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 TUCs 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.
OK so we agree that in the
OK so we agree that in the first part of the essay, Marx argues clearly for Jewish emancipation - for the right of Jews to be full citizens and still to remain Jews.
I read the second part as a long piss-take of Bauer. OK, says Marx, lets see what we can do with Bauer's nonsense...
I've been promised a piece making this argument for the next edition of the Engage journal http://www.engageonline.org.uk/journal/ on Marx and the Jewish Question.
And I hope this will be followed by a serious discussion (please take part). I think that we can put to rest this myth that Marx was an antisemite for good.
I use this piece to teach students about state/civil society and about Marx's attitude to legal rights.
See Fine and Draper:
Fine, B. (1984). Democracy and The Rule of Law. London, Pluto. Esp. pp 79 - 85
Draper, H. (1977). State and Bureaucracy. New York, Monthly Review Press.
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