Monday 15 June 2009

Anti-Semitism of the Left




After reading a few posts recently on Marx's anti-Semitism:-

Here

and here

I wanted add a few thoughts. Whilst I agree entirely that Marx and indeed much of the left, in the past have held and today do hold prejudiced and bigotted views on Jews and Judaism, I suggest that theirs is a quantatively different kind of anti-Semitism than that of either the Christian, Islamic or Nationalist kinds. This makes it no more obnoxious or harmful but rather it places it more firmly within the weltanschuanng of the left. This then raises issues that those who wish the left to truely leave this malignant tradition behind and how best to avoid similar fallacies.

Christian anti-Semitism is based on the particular collective accusation of deicide and the failure of the Jews to heed the new order of things brought about by Jesus. Islamic Juduophobia is founded similarly on Jewish rejection of the new 'truth' and their role as the early enemies of the prophet. Nationalist bigotry against the nefarious mythical 'Jude' comes from the Jews' seemly inherent 'alien' and a-national nature and their again innate 'decadence'. The similarities are clear, but the differences are vital too. One can see many synthesis of these narratives and these accusations. The original examples of the Blood libels in the Islamic world conjoined Christian and Nationalist versions of Jew hatred with Koranic sectarianism. Codreanu's passionate hatred of the Jews came from both a Christian 'Christ-killer' perspective and a Nationalist 'Cancer' one.
The leftist (i.e. Liberal, Radical/Jacobin, Socialist, Anarchist, Bolshevik Communist, anti-Imperialist) form of anti-Semitism is based on two levels, economic and philosophic. Economically, the Jews' position within Islamic and Christian pre-industrial society as being barred from land ownership placed them outside the whole economic basis of society. The opening up and 'rationalisation' of the Professions in the 19th century further isolated prominent Jews from the 'moral' and good economy. Jew had, pre-industrialisation, became a catch-all for the 'usurer', the proto-capitalist, those not bound by the various forms of contractual and tradition that governed feudal economic and property. Further, as the feudal system became to croak under the strains, the vast expansion of litigation involved placed the Lawyer, the 'schister' as arbiter. Jews thus were doubly damned by social circumstances. They represented a violent innovation in economics and a caste now in command of the revolutionised means of legal restitution. The Jew, as a clinched villain and demon in theocratic vernacular, was now clad additionally in the clothes of the quintessential capitalist iconoclast. Judaism was depicted as a strategy of cabal-esque exploitation, one directed by the 'diabolical' Talmud against naive Gentiles.

This exploitative meme is key. Rather than corruption or heresy, exploitation, to the bigot, seemly inherent to their religion, culture and upbringing, was the Jew's crime. Like all capitalists, they were a-social, part of the parasites on the producers. But their 'innate' will to enslave their fellow man came, not from their class or from their individual 'inhumanity' but from their creed or 'race'. As an aside that I shall have to pick up on in another post, race in the 19th century was an extremely contested and ill-defined term. Race was a knot of various ideas about kinship, language, culture and descent, only given its 'modernist' meaning by quack genetics later in the century. But to return, exploitation, unwarranted profit and thus alienation and poverty to 'the hindmost' was part and parcel of the Jewish identity according to those 'foolish socialists' including Marx.

Thus branded with the stamp of inherent exploiters and apologists of the system, Jews were further marked by their commitment to their faith. By refusing to shake off their 'Talmudic Devilishness' upon emancipation and step out into the light of reason etc etc, Jews were further transformed into inherent enemies. This time not just of the working man, but of the march of progress itself. The fact that Jews had suffered years of violence and oppression from theocracy and belief made their continued attachment to their faith seem perverse. Jews, as followers of a ancient 'unenlightened' faith, like those uppity Hebs in seventh century Arabia or first century Judea, 'failed' to succumb to the inevitable. From a philosophical point, Jews, as Berman pointed out sometime ago, give utopias indigestion.

Take away this hatred, this concoction of lies, deceit, bigotry and hatred and the left is none the poorer. The game of much anti-Zionism, of the singular evil of Israeli nationalism, is not a mainstay, it is a growth, albeit one that feeds off many of the tenets of Socialism.
Update: BFB was kind enough to link to me along with this fine (and concise) piece.
Fanon-ism is in many ways a updated, a-materialistic moral version of the philosophical element to Left a-s. I shall have to have a closer look and get back to you

1 comment:

schalomlibertad said...

i have not read the entirety of those two linked blog posts, but from the little I have read of them, they seem to ignore the fact that marx is arguing (in On the Jewish Question) in favor of political emancipation for Jews, and against a state religion. His text is against Bruno Bauer's position of assimilation. Marx furthermore argues that political emancipation, however important and necessary it is, is however insufficient in consideration of human emancipation more broadly.
Marx's position is a hundred times more emancipatory than Bauer's, and his text should be read carefully in it's entirety. The social democratic attack on Marx's rhetoric in the much smaller second part is cheap. Bloggers should get off the net more often and read Marx's text seriously. And this, it should be noted, is being said by someone who is *not* a marxist.