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Antisemitic analysis in Marx, Proudhon and Bakunin’s writings
by Yves Coleman
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Introduction ¶
The following quotations are intended to show that revolutionary thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (whether anarchists or Marxists) have had difficulty in analysing the Jewish religion and the place of the Jewish people in history .
It’s therefore not surprising that the question of left antisemitism regularly comes up, or more precisely, that it’s regularly swept under the carpet, as it would force Marxists and anarchists to question some of the writings of their founding fathers and, above all, to recognise the limits of their thinking.
Proudhon ¶
“Caesarism and Christianity, 1860 ¶
The Jew is by temperament anti-producer, neither farmer nor industrialist,
not even a real trader.
He is always a fraudulent and parasitic middleman, who operates, in business
as in philosophy, by fabrication, counterfeiting, and shady dealing.
He knows only the rise and fall, the risks of transport, the uncertainties
of the harvest, the hazards of supply and demand.
His policy in economics is all negative, it’s the wrong principle.
Satan, Ahriman, incarnated in the race of Shem." (Caesarism and Christianity, 1860).
In Proudhon’s Notebooks, on December 26, 1847, we find this exterminationist passage ¶
In Proudhon’s Notebooks, on December 26, 1847, we find this exterminationist passage:
“Write an article against this race that poisons everything by sticking its nose into everything without ever mixing with any other people.
Demand its expulsion from France, except for those married to French women. Abolish synagogues and not admit them to any employment.
Demand its expulsion Finally, pursue the abolition of this religion. It’s not without cause that the Christians called them deicides.
The Jew is the enemy of humankind.
They must be sent back to Asia or be exterminated.
H. Heine, A. Weill, and others are nothing but secret spies; Rothschild, Crémieux, Marx, Fould, wicked, bilious, envious, bitter, etc. etc. beings who hate us.
The Jew must disappear by steel or by fusion or by expulsion.
Tolerate the elderly who no longer have children. Work to be done – What the peoples of the Middle Ages hated instinctively I hate upon reflection and irrevocably. The hatred of the Jew like the hatred of the English should be our first article of political faith.
Moreover, the abolition of Judaism will come with the abolition of other religions. Begin by not allocating funds to the clergy and leaving this to religious offerings. – And then, a short while later, abolish the religion.”
Marx ¶
The Jewish Question, 1844 ¶
“What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God ? Money.. […] An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions for huckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jew impossible. […] We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time, an element which through historical development – to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed – has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate. […]. The Jew has emancipated himself in a Jewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but also because, through him and also apart from him, money has become a world power and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of the Christian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as the Christians have become Jews. […] Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. (…) Judaism reaches its highest point with the perfection of civil society […] Christianity is the sublime thought of Judaism, Judaism is the common practical application of Christianity […]. Since in civil society the real nature of the Jew has been universally realized and secularized, civil society could not convince the Jew of the unreality of his religious nature, which is indeed only the ideal aspect of practical need.”,
The Jewish Question, 1844.
I will not quote Marx’s private correspondence, which abounds in such remarks as: “the little Jew”, “the Yid”, “the Stock Exchange Jew”, “the Süss Jew of Egypt”, “that negro Jew Lassalle”, etc.
Bakunin ¶
Michel Bakunin, “Letter to Comrades of the Jura Federation”, 1872. ¶
“The Jews today form a real power in Germany. For a long time now, they have been sovereign masters in the banking business. But in the last thirty years or so, they have also succeeded in a kind of monopoly in literature – there is hardly a newspaper in Germany that does not have its own Jewish editor, and journalism and banking join hands, rendering each other valuable services. It’s a very interesting race, the race of the Jews! a forced emigration. And it was during this emigration that the cult of Jerusalem, the symbol of national unity, was formed and deepened in the hearts of the Jews. Nothing so unites as misfortune. Dispersed and scattered throughout Asia, enslaved, despised, oppressed, but always intelligent, they formed more than ever a nation: the international nation of Asia and part of Africa. Torn from the land Jehovah had given them and no longer able to devote themselves to agriculture, they must seek another outlet for their passionate restless activity. This outlet could be none other than trade; and the Jews became the trading people par excellence 24 .
In all countries they found their countrymen, victims like themselves of foreign oppression, despised, persecuted like themselves, and like themselves animated by a natural and deep-seated hatred against the conquering nations.
This explains how in the long run there must have been formed among all the Jewish tribes scattered over Asia and Africa, among the Jews of all, a vast trading association, of mutual help and assistance, and of joint exploitation of all foreign nations;
a people of parasites living on the sweat and blood of their conquerors.”
Michel Bakunin, “Letter to Comrades of the Jura Federation”, 1872.
Confronted with these socalled “slippages”, what is the reaction of their Marxist and anarchist disciples ? They unfold very dodgy arguments. Let’s review some of them: ¶
Confronted with these socalled “slippages”, what is the reaction of their Marxist and anarchist disciples ?
They unfold very dodgy arguments.
Let’s review some of them:
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If we remove the antisemitic quotations from the work of these three essential thinkers, or other important ones, there remains a substantial theoretical edifice, so there is no automatic link between antisemitism and anti-capitalism 25 .
Or the Trotskyite variant of the same song: one can certainly find antisemitic reflections in Marx’s correspondence, but they can also be spoted in the writings of the Dreyfusard sociologist Durkheim, or of Jewish philosophers like Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin, so le’ts talk about something more important 26 ;
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They had Jewish friends 27 (?!) therefore they were not antisemitic (note that this is the typical excuse of racists);
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Many anarchists and Marxists were, or are, Jewish (?!), thefore Marxist and anarchist ideas have no connection with antisemitism;
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Marx made antisemitic remarks during all his life in his correspondence 28 , but Bakunin did that only when Marx attacked him unfairly 29 (!?);
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Marx, Proudhon and Bakunin were certainly very hostile to the Jewish religion, to the ideological content of this religion, but they did not hate Jews as individuals , or as a people;
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in any case, Proudhon’s most nefarious writings in his Notebooks were not made public until after his death , therefore they had no influence on the anarchist movement (an inaccurate statement, since Caesarism and Christianity was published during his lifetime);
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the fact of denouncing the “elective affinity” between Jews and money was in the 19th century a “literary banality” (according to the Marxist Roman Rosdolsky quoted by the neo-Trotskyist Daniel Bensaïd)!
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It’s anachronistic to speak of antisemitism for writings that were published before the invention of the word itself: the antisemites of the 1870s, even atheists like Marr, drew liberally on Christian stereotypes that had appeared a long time before the word antisemitism was invented. Moreover, Jew- hatred had already had a social content for centuries;
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Even if some formulations are “unfortunate”, when Marx, Proudhon or Bakunin wrote them, Marxism and anarchism were not yet fully mature, the anarchist and Marxist movements were in their infancy, etc.;
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Judeocide had not yet taken place when these texts were published, so calling for the “disappearance” of the Jews did not have at all the same meaning in the 19th century as it does today.
You can assess yourselves the validity, or, for me, the abysmal vacuity, of these objections presented at the end of the 20th century , when we have sufficient historical hindsight to understand the lethal scope of certain arguments.
What interests me, and what is important to reflect on, is whether one can still read the same kind of anti-Jewish statements in the articles, or in the speeches, of far left or anarchist militants today.
If the answer is yes, then we will not have a nice academic discussion about the exact meaning of texts written 150 years ago !
We have to question a recurrent predisposition among left, far left or anarchist activists to take the Jews as scapegoats for their personal, social and political frustrations. Indeed, if I reread the arguments I have just quoted in defence of the founding fathers of Marxism and anarchism, today, in the 21st century, these militants think that:
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having Jewish friends or comrades vaccinates against antisemitism;
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being Jewish prevents having any active (or passive) complicity with antisemitism;
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private antisemitic speech is less serious than public speech;
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they are less antisemitic than the activists of the other organisations and therefore less objectionable;
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criticizing Jewish religion gives the right to make any racist statement against the Jews;
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antisemitism is only a temporary, ephemeral, phenomenon, in an individual’s life, or only the product of an overreaction to an injustice suffered.
All these “excuses” and “reasonings” are common today when militants are confronted with antisemitic behaviours or writings by other far left or libertarian activists.
Similar arguments are never put forward publicly to explain/excuse homophobic, “transphobic”, sexist or anti-Muslim attitudes or writings ¶
On the other hand, in the same radical circles, similar arguments are never put forward publicly to explain/excuse homophobic, “transphobic”, sexist or anti-Muslim attitudes or writings…
Today it’s not the subtle analyses of Elisée Reclus 30 , the most intelligent positions of Marx, Proudhon and Bakunin that influence Marxist and anarchist militants when they look at the socalled “Jewish question” and a fortiori at Zionism, but the reactionary prejudices of their founding fathers…
Is this not a sad example of double standards within the left circles ?
Notes ¶
24 This legend has informed the view of the Left for more than a century ¶
This legend has informed the view of the Left for more than a century.
Hopefully some recent studies have started to demolish this myth.
See, for example, Julie Mell, The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender (Palgrave, 2 volumes, 2018), and her interview on : https://moneyontheleft.org/2019/02/15/myth-of-the-medieval-jewish-moneylender-with-julie-mell/
25 This type of justification can be applied within the same book ¶
This type of justification can be applied within the same book; for example, some Marxists explain that, while antisemitic stereotypes abound in the second part of Marx’s The Jewish Question, the first part of this book can’t be criticized since Marx defends the equality of Jewish citizens with all other citizens and the abolition of all discrimination against them.
The problem with that argument is that Jewish legal inequality has been banned at least since World War II, while Marx’s antisemitic stereotypes are still quite influential today in society and in the Left.
26 This reasoning and many other twisted arguments ¶
This reasoning and many other twisted arguments can be found in the edition of On the Jewish Question published by the leftwing “anti-Zionist” publisher La Fabrique.
Daniel Bensaïd, a neo-Trotskyist intellectual and political leader, wrote an apologetic preface and afterword for this new edition
27 “Like Marx and Engels belittling the Hungarians and Slavs ¶
“Like Marx and Engels belittling the Hungarians and Slavs, Bakunin divided peoples by sharing cultural prejudices about supposed revolutionary instincts.
The blindness pushed Bakunin into a vulgar antisemitism which reduced Marxists to a predominantly German and Jewish conglomerate.
Nevertheless, Bakunin had Russian Jewish relatives.” (Note from the Pierre Besnard Foundation for Bakunin’s “The principle of authority and its effects”)….
28 “Bakunin’s antisemitism is a late phenomenon ¶
“Bakunin’s antisemitism is a late phenomenon; its causes can be explained if not excused, and it was condemned by his entourage. On the other hand, in Marx writings it’s a permanent phenomenon […].” (Note by René Berthier in Bakounine avant l’anarchiste. 1836-1842)
29 “Bakunin’s antisemitic deviations will be the subject of a special study ¶
“Bakunin’s antisemitic deviations will be the subject of a special study.
Until 1868-1869 they are absent from his work. It will therefore be necessary to determine the circumstances that led to the appearance of antisemitic statements.
Bakunin’s antisemitism is directly linked to the slander campaigns he was subjected to after the Basel Congress of the AIT in 1869 […].
Bakunin’s antisemitic argument was totally unoriginal but remained coherent with his cultural and linguistic explanation of the characteristics of each people: the oppression suffered by the Jews shaped their history and their collective behaviour. The Jews constituted a “formidable power”, said Bakunin: the usual argument of antisemitism. […]” Note by René Berthier included in Bakounine avant l’anarchiste 1836-1842.
Berthier made a similar remark in another note of the same text: “Bakunin’s antisemitic remarks will appear much later and will be linked to the calumnies of Marx and his entourage, specially of Moses Hess, calumnies that Bakunin will attribute to the “German Jews”.” http://1libertaire.free.fr/RBerthier40.html .
Although I dont share the author’s views, English readers will certainly find a more critical anarchist assessment of Bakunin’s antisemitism in this article : https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/zoe-baker-bakunin-was-a-racist
30 On this subject, see Philippe Pelletier’s Géographie et Anarchie, Editions libertaires, 2013, ¶
On this subject, see Philippe Pelletier’s Géographie et Anarchie, Editions libertaires, 2013, especially pages 407-436.