| Karl Marx and Socialist Anti-Semitism |
Anti-semitism is an integral part of socialism.Socialism appeared toward the end of the 18th century, the philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte was the first to conceptualize the modern socialist state -- autarky, a ‘protected’ economy with all economic activity regulated by the state, including: trade, production, prices, wages, and removing the right of individuals to choose their occupation. His work later influenced the utopians and syndicalist socialism. His comments on Jews include: In nearly all the nations of Europe, a powerful, hostile government is growing, and is at war with all the others, and sometimes oppresses the people in dreadful ways: It is Jewry! 10 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon advocated the abolition of money and advanced a reshaping of society upon communitarianism. Proudhon is better known for “property is theft!,” he also stated: The Jew is by temperament an anti-producer, neither a farmer nor an industrialist nor even a true merchant. He is an intermediary, always fraudulent and parasitic, who operates, in trade as in philosophy, by means of falsification, counterfeiting, and horse-trading. [Jews are] parasites, merchants, usurers [who] pillage the country like pirates and were guilty of mercantile depravities 5 This merchant is a real Jew. It is applied, in familiar style, to all those who show great greed for money and eagerness to make it. 5 Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew -- not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. 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. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time.... We recognize in Jewry, therefore, a general present-time-oriented anti-social element, 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 dissolve itself. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry 1 This young lady, who instantly overwhelmed me with her kindness, is the ugliest creature I have seen in my entire life, with repulsive Jewish facial features. 13 Marx' collaborator Friedrich Engels co-authored the “Communist Manifesto.” He also wrote: I'm returning the letter by Lassalle. A loony Jew, from top to toe. 22 I define the name of the despised Jew, any type of trafficker, any non-productive parasite, who lives from somebody else's substance and work. [Jews are] one exploiting sect, one people of leeches, one single devouring parasite closely and intimately bound together not only across national boundaries, but also across all divergences of political opinion anti-Semitism is a Socialist movement, only in nobler and purer forms than Social Democracy. 5 the Jewish questions - always and everywhere - has to do with economic exploitation. 5 we --- make no secret of regarding anti-Semitism not as a regrettable symptom or disgrace, but as the main prop of national thought, the chief means of promoting a disposition genuinely based on the people, and thus the greatest achievement of the century. even parts of science which are especially ventured into by the Jews on account of their exclusion from others, already reveal in many ways the stamp of the new form of business directed to profit in all its reasonings appeals to us as a creation of the intellect, a thing of thought and purpose projected into the world of organisms, mechanically and artfully wrought, destined to destroy and to conquer Nature's realm and to reign itself in her stead. Just so does Capitalism appear on the scene; like the Jewish religion, an alien element in the midst of the natural, created world; like it too something schemed and planned in the midst of teeming life. It should come as no surprise that in the twentieth century, the National Socialist German Worker's Party published the following propaganda: the Jew has always remained the same, whether as a grain speculator in ancient Rome or as a bank or stock exchange potentate in the modern era. They were always able to control the wealth of whole nations. Nations and peoples once their contemporaries have vanished, leaving only words and crumbled monuments behind; only the Jew remains. In ancient days we see him carrying on his business in the trading centers of the Mediterranean. In the Middle Ages he provided money for German nobles and free cities. Today he rules the banks and stock exchanges of the whole world, forcing the nations under the yoke of financial capitalism. The power of this people of 15 million rests on these international relations. This is how they seem to fulfill the commandment of Jehovah - the world domination of the chosen people. 27 NSDAP economic policies, and those of other parties labelled as ‘fascist’ such as the Italian Fascists themselves, the British Union of Fascists, and the British National Party, are/were undoubtedly socialist. Adolph Hitler: We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions 2 The bourgeois is about to leave the historical stage. In its place will come the class of productive workers, the working class, that has been up until today oppressed. It is beginning to fulfill its political mission. It is involved in a hard and bitter struggle for political power as it seeks to become part of the national organism. The battle began in the economic realm; it will finish in the political. It is not merely a matter of pay, not only a matter of the number of hours worked in a day-though we may never forget that these are an essential, perhaps even the most significant part of the socialist platform-but it is much more a matter of incorporating a powerful and responsible class in the state, perhaps even to make it the dominant force in the future politics of the Fatherland 9 A large part of NSDAP anti-semitic propaganda also presented Marxism as a ‘Jewish conspiracy’ in reference to Marx's Jewish roots, this was a purely pragmatic political move against the German Communists of the KPD -- the Comintern faction whose aim was to bring Germany into the USSR. In private conversations, Hitler admitted that the NSDAP ideology was none other than Marxist. Marx and Engels were anti-semitic toward the Jewish socialist Ferdinand Lassalle, Bakunin was anti-semitic toward Marx, all three of the previous mentioned factions denounced each other's socialism -- and all were socialist. The major intellectuals of the NSDAP were also Marxist theoreticians. Socialism was a Christian Protestant schism, a backlash against science, secularism, and individualism, which essentially repeated the old Christian collectivist prejudices against Judaism and stereotypes, in the socialist prejudices against secularism, against self-reliance, individual enquiry and economic activity. Socialists despise modern Judaism and Jewish culture for (unlike socialism) being secularist with a strong emphasis on individualism. Jewish culture contains a respect for individuals, thirst for knowledge, and a tolerance for dissent. Judaism is not concerned with “the heavenly” but with a pragmatic improvement of the human condition. I cannot write better words than the following... It is clear also that “serving God” was equated with “serving the living.” The best of the Jewish people, especially the Prophets and Jesus, contended tirelessly for this. Judaism is thus no transcendental religion; it is concerned with life as we live it and as we can, to a certain extent, grasp it, and nothing else. It seems to me, therefore, doubtful whether it can be called a religion in the accepted sense of the word, particularly as no “faith” but the sanctification of life in a supra-personal sense is demanded of the Jew. But the Jewish tradition also contains something else, something which finds splendid expression in many of the Psalms, namely, a sort of intoxicated joy and amazement at the beauty and grandeur of this world, of which man can form just a faint notion. This joy is the feeling from which true scientific research draws its spiritual sustenance, but which also seems to find expression in the song of birds. To tack this feeling to the idea of God seems mere childish absurdity. Albert Einstein, 1934 it is only in the Christian world that civil society attains perfection 1 There is no other demographic more lacking in spirituality than socialists. Spiritual experience is to be found in the material world, not in ”the social good,” “utopia,” and other meaningless words by which they subjugate humanity. Anti-Zionism is socialist anti-semitism -- the association of Judaism and Jews with capitalist/Western imperialism. Ulrike Meinhof, the 1970s left-wing German terrorist of the Bolshevik-sponsored Badden-Meinhof Gang: Auschwitz meant that six million Jews were killed, and thrown on the waste--heap of Europe, for what they were considered: money-Jews. Finance capital and the banks, the hard core of the system of imperialism and capitalism, had turned the hatred of men against money and exploitation, and against the Jews.... Anti-Semitism is really a hatred of capitalism. 3 This is why East German agents aided the escape of the Black September assassins of Jewish athletes in the Munich Olympics, why East German schools failed to mention that Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and why the East German government harbored Lebanese terrorists and Carlos the Jackal. This is the reason for this modern socialist attempted rescuing of Marx's statements, published by the “World Socialist Web Site” [humans have a need to confess, often in the midst of a denial]: While those passages in Marx's works that identify Judaism with the more vulgar aspects of commercial life are seized upon by anti-Marxists as proof of his malice toward Jews, the fact is that Marx was addressing himself to a well-known historically determined phenomenon. 4 This is why with the resurgence of socialism in Germany and France we are now observing a continual rise in anti-semitic attacks. This is why the socialist-dominated European Union continues to pour money into the Palestinian Authority, despite that PA documents captured during Operation Defensive Shield, and independently verified, proved that the PA was directly sponsoring terrorism, and despite publicly available statements by PA ministers verifying their commitment to the destruction of Israel. This is why the EU maintains the most hostile attitude toward Israel outside of the Middle East, wanting to impose labeling of Israeli and Jewish ‘settlement’ imports to encourage a boycott [will the label be a yellow star perhaps?] Even more inexcusable is the EU direct funding of the PA television station which has repeatedly over many years broadcast descriptions of Jews as “the sons of pigs and dogs” and direct calls for their extermination -- again all this information is well documented and publicly available, ignorance is not a believable excuse. This is why the French left-wing newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur made an absurd and unfounded libel, without any evidence, against Israeli soldiers -- that they raped “Palestinian” women in order that those women would later be killed by their relatives for family honor [in an attempt to excuse well documented ‘honor’ killings amongst ‘Palestinian’ society.] 7
This is why Brian Whitaker the Middle East editor of the British left-wing newspaper the Guardian runs a personal website about all Middle East nations excepting Israel on the stated basis that it is not a member of the Arab League, which in 1948 had announced a “war of extermination” against Israel and whose Zeyad Center think-tank recently supported Holocaust deniers, their Executive Director stating Jews are enemies of all nations. This is why the Guardian ran a front-page headline questioning whether the existence of Israel was justified. This is why... In June 1967 Benoit Frachon, a leader of the French Communist Party, described the Israeli victory ceremony in Jerusalem in the following terms:
accuses this "jewish" politician of corruption, and mentions that the revolution was financed by the "jewish" George Soros. Hakan Jacobson has found out that several sentences are picked almost word-by-word from an article on a Swedish neo-nazi site 38 This is why when I walked into a ‘worker's’ drinking-hole I overheard a discussion between three trades unionists, moving from deriding the capitalist policies of their government to talk about “Jewish princesses.” This is why at various socialist marches [the most recent ones being anti-liberation-of-Iraq] a common sight is masks depicting Jews -- like the 19th century depictions of Negroes -- in grotesque physiological ethnic-caricature [no words, just a face ‘representing’ a Jew,] which no one at these marches seems to find at all offensive. Also there are signs such as [verbatim] “Smash the Jewish state,” the man photographed carrying the aforementioned sign was photographed at another march carrying a sign with the words “The options still remain = Socialism or imperialist barbarism.” And at a recent anti-globalization protest in Italy a Jewish citizen of Milan carrying the Israeli flag was assaulted, whilst at another protest in Italy, in Davos protesters wore masks of Jewish US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- marked with a yellow star, carrying a golden calf laden with money. 6
This is why Adbusters the Canadian anti-capitalist movement published a list of fifty prominent US conservatives, marking with a black dot all which were Jewish. This is why Indymedia the left-wing internet organization were recently pulled from Google's news feed service for running anti-semitic articles. This is why I am not a socialist. I must end this essay with mention of one form of anti-Semitism among the socialists of today -- one which I have witnessed in person repeatedly -- accusing Jews of being, or being equivalent to, the NSDAP. Most often this is levelled against Israelis (“Israeli” is the word used by socialists to avoid saying “Jew”) -- that their “occupation” (a factually incorrect use of a legal term) of “Palestine” (a factually incorrect use of a geographic term) is “like the Nazis” -- or, meaning exactly the same but in vaguer language “how could they do this after what the Nazis did to them?” The innaccuracy and obscenity of such a comparison -- of the NSDAP who sent millions -- humans -- children -- into ovens and gas chambers, who injected dye into the eyes of children in an attempt to “make them Aryan,” who turned people into soap -- with the Israeli administration which has spent billions of dollars upon “occupied” Palestinians, building hundreds of hospitals, schools, mother and child centers, many universities, training and employing thousands of Palestinian teachers and health-care professionals -- which improved the quality of Palestinian life at a phenomenally greater rate than the previous Jordanian occupation (this time a correct usage) of “Palestine” -- is beyond description. Given there is no factual basis for the comparison one must ask why specifically the NSDAP and why, in any case, such an innaccurate comparison -- the only explanation I can admit is that the statement is intended to emotionally hurt Jews -- and the statement proceeds from hatred. I have only ever heard socialists make this comparison. In my personal experience, one out of five socialists -- not meaning those who vote to protect their welfare checks -- or those who describe their selves as “left-wing” having been told long ago by friends that it was about “equality and justice” and who show scarcely any interest in politics -- but in politically active socialists, I have directly observed unmistakable anti-semitism. The actual ratio of those who hold anti-semitic views I suspect to be one out of three or higher. From the mass socialist support for Saddam Hussein and the Ba'athist/religious extremist terrorists in Iraq, which strongly resembles the Comintern support for the NSDAP during the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, to physical violence directed against peaceful right-wing counter-protestors for daring to express an alternate opinion at public socialist “peace” marches, to the American college Professor who thinks that several repeats of the 9/11 mass murder are necessary, the instincts for tyranny and violence are still there. Why is socialism still accepted as a valid political view among supposedly civilized cultures? Whilst, as per the Weimar Republic, the German economy again languishes after years of state socialism, and one hears reports like the one repeated below, one realizes that European socialists who, despite the facts of World Wars One, Two, and the Holocaust, pride their selves as being so far more sophisticated and intelligent than those “dumb Yanks,” in fact have learnt precisely nothing. Last week, I had the opportunity in Munich to attend a screening of Roman Polanski's new film The Pianist, a film that will not premiere in the United States for another month. This film is based on the true story of the Polish Jewish piano virtuoso Wladyslaw Szpilman, who survived the entire Nazi occupation of Warsaw hiding in the Ghetto and at times being hidden right under the noses of the Nazis in safe houses maintained by the Polish Resistance. Simply put, Polanski's film is a masterpiece. It is considerably better than Schindler's List and is undoubtedly the greatest Holocaust movie of all time. The Pianist has already won the Palm d'Or at Cannes. It deserves to win the Oscar... 1 "On the Jewish Question" by Karl Marx, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/ 2 Adolph Hitler, speech of 1 May 1927, cited in "Hitler was a Socialist" by John Ray, http://jonjayray.netfirms.com/hitler.html 3 "The Socialist Roots of Anti-Semitism" by Tyler Cowen, http://www.frontpagemag.com/ 4 "An exchange of letters on Marx and anti-Semitism" by David North of the WSWS Editorial Board, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/corr-m13.shtml 5 Citation in "The Marxist Origins of Hitlerian Hate" by Jim Peron, http://freedom.orlingrabbe.com/lfetimes/marx_hitler.htm 6 "Globalisation, anti-Zionism and the New Antisemitism" by Mark Strauss, Foreign Policy, http://www.aijac.org.au/updates/Oct-03/311003.html/ 7 "Graffiti On History's Walls" by Mortimer B. Zuckerman, US News and World Report, http://www.aijac.org.au/updates/Oct-03/311003.html/ 8 Oswald Mosley, http://www.oswaldmosley.com/ 9 Paul Joseph Goebbels, cited in "Hitler was a Socialist" by John Ray, http://jonjayray.netfirms.com/hitler.html 10 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, cited in "Why the Aryan Law? A Contribution to the Jewish Question" by Dr. E. H. Schulz and Dr. R. Frercks, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/arier.htm 11 http://www.bnp.org.uk/ 12 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, cited in "Here There is No Why?" published in "the diary of an anti-chomskyite" by Benjamin Kerstein, http://antichomsky.blogspot.com/ 13 Karl Marx to Antoinette Philips, 24 March 1861, translation by John Ray, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_marxwords_archive.html#110871264591396759 14 Karl Marx, "Mr. Vogt," 1860, translation by John Ray, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_marxwords_archive.html#110836464035445098 15 Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, 25 February 1859, translation by John Ray, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_marxwords_archive.html#110829094514996393 16 Karl Marx, "Die russische Anleihe," 1856, translation by John Ray, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_marxwords_archive.html#110766388016667659 17 Karl Marx, "Über die Bauernbefreiung in Rußland," 1858, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_marxwords_archive.html#110750839493463842 18 Karl Marx, "Österreichs Bankrott," 1854, translation by John Ray, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_marxwords_archive.html#110724359254513178 19 Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, 21 January 1853, translation by John Ray, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_marxwords_archive.html#110681739800440053 20 Karl Marx, NRZ 17 November 1848, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_marxwords_archive.html#110551545535387686 21 Karl Marx to Arnold Ruge, 13 March 1843, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_marxwords_archive.html#110464566803672044 22 Friedrich Engels to Karl Marx, 11 May 1857, translation by John Ray, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_marxwords_archive.html#110802291886332391 23 Friedrich Engels to Karl Marx, 14 April 1856, translation by John Ray & associate, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_marxwords_archive.html#110777426631578007 24 Friedrich Engels to Karl Marx, 7 March 1856, translation by John Ray, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_marxwords_archive.html#110758803143020218 25 Friedrich Engels, NRZ 29 April 1849, http://marxwords.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_marxwords_archive.html#110594074714876973 26 "The Eternal Nazi: Watching Roman Polanski's The Pianist in Germany," by William Grim, http://www.rightwingnews.com 27 "Why the Aryan Law? A Contribution to the Jewish Question" by Dr. E. H. Schulz and Dr. R. Frercks, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/arier.htm 28 "The Jews in World Politics" by Karl Baumbck, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/aufkla01.htm 29 "The German National Catechism," http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/catech.htm 30 "The Jewish Problem," http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/imbild1.htm 31 "The "Decent" Jew, A Letter to an Englishman," by Hanns Oberlindober, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/oberlindober1.htm 32 "Racial Policy," http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/rassenpo.htm 33 "Ten Responses to Jewish Lackeys," by Kurt Hilmar Eitzen, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/responses.htm 34 "To Know the Jews is to Understand the Meaning of the War!," http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/sprech44a.htm 35 "Zionism," by Arno Schickedanz, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/zionism.htm 36 "Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken," by Joseph Goebbels, http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/haken32.htm 37 "Fifty Years of French Intellectual Bias against Israel - An Interview with Simon Epstein," http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-4.htm 38 "Does DN use Nazis as Sources?" by Johan Norberg, http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=displayblog&month=2&year=2005#851 39 "Strang Teacups" by Johan Norberg, http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=displayblog&month=3&year=2005#868 |
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