326 } Notes to Chapter 4
Jewish emancipation only in the Die heilige Familie, and then only to score points against
Bauer (Geography of Hope, 64 ). In fact, Marx argues expressly in ZJ 1 that Jews deserve po-
litical emancipation: “If Bauer asks the Jews: Have you from your standpoint the right to
want political emancipation? we ask the converse question: Does the standpoint of politi-
cal emancipation give the right to demand from the Jew the abolition of Judaism and from
man the abolition of religion?” (Marx and Engels, MECW, 3 : 150 ). Marx answers his own
question with a resounding “no.” He writes further of political emancipation that although
it is “not the final form of human emancipation in general... it is the final form of human
emancipation within the hitherto existing world order. It goes without saying that we are
speaking here of real, practical emancipation” (ibid., 3 : 155 ). Marx says, then, that political
emancipation is the highest form of liberation yet achieved in human history, and that Jews
fully deserve it and should not have to give up their religion or particular identity as part of
a quid pro quo for political rights. Paul Rose claims that “On the Jewish Question is in fact
the foundation of an entirely secularized form of Jew-hatred far more systematic in its theory
than the other revolutionary efforts of Bauer and company” (Revolutionary Antisemitism in
Germany from Kant to Wagner [hereafter RA], 301 – 2 ). Rose refers to the uses a subsequent
tradition of antisemitism on the Left made of Marx’s text, but his statement also seems (it
remains ambiguous) to see Marx’s “Zur Judenfrage” itself—and not only its subsequent ap-
propriations—as a “far more systematic” theory of Jew-hatred than Bauer’s. On subsequent
socialist abuses of Marx’s text, see Fischer, The Socialist Response. For recent even-handed
assessments of the antisemitism of Marx’s essay, see Haury, “Zur Judenfrage,” and Leopold,
The Young Karl Marx, 163 – 80.
120. Marx and Engels, MEW, 1 : 352.
121. Marx and Engels, MECW, 3 : 151.
122. See Breckman, DS, 293 – 94.
123. Marx and Engels, MECW, 3 : 149.
124. Marx wrote in a third letter to Ruge published in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher
(dated September 1843 , when Marx was working on ZJ 1 ): “The reform of consciousness
consists only in making the world aware of its own consciousness, in awakening it out of its
dream about itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions. Our whole object can
only be—as is also the case in Feuerbach’s criticism of religion—to give religious and philo-
sophical questions the form corresponding to man who has become conscious of himself ”
(Marx and Engels, MECW, 3 : 144 ; and MEW, 1 : 346 ). Marx seeks to reveal to the world the
alienation of its consciousness in the political state in strict analogy to how Feuerbach reveals
the alienation of consciousness in religion. He draws an ironic, but still telling, analogy be-
tween the aims of the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher and Christian confession and mercy:
“We can formulate the trend of our journal as being: self-clarification (critical philosophy) to
be gained by the present time of its struggles and desires. This is a work for the world and
for us. It can be only the work of united forces. It is a matter of a confession [Beichte], and
nothing more. In order to secure remission of its sins, mankind has only to declare them for
what they actually are” (Marx and Engels, MECW, 3 : 145 ; and MEW, 1 : 346 ). If Marx opens
ZJ 2 by deriding Bauer’s model of emancipation as merely a Bekenntis—an emancipation of
consciousness only—the same criticism is apposite for Marx’s model in ZJ 1. In Marx’s ideo-
logical “confession” one comprehends and disavows the errors of mystified consciousness,
and by this act freedom almost magically realizes itself: “It will then become evident that the