Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

148 } Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany

Begun in late 1843 and probably finished in early 1844 , “Zur Judenfrage”

falls within perhaps the most volatile period in Marx’s intellectual develop-

ment. After his editorship of the Rheinische Zeitung ended in May 1843 over

conflicts with the censor, Marx was at something of a loss, conceptually and

rhetorically. Not until Die deutsche Ideologie (The German Ideology, written in

1845 – 46 ), would Marx—in collaboration with Friedrich Engels—first articulate

the core analytical tenets of historical materialism (the productive interchange

with nature, and social relations structured by labor) to which he would ad-

here throughout his life.^11

In the intervening period he was at pains to ground his writings in something

“real.” What he came up with was a series of rhetorically forceful yet analytically

unstable and rapidly changing versions of “reality.” By late 1843 Marx had lost

faith in liberal politics, and he used Bauer’s writings on the Jewish Question as

an occasion to critique political rights as the means of achieving human free-

dom. Marx argued that formal political rights can actually naturalize, by render-

ing politically irrelevant, the alienation and social fragmentation that competi-

tive commercialism engenders. Genuine human emancipation would require

transforming the real world of commercially self-interested civil society.

Scholars have seen “Zur Judenfrage” as pivotal in Marx’s intellectual evolu-

tion, and Marx’s critique of the structural shortcomings of liberal democracy

continues to inspire political theorists.^12 Marx’s essay is not only famous but

also notorious, however, due to the vulgar negative stereotype of Jews to which

Marx resorts in part 2.

Many scholars have simply ignored Marx’s anti-Jewish language.^13 Other

scholars as diverse as Julius Carlebach, Elisabeth de Fontenay, David McLellan

and Lawrence Simon—to name only a few—have tried to “rescue” the ideas

Marx developed in part 1 from the more troubling rhetoric of part 2 , generally

by insisting on the latter part’s conceptual vacuity and gratuitousness.^14 The

majority of scholars who have concerned themselves with Marx’s anti-Jewish

language per se, including Arnold Künzli, Edmund Silberner, Robert Wistrich,

Sander Gilman, and Paul Rose, have interpreted it as a symptom of Marx’s own

Jewish self-hatred.^15

My aim, in contrast, is to analyze the relatively neglected function, within

Marx’s early project, that his anti-Jewish rhetoric performs. I do so by locating

Marx’s figuration of the Jew as the egoistic embodiment of material interest in

the rapid evolution of his thought in the crucial year of 1843.^16 My intention

is not to excuse Marx’s anti-Jewish statements or deny that the deployment of

such ugly stereotypes can have dire consequences for real people.^17 Yet both

apologies for and criticisms of Marx’s rhetorical abuse of “real Jews” tend to