RadixJournal - Karl Marx： On the Jewish Question

00:00:00.000 Karl Marx born in 1813 or 1818 I forget 1818 and he died in 1883 had a life that was roughly

00:00:12.820 contemporaneous with Richard Wagner for whatever that's worth. Richard Wagner was involved in the

00:00:20.380 1848 revolutions across Europe. Karl Marx was intensely involved as well. His most famous

00:00:28.820 essay the communist manifesto i guess the the book that if you know next to nothing about marx you

00:00:35.260 know he wrote um was produced at that time and was meant as a revolutionary program for that

00:00:45.340 mid-19th century uh point of upheaval carl marx is jewish by birth but he is the uh son of germans

00:00:56.340 who converted to Lutheranism.

00:01:00.160 So that, too, suggests a sort of ambivalence

00:01:05.000 that you could see within Karl Marx.

00:01:08.580 At the end of the essay, there are passages

00:01:12.040 that I think could fairly be called anti-Semitic.

00:01:16.060 At the same time, he is in many ways reacting

00:01:20.400 against a sort of hegelian let's call it new atheist and anti-semitism that is emerging with

00:01:30.420 bruno bauer who is actually a advisor in his dissertation carl marx's advisor that is

00:01:37.480 and he wants liberation he wants liberation for all jews and no they don't have to liberate

00:01:45.560 themselves from Yahweh before that happens. They just need to immediately be liberated.

00:01:51.400 He also expresses a sort of fondness for Judaism, religion in general, Christianity

00:02:00.520 as well, that was not shared by many of his contemporaries, including Bruno Bauer. He

00:02:08.780 does not see religion entirely as a tool of the state used to oppress people he certainly

00:02:19.360 could have viewed it that way um growing up in the early to mid 19th century uh where the german

00:02:29.180 state was an official christian one uh they were modern in many ways particularly economically

00:02:36.080 modern but holding on to the vestiges of feudalism uh oppressive right-wing aristocratic reactionary

00:02:46.240 however you want to describe them uh they used christianity as a way of seeking their own

00:02:54.040 legitimacy and as a way of repressing revolutionary activity and the working classes

00:03:01.980 at large uh so marx would have been within his rights to view christianity that way but he

00:03:08.920 doesn't and that is very important as we look at this essay so this essay was sort of a

00:03:17.460 i guess a response to a response to a response there is a figure named david strauss

00:03:25.000 um about 10 or 12 years older than Karl Marx uh along with Brudo Bauer they were roughly the same

00:03:32.040 age uh they are coming from the Hegelian side of academia and Hegel was sort of the

00:03:45.320 great philosopher of german prussian academia at the time uh and that shouldn't be too surprising

00:03:57.040 because after all uh all of world history worked out through its inner logic the dialectic

00:04:05.920 of cancellation and affirmation within negation has ended up here

00:04:12.200 hey guys i am so sorry about the lateness oh that's fine internet problem okay good well i'm

00:04:22.140 glad you're here i think it was operator error so apologies well so i was just sort of rambling

00:04:31.680 around giving a introduction to mark's introduction to this essay on the jewish question and how it

00:04:38.600 relates to this deeper ambivalence about Jews vis-a-vis Paul and Martin Luther and even Hitler,

00:04:49.940 etc. So Hegelianism, the notion that the idea will work its way out in world history,

00:05:03.640 that there are there is a logical core to history itself that you can glimpse this is sort of

00:05:15.740 legendary but the notion that the world spirit or weltgeist was um on horseback in the form of

00:05:25.040 Napoleon it's it's sort of a funny anecdote but in a way it is a deeply hegelian idea the

00:05:31.400 ideal making itself real and a philosopher as an analyst can see the workings out of the ideal

00:05:41.700 throughout world history um david strauss who i mentioned earlier was hegelian he was part of this

00:05:49.600 world and uh he wrote a book on the life of jesus that might very well be i mean i'm i'm you can

00:05:59.860 always find counter examples to this but it might very well be the first example of christ mythicism

00:06:06.020 and he you know christ was not the son of god all of the miracle stuff was just made up he did

00:06:13.900 assume a sort of historicity to christ but he was moving in the direction of a um dismantling

00:06:23.900 deconstruction of christianity uh this put him uh out of sorts with hegel himself i guess hegelians

00:06:34.620 as a major school and academia it certainly put him himself at sorts at odds i should say

00:06:40.740 with uh the german state that was funding these universities uh etc etc and a young bruno bauer

00:06:49.040 was tasked with refuting this from a hegelian point of view uh and he did that that was a very

00:06:56.620 early essay and 10 years later he not only agreed with david strauss but seemed to

00:07:06.920 hammer the nail home even harder you could say in the sense of the deconstruction of

00:07:16.120 jesus christ as a god man the son of god who lived on earth reigns in heaven will come again

00:07:24.340 and um karl marx again deeply influenced by bauer they are both in this way left hegelians

00:07:34.640 um karl marx will sort of situate himself to the left of a left hegelian like bruno bauer

00:07:42.380 They are taking the structure of the thought of Hegel and moving it into new realms.

00:07:56.160 And they are certainly dispensing with the perhaps surprising conservative quality to Hegel himself.

00:08:07.360 So I mentioned Bruno Bauer.

00:08:10.300 He wrote a series of articles on the Jewish question, and these will be summarized and relayed in Marx's essay, so we don't need to go into them in too much depth.

00:08:24.160 They'll be gone into in depth by Karl Marx.

00:08:28.460 But he basically made some fundamental points.

00:08:32.900 Religion is itself a form of oppression.

00:08:36.280 Religion is itself radically conservative. Religion is itself helpful to aristocrats as they seek to avoid revolution and oppress the working people. 0.93

00:08:51.980 um Karl Marx is responding to Bauer again his former friend and advisor and uh agreeing with

00:09:04.500 him in some important ways uh Karl Marx does not believe that religion is going to persist

00:09:13.280 in the age of socialism and and communism and the world he would like to see but he has a much more

00:09:21.000 nuanced vision of religion and christianity and judaism in particular that is worth addressing

00:09:31.560 and it's worth looking at karl marx's own ambivalence about this uh matter as well

00:09:38.940 um there's not enough time to go into all of karl marx needless to say uh but i i there's this nice

00:09:50.200 This little quote that is addressed to Hegelians and demonstrates the way that he is sort of turning Hegel on his head, retaining the structure of Hegel's thought, but reversing it in fundamental ways.

00:10:13.860 And I will just read this right here.

00:10:17.160 This is actually from none other than Das Kapital.

00:10:23.860 My dialectical method is in its foundations, not only different from the Hegelian, but exactly opposite to it.

00:10:32.400 For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he even transforms into an independent subject under the name of the idea.

00:10:40.680 so it's almost a it's an idealism that's almost transcendent it's beyond even the humans thinking

00:10:50.820 the idea it's the idea itself that is working it's working out its own inner logic and this

00:10:58.440 inner logic is reflected by history under the name of the idea is the creator of the real world

00:11:06.980 and the real world is only the external appearance of the idea.

00:11:12.240 With me, the reverse is true.

00:11:14.380 The ideal is nothing but the material world

00:11:17.560 reflected in the mind of men

00:11:19.640 and translated into forms of thought.

00:11:23.140 So this is where we get notions of materialism.

00:11:30.280 We get notions of false consciousness and so on.

00:11:34.720 you could sort of see how christianity would be useful for um aristocratic elites whether

00:11:42.240 they're aware of what they're doing or not uh of look we'll all be equal in the afterlife none of

00:11:49.880 this the here and now this doesn't really matter too much so get to work uh heaven will come later

00:11:58.700 on uh but uh you live in a veil of tears you must live by the sweat of your brow um all of that

00:12:07.740 stuff that sort of world denialism demoralization you could say uh could be very useful for

00:12:16.300 aristocratic elites or capitalist elites later on who wanted to maintain the system and certainly

00:12:22.340 it was overtly used that way by feudal elites so again you probably encountered this to some degree

00:12:30.260 with marks of you know three big stages of of world history or at least european history a

00:12:37.220 ancient world that involved master and slave and thus the philosophical systems are going to be

00:12:44.240 sort of in relation to or or justifications for the master and slave relationship in giving

00:12:52.320 legitimacy to the master's whip hand so to speak um this was transformed into feudalism

00:13:00.980 uh not quite slavery but serfdom and this is sort of the age of christianity in its full flourishing

00:13:10.220 and now we are in an age of capitalism uh that is fundamentally defined by the owners of capital

00:13:19.320 money power the means of production the factories etc and the wage laborer so the man who is in

00:13:27.940 effect trading his labor for money uh that this is the fundamental relation in the 19th century world

00:13:39.540 i think it's fair to say that that's still the fundamental relation in economies uh all over the

00:13:47.560 planet in fact not just in the advanced economies of will you work will you give me your labor for

00:13:54.560 twenty dollars an hour um that is what everyone is doing on some level um even though it's uh

00:14:03.080 we don't quite have a working class situation like we did in the 19th century you see

00:14:08.020 uh the point now each of these stages according to Marx are going to lead to the next one and

00:14:15.640 the institutions above the real economy are sort of reflecting the real economy. So things like

00:14:21.920 universities, monasteries, art and culture, these are just reflecting social relations in each of

00:14:29.220 these big world eras. And at some point, there is a technological change that is the real economy

00:14:40.920 changes in such a way that it will allow for a transformation of the institutions, our ways of

00:14:49.840 life, our ways of interacting between other human beings, and will certainly transform itself into

00:14:56.020 art and culture. So capitalism is a necessary stage in this world picture. Each of these feudalism,

00:15:09.420 the master and slave. These are all necessary stages. There's going to be a moment where

00:15:14.520 technology advances to a point in which that existing relation between human beings is no

00:15:23.600 longer necessary. And so capitalism is going to birth its own demise. The capitalist will sell

00:15:32.020 you the rope that you hang him with. You might have heard phrases like that said by Marxists,

00:15:37.980 that capitalism which is extremely productive it puts the ancient world and the medieval world to

00:15:44.940 shame it is going to be so productive that we will eventually through a revolution or something like

00:15:51.040 this eventually reach a sort of stage of socialism where we are providing to people on the basis of

00:16:01.100 their ability so that the government is going to own the means of production to a great degree,

00:16:11.060 but you will still be provided more money, luxury, wealth, et cetera, due to your contribution.

00:16:17.160 At some point, even that will be transformed to a state of communism that he does not quite

00:16:24.060 describe in detail, but sort of outlines of a point where you will be provided according to

00:16:30.480 your need and that scarcity itself will be something of the past the state the need to

00:16:39.480 you know keep everything in line police forces etc these things will start to start to wither

00:16:48.200 away and so scarcity is overcome the uh division of labor is overcome you you might be a poet in

00:16:57.720 the morning and a fisherman in the afternoon the division of things like art and labor will be

00:17:02.960 overcome scarcity is uh you know is not a problem and thus your labor becomes a sort of art as it

00:17:11.060 were you do what you want it's a an attractive vision you can see why why it appeals to uh

00:17:17.980 bohemians layabouts and grad students but um this is the uh vision of Karl Marx and it's also a sort

00:17:27.120 of heaven on earth it's like a deeply christian vision as well um it would i i don't think it's

00:17:37.680 a vision of the way that we should relate to one another as human beings that would offend jesus

00:17:45.380 christ if t if he existed and thus you always reach this interesting contradiction with people

00:17:53.440 like Marx, and I would say leftist in general, where not all of them, of course, but most all

00:18:00.300 of them are a little bit cynical about Christianity, don't believe in God, find a lot, if not all,

00:18:09.280 expressions of Christianity to be oppressive, etc. But then they seem so indebted to the

00:18:20.700 Christian message, that they represent a sort of secularization of the Gospels. They're deeply

00:18:28.720 indebted to the morality of Christianity in a way that maybe not all of them are fully aware.

00:18:38.720 They are, to some degree, the true Christians. They're truer Christians than many

00:18:47.000 conservatives or traditionalists who want to hold on to the literalness of the religion

00:18:57.000 and say, you know, Dagnummit, Jesus was born in a manger, he was crucified, and he rose again.

00:19:05.400 There it is. I believe in that. They believe in this sort of supernatural spectacle,

00:19:10.860 And they are either too blind or too stupid to see the real inner message of these religions, which resembles to a startling degree communism and utopia that is being put forth by. 1.00

RadixJournal - June 02, 2026

Karl Marx： On the Jewish Question

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