The Socialism of Fools

On Marx's Antisemitism, Part 1

Hitler*.

Lenin.

Stalin.

The three biggest destroyers of Jewish life, spiritual and physical, of the 20th century. They were arguably our worst persecutors since the Romans. It would be false to say that these three only had one thing in common; they share far more than their respective defenders feel comfortable with. One thing is for certain, however: their political views were all originally molded by Karl Marx, and this unholy triad held him in great esteem. They also shared his view on Jews.

Never a truer rogues’ gallery

The two most common Marxist defenses against the accusation of antisemitism can be boiled down to either 1) “How can you say Marx was an antisemite? He was, after all, a Jew! His own grand-father an Orthodox Rabbi!” or 2) “You simply don’t understand Marx’s acerbic wit, sense of irony and use of satire.” 

Those are oft-repeated misdirections regarding Marx, serving knowingly or unknowingly to obscure his youth, relationships, and views, which we’ll explore in that order. 

*See end note

An Effervescent Germany

Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany. At the time, his hometown was a profoundly Catholic city, with over 90% of its inhabitants professing the faith. Founded by the Celts in the 4th century and conquered by the Romans three centuries later, it is home to the Trier Cathedral, one of the oldest Catholic churches in the world. 

Germany circa 1818 was a tough place for religious Jews to live in. Unlike the residents of Trier, the mostly devout residents of the rest of Germany were a mix of Protestants, the majority of Lutheran confession. There is no doubt that Martin Luther's vicious antisemitism had infected your average German, already predisposed to it through hundreds of years of Catholic indoctrination. 

This was also a country in the midst of an intellectual renaissance of a sort. Fighting to quell the stereotype of the backwater sausage-eating beer-drinking yodeling German, the intellectuals produced by 19th Century Germany would become world-renowned and forever changed our image of the Land of the Teutons. Nietzsche, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Weber, names that would be recounted alongside the other significant cultural figures that graced the Germany of this epoch, universally renowned cultural luminaries such as Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, Strauss, Mendelssohn, Goethe, Schiller, the Grimm Brothers, Mann or Kant.

The Jewish world itself was not left unaffected. Germany was the epicenter of a weltanschauung earthquake that shook Judaism and led to the creation of multiple new approaches to Judaism as well as the Reform movement. It is also where the Jewish anti-religious movement par excellence, the maskilim, stemmed from. These were the German (or German-influenced) Jews hell-bent on bringing Judaism into their vision of "modernity" & who wanted to Germanize Judaism to turn it into a palatable religion for protestants. No more would the Jew be ashamed to worship (or, let's be honest, when other Jews worshiped), as he would do so in the fashion of his non-Jewish neighbor! These maskilim would take the German scientific and philosophical framework and see the Torah and Talmud through it. Thus were born Jewish studies! Many Jews were sadly swept in their tides, lured in by their promises of intellectual emancipation, if not actual emancipation, due to their newly liberated intellect. 

Some of the radical changes they would suggest included bringing organs into synagogues, moving the Sabbath to Sunday, dressing Rabbis in the Lutheran fashion, declaring themselves Germans of the Mosaic persuasion and that Germany was their Fatherland, proclaiming Berlin as their Jerusalem… The Reform movement came as an attempt to bridge the differences between what was now called 'Orthodoxy' and the maskilim.

A Third Way

Some of the radical changes they would suggest included bringing organs into synagogues, moving the Sabbath to Sunday, dressing Rabbis in the Lutheran fashion, declaring themselves Germans of the Mosaic persuasion and that Germany was their Fatherland, proclaiming Berlin as their Jerusalem… The Reform movement came as an attempt to bridge the differences between what was now called 'Orthodoxy' and the maskilim.

In the midst of all this was a third, even more sweeping, movement: conversion through social pressure. Tired of living on the margins of society, more & more Germans Jews who had gone through the maskil education system were opting out of Judaism and embracing their host's religion. It was an easy ticket out of the restrictions imposed on Jews, allowing for upward mobility & a more leisurely life in German society.

We have yet to determine the precise date, but it's most likely that Heinrich Marx converted to Lutheranism in 1819, soon after Karl's 1st birthday. Marx's mother was more reluctant. While not religiously observant herself, she only fully acquiesced to her own conversion & the baptism of her children in 1924, when Karl was 6. Though it might have been at first a conversion of convenience, his parents soon became truly devout Lutherans and stayed so until their death.

And so was Marx, at least at first. We know that by age 17, as one of his last assignments before high school graduation, he chose to pen an essay on John's 15th chapter. Only after he entered university and discovered Hegel's views did he embrace the atheism he would become famous for.

There is no indication that Marx had much to do with his extended family, who presumably shunned them for converting out. This is aside from a few visits to an uncle & family members in order to mooch from them after the death of his parents, as he refused to take up any work. Marx grew up as a German Catholic, vaguely aware of a Jewish ethnicity he never cared for and unaware of a Jewish religion he had never learned about or was ever exposed to. So wretched was his knowledge of Judaism that he later relied on the writings of non-Jewish Germans about Judaism to discuss its theology, particularly in On the Jewish Question. 

Yes, there were Rabbis in Marx's family. He was fully Jewish according to Jewish law. Yet, the facts remain:

Marx never received a Jewish education, never went to cheder, never went to yeshiva, never had a bar mitzvah; he never received any Torah education whatsoever. There was no Jewish presence in his life, neither were there Jewish friends or even a passing acquaintance of Judaism or German Jewish life.

He was a German Lutheran through and through and only Jewish by accident of birth. 

Das KKKapital

Marx hated Jews. Truly hated Jews. Not far behind were blacks, too. No one was spared his hatred, not even family members.

Paul Lafargue was his son-in-law, the husband of his daughter Laura. Originally from Cuba, he moved to Europe to rub shoulders with socialists & get involved in politics. Marx constantly derided said son-in-law by calling him "the negrillo" and "the gorilla." 

He complained to Engels that

"Lafargue has the blemish customarily found in the negro tribe - no sense of shame, by which I mean shame about making a fool of oneself." 

It's unclear whether he fully disowned his daughter for marrying Lafargue. Still, at the very least he very explicitly and vehemently told her how much he disagreed with her choice of spouse. His relationship with Laura relationship was very much strained as a result.

Engels was not only his partner in politics but his partner in racism as well. Just as scathingly bigoted as Marx, Engels said he had deducted scientifically that, based on his features, Lafargue possessed at least "one-eight or one-twelfth of nigger blood."

When Paul ran for political office in Paris, he wrote to Laura Marx in a letter that

"Being in his quality as a nigger, a degree nearer to the animal kingdom than the rest of us, he is undoubtedly the most appropriate representative of that district." 

The reason why he was so appropriate to represent that specific district? It contained a zoo. 

Paul and Laura ended up taking their own lives in a suicide pact. She would be Marx's second daughter to commit suicide.

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Marx and Engel's correspondence was also replete with racist vitriol they would spew at all those they hated, especially Jews.

Discussing a Jewish colleague, Marx wrote how much he loathed his "cynical, oily-obtrusive, phony-Baronial Jew-manners." He usually addressed Leo Frankel in letters as "the little Jew". He referred to another, Ferdinand Lasalle, as "greasy Jew," "the little kike," "water-polack Jew," "Jew Braun," "Yid" "Izzy," "Wily Efraim," "Baron Itzig," and "the Jewish Nigger".

He also wrote about him that:

"It is now perfectly clear to me that, as the shape of his head and the growth of his hair indicates he is descended from the Negroes who joined in Moses' flight from Egypt."

He added that he could be wrong and that his "cranial formation" might be as such because "his mother or his grandmother on the father's side was crossed with a nigger." He ended his invective by saying, "The union of a Jew & German on a Negro base was bound to produce an extraordinary hybrid. The fellow's opportunity is also niggerlike".

Be a German in the Street, and a Jew-hater at Home

What a wonderful sardonic sense of humor, right? You'd think he was the seventh Marx brother (RIP, Manfred). Or, at the very least, that's the defense the likes of Professor Robert Fine or David Hirsch argue. Marx would fit right in on today's anonymous image boards, considering his casual and repeated use of the n-word and vitriolic hatred of Jews.

The problem is that, even at the time, Marx's own racism was far outside the bounds of polite society. It was not considered normal at the time to engage in such speech, neither in private nor in public.

Nor were his execrations restricted to individual Jews; as he wrote in another letter, "the Israelite faith is repulsive to me." The contempt dripped from every letter of every word he ever wrote about the subject and every conversation he had.

Writing to Engels in May 1868, he complained that he was prevented from writing by the visit of a certain Leibel Choras. He mentioned the persecution of Jews in Moldavia and dismissed Leibel's concerns as "he wailed a bit, but it does not appear to be that bad." While on holiday in Ramsgate in 1879, he complained to him that the resort was plagued with too "many Jews and fleas."

In a letter to his daughter Jenny, he described how

Yesterday evening I had the unavoidable tea at the Grumperts. Mrs Grumpert has been much affected by the teeth of time. I have never witnessed before a more rapid change. The hypocrisy of a Greek nose has given way to the true Jewish type, everything about her looks rather shrivelled and dried up, and the voice has that guttural sound which the selected people is to some degree cursed with. Speaking of disagreeableness, […]

Seemingly, any trait he found undesirable or irritating, he ascribed to Jewishness, such as when a particular businessman who had to try to haggle with him, it had to be because "[as] a Jew he had to make just one more attempt!"

"Tausenau is, in general, very much a wiseacre and intriguer, dabbling in diplomacy and equipped with the petty Jew's flair for calculation" - to Engels, 1851

"Each time Spielmann turns me away with the remark, uttered in Jewishly nasal tones: 'Nah nahtice yet.'" - to Engels, 1853

This Fraulein, who really swamped me with her benevolence, is the most ugly creature I ever saw in my life, a nastily Jewish physiognomy, a sharply protruding thin nose, [...] - to Antoinette Philips, 1961

“At certain times, strangely enough, la Hatzfeld's voice has a Jewish intonation that has been acquired from and instilled in her by him.” - to Engels, 1861

"In London, a crafty-looking little Jew with a small box under his arm climbed into our carriage with great haste." - to Engels, 1875

In fact, it is challenging to find a letter where Marx doesn't preface a Jewish name with the word Jew, something he does not do with any other race or nationality, at least in a consistent manner and not an individual basis.

It's even harder to find a letter where such a preface is preceded by a positive qualifier; nigh impossible, really. At best, "the Jew such-and-such" will be used when discussing an individual. Far more common is something along the lines of "[…] and it ends with that oily Jew Bender[…]" in a letter to Engels in 1867. "Little Jew" seems to be a favorite, and is used dozens of times for almost as many individuals.

One of the nastiest character traits of Marx was how he would simultaneously loathe those close to him but also act incensed at how they would not eternally provide him with money simply for the privilege of living in the same world as Karl.

The Jewish nigger Lassalle who, I'm glad to say, is leaving at the end of this week, has happily lost another 5,000 talers in an ill-judged speculation. The chap would sooner throw money down the drain than lend it to a 'friend,' even though his interest and capital were guaranteed. In this he bases himself on the view that he ought to live the life of a Jewish baron, or Jew created a baron (no doubt by the countess ). Just imagine! [...] The fellow has wasted my time and, what is more, the dolt opined that, since I was not engaged upon any 'business' just now, but merely upon a 'theoretical work', I might just as well kill time with him! In order to keep up certain dehorsh vis-à-vis the fellow, my wife had to put in pawn everything that wasn't actually nailed or bolted down!

The visit of someone whom he considers a friend was a waste of time, as he did not offer Marx any money. He won't even respect his 'theoretical work' and treats Marx's nights out at the pub getting drunk and theorizing (or afternoons cheating on his wife with their indentured servant) as a sign that his friend might not be so incredibly busy as to spend time together.

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Being an intellectual, Marx's hatred was not contained in mere crude bigotry. He, of course, couched it in philosophic terms. In fact, his whole ideology rested on his theory of international (Jewish) bankers controlling society.

Reading Marx's life story and letters leaves you with a very disturbing portrait; this is a man no one should venerate. Marx's treatment of others, especially his wife or children, was abhorrent. I did not concentrate much on his private life; I did not even cover most of the racist comments you find in his private discussions and letters.

As far as what can be gleaned from all of this, it's clear that Marx had paranoid beliefs about Jewish bankers, believed in conspiracy theories (especially those involving the British), refused any honest work and would have been classified as "not engaged in education, employment or training" his entire life, loved to use racial slurs, insulted anyone he didn't like in the vilest terms, lived off his parents, utterly ungrateful, had terrible hygiene and was a narcissist with a superiority complex…

I guess 4chan is where Marx would have first published The Communist Manifesto if he had lived in our day…

Marriage made in Hell

In the next installment, I will provide in-depth analysis & citations of the antisemitism in his public and published work.

A note on Hitler & Marx

While it is true that Hitler was not a communist, he most certainly was influenced and molded his own political third way based on Marx and his ideas. His early political leanings were centered around Socialist and Marxist groups, and many members of his inner circle were themselves avowed Marxists before embracing National Socialism (and sometimes, considered both perfectly compatible). He himself described how he spent dozens of hours reading Marxist material, both socialist and communist tracts, and he ultimately picked and chose from both what he felt were German enough in spirit for his ideology. His view of Marxists differed from his views of Karl Marx the man, and his ideas. Even in what he rejected of Marx, it still left a profound influence on him.