Jewish Philosophical Politics in Germany, 1789-1848

Jews between Volk and Proletariat { 165

most ridiculous things on me [heftete mir die lächerlichsten Dinge auf die

Nase], e.g., the state and religion had to be dissolved in the concept [im

Begriff aufgelöst werden], property and the family as well; what was to be

done constructively [positiv] he [man] didn’t know, he only knew that every-

thing had to be negated, i.e. make a principle of the negativity of the frivolous

world and suspend [aufheben] all certainty, all character, all enthusiasm for

humanity’s historical tasks, which one can never conceive of other than in

positive terms.... It is sadly only too true that it really is the system of frivol-

ity: not to recognize intellectual certainty as positive, but rather to dissolve

each certainty immediately, due to its narrowness, into the laughter of the

super-clever [superklugen] subject.... Die Freien are a frivolous and blasé

clique.^73

For a contextualized reading of Marx’s “Zur Judenfrage” it is important

to appreciate the nature of the inflammatory and emphatically antipragmatic

stance Bauer was moving toward in 1842 and the role that his interventions on

the Jewish Question played in this evolution. As Douglas Moggach notes, when

Marx criticized Bauer and the Freien on tactical grounds in autumn 1842 the two

nonetheless “shared a republican orientation.”^74 Instead of the tactical reckless-

ness of Bauer and the Freien, Marx called for a more pragmatic approach to

contesting reigning political conditions. He also opposed “real” political con-

ditions to contentless religion. In “Zur Judenfrage,” roughly a year later, Marx

would dismiss politics as essentially lacking in content. He had come to see

religion and politics as different forms of abstraction away from a more funda-

mental social reality. Thus while Marx consistently sees Bauer as in some sense

too abstract, after resigning as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung Marx had to

rethink radically the nature of the reality he would oppose to Bauer’s abstrac-

tion. If Marx’s polemics with Bauer took shape around essentially tactical ques-

tions, they became more urgently implicated in Marx’s self-definition as Marx

struggled to define himself as a theorist and activist beyond the pale of liberal life

and politics. Marx could no longer dismiss Bauer’s mode of self-aggrandizing

incendiary intellectual elitism with calls for a more pragmatic commitment to

causes that Marx had now come to view as also radically insufficient. In “Zur Ju-

denfrage” Marx begins to define his own theory and practice of radical critique

in contrast to Bauer’s, and to redefine the very ground from which he speaks.

Bauer was the most conspicuous self-styled radical critic on the German

scene in 1842 – 43 , precisely when Marx was struggling most acutely to redefine

himself as a radical (postliberal) social critic. In the volatile period between

Marx’s abandoning liberal politics and his working out the precepts of his-