[DrNo]

The historical illiteracy of our era strikes again.

Doctor:

Now that I've had a chance to get to my office and check my sources, let me offer the following support for my earlier-stated reading of "On the Jewish Question."

Robert Tucker (The Marx Engels Reader, 1972, W.W. Norton, page 24) offers the following observation on the piece:

"In the second part, Marx proceeds to the criticism of economics or commerce, which he equates with 'Judaism.'

"His concluding call for the 'emancipation of society from Judaism' (which has been seen on occassion as a manifesto of anti-Semitism) is in fact a call for the emancipation of society from what he here calls 'huckstering,' or from what he was subsequently to call 'capitalism.' "

I can see where you'd call me a(n) historical illiterate, I'm just a dumb working-class kid from the Mid-West at a Southern state university, but Robert C. Tucker is/was a Profesor of Politics at Princeton University!

P.S. Since this is apparently his area of expertise, I trust you will not accuse me of having committed the fallacy of ad verecundiam!

[Asclepius]

... "His concluding call for the 'emancipation of society from Judaism' (which has been seen on occassion as a manifesto of anti-Semitism) is in fact a call for the emancipation of society from what he here calls 'huckstering,' or from what he was subsequently to call 'capitalism' ...

First, please allow me to withdraw the 'illiteracy' remark. It was uncalled for and I apologise profusely.

Second, thank you for the quote. I don't agree with it, but I can at least see where you're coming from.

And here is what I disagree with, the notion that "huckstering" and "capitalism" are somehow linked in Marx's essay. "Huckstering" was a coping strategy for Jews who were excluded from European civil society (cf Gypsies); capitalism was for Marx a fully realized system of production based on the capital accumulation, a novel division of labor, and the serial production and distribution of commodities etc., etc. I would argue that Marx does not implicate the Jews in capitalist commodities production or the bourgeois social order simply because they were excluded from both in Marx's era. They were confined to ghettos, allowed only to dig graves or lend money etc.

Marx's essay is an indictment of Judaism (as a religion, as an alibi for Jewish suffering) precisely because it insulates the Jews from the bourgeois revolution, which Marx believed was an historically necessarily precurser to revolution etc., etc. It's no big deal. I am not a Marxist; I am not comfortable defending Marx. Reasonable people can disagree and all that.