MARX CONTRA BAUER

This entry is built around Karl Marx’s 1844 essay On the Jewish Question, which is, in essence, his critique of two works on the Jewish question, both written by Bruno Bauer. Although Bauer himself is a subject of considerable interest, I am not giving his works an independent treatment here, because on the one hand he has got an entry of his own in the Significant Others section, and, on the other hand, this one carries, above all, the Marxian theme, which is, accordingly, drawing all of my attention. A separate discussion of Bruno Bauer can be found in the above-mentioned entry Bruno Bauer And The Judenfrage.

Published in February 1844, Karl Marx’s controversial work On the Jewish Question is, in fact, a two-part criticism of Bruno Bauer’s two works: The Jewish Question (1842) and The Capacity of Present-Day Jews and Christians to Become Free (1843).

The questions raised in this one-sided polemic are of such historical significance and general importance to Res Judaica that I have afforded them a level of attention which at first sight may seem unwarranted but on closer scrutiny is very well justified. Here are, therefore, some extended excerpts from Karl Marx’s critique of Bruno Bauer, with my comments.

“The German Jews demand civic, political emancipation for themselves, not as Germans, but as Jews. But no one in Germany is politically emancipated, and Bauer accuses the Jews of egoism. Why should German liberals be interested in the liberation of the Jews, if those Jews are not interested in the liberation of their German neighbors?” This seems at first a completely disingenuous argument on Bauer’s part, except when we take into consideration the economic and social prominence of the Jews in Prussia. With their share of political influence on the German discourse, Bauer can surely expect a less egotistical stand on civil rights than the one taken by the Jewish liberals. Why don’t they fight for the human rights of everyone, not just of their own? Ironically, Bauer’s complaint was soon to be answered by Jewish communists and radicals who not only nationalized the issue across the board, but internationalized it as well… Herr Doktor: be careful what you wish for!

“And now the next point. In wanting to be emancipated from the Christian state, the Jew is demanding that the Christian state should give up its religious prejudice. Does he, the Jew, give up his religious prejudice?! Has he, then, the right to demand that someone else should renounce his religion?” Marx’s answer to this semi-rhetorical question is already rampant in the next paragraph. In order for the Jews to achieve equality within any Gentile-majority State, they need not a religious equality, but the abolition of religion as such! This bold assertion sets the stage for an explosive discussion.

“The most rigid form of the opposition between the Jew and the Christian is the religious opposition. How is an opposition resolved? By making it impossible. How can religious opposition be made impossible? By abolishing religion. As soon as Jew and Christian recognize that their respective religions are nothing but different stages in the development of the human mind, different snake skins, cast off by history, and man is the snake who sloughed them, the relation of Jew and Christian is no longer religious, but is only a critical, scientific, and human relation. Science then constitutes their unity, and science contradictions are resolved by science itself.” Marx here has an opportunity to exhibit his unabashedly atheistic outlook, which in itself is not terribly interesting. But what he has to say next is most instructive and undoubtedly fascinating. This atheistic outlook (known as secularist) has, incidentally, become a tacit norm in modern American society, which, ironically, represents a triumph of Jewish “Marxist” perseverance. Perhaps, the First International did not die in America in 1876, but lived on to fulfill its global mission on the New World soil? (If you are in disbelief, please consult Mr. Bill O’Reilly and a veritable army of Evangelical preachers on secularism in modern America. As for the huge and terribly misleading disconnect between secularism and religion in America, do read on!)

“German Jews particularly are confronted by the general absence of political emancipation and the strongly Christian character of the state. Yet in Bauer’s conception the Jewish question has a universal significance independent of specifically German conditions. It is the question of the relation of religion to the state, of the contradiction between religious constraint and political emancipation. Emancipation from religion is laid down as a condition, both to the Jew who wants to be emancipated politically and to the state which is to effect emancipation and is itself to be emancipated.” Indeed, modern history teaches us that Bauer was right in this respect. The Jewish question does have a universal significance!

“…Bauer therefore demands, on the one hand, that the Jew should renounce Judaism, and that mankind in general should renounce religion in order to achieve civic emancipation.” The only mistake Bauer makes is his demand for an explicit renunciation of religion, which is totally unnecessary for the achievement of the same objective. Modern American experience shows that it is quite sufficient to marginalize and trivialize religion in political and social life with no compelling need to abolish it altogether. Today’s politicians are presumably elected in America under a heavy influence of the Evangelical voting bloc, yet the pastors keep complaining about the all-pervasive rule of secularism, as though the American Evangelical vote amounted to nothing. As a matter of fact, it does amount to nothing, except the mistaken and totally vain assumption that it does.

“At this point, the one-sided formulation of the Jewish question becomes evident. It is by no means enough sufficient to investigate, who is to emancipate, or who is to be emancipated. Criticism has to inquire, what kind of emancipation is in question? What conditions follow from the very nature of the emancipation that is demanded? Only the criticism of political emancipation itself would have been a conclusive criticism of the Jewish question and its real merging in the general question of time.” Marx puts his finger right where Bauer’s philosophical problem is. It is clear that Bauer has failed to raise the question to the proper level. But who would blame Bauer for his erroneous ways, if his mistakes are repeated today by a multitude of political commentators, some inadvertently, some not so innocently.

“But because Bauer doesn’t raise the question to this level, he becomes entangled in contradictions. He puts forward conditions which are not based on the nature of political emancipation itself. He raises questions which are not part of his problem, and he solves problems which leave this question unanswered. When he says of the opponents of Jewish emancipation: “Their error was only that they assumed the Christian state to be the only true one and did not subject it to the same criticism that they applied to Judaism,” his error lies in the fact that he subjects to criticism only the “Christian state,” not the “state as such,” that he does not investigate the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation and, therefore, puts forward conditions that can be explained only by an uncritical confusion of a political emancipation with general human 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 political emancipation give the right to demand from the Jew the abolition of Judaism, and from man,-- the abolition of religion?” What follows in Marx’s polemic now amply justifies George Bernard Shaw’s description of him as “a mighty prophet.” As a matter of formal record, it was not on account of the Judenfrage that Shaw called Marx “a prophet,” but paraphrasing a familiar line, once a prophet, always a prophet…

“The political emancipation of the Jew, the Christian, and in general, of religious man, is the emancipation of the State from Judaism, from Christianity, and from religion in general. In its own form, in the manner characteristic of its nature, the state as a state emancipates itself from religion by emancipating itself from the state religion – that is to say, by the state as a state not professing any religion, but, on the contrary, asserting itself as a state. The political emancipation from religion is not a religious emancipation that has been carried through to completion and is free from contradiction, because political emancipation is not a form of human emancipation which has been carried through to completion and is free from contradiction.

The limits of political emancipation are evident at once from the fact that the state can free itself from any restriction without man being really free from this restriction, that the state can be a free state (pun on the word Freistaat, which also means republic) without a man being a free man. Bauer himself tacitly admits this when he lays down the following condition for political emancipation: “Every religious privilege, and therefore also the monopoly of a privileged church, would have been abolished altogether, and if some or many persons or even the overwhelming majority still believed themselves bound to fulfill religious duties this fulfillment ought to be left to them as a purely private matter.” (p. 65.) It is possible, therefore, for the state to have emancipated itself from religion even if the overwhelming majority is still religious. And the overwhelming majority does not cease to be religious through being religious in private.” Bravo!

Thus, astonishingly, back in 1844, Marx effectively prophesies the exact situation which exists in modern America today. Or is it the other way? Perhaps, America has learned from Marx more than we give her credit for, this thing included?