane prices of food are hurting his wallet just like they are hurting middle- and working-class folks.
I think Andrew Carnegie was born in Scotland, but that's really neither here nor there. Made his fortune in the U.S.
Imo, unless a syllabus specifically includes "On the Jewish Question," I'm not sure Marx's remarks on the issue are worth a mention. A professor is under no obligation to denounce all objectionable, (apparently) anti-Semitic or (apparently) racist comments made by a figure under consideration, even if, as in Marx's case, the thinker wrote a whole essay on the subject. If a student in the course were to ask a question specifically about this, for one reason or other, then that would be a different matter and the subject would be on the table. It might also be a different matter if the views Marx expressed in that essay affected his other and later work, but I'm not sure that's the case. (I tend to think it's largely not.)
I have on my shelf Jonathan Sperber's Karl Marx: A Nineteenth-Century Life (Norton, 2013). On pp. 496 ff., Sperber discusses Marx's "attitudes toward his own Jewish ancestry and other people's perceptions of his Jewishness in the light of nineteenth-century understandings of what it meant to be Jewish." Don't have time to summarize but just thought I'd flag the reference.
Marc said:
It is apparent that Marx’s expressions of anti-Semitism were a central aspect of his theory regarding capitalism and the exploitation of workers...
No, they were not. Anyone who has read Capital vol. 1 will find this statement pretty absurd.
Btw, Marx was what, in contemporary argot, might be called a "difficult person." Prickly, combative, sure of himself, didn't suffer fools gladly, had prejudices, etc., likely not someone one might choose to relax in a bar with. So what? In a course like the one RPW is teaching, it's irrelevant.
John Rapko,
I see you're recommending Rieff's and Sontag's "Freud, the Mind of a Moralist". That book has been around almost as long as I have and apparently, has well stood the test of time.
I haven't read it, but now that you recommend it, I'll buy it.
Of all these characters we're talking about here, if I had to pick one as worth paying attention to in 2022 at my age, 76, I'd go with Sigmund.
LFC/Marc, Carnegie was indeed born in Scotland, in Dunfermline, Fife. He was related, via an uncle, to the British jacobins who fought and suffered for political emancipation of the working class. But like that other radical Scot, Allan Pinkerton (a member of the physical force wing of the Chartists) translation to America also saw a transformation in his politics. Retiring early, Carnegie frequently visited his homeland: he had a "castle" somewhere in the vicinity of Aberdeen, I think it was, and hobnobbed with the Prince of Wales. Put not your trust in the nouveau riche (or any other riche). No matter what side they were on in the American civil war.
Since John R. is mentioning his favorites from the Freud literature, I'd mention, for a sociologist's sympathetic take on certain of Freud's views: Dennis Wrong, The Problem of Order, ch. 5, "The Freudian Synthesis." Wrong is somewhat more sympathetic than I'm inclined to be, but it's a thoughtful discussion. Paul Roazen, Freud: Political and Social Thought, is pretty good, not the most exciting thing in the world, but whatever.
Would it be possible for you to share your reading list for your course?
John Rapko: For Freud as an empirically-informed and ever-developing theorist
I haven't read Wollheim, but one of Frederick Crews' main conclusions in the book I quoted above is that, despite the many claims to the contrary, Freud was not empirically informed.
LFC: Marx was what, in contemporary argot, might be called a "difficult person."
Prof Wolff makes that point quite clearly in one of his first lectures in the series on Marx that is on youtube.
John Rapko, Anonymous, s. wallerstein, LFC,
I do not know if Beethoven or Mozart was anti-Semitic. There is a good chance, given the environment in which they grew up, that they were. However, I am not aware of any anti-Semitic passages in the libretto of “Fidelio,” or “The Marriage of Figaro,” or any other of Mozart’s operas. Nor can I conceive of how their anti-Semitism, if such existed, influence their composing of their sonatas, concertos, quartets, or symphonies.
A class devoted to the works of Dostoyevsky, Dickens, or Hemingway, would not, to my mind, be adequate if it failed to discuss the anti-Semitic references in their works, because it informs how they portrayed their characters. A discussion of the Merchant of Venice cannot avoid a discussion of Shakespeare’s portrayal of Shylock and anti-Semitism (in which, by the way, I believe Shakespeare is actually condemning the hypocrisy of the Venetians, particularly during the trial when Portia uses her “quality of mercy” soliloquy to persuade Shylock to show mercy to Antonio, but then proceeds to show him no mercy when he seeks to retract his demand that his pledge be satisfied).
The issue is to what extent do the composer’s/writer’s/ thinker’s racist or biased views inform and influence their works. In the case of Marx, who is espousing a theory regarding the exploitation of the working class by capitalists, and he offers as the prototype of the exploiting capitalist the Jew, whose “god is only an illusory bill of exchange, … [whose] nationality [is] of the merchant, of the man of money in general,” his anti-Semitism is an integral part of his economic theory, and discussion of that racism should not be avoided just to preserve his prestige as an economic thinker. And, LFC, I not believe the correlation is, as you say, "absurd."
"But like that other radical Scot, Allan Pinkerton..."
Carnegie went on vacation to Scotland and let Henry Frick (Swiss, German) settle (with the help of Pinkerton agents and the incompetent anarchist Alexander Berkman) the Homestead strike. Carnegie was good at PR.
His anti-semitism is an integral part of his economic theory? Indeed? That strikes me as quite nonsensical. He was, however, as an economic historian, quite interested in how it had come about that the Jews, at least some few of them, had been put into quite invidious, if financially rewarding places in Christian Europe. One might even go on to say that those with the real political power constructed a system where people could be led to hate the Rothschilds, etc. and by extension all Jews, although Marx himself does take note that a great many Jews were also among the economic victims of the system, rather than blame those who really dominated. All of that has something to do with how you then have to read someone given to bitter irony and ridicule even while trying to elucidate the complexities of that system.
Marc,
How about sexism?
I believe it would be almost impossible to find a male author before very recently whose works are not sexist. Should the professor or teacher dedicate class-time to explaining that, say, Homer or Shakespeare or Milton or Donne or Fielding or Flaubert or Fitzgerald are sexist? What's the point?
Anonymous,
I am sorry, but I do not find any examples of “bitter irony” in the excerpt I quoted above from Marx’s essay, “The Jewish Question.”
Nor do I see any “bitter irony” in the excerpt below from Max’s article, “The Russian Loan,” published in the New-York Daily Tribune on January 4, 1856:
“… the real work is done by the Jews, and can only be done by them, as they monopolize the machinery of the loan mongering mysteries by concentrating their energies upon the barter trade in securities… Here and there and everywhere that a little capital courts investment, there is ever one of these little Jews ready to make a little suggestion or place a little bit of a loan. The smartest highwayman in the Abruzzi is not better posted up about the locale of the hard cash in a traveler’s valise or pocket than those Jews about any loose capital in the hands of a trader… The language spoken smells strongly of Babel, and the perfume which otherwise pervades the place is by no means of a choice kind.
“… Thus do these loans, which are a curse to the people, a ruin to the holders, and a danger to the governments, become a blessing to the houses of the children of Judah. This Jew organization of loan-mongers is as dangerous to the people as the aristocratic organization of landowners… The fortunes amassed by these loan-mongers are immense, but the wrongs and sufferings thus entailed on the people and the encouragement thus afforded to their oppressors still remain to be told.
“… The fact that 1855 years ago Christ drove the Jewish moneychangers out of the temple, and that the moneychangers of our age enlisted on the side of tyranny happen again chiefly to be Jews, is perhaps no more than a historical coincidence. The loan-mongering Jews of Europe do only on a larger and more obnoxious scale what many others do on one smaller and less significant. But it is only because the Jews are so strong that it is timely and expedient to expose and stigmatize their organization.”
Bitter irony? Please. This is vile, flagrant anti-Semitism, by a descendant of Jews who was raised Protestant, and knew nothing of Judaism, its tenets or doctrines.. The irony is that it could have been lifted directly from Mein Kampt, whose author was a sworn enemy of Marx and Marxism. And yet, and yet, we have academics and intellectuals, Marxists, rationalizing and minimizing his anti-Semitism as not being an integral part of his philosophy of capitalist exploitation and the labor theory of value. Why does anti-Semitism in Marxist writings never profit in intellectual academic circles? Because If it profits, none dare call it anti-Semitism. It is absolutely despicable. J’Accuse.
And the difference, s. wallerstien, between Marx’s promotion of anti-Semitic stereotypes and the sexism expressed in the various literary works you have identified is that the stereotypes promoted by Marx have historically had extremely dire consequences for Jews, including torture and death. The sexism you refer to may have sustained the status quo which treated women as second class citizens, but it did not lead to widespread torture and murder of women.
Marx was a non-practicing and atheistic Jew; Freud was a non-practicing and atheistic Jew; and what about Marcuse. According to Wikipedia: "Herbert Marcuse was born July 19, 1898, in Berlin, to Carl Marcuse and Gertrud Kreslawsky. Marcuse's family was a German upper-middle-class Jewish family that was well integrated into German society." I think HM was also a non-practicing and atheistic Jew. So the "Jewishness" of Marx/Freud/Marcuse is not a matter of sharing a common religion and monotheism but rather a matter of their ethnicity, education and upbringing. I think that they are being used as exemplars of critical theory and social dissent, and we look to their arguments for insight rather than their moral characters and personal life for adoration or inspiration. Is it more than a coincidence or contingency that RPW rests his case for social revolution upon this triad of thinkers?
I believe that RPW is exploring what dialectically unites these thinkers and how they lead to a more critical understanding of social development from a repressive society to a liberated society, or the religious theme of exodus to the promised land which is a Jewish narrative that is universalizable for all not yet liberated peoples to some degree. Philosophy is not well practiced as hero worship so you have to weave a larger narrative of social revolution as everyone's business, at all times due to our continuing imperfections. It is necessary also to discuss connected figures such as Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Paul Goodman, W.E.B. Du Bois or others developing parallel or connected critical theories in the wake of Marxism and its revolutionary insights into the process of revolution, which according to Paul Goodman is truly endless because we are humans, or the revolutionary animal by our flexible natures.
Prof. Couture,
Marx was not just a non-practicing, atheistic Jew. The excerpts I have quoted from Marx’s writings expose him as being a virulent anti-Semite. Freud, Marcuse, Arendt, Wittgenstein (who actually referred to himself as a Jewish philosopher) were non-practicing, atheistic Jews, but I know of nothing in their respective writings which compares with the virulent anti-Semitic statements which appeared in Marx’s writings. Freud’s comment about the “Polish Jew” is more a comment by an elitist Austrian Jew scoffing at an East European Jew. The hostility between Jews from different parts of Europe – a hostility which the Nazis took great advantage of – is well known in Jewish communities. But unlike Mars, it is not anti-Semitism; it is classism.
Marc,
First of all, I agree with what you say about inter-Jewish prejudices. My grandparents were full of prejudices against Jews from Eastern Europe. It wasn't racism, it was a delusion of cultural superiority.
Second, I believe you're under-estimating the amount of sexual violence (rape, sexual molesting) and domestic violence women suffer in traditional societies, not to mention arranged or forced marriages where women are traded or almost sold as property to men with money.
s. wallerstein,
I am not, by any means, minimizing the adverse effects that sexism has historically had on women. Today. the Taliban leaders in Afghanistan celebrated the one-year victory over the U.S., extolling the prosperity they have brought to Afghanistan, as the Afghan women suffer under their brutality, even being tortured if they leave their house unaccompanied by a man. But the sexism portrayed by the authors you referred to advanced status quo sexism, maintaining their social station as second-class citizens, not ameliorating their being raped or sexual exploitation. None of it compares to the vile stereotypes Marx advanced of Jews, stereotypes used for centuries to promote pogroms against Jews, to their families, to torture and murder them. To overlook Marx’s virulent anti-Semitism, to rationalize and minimize it, given the horrendous consequences his reiteration of Jewish stereotypes have had on hundreds of thousands of Jews over the centuries, is, frankly, disgraceful.
Post-script:
s. wallerstein,
And I have not advocated ignoring the sexism that is expressed in the works you identity. In a literature class in which those works are discussed and analyzed, their expressions of sexism should be called out by an instructor and condemned. And in classes devoted to discussing feminist issues, this is precisely what is done. I am condemning the failure, the refusal, to confront the prominent role which anti-Semitism plays in Marx’s philosophy.
Scholar of rhetoric on Civil War
https://www.patriciarobertsmiller.com/2022/08/15/how-to-respond-the-gops-plan-for-another-civil-war/
FYI
Marc,
I agree with your post script, but I would point out that the picture of domestic bliss in so many conventional 19th century novels is a white-wash of wife-beating, rape within marriage,
killing of women by jealous husbands or boy-friends, arranged marriages (common in the 19 century). Sure, they don't directly apologize for such a state of affairs, they hide it.
Howie,
Thank you for the link to Ms. Robert-Miller's article. I share her premonitions.
In the mid-1970s, in my sophomore year of college, I had to spend time and intellectual energy reading much of Capital (vol. 1) and some other standard Marx works, e.g. the 18th Brumaire, the Critique of the Gotha Progam, the Communist Manifesto (written w Engels), the Civil War in France, bits of the Grundrisse. When I went back to (grad) school years later, I had to take another, briefer pass through Marx including parts of some of the earlier works, like The German Ideology and the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. (I would have just as soon skipped this second exposure, since its relevance to the PhD in international relations I was getting was not immediately or overwhelmingly obvious to me, but in my program all the first-year phd students had to take a social-theory seminar where Marx, among other authors, was assigned.) Perhaps my memory is playing tricks here, but I can't recall any anti-Semitic references in any of these works, w the possible exception of bits of the notebooks called the Grundrisse (though at this remove I'm not sure).
More to the point, the fact is that Marx could have been a raving, frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semite and it still would have had no integral connection to his basic theory of capitalism and exploitation. In Marx's view, workers are exploited because they have nothing to sell but their labor-power and must sell that labor-power to survive, and the characteristics of that labor-power make it also the source of surplus value, the capitalist's profit. This has nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
A sentence like "[t]his Jew organization of loan-mongers is as dangerous to the people as the aristocratic organization of landowners" (from the New York Tribune article quoted above) has no integral connection to the core of Marx's theory. That's not in any way to excuse it, simply to note that it has no integral connection. The contention that it does have such a connection is, as far as I can tell, simply incorrect.
Marc insists that anti-Semitism plays a "prominent role" in Marx's philosophy, but he has not shown that it influenced the doctrines one associates with Marx, such as dialectical materialism or the materialist approach to history, the contradiction between the forces and relations of production, or the notions of alienation or alienated labor. If anti-Semitism played a prominent role in Marx's work, one would expect to find it everywhere in Marx's writings. One doesn't. Instead it shows up in letters, in journalism, in a few other places maybe. I'm happy to agree that it's reprehensible, but there's a difference between something's being reprehensible and despicable, on the one hand, and its being integral to a person's theories on the other. "Integral" means that anti-Semitism is playing a central, indispensable, role in the theory, such that the theory makes no sense without it or would be deprived of a central component without it. Is there any evidence for that?
A quick bit of googling brings up a 1984 article in Political Psychology by someone named Blanchard. This article argues, according to the abstract, that the origin of Marx's hostility to capitalism had its source in hostility to Jews (I have no idea whether that's correct) but even this piece concludes, according to the abstract, that anti-Semitism plays no role in the theories as formulated in his mature years.
If I may take Marc's side for a moment. I believe that the main point in his favor is that
if Marx had made racist, anti-Black statements, we'd all be screaming for his cancelation, but seemingly, anti-semitism (and sexism) are more permissible than anti-Black racism.
Why? I don't want to do a body count.
s.w.
No one is screaming for Marx's "cancellation" just like no one is screaming for Kant's "cancellation" because of Kant's racism, just like no one is screaming for Nietzsche's "cancellation" because N. referred to "the blond beast" and his sister hobnobbed with Nazis.
I don't know what's going on in this thread but I have to say it strikes me, to use the politest word I can think of, as ill-considered.
LFC,
I must say I find your rationalization of the role which anti-Semitism plays in Marx’s philosophy as merely peripheral rather astounding, particularly for one who presents himself as a semi-academic (since you have explained that you did not obtain a Ph.D.). In the excerpts from the writings from which I quoted, Marx presents the Jew (and, by the way, no a particular Jew, by all Jews generally) as the archetypal, prototypical exploiting capitalist, in virulently anti-Semitic terms, yet you wish to minimize this by pointing out that he does not use such language in explaining his economic theory, per se. So what? He has identified the Jew as the prototypical exploitative capitalist. And the fact that the source you refer to expresses the view that his hostility towards Jews was a motivating factor in the development of his economic philosophy, but played no role in his formulation of the theory in his mature years, what does it mean that the source of his antipathy for capitalism derived from his antipathy for Jews??? Please, no more excuses! Enough! And the criticism is "ill considered"! More genteel b.s.
Marc,
I did obtain a PhD. (What I did not obtain was an academic job. [Which I guess, from your standpoint, is just as well.])
P.s. There's an entire library of books about Marx. At least one of them was written by an Israeli scholar, Shlomo Avineri. I doubt he would have written a book on Marx if his view of the matter had been what yours is.
p.p.s. Since this is Prof Wolff's blog, might as well let him weigh in on this. I've had my say on it.
One final point.
If Newton was an anti-Semite, or if Einstein was a racist Jew (I have no evidence to support either of these propositions), their personal prejudices would not be a basis to call into question Newton’s three laws of motion, or Einstein’s special or general theories of relativity. Moreover, both theories are susceptible of empirical confirmation.
Marx’s economic theory is of a different caliber. It is his opinion regarding how the economic forces in a capitalist society operate. The theory is his opinion, an opinion not accepted by all economists, and not subject to empirical confirmation. Consequently, what prejudicial factors contributed to his reaching this opinion, unlike the theories of Newton and Einstein, are relevant to evaluating its validity, and the fact that his hostility to Jews contributed to the development of that theory/opinion should not be regarded as merely a tangential matter.
And to suggest that an Israeli scholar, presumably Jewish, wrote a book about Mars entails that Marx’s anti-Semitism can be overlooked or disregarded as peripheral to his economic philosophy is nonsense. I dare say many books about Marx were written by Jewish authors (some of whom had critiqued his anti-Semitism). So what?
Of course I did not say that "his hostility to Jews contributed to the development of that theory/opinion."
I said that a five-second search turned up one article that argued that, and you shd at least read the abstract first. I didn't link it, true, but not hard to find.
LFC,
I expressly stated that that the opinion in question came form a source you referred to. I did not state that it was your opinion.
s. wallerstein,
Feel free to take my side any time you wish, or feel appropriate, and not just for a moment.
"...if Marx had made racist, anti-Black statements..."
If you want a twofer, google "Lassalle Marx Engelscorrespondence"
LFC,
I found the abstract of WH Blanchard that you referred to above. While he acknowledges that, “Marx never disavowed his early paper on the Jewish question,” he proceeds to claim, “In his final version of the materialist theory of history and the concept of capitalism, the Jew plays no part, nor does anti-Semitism.” The latter assertion does not stand up under scrutiny. By the time he and Engels published the Communist Manifesto in 1848, his concepts of class struggle, the labor theory of value, and surplus value had already been formulated. His Theories of Surplus Value was written in 1856. After the Communist Manifesto was published, and a mere 6 years before he wrote Theories of Surplus Value (published posthumously). His rabidly anti-Semitic article titled The Russian Loan was published in 1856, the same year he completed his Theories of Surplus Value. So Blanchard’s claim that Marx had abandoned his anti-Semitic opinions in his later years and that they therefore played no part in his formulating his economic theory is specious.
As was pointed out above Marx was a jerk when it came to relationships of all sorts.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who read and comment on this blog who are considerably further to the left than I am. I don't even consider myself a Marxist, though I have a lot of respect for (some of) Marx's work. The fact that many of the Marxist readers of this blog have chosen not to enter this discussion suggests to me that at least some of them have concluded that the claim being advanced about the centrality of M's anti-Semitism is not even worth arguing about. (Or else that most of them almost never comment.)
It would be a shame if this thread has dissuaded anyone from reading Marx's key works. I'm convinced that people will still be quoting the opening passages of the 18th Brumaire centuries from now, assuming that humans are still around.
LFC,
Another astoundingly specious statement by you. You infer from the fact that many of this blog’s readers are knowledgeable about Marx, and have not chimed in on the issue of Marx’s anti-Semitism, that their disinterest demonstrates the invalidity of my criticism of Marx. Wow.
In 1994, Prof. Charles Murray and Prof. Richard Herrnstein published a controversial book, The Bell Curve. The title referred to the normal distribution of intelligence quotients in society. One of the main theses of the book was that Americans at the higher end of the curve, with higher IQ’s, were becoming more and more wealthy as a result of the superior intelligence, resulting in an intelligence-wealth gap in our society. The most controversial claim in the book that differences in IQ’s were reflective of, and a consequence of, racial difference. This claim was highly criticized by the academic community as being without empirical basis and promoting racism. Imagine if there was also evidence that either Murray or Hernstein had expressed flagrantly racist views regarding African-Americans in some past writing(s). This evidence would immediately have been deemed sufficient to discredit their hypothesis of racial intelligence difference. Why aren’t Marx’s flagrantly anti-Semitic writings afforded the same degree of discreditation with respect to his economic theory, in which the Jew is portrayed as the prototypical exploiting capitalist?
My last comment for a while. In _Capital_, the prototypical capitalist is the factory owner, who at that time was also likely the hands-on director of its operations or at least the non-absentee boss. (I'm sure that's oversimplified, but it's late.) At the end of ch. 6 in v. 1, Marx says he has to follow the capitalist and the worker "into the hidden abode of production" where the "secret of profit-making" will "be laid bare."
In the 1856 NY Tribune article, he portrays Jews as "loan mongers." They lend money, they don't directly buy the labor-power of workers. They are "dangerous to the people," but they're not engaging in exploitation because they're not buying labor-power, which is the source of profit. So he's not portraying the Jews as prototypical exploiting capitalists.
In sum, Marx defined exploitation in a specific way. It involves the sale and purchase of labor-power. "Loan-mongers" are not directly involved in that, hence they're not engaging in exploitation, hence they're not prototypical exploiting capitalists.
I want to thank Marc for insisting on this, even though I believe that LFC is right that
Marx's analysis of capitalism is not anti-semitic.
However, the fact that Marx, supposedly the champion of the oppressed and exploited, of the under-dog, spent so much energy dumping on one of the most discriminated against and excluded groups in Europe, the Jews, does not speak well of him and leads us to doubt abaout the soundness of some of his other judgments.
There's a difference between Marx and Nietzsche, whom LFC cites above as having some politically uncorrect views. Nietzsche is full of brillant insights, but no one in his right mind takes him as a guide for action, while Marx, who is also full of brillant insights I do not doubt, is taken by many as a guide for political action. Should someone who is so full of hatred for one of the most discriminated groups in Europe be taken as a guide for action by the left?
"Anti-semitism is the socialism of fools" was probably first said by Austrian socialist
Ferdinand Kronawetter. There is a lot of wisdom in the socialist tradition, but not necessarily from Marx.
Quick thought on the conversation between Marc and LFC and others -
I don't think that anyone's trying to "excuse" Marx's bigotry against Jewish people; the disagreement concerns mainly the correctness or incorrectness of the denial that Marx's bigotry against Jewish people is central to his thought.
It seems implied by Marc's position that it isn't possible for an interpreter of Marx to omit mention of his bigotry while being faithful to the basic character of his thought. I'm not really versed in the literature on this at any level, but I think this would be pretty dubious. Isn't Marx more concerned with the general, systemic features of capitalism than with the details about the individual human beings who are caught up in the system? I think I remember a past discussion here* where Prof. Wolff urged that a description of one's employer as a kind and virtuous individual (or a cruel and vicious one, or whatever) would be perfectly compatible with - and irrelevant to - Marx's contention that capitalism is inherently exploitative.
If this is on the right track, then I'd suggest that Marx can afford to get some details about human beings badly, offensively wrong, while still having valuable (even indispensable) insights as a social scientist.
*See here: https://robertpaulwolff.blogspot.com/2020/08/an-explanation-of-explanation.html
I have practiced law now for over 44 years, mostly in the civil law area representing plaintiffs, during which I have heard and read many arguments by defense attorneys which appear to have a superficial validity, but upon reflection are nothing but drivel. A good number of those years were spent representing unions and their members, and nonunion employees who were terminated, but had the good fortune to be able to argue that either by virtue of an employee handbook, or by virtue of something the employer said when they were hired, the employee could only be terminated for cause. Then one day, sometime in the 1990s, an argument began to be adopted and argued by employer attorneys making along the following lines: Well, yes, employer x fired employee y based on the allegation that y had arrived late on day t; or had failed to complete task s; or had …. But the evidence shows, indisputably that y had not arrived late on day t; or that the employee had in fact completed task s, etc. Then, during, discovery, either the production of documents; or answers to interrogatories, or taking the employee’s deposition, the defense attorney discovers that the employee had faked a report, which the employer was not aware of at the time; or had taken home a box of toilet paper, which the employer was not aware of at the time; etc. And walla, the employer has a new argument – that if the employer had known what the employee had done prior to his/her actual termination, this would have constituted just cause for termination, and therefore the employee has no cause of action, because whether or not the basis for the actual termination was valid, had the employer known what the employee had done prior to that termination, the employer would have had just cause to terminate the employee anyway. Now, I argued, that the law applies the facts as they exist at the time the lawsuit is filed, including what the employer knew at the time of filing, not based on what the employer might have known had s/he had more information. Termination cannot be justified based on a counter-factual. But, guess what, the courts uniformly accepted the employers’ new argument, and the argument has become a standard tool in the arsenal of employment defense attorneys. Sometimes such bogus arguments even get accepted by the U.S. S.Ct., such as in the case of Janus v. AFSCME, where, contrary to years of legal precedent which held that non-union public employees still have to pay their fair share of union dues in order to qualify for the benefits that they obtain via collective bargaining, the Cour, in a majority opinion written by that paradigm of legal reasoning and the darling of the far right, Justice Alito, reversed these precedents, claiming that since it was not possible to ensure that the portion of union dues paid by non-union public employees could be used to support causes with which the non-union employees disagreed, requiring that they pay their fair share portion of union dues violated their right of free speech under the 1st Amendment, because it constituted “compelled speech.” J. Alito, and the rest of the majority, somehow failed to appreciate that requiring unions to provide services to non-union public employees who had paid nothing to finance those services violated the 14th Amendment, since it was requiring the union to pay for the time of the union employees who have to spend their time and effort providing free representation to the free-loaders, which violates the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against depriving the union employees of their property – their time and work effort – without compensation. The result – the undermining of public unions based on a bogus argument.
(Continued)
So, I know a bogus argument when I see or read one, and LFC’s argument that Marx’s anti-Semitic sentiments really have nothing to do with his basic theory of capitalist exploitation because it focuses on the employer’s relationship with the employees, who trade their labor in order to be compensated by the employer, who in turn exploit the laborer, and Marx’s racist rants about Jew bankers is separate and apart from all of this. But the reason the employer is able to exploit the laborer is because the employer own the means of production, which gives the employer the leverage to exploit the employee laborer. But how does the employer get to own the means of production? Where does the employer obtain the capital to purchase and own the means of production, which the employer then uses to exploit the laborer? Does he somehow acquire the means of production – the factory in which the employees labor for wages determined by the employer, using machinery owned by the employer – out of thin air? No, he purchases the means of production using money – capital – borrowed from banks. And who is the prototypical banker, who sits at the apex of this capitalist system – the Jew banker, who finances the employer to obtain the means of production which in turn allows the employer to exploit the employees for wages that do not adequately compensate the laborer for his labor. So, under Marx’s theory, it is really the bankers, and the prototypical banker being the Jews (because we all know that all Jews are bankers) sits at the apex of the capitalist exploitation pyramid. So don’t tell me, LFC, that Marx’s anti-Semitism is not an integral part of his theory of the labor theory of value – it is in fact the driving force behind that theory. And Marx continued to spout his vile anti-Semitism as late as 1856. For academics and Marx proponents to ignore or rationalize the central role which anti-Semitism played in his overall theory of capitalist economies and their exploitation of the worker is, as I wrote above, disgraceful.
Post-script:
LFC writes above, that because bankers are a step removed from the actual employers who exploit their workers, Marx is “not portraying the Jews as prototypical exploiting capitalists.” More hogwash. How does the banker make a profit? By charging interest on the loans made to lenders, including the employers who use the borrowed money to purchase the means of production, which in turn allows them to take advantage of the laborers who exchange their labor for wages. But how does the employer repay the loans, including the interest that must be paid? Ultimately, the interest which the employer has to pay the banker – the prototypical exemplar being the Jew banker – must come from the employer’s profits in operating the means of production. How does the employer increase his profits in order to repay the banker? One way is to keep the employees’ wages low. So, ultimately, it is the banker – the Jew banker – who profits from the employers’ exploitation of their workers.
Correction:
"loans made to borrowers"
Insofar as any of the bankers were/are Jewish they deserve as much criticism as the non-Jewish bankers. Ditto for all the other exploiters and war criminals.
Post-post-script:
I anticipate LFC responding, “Marc, you are distorting my position. All I am saying is that, if you take the role of bankers, including Jewish bankers, out of the picture, then the mechanics of Marx’s theory of capitalist exploitation of workers applies and is valid. It is valid regardless the ethnicity of the bankers.” This would be just an evasive tactic, to avoid acknowledging Marx’s anti-Semitism, which his writings, apart from Capital, indicate he regarded as an integral part of the capitalist exploitation. Just sanitize Marx’s theory and disregard his anti-Semitism. Returning to the example I offered above regarding Newton and Einstein, suppose Newton had maintained that F = ma applies only if the force in question is being applied by a Caucasian, by not by an African. Would it be legitimate to say, well, but Newtons formulae are still accurate, regardless the ethnicity of the agents involved. This would be sanitizing Newton’s theory, and no longer be Newton’s actual theory. Or, suppose Einstein had held that given that the speed of light is a constant, regardless acceleration, time slows down as one approaches the speed of light, unless you are an African. Would it be legitimate to say, well, Einstein’s theory is correct, putting aside the racism. But then it would no longer be Einstein’s theory of special relativity. So why is it acceptable to ignore the anti-Semitism at the heart of Marx’s writings, when they are an integral part of his theory of capitalist exploitation?
Marc seems to think that Marx's theory of exploitation is that employees "trade their labor" for wages, which are not "adequate."
What Marc does not understand is that Marx's theory of exploitation is not a moralizing tale but a description of what Marx saw as a particular process. According to Marx, workers don't "trade their labor." What workers do is sell the commodity *labor-power*. Labor-power is a special kind of commodity because it generates more value in the production process than its "value" defined in terms of the cost of its reproduction. Actually that's not *exactly* what Marx says but it's closer than Marc's summary.
Because Marc apparently does not understand what Marx says, his thesis is going to go off the rails.
Anyway, what Michael says above is right. Marx sometimes used moralizing language, but at its core his theory is not a moralizing theory and it's not concerned with some people being inherently virtuous and others wicked. It's an indictment of a system rather than being mainly an indictment of individuals.
P.s. No one is suggesting that anything Marx wrote should be ignored. What's happened here though is that Marc has decided that anti-Semitism is "integral" to Marx's theory without having read (much) Marx.
LFC,
More of your semantics and smug condescension. Regardless how you describe the mechanics of the interaction between the employer and the laborer, the fact of the matter is that at the center of the interaction, and what gives the employer the advantage, is the employer’s control/ownership of the means of production, the sine qua.non for which is the capital borrowed by the employer to purchase the means of production. According to Marx, the culprit at the head of all of this is the banker, usually a Jew, whose loan to the employer must be repaid with interest, which is a motivating factor for the employer to depress the employees’ wages. Consequently, the banker – according to Marx, prototypically a Jew - is the ultimate beneficiary of the exploitation of the workers.
With regard to a previous question posted earlier, according to their biographer Maynard Solomon, neither Mozart nor Beethoven harbored antisemitic views. Beethoven was virulently anti-Catholic church, though raised catholic, and never practiced. Mozart was raised catholic, had strong faith but also never practiced. Mozart, though, was also interested in a wide range of religious beliefs, including Zoroastrianism and some cult writings. It's likely, given the times, both engaged in social rhetorical banter that involved jokes or negative comments about various religions or ethnic differences.
Also, I consider Peter Gay's "Freud - A Life For Our Time" the definitive biography.
Marc Susselman, from previous blogs posts I know that RPW likes to contextualize Marx's thought by reference to the work, Marx's Fate: The Shape of a Life (1978) by Jerrold Seigel. This is a highly detailed intellectual biography of Marx and it includes a section concerning the essays by Marx On the Jewish Question (p 112-19).
Here is a sample from Jerrold Seigel which explains Marx without excusing him morally:
"...both in the essay 'On the Jewish Question' and in some of his letters and journalism, Marx spoke disparagingly of the Jews as a group, and of individuals who displayed what he thought were Jewish characteristics. Undeniably, he sometimes felt hostility towards the Jews. If, on balance, it is not possible to describe Marx's relationship to Jewishness--his own or others--in the simple terms of anti-Semitism, it is essential to recognize that Marx felt a deep ambivalence towards Jews and Judaism.
Much of the evidence usually cited for Marx's anti-Semitism comes from his later comments--mostly in letters to Engels--about Ferdinand Lasalle. Lasalle helped Marx, both financially and in his relations with German publishers. Yet, from about 1856, Marx's private view of Lasalle grew hostile, and he and Engels began to cover him with anti-Semitic epithets" (p 113, Marx's Fate, Penn State U Press edition, 1993).
Marx verbally abused both Lasalle and his own mulatto son-in-law Paul Lafargue (author of The Right to Be Lazy) with the usual racial slur in bitter letters to Engels, which Engels probably should have burned or lost to hide this inconvenient truth from the eyeballs of posterity. A sick and grumpy man will say sick and cranky things that he should not, and Marx should never be regarded as a saint. He suffered from being caged in the time of a 19th century oppressive industrialized system and reacted with pain and resentment, anger and great bitterness.
Siegel explains: "Again, Marx's own feelings were complex and ambivalent, and unexamined prejudices were at work in them. However, if his language makes us squirm, his actions do not justify putting him in the camp of the racists" (p 114).
"The personal is the political" and associated radical feminist slogans and methodology that requires taking a victim-biased perspective to correct historical imbalances by zero-tolerance towards those who sometimes say what is unpardonable in principle is the wrong approach to the history of ideas and philosophy as it is mired in anecdote and perspectivism, emotivism, and ultimately promotes identity-based politics and a cult of extreme subjectivity.
Prof. Couture,
Thank you for your excerpt from Jerrold Siegel’s biography of Marx.
I am not willing to be as accommodating of Marx’s anti-Semitism as is Prof. Siegel. Anyone who publishes in a newspaper with a wide distribution such statements as, “Thus do these loans, which are a curse to the people, a ruin to the holders, and a danger to the governments, become a blessing to the houses of the children of Judah. This Jew organization of loan-mongers is as dangerous to the people as the aristocratic organization of landowners” is beneath contempt, regardless the profundity of their thoughts on other issues. I continue to maintain that any discussion of Marx’s contributions to economics or philosophy which avoids addressing his blatant anti-Semitism is a cop-out.
I take it, perhaps wrongly, that when Marx referred to “the houses of Judah” he was referring to the banking houses, not to all Jewish households. (As I think has previously been noted, he did hold that the great many non-wealthy Jews were also victims of the political-economic system.)
As a merely factual matter, does anyone here who knows anything about the history of banking, especially in Marx’s own era, know just what proportion of the banking houses, especially the great banking houses, were Jewish owned and operated? (Or is it now a cancellable crime to even ask such an historical question?) The grounds for asking it rest on the history of charging interest on money loans in old Europe, a role supposedly prohibited to Christians (though I have no doubt that was another religious injunction more honored in the breach).
Some pointers to answers to my own question:
https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/52074819/WindolfZUG2011Vol56-with-cover-page-v2.pdf?Expires=1660672799&Signature=fmxTO7CaZ~EPDeGQRgDIA7nOvAq4Kz6c9KwGYTclHGEhqXFu1YdgsvqPBgHYLFBMpragI~VQf8~Fgn8m-fJsq-lffKTf7uPbOD1furTpKS486jvoiVkSSY84LonmoG~Jy9vsC4MBp1bNthvl55wwydvKCCnTAv89cWVTPtNy-w6PrEAEZKP4PcPMYpFk56TrhrO1hx0PU6xeKuF02S6MauE3GnrPRXOwZGXSJTUVpULX2aDcqi5ioLJRgwKYSrruKzREvmtOMybPBbFuqgAbY~GX9Kb4hy-HfhKOsE7npzWaBpWqjIRm2TlvbfMSwKhGdYbEqRnrKpfzoAjDk9apAg__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
https://gates.comm.virginia.edu/wjw9a/Papers/JACF%20Morrison%20Wilhelm%20Final%20version.pdf
https://ce399.typepad.com/files/10schijf205.pdf
Of passing marxological interest, the author of the first of these papers, Paul Windolf, is a professor of sociology at the University of Trier.
Anonymous,
Without having looked at the references you cited, “The House of Judah” is a recognized shorthand reference to the Jewish people, and Marx undoubtedly knew this.
In Europe during the Middle Ages only Jews were allowed to engage in money lending, since it involved the charging of interest, which the superstitious Christians regarded as the work of Satan, because money increased somehow miraculously. European monarchs often financed their wars by borrowing money from wealthy Jews. King Edward I borrowed prodigious amounts of money from English Jews, and then, when he could not repay the loans, his solution was to expel all of the Jews from England, in 1290, 200 years before Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain.
For a thorough discussion of the history of Jewish involvement in banking see:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/banking-and-bankers
Marc, perhaps you just provided an answer to Marx's remarks. Had any other group been prominent in banking, he likely would have seized (as he did with Lassalle) on whatever group characteristic struck his fancy. That seems somewhat irrelevant to his theory.
No one but Marc seems particularly upset by Marx's rabid anti-semitism.
That's cool. Marx was a genius and we excuse these defects in a genius.
So if I mention favorably Heidegger, who was also a genius and an anti-semite, no one is going to scream at me. After all, Heidegger, unlike Marx, never wrote an anti-semitic tract, not even during the Nazi period when he would have won friends and influenced people for doing so.
No, I can't get away with that. Heidegger was a ultra-rightwinger, a fascist and Marx was a leftwinger.
Now I get it. You can be a leftwinger and an anti-semite, but not a rightwinger and an anti-semite. It's always great to learn the rules of the game.
aaall,
Irrelevant to his theory??? Are you serious? It was bankers he hated, and the Jews just become his target by happenstance.
As I wrote above, why does anti-Semitism never profit among left-wing intellectuals. Because if it profits, none dare call it anti-Semitism.
This is sickening.
That’s it. I’m outa here.
I guess one should never argue with someone who has a bee in his bonnet. If only this were the first time.
s. wallerstein
I do think Marx's anti-Semitism should not be ignored.
What I've said here is that I don't think his anti-Semitism is integral to his economic theory (or theories). That doesn't mean it's excusable or should be ignored. Just as, w.r.t. Heidegger, his having been a Nazi shd not be ignored.
"Now I get it. You can be a leftwinger and an anti-semite, but not a rightwinger and an anti-semite. It's always great to learn the rules of the game."
????? s.w., I'm not a Marxist. What does "being upset by Marx's rabid anti-semitism" even mean? I've been aware of Marx's penchant for petty invective based on gender, race, ethnicity, and whatever else struck him at the moment since the 1960s. What's the action item?
Marx was a cranky 19th century philosopher who depended on the kindness of strangers. Heidegger was a 20th century philosopher who participated in the Nazi regime. While their works should be judged on their own, I do see a difference.
I always wanted to teach a class on Marx, but never had the opportunity. I'm pretty sure I would have mentioned Marx's anti-semitism in an introductory lecture on his life (in the same way that I usually mentioned Aristotle's views on women and slaves in any introductory lecture on the Nicomachean Ethics). I don't imagine I would have mentioned it again, unless I had the time to give more than passing consideration of 'On the Jewish Question'. Here's my scorecard:
The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurian Philosophy of Nature--No (overt) anti-semitism.
The 1844 Paris Manuscripts--No (overt) anti-semitism.
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right--No (overt) anti-semitism.
'On the Jewish Question'--Anti-semitism (perhaps, at least prima facie, and certainly if the relevant sentences are taken out of context and divorced from consideration of Marx's evolving political views and methodology)
The German Ideology--No (overt) anti-semitism.
Theses on Feuerbach--No (overt) anti-semitism.
The Communist Manifesto--No (overt) anti-semitism.
The Grundrisse--No (overt) anti-semitism.
Capital vol. 1-3--No (overt) anti-semitism.
The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte--No (overt) anti-semitism.
Critique of the Gotha Program--No (overt) anti-semitism.
Upthread, s.w. distinguished between "the socialist tradition" and Marx; I agree with the point inasmuch as there were and are, of course, non-Marxist strands of socialism. (For instance, for an anthology that starts w/ Marx and Engels and then broadens out, see Irving Howe, ed., Essential Works of Socialism, 1970, pb. ed. 1971.)
But this thread was about something else. It began when Prof. Couture mentioned Marx's "racist and anti-Semitic letters to Engels." Then Marc posted and the thread was off and running. This is probably one of relatively few blogs where this kind of (basically unmoderated) discussion still occurs. The downside of it is outweighed, I think, by the immediacy of interaction, but it can sometimes get wearing. Which I guess is simply a memo to myself to exercise more self-restraint about jumping into these threads.
Non-Marxist socialists: for example, Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, Noam Chomsky, in Latin America there's a whole tradition of Christian socialism generally associated with liberation theology. There was a very active group, Christians for Socialists, which supported Allende. Wasn't Martin Luther King (not the decaffeinated version pushed by the media) a Christian socialist of sorts?
There's a little book by Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, where he talks about the utopian socialists, the guys who got trashed by Marx and finds some merit in their work. Buber also talks about Marx favorably in the book by the way.
Marx was such a dominant figure that he managed to hegemonize the socialist movement, dismissing all other socialist figures as "utopian" and depicting himself as "scientific".
With time he doesn't look all that scientific and maybe the guys he put out of business (the utopians) have something to say to us today.
Like all hegemonies, Marx's hegemony of socialism needs to be deconstructed a little.
s.w. I don't mean to sound at all defensive, it's just a matter of clarity, but when you say Marx doesn't now sound at all scientific, that kind of overlooks the fact that what constitutes science is itself a matter of dispute.
Incidentally, Eric, I think it was, offered a reference to Fred Crews's critical book on Freud, where the same issue arises: Crews has a view of science which allows him to pillory Freud for his claims to be pursuing a science. Crews, by the way, unlike shall we say Marc, was a true Freudian believer, whereas I doubt Marc ever was a true marxian believer (or if he was, his surprise at the contents of "On the Jewish Question" indicate he hadn't read much of Marx beyond perhaps the Manifesto.
But to my secondary point, from devotee to bitter opponent via primal scream therapy, Crews relies on a very positivistic notion of science. Of course, now that all the old verities are crashing in the dust. But who cares? It's all just artificial intelligence algorithms crunching big data; all correlations among god knows how defined bits of "information" and no deeper understanding of the hows and whys of anything. Cheers.
One model of the philosopher is to be a "divine arsonist," having a gift at starting fires (arguments) that never go out and dialectical explosions, leading to further arguments and a kind of eternal flame in consciousness that we are burning to discover a particular truth but cannot quite do it. So this subversive identity of the Greek philosopher derived from Socrates and Plato's cave is one way that philosophers might regain public attention for their craft (by creating culture wars) and influence politics. I have a manuscript called Dialectic of Model Philosophers where I develop these arguments more and contrast this ancient model of philosopher as shaman of the never ending dialectic.
When present-day teachers of philosophy look back at the great (and apparently or not so great now) thinkers, phenomenologically speaking, they see them stuck in their times, mortally limited and not entirely aware of their own limitations of expression, missing data or much larger context. Present-day interpreters are still floating in time and think that they know much better than the dead thinker what language would have been appropriate, what not to say or how to self-censor themselves from the retrospective perspective of a kind of omniscient narrator who knows better what should have been saved and how it should have been said, if only the dead thinker had not been so stuck in their time and unable to understand the whole of time which we now (wrongly) think we have accessed in our current wiser times.
Marx was stuck in a more racist, sexist, regressive society in the 19th century and his work reflects his time-boundedness, whether it is his scientific theories of socialism and how to really interpret history correctly in his journalism informing the public. "On the Jewish Question" is much more incendiary or polemical than many other writings, but it would not be reasonable to boycott Marxism in general on its basis. The worst verbal crimes of Marx are in his private letters to Engels which were not intended for publication but more personal venting, complaining and asking for money or support as a victim of the economic system that he is trying to overthrow. Redacting or removing such texts from the historical record is impossible, but we can choose how much attention to give them and how much to discount them as we endeavour to make some genuine progress.
Philosophy can get very heated and committed to action right now in any crisis, and it can also get very cold and detached and lost in endless theorizing about the possibilities of a social utopia. Marx was no Mr. Freeze but used his (super) powers of philosophical analysis to attack the individualistic forms of society that were frustrating the development of a greater social being and more just society. Marx, Freud, and Marcuse did not succeed in overcoming the repressive capitalist societies that many of us live in, and so we have to take up their tools and arguments and keep trying, with some awareness of their now glaring errors and blinding bitterness.
The Immaterial: Knowledge, Value and Capital (2003), a book by by French neo-Marxist Andre Gorz is one example of how a philosopher can take up the broken and limited ideas of a dead thinker trapped in his time (Marx) and make them live again. RPW is not engaged in any kind of hero-worship of Marx of others, even if it may seem that he does an ironic parody of such hero-worshipping in order to create reason to attend more, I would read it as part of his stand up philosophy act and listen with both ears open, not one-dimensionally. I associate Marx with Muhammad Ali as a kind of champion of the world of argument, even if he says some rather regrettable things in retrospect.
Here is a direct link to my manuscript Dialectic of Model Philosophers:
https://www.academia.edu/62134057/Dialectic_of_Model_Philosophers_by_Tony_Couture
Here is the description of the manuscript:
These unfinished lectures are from a course concerned with introduction to ethics and social philosophy using Great Books. I focus on Plato's Republic, Thoreau's Walden, and Mill and Taylor's On Liberty. I cover and compare five model philosophers: the Divine Arsonist, the Eco-Freak, the Pacifist Truth-Seeker, Professional Debaters in an Open Society, and Social Justice Warrior or Logical Pugilist.
Marx is more than one style of philosopher in my terms: a divine arsonist, a social justice warrior, or logical pugilist. But he is unaware of the eco-freak perspective, has no interest in pacifism or non-violence, and has great contempt for J.S. Mill and Harriet Taylor's seminar model of intellectual debate in an open society. Regarding Mill, Marx would be sarcastic like Thrasymachus and tell him to enjoy his feasts of words and starve in his ideological games of pursuing truth individualistically. Identity matters in any philosopher, but it is always a matter of argument and interpretation rather than inwardness and social oblivion.
A note on Marx as possibly a Tony Couture-style 'eco-freak': Starting 20-25 years ago, there's been a very interesting dimension to Marx scholarship, pioneered by Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster, that tries to recover an ecological dimension to Marx's thought. If anyone's interested, I stuck a very brief overview of that scholarship in my review of Andreas Malm's recent book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, published on-line in the Marx and Philosophy Review of Books (and here on my academia.edu page: https://www.academia.edu/73423024/_Expanded_Review_of_Andreas_Malms_How_to_Blow_Up_a_Pipeline).--I am very much in agreement with Tony Couture on the interest in André Gorz's work.
Tony, In your 12:26 pm post, in your second paragraph did you mean “mortally limited” or morally limited? Anyway, I appreciate your elucidations. Some of the points you make I was trying to suggest more indirectly in my references to the history of European banking, where I wanted to say that it’s important to have some grasp of the environment in which he lived and to which he was responding, albeit in a quite greneralising fashion.
Being aware that I respond with greater outrage to garoups of drunken idiots who belong to my own tribal kin than I do to drunken idiots who belong to other tribes, I’ve also found myself wondering just how much Marx’s venom might have been rooted in the same sort of thing.
I don’t, by the way, mean to be attempting to buttress hero worship. I happen to think that it makes little sense to look to marxism as ultimately and finally defined by Marx. It seems to me your mentioning of Gorz is but one case of a whole host of people who have tried to modify and develop what Marx wrought. And then, of course, there are the outright apostates such as David Horowitz who give yet another twist to the unfolding of a complex intellectual-cum-practical tradition.
Anonymous,
I'm Jewish and as you point out, I tend to be more harsh with my criticism of Jews, say, of Israeli expansionism than of, say, Syrian war crimes.
I've told this typical Jewish joke before. It comes from my great-uncle Julian, who by the way, drove a Cadillac.
Why is September 20 such a holy day for the Jews?
Rosh Hoshannah? Yom Kippur? (Doesn't Julian realize that Jews use a lunar calendar?)
No, it's the day the new model Cadillac appears.
It's humor directed against not only one's group, but also against oneself. Julian obviously saw himself as a Jew, while Marx does not see himself as a Jew and/or wants to deny his Jewishness. Marx's anti-semitism reminds me a little bit of the homophobia of some in-the-closet gay people: people who try to deny their identity by an outward show of hostility towards it.
For entry points into some of the intellectual history s.w. alludes to above, see M. Harrington, Socialism: Past and Future, esp. ch. 2 (and sources cited therein), and Manuel & Manuel, Utopian Thought in the Western World.
I have been ruminating on the issue I raised in this thread regarding the role that anti-Semitism plays in Marx’s philosophy and criticism of capitalism for two days now, and the more I ruminate, the angrier I get. I am particularly irritated by arguments which are pervasively based on sophistry, whether it be the sophistry purveyed by a politician, a scientist, a political scientist, a lawyer, a judge, or an academic, including professors of philosophy. And there is plenty of sophistry in the comments in this thread maintaining that anti-Semitism was not a central premise in the nuts and bolts of Marx’s critique of capitalism. According to Anonymous this matter is just a bee in my bonnet. Yes, it is a bee in my bonnet, and I refuse to let it go, leaving the field to the purveyors of sophistry.
Question: Does ownership or control of the means of production play an integral role in Marx’s critique of capitalism?
The answer is undeniably “Yes.” Terry Eagleton, a recognized prominent Marxist theorist who has frequently by referred to by commenters on this blog, in his book, “Why Marx Was Right” (2011), Eagleton
“uses a number of terms from Marxist philosophy, which arose from the ideas of the 19th-century German philosopher Karl Marx. In describing a society's use of labor, he employs the phrase means of production to describe the raw materials and tools needed to produce goods and services; the productive forces refer collectively to the means of production, human knowledge, and division of labour within the society. A society also has relations of production: roles like wage labour, where a person sells their labour to a boss in exchange for money. The productive forces and relations of production—together called the mode of production—are seen by Marx as describing the fundamental structure of a society; example modes of production include capitalism and feudalism.
In Marxist class theory, a person belongs to a specific social class (e.g. working class) based on the role they play in the mode of production. In capitalism, for example, the bourgeoisie are a class of property owners who control the means of production. Marx identified a pattern of one social class developing the productive forces until the relations of production are a barrier to further advancement. Class struggle—a proposed fundamental tension between different classes—is central to Marxists's understanding of how a new mode of production is established. Because he viewed societal development as rooted in physical conditions rather than abstract ideas, Marx was a historical materialist, rather than an idealist. Base and superstructure is a materialist model for describing society, wherein the mode of production ("base") is seen to shape the other aspects of the community: art, culture, science, etc. ("superstructure").” (Emphasis added [assuming it has appeared in this transcription]; footnotes omitted.)
(Continued)
In an article titled. “In Defence of Marx’s Account of the Nature of Capitalist Exploitation” (Philosophy of Economics) the author, Chrisoula Andreou, writes:
“
Labor-power is the commodity whose use or consumption is labor of average skill and intensity. Marx notes that "the value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently the reproduction, of this special article". But, unlike other commodities, labor is a commodity whose "use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value". It is this special feature of labor-power which accounts for the exploitability of the worker. The situation can be described as follows: The worker and the capitalist meet in the market with their "goods". The worker comes with labor-power and the capitalist with money (as well as with the commodities which he sells). (1) With his money, the capitalist buys means of production, which include instruments of production and raw materials, and labor-power. We may assume that equivalent is exchanged for equivalent. By consuming his newly bought commodities — in other words, by setting the laborer to work with the means of production — the capitalist initiates the production of value. It follows from the definition of value, that the value of the commodities produced in this process of "productive consumption" is the sum of the values of the means of production used up plus the labor-time. If the worker works (per day) more than the amount of time which is the value of a days worth of labor-power, then the capitalist will possess, by the end of the productive process, more value than he did when he got to the market. This additional value that the capitalist ends up with is what Marx calls surplus-value. It is the appropriation by the capitalist of the surplus-value created by the worker's labor that constitutes the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist. The capitalist maximizes surplus-value by having the worker work the entire workday. (2) Even though the worker may be doing the same thing all workday, it is possible to split up the days' work into two parts, namely necessary labor and surplus labor. Necessary labor is the labor-time (socially) necessary for the production of new value equal to the value of the labor-power that the capitalist has bought. Surplus labor is the labor-time which constitutes the remainder of the workday. The surplus labor of the worker is "unrequited" since the worker receives in wages only the value of his labor-power. When one recognizes that the fruits of the worker's surplus labor are reaped by the capitalist, the exploitation of the worker by the capitalist and the similarities between capitalist exploitation and exploitation in slave societies and feudal societies become clear.” (Emphasis, if transcribed, added; references omitted.)
It is thus undeniable that ownership/control of the means of production play an integral role in the capitalist relationship between employer and laborer, by virtue of which the employer has the upper hand and the leverage by which the employer is enabled to exploit the laborer, thereby rendering a capitalist economy being based on the exploitation of the laborer by virtue of the employer’s ownership/control of the means of production -means of production which the employer purchases using money. And where does the employer obtain the money to purchase the means of production by virtue of which s/he has the leverage to exploit the laborer? From banks. And who, according to Marx, is the archetypal, prototypical banker? The Jew banker. Consequently, in Marx’s theory of capitalism – and it is Marx’s theory of capitalism which we are discussing here, not Lenin’s, or Marcuse’s, or Professor Wolff’s – it is the Jew banker who provided the finances to the capitalist employer to purchase the means of production which enables the employer to exploit his employees.
(Continued)
According to LFC, aaall, s. wallerstien, and John Rapko, this argument is specious and misleading, because it is bankers for whom Marx holds contempt, and Jews just happened to be the most prominent and populous bankers in Europe during the 19th century. According to LFC, my thinking is muddled and based on an inadequate understanding of Marx’s theory. (Note: In Prof. Rapko’s ledger of Marx’s works in which he is “ostensibly” anti-Semitic, he lists only his monograph “The Jewish Question,” but he fails to list Marx’s “Russian Loan” article published in the New-York Daily Tribune in 1856, in which Marx used the most despicable, anti-Semitic language to describe Jews – not just Jewish bankers – as stereotypical “loan mongers” - language which Hitler and his Nazi storm troopers were very comfortable using and by which they reveled in stigmatizing Jews, stigmatization which resulted in 6 million Jews being gassed and cremated.)
Thus according to LFC, aaall, s. wallerstien, and John Rapko, Marx’s anti-Semitism is not an integral part of his critique of capitalism, because you can analyze the nuts and bolts of the theory without even alluding to his anti-Semitsim. Sophistry, upon sophistry. No, you cannot analyze MARX’S theory of capitalism without discussing the central role which the ownership/control of the means of production plays, which, in turn, is based on the availability of capital borrowed from banks to purchase the means of production, which, in turn, according to Marx, is primarily controlled by the Jew bankers. As in the examples I offered above regarding Newton’s three laws of motion, if Newton claimed that F in F=ma referred to the force which only Caucasians, but not Africans, could exert on an object, no one would say that, well, Newton’s three laws do not really depend on the race of the agent, and Newton’s theory is not, basically, racist. B.S. But it is alright to claim that Marx’s examination of capitalism is not, basically, anti-Semitic.
But heaven forbear, we must not claim that anti-Semitism plays a significant role in Marx’s critique of capitalism because, after all, it is really only tangential, and we must not sully the reputation and prestige of the great Marx and his revolutionary theory of economics. Better to sweep it under the carpet, to rationalize it, to ignore it. So say many of Marx’s champions, many of whom are themselves Jewish, at least by birth, if not in practice - which is quite alright, I myself am not a practicing Jew, but I will be damned if I will stand by and watch the writings and analysis of a rabid anti-Semite sanitized in order to insulate his economic theory from valid criticism.
You know, there is a lot of hypocrisy being proliferated by the commenters on this site. Virtually everyone who comments on this site believes there is no question that Trump is responsible for motivating the Jan. 6 insurrection, by virtue of what he said before the rampage began, even though, as some have pointed out, he did not directly state that they should assault the Capitol. They think there is enough circumstantial evidence to indict and try him for having caused the insurrection - a belief which I share. But, heaven forbid, we must not note the central role which Marx’s anti-Semitic writings played in his overall critique of capitalism. That would not be politically correct. Hypocrisy upon hypocrisy, all is hypocrisy.
I'm not interested in insulating Marx "from valid criticism." Marx's views have been criticized every which way since he began to publish and circulate his views. The critical literature on Marx probably could fill entire libraries.
I don't think your Newton example works, for several reasons. One reason is that it's not a good analogy. (Even on your own account, Marx is not saying his theory does not work unless the banker is Jewish. The banker could be a Zoroastrian, a Catholic, a Buddhist, it wouldn't matter because money is money.)
More to the point, I don't really care here about defending Marx's theories. I don't care about defending Marx himself. Lets say, for argument's sake, that Marx's economics are all wrong, completely bogus, ok? For purposes of discussion we'll stipulate (as lawyers say) that Marx's theory is wrong. The question then becomes: is it wrong because Marx was anti-Semitic and viewed Jews as prototypical bankers, or is it wrong for other reasons? My answer to that would be: It's wrong for other reasons. In other words, Marx could be all wrong, but not because his theory was fatally infected by his anti-Semitism.
I think what is at issue here is how to interpret someone's thought and theories. You want to turn it into a personal quarrel and make it all about alleged hypocrisy and alleged unwillingness to criticize Marx. It's not about that. It's about, broadly, how to approach the history of thought, whether economic thought or social thought or whatever.
You want to write off an entire body of work as completely worthless because its author expressed repellent anti-Semitic views. That attitude is anti-intellectual, there's no other word for it.
Should we throw all of Faulkner's novels into the garbage because Faulkner expressed racist sentiments? Of course not. Should we throw all of Nietzsche into the trash because N. (probably) expressed anti-Semitic sentiments (I add "probably" bc haven't really read Nietzsche)? Of course not. Should we consign Hemingway to oblivion because of the anti-Semitic way in which he depicted a character in The Sun Also Rises? Should the defenders of slavery, people like George Fitzhugh or James Henry Hammond or John Calhoun or Alexander Stephens or Jefferson Davis, not be taught or read in history courses? Should we not read or study the Lincoln-Douglas debates because Douglas had certain racist attitudes (as did Lincoln, for that matter)? The questions answer themselves.
p.s. What about all the turn-of-the-century Progressives, many of whom were advocates of eugenics? Should we conclude that all of their works are worthless?
Marc,
Marx believed he was carrying out a scientific analysis of capitalism. He read Adam Smith, David Ricardo and all the previous economic theorists, found or believe he had found holes in their theories and outlined his own theory of how capitalism works.
Now it may be that on an unconscious level Marx's own problems about dealing with his Jewish identity led him to obsess himself with analyzing scientifically the structure of the capitalist economy, but none of us are in a position to carry out a psychoanalysis of Marx's "real" unconscious motives.
LFC,
Here you go again (to revive Reagan’s mocking of Carter), distorting my position with fatuous irrelevancies. I never stated – repeat- never stated – that all of Marx’s theory should be trashed and ignored because of the role anti-Semitism played in his analysis. I am saying that any exposition of MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM cannot be candidly explained and discussed without acknowledging the central role which his anti-Semitism played in MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM. Can you criticize and evaluate capitalism without discussing Jewish bankers? Of course. But that is not the point. In doing so, one is not discussing and evaluating MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM, integral to which it the role of the ownership/control of the means of production, integral to which are the loans extended to employers to purchase the means of production, integral to which are bankers, and, for Marx, integral to the banking is the primary role played by Jewish bankers. The role of the Jewish bankers is thus an integral part of MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM, and if you, or Prof. Wolff, or John Rapko, or aaall, etc., want to criticize capitalism, fine, but if you purport to do so by claiming to be discussing MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM, without addressing the central role which Jewish bankers play in MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM, then you are white-washing that theory and not discussing MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM.
Your claim that my example of Newton’s first law of motion is inapposite in more of your sophistry. IF Newton had proposed a the first law that F = ma, and claimed that it held true only for Caucasian agents, but not for African agents, we would all agree that would be a preposterous physical law. Newton did not propose such a preposterous theory. BUT IF HE HAD, whether the agent was Caucasian vs. Black would be an integral part of his theory. Can one propose a law F = ma which does not vary depending on the race of the agent – of course. But then one would not be discussing the apocryphal rule of motion which I am hypothesizing, just as ignoring the role that Jewish bankers play in the theory of capitalism which Marx himself espoused in some of his writings, and not to confront this is failing to discuss and analyze MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM as he espoused it, taking together all of his writings.
Can one discuss Faulkner’s Sound And The Fury without discussing its racist elements? Of course, but such a discussion would not be providing an accurate depiction of the plot in that novel. Likewise, one can avoid Hemingway’s anti-Semitic characterization of Robert Cohn in the Sun Also Rises and still provide a superficial description of the novel’s plot, but such an exposition would be omitting one of the central themes in the novel – the comfort with which Jake Barnes and his friends – the supposedly Lost Generation – accept anti-Semitism.
Nothing I have written entails any of the absurd consequences you claim derive from my critique of MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM. I am not an “anti-intellectual” and am not recommending that books which contain allusions to racism or anti-Semitism should be burned. This is more of your nonsense. But discussions of these works should not avoid discussing those racist or anti-Semitic elements, just to be politically correct.
So, I maintain that any exposition of MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM which fails to discuss and confront the role the Jewish bankers purportedly play in that theory – an obviously flagrant defect in that theory – is not an exposition of MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM. That the theory embraces that defect is not a reflection on the theory without that racist element. But one cannot candidly discuss MARX’S THEORY OF RACISM without addressing the role that anti-Semitism plays in THAT THEORY.
s. wallerstien,
B.S. Marx did not write his article titled the The Russian Loan unconsciously, subconsciously or in his sleep. He wrote, in plain black and white print, that the means of production which employers control/own, by virtue of which they exploit the working class, are being purchased with money lent by banks, banks predominantly owned/controlled by Jew bankers. It is irrelevant whether in so writing he was working out his own psychological phobias about his Jewish ancestry.
Correction:
Next to last line of in the final paragraph of my rejoinder to LFC: MARX'S THEORY OF CAPITALISM
Clearly we aren't going to agree, but it might be worth taking the time (which I haven't) to read the whole of "The Russian Loan" newspaper piece and place it in context. (e.g., What loan is he talking about? A loan to the Russian [Czarist] government?)
Marc,
As someone noted above, your surprise about Marx's anti-semitism indicates you haven't read much of him or about him.
I've read a few books on Marx, some of them not particularly favorable to his theories, including one by Raymond Aron and another by Isaiah Berlin, neither of them especially leftwing or pro-socialist.
Berlin writes extensively about Marx's anti-semitic writings, but in no way links them to his economic theories as expressed in Das Kapital.
Doesn't it strike as strange that someone as anti-Marxist as Berlin (and Aron), both of them Jewish and Zionist, don't notice the link between Marx's anti-semitism and his economic theories?
Maybe with just a glance at Marx in Google you've discovered something no one has ever discovered before and if so, copyright it immediately. However, since lots of great minds have studied Marx over the years and not all of them are especially pro-Marx, none of them making the link that you do, shouldn't you reflect before you leap?
Marc’s lengthy explications of material he has evidently newly come upon are lengthy, I suppose, because that’s rather typical of a johnny-come-lately to a field of discourse. He’s so excited by his discoveries—which I can’t condemn, which I can even warm to, since it’s great that anyone past a certain age can be excited by such things; it’s the sort of thing that makes teaching undergraduates so rewarding in some ways—that he imagines he’s making discoveries no one else has ever made before and he wants to reveal all to everyone else.
But it is rather tiresome to be lectured at (and insulted) on some matters as if we were all mere tyros. And it’s especially tiresome when his understanding is, to say the least, at least open to criticism. For Marc, being Marc, cannot brook criticism or correction of even a minor sort. (I’d refer back a long way on this blog to the gloriously wrong-headed lengthy multi-post attempt to validate his obviously mistaken understanding of the opening passages of “Richard III” for yet another example of his peculiar notion of intellectual debate.) As I intimated, trying to debate someone with an obvious bee in his bonnet is a waste of time. So I suggest LFC, s.w., etc. just let the subject rest
I would just like to note that IF there're philosophically interesting issues here, it seems to me that they concern (a) what counts as 'integral' to someone's thought, and (b) what sort of thoughtful response one might make to highly problematic or even wholly unacceptable aspects of someone's thought. On (a): Consider the case of the grotesquely anti-semitic Gottlob Frege. To my knowledge a standard response is to say that Frege's anti-semitism is unconnected with his influential published work, the Begriffsschrift, his attempts to reduce mathematics to logic, and his functional analysis of propositions. But suppose one were to find a scrap of paper where he wrote that 'Bedeutung ist gut-deutsch, Sinn ist schlecht-jüdisch'. What then? On (b): With regard to the mistakes of the great dead ones, I've been most concerned to reflect on Aristotle's misogyny, social conservatism, and priggishness. Can these objectionable features be eliminated with the stroke of a red pen, with a reasonably integrated, suggestive, and rich account left intact? It seems to me that they can be so eliminated. So could Newton's (fictitious) racism. Or if on the other hand the excision of the objectionable leaves only a fragment, there's at least the conceptual possibility of revising and adapting the fragment with the aim of producing a new account superior to the flawed original.--Among the very first things I read on Marx when I was first reading Das Kapital was Lukács's 'What is Orthodox Marxism?', wherein he claims that even if "recent research had disproved once and for all every one of Marx's individual theses," an 'orthodox Marxist' would not have to renounce his orthodoxy, which "refers exclusively to method." I cannot see any reason that even an 'orthodox Marxist' couldn't, if convinced by Marc's claim that anti-semitism is integral to Marx's critique of capitalism, simply note Marx's anti-semitism, excise it, and carry on giving serious consideration to pretty much every one of the 5,000 or so pages of Marx's writing I listed above.
More sophistry from s. wallerstein and Anonymous (who does not even have the integrity to identify himself). So now my contention must be invalid because I am supposedly a “tyro” when it comes to Marxist scholarship. When you cannot engage on the merits of the contention, stoop to ad hominems and resurrection of past unresolved disputes.
Below is a link to the original New York tribune article, and below that, a transcription of the entire article. Its rank anti-Semitism stinks to high heaven.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030213/1856-01-04/ed-1/seq-4/
The issue of a new Russian loan affords a practical illustration of the system of Loan-mongering in Europe, to which we have heretofore called the attention of our readers.
This loan is brought out under the auspices of the house of Stieglitz at St. Petersburg. Stieglitz is to Alexander what Rothschild is to Francis Joseph, what Fould is to Louis Napoleon. The late Czar Nicholas made Stieglitz a Russian Barron, as the late Kaiser Franz made old Rothschild an Austrian Baron, while Louis Napoleon has made a Cabinet Minister of Fould, with a free ticket to the Tuileries for the females of his family. Thus we find every tyrant backed by a Jews, as is every Pope by a Jesuit. In truth, the cravings of oppressors would be hopeless, and the practicability of war out of the question, if there were not an army of Jesuits to smother thought and a handful of Jews to ransack pockets.
(Continued)
The loan is for fifty millions of roubles, to be issued in five per cent bonds, with dividends payable at Amsterdam, Berlin and Hamburgh, at the exceedingly moderate price of 86 roubles – that is to say, in consideration of paying 86 roubles, in several instalments, the payer is entitled to five roubles dividend per year, which amounts to nearly six percent, and to a bond of 100 roubles indorsed by the Russian Government, as security for his capital, which is redeemable at some remote period between this and doomsday. It is worthy of notice that Russia does not appeal, as Austria has recently done, to the moneyed enthusiasm of her own subjects, stirred up by the stimulus of bayonets and prisons; but this shows only the greater confidence which she has in her credit abroad, and the greater sagacity which she possesses in raising money without embarrassing and therefore without disappointing the people at home. Baron Stieglitz does not propose to retain one single kopeck of the fifty millions for the Greek, Sicilian, American, Polish, Livonian, Tartarian, Siberian and Crimean sympathizers with Russia, but distributes seventeen millions of the loan to Hope & Co. of Amsterdam, the same share to Mendelssohn & Co. of Berlin, and sixteen millions to Paul Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, of Hamburgh. And, although British and French houses do not, for obvious reasons, court a direct participation in the loan, we shall presently show that indirectly they contribute largely to furnishing their antagonists with the sinews of war. With the exception of a small amount of five and six per cent Russian bonds negotiated at London and Hamburgh, and of the last Russian loan which was taken up by the Barings, Stieglitz of St. Petersburgh, in conjunction with Hope & Co. of Amsterdam, have been the principal agencies for Russian credit with the capitalists of Western and Central Europe. The four-per-cent Hope certificates, under the special auspices of Hope, and the four-per-cent Stieglitz inscriptions, under the special auspices of Stieglitz, are extensively held in Holland, Switzerland, Prussia and to some extent even in England. The Hopes of Amsterdam, who enjoy great prestige in Europe from their connection with the Dutch Government and their reputation for great integrity and immense wealth, have well deserved of the Czar for the efforts they have made to popularize his bonds in Holland. Stieglitz, who is a German Jew intimately connected with all his co-religionists in the loan-mongering trade, has done the rest. Hope commanding the respect of the most eminent merchants of the age, and Stieglitz being one of the free-masonry of Jews, which has existed in all ages – these two powers combined to influence at once the highest merchants and the lowest jobbing circles, have been turned by Russia to most profitable account.
(Continued)
Owing to these two influences, and to the ignorance which prevails about her interior resources, Russia, of all the European Continental Governments, stands highest in the estimation of ‘Change, whatever may be thought of her in other quarters. But the Hopes lend only the prestige of their name; the real work is done by the Jews, and can only be done by them, as they monopolize the machinery of the loanmongering mysteries by concentrating their energies upon the barter-trade in securities, and the changing of money and negotiating of bills in a great measure arising therefrom. Take Amsterdam, for instance, a city harbouring many of the worst descendents of the Jews whom Ferdinand and Isabella drove out of Spain, and who, after lingering a while in Portugal, were driven thence also, and eventually found a safe place of retreat in Holland. In Amsterdam alone they number not less than 35,000, many of whom are engaged in this gambling and jobbing of securities. These men have their agents at Rotterdam, the Hague, Leyden, Haarlem, Nymwegen, Delft, Groningen, Antwerp, Ghent, Brussels and various other places in the Netherlands and surrounding German and French Territories. Their business is to watch the moneys available for investment and keenly observe where they lie. Here and there and everywhere that is a little capital courts investment, there is ever one of these little Jews ready to make a little suggestion or place a little bit of a loan. The smartest highwayman in the Abruzzi is not better posted up about the locale of the hard cash in a traveler’s valise or pocket than those Jews about any loose capital in the hands of a trader.
These small Jewish agents draw their supplies from the big Jewish houses, such as that of Hollanderand Lebren, Königswarter, Raphael, Stern, Sichel, Bischoffsheim, Amsterdam, Ezekiels of Rotterdam. Hollander and Lehren are of the Portuguese sect of Jews, and practice a great ostensible devotion to the religion of their race. Lehren, like the great London Jew Sir Moses Montefiore, has made many sacrifices for those that still linger in Jerusalem. His office, near the Amstel, in Amsterdam, is one of the most picturesque imaginable. Crowds of these Jewish agents assemble there every day, together with numerous Jewish theologians, and around its doors are congregated with all sorts and manners of Amenian, Jerusalem, barbaresque, and Polish beggars, in long robes and Oriental turbans. The language spoken smells strongly of Babel, and the perfume which otherwise pervades the place is by no means of a choice kind.
(Continued)
The next Jewish loan-mongering concern is that of Königswarter, who came from a Jewish colonyin Forth in Bavaria, opposite Nuremberg, whose 10,000 inhabitants are all Jews with some few Roman Catholic exceptions. The Königswarters have houses at Frankfort, Paris, Vienna and Amsterdam, and all these various establishments will place a certain amount of the loan. Then we have the Raphaels, who also have houses in London and Paris, who belong, like Königswarter, to the lowest class of loan-mongering Jews. The Sterns come from Frankfort, and have houses at Paris, Berlin, London and Amsterdam. One of the London Sterns, Davis, was for some time established at Madrid, but so disgusted the chivalrous Spaniards that he was compelled to quit. They have married the daughters of one of the rich London Goldsmiths, and do an immense business in stock. The only man of ability in the family is the Paris Stern.
The Bischoffsheims are, next to the Rothschilds and Hopes, the most influential house in Belgium and Holland. The Belgian Bischoffsheim is a man of great accomplishments and one of the most respected bank directors and railway magnates. They came from Mayence, and owing to the genius of this Belgian Bischoffsheim, have attained to their present eminence. They have houses at London, Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, Frankfort, Cologne and Vienna, and have recently sent a clerk or agent to New-York. They have intermarried with a Frankfort Jew of the name Goldschmidt, who, however, is not distinguished either of wealth or genius, although pretending to both. One of these Goldschmidts – and the most insignificant of the firm – presides over the London concern, whole one of the Bischoffsheims rules over that of Amsterdam, and the other over that of Brussels and of Paris As far as the seventeen million roubles assigned to Holland are concerned, although brought out under the name of Hope, they will at once go into the hands of these Jews, who will, through their various branch houses, find a market abroad, while the small Jew agents and brokers create a demand for them at home. Thus do these loans, which are a curse to the people, a ruin to the holders, and a danger to the Governments, become a blessing to the houses of the children of Judah. This Jew organization of loan-mongers is as dangerous to the people as the aristocratic organization of landowners. It principally sprung up in Europe since Rothschild was made a Baron by Austria, and enriched by the money earned by Hessians in fighting the American Revolution. The fortunes amassed by these loan-mongers are immense, but the wrongs and sufferings thus entailed on the people and the encouragement thus afforded to their oppressors still remain to be told.
(Continued)
We have sufficiently shown how the Amsterdam Jews, through their machinery at home and abroad, will absorb in a very little time the seventeen millions of roubles put at the disposal of Hope. The arrangements attendant on the placing of the amount in Berlin and Hamburgh are somewhat of a similar nature. The Mendelssohns of Berlin are descended from the good and learned Moses Mendelssohn, and count among the more modern members of the family the distinguished musical composer. In their case, as in that of the Lessings and a few other Frankfort, Berlin and Hamburgh families, owing to some peculiar literary tradition or some peculiar influence of refinement, their houses are far superior in character to those of the general clique of loan-mongers. Their representative in Hamburgh too, Mr. Beschutz, is a man of high character, and there is little doubt that under their auspices the thirty three millions put by Stieglitz at their disposal will soon be taken. But, as in the case of Hope of Amsterdam, the part taken by the Mendelssohns will only be nominal, and to lend the prestige of their name. Rothschilds’ special agent at Berlin, Simon Bleichreder, and their occasional agents, the Veits, will very likely take a portion on speculation, and sell it with a profit to the small Jew fry of Berlin, Hanover, Magdeburgh, Brunswick and Cassel, while the Frankfort Jews will supply the small fry of Darmstadt, Mannheim, Carlsruhe, Stuttgartd, Ulm, Augsburg and Munich. This small fry again distribute the stock among still smaller fry, until eventually some honest farmer of Suabia, some substantial manufacturer of Crefeld, or some dowager Countess of Isenburg, has the honor of becoming the permanent creditor of the Czar by locking the stock up as a permanent investment. The Jew jobbers of Breslau, Ratisbor, Cracow and Posen, the Frankels of Warsaw, Benedick of Stockhol, Hambro of Copenhagen, Magnus of Berlin, with his extensive Polish constituency, Jacobson of the same city and Ries and Heine of Hamburg, both houses of great influence in Jew financial circles, especially Heine, will each and all disseminate a goodly amount among their multitudinous customers and bring the stock within the reach of all the northern section of Europe. In this wise any amount, however large, is soon absorbed. It must be borne in mind, that beside the local and provincial speculations, there is the immense stock-jobbing machinery between the various European gathering points of the loan-mongering confederation now all connected by telegraph communications, which, of course, vastly facilitate all such operations. Moreover, almost all the Jew loan-mongers in Europe are connected by family ties. At Cologne, for instance, we find the principal branch-house of the Paris Foulds, one of whom married a Miss Oppenheim, whose brothers are the chief railway speculators of Rhenish Prussia, and next to Heistedt and Stein, the principle bankers of Cologne. Like the Rothschilds and the Greeks, the loan-mongering Jews derive much of their strength from these family relations, as these, in addition to their lucre affinities, give a compactness and unity to their operations which insure their success.
This Eastern war is destined at all events to throw some light upon this system of loan-mongering as well as other systems. Meantime the Czar will get his fifty millions, and let the English journals say what they please, if he wants five fifty more, the Jews will dig them up. Let us not be thought too severe upon these loan-mongering gentry. The fact that 1855 years ago Christ drove the Jewish money-changers out of the temple, and that the money-changers of our age enlisted on the side of tyranny happen again chiefly to be Jews, is perhaps no more than a historical coincidence. The loan-mongering Jews of Europe do only on a large and more obnoxious scale what many others do on one smaller and less significant. But it is only because the Jews are so strong that it is timely and expedient to expose and stigmatize their organization.
LFC wrote: "Should we not read or study the Lincoln-Douglas debates because Douglas had certain racist attitudes (as did Lincoln, for that matter)?"
Yes we should as a Western Hemisphere in which there was a Douglas presidency would likely be quit different (from Jaffa's House Divided:
"The fourth question Lincoln put to Douglas at Freeport has also been overshadowed by the famous second question. It, too, has a significance that can hardly be exaggerated. Lincoln asked: "Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?" Here is an extract from Douglas's reply:
this is a young and growing nation. It swarms as often as a hive of bees, and... there must be hives in which they can gather and make their honey. In less than fifteen years, if the same progress that has distinguished this country for the last fifteen years continues, every foot of vacant land between this and the Pacific Ocean, owned by the United States, will be occupied. Will you not continue to increase at the end of fifteen years as well as now? I tell you, increase, and multiply, and expand, is the law of this nation s existence. You cannot limit this great republic by mere boundary lines, saying, thus far shalt thou go, and no further." Any one of you gentlemen might as well say to a son twelve years old that he is big enough, and must not grow any larger, and in order to prevent his growth put a hoop around him to keep him to his present size. What would be the result? Either the hoop must burst... or the child must die.
So it would be with this great nation. With our natural increase... with the tide of emigration that is fleeing despotism in the old world to seek a refuge in our own, there is a constant torrent pouring into this country that requires more land, more territory upon which to settle, and just as fast as our interests and our destiny require additional territory in the north, in the south, or in the islands of the ocean, I am for it, and when we acquire it will leave the people, according to the Nebraska Bill, free to do as they please on the subject of slavery and every other question…"
May be of interest:
https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/marx-shaped-by-european-jewish-experience-by-yanis-varoufakis-2020-10
It’s surely a bit rich for someone who has employed several pseudonyms, including “Another Anonymous” (which may, incidentally have been plagiarised from me, since I used to use that pseudonym occasionally when another “Anonymous” had made a comment), until he was outed by our blog’s owner/host, to come on all holier-than-thou about me being “Anonymous.” The interesting thing about so many of those who come here—e.g., LFC, aaall, etc., even those who attach a name to themselves, such as s. wallerstein, james wilson, etc. etc. could actually be anyone at all. So initials and purported names are actually not worth very much. Why should they be preferable to "Anonymous" as pseudonyms?
Incidentally, while i'm not taking a stand on it one way or the other, there is some question, I've read, as to whether Marx's name should be attached to that pice on the Russian loan just quoted at length.
Douglas:
"I am for it, and when we acquire it will leave the people, according to the Nebraska Bill, free to do as they please on the subject of slavery and every other question..."
This position on the matter, of course, was known as "popular sovereignty."
Lincoln and Douglas debated for hours at a time, w probably not that many notes, and spoke, as this excerpt indicates, in complete sentences and paragraphs. And people listened to the whole thing. There was some occasional heckling and interruption, I think, but people wanted to hear what the candidates had to say.
Contrast that with my experience in 2012. I had done a bit of volunteer phone-banking for Obama in a little building close to where I live (we were in MD, but calling Virginia phone numbers, since the outcome in MD was assured). After the phone-banking was done, the plan was to eat dinner (I think the food was provided by the campaign, don't precisely recall) and watch one of the Obama-Romney debates -- it was televised that night. It soon became apparent that some of the other volunteers, particularly a few middle-aged or older guys, weren't really interested in hearing the debate -- they were interrupting and talking over it all the time, jeering at Romney's responses etc. etc. After about ten minutes of this, I left to go home and listen to the debate on radio, because I actually wanted to hear it. A woman sitting near the door asked me in a surprised voice, "You're leaving?" I just nodded and left.
Anonymous,
Regarding my discontinuance of using a pseudonym on this blog, as the saying goes, there is no one as sanctimonious as a reformed whore. If I am a reformed whore, what does that make you?
Marc Susselman,
You might appreciate this anecdote from Norman Finkelstein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP7LJTBnEJ4&t=839s
@ 13:58-16:11
I liked the choice of weapons directed against him, Eric. They sound scrumptious.
Eric,
I am curious why you offered a link to Norman Finkelstein’s anecdote about his attendance at a Passover seder in which a dispute about the Russian/Ukrainian conflict erupted over Finkelstein’s assertion that the Ukrainian army is full of Nazis? What relevance, pray tell – other than the fact that Nazism and anti-Semitism are correlated, and Passover is a Jewish holiday – did this anecdote have to the subject in this thread, regarding the role which anti-Semitism played in Marx’s theory of capitalism? Please enlighten me.
Pardon me, Marc, but was marx's anti-semitism actually the subject of this thread. It seems to me RPW tried to start us off in another direction, and then it was hijacked. In which case, wasn't it open to Eric or anyone else to hijack it in another direction? Or to try to meld together two themes which have obviously got people quite exercised. Personally, I wish people would try to adhere to the directions RPW initiates. It gets kind of tedious seeing the same thing happening again and again. Or am I misunderstanding the whole thing. james wilson (who wishes no one would take his name in vain).
Prof. Wilson,
I would dispute your characterization that I hijacked this thread, and diverted it to a discussion of Marx and the role his anti-Semitic rants played in his theory of capitalism. In the first sentence of Prof. Wolff’s thread, he referred to the course he was teaching on Marx, Freud, Marcuse: Thesis and Antithesis. The first comment, by Prof. Couture, referred to Marx’s anti-Semitic letters to Engels. Was Prof. Couture “hijacking” the thread by raising this matter? I proceeded to express my surprise that Marx had expressed anti-Semitic sentiments, following Prof. Couture’s lead. Eric’s comment cannot be connected to either Prof. Wolff’s initial post, Prof. Couture’s comment, or my comments about the role of anti-Semitism in Marx’s theory of capitalism, an issue which is not remote from Prof. Wolff’s post about teaching a course related to Marx. I guess “hijacking,” and what constitutes being “tedious,” is in the eye of the beholder.
I enjoy a good debate. In fact, debating is the only sport that has ever appealed to me, that I have ever watched or participated in willingly.
Marc is a good debater, and generally I watch him in action with pleasure, although I don't like being on the receiving end of his attacks.
However, Marc "hijacks" threads and he's done it here. Maybe we could find a better word for it than "hijack" since it's no crime, hurts no one and is often fun to watch. And of course if someone prefers to refer to the originial post, they are free to do that at any point in the thread.
In the next thread, Prof. Wolff began by posting a comment about the pleasure of returning to live in-class teaching. He ended the post with a brief reference to the possibility that Garland’s investigation of Trump was picking up speed, with the felicitous expectation that Prof. Wolff would get to see Trump in an orange jump suit in the near future.
The first two comments were related to Prof. Wolff’s post, and then Prof. Couture made a 90-degree turn and raised the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, to which aaall added a comment about Russia’s motives regarding its seizure of the nuclear power plant, neither of which had anything to do with Prof. Wolff’s original post. And then Jerry Fresia submitted a comment taking the thread into an entirely new direction, raised a criticism of President Biden and the Democrats’ passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. And then LFC, David Palmeter and Jerry Fresia exchanged comments on this new subject. Then Prof. Couture submitted a three-part comment about the dire straits the Ukrainians were in, to which Eric submitted his own take on the situation, none of which had anything to do with Prof. Wolff’s original post.
Now, none of this irritated or offended me, nor did I find any of it “tedious.” But were Prof. Couture, Jerry Fresia, LFC, Eric, aaall guilty of “hijacking” Prof. Wolff’s original post, and if not, why not?
This is my sense of what is going on here. Most of the people who read and comment on this blog, with some exceptions, regard themselves as left to far-left liberals (but not the kind of liberals with whom Prof. Geuss takes issue). Although I regard myself as liberal, it is more central oriented liberal (the kind of liberal with whom Prof. Geuss does take issue). I am not “woke.” So, it is okay for Prof. Couture, Jerry Fresia, LFC, aaall, and Eric to deviate from the subject of Prof. Wolff’s original post, and not be accused of “hijacking” the thread, but it is not alright for me to do so, especially if I am criticizing the darling of the far-left, Karl Marx. As I said in the prior thread, hypocrisy upon hypocrisy, all is hypocrisy.
Sure, Marc. We all tend to judge more harshly those who political opinions differ from ours. There's lots of social psychology research on that.
s. wallerstein,
An explanation is not a justification. And hypocrisy, in whatever form it takes, is not estimable, particularly among intellectuals/academics who pride themselves on the integrity of their thought and values.
Marc Susselman,
For the better part of four months, you argued vociferously in support of the Ukrainian military, which is filled with neo-Nazis and Nazi sympathizers, and which is presided over by a commander who has said it's totally normal and cool for some Ukrainians to hold Nazi-collaborator Stepan Bandera up as a hero.
(If you are not sufficiently convinced that Ukrainian national hero Stepan Bandera and his organization, OUN, were antisemitic and participated in the genocide of Jews in Ukraine, please see John-Paul Himka's Ukrainian Nationalists and the Holocaust, or the work of historian Karel Berkhoff.)
Now here you are trying to destroy marxian theory based on Marx's antisemitism (which, as far as I have seen, nobody here has defended or would defend). Finkelstein's anecdote seems perfectly fitting.
Your righteous indignation over Marx's antisemitism is warranted. But why single out Marx alone for criticism? When the works of any of the most influential philosophers are being discussed, their racism, antisemitism, misogyny & sexism, homophobia, and classism all need to be part of the conversation. (Your dismissal of the importance of sexism on 15 Aug 7:25pm was not persuasive.) One of the main reasons to study their work is to try to see whether and how their ideas have relevance for us today. You can't consider that question fairly without taking into consideration their prejudices. I believe that this is one of the primary reasons Prof Wolff has been so effusive in his praise of Charles Mills' work.
I don't believe that full recognition of the bigotry and destructive acts of people who have made important discoveries or created powerful works of art mandates that their positive contributions be entirely discarded. But neither do I believe that the uglier parts of their histories should be glossed over or dismissed as irrelevant. We can appreciate the positive impacts their discoveries or creations have had while we simultaneously condemn them for their antisocial acts and beliefs. Part of that condemnation may include stripping them of honors and awards and tearing down their statues.
Take J. Marion Sims, who has been called "the father of gynecology." He pioneered several procedures that revolutionized gynecologic surgery. But the methods he used in the process of developing those procedures were monstrous, worthy of Josef Mengele. We can appreciate the value of the procedures he introduced without needing to praise him as "the father of gynecology" or put him on a pedestal (indeed, a statue honoring him was removed from a site in New York's Central Park across the street from the New York Academy of Medicine a few years ago).
As I have written here before, it disgusts me to know that L. Frank Baum was a racist champion of genocide. But I still hold a special place in my heart for his stories about Dorothy and Oz. (If I had known about his racist history before I had read his books or seen the movie, that might not be the case.)
And it is infuriating to me that we still honor people like Stephen F. Austin and Christopher Columbus by continuing to use their names for places and institutions named after them. Don't tell me it would be too hard to change the names! Mumbai. Istanbul. St. Petersburg. New York.
If one is interested in the wayward line of commentary that has developed here about 19th century antisemitism among European intellectuals (especially among our canonical German philosophers), one might want to consult (and better yet read) Yirmiyahu Yovel’s remarkable book: “Dark Riddle—Hegel, Nietzsche, and the Jews.”
As a person who has decried hypocrisy among intellectuals/academics, it would be highly hypocritical of me to take positions on this blog, or elsewhere, which are themselves examples of hypocrisy, which is what you are accusing me of with respect to my initial condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and my praise of the Ukrainians’ demonstrations of courageous resistance. Now, you would be correct that this would be an example of my own hypocrisy if two propositions were true: 1) That the Ukrainian military which is putting up the resistance is controlled or infiltrated by anti-Semitic neo-Nazis; and 2) I was aware of this role of neo-Nazis in the Ukrainian military. I have researched the first proposition in order to determine whether it is true, and my research has yielded mixed results. The proposition is largely based on the role which the Ukrainian militia played during WWII in supporting the Nazis and committing the slaughter of Jews at the Nazis’ bidding. But I have not found any definitive analysis which confirms that these same elements are dominant in the current Ukrainian military. If there was such evidence, and I knew it, it would indeed be hypocritical of me to support the Ukraine’s position in its current conflict with Russia, at the same time that I condemned Marx for his flagrant anti-Semitism. Given that my admittedly limited research has not definitively proved what you claim is the case, then proposition 2 is not true, and I can, with a clear conscience, state that I have not been a hypocrite with respect my position on the Ukrainian/Russian conflict and the role which anti-Semitism has played in Marx’s theory of capitalism.
Regarding your link to Norman Finkelstein’s anecdote about the tumult which erupted at a recent Passover seder, I would venture go guess that most of the attendees who threw macaroons at him did not believe, or were aware of, propositions (1) above, and therefore were no more hypocritical than I. Just because you and Prof. Finkelstein are convince that proposition (1) is true does not mean it should be obvious to everyone else, whether Jewish or otherwise. In fact, on of my friend’s significant other recently celebrated the wedding of her daughter. The groom was from a family of Jewish Ukrainians who had emigrated to the U.S. They were concerned that at the wedding reception a brawl might break out between the Ukrainian relatives, all Jewish, who supported the Ukrainians in their defiance of Russia, and those who supported Russia and maintained that Putin’s claim that he invaded Ukraine in order to de-Nazify it was valid.
(Continued)
Regarding the balance of your critique of me, you are making the same error that LFC has made in mischaracterizing my position regarding the role of anti-Semitism in Marx’s theory of capitalism. I have not claimed that because of that role, Marx’s critique of capitalism is entirely bogus and should be kicked to the curb. I have only maintained that, as that theory is presented by Marx in the entirety of his writings, anti-Semitism is a central and integral part of his criticism of capitalism, in which Jewish bankers are primarily responsible for lending money to employers to purchase the means of production, which enables the employers to exploit their workers. Could a criticism of capitalism be mounted without linking it to Jewish bankers? Absolutely. But this would not be an exposition of capitalism as was propounded by Marx, in which Jewish banker play a prominent role, and to purport to be expounding on Marx’s theory of capitalism without confronting the role which Jewish bankers play in his theory of capitalism is, I maintain, a cop-out.
None of what I have written in this thread indicates that I advocate a puritanical policy of trashing and discarding all works of art which have traces of racism, sexism, or anti-Semitism, nor have I advocated doing so if their creators harbored such sentiments. I only maintain that where such sentiments play a prominent role in their literary products, that role should be discussed when discussing their works. I do not support boycotting Wagner’s music because he was a virulent anti-Semite; I support condemning Wagner as a human being because he was a virulent anti-Semite.
This comment is about what Marc wrote at 8:41 p.m., specifically the last paragraph.
First, Marc doesn't understand what the word "liberalism" means. It has at least two meanings. These meanings might overlap but they should be kept distinct. One meaning refers to liberalism as a main tradition of political philosophy -- to be sure, not a monolithic tradition. This is the sense in which Locke, Mill, and Rawls are liberals. This is the sense of liberalism that Geuss is criticizing, as a perusal of J. Rapko's review of Geuss makes clear. Then there is the sense of "liberalism" as used in contemporary U.S. political discourse. This is the sense that Marc seems to think Geuss is referring to (hence Marc's distinction between "far left" and "centrist" liberals). But that's actually not what Geuss is mainly talking about. He's talking about liberalism in the political-philosophy sense of the word.
Second, Marc persists in saying that he's being picked on or singled out because he attacked Marx, "darling of the far left." Bullshit. Marc was criticized in this thread not because he was attacking the "darling of the far left," but rather because his claim that Marx's anti-Semitism is "integral" to "Marx's theory of capitalism" is nonsense.
As s.w. pointed out upthread, both Isaiah Berlin and Raymond Aron wrote critically about Marx. Neither was a Marxist at all (Aron wrote a book called The Opium of the Intellectuals criticizing certain left-wing French philosophers, among others). Both Berlin and Aron were Jewish. As s.w. pointed out, neither Berlin nor Aron maintained that Marx's anti-Semitism is "integral" to Marx's theory of capitalism. The reason neither Aron nor Berlin embraced that position, if it can even be dignified with the label "position," is that it is nonsense.
Marc persists in painting himself as a picked-on martyr who is being criticized because he had the temerity to attack the "darling of the left," Marx. Rubbish. Marc was criticized because his argument was a bunch of nonsense, not because he attacked Marx.
I stated explicitly upthread that my interest was not to defend Marx but to examine the validity of the claim Marc was advancing. Marc has persistently and inexcusably ignored my statement that my motive was not to defend Marx, instead choosing to wrap himself in the clothes of a martyr to unpopular "truths." This unctuous martyr pose is, frankly, absurd.
LFC,
Raymond Aron also wrote a book, translated into Spanish as El Marxismo de Marx (the Marxism of Marx) and apparently not into English, where he examines in great deal what Marx himself wrote and published during his lifetime, excluding notebooks and works published by Engels and others after his death.
It's 756 pages in Spanish to give you an idea of how complete his explanation and criticism of Marx's ideas is.
LFC,
Here you go again, spouting more of your fatuous sophistry, in your smug condescending, arrogant tone.
As a matter of fact, Prof. Geuss is writing, and discrediting, the form of conventional liberalism with which I identify. On p. 166 of Not Thinking Like A Liberal, he states:
“Is liberalism committed to the lightest possible regulatory touch on the financial services industry and the respect for all existing forms of ownership and entitlement? The financial crisis of 2008 was a direct effect of the application of liberal doctrines to the baking system. The only remedies liberals seem to have in their medicine chest to prevent a recurrence of such a crisis seem toothless almost to the point of absurdity.”
He is not speaking here of the traditional liberal political philosophy as you claim of Lock, Mill and Rawls. He is speaking about the conventional form of liberalism which was espoused by traditional Democrats like John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. So, as usual, you do not know what you are talking out, but spout insults as if you are the final seer on all things political and philosophical.
Regarding your spurious critique of my argument regarding Marx, it is based on three ineluctably true predicates:
1. The control/ownership of the means of production are critical to the capitalist employer’s exploitation of the worker employees.
2. Essential to the employers’ control/ownership of the means of production is the ability to borrow money from banks which enable he employer to purchase the means of production.
3. According to Marx, repeated in at least two of his published writings, the banking system is controlled by Jewish bankers who approve the loans to the employers in order to purchase the means of production, enabling the employer to exploit the employee workers.
Consequently, in MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM, the Jewish banker plays an integral role in the capitalist’s exploitation of the workers. This is anti-Semitism, period.
Neither you, nor anyone else who has commented in this thread and taken issue with my contention, has proved that any of the three premises as false or invalid. Based on the three premises, I maintain that to ignore the role which Jewish bankers play in MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM, to discuss MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM without acknowledging the role his anti-Semitism plays in that theory is to white-wash his theory. Does this mean that capitalism is not subject to criticism based on the aspects of Marx’s theory which do not involve his condemnation of Jewish bankers? Of course not. But to strip the anti-Semitic aspect of his theory from his theory is not to be discussing MARX’S THEORY OF CAPITALISM, but a sanitized version of his theory.
You and s. wallerstein retort that other critics of Marx, including esteemed Jewish writers and thinkers, have never alleged that an integral aspect of Marx’s theory of capitalism relates to his anti-Semitism, and therefore my contention must be false. S. wallerstein goes so far as to state that if I am correct, I have hit upon a remarkable new analysis of Marx and should copyright it. What kind of intellectual argument is that – proposition x has never before been asserted by intellectuals and luminaries, therefore proposition x must be false and invalid. What sophistry coming from supposed intellectuals.
LFC, you persistently present yourself on this blog at the final correct authority on all aspects of political science and international affairs. But you are nothing but an egotistical, arrogant charlatan.
One point.
During the Cold War hundreds of anti-communist academics dedicated themselves to showing that Marx was not only wrong, but also as horrid a human being as can be imagined.
A conservative British historian called Paul Johnson wrote a book called Intellectuals in the 80's where he tried to show what shoddy thinkers and despicable human beings noted leftwing intellectuals were. Of course he dedicated a chapter to Marx where he pointed out his anti-semitism, but neither Johnson nor other cold war anti-communists claim that Marx's analysis of capitalism was linked to his anti-semitism.
Of course it's not a proof that your analysis is wrong, Marc, because no one has come up with it before, but given the quantity of anti-Marx scholarship over the years it seems strange that no one has noticed the link previously. Even more because you seemingly have never read a biography of Marx (so you don't have a clear idea how his thought developed) nor Das Kapital itself, which is subtitled "A Critique of Political Economy", that a criticism of his predecessors such as Smith and Ricardo, not a study of who is who in real-life capitalism.
I have never presented myself as the final, correct authority on anything. It is you who view your positions and arguments as unassailable truths. What bugs me is that you say that my criticism of your Marx comments has to do w a desire to defend a darling of the far left. It has nothing to do w that.
It is also bugs me that you view your own motives as pure and everyone else's motives as, so you speak, wallowing in the muck.
Correction: so to speak
LFC and s. wallerstein,
You both keep making the same hackneyed, specious argument that since none of the many illustrious biographers and analysts of Marx and his theory of capitalism have connected the anti-Semitism of his writing to his theory of capitalism, my contention that they are connected must be invalid. This is not addressing my argument. Which of the three premises I present above is false? If none are false, as I maintain, then on what basis do you maintain that they are not connected, since Marx claimed in his writings – The Jewish Question and the Russian Loan - that they were connected? Why are you, s. wallerstein and others so intent on absolving Marx of this correlation?
As far as my being moralistic, LFC, yes, when it comes to anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism which has plagued Jews for centuries and has resulted in the persecution, torture and murder of millions of Jews over the last 2,200 years I am moralistic, and I make no apologies for it.
Ultimately I agree much more with LFC and the rest than with Marc on this issue - "this issue" meaning the claim that Marx's anti-Semitism is integral to his outlook on capitalism. (And I'll agree that the tone and volume of Marc's comments could be improved, too, but I don't really want to get into that.) However, after considering it a little further, I've come to think that Marc's claim is somewhat less implausible than I initially took it to be. I don't actually accept Marc's claim, but here's how I understand it:
Marx (whom I have studied little, and quite possibly misunderstood!) contends that capitalism is fundamentally alienating and exploitative. The chief victims of exploitation are the members of the working class, who sell their labor in order to stave off destitution (the only "alternative" to selling their labor); they are thus dependent upon their employers, whereas the function of their employers - driven by the need to maximize profit - is to maximize worker productivity, typically for purposes alien to the workers themselves: purposes which primarily enrich the workers' "superiors," often at the expense of their well-being.
I gather that Marx spends much of his chief writings exploring this theme, largely without emphasizing or even mentioning any of his views about Jewish people. But in a few of his much shorter, much less well-known, much less influential pieces, he describes the Jewish people in highly offensive terms: As Marc says, it appears to be Marx's view that the exploitative employers are to a significant extent financially enabled by Jews. Consequently (Marc infers), Marx's critique of capitalism would not be distinctively Marx's unless bigotry against Jewish people were a central component of it. This is how I take Marc's position. I might be missing something. But I think the weaknesses of this position are as follows -
(1) As was just said, Marx's views about Jewish people do not receive expression except in writings for which Marx is not generally remembered - writings, moreover, whose character and purpose (and apparently authorship in one case) are sometimes disputed. This is an impressive fact; however, it doesn't necessarily follow that bigotry against Jewish people is inessential to Marx's critique of capitalism. More on that below.
(2) At face value, Marx's critique of capitalism includes these two propositions (among numerous others): (i) The capitalist system is necessarily such that workers are exploited by their employers, and (ii) The employers in this system are financially enabled by a class of people in which Jewish bankers prominently figure. My sense, however, to put it roughly, is that (ii) is "less essential" for Marx than (i). I think this is because (i) has more of the character of philosophical theory - a lot rides on the meaning of "exploitation" and the conditions that make exploitation in general possible - whereas (ii) is closer to an empirical claim. A dispute about (i) would heavily rely on a priori reasoning, whereas a dispute about (ii) would appeal more straightforwardly to evidence. If Marx were to reject (ii), he could conceivably do so without some vast philosophical overhaul which would render his work unrecognizable. But in the case of (i), this is harder to picture.
None of this constitutes a super-rigorous argument, of course, but I'm left with the feeling that Marc's position is unsettling - though not so unsettling that I couldn't possibly forgive (or indeed easily sympathize with) the philosophy professor who doesn't mention Marx's anti-Semitism in a broad survey of his thought, for similar reasons to the Frege case or even the Heidegger case.
I want to thank Michael for his explication of my position even better than I have done, and for his willingness to at least concede that it may have merit, even though ultimately he comes down on the side that proposition (ii) in his explication is not essential to Marx’s theory of capitalism because it is a historical, empirical proposition, whereas proposition (i) is more philosophical and represents the meat and bones, so to speak, of Marx’s contribution. But, as he says, while proposition (ii) may be incidental to his critique of capitalism, the fact of the matter is that Marx did offer proposition (ii) as a factor in his criticism of capitalism, and therefore, to my mind, it should not be rationalized or minimized when discussing Marx’s – Marx’s – theory of capitalism. Moreover the fact of the matter is that Marx did not reject proposition (ii) but endorsed in in at least one writing, and possibly two. It is the alacrity with which many of Marx’s adherents are willing to dismiss the relevance of Marx’s virulently anti-Semitic writing or writings that I take issue, and find irritating. Were a hereto-before unknown letter written by Justice Kavanaugh, or Alito or Gorsuch discovered in which they expressed virulently racist views about African-Americans, most of the readers and commenters on this blog would not deem even a single writing expressing such views as irrelevant, or tangential to their legal philosophy and would immediately be willing to condemn them based on that single writing and connect the views expressed in that writing to their decisions, regarding the Voting Rights Act, for example. So why, I ask, the adamant resistance to acknowledging the role that anti-Semitism played in Marx’s views of capitalism when the authenticity of at least one anti-Semitic writing – the Jewish Question – is not in doubt?
I have come late to this thread and there may be some things that I have missed but I want to confirm LFC’s basic point and then to make a concession to Marc or Susselman: Like LFC I have read a fair bit of Marx though , I suspect, nowhere near as much as Professor Wolff. I have read the Communist Manifesto, the German Ideology (the whole book cover to cover), several selections from Marx’s journalism, the Civil War in France, Class Struggles in France, the 18th Brumaire, the Progress publishers Selected Correspondence and Raddatz’s ‘The Marx-Engels Correspondence’ (which includes a number of gamier texts omitted by the Communist editors of Progress Publishers Selection). I have skimmed ‘On the Jewish Question’ . I have read (and often annotated) several biographies of Marx and his womenfolk (Mehring, Sperber, Wheen, Kapp, Gabriel, Stedman Jones, Holmes). I have also read a lot of Marx criticism, both friendly and otherwise, much of it by jewish scholars and thinkers. (My view of Marx has been, and continues to be, much influenced by a reading of Popper’s The Open Society and I have at least skimmed Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: a Defence. I recommend Bernstein to my students.) And as result of this I think I can say two things
1) Marx was definitely an antisemite, or at least prone to distastefully anti-semitic thoughts and remarks, Ferdinand Lasalle, being a particular butt. (‘Baron Itzig’,‘The Jewboy’,’Clever Ephraim’)
2) However, this anti-semitism plays NO essential part in his mature social theory. His mature social theory neither implies nor is implied by his (genuine) anti-Semitism. The contrary view isn’t just false. As LFC rightly claims it is utterly absurd. *It does not come within cooee of a half-way sensible thing to say.* This is true in particular of his theory of exploitation (silly as I believe it to be).
Hence
3) A course on Marx’s social theory NEED NOT make any mention of Marx’s anti-Semitism since it isn’t strictly relevant. (Similarly, a course on Hume’s epistemology need make no mention of his rather bizarre classism which is obliquely criticised by his buddy Adam Smith.)
However (and here’s the concession) it might be worth dong so nonetheless. Here, slightly adapted, is a comment I posted on Leiter’s Blog:
Some philosophers have seductive literary personalities. . In engaging with their ideas you feel yourself to be engaging with a personality, often a personality that it is hard not to like and admire (Lakatos for me, Wittgenstein for others). But there is something wrong with admiring or liking those who are not truly admirable. So *that‘s* why it is sometimes worth making a fuss about a famous a philosopher’s dubious deeds. When we celebrate what Lakatos made of of his massive intellectual gifts we do well to remember that because of him there was at least one idealistic young woman who never got to develop the gifts that she may have had because he pressured her into swallowing poison. When we swoon to the hypnotic charm of Wittgenstein’s writings we do well to remember that there was one poor kid who died at fourteen, who Wittgenstein hit so hard that he collapsed, and whose short life was probably made miserable by a terrifying teacher. But this is not a practical concern nor is it specific to any one issue such as sexual harassment [or in the present case, anti-semitism.]. The chances of actually meeting (let alone being physically seduced by) these literary seducers are often pretty slim. After all, many of them are dead. No, the real issue is making hero or a heroine of somebody who doesn’t deserve it, something that it is surprisingly easy to do. This is not a reason, I think, for not assigning great but flawed philosophers, good but flawed philosophers, or even OK but flawed philosophers, but it is a reason (sometimes) for saying a little something about the flaws.
I appreciate Prof. Pigden's comments. If I were teaching a course on Marx (which is not going to happen, I'm almost certain, but hypothetically) I'd begin with some general remarks and I'd certainly mention Marx's anti-Semitism.
As Prof. Pigden suggests, students should have a fairly full, rounded picture of the figures they are reading, even if the ugly or repellent aspects of their views are not playing an essential role in the theory (or theories).
A respectful rejoinder to Prof. Pigden.
There is a distinct difference between the distasteful acts he refers to regarding Lakatos' role in the cyanide poisoning of Eva Iszak out of concern that, if captured by the Nazis, she might reveal the whereabouts of the Hungarian resistance, and Wittgenstein's striking a young boy, resulting in his death. These are actions, not writings. Marx did not only engage in anti-Semitic actions, e.g., his verbal mocking and mistreatment of Lasalle. He wrote at least one flagrantly ant-Semitic screed, The Jewiah Question, in which he directly links his theory of exploitation via the ownership and control of the means of production to bankers, and particularly Jewish bankers. I have acknowledged above that one can discuss the nuts and bolts of Marx's critique of capitalism without raising his anti-Semitism, but such a discussion, I submit, would not present a complete exposition of his critique of capitalism by failing to mention the role that his anti-Semitism, in his denunciation of Jewish bankers, plays in the exploitation of workers by those who own/control the means of production. The actions by Lakatos and Wittgenstein referred to by Prof. Pigden are in no way reflected in their respective philosophical or mathematical analyses, nor in their writings. This is not true of Marx, and to treat his ant-Semitism as an irrelevant aside about his malevolent personality is to sanitize his full critique of capitalism from the distasteful role that his ant-Semitic attack on Jewish bankers plays in that overall critique. And therefore I do not understand the adamant aversion to acknowledging the role his anti-Semitic writings play in the complete critique of capitalism, as he espoused it, not simply in his actions, but in his writings. And to say, for example that the Jewish Question is just a minor, insubstantial writing which does not represent the true nuts and bolts of Marx's theory of the exploitative character of capitalism is simply sanitizing that theory, as presented in his writings, and not simply a reason not to regard him as a hero.
Marc,
Why don't you sit down and read volume 1 of Kapital and when you've done that, give us your opinion about how Marx's anti-semitism fits into his mature economic theory as expressed in Kapital?
It's not fun to read, but it's not hard going, and there are parts that one can easily skim without losing the general sense of the work.
I'm not a Marxist expert, but I believe that the theory of exploitation that you're concerned about is wholly developed in volume 1 and that thus, you can skip volumes 2 and 3, as many do.
By the way, I don't consider Marx to be a hero nor am I a Marxist.
I am planing to read "On the Jewish Question," which is one of M's works I haven't read (at least not closely). I have a copy in front of me rt now but don't know whether I'll get to it today, though I may bc it's pretty short.
It was written toward the end of 1843 and is a reply to Bruno Bauer, who was one of the so-called Young Hegelians. Looking toward the end now I see the sentence "Exchange is the true god of the Jew," but I do not think there are any specific references to M's theory of exploitation in "On the Jewish Question," but I cd be wrong about that and will report back after I've read it. (I don't think M. had really developed the theory of exploitation by 1843, and if that's
correct then the piece can't support Marc's contention that this is integral to the theory of exploitation, bc he hadn't really formated it yet.)
Correction: formulated not formated
Given that Marx is at the centre of the matter here, isn’t it odd that, aside from a few undeveloped hints that it is appropriate and indeed necessary to read him in his historical timeframe, almost nothing has been said about anti-semitism as a historically variable concept. That’s doubly odd since we inhabit a moment where, because the Holocaust and the creation and expansion of Israel necessarily lurk in the background, the definition of anti-semitism is a matter of considerable debate and conflict especially, so far as I can tell, among Jews, as, for example, the competing definitions of the IHRA and the Jerusalem Declaration bear witness. That being so, it also deserves some contemplation, how current conflicted understandings, adopted if perhaps only unconsciously, shape our evaluations of and responses to the past.
Prof Pigden's and s. wallerstein's comments from a 2016 Leiter blog discussion about what sorts of sanctions, if any, should be leveled against philosophers, living and dead, accused of unethical behavior:
https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2016/07/not-assigning-professor-pogges-work-because-of-evidence-of-his-misconduct-towards-women.html
The blog discussion was prompted by then-current news about allegations against ethicist Thomas Pogge of sexual misconduct with students.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katiejmbaker/yale-ethics-professor
Marc, I found this current Telegram post interesting - listed first yet!
"To make an attempt to liquidate the father of Great Russian nationalism? Not their level, not their handwriting, not their style.
🔻Ok, but then who? Jews? Brits? Amers? Satanists?
Always in such cases it is necessary to ask typical questions: Cui bono? Cui prodest?"
https://t.me/rybar/37517
I've almost finished reading Marx's "On the Jewish Question" but I likely will not have time tonight to write my comment about it. I'll have to put that off until some time tomorrow.
p.s. One good thing about this thread is that it's gotten me to read "On the Jewish Question," which in some respects is quite interesting and which I almost certainly would never have read otherwise.
LFC. and s. wallerstein,
In “On The Jewish Question,” Marx was writing in rebuttal to an essay written by Bruno Bauer titled “The Jewish Question” in which Bauer claimed that Jews were responsible for their own misfortune in European society because they had "made their nest in the pores and interstices of bourgeois society." In Marx’s rebuttal, he wrote:
“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 is 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.
“The Christian state can behave towards the Jew only in the way characteristic of the Christian state – that is, by granting privileges, by permitting the separation of the Jew from the other subjects, but making him feel the pressure of all the other separate spheres of society, and feel it all the more intensely because he is in religious opposition to the dominant religion. But the Jew, too, can behave towards the state only in a Jewish way – that is, by treating it as something alien to him, by counterposing his imaginary nationality to the real nationality, by counterposing his illusory law to the real law, by deeming himself justified in separating himself from mankind, by abstaining on principle from taking part in the historical movement, by putting his trust in a future which has nothing in common with the future of mankind in general, and by seeing himself as a member of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people as the chosen people.”
This is ahistorical anti-Semitic nonsense. The Jews are seeking to compel the Christians to renounce their religion? Judaism counterposes its “illusory” law to “the real law”??!!! Marx, despite being the grandson of rabbis, was obviously ignorant of the fact that a central tenet of Judaism is that they do not proselytize.. In fact, it was Marx’s father who decided to convert the family to Protestantism (as did Disraeli’s father). But it takes Marx a few pages to really expose the full contemptible depth of his anti-Semitism:
“This is no isolated fact. 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.
. . .
"The contradiction that exists between the practical political power of the Jew and his political rights is the contradiction between politics and the power of money in general. Although theoretically the former is superior to the latter, in actual fact politics has become the serf of financial power.
(Continued)
“Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.
“The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange.
“The view of nature attained under the domination of private property and money is a real contempt for, and practical debasement of, nature; in the Jewish religion, nature exists, it is true, but it exists only in imagination.”
Joseph Goebbels could not have found a more reliable ally in his anti-Semitic propaganda.
Those who dispute my claim that Marx’s anti-Semitism plays a central role in his theory of capitalism and its exploitation of workers maintain that this isolated expression (assuming that the Russian Loan is not properly attributed to him) of his anti-Semitic sentiments is not a factor in his mature writings. S. wallerstein asks me to read Capital (because he, and others, assume that I have not already done so and am a “tyro” when it comes to Marx) and find where in this apotheosis of his mature thought there is any expression of anti-Semitism. So, let’s look at what he wrote 24 years after having published On The Jewish Question (which, by the way, he never repudiated as no longer representing his thinking).
In Volume 1, Part One, Chapter Three, he writes:
The currency of money is the constant and monotonous repetition of the same process. The commodity is always in the hands of the buyer. And money serves as means of purchase by realizing the price of the commodity. This realization transfers the commodity from the seller to the buyer and removes the money from the hands of the buyer into those of the seller, where it again goes through the same process with another commodity. That this one-sided character of the money motion arises out of the two-sided character of the commodity’s motions, is a circumstance that is veiled over. …
So, not surprisingly, money plays a central role in keeping the wheels of capitalism functioning. In On The Jewish Question, written 24 years earlier, money, filthy lucre, is the “god of the Jews.” But, my detractors will argue, this is not a direct connection to Marx’s anti-Semitism, since, after all, as you admit, the role of money in the functioning of a capitalist economy is obvious and unavoidable. So let’s read further.
In Part Four, Chapter 12, Sec. 3, he writes:
"The collective labourer, formed by the combination of a number of detail labourers, is the machinery specially characteristic of the manufacturing periods. The various operations that are performed in turns by the producer of a commodity, and coalesce one with another during the progress of production, lay claim to him in various ways. … The one-sidedness and the deficiencies of the detail labourer become perfections when he is a p[at of the collective labourer. The habit of doing only one thing converts him into a never failing instrument, while his connexion with the whole mechanism compels him to work with the regularity of the parts of a machine." (Footnotes omitted.)
(Continued)
So, the highest achievement of capitalism is to turn the worker into a mere cog in a machine, resulting to his/her alienation from his/her work. No references to anti-Semitism here. But wait. In Section 4, he writes:
“In manufacture, as well as in simple co-operation, the collective working organism is a form of existence of capital. The mechanism that is made up of numerous individual detail labourers belong to the capitalist. Hence, the productive power resulting from a combination of labours appears to be the productive power of capital. Manufacture proper not only subjects the previously independent workman to the discipline and command of capital, but, in addition, creates a hierarchic gradation of the workmen themselves. … If, at first, the workman sels his labour power to capital, because the material means of producing a commodity fail him, now his very labor-power refuses its services unless it has been sold to capital. Its’ fucntions can be exercised only in an environment that eists in the workshop of the capitalist after the ale. By nature unfitted to make anything independently, the manufacturing labourer develops productive activity as a mere appendage of the capitalist’s workshop. As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital.”
There you have it – “As the chosen people [the Jews] bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah [the Jewish God], so division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital [which is worshipped by the Jews].” But, money – capital – is the essential currency which greases the wheels of capitalism, money, which is “the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist.”
I can already hear the heated rejoinders - I am distorting the meaning of this sentence. Marx is speaking in merely metaphorical terms. This is just one sentence selectively picked out of the thousands of sentences Marx wrote. Etc. etc.
Why do expressions of anti-Semitism in Marx’s writings never prosper as the basis for his criticism of capitalism? Because if it prospers, none dare call it anti-Semitism. Academics adept at interpreting the most obscure references of other thinkers, adept at reading between the lines and linking passages in a thinker’s different writings separated by decades, refuse to acknowledge the correlation between this sentence and Marx’s denunciation of Jews for whom, “Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist” – money, which is the essential currency of capitalism, and to which the manufacturing labourer becomes its tethered property.
I have only skimmed fairly quickly Marc's comments above. But I already have one criticism: in those opening passages Marc calls "ahistorical anti-Semitic nonsense," Marx is summarizing Bauer's view, not expressing his own view. First he summarizes Bauer, then he gives his own view. Marc has run the two together.
Anyway, what follows is my comment on Marx's "On the Jewish Question," which I've now read (in Marx, Early Writings, Vintage Books/Random House, 1975, pp. 211-241). The piece has two parts, the first longer than the second. In my opinion, the first part does not contain anything anti-Semitic, or at least nothing that struck me as markedly anti-Semitic. The second part does.
The first part is hard to summarize briefly, but one thing Marx does here is to contrast "political emancipation" with "human emancipation." Political emancipation in this context means the granting of civil rights to – in this case – Jews, but more generally to members of all religious groups. Marx calls political emancipation "a big step forward" (p. 221) but contrasts it with human emancipation, where humans come into their "true species-being” (p. 226, italics in original) and, among other things, renounce religion completely. For Jews to emancipate themselves "as humans" (226), they would have to renounce Judaism (just as, presumably, for Christians to emancipate themselves as humans, they would have to renounce Christianity, though in the second part it becomes clear that Marx sees Judaism in a different light than Christianity). "If you Jews want to be politically emancipated without emancipating yourselves as humans, the incompleteness and the contradiction lies not only in you but in the nature and the category of political emancipation." (226, italics in original) This line is anti-religion, obviously, but I don’t think it is anti-Semitic.
[continued in next box]
It's the second, briefer part of "On the Jewish Question" that has the offensive content. Here Marx identifies "the secular basis of Judaism" (236) and "the practical Jewish spirit" (237) with finance, exchange, money. "The god of the Jews has been secularized and become the god of the world. Exchange is the true god of the Jew." (239) "What is present in an abstract form in the Jewish religion – contempt for theory, for art, for history, for man as an end in himself – is the actual and conscious standpoint, the virtue, of the man of money....The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.” (239, italics in original)
I was also going to quote a passage that I think Marc quotes above, but further quotation is probably not necessary.
None of this really has anything to do with Marx's theory of exploitation, which he had not yet developed when he wrote "On the Jewish Question." The word "exploitation" does not appear in the piece. (Neither does the word "capitalism.")
So "On the Jewish Question" does not, in my view, support the claim that anti-Semitism is integral to Marx's theory of exploitation.
P.s. Marx wrote "On the Jewish Question" as a very young man. Probably some aspects of what he says there, e.g. the emphasis on "species-being" (a notion that comes from Feuerbach, as the Glossary of Key Terms in the pb. ed. of Early Writings notes) carry over into his later years. But the piece has to be read in the context of his other early writings.
Another issue is the extent to which Marx's picture of Jews and Judaism in the second part of "On the Jewish Question" reflects the culture of the time (and, perhaps, place). To one sentence in the second part the editor or translator attaches a footnote: "The German word Judentum -- 'Judaism' -- could also be used [in the 19th century, presumably?] to mean 'commerce'. Marx plays on this double meaning of the word." (238, n.37)
It took me a little while to find the passage from Capital v. 1 Marc highlights (bc he didn't give the cite correctly). It's in ch. 14, sec.5. The translation I have gives it as: "As the chosen people bore in their features the sign that they were the property of Jehovah, so the division of labor brands the manufacturing worker as the property of capital." If you read this sentence in context (or even out of context), there's nothing really anti-Semitic about it.
In "On the Jewish Question" Marx says that the "true god of the Jew" is "exchange." Also:
"What is the secular cult of the Jew? Haggling. What is his secular God? Money." (236)
So in "On the Jewish Question," he identifies "the Jew" with haggling, exchange, money, "practical need," "egoism," "civil society," "self-interest," wiliness (i.e., cunning or, in a derogatory sense, cleverness), as in:
"Jewish Jesuitry, the same practical Jesuitry that Bauer finds in the Talmud, is the relationship of the world of self-interest to the laws that dominate it; the wily circumvention of those laws constitutes the principal skill of that world." (240)
By contrast, in the section from Capital ch. 14, he's talking about how the manufacturing process -- something that is not discussed at all in "On the Jewish Question" -- "converts the worker" -- "the worker" is a phrase afaict that doesn't appear at all in "On the Jewish Question" -- "into a crippled monstrosity...." It's in that context that the line "As the chosen people bore in their features the sign that they were the property of Jehovah, so the division of labor brands the manufacturing worker as the property of capital" appears. The line is a little obscure, I guess, and may traffic in certain stereotypes about appearance and physiognomy (stereotypes and notions that wd likely have been commonplace in the 19th cent.) but it's not obviously anti-Semitic.
In my copy of Capital, I have that line highlighted in yellow (prob the result of a tendency to overuse highlighter as a student in those days). What do I have written next to it the margins? Absolutely nothing. No "Anti-Semite!" No "Bigotry!" No "Anti-Semitism!" No "Disgusting!" No "Revolting!" Nothing.
Possibly that could have been, I suppose, b/c I was incapable of recognizing anti-Semitism, but the far more plausible explanation for why I wrote nothing in the margin is that the line is not anti-Semitic.
LFC,
This will be my last comment on this subject, because it has become obvious to me that I am wasting my time, as you, I assume, responding to me is a waste of your time. But your latest comment is more of your sophistry. The fact that when you first read Capital, as an undergraduate I assume, the fact that you did not interpret the sentence I have highlighted as anti-Semitic must mean that you, as wise as you were at that age, must be correct and, of course, “the far more plausible explanation for why I wrote nothing in the margin is that the line is not anti-Semitic.” Even at that tender age, LFC was such an authority that we must all acknowledge that the fact that he did not see, at that tender age, any hint of anti-Semitism means that there was no anti-Semitism – despite the fact, as notes, Marx refers to the physiognomy of the Jew – what did he have in mind, the conventional view of the Jew with a hook nose? No snit-Semitism there, apparently. And at that time he saw no plausible correlation with Marx’s essay On The Jewish Question, which, by the way, he has read for the first time only this week.
And , of course, there is no correlation, between Marx’s observation that, “Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it” and “The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world,” with his assertion in Capital that just as the chosen people bear the sign manual of Jehovah, the “division of labor brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital,” i.e., the medium which is the god of the Jews. To make such a correlation leap between an earlier writing and a later writing of the same author is too tenuous to merit serious contemplation. Academics are too sophisticated to advance such questionable correlations, whereas, as in Prof. Wolff’s next few posts, the correlation between the Book of Genesis, chapter 3 verses 16 – 19 and Marx’s discussion of the alienation of labor is a far more palatable, profound and creative correlation. The correlation between Marx’s espousal of anti-Semitism at the age of 30 and his later development of his critique of capitalism at the age of 54 in Capital which culminates in the “manufacturing workman as the property of capital,” not so much.
Marc,
You're right about one thing. I did read On the Jewish Question for the first time this week. (I could have written more about it, but I decided to try to keep my comments relatively short and relatively to the point at hand.)
Since you're so convinced about this whole issue, why don't you take it up directly w Proff Wolff, who is certainly more steeped in Marx than I am or than most of the other readers here probably are.
The issue btw is not that I was so wise as an undergraduate, that's not what I meant. Not at all. (Or for that matter that I'm wise now. No, not saying that.) Rather it's that as a Jewish kid the line did not jump out at me as anti-Semitic. That's all I meant. Doesn't prove anything. Just an anecdote.
P.s. Marx was 25 when he wrote "On the Jewish Question," not 30 (as Marc says above).
That’s it! I’ve had it. More sophistry from you. You seem to think that 1843 – 1818 = 25!
This is not a big deal, but it does equal 25. (Unless there's some joke here I'm missing.)
That's humor, I believe.
Both Marc and I are Jersey Boys and so maybe I get his humor when others don't.
Thanks, s.w.
I guess I shd have been from New Jersey.
At the end of Casablanca, Rick says to his sometime adversary, Capt. Renaud, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
So I say to s. wallersteine, despite our back-and-forth disputes and quarrels, from one Jersey boy to another, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Marc,
Ok. It's a deal.
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