David Hirsh on David Clark and Marx
There is an interesting post on Engage trying to unpack some of the problematic aspects of what’s getting thrown around between racism and anti-Semitism of late.
What seems interesting is that while the article is trying complexify and nuance argumentation, I’m not sure that the form of the argument really bares out:
The truth is that there have always been pro-totalitarian and antisemitic currents on the left but that these currents were always militantly opposed by others on the left who were anti-racist and who took liberty seriously. Karl Marx thundered against the ultra-left antisemitic rubbish of Bruno Bauer, when Bauer argued against Jewish emancipation in 19th Century Germany. August Bebel denounced left antisemities who thought that a clever way to oppose capitalism was to oppose “Jewish capitalism” first. Bebel called this the “Socialism of Fools”. Jewish Trade Unionists bravely resisted the TUC’s campaign for immigration controls to exclude Jews from Britain in 1905. The Russian Stalinists relied on antisemitism as a staple organising principle of their totalitarian state.
The problem here being that Marx, in the second part of On the Jewish Question, makes a plurality of really bad arguments about Jew’s and parasitism, the source of most linkages between Marx and anti-Semitism. And to claim that this was the thunderous response to Bauer pretty much ignores the second part of the essay. While it’s agreeable that some parts of the left have opposed anti-Semism, it’s unfortunate to use this example.
