On Anti-Semitism and Socialism

Reihe Hochschulschriften

Band 9

Mario Kessler

On Anti-Semitism and Socialism

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Selected Essays

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i Table of Contents

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Preface

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Karl Marx: An Example of Anti-Semitism?

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Mario Kessler

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47

The Bund and the Labour and Socialist International

65

,,The Physical Extermination of the Jews": Leon Trotsky on Anti-Semitism and Zionism

79

Arthur Rosenberg: Heretic Between the Camps

91,

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The Russian Revolution and the Jewish Workers' Movement

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Selected EssaYs"

26-284-X

27

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,,On Anti-Semitism and Socialism'

ISBN 3-896

Friedrich Engels on Anti-Semitism

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trafo verlag dr. wolfgang weist, 2005 Finkenstraße 8, 1'2621 Berlin

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The Resistance of Small Socialist Groups Against German Fascism

1,1,7

The Soviet Style of Power: Some Notes on the SED

135

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Anti-Semitism Against a Non-Jew: The Case of Paul Merker,

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52-19 53

149

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Exile Experience in Scholarship and Politics i Re-immigration of Historians to East Germany

1,67

The Fall of the Berlin'Süall and the Radical Right in East Germany

183

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5

Can Marxist Historical Thought Survive?

References

The Author

1.95

Preface

205

207

This collection of twelve essay deals with problems of historical research on anti-Semitism and on the international socialist movement. It also includes a chapter on German refugee historians who returned io East Germany after 1945. The volume attempts primarily to investigate aspects of the changing relations between workers' emancipation and the strugglê against anti-Semitism from the time of the Communist '!Øall. This book, however, does not Manifesto to the fall of the Berlin contribute to the tremendous number of contemporary writings that celebrate the defeat of socialism, a Zeitgeist literature which still dom'lflestern countries. inates official culture and politics in the advanced Eight of the essays were originally written in English, while four were translated by colleagues, and I am greatly indebted to Dr. Axel FairSchulz, Mr. Ed Kovacs, and Mr. David Schrag for their help. Special thanks are due to Mr. Marcus Aurin for correcting the whole English text. This collection represents my ongoing attempt to continue a political tradition that has been largely ignored by both orthodox communists and orthodox anti-communists: i.e., an independent radical democratic view based on moral integrity and a spontaneous internationalism as an antipode to both nationalism and anti-Semitism. The uncompromising radical spirit of such communist 'heretic' intellectuals as Leon Trotsky and Arthur Rosenberg, for example, took shape within the context of the political struggles of the workers' movement. At the same time, the political errors committed by Trotsky and Rosenberg that 7

conrributed to the defeat of a more 'libertarian' variant of communism are also addressed in this volume. The defeat of alternative currents within the communist movement few privwas followed by the concenrrarion of power in the hands of a auileged members of the party bureaucracy that became increasingly of a state tonomous over time. This was accompanied by the expansion with absosecurity service that sought to replace voluntary submission lute obedience. Repressive measures were extended to those who reprecamsented the internationalist spirit of the past. The Soviet-initiated

Karl Marx: An Example of Anti-Semitism?

paigns against 'cosmopolitanism' affected Jews as well as non-Jewish

segre-immigrants from the west to a much larger extent than other ments of the population or party membership' quesCurrent political problems may have pushed some of these tions into the background. It is nevertheless helpful to place contemporary evenrs within a broader historical perspective. Sixty years after is on the organized annihilation of the Jews in Europe, anti-Semitism in the situation political the rise again in many parts of the world; the ever Middle East is unresolved; the number of refugees is greater than colThis emerge' to yet before; and viable socialist alternatives have problems' lection of essays does not claim to offet a solution for these begin should answers for Its aim, rather, is to point out that the search can that with reexamining the rich legacy of a workets' movement form finally be discussed on irs own terms, rather than in the distorted

of a repressive state

In the introduction to the new German edition of his early works, Herbert Marcuse wrote in 1,965, that all ,,wâs written prior to Auschwitz and is separated so deeply from the present. What used to be right has now not as much become wrong but dated."1 Referring to the early essay by Karl Marx'on the 'Jewish Question,' Isaac Deutscher noted a y.ear Iater that, To my mind, the tragic events of the Nazi era neither invalidate the ciassic

Marxist analysis of the Jewish question nor call for its revision. It goes without saying that classical Marxism made no allowance for anything like the Nazis' 'Final Solution', or for the grave complications of the problem

ideologY.

in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist period in the Soviet Union. Classical Marxism reckoned with a healthier and more normal development of our civilization in general, i.e. with a timeiy transformation of the capitalist

MythanksareduetothepublishersandeditorsofBerlinerDialog

Hefte, Discours social, Hwmaniora Publishers, International Politics, palgraue/st. Martin's Press, science ønd society, socialism and Democracy, and VSA.

into a socialist

society.2

Elsewhere, Deutscher wrote that even an undercurrent

Potsdam and Berlin, August 2005

Mario Kessler

'I 2

in early Marxist writings ,,there was

of certain hostility towards the Jews, not

as Jews,

Herbert Marcuse, Kultur und Gesellschaft l(Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp, 1965), p. 11. Deutscher, lsaac, ,,Who is a Jew? [1966]," ldem, The Non-Jewish Jew and OtherEssays (London: Merlin Press, 1981), p. 49.

9

but as a prominent and spectacular section undercurrent of

'Western

European bourgeoisie. "3 invectives against his opponents, Lassalle' Examples can be especially who were of Jewish background, found in Marx's correspondence, with his closest personal friend Engels, and less so in those arricles intended for publication. Friendly Indeed,

Marxt writings are full of

remarks about Jews' howeveÍ) ane rare' Not even the beginnings of Jewish Socialism are mentioned by Marx.

Marx as a ,,Jew" within the contest of opinions

All

these questions and issues have been treated

in an expansive

schol-

arly literature. In an early work Thomas Masaryk had noted Marx's with ,,anti-Semitism,,, afthough Marx was, in all likelihood, unfamiliar this concept.a The term 'anti-Semitism' was not introduced untll 1'879, a few years prior to Marx's death, by the German publicist \üilhelm Marr - at one time a left-winger himself.s ,Marx and the Jews' are heavily colored by the Most rrearments of authors' views toward Marxism.6 such approaches range from unreflective condemnation all the way to equally unreflective and uncritical justifications. One can dismiss, as too extreme' people such as Dagobert Runes, who saw in Marx's writings a ,,blood-drenched dream" of a Marx's ,,world without Jews."7 Similarly when Robert Misrahi reads essay Zur Judenfrage as a call for the annihilation of a people, it reveals less about Marx and more about Misrahi's own pathology.s

Nevertheless, Iess biased authors have also offered harsh critiques of Marx. Both chronologically and politically diverse writers (such as Camillo Bernerie, Maximilian Rubel10, Arnold Künzli11, Hans Lamm12,

or Léon Poliakovl3) have observed a certain Marxian anti-Semitism, that - according to the conventional explanation - is really a manifestation of Jewish self-hatred. Theodor Lessing, who coined the phrase, however, did not mention Marx within that context.la Marxists have also responded to the issue of Marx's anti-Semitism with a variety of approaches. Curiousl¡ the lost world of Soviet Marxism largely avoided the issue. Very rarely have genuine experts on Marx engaged this complex and potentially controversial subject matter. David Rjazanov argues, in his 1927 study on Marx and Engels (also published in English), that Marx delineated sharply between poor Jews, with whom he identified, and the wealthy representatives of the Finanziudentum or the Jewish financiers.15 In addition to the problematic notion of Finønzjudentum) Rjazanov, who was one of the Soviet Union's most distinguished biographers of Marx and was killed by Stalin, did not provide any sources for this interpretation, as the Israeli historian Edmund Silberner has noted critically.16 Silberner, a former Communist who died as an embittered anti-Marxist in 1985, nevertheless produced one of the most thorough, sourcesbased study and analysis of Marx's thinking on the Jews. Silberner's

I 10

Camillo Berneri

, Le

juif antisémife (Paris: Vita, 1935), pp. 62-78.

Maximilian Rubel, Karl Marx: Essai de biographie intellectuelle (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1957),

o.88.

3 4

ldem, ,,The Russian Revolution and the Jewish Problem [1964]," ibid'' p' 65' Thomas G. Masaryk, Die philosophischen und sociologischen Grundlagen des Marxismus: Studien zur sociaten Frage (Vienna: C. Konegin, 1 899)' p' 454'

11

ArnoldKünzli, Karl Maa: EinePsychographie(Vienna: Europa-Verlag, 1966),pp.205ff.

'12

Hans Lamm, Karl Marx und das J ude ntu m (Munich : Max Uber Verlag,

to

Léon Poliakov Geschichte des Antisem¡tismus, Vol. Vl (Worms: Heintz, 1987),p.22a.

5

Oxford: See Moshe Zimmermann, Withelm Marr:The Patriarch of AnÙ-Semft'sm (NewYork and Oxford University Press, 1986)' (London and Boston: See Julius Carlebach, Karl Marx and the Radicat Critique of Judaism noutieOge & Kegan Paul, 1978); pp.438-99; Gérard Bensussan,,,Die Judenfrage ¡n den Mar:xismLn," Das Argument, No' 167 (1 988)' pp. 76-83'

14

Theodor Lessing, Der jüdische Selbsthaß119301, (Reprint: Munich: Matthes & Seitz, 1984).

67 8 10

Dagobert D. Runes, Karl Marx:AWorldWithoutJews(NewYork:

Ph¡losophical Library, 1960),

p.xl. Robert Mis rahi, Marx et ta question iuive (Paris: Gallimard, 19721' p' 62'

tc

1

969), pp. 30, 60

David Rjazanov, Karl Marx and Friedr¡ch Engels(NewYork: lnternational Publishers, 1927),

o.35. to

Edmund Silberner, ,,Was Man an Anti-Semite?," Historica Judaica, Vol. Xl (1949), No. 1 , p. 1 9. Cited hereafter as: Silberner, ,,Max." A German translation of this essay can be found in: ldem, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage (Berlin: Colloquium-Verlag, 1962), pp.107-42, and in: ldem, Kommunisten zur Judenfrage: Zur Geschichte von Theorie und Praxis des Kommunismus (Opladen:WestdeutscherVerlag, 1983), pp. 16-42.

1,1

work was, in any event, the first to provide a detailed documentation of Marx's comments on this subject. However, Silberner's conclusion that Marx occupies a key role in what amounted to the anti-Semitic undercurrent in modern socialism, was by no means shared by all nonMarxist Marx scholars. A case in point is Robert wistrich, who argued that ,,the Marxist, like the liberal, analysis of the Jewish question assumed that anti-Semitism was a temporary and secondary phenomenon: with its dissipation the lasr factor encouraging the 'illusory' national cohesion of the Jews would also fade."17 Wistrich thus interpreted Marx within a nineteenth-century setting. The historical approach was the preferred option for critical Marxisrs as well. Enzo Traverso engages views (akin to Karl Löwithl8 or Arnold Toynbeele ) that regards Marxist thought in terms of a socialist secularization of Jewish eschatology' He draws a structural homology between the Marxist vision of the role of the proletariat in capitalist society and the vision of the Jews as the elect people, indeed the subiect of salvation. Traverso even allows for similarities between the idea of a socialist revolution and the Hebrew notion of an apocalypse in order to bridge the gap between the historical present and the messianic future, i.e. the restoration of God's kingdom on earth' Yet' Traverso also emphasized that Marx never consciously drew on such structural simil"rities; he based his ideas on an analysis of the capitalist mode of production, not on the Jewish cultural and spiritual heritage.zo This perspective is supported by Marx's earliest scholarl¡ political, and public activities, where he, according to'Werner Blumenberg' advoprolecated with moral pathos rhe union between philosophy and the

17

19

20

emancipation from the Jewish religion. Marx's rhetorical strategies, uis-à-uis Bauer, show the conceptual innovations as well as the ultimate limitations that developed within the horizon of the Jewish revolutionary from the Rhine region.

Zur Judenfrage in the Intellectual Develooment of the Youns Marx 'Marx's father Heinrich, who was baptized at the latest in 1819, decided¡n7gZ+ to have his son baptized as well. Silberner observes that as a child Marx did not have any say in this process; yet, this ,,conversion" to Christianity was never reversed.23 Growing up in a milieu of recent converts, Marx's forrnative years were barren of any Jewish acculturation and were directly exposed to anti-Semitic undercurrents then typical of Central European Christianity. He frequently derided his political foes' and his friends' Jewish backgrounds, even when the specific context of the exchanges did not deal with Jewish issues. Thus, already by 1,842, Marx called Heinrich Heine, who was the Paris correspondent of the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, a ,,convert," drawing unnecessary âttention to the latter's Jewish origin, though Marx did not know him at that time.za Similarl¡ late as 1885, Friedrich Engels pub-

Rootsjfconffontatlon," Roberts.wistrich,,,MaxismandJewishNationalism:TheTheoretical io", (ed.), Ihe t"ft egãinìü zor: communism, tsrael, and the Middle East (London and Totowa: Frank Cass,

18

taÅat.z\ Gustav Mayer notes how Marx sought to justify his alleged superiority over the other Young Hegelians of his youth.22 Blumenberg regards Marx's methods here as inappropriate, given that the latter engaged in a polemic with Bruno Bauer. Bauer supported Jewish emancipation, while conceptualizing this emancipation only in terms of an

1

979), P. 1 .

Philosophy of Kart Löwith, Meaning in History:TheTheological tmptications of the cago: Univers¡ty of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 44.

Gustav Mayer,,,DerJude in Karl Max," Neue Judische Monatshefie, Val. ll (1918), pp.327-331; idem,,,Early German Socialism and Jewish Emancipation," Jewish Social Studies, Vol. I (1939),

History(cht'

pp.439_-40, as ArnoldToynbee,llhistoire: lJn essai d'interprétation (Paris Gallimard, 1951), á;riaverso, The Maxists and the Jewish Question: The History of a Debate, ieqs-tsaT( rÀ^nticHighlands, N.J: Humanities Press, 1994)' p' 13'

;;;i; ì;

Werner Blumenberg, Karl Maa m¡t Selbstzeugn¡ssen und Bilddokumenfen (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1 989), p. 57.

pp.409-22. 23

Silberner, ,,Max," pp. 1 3-14.

24

Karl Manr, ,,Der Kommunismus und die ,Augsburger Allgemeine Zeirung'," Maa-Engels-Werke (cited hereafteras MEW,Vol.1 (Berlin: Dietz, 1956), p. 106.

lbid."P:14.

13

licly referred to his and Marx's former comfade Stephan Born as Simon Buttermilch.25

young Marx thus gfew up in a climate where both the content and form of Jewish emancipation were hotly debated. In a letter to Arnold Ruge dated March 13,1'843, Marx declared his support of Jewish political emancipation, distancing himself from Bruno Bauer's intention to emancipare the Jews only after they had all become Atheists. Marx considered Bauer's views ,,too abstract" and supported the leader of the Jewish congregation in Cologne's petition to the Prussian Parliament for equal rights - in order to punch as many holes as possible in the Christian nature of the state. Yet, Marx could not help but emphasize how ,,repugnant" Jewish faith was to him.26 Despite the intensity of his feelings on the subject, Marx's only subsrantive contribution to the discussion on Jewish emancipation was his 1g43 essay Zur ludenfrage.It was published in the following year in the Deutsch-Französische lahrbücher, which incidentally appeared in only one double edition. contrary to Bruno Bauer, Marx argues that the implementation of bourgeois democratic rights demanded that neither Christians nor Jews give up their religious commitments. Marx wanted to reconfigure the parametefs of the discussion from the level of theolog¡ where Bauer's arguments are referred to, to a secular level dimensions. Marx therefore explicitly focused his discussion not on the Sabbathiuden (Jew of the Sabbath), but instead the Alltagsiwden (Jew of everyday life). Marx looked at Jewish culture and sensibility in terms of its ,,worldly ground", linking it with very tangible practical necessities and material interests. In doing so, Marx drew on the association of the ,,worldly God" with Scbacber (usury) and money. He concluded that emancipation from worldl¡ financial values and pressures, which he identified as the central features of practical and ,,real" Judaism, must be the frame of reference for any genuine emancipation.2T This

conclusion is based on the notion that it is supposedly a specific Jewish trait to equate one's own rights and interests with those of property. Marx, of course, realized that it was not just Jews who had internalized this capitalist ethos. Historical developments had led to a transfer of the exchange-value, capitalist mentality from Jews to Christians or, in fhe Hegelian terms of the young Marx, the ,,social emancipation of the Jew is the emøncipation of society from Judaism."?8 Several scholars, including critical Marxists, have pointed out that Marx did not fulfill his own objective of rigorously analyzing the Jew-

ish'question. He utilized the dialectical materialistic method ,,purely logically", but approached his topic disconnected from the historical and social conditions of Jewish life during his age.2e Marx's quest for the ,,practical, real" Judaism was indeed in keeping with his materialist analysis. Yet Marx's answer) which linked ,,true Judaism" with the "conditions and form of capitalism) was still caught within the framework of then-contemporary misconceptions and prejudices. It seems that Marx was captured by unique and very specific historical circumstances, which he generalized and applied erroneously to the situation of all Jews throughout capitalist Europe. The well established Íact that the majority of Jews, even in nineteenth-century German¡ were not engaged in money lending or any money accumulating activities was ignored by Marx.30 Marx used the terms 'Jew' and 'Judaism' as ,,social symbols" of a society based on private ownership of the means of production and capitalist competition3l; yet, such an approach was hardly appropriate or analytically useful in sharpening understanding of capitalist society.32 Marx saw in money and trade

28 29

lbid., p. 174. Blumenberg, Karl Marx, p. 58; Rosemarie Leuschen-Seppel, Sozialdemokratie und Antisemitismus im Kaiserreich: Die Auseinandersetzungen der Pañei m¡t den konservativen und völkischen Strömungen des Ant¡semit¡smus 1878-1914 (Bonn: Verlag Neue Gesellschaft, 1978),

o.24.

30

See e.g. Jacob Toury, Soziale und politische Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 1847-1871

(Düsseldorf: Claassen, 1 977).

25

Friedrich Engels, ,,Preface" (to the 3rd edition of Max' ,Enthüllungen über den Kommunistenproze1zu Kéln), MElill, Vol.21 , p.219. Buttermilch was Born's former Jewish name.

31

Joachim Höppner, ,,lntroduction" to: Karl Marx and Arnold Ruge (eds.), Deufsch-französische Jahrbücher (Leipzig: Reclam, 1 981 ), p. 53.

26 27

Karl Max,,,Leüerto Arnold Ruge," 13 March 1843, MEW,Vol.27'p'418'

32

See Leuschen-Seppel, Sozialdemokratie,pp.20-21;Wolfgang Fr¡tz Haug,,,Antisemitismus in maxistischerSicht," HeôertA. Strauss and Nortert Kampe (eds.), Anflsemitismus:Von derJudenfeindschaft zum Holocausf (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Polilische Bildung, 1 985), pp.234-55.

ldem,,,ZurJudenfrage," MEW, Vol. 1, p.372. English translation: Man