I’d really really suggest reading the entire article you’re quoting because it is quite good and you might be surprised. Marx uses language he probably shouldn’t use today honestly, but the entire point of it is that he’s responding to a very vocal antisemite
What you’re quoting is out of context. That comes from an exchange Marx was having with Bruno Bauer, where he was offering Bauer a situation where the worst antisemitic stereotypes were true. Even if they were true, they’re all connected to money, so Marx goes on to make claims like this is a practical development of emancipation Jews have had to adopt, like how many Jewish people during feudalism had to adopt careers in banking or finance.
The article finishes with “Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.”
What he means is that in a society that can’t have the social means to even enact the stereotypes of Jews, then the negative stereotype of a Jew wouldn’t even exist. Bauer was making the argument that society needed to be liberated from Judaism, and Marx’s response is that liberating society would get rid of the Judaism in Bauer’s imagination.
Edit: This was the article I was referencing, I just wanted to make sure we were speaking of the same one. It conflated Marx with Marxism which I don’t particularly care for. It also references “The Russian Loan” which is often attributed to Marx but it hasn’t been confirmed. So all in all, not the best article. i feel the quote I provided in my last comment, even in context, is still problematic and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to call him antisemitic.
I just can’t imagine a context in which those kinds of statements wouldn’t be antisemitic, or most generously, incredibly innacurate generalizations. It starts with the premise “all Jews are money hungry idolaters” and goes on to say “they’re only money hungry idolaters because capitalism”. That would be like me saying sure, all blacks are criminals but they’re only criminals because of capitalism. Get rid of capitalism and all blacks will no longer be criminals, thus blackness would cease to exist. There’s a degree of truth to that but most people would agree that it’s an unhelpful generalization that relies on stereotypes. Many would call it racist and they’d be correct in my opinion. It’s whittling down an ethnic, cultural and religious group with a rich history to a handful of hateful, innacurate qualities and then saying that the abolition of capitalism will erase that groups cultural identity because they’re no longer required to fulfill these inaccurate stereotypes. It just doesn’t sit right with me
When asked about gangs Tupac once said, “What I want to know, though, is why all of a sudden is everybody acting like gangs are some new phenomenon in this country? Almost everyone in America is affiliated with some kind of gang. We got the FBI, the ATF, the police departments, the religious groups, the Democrats and the Republicans. Everybody’s got their own little clique and they’re all out there gangbanging in their own little way.”
He didn’t deny that any black person was in a violent gang, he said that they were no more likely to be in gangs than anyone else was. Likewise Marx wasn’t going to try to tell an antisemite like Bauer that no Jew anywhere was greedy. He was saying that if they are its because we all live in a system that allows for and encourages people to be like that.
There’s an article I can’t find and really wish I could link, because it’s obviously much more eloquent, where a black theorist shows the almost exact parallels between On the Jewish Question and an interview with Tupac Shakur saying exactly this. The interviewer asks some bullshit about are black men actually violent, gun-toting etc., and most black interviewees would give one of two answers - either they say no, and the interviewer would just point to racial violence stats, or they say yes but I’m one of the good ones. Instead Tupac said yes, and that’s the obviously correct decision in the world they’re forced to live in. Black men live in a dangerous world where becoming violent and having firearms is the only way to survive - and the only way to change that is to fundamentally change the society they live in.
On the Jewish Question is a reply by Marx (both of whose parents were Jewish, but converted to escape antisemitism) to an actual antisemite arguing for the exclusion of Jewish people from society. Marx’s response was basically, fuck you, why not, all these horrible things you’ve said about Jews are true - because these things are intrinsic to capitalism. You’re just describing the inner “”“Jewishness”“” of capitalism, and if you want to get rid of it, if you want Jewish people (and everyone else!) to stop acting like that, the only way to do it is to overcome capitalism. I not only don’t think Marx was wrong to make the argument this way, I think it’s a powerful critique and I think it remained true when Tupac independently came up with basically the same thing. But then, I was led to this conclusion by a much more well-written article.
Gotcha, that does make more sense and I realize now that’s essentially what the comment I replied to was saying. The point wasn’t making it’s way through my thick skull haha
That’s alright, misinterpreting that essay is like it’s own whole cottage industry for anti-Marxists, so 100% of the search results I found while looking for the defense were like “PROOF THAT COMMUNISM IS ANTISEMITIC”. My first exposure to that essay was a theorist confidently showing me what it was really about, if I’d happened on the subject randomly I’d probably also have had a brain-crust of targeted misinformation to break through.
I’d really really suggest reading the entire article you’re quoting because it is quite good and you might be surprised. Marx uses language he probably shouldn’t use today honestly, but the entire point of it is that he’s responding to a very vocal antisemite
What you’re quoting is out of context. That comes from an exchange Marx was having with Bruno Bauer, where he was offering Bauer a situation where the worst antisemitic stereotypes were true. Even if they were true, they’re all connected to money, so Marx goes on to make claims like this is a practical development of emancipation Jews have had to adopt, like how many Jewish people during feudalism had to adopt careers in banking or finance.
The article finishes with “Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.”
What he means is that in a society that can’t have the social means to even enact the stereotypes of Jews, then the negative stereotype of a Jew wouldn’t even exist. Bauer was making the argument that society needed to be liberated from Judaism, and Marx’s response is that liberating society would get rid of the Judaism in Bauer’s imagination.
Edit: This was the article I was referencing, I just wanted to make sure we were speaking of the same one. It conflated Marx with Marxism which I don’t particularly care for. It also references “The Russian Loan” which is often attributed to Marx but it hasn’t been confirmed. So all in all, not the best article. i feel the quote I provided in my last comment, even in context, is still problematic and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to call him antisemitic.
I just can’t imagine a context in which those kinds of statements wouldn’t be antisemitic, or most generously, incredibly innacurate generalizations. It starts with the premise “all Jews are money hungry idolaters” and goes on to say “they’re only money hungry idolaters because capitalism”. That would be like me saying sure, all blacks are criminals but they’re only criminals because of capitalism. Get rid of capitalism and all blacks will no longer be criminals, thus blackness would cease to exist. There’s a degree of truth to that but most people would agree that it’s an unhelpful generalization that relies on stereotypes. Many would call it racist and they’d be correct in my opinion. It’s whittling down an ethnic, cultural and religious group with a rich history to a handful of hateful, innacurate qualities and then saying that the abolition of capitalism will erase that groups cultural identity because they’re no longer required to fulfill these inaccurate stereotypes. It just doesn’t sit right with me
When asked about gangs Tupac once said, “What I want to know, though, is why all of a sudden is everybody acting like gangs are some new phenomenon in this country? Almost everyone in America is affiliated with some kind of gang. We got the FBI, the ATF, the police departments, the religious groups, the Democrats and the Republicans. Everybody’s got their own little clique and they’re all out there gangbanging in their own little way.”
He didn’t deny that any black person was in a violent gang, he said that they were no more likely to be in gangs than anyone else was. Likewise Marx wasn’t going to try to tell an antisemite like Bauer that no Jew anywhere was greedy. He was saying that if they are its because we all live in a system that allows for and encourages people to be like that.
There’s an article I can’t find and really wish I could link, because it’s obviously much more eloquent, where a black theorist shows the almost exact parallels between On the Jewish Question and an interview with Tupac Shakur saying exactly this. The interviewer asks some bullshit about are black men actually violent, gun-toting etc., and most black interviewees would give one of two answers - either they say no, and the interviewer would just point to racial violence stats, or they say yes but I’m one of the good ones. Instead Tupac said yes, and that’s the obviously correct decision in the world they’re forced to live in. Black men live in a dangerous world where becoming violent and having firearms is the only way to survive - and the only way to change that is to fundamentally change the society they live in.
On the Jewish Question is a reply by Marx (both of whose parents were Jewish, but converted to escape antisemitism) to an actual antisemite arguing for the exclusion of Jewish people from society. Marx’s response was basically, fuck you, why not, all these horrible things you’ve said about Jews are true - because these things are intrinsic to capitalism. You’re just describing the inner “”“Jewishness”“” of capitalism, and if you want to get rid of it, if you want Jewish people (and everyone else!) to stop acting like that, the only way to do it is to overcome capitalism. I not only don’t think Marx was wrong to make the argument this way, I think it’s a powerful critique and I think it remained true when Tupac independently came up with basically the same thing. But then, I was led to this conclusion by a much more well-written article.
Gotcha, that does make more sense and I realize now that’s essentially what the comment I replied to was saying. The point wasn’t making it’s way through my thick skull haha
That’s alright, misinterpreting that essay is like it’s own whole cottage industry for anti-Marxists, so 100% of the search results I found while looking for the defense were like “PROOF THAT COMMUNISM IS ANTISEMITIC”. My first exposure to that essay was a theorist confidently showing me what it was really about, if I’d happened on the subject randomly I’d probably also have had a brain-crust of targeted misinformation to break through.
I’m pretty sure the article you’re referring to is a section of the great redsails piece Masses, Elites, and Rebels: the Theory of Brainwashing
Ah, that’s exactly it! I knew I’d read it on redsails, but I couldn’t find it in the article search - I guess it only searches titles.
I had the same experience, so I just googled “redsails Tupac shakur”