Karl Marx: A Biography

76 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHY

his practical political power, is the general contradiction between politics
and the power of money. Whereas the first ideally is superior to the
second, in fact it is its bondsman.'^52 The basis of civil society was practical
need, and the god of this practical need was money - the secularised god
of the Jews:
Money is the jealous god of Israel before whom no other god may
stand. Money debases all the gods of man and turns them into com-
modities. Money is the universal, self-constituted value of all things. It
has therefore robbed the whole world, human as well as natural, of its
own values. Money is the alienated essence of man's work and being;
this alien essence dominates him; and he adores it."
Judaism could not develop further as a religion, but had succeeded in
installing itself in practice at the heart of civil society and the Christian
world:
Judaism reaches its apogee with the completion of civil society; but
civil society first reaches its completion in the Christian world. Only
under the domination of Christianity which made all national, natural,
moral and theoretical relationships exterior to man, could civil society
separate itself completely from the life of the state, tear asunder all the
species-bonds of man, put egoism and selfish need in the place of
these species-bonds and dissolve man into a world of atomised indi-
viduals hostile to one another.^54
Thus Christianity, which arose out of Judaism, had now dissolved and
reverted to Judaism.
Marx's conclusion outlined the idea of alienated labour that he would
shortly develop at length:
As long as man is imprisoned within religion, he only knows how to
objectify his essence by making it into an alien, imaginary being. Simi-
larly, under the domination of egoistic need he can only become practi-
cal, only create practical objects by putting his products and his activity
under the domination of an alien entity and lending them the signifi-
cance of this alien entity: money.^55
It is largely this article that has given rise to the view that Marx was
an anti-semite. It is true that a quick and unreflective reading of, particu-
larly, the briefer second section leaves a nasty impression. It is also true
that Marx indulged elsewhere in anti-Jewish remarks - though none as
sustained as here. He was himself attacked as a Jew by many of his most
prominent opponents - Ruge, Proudhon, Bakunin and Diihring; but there
is virtually no trace of Jewish self-consciousness either in his published
writings or in his private letters. An incident that occurred while Marx
was in Cologne throws some light on his attitude: