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Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818^[1] – March 14, 1883) was a bourgeois^[2] political pamphleteer,^[3] polemicist^[4] and propagandist,^[5] credited as co-founder (with Friedrich Engels) of communism^[6] and specifically of Marxism. According to Don Ross, co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics, "the Marxist system as a whole is not regarded as economics by the mainstream."^[7] Economist Thomas Sowell, an ex-Marxist,^[8] agrees:

William Coleman of the Australian National University actually identifies Marx as an "anti-economist."^[10] Ross concurs, labeling Marx "the most influential anti-economist of all."^[11] Even Michael Harrington, a well-known Marxist,^[12] in his book, The Twilight of Capitalism, devoted an entire chapter to Marx "The anti-economist."^[13] Nevertheless, men and women of zeal, often well-meaning but without understanding^[14] of economics, ravaged the 20th century reifying Marx's economic illusions—in the process killing more people than all the century's wars combined.^[15]

Early life

Marx was born "Carl Marx"^[16] in the Rhineland city of Trier, then in the Kingdom of Prussia (now in the Federal Republic of Germany),^[17] the son of Heinrich Marx and Henriette Pressborck.^[18] Marx's father was a successful lawyer^[19] and owner of several Moselle vineyards.^[20] Philosophically, he was a liberal^[21] who “knew his Voltaire and Rousseau by heart.”^[22] After the Prussian Edict of 1812 effectively banned Jews from public office and the professions,^[23] he converted from Judaism to the Evangelical Church^[24] (established in 1817 as the state church of Prussia),^[25] changing his name from Hershel Mordechai to Heinrich Marx.^[26] In 1824, he had his seven children, including six-year-old Karl, baptized.^[27]

Marx the Christian

Marx was confirmed at age 15. As a student at the Royal Frederick William III gymnasium, he was to all appearances a Christian. When Marx graduated in 1835, his diploma read, under the category “Religious knowledge”: “His knowledge of the Christian faith and morals is fairly clear and well grounded; he knows also to some extent the history of the Christian Church.”^[28] Yet even then Marx betrayed a tendency to substitute man for God as the primary and ultimate object of Christian love and sacrifice. In an 1835 senior thesis, the 17-year-old Marx wrote that in union with Christ, "we turn our hearts to our brothers whom He has closely bound to us, and for whom also He sacrificed Himself... Therefore union with Christ bestows... a heart which is open to love of mankind..."^[29] Likewise, in another senior thesis written at the same time, Marx wrote that "religion itself teaches us that the ideal being whom all strive to copy sacrificed himself for the sake of mankind, and who would dare to set at nought such judgments?"^[30] Marx, a descendant of famous Talmudic scholars and sages on both sides of his family,^[31] apparently studied Greek and French, but not Hebrew.^[32] He would put this education to strange uses: "Many of Marx’s dogmas were not original," writes economist Mark Skousen. "They came from the Bible, which he twisted and changed to suit his purposes."^[33]

Bonn University

However, Marx's Christianity had little staying power. Barely a month after starting the study of law at Bonn University in October 1835, Marx seems to have embraced atheism. Heinrich disapproved, warning his son:

Marx was not academically successful, and proved to be a disappointment to his parents,^[35] confirming his father's opinion “that in your heart egoism is predominant.”^[36] As a leader of the Trier Tavern Club, a group of students “whose main ambition was to get drunk as frequently and riotously as possible,” Marx began playing cards, getting into drunken brawls, and was even wounded in a duel.^[37] He spent 24 hours in jail “for disturbing the peace by rowdiness and drunkenness at night.”^[38] His father tried to dissuade the young Marx from such vices, warning his son that “youthful sins in any enjoyment that is immoderate or even harmful in itself meet with frightful punishment.”^[39]

His father's warning had no discernible effect. Years later, in London, Marx went on “many a pub crawl.”^[40] On one of these, accompanied by Wilhelm Liebknecht and Edgar Bauer, Marx drank in no less than 18 different pubs. In one of these, Marx's “inebriated comments”^[41] that Germany “would yet outclass all other nations” nearly got them, once again, into a fight. They fled into the street where, according to Liebknecht, “we broke four or five street lamps.”^[42] When he participated in this crime, Marx was a husband and father himself, nearly 40 years old.^[43]

Marx's finances

Marx's youthful bacchanalia seem to have been riotously expensive; while he was still a student, there emerged what was to become a dominant theme of his life: his "grotesque incompetence" in real-world economics.^[44] On this score, the letters of Marx's long-suffering father tell a sorry tale:

• “Your accounts, dear Karl, are... disconnected and inconclusive. If only they had been shorter and more precise, and the figures properly set out in columns, the operation would have been very simple. One expects order even from a scholar, and especially from a practical lawyer.... I enclose a money order for 50 talers...”^[45]
• “I sent... 50 talers. With what you took with you, that makes 160 talers.... I am convinced that it is possible to manage with less... But no more under any condition... I enclose a draft on... the lottery office in the university building; you will get money there, as m[uch as] you need.”^[46]
• “You are receiving 100 talers herewith and, if you ask for it, you will receive the rest... You have not kept your word to me—you remember your promise... At the moment I could not send you any more. In the next few days you will probably receive 20 talers through Rabe.”^[47]
• “Please, dear Karl, write at once, but write frankly, without reserve and truthfully. Calm me and your dear, kind mother, and we will soon forget the little monetary sacrifice.”^[48]
• “For the time being I am sending you herewith 50 talers. You must at present be able to estimate approximately the amount you absolutely need each year, and that is what I should like to know.”^[49]
• “Enclosed a money order for 50 talers. If you prefer me to look for a firm there to make an arrangement with you, you must tell me approximately the monthly sum I should fix for you. By now you must be able to say what it amounts to with one thing and another.”^[50]
• "As if we were men of wealth, my Herr Son disposed in one year of almost 700 talers contrary to all agreement, contrary to all usage, whereas the richest spend less than 500."^[51]
• "...we are now in the fourth month of the law year and you have already drawn 280 talers. I have not yet earned that much this winter."^[52]

If the young Marx's money woes were due to immaturity, in this regard he he never grew up. "Marx was perpetually in debt, thanks largely to a disastrous combination of traits in his own character," writes Hugh Griffith: "an incorrigible hopelessness with money, together with a refusal to stop spending when it ran out."^[53] "Marx, the economist of the proletarian class," writes economist Yuri Maltsev, "was hardly what we would call a sound financial administrator."^[54]

In 1869, Marx told Engels he was £210 in debt, "of which 75 are for pawnshop and interest."^[55] That year, Engels sold his interest in the family firm and paid off all Marx's debts; in addition, Engels gave Marx a pension of £350 per year.^[56] According to Maltsev (using figures from an 1867 study presented to the Statistical Society of London),^[57] that put Marx's income in the top 2% of the British population—at the time the wealthiest in the world.^[58] Yet even this sum was not enough for Marx, who by his own admission was spending from £400 to £500 per year.^[59]

As a young man, Marx's financial irresponsibility "drove him into the hands of moneylenders at high rates of interest."^[60] This pattern continued into his middle age: "Marx was constantly borrowing money against his future income," writes Jerrold Seigal, professor of history at New York University, "and until 1863 against his family inheritance too...."^[61] By Marx's own admission he was paying interest rates as high as 50% in 1866, when he was 48 years of age.^[62] Perhaps not coincidentally, a "passionate hatred of usury was the real emotional dynamic of [Marx's] whole moral philosophy," argues historian Paul Johnson. "It explains why he devoted so much time and space to the subject" and, suggests Johnson, might be found "lying perhaps at the very roots of his hatred for the capitalist system."^[63]

Marx's anti-Semitism and racism

Among the money-lenders in London, Marx "made use of the Jews"—particularly "the Bambergers, Steifer and Spielmann," writes economic historian W.O. Henderson, "to raise small loans and to discount bills of exchange" from his editor—although he "became "furious when they pressed him to honour debts due for repayment," showing "his contempt by always referring to them as 'Jew (or little Jew) Bamberger' and 'Jew Spielmann.'"^[64] (Elsewhere, he called Bamberger a member of "the stock-exchange synagogue.")^[65] "His private letters are replete with anti-Semitic remarks, caricatures, and crude epithets," writes Marx's biographer, Saul K. Padover: "'Levy's Jewish nose,' 'usurers,' 'Jew-boy,' 'nigger-Jew,' etc."^[66] Marx "sprayed anti-Semitic insults at his enemies with savage glee," writes Francis Wheen:^[67] "The Jew Steinthal, with the bland smile"; "that pig... is a Jew by the name of Meier"; he called Max Friedlander "the cursed Jew of Vienna," Achille Fould a "stock-exchange Jew," and Joseph Süß Oppenheimer "the Jew Süß of Egypt;" he even called his doctor a Jew for pressing him for payment.^[68]

Marx's anti-Semitism was intertwined with racism. One one occasion when fellow socialist Ferdinand Lassalle (who regularly loaned Marx money) refused him a loan, Marx complained to Engels:

Marx called Lassalle a "kinky-haired Nigger-Jew" (kraushaariger Nigger-Jude)^[70] and continually referred to him as "Isaac," "Baron Isaac," a "little Jew," "Ephraim the clever," "Braun Yid" and "Itzig," names commonly used by anti-Semites of the day. "[T]he exodus of the Jews from Egypt was nothing but... the expulsion of the 'leprous people' from Egypt. At the head of these lepers was an Egyptian priest, Moses," assterted Marx. "Lazarus, the leper, is therefore the prototype of the Jew, and so also of Lazare-Lassalle."^[71]

Marx's style was shared by his companions: his wife referred to Lassalle "the little Berlin Jew,"^[72] while Engels called him a "greasy Jew."^[73]

Marx's anti-Semitism was not merely directed at his creditors, but extended to Jews and Judaism in general: He wrote to Engels from Ramsgate that there were "many Jews and bedbugs hereabouts";^[74] elsewhere, he wrote, "the Israelite faith is repugnant to me."^[75]

Left-wing anti-Semitism

Marx's anti-Semitism was well within mainstream leftism: although many leftists try to deny it, “modern, political anti-Semitism is a creature of the left as well as the right,”^[76] writes Robert Fine, chair of the Sociology Department at Warwick University. “[T]here is a strong tradition of anti-Semitism on the Left.”^[77] In France, writes Göttingen historian Karlheinz Weissmann, many on the left saw the Jews not merely as representing "German–Marxist internationalism," but "as the embodiment of capitalism."^[78] One "need not venture far into the pre-1930 literature of anti-economics before encountering conspicuous anti-Semitic effusions," observes Coleman. "One may say that, before about 1930, anti-economics and anti-Semitism existed in striking conjunction." He adds that "the conjunction was not accidental... [A]nti-economics and modern anti-Semitism shared some leading ideological contentions."^[79]

"[A]nti-capitalism and anti-Semitism were deeply intertwined," according to George L. Mosses, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "[I]n fact, they had been connected since the middle-ages."^[80] "For centuries, Jewish economic success led anti-Semites to condemn capitalism as a form of Jewish domination and exploitation," writes Columbia University history professor Jerry Z. Muller, "or to attribute Jewish success to unsavory qualities of the Jews themselves.^[81] “The Marxist, postmodern and post-Zionist pseudo-liberal views on democracy lead back to the totalitarian democracy of the French Enlightenment, in which anti-Semitism formed an essential ingredient,” writes Shlomo Sharan of Tel Aviv University.^[82] At that time, "the Jews symbolised the distressing symptoms of modernity ushered in by capitalism and political liberalism," writes Christian Wiese, professor of Jewish history at the University of Sussex.^[83] "It was in those days that the complaint arose that Jews were 'unproductive middle men,' 'economic parasites,'" wrote Edward H. Flannery, a professor at the Institute of Judeo-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University.^[84] "It was shaped for the most part by socialist writers and became a favorite theme with later racist antisemites of a socialist stripe."^[85] Among the French Left, observes Weissmann, were "numerous individuals and groups who considered class struggle and race struggle as one and the same thing—especially with reference to the Jews...."^[86] The socialism of Fourier,^[87] Proudhon,^[88] Bakunin^[89] and Beatrice Webb^[90] was inseperable from this crude and vicious anti-Semitism, portraying Jews as exploiters, leeches and parasites.^[91]

During the 19th century, the center of left-wing anti-Semitism gradually shifted from Paris to Vienna, where the "radical-democratic and nationalist left wing" was headed by German Liberal Party leader Georg von Schönerer,^[92] one of a group of "left-wing German liberals" who demanded "the exclusion of Jews from the new movement and as far as possible from public life";^[93] Hitler would later ascribe to Schönerer "the wisdom of a prophet."^[94] In late 19th century Germany, a popular critical view held that capitalism was a product of Jewish culture.^[95] Adolf Stöcker, leader of the left-wing Christian Social Party, wrote, "I see in unrestrained capitalism the evil of our epoch and am naturally also an opponent of modern Judaism on account of my socio-political views."^[96] Meanwhile, Adam Müller, leader of the anti-capitalist right, said, “The Jewish messiah, the Antichrist, has come to earth in the guise of the steam engine, and this in order to speed up the end of the world.”^[97] According to Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University:

According to Henry L. Feingold, director of the Jewish Resource Center at Baruch College, "socialism contained the seeds to become the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals of the Left."^[99] In the 20th century, those seeds took root and grew into a forest bearing poisonous fruit: Stalinist Russia,^[100] East Germany,^[101] the Tupamoros-West Berlin,^[102] the Red Brigade Faction,^[103] the Revolutionary Cells (Revolutionäre Zellen)^[104] and the Sandinistas.^[105] In the 21st-century it has festered into full flower, with embrace of Islamist anti-Semitism by the Left.^[106]

Marx's anti-Semitism

So current are such ideas in socialist circles that they have come to influence even Jews, “or to be precise, ex-Jews, in the socialist ranks,” according to Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. “The outstanding example of this is of course Karl Marx.”^[107] Although Marxists and other socialists "are extremely coy about it nowadays, for obvious reasons," observes British writer Alexander Baron, "the early socialists, including the Jewish-born Karl Marx, were more than a little tainted with that most ignoble of pastimes, Jew-baiting."^[108] Marx was "a particularly caustic antisemite," wrote Flannery.^[109] Indeed, Marx's "entire theory of class was rooted in anti-Semitism," writes Johnson.^[110]

Thus Sharan calls Marx an “anti-Semitic Jew,”^[111] while Albert S. Lindemann, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History, University of California–Santa Barbara, dubs him “a self-hating Jew.”^[112] Likewise, Sir Isaiah Berlin diagnosed Marx's condition as "self-hate" and Marx's biographer Werner Blumenberg "self-hatred"; Raphael Patai pronounced Marx the "most influential of Jewish self-haters."^[113]

Henderson and W.H. Chaloner, who together translated and edited a 1971 edition of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England, comment:

"On the Jewish Question"

In his essay “On the Jewish Question,” writes Dennis K. Fischman, assistant professor of social science at Boston University, "Marx seems fairly to bristle with anti-Jewish sentiments."^[115] The views Marx expressed in that essay "were part of the classic repertoire of anti-Semitism," according to Gertrude Himmelfarb, professor of history at the Graduate School of the City University of New York.^[116] It is “almost a classic anti-Semitic tract,” agrees Johnson.^[117] It is "without any question an anti-Semitic tract," admits "eco-socialist" Joel Kovel.^[118] Indeed, concurs Lewis, it has become “one of the classics of anti-Semitic propaganda.” ^[119] This essay was "reprinted, widely quoted, and praised," adds Himmelfarb, "and became the exemplar of a classic genre of socialist anti-Semitism."^[120]

"Much of the essay seems simply to borrow from standard anti-Semitic fare," writes Lindemann.^[121] Coleman identifies this work as "perhaps, the most condensed identification of Jews with self-interest."^[122] Marx exploits the stereotype of Jews “linked in the popular imagination with usury, sharp dealing, and ruthless cunning,” writes Stephen J. Greenblatt of Harvard.^[123] He uses the “widespread antisemitic caricature of Jews as inveterate moneylenders and hucksters along with the use of the term Judentum [Jewishness, Judaism] as a metaphor for commerce,” writes Larry Ray, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent.^[124] Not only are Judaism and capitalism "described as basically the same," according to Lindeman,^[125] but in Marx's view, Jews are "responsible for capitalism," writes Lewis.^[126] Marx considered Jews "the very soul of the corrupt capitalism he fought," wrote Flannery.^[127] The essay, writes Johnson, is “based upon a fantasied Jewish archetype and a conspiracy to corrupt the world.”^[128] "[T]he net result of Marx's essay is to reinforce a traditional anti-Jewish stereotype," concludes Wisrich, "the identification of the Jews with money-making—in the sharpest possible manner."^[129]

"Marx argues that the Jew will have to cast off his 'Jewishness'—that is, his mean and grasping ways," writes Lindemann, "in order to become fully human." Even Kovel, former Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies at Bard College, concedes, "No attempt to read these pages as a play on words can conceal the hostility which infuses them, and is precisely directed against the identity of the Jew."^[130] It involves “a sharp, even hysterical, denial of his religious background,” writes Greenblatt, as well as “extreme [rhetorical] violence” and “utter separation of himself from the people he excoriates....”

Marx "considered Jews worshippers of mammon," writes Flannery. ^[132] "The Jew of Marx's essay," agrees Lindeman, "worships money...."^[133] As Marx put it: "What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the secular cult of the Jew? Haggling.^[134] What is his worldly God? Money." Marx hammers the point: "Money is the jealous god of Israel, before which no other god may exist. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange." Despite political disenfranchisement, claims Marx, Jews have come to dominate politics through "the power of money":

Marx claimed that the Jews had elevated "their greedy, exploitive spirit"^[135] into the reigning spirit of the age, writes Matthew Lange, director of the German program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As Marx put it, "The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world":

It is "in North America," according to Marx, that "the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved" what he calls "its unambiguous and normal expression." As evidence, Marx approvingly quotes one observer who writes of the "devout and politically free inhabitant of New England" that

Marx ends with a call for "the emancipation of society from Judaism":

About this essay, Gérard Lyon-Caen, professor of labor law at the University of Paris, wrote:

The Holy Family

In his book The Holy Family Marx expanded on the theme of "the material, mass-type Jews," repeating his premise that "real secular Jewry, and hence religious Jewry too... finds its final development in the money system," and his conclusion that "the task of abolishing the essence of Jewry is actually the task of abolishing the Jewish character of civil society... the most extreme expression of which is the money system."^[139] About this book, Marx's biographer Robert Payne writes, "this solution of the Jewish question was not very different from Adolf Hitler's, for it involved the liquidation of Judaism...."^[140]

The German Ideology

In The German Ideology, Marx describes Jews as criminals and hypocrites, and in this regard, claims that the bourgeoisie is like the Jews: “The attitude of the bourgeois to the institutions of his regime is like that of the Jew to the law; he evades them whenever it is possible to do so in each individual case, but he wants everyone else to observe them.”^[141]

"The Russian Loan"

Extreme as these German works were, Marx surpassed them in vituperation with an article published in the United States. "The Russian Loan," published in the New York Daily Tribune, did not just savage the Jews as capitalists, but specifically exploited the anti-Semitic stereotype of Jews as usurers:

Engels called Polish Jews the "meanest of all races," marked by "its lust for profit."^[143]

References

1. ↑ Birth Certificate of Karl Marx, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 635
2. ↑ Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (W.W. Norton & Company, 2001) ISBN 0393321576, pp. 8, 278
3. ↑ George Bernard Shaw, “Trotsky, Prince of Pamphleteers,” The Nation (ISSN 0027-8378) Vol. 1922 No. 30 (June 7, 1922), pp. 560-561, reprinted in Brian Tyson, ed., Bernard Shaw's Book Reviews: Volume Two,1884-1950 (University Park, PA.: Penn State Press, 1996) ISBN 0271015489, pp. 440-450. Cf. Terrell Carver, The Postmodern Marx (University Park, PA.: Penn State Press, 1998), p. 160
4. ↑ Chris Matthew Sciaberra, Marx, Hayek and Utopia (SUNY Press, 1995) ISBN 0791426165, p.6. Cf. Michael Grenfell and Cheryl Hardy, Art Rules: Pierre Bourdieu and the Visual Arts (Berg Publishers, 2007) ISBN 1845202341, p.17
5. ↑ Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, The Cambridge Modern History (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1910), p. 758. Cf. Milorad M. Drachkovitch and Sidney Hook, Marxist Ideology in the Contemporary World: Its Appeals and Paradoxes (Ayer Publishing, 1973) ISBN 0836981545, p. 113
6. ↑ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings (Barnes & Noble, 2005) ISBN 1593081006, p. vi
7. ↑ Don Ross, "Economic theory, anti-economics, and political ideology," p. 10
8. ↑ Ray Sawhill, "Black and right," Salon.com, November 10, 1999
9. ↑ Thomas Sowell, Marxism: Philosophy and Economics (Taylor & Francis, 1985) ISBN 0043201717, p. 217.
10. ↑ William Coleman, Economics and its Enemies: Two Centuries of Anti-Economics (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) ISBN 1403941483, p. 234.
11. ↑ Don Ross, "Economic theory, anti-economics, and political ideology," p. 10
12. ↑ Wayne Price, "Anarchism: Utopian or Scientific?" The Utopian Vol. 5, p. 62
13. ↑ Michael Harrington, The Twilight of Capitalism (Simon and Schuster, 1976) ISBN 0671227599, chapter 5
14. ↑ "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Brandeis, J., Dissenting, Olmstead v. United States 277 US 438 (1928)
15. ↑ R.J. Rummel, What? Only 35,000,000 Killed in 20th Century War?, Democratic Peace Blog, November 30, 2008. In 1918, Grigory Zinoviev, first head of the Comintern, announced: "To overcome of our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia's population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated." (George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police [Oxford University Press, 1986] ISBN 0-19-822862-7, p. 114) Zinoviev's estimate that the Soviets would murder 10 million people was far too low: Mid-range academic estimates of the number of civilians murdered by Marxists range from 94 million (Stéphane Courtois, ed. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression [Harvard University Press, 1999] ISBN 0-674-07608-7, p. 4) to 148 million (R.J. Rummel [Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii], "Stalin Exceeded Hitler in Monstrous Evil; Mao Beat Out Stalin", Hawaii Reporter, December 1, 2005. Cf. R.J.Rummel, Reevaluating China’s Democide to 73,000,000, Democratic Peace Blog, October 10, 2005; R.J. Rummel, Reevaluated democide totals for 20th C. and China, Asia Pacific Research Online, November 29, 2005 [T. Matthew Ciolek, ed., Head, Internet Publications Bureau, Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies, National Institute for Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University]; Chris Banescu with Scott Manning, Communist Holocaust: 100+ million dead, hundreds of millions more tortured, imprisoned, and enslaved, OrthodoxNet.com Blog, March 9, 2010
16. ↑ Birth Certificate of Karl Marx, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 635
17. ↑ Roman Culture in Germany, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, London
18. ↑ Birth Certificate of Karl Marx, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 635
19. ↑ Hyam Maccoby, Antisemitism and Modernity: Innovation and Continuity (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006) ISBN 041531173X, p. 64
20. ↑ Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (W.W. Norton & Company, 2001) ISBN 0393321576, p. 10
21. ↑ John Spargo, Karl Marx: His Life and Work (B. W. Huebsch, 1912), p. 18
22. ↑ Wilhelm Liebknecht (Trans. Ernest Untermann), Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs (Chicago: C. H. Kerr & company, 1901), p. 163
23. ↑ Michael A. Meyer, ed., German-Jewish History in Modern Times: Vol. 2, Emancipation and acculturation, 1780-1871 (Columbia University Press, 1997) ISBN 0231074743, pp. 24-27
24. ↑ Birth Certificate of Karl Marx, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 635. Cf. Allan Megill, Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason (Why Marx Rejected Politics and the Market) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) ISBN 0742511669, p. 72
25. ↑ John Henry Kurtz, History of the Christian Church from the Reformation to the Present, Volume 3 (Edinburgh: Clark, 1863) ISBN 1417991631, pp. 302-303. Cf. "Prussia" in Hugh Chisholm, ed., The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information, 11th Ed., Vol. 22 (New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company, 1911), p. 522; "Evangelical Church," Catholic Encyclopedia
26. ↑ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: International Publishers, 1950), p. 9
27. ↑ Werner Blumenberg, Karl Marx: An Illustrated Biography (Verso, 2000) ISBN 1859842542, p. 10
28. ↑ Certificate of Maturity for Pupil of the Gymnasium in Trier, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), p. 643
29. ↑ Karl Marx, “The Union of Believers With Christ According to John 15: 1-14, Showing its Basis and Essence, its Absolute Necessity, and its Effects,” in Robert Payne, ed.,The Unknown Karl Marx (New York University Press, 1971), ISBN 0340093935, pp. 39-43, reprinted in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 636–639
30. ↑ Karl Marx, “Reflections of a Young Man on The Choice of a Profession,” Archiv für die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung (1925), reprinted in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 3-9
31. ↑ Paul Johnson, Intellectuals(HarperCollins, 1990) ISBN 0060916575, p. 53
32. ↑ Certificate of Maturity for Pupil of the Gymnasium in Trier, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), p. 643
33. ↑ Mark Skousen, The big three in economics: Adam Smith, Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes (M.E. Sharpe, 2007) ISBN 0765616947, p. 70
34. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, November 18, 1835, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 645-648
35. ↑ John Spargo , Karl Marx: His Life and Work (B. W. Huebsch, 1912) , p. 33
36. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, November 8, 1835, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), p. 645
37. ↑ Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (W. W. Norton & Company, 2001) ISBN 0393321576, pp. 15-16
38. ↑ Leaving Certificate from Berlin University, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 1, pp. 703-704
39. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, 1836, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 648-652
40. ↑ Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (W. W. Norton & Company, 2001) ISBN 0393321576, pp. 6, 74. Cf. Jack Newcombe, "The Karl Marx Memorial Pub Crawl," Life, October 25, 1968, pp. 105-106; "Cheers to Karl Marx, BBC, 1 May, 1998; Richard Newberry, "London Pub Crawl with Karl Marx," La Stampa, November 26, 2007
41. ↑ N. Ann Davis, Richard Keshen and Jeff McMahan, eds., Ethics and Humanity: Themes from the Philosophy of Jonathan Glover (Oxford University Press, 2010) ISBN 0195325192, p. 278
42. ↑ Wilhelm Liebknecht (Trans. Ernest Untermann), Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs (Chicago: C. H. Kerr & company, 1901), p. 150
43. ↑ Boris Nicolaievsky and Otto Maenchen-Helfen, (Trans. Gwenda David and Eric Mosbacher), Karl Marx: Man and Fighter (London: Methuen, 1936) ISBN 1406727032, p. 40
44. ↑ Paul Johnson, Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky (HarperCollins, 2007) ISBN 0061253170), p. 73
45. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, 1836, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 648-652
46. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, March 18, 1836, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 652-653
47. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, ca. May-June 1836, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 652-653
48. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, July 1, 1836, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 655-656
49. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, November 9, 1836, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 661-663
50. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, December 28, 1836, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 663-666
51. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, December 9, 1837, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 685-691
52. ↑ Letter from Heinrich Marx to son Karl, February 10, 1838, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. I (Trans. Robert Dixon), pp. 691-694
53. ↑ Hugh Griffith, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (Collector's Library, 2009) ISBN 1905716737, p. 10
54. ↑ Yuri N. Maltsev, Requiem for Marx (Auburn, AL: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 1993) ISBN 1610161165, p. 101
55. ↑ Quoted by Otto Ruhle, Karl Marx: His Life and Work (New York: Now Home Library, 1942; reprint: Lightning Source Inc, 2007) ISBN 1406727024, p. 360
56. ↑ F.Engels to Karl Marx, March 28, 1869: “Enclosed draft on the Union Bank of London £87–10s for March to June” (ie £350 per annum) in Gesamtausgabe [Collected Works], Part III, Vol. 3, p. 173, as cited in William Otto Henderson, Marx and Engels and the English workers: and other essays (Psychology Press, 1989) ISBN 0714633348, p. 26, n. 41. The Marxist Internet Archive has apparently not yet found the time to post this letter.
57. ↑ R. Dudley Baxter, National income: the United Kingdom (London: Macmillan and co, 1868)
58. ↑ Yuri N. Maltsev, Requiem for Marx (Auburn, AL: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 1993) ISBN 1610161165, p. 103
59. ↑ Marx to Kugelmann, 17 March 1868, Letters to Kugelmann (Greenwood Press, 1973) ISBN 0837170451, p. 65. This is yet another letter the text of which is missing from the Marxist Internet Archive.
60. ↑ Paul Johnson, Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky (HarperCollins, 2007) ISBN 0061253170), p. 73
61. ↑ Jerrold Seigal, Marx's Fate: The Shape of a Life (Penn State Press, 2004) ISBN 0271025816, p. 257
62. ↑ Karl Marx, Marx To Ludwig Kugelmann, 13 October 1866, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), Volume 42, p. 327
63. ↑ Paul Johnson, Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky (HarperCollins, 2007) ISBN 0061253170), p. 73
64. ↑ William Otto Henderson, Marx and Engels and the English workers: and other essays (Psychology Press, 1989) ISBN 0714633348, p. 70
65. ↑ Léon Poliakov, The History of Anti-semitism: From Voltaire to Wagner (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) ISBN 0812218655, p. 424-425
66. ↑ Saul Kussiel Padover, Karl Marx, an intimate biography (McGraw-Hill, 1978) ISBN 0070480729, p. 171
67. ↑ Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life (W.W. Norton & Company, 2001) ISBN 0393321576, p. 55
68. ↑ Léon Poliakov, The History of Anti-semitism: From Voltaire to Wagner (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) ISBN 0812218655, p. 424-425
69. ↑ Marx To Engels, July 30, 1862, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, Volume 41 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 388
70. ↑ Reinhold Aman, "Karl Marx, Maledictor," Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression Vol. 6, No. 1 (1982), p. 31
71. ↑ Pierre Birnbaum, Geography of hope: exile, the Enlightenment, disassimilation (Stanford University Press, 2008) ISBN 0804752931, p. 68
72. ↑ William Otto Henderson, Marx and Engels and the English workers: and other essays (Psychology Press, 1989) ISBN 0714633348, p. 71
73. ↑ Paul Johnson, A history of the Jews (HarperCollins, 1998) ISBN 0060915331, p. 350
74. ↑ Sigmund Krancberg, A Soviet postmortem: philosophical roots of the "Grand Failure" (Rowman & Littlefield, 1994) ISBN 0847679284, p. 59, n. 13
75. ↑ Robert S. Wistrich, Revolutionary Jews from Marx to Trotsky (Harrap, 1976) ISBN 0245527850, p. 30. The Marxist Internet Archive bowdlerizes this to "I dislike the Jewish faith," but the word Marx used—widderlich—is generally translated as disgusting, foul, abominable, etc.
76. ↑ "[A]nti-Semitism that we might call populist or democratic.... is linked equally to the left and right," according to historian George L. Mosses, "to the new nationalism, but also to certain tendencies in socialism." (George L. Mosse, Modern Jewish History - Summary: Lecture #7, March 1, 1971, George L. Mosse Program in History, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison) "[O]ne of the most frightening aspects of Hitler's book is not that he said what he said at the time, but that much of what he said can be found today in innumerable places: on Internet sites, propaganda brochures, political speeches, protest placards, academic publications, religious sermons, you name it. As long as it does not have Hitler's name attached to it, this deranged discourse will be ignored or allowed to pass. The voices that express these opinions do not belong to a single political or ideological current, and they are much less easy to distinguish than in the 1930s. They belong to the right and the left, to the religious and the secular, to the West and the East, to the rabble and the leaders, to terrorists and intellectuals, students and peasants, pacifists and militants, expansionists and anti-globalization activists." Omer Bartov, "He Meant What He Said," The New Republic, February 2, 2004
77. ↑ Robert Fine, “Karl Marx and the Radical Critique of Anti-Semitism,” Engage, No. 2 (May 2006)
78. ↑ Karlheinz Weissmann, "The Epoch of National Socialism," The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 257–294, citing Edmund Silberner, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sozialismus vom Anfang des 19.Jahrhunderts bis 1914 (Berlin, 1962), pp. 65–82
79. ↑ William Coleman, "Anti-Semitism in Anti-economics," History of Political Economy, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Winter 2003), pp. 759-777
80. ↑ George L. Mosse, Modern Jewish History - Summary: Lecture #7, March 1, 1971, George L. Mosse Program in History, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
81. ↑ Jerry Z. Muller, Capitalism and the Jews (Princeton University Press, 2010) ISBN 0691144788, p. 2
82. ↑ Shlomo Sharan, Israel and the Post-Zionists: A Nation at Risk (Sussex Academic Press, 2003) ISBN 1903900522 , p. 125
83. ↑ Christian Wiese, "Modern Antisemitism and Jewish Responses in Germany and France," in Michael Brenner, Vicki Caron and Uri R. Kaufmann, eds., Jewish emancipation reconsidered: the French and German models (Mohr Siebeck, 2003) ISBN 316148018X, p. 136
84. ↑ Eric Pace, "The Rev. Edward Flannery, 86, Priest Who Fought Anti-Semitism," The New York Times, October 22, 1998
85. ↑ Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-three Centuries of Antisemitism (Paulist Press, 2004) ISBN 0809143240, p. 168
86. ↑ Karlheinz Weissmann, "The Epoch of National Socialism," The Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 257–294, citing Edmund Silberner, Sozialisten zur Judenfrage: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sozialismus vom Anfang des 19.Jahrhunderts bis 1914 (Berlin, 1962), pp. 65–82
87. ↑ Fourier called Jews “parasites, merchants, and usurers.” Julia Franklin, trans., Selections from the works of Fourier (S. Sonnenschein & co., lim., 1901), p. 96, n. 1. Cf. Bernard Lewis, Semites and anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (W. W. Norton & Company, 1999) ISBN 0393318397, p. 111
88. ↑ Proudon called Jews “the race which poisons everything” and “the enemy of the human race.” Norman Podhoretz, Why are Jews Liberals? (Random House, Inc., 2009) ISBN 0385529198, p. 62
89. ↑ Bakunin called Jews “an exploiting sect, a bloodsucking people, a unique devouring parasite.” Robert S. Wistrich, “Socialism and Judeophobia: Antisemitism in Europe before 1914,” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, Vol. 37, No. 1 (January 1992), pp. 111-145
90. ↑ Webb wrote that “the strongest impelling motive of the Jewish race” was “the love of profit as distinct from other forms of money-earning.” (Italics in original.) Beatrice Webb, “East London Labour,” The Nineteenth Century, Vol. XXIV (July-December 1888), p. 176
91. ↑ Edmund Silberner, “The Anti-Semitic Tradition in Modern Socialism.,” Scripta Hierosolymitana, vol. III (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1956), pp.378-379
92. ↑ Viktor Karády, The Jews of Europe in the modern era: a socio-historical outline (Central European University Press, 2004) ISBN 9639241520, p. 360
93. ↑ Robert A. Kann, A history of the Habsburg Empire, 1526-1918 (University of California Press, 1980) ISBN 0520042069, p. 433
94. ↑ Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf: zwei Bände in einem Band, Vol. 1, 40th ed., (Bottom of the Hill, 1938) ISBN 1935785079, p. 93
95. ↑ Cristobal Young, "Christianity, Judaism, and the Spirit of Capitalism: The Weber-Sombart Debates," Department of Sociology, Princeton University, p. 1
96. ↑ Peter G. J. Pulzer, The rise of political anti-semitism in Germany & Austria (Harvard University Press, 1988) ISBN 0674771664, p. 95. "The anti-semitic ideology is usually embedded into a worldview, which ‘explains’ the evils of modern capitalist society," says one "Berlin-based antifascist, anti-capitalist group." "Capitalism in this worldview is not seen as a process, which arises following its own structural logic without a particular leadership, but rather as an exploitative project consciously put into effect by evil people. Historically, this way of thinking emerged in the 19th century in Europe in a time of to the rapid spread of capitalist society and the social upheavals this triggered. The anti-Semitic worldview thus consists of personification for non-understood economic and social procedures and draws upon the picture of the ‘Jewish capitalist’ that is deeply embedded in Western culture, which for centuries associated Jews with money. It can be displayed in talk of ‘the capitalists’ who ‘pull the strings’ from ‘the US East Coast’, ‘dominate the world’ and just can’t get enough with their ‘greed’." TOP Berlin, Make a foreshortened critique of capitalism history!: Without a radical critique every action becomes mere activism - reflections on the anti-G8 mobilisation 2007, shiftmag.co.uk, No. 1
97. ↑ George L. Mosse, Modern Jewish History - Summary: Lecture #7, March 1, 1971, George L. Mosse Program in History, Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
98. ↑ Tyler Cowen, "The Socialist Roots of Modern Anti-Semitism," The Freeman (Foundation for Economic Education), January 1997
99. ↑ Henry L. Feingold, Lest memory cease: finding meaning in the American Jewish past (Syracuse University Press, 1996) ISBN 0815604009, p. 81
100. ↑ See Konstantin Azadovskii and Boris Egorov, "From Anti-Westernism to Anti-Semitism," Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Winter 2002), pp. 66-80. Cf. Louis Rapoport, Stalin's war against the Jews: the doctors' plot and the Soviet solution (Free Press, 1990) ISBN 0029258219. Even after Stalin's death, Soviet anti-Semitism persisted:

     "Since World War II Jews and Judaism have been liberated in every country and territory where capitalism has been restored to vigorous growth—and this includes Germany. By contrast, wherever anticapitalism or precapitalism has prevailed the status of Jews and Judaism has either undergone deterioration or is highly precarious. Thus at this very moment the country where developing global capitalism is most advanced, the United States, accords Jews and Judaism a freedom that is known nowhere else in the world and that was never known in the past. It is a freedom that is not matched even in Israel.... By contrast, in the Soviet Union, the citadel of anticapitalism, the Jews are cowed by anti-Semitism, threatened by extinction, and barred from access to their God." Ellis Rivkin, The shaping of Jewish history: A radical new interpretation, (C. Scribner's Sons, 1971) ISBN 0684132362, p. 240

101. ↑ According to Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, during the Six Day War on Israel in 1967, the East German Communist regime used former Nazi propagandists to write anti-Israeli propaganda, with the substitution of a few words such as “Israeli” for “Jew” and “progressive forces” for “National Socialism.” Simon Wiesenthal, The Same Language: First for Hitler—Now for Ulbricht (Bonn: Rolf Vogel, Deutschland Berichte, 1968), as cited in Jeffrey Herf, Divided memory: the Nazi past in the two Germanys (Harvard University Press, 1997) ISBN 0674213033, p. 189
102. ↑ This Communist revolutionary terrorist group, headed by Dieter Kunzelmann, attempted to bomb Berlin's Jewish Community Center during a commemoration of the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1969. Walter Laqueur, The changing face of antisemitism: from ancient times to the present day (Oxford University Press US, 2006) ISBN 0195304292, p. 147. Kunzelmann later became a leader of the Green Party. Aribert Reimann, Dieter Kunzelmann: Avantgardist, Protestler, Radikaler, (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), ISBN 3525370105, pp. 274-286
103. ↑ Ulrike Meinhof, a leader of this terrorist revolutionary Communist group, stated: "Auschwitz means that six million Jews were murdered and carted on to the rubbish dumps of Europe for being that which was maintained of them—Money-Jews." ("Auschwitz heisst, das sechs Millionen Juden ermordet und auf die Müllkippen Europas gekarrt wurden als das, als was man sie ausgab — als Geldjuden.") Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler's apocalypse: Jews and the Nazi legacy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985) ISBN 0297787195, p. 230
104. ↑ This German Communist terrorist group joined with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (a Communist revolutionary terrorist group based in Palestine) to hijack an Air France flight to Entebbe, Uganda, where they singled out the Jewish passengers in a plot to murder them. Stephen E. Atkins, Encyclopedia of modern worldwide extremists and extremist groups (Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004) ISBN 0313324859, p. 277
105. ↑ The official Sandinista organ proclaimed that "the world's money, banking and finance are in the hands of descendants of Jews.... [C]ontrolling economic power, they control political power as now happens in the United States." El Nuevo Diario, July 17, 1982, as cited in Porfirio R. Solórzano, The Nirex Collection: Nicaraguan Revolution Extracts, Twelve Years, 1978-1990, Vol VII: Of War and Peace (Litex, 1993) ISBN 1877970018
106. ↑ "Although traditional Trotskyite ideology is in no way close to radical Islamic teachings and the shariah, since the radical Islamists also subscribed to anticapitalism, antiglobalism, and anti-Americanism, there seemed to be sufficient common ground for an alliance. Thus, the militants of the far left began to march side by side with the radical Islamists in demonstrations, denouncing American aggression and Israeli crimes. In Britain a new political party named Respect was established, uniting Trotskyites, Stalinists, Muslim Brotherhood militants, and similar groups." (Walter Laquer, The changing face of antisemitism: from ancient times to the present day [Oxford University Press US, 2006] ISBN 0195304292, p. 186). The European Union's European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia decided not to publish its comprehensive study of the causes of anti-Semitism in Europe, a source familiar with the report told London's Financial Times, after the report uncovered "a trend towards Muslim anti-Semitism," and that "on the left there is also mobilization against Israel that is not always free of prejudice." (Reuters, "EU racism watchdog shelves anti-Semitism report," Haaretz, November 22, 2003). Michael Neumann, Professor of Philosophy at Canada's Trent University, writes that he wants to “help the Palestinians.... I am not interested in the truth, or justice, or understanding, or anything else, except so far as it serves that purpose. If an effective strategy means that some truths about the Jews don’t come to light, I don’t care. If an effective strategy means encouraging reasonable anti-Semitism, or reasonable hostility to Jews, I also don’t care. If it means encouraging vicious racist anti-Semitism, or the destruction of the State of Israel, I still don’t care.” (Yoni Petel, "Antisemitism on Campus: A Student's Perspective," League for Human Rights, B'nai B'rith of Canada, Submission to the Special Rapporteur on Racism, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, September 25, 2003) According to the progressive magazine Tikkun, "A.N.S.W.E.R. refuses to acknowledge or support the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination—though it supports that right for every other group with a history of oppression. When Jews are denied the rights of others, it is a tell-tale sign of anti-Semitism." ("Authoritarianism and Anti-Semitism in the Anti-War Movement?," Tikkun, May-June 2003). "[T]he locus of anti-Semitism has moved from the right side of the political spectrum to the left.... These days, the hatemongers targeting Jews’ right to live peacefully spout the mantras of 'social justice' and 'peace studies,' not racial purity." (Jonathan Kay, "The lesson from Israel Apartheid Week: Anti-Semitism is now a creature of the left," National Post, March 2, 2009). Cf. David Horowitz, Unholy alliance: radical Islam and the American left (Regnery Publishing, 2004) ISBN 089526076X, p. 148
107. ↑ Bernard Lewis, Semites and anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (W. W. Norton & Company, 1999) ISBN 0393318397, p. 112. Cf. Edmund Silberner, "Was Marx an Anti-Semite?" Historica Judaica, April 1949, p. 52
108. ↑ Alexander Baron, Anti-capitalism from anti-semitism to 'anti-racism' (Anglo-Hebrew Publishing, 1995) ISBN 1898318239, p. 1
109. ↑ Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-three Centuries of Antisemitism (Paulist Press, 2004) ISBN 0809143240, p. 168
110. ↑ Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (HarperCollins, 1990) ISBN 0060916575), p. 73
111. ↑ Shlomo Sharan, Israel and the Post-Zionists: A Nation at Risk (Sussex Academic Press, 2003) ISBN 1903900522 , p. 125
112. ↑ Albert S. Lindemann , Esau's Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews (Cambridge University Press, 2000) ISBN 0521795389, p. 166
113. ↑ Raphael Patai, The Jewish mind (Wayne State University Press, 1977) ISBN 081432651X, p. 470
114. ↑ W.H. Chaloner & W.O. Henderson, "Marx/Engels and Racism," Encounter, July 1975, pp. 18-23
115. ↑ Dennis K. Fischman, Political discourse in exile: Karl Marx and the Jewish question (Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1991) ISBN 0870237462, p. 13
116. ↑ Gertrude Himmelfarb, “The 'Real' Marx,” Commentary, April 1985
117. ↑ Paul Johnson, "Marxism vs. the Jews," Commentary, April 1984
118. ↑ Joel Kovel, “Marx on the Jewish Question,” Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 8, No. 1-2, (1983) pp.31-46
119. ↑ Bernard Lewis, Semites and anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (W. W. Norton & Company, 1999) ISBN 0393318397, p. 112
120. ↑ Reader Letters: Marx, Commentary, August 1985
121. ↑ Albert S. Lindemann, Esau's tears: modern anti-semitism and the rise of the Jews (Cambridge University Press, 2000) ISBN 0521795389, p. 163
122. ↑ William Coleman, "Anti-Semitism in Anti-economics," History of Political Economy, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Winter 2003), pp. 759-777
123. ↑ Stephen J. Greenblatt, Learning to curse: essays in early modern culture (Routledge, 1990) ISBN 0415901731, p. 41
124. ↑ Larry Ray, “Marx and the Radical Critique of Difference,” Engage, Issue 3 (September 2006)
125. ↑ Albert S. Lindemann, Esau's tears: modern anti-semitism and the rise of the Jews (Cambridge University Press, 2000) ISBN 0521795389, p. 163
126. ↑ Bernard Lewis, Semites and anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (W. W. Norton & Company, 1999) ISBN 0393318397, p. 112
127. ↑ Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-three Centuries of Antisemitism (Paulist Press, 2004) ISBN 0809143240, p. 168
128. ↑ Paul Johnson, "Marxism vs. the Jews," Commentary, April 1984
129. ↑ Soviet Jewish Affairs, Vol. 4, No. 1, (Institute of Jewish Affairs, World Jewish Congress, 1974), p. 56
130. ↑ Joel Kovel, “Marx on the Jewish Question,” Dialectical Anthropology, Vol. 8, No. 1-2, (1983) pp.31-46
131. ↑ Stephen J. Greenblatt, "Marlowe, Marx, and Anti-Semitism," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter 1978), pp. 291-307
132. ↑ Edward H. Flannery, The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-three Centuries of Antisemitism (Paulist Press, 2004) ISBN 0809143240, p. 168
133. ↑ Albert S. Lindemann, Esau's tears: modern anti-semitism and the rise of the Jews (Cambridge University Press, 2000) ISBN 0521795389, p. 163
134. ↑ The Marxist Internet Archive softens "secular cult" (weltliche Kultus) to "worldly religion" and "Haggling" (schacher) to "Huckstering"
135. ↑ Matthew Lange, Antisemitic Elements in the Critique of Capitalism in German Culture, 1850-1933 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007)ISBN 3039110403, p. 39
136. ↑ This theme, the "practical domination" of Judentum over America, would later be exploited by the Nazis, in the claim that the Jews had "economic life in New York... entirely under their control," thus exercised a baleful influence through the press "controlled by the Jews" on American public opinion: "The question is whether the American people want to make the Jews happy by engaging in fruitless conflict with the German Reich and the German people." (Joseph Goebbels, "What Does America Really Want?" Völkischer Beobachter, January 21, 1939 [“Was will eigentlich Amerika,” Die Zeit ohne Beispiel (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP., 1941), pp. 24-30]) This approach has since been reclaimed by the left: "large and extremely influential Jewish donor groups are the ones agitating for a U.S. war against Iran" (Glenn Greenwald, as quoted in Adam Levick, "Anti-Israelism and Anti-Semitism in Progressive U.S. Blogs/News Websites: Influential and Poorly Monitored," Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism (Institute for Global Jewish Affairs), No. 92, [December 2010]); there is a "secret Jewish coalition raising funds in excess of $200 million to wage a propaganda war in America in an attempt to gain American support for another war against Iran" (PoliSci 000, "Apartheid Israel Trying to Start World War 3," Daily Kos, June 21, 2008); claims that "Israel's powerful lobbies" in the U.S. have "embraced Israel's approach to Iran," creating a "serious stumbling block" peace; that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's demand that Israel be "wiped off the map" wasmisinterpreted, that "the threat is the other way around," etc. (Phyllis Bennis, "Iran in the Crosshairs," Institute for Policy Studies, February 28, 2008) "I’m sick of having a great power like the US being dictated to in the conduct of its own foreign policy by an ally [Israel] that provides almost no real benefit to the US, and more and more costs." (Andrew Sullivan, "'Sick' Of The Israelis And The Palestinians," theatlantic.com, January 6, 2010) This idea of the "practical domination" of America by Judentum has powerful roots: "Anti-Americanism in the Islamic world and Anti-Americanism in Europe are in fact linked, and both bear an uncanny resemblance to anti-Semitism." (Natan Sharansky, "On Hating Jews: The inextricable link between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism," The Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2003) "America and Jews are seen by many Europeans as paragons of a modernity they dislike and distrust: money-driven, profit-hungry, urban, universalistic, individualistic, mobile, rootless, inauthentic, and thus hostile to established traditions and values." "European Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism: Similarities and Differences," An Interview with Andrei S. Markovits, Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism (Institute for Global Jewish Affairs), No. 16 (January 1, 2004) "America today has become the world's market-dominant minority," writes professor Amy Chua of Yale, while "Jews are a market-dominant mionority in the Middle East." Amy Chua, World on fire: how exporting free market democracy breeds ethnic hatred and global instability (Random House, Inc., 2004) ISBN 0385721862, pp. 218, 229 Post-unification Germany, wrote journalist Wolfgang Munchau in 2005, is marked by "a poisonous cocktail of the three big As: anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism." (Wolfgang Munchau, "Anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, anti-capitalism," The Spectator, May 21, 2005) By 2009, the "progressive" webzine Counterpunch.org (edited by Alexander Cockburn, son of Soviet agent Claud Cockburn) could publish a revival of the "Blood Libel," alleging that Jews were killing Muslims to harvest their organs. Alison Weir, "Israeli Organ Harvesting," Counterpunch.org, August 28-30, 2009. "[L]eftists who despise their own capitalist societies inevitably come to sympathize with militants—communists, Tier-mondistes, Islamists, it doesn't make any difference—who attack those societies from without," argues Kay. "Right now, the only corner of the world putting up any sort of serious ideological fight against Western-style capitalism and liberalism is the Muslim Middle East. So, just as the left uncritically swallowed Stalin's propaganda in the 1930s, expect the left to increasingly swallow Arabist propaganda in our own era." He concludes that "since one of the key elements of Arabist propaganda is a hatred of Israel and a suspicion of Jews, these building blocks of anti-Semitism will become more and more a part of mainstream leftist discourse." Symposium: Jamie Glazov, "Anti-Semitism - the New Call of the Left," FrontPageMagazine.com, March 14, 2003
137. ↑ Karl Marx, "On The Jewish Question," Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, February 1844, reprinted in Karl Marx, Early writings (Penguin, 1992) ISBN 0140445749, p. 232.
138. ↑ Gérard Lyon-Caen, "Marx et le droit moderne", Archives de philosophie du droit, No. XII, Paris, Sirey, 1967, p. 1-11 (as cited in Léon Poliakov, The History of Anti-semitism: From Voltaire to Wagner (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) ISBN 0812218655, p. 557, n. 150
139. ↑ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 4 (Lawrence & Wishart, 1975) ISBN 0853152942, pp. 94, 109-110
140. ↑ Robert Payne, Marx (Simon and Schuster, 1968) as cited in William Otto Henderson, Marx and Engels and the English workers: and other essays (Psychology Press, 1989) ISBN 0714633348, p. 70
141. ↑ Karl Marx abd Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology: including Theses on Feuerbach and introduction to The critique of political economy (Prometheus Books, 1998) ISBN 1573922587), p. 194
142. ↑ Karl Marx, "The Russian Loan," New-York Daily Tribune, January 4, 1856, reprinted in Richard Aveling and Eleanor Marx Aveling, eds., The Eastern question: a reprint of letters written 1853-1856 dealing with the events of the Crimean War (S. Sonnenschein & co., lim., 1897), pp. 600-606. So embarrassing is this article to apologists for Marx that the Marxist Internet Archive has dropped it down the Memory Hole. The Web site's collection of Marx's articles from the New York Daily Tribune, August 21, 1852-February 1861, skips from November 16, 1855 to January 12, 1856—erasing this article as effectively as Stalin erased Nikolai Yezhov. (Without mentioning this article by name, the archive does mention that the 1897 publication of the book in which this article was reprinted “was not 'helpful'.”) The site claims that "In the past, some writers who have contributed to Marxism have expressed racist... views. The MIA generally does not “filter out” such views; if we are archiving the work of a writer, any and all of that writer’s work may be included...." The site's censorship of Marx himself is an exception.
143. ↑ Friedrich Engels, Posen, Neue Rheinische Zeitung No. 285 (second edition), April 29, 1849, reprinted in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 9 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 359

Fascism and National Socialism

George Orwell, a socialist who fought for the Soviet-backed government of Spain in the Spanish Civil War, wrote prophetically in 1936 that "Socialism, in the form in which it is now presented, appeals chiefly to unsatisfactory or even inhuman types," including, among others, "the astute young social-literary climbers who are Communists now, as they will be Fascists five years hence, because it is all the go."^[1] Five years later, Hitler and Stalin were partners in the Nazi-Soviet pact, the joint invasion of Poland and the division of Europe; Orwell watched in despair as his former comrades supported the pact, even as Hitler launched his Blitz on London.^[2]

When Britain declared war on the Nazis, German Communist Party leader Walter Ulbricht denounced "English Imperialism" as “the most reactionary force in the world,”^[3] “The [Nazi] German government declared itself ready for friendly relations with the Soviet Union, whereas the English-French war bloc desires a war against the socialist Soviet Union,” declared Ulbricht. “The Soviet people and the working people of Germany have an interest in preventing the English war plan.”^[4] When France fell to the Nazi invaders, French Communist Party leaders Maurice Thorez and Jacques Duclos celebrated, declaring that "the struggle of the French people has the same aim as the struggle of [Nazi] German imperialism." During the battle of Britain, "Communists in the factories actually fomented strikes, and spread defeatist propaganda in the blitzed areas of London," writes Orwell prize winning^[5] journalist Peter Hitchens.^[6]

By the time the war was over, it had become impossible, observed Orwell, to discuss the issue: “The word 'Fascism' has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’," he wrote. “Since you don't know what Fascism is," he asked, "how can you struggle against Fascism?”^[7] Particularly in the United States, the word "fascism" had become associated with the principles of private property and economic freedom, which had previously been the called "liberalism";^[8] meanwhile, the word "liberalism" had been redefined to denote the very "state-capitalist" mixed economy that characterized Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany. "As a supreme, if unintended compliment," quipped Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter,^[9] "the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its label."^[10] This debasing of meaning, making reasoned discourse and clear thinking impossible, was precisely what Orwell was illustrating in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by means of "Newspeak."^[11]

These policies that are today called "liberal"—big government, high taxation, regulation, state intervention in or control of the economy, public-private partnerships, state control over the use of private property, etc.—were all pioneered by the fascists, who called this economic system corporativismo (corporativism). Contrary to revisionist socialist propaganda, the name has nothing to do with incorporated firms, but refers to the medieval system of guilds, theoretically modernized as syndicalism. Corporativist ideas had been popular with British socialists and Fabians, as well as American progressives such as Herbert Croly, Edward Bellamy and Colonel House, since the late 19th century. Far from being capitalist, corporativism was stridently anti-capitalist. “So substantial are the limitations under which private property and capital are exercised in Italy, that the conception of ‘capitalism’ is avowedly destroyed and replaced by corporativismo,” wrote Herbert Steiner in his classic 1938 study of fascism.^[12] Even Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas admitted, "the fascists revolutions definitely abolished laissez-faire capitalism in favor of one or another kind and degree of state capitalism."^[13] “The programme of the Fascists, as drafted in 1919, was vehemently anti-capitalistic,” wrote Ludwig von Mises. “The most radical New Dealers and even communists could agree with it.”^[14] It demanded “Suppression of incorporated joint-stock companies, industrial or financial. Suppression of all speculation by banks and stock exchanges,” and “Control and taxation of private wealth. Confiscation of unproductive income.”^[15]

Fascism

"Originally, fascism saw itself as profoundly revolutionary—not conservative (as the left now sees it)," writes Christopher Harmon, professor of International Relations at the US Marine Corps University.^[16] Mussolini had been a Marxist, who took over the Italian Socialist Party at the Congress of Reggio Emilia in 1912, expelling the syndicalist heretics and espousing doctrinaire Marxism—prompting Lenin to write, “the party of the Italian socialist proletariat has taken the right path.”^[17] Five years later, Lenin took over Russia, the following year imposing socialism (“War Communism”); it quickly and spectacularly failed, producing mass famine and economic collapse.^[18] In response to this failure, Marxists and other communists scrambled for a "Third Way" between socialism and capitalism: an alternative to the market, but one that might actually work.^[19] Lenin thus introduced his New Economic Policy, based on Oskar Lange's theoretical "market socialism"; Mussolini, meanwhile, resurrected the ideas of the syndicalists he had previously ousted.^[20] "The most important influence upon Mussolini's development," writes his biographer Renzo De Felice, "was that exercised by revolutionary syndicalism."^[21] Most, but not all, of the of the leading organizers of Italian syndicalism became active fascists.^[22] Syndicalism (syndicalisme) was the French name for the British idea of "guild socialism." Being Italian nationalists, Mussolini and his followers gave it an Italian name, corporativismo (corporativism or corporatism), from corporazione (guild). The fascists ordered all labor unions and industries into cartels, (corporazioni)—administrative units of the government, through which it set production levels, wages and prices.

It is often claimed that corporatism means "the power of business corporations over society."^[23] For example, in the wake of his upset defeat by Tea Party backed challenger Dr. Nan Hayworth, then-Congressman John Hall (D-NY) said, "I learned when I was in social studies class in school that corporate ownership or corporate control of government is called Fascism."^[24] Likewise, an article published by the Council for Secular Humanism claims that under fascism, "the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised."^[25] While he didn't mention business, President Franklin Roosevelt, a liberal Democrat, said, "in its essence... fascism [is] ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power"^[26] (a statement approvingly quoted by secret Communist^[27] George Seldes).^[28] Such claims are often buttressed by an apocryphal quote, attributed to Mussolini, that "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."^[29]

But there is no evidence that Mussolini ever said this,^[30] and as one left-wing researcher admits, "it contradicts most of the other writing he did on the subject of corporatism and corporations."^[31] Corporatism has nothing to do with incorporated firms or businesses; all fascist movements have in common the aim of "eliminating the autonomy (or, in some proposals, the existence) of large-scale capitalism and major industry."^[32]

While it may preserve the appearance of ownership, corporatism strips owners of control of their property, thus stripping "ownership" of meaning. Under fascism, "the state directs and controls" business,^[33] exercising "absolute authoritarian control of production."^[34] As Mussolini put it, "the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production." He demanded "State intervention in economic production" whenever "private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management."^[35] The state thus becomes the de facto owner, reducing de jure owners to bureaucrats, carrying out government orders. It is therefore more accurate to say that "corporatism" means government control of corporations than corporate control of government.

National Socialism

National Socialism, emerging from the shattered remains of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the wake of World War I, promised yet another a “third way” between capitalism and communism.^[36] Whereas Communism sought to unite the working class of all nations to fight for their class, and fascism sought to unite all the classes with a country to fight for the State, National Socialism sought to unite all members of a race, from whatever class or nation, to fight for their race. It was this "Third Way" that attracted Adolf Hitler.

As early as 1933, Nobel prize winning economist F.A. Hayek warned William Beveridge, director of the London School of Economics, that "National 'Socialism' is a genuine socialist movement."^[37] As Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas admitted, "In no way was Hitler the tool of big business."^[38] Hitler stated that under Nazism, "the attitude of the State towards capital would be comparatively simple and clear. Its only object would be to make sure that capital remained subservient to the State."^[39] David Schoenbaum notes that the Nazi Party census found the single largest category of Party members was “Workers” (30.3%); the second-largest category was “White collar,” (19.4%), of which 59.1% were in sales; the third-largest category, “Independent”/“Self-Employed” made up 19%, the largest group of whom were in “handicraft” (43.7%). Schoenbaum adds that of the two exhibits most often trotted out in defense of the Naziism-as-capitalist-plot thesis—Fritz Thyssen and the Krupps—that Thyssen eventually had to flee Nazi Germany for Switzerland, while even the Krupps “did not finance Hitler before 1933,” when his victory had become a fait accompli.^[40] Moreover, some business people likewise supported FDR's policies (e.g., "Although I'm a capitalist, I happen to believe in [Roosevelt's] program").^[41] Even Ronald Reagan was a New Dealer, back when he was a liberal Democrat and a Roosevelt man (although he later saw the light, saying, "Fascism was really the basis of the New Deal").^[42]

In fact, much of Nazism was borrowed^[43] from American progressives and Democrats^[44]—eugenics and "racial hygiene,"^[45] for example. As Robert Nisbet observed:

Likewise, Nazi "domestic policies were remarkably friendly toward the German lower classes, soaking the wealthy and redistributing the burdens of wartime to the benefit of the underprivileged," including "transferring the tax burden to corporations."^[47]

Along with its well-known anti-Semitic and expansionist planks, the Nazi Party program included a number of less-remembered demands that were (and are still) considered “progressive.” For example: “the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood”, “a generous increase in old-age pensions”, “specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State”, “help raise the standard of national health” by “providing maternity welfare centers, banning child labor, increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics, and by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young,” etc.

The Nazi platform attacked the concept of economic freedom, asserting that the “first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically”, that “all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished... breaking of the tyranny of interest”, that “usurers, profiteers, etc., are to be punished with death, regardless of creed or race”, “total confiscation of all war profits”, “nationalization of all trusts that have gone public [i.e., publicly-traded companies]”, “profit-sharing in large industries”, “ immediate communalization of large stores”, “enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose... abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land”, etc. (Nazi newspapers ran frequent polemics against landlords.)^[48]

As against individualism and the free market, the Nazis demanded “creation of a strong central authority in the State”, “COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD” [Capitalization in original], that “No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all”, that “ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare”, etc.

Finally, the Nazis wiped out free speech and religious freedom, demanding “a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press”, that “Newspapers transgressing against the common welfare shall be suppressed”, disingenuously promising freedom for all religious faiths “in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence” or “offend the moral and ethical sense” of the Germanic race.^[49] The Party statutes of May 22, 1926, state of these points: "This program is unalterable."^[50] "Architect of the Holocaust" Adolf Eichmann wrote in his memoirs, "My political sympathies inclined towards the left and emphasized socialist aspects every bit as much as nationalist ones.” He and his comrades, said Eichmann, viewed Nazism and Communism as “quasi-siblings."^[51] Likewise, in a 1944 article titled "Our Socialism," Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels boasted that “We alone [the Nazis] have the best social welfare measures.” In contrast, he wrote, "The Jews are the incarnation of capitalism.”^[52]

By confiscating and redistributing the property of Jews, the Nazis sought what they called “a truly socialist division of personal assets.”^[53] To this end, the Nazis enacted price controls, rent controls, exorbitant corporate taxes, farm subsidies and harsh taxes on capital gains,^[54] which Hitler denounced as “effortless income.”^[55] It was in this atmosphere that the New Deal took shape.

Fascism and the New Deal

"Both Stalin's Russia and Mussolini's Italy influenced the New Deal enormously,"^[56] writes Amity Schlaes, author of The Forgotten Man. "[T]he New Deal was often compared with Fascism," according to cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch.^[57] “The slogan into which the Nazis condensed their economic philosophy, Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz (i.e., the commonweal ranks above private profit) is likewise the idea underlying the American New Deal,” wrote Ludwig von Mises.^[58]

"Dictatorial powers"

Roosevelt presented the New Deal in militaristic terms of "discipline," sacrificing individual rights for "leadership" promising a greater good. His first inaugural address contained an exhortation that could have been made by Mussolini or Hitler:

Meanwhile, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt “lamented that the nation lacked a benevolent dictator to force through reforms."^[60] Soviet intelligence source^[61] Walter Lippmann told Roosevelt, "The situation is critical, Franklin. You may have no alternative but to assume dictatorial powers";^[62] in his influential^[63] column, Lippmann added that the use of "'dictatorial powers,' if that is the name for it—is essential."^[64] The New York Herald Tribune approved the inauguration with the headline "FOR DICTATORSHIP IF NECESSARY."^[65] A Hollywood movie was released about a President of the United States who "revokes the Constitution, becomes a reigning dictator," and employs "brown-shirted storm troopers,"^[66]—by means of whom he not only "declares martial law,"^[67] but “dissolves Congress, creates an army of the unemployed, and lines up his enemies before a firing squad.”^[68] This movie was made not by a conservative such as Frank Capra, but by Walter Wanger, a "liberal Hollywood mogul";^[69] in the film, the dictator ("an FDR lookalike")^[70] is not the villain, but the hero, who by such dictatorial means "solves all of the nation's problems."^[71] Roosevelt enjoyed the movie and saw it several times.^[72] Most chilling, FDR wrote that he thought this film “would help the country.”^[73]

Contemporary reporting and commentary

The mood in Washington at FDR's inauguration was “strangely reminiscent of Rome in the first weeks after the march of the Blackshirts, of Moscow at the beginning of the Five-Year Plan” reported The New York Times. “America today literally asks for orders.” The Roosevelt administration, reported the Times, “envisages a federation of industry, labor and government after the fashion of the corporative State as it exists in Italy.”^[74] Progressive writer Roger Shaw described the New Deal as “Fascist means to gain liberal ends.”^[75] George Soule, editor of the pro-Roosevelt New Republic magazine, wrote, "We are trying out the economics of Fascism without having suffered all its social or political ravages."^[76] "We in America,” wrote liberal journalist Mauritz Hallgren, “are being forced rapidly and definitely into Fascism..."^[77]

Fascists on the New Deal

Mussolini was convinced that the New Deal was copying Fascist economic policies.^[78] "Reminiscent of Fascism is the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices," wrote Mussolini in a review of FDR's book Looking Forward. "Without question, the mood accompanying this sea-change is reminiscent of Fascism." Mussolini wrote that the book New Frontiers, by FDR's Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, was "just as 'corporativistic' as the individual solutions put forth in it... The book leaves no doubt that it is on the road to corporatism..."^[79]

Nazi Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht declared that Roosevelt had the same economic idea as Hitler and Mussolini;^[80] the official Nazi Party organ, Völkischer Beobachter, applauded “Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies,” commenting, "Many passages in [Roosevelt's] book Looking Forward could have been written by a National Socialist."^[81]

Hitler himself admired FDR’s approach, saying, “I have sympathy with President Roosevelt because he marches straight toward his objective over Congress, over lobbies, over stubborn bureaucracies.”^[82] Hitler likewise congratulated Roosevelt for "his heroic effort in the interest of the American People." He added:

New Dealers on fascism

Roosevelt’s economic adviser, Rexford Tugwell, the “most prominent of the Brain Trusters and the man often considered the chief ideologist of the 'first New Deal' (roughly, 1933–34),”^[84] was "open in his respect for Mussolini's economic policies." Of the Fascist system he wrote, "It's the cleanest, neatnest [sic], most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious." Tugwell, "the most left-wing member of Roosevelt's brain trust,"^[85] said, “I find Italy doing many of the things which seem to me necessary... Mussolini certainly has the same people opposed to him as FDR has. But he has the press controlled so that they cannot scream lies at him daily.”^[86]

Roosevelt was also a secret admirer of Mussolini, writing to his friend John Lawrence, "I don't mind telling you in confidence, that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman."^[87] FDR also wrote to U.S. Ambassador to Italy Breckinridge Long about Mussolini, "I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and seeking to prevent general European trouble."^[88] FDR privately acknowledged that “what we were doing in this country were some of the things that were being done in Russia and even some of the things that were being done under Hitler in Germany. But we were doing them in an orderly way.”^[89]

Fabian socialism

Tugwell was deeply interested in the ideas of the Fabian Society (which "set up the banner of Socialism militant"),^[90] particularly those of George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Referring to Roosevelt's Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, Tugwell commented, “Miss Perkins was literate in the Fabian tradition, and so were some of the rest of us.” Roosevelt himself, observed Tugwell, “had a good Harvard education when Fabianism was developing, and he probably knew quite well the work of Wells and Shaw.^[91] But as John T. Flynn, who had supported Roosevelt in the 1932 election, observed, "the line between fascism and Fabian socialism is very thin. Fabian socialism is the dream. Fascism is Fabian socialism plus the inevitable dictator."^[92] One Fabian socialist from the 1920s and '30s, Oswald Mosley,^[93] went on to found and lead the British Union of Fascists, in which role he was lauded by Shaw,^[94] who also admired both Mussolini and Hitler.^[95]

Shaw had contempt for freedom. Mussolini, Hitler and other dictators, he wrote, "can depend on me to judge them by their ability to deliver the goods," rather than by what Shaw dismissed as "comfortable notions of freedom."^[96] Shaw thoroughly endorsed^[97] the Nazi doctrine of "life unworthy of life" (Lebensunwertes Leben).^[98] In the BBC's weekly magazine, he made a 1933 "appeal to the chemists to discover a humane gas that will kill instantly and painlessly. Deadly by all means, but humane not cruel..."^[99] His appeal would shortly come to fruition in Nazi Germany.^[100] Asked what Britons should do if the Nazis crossed the channel into Britain, Shaw replied, "Welcome them as tourists."^[101]

H.G. Wells expressed similar opinions. In a 1932 speech at Oxford University, Wells exhorted his audience, “I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.”^[102] Two years later Roosevelt and key members of his “Brains Trust” met with Wells, who judged FDR “the most effective transmitting instrument possible for the coming of the new world order... He is continually revolutionary in the new way without ever provoking a stark revolutionary crisis.”^[103]

Keynesian economics

Perkins commented that, "Combined with the relief program and with public works," the the National Recovery Administration (NRA), the centerpiece of the New Deal, "constituted an effective demonstration of the theories which John Maynard Keynes had been preaching and urging upon the English government," adding:

Keynes had been involved with Fabian socialism since at least his student days at Cambridge.^[105] Oswald Mosley, mentioned earlier, had been a Fabian socialist in 1930, when Keynesian economics was the "officially accepted Fabian line," notes Dobbs. Mosely went on to found the British Union of Fascists, which "at first was modelled after Mussolini’s example but later became patterned after Hitler. Through all these tergiversations, Mosley never had to abandon his Keynesist principles."^[106] A a leading Fascist propagandist^[107] noted (in a book with a preface by Mussolini):^[108]

"Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter’s prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes’ excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (l926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud.... All this is pure fascist premises."^[109]

As Communist Party General Secretary William Z. Foster commented, "The Nazi fascists were especially enthusiastic supporters of Keynes."^[110] Former Trotskyite^[111] Zygmund Dobbs recounted that Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter observed that in Nazi Germany, "A work like Keynes’ General Theory could have appeared unmolested—and did." Fascist affinity for Keynesian economics aside, Keynes was at least ambivalent toward Nazi anti-Semitism. He called Albert Einstein "a naughty Jew boy... that kind of Jew... who have not sublimated immortality into compound interest." This he contrasted with

New Deal programs

National Recovery Administration

Just as Roosevelt expressed to Ambassador Long his admiration of Mussolini, Long in turn reported to Tugwell regarding Fascist economics, “Your mind runs along these lines.... It may have some bearing on the code work under N.R.A.”^[113] The NRA—“the New Deal’s attempt to bring to America the substance of Mussolini’s corporativism”^[114]—was established by the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, which was “similar to experiments being carried out by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in Italy and by the Nazis in Adolf Hitler's Germany,” according to John A. Garraty,^[115] president of the Society of American Historians.^[116] As one NRA study concluded, “The Fascist principles are very similar to those which have been evolving in America and so are of particular interest at this time.”^[117]

"There was hardly a commentator who failed to see elements of Italian corporatism in Roosevelt's managed economy under the National Recovery Administration, the institution formed in 1933 to maintain mandatory production and price 'codes' for American industry," wrote Schivelbusch. Even "intellectual observers of economics and social policies who were otherwise Roosevelt allies... saw a Fascist element at the core of the New Deal."^[118]

The Italian Fascist Party journal of political theory Gerarchia (Leadership) characterized the NRA as "bearing a Fascist signature" and as "corporatism without the corporations." Progressive journalist Robert Shaw agreed, "The NRA... was plainly an American adaptation of the Italian corporate state." When Roosevelt referred to the industrial cartels established by the NRA as "modern guilds," writes Schivelbusch, he was making "reference to the corporatist system associated with Fascism."^[119] FDR's own economics instructor at Harvard^[120] concurred, identifying the NRA as "essentially fascistic."^[121]

Just as Mussolini “organized each trade or industrial group or professional group into a state supervised trade association” that “operated under state supervision and could plan production, quality, prices, distribution, labor standards, etc.,”^[122] the NRA “forced virtually all American industry, manufacturing, and retail business into cartels possessing the power to set prices and wages, and to dictate the levels of production.”^[123]

Hugh Johnson

As head of the NRA and thus “FDR’s leading bureaucrat,”^[124] the President appointed^[125] General Hugh Johnson, who was granted “almost unlimited powers over industry.”^[126] According to economist Thayer Watkins (who teaches economic history at California’s San José State University),^[127] Johnson was “an admirer of Mussolini’s National Corporatist system in Italy and he drew upon the Italian experience in formulating the New Deal.”^[128] Walker F. Todd, research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, agrees that Johnson “did admire greatly what Mussolini appeared to have done,” identifying the NRA as a “thoroughly corporativist” idea.^[129]

According to Jonah Goldberg, Johnson displayed a portrait of Il Duce in his NRA office and actually “distributed a memo at the Democratic Convention proposing that FDR become a Mussolini-like dictator.”^[130] In his retirement speech, Johnson invoked what he called the “shining name” of Mussolini.^[131] Johnson was said to carry around with him a copy of Raffaello Viglione’s pro-Mussolini book,^[132] The Corporate State, and presented a copy to Perkins.^[133]

Agricultural Adjustment Administration

Roosevelt appointed Johnson’s former business partner George Peek to head the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA). Both men had “worked with the War Industries Board, the agency that regulated American production during World War I, and they believed their experience of managing an economy almost totally sealed off from the world market would suit the country now.”^[134] They had long advocated a policy of expanding tariffs to keep foreign agricultural products out of the United States,^[135] a policy that would have again rendered the U.S. economy “almost totally sealed off from the world market”^[136]—a fair approximation of “autarky,” an economic policy particularly but not exclusively “associated with Nazi economic organization.”^[137]

Civilian Conservation Corps

"The German Labor Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst—RAD) arose from a party organization set up in 1931 and known as the NS-Arbeitsdienst for the purpose of easing unemployment,"^[138] "like its New Deal equivalent, the Civilian Conservation Corps [CCC],"^[139] which would be established two years later.^[140] According to Garraty, both

As early as 1933, the manifesto of the first United States Congress Against War and Fascism "pointed to the NRA, the CCC, and the other policies of the Roosevelt administration as indications of America's preparedness for war and Fascism," according to FDR's Attorney General Francis Biddle.^[142]

National Youth Administration

The National Youth Administration (NYA) was conceived as a New Deal “alternative to the Hitler Youth,” designed to hold young people “to their patriotic loyalties.”^[143] Harry Hopkins told the the NYA's Advisory Committee, “we have a lawyer who will declare anything you want to do legal.”^[144] Hopkins had hired the Communist^[145] lawyer Lee Pressman back into the government immediately after he was "purged" from AAA.^[146] According to Pressman, Hopkins told him, “The first time you tell me I can’t do what I want to do, you’re fired. I’m going to decide what I think has to be done and it’s up to you to see to it that it’s legal.”^[147] Among his other hires was Eleanor Roosevelt's close friend Lorena Hickok, whom Hopkins brought into the government on Mrs. Roosevelt's recommendation. Hickok wrote, "If I were 20 years younger and weighed 75 pounds less, I think I'd start out to be the Joan of Arc of the Fascist Movement of the United States."^[148]

"Friendly Fascism"

Even some New Dealers have come to see the essential similarities between their ideology and fascism. For example, according to Friendly Fascism, by left-wing political science professor Bertram Gross, a leading architect of liberal social policy under presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Carter:^[149]

While writing his book, Gross dreamed that he was searching through a huge, empty house for "friendly fascists."

Myths

Several myths have formed around the Great Depression. Among these are the myth that the Depression was brought to an end by the New Deal, or by the "wartime prosperity" of World War II. Neither of these is true. One study found that New Deal policies actually prolonged the depression by about seven years.^[151] In fact, Americans' personal consumption did not rebound to 1929 levels until 1941.^[152] "[T]he consensus among historians today," writes Schivelbusch, is "that the United States completely emerged from the Depression only with its entry into World War II."^[153] Although the conscription of some 20 million young men into the armed forces reduced the civilian unemployment rate during World War II, the standard of living in the U.S. actually declined during the war. Using the Friedman-Schwartz price index, economist Robert Higgs found that real personal consumption per capita declined by more than 6 percent during 1941-1943, and did not recover to the 1941 level until 1946.^[154]

Notes

Joe McCarthy

The Army's Special Counsel Joseph Welch had a problem: his assistant, Frederick Fisher, whom Welch had brought to Washington from Welch's New York law firm to work on the Army-McCarthy case, was a former member of the National Lawyers Guild, U.S. affiliate of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers,^[1] which operated under the control of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.^[2] Under the Truman loyalty order, such a background could have disqualified Fisher from Federal employment; to have such a person working on the Army's legal team—on a case involving Communist infiltration of the Army, during a war in Korea in which Communists had already killed tens of thousands of Americans—could ruin Welch's case.

According to Cohn, Welch had him agree "not to bring up Fred Fisher in return for Welch's promise not to explore Cohn's military record."^[3] Hollywood liberal^[4] George Clooney, director and co-writer of the 2005 anti-McCarthy movie Good Night and Good Luck, suggests that this was actually a veiled blackmail threat to “out” Cohn as a homosexual on national television if he mentioned Fisher. As Clooney put it, Welch told Cohn, “you leave this young lawyer at my firm alone [by not calling him a Communist], and we'll leave this [homosexual] issue out.”^[5]

After Senator John McClellan, a segregationist Democrat,^[6] pressed Cohn on whether there was something “unusual” in his relationship with Schine, according to Herman, “Welch had his sport with him.”

Welch had earlier badgered McCarthy staffer Jim Juliana, an ex-FBI agent—insinuating that Cohn had cropped a photograph of Schine and Stevens—asking Juliana where the photo had come from. Juliana told him he didn't know, upon which Welch asked, "Did you think this came from a pixie?”

When McCarthy asked Welch to define “pixie,” Welch replied pointedly, “a pixie is a close relative of a fairy.”

The camera panned to Schine, Cohn and McCarthy. The whole audience burst into laughter. Obviously furious at Welch's blatant gay-baiting, according to LBJ advisor Eric F. Goldman, Cohn's lips “hardened into angry lines.”^[7]

“Shall I proceed, sir?” said Welch. “Have I enlightened you?"

Welch was now continuing in this vein, toying with Cohn: “May I add my small voice, sir, and say whenever you know about a subversive or a Communist spy, please hurry,” he taunted. “Will you remember these words?”

It was this taunt that finally provoked McCarthy to come to the defense of his 26-year old subcommittee counsel, saying, “in view of Mr. Welch's request that information be given once we know of anyone who might be performing work for the Communist Party, I think we should tell him that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher...”

McCarthy outlined Fisher's background in the NLG,

“Mr. Welch talks about this being cruel and reckless,” said McCarthy. “He was just baiting; he has been baiting Mr. Cohn here for hours...”^[8]

Welch turned to Cohn: “I did you, I think, no personal injury, Mr. Cohn?’ Cohn replied: ‘No, sir.’

Cohn later confessed that in fact he found Welch's remark "malicious," "wicked," and "indecent."^[9] Even former Soviet agent Michael Straight admitted in the New Republic: “As law the comment was improper; as humor it was unjust...” “That was Welch's technique,” according to radical, left-wing^[10] filmmaker Emile de Antonio, whose cinematic attack on McCarthy predated Clooney's by decades.

In researching his movie, Clooney boasted, “we had to go back to the actual initial footage of the Army-McCarthy hearings and watch them all the way through. And we did, all of them, 36 days' worth.” From these 36 days of hearings, Antonio cherry-picked the 97 minutes of footage that put McCarthy in the worst light for Point of Order, a documentary that became the main source of the principal surviving image of McCarthy.^[11] (This film in turn was edited still further into a 47-minute version, Charge and Countercharge, for exhibition in public-school classrooms—thus forming an entire generation's view of McCarthy.)^[12]

Bursting into tears, Welch fled the Senate caucus room to the applause of the reporters and cameramen packing the gallery.^[13] Tears still coursing, according to liberal pundit Nicholas Von Hoffman, Welch winked at reporter John Newhouse,^[14] best known today as the author of Imperial America: The Bush Assault on the World Order. Once safely beyond reach of the TV cameras, Welch turned to his assistant and asked, 'Well, how did it go?'”^[15]

McCarthy had “already gone after the Army and accused 'em of being traitors,” according to Clooney. “So Secretary [of the Army Robert T.] Stevens and those guys were like, [Expletive deleted] you, we're going to get you any way we can.” (Italics in original.)

References

1. ↑ "Report on the National Lawyers Guild, legal bulwark of the Communist Party," Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, United States Congress (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1950), p. 11-12 (PDF pp. 17-18). Cf. János Radványi , Psychological Operations and Political Warfare in Long-term Strategic Planning (ABC-CLIO, 1990) ISBN 0275936236, p. 48; Harvey Klehr, Far Left of Center: The American Radical Left Today (New Brunswick , N.J.: Transaction Books, 1988), p. 161
2. ↑ David Horowitz, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2006) ISBN 0895260034, p. 160
3. ↑ Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (University of Massachusetts Press, 1987) ISBN 0870235559, p. 259, n. 46
4. ↑ When CNN talk-show host Larry King asked Clooney, “do you think when people say Hollywood's out of touch with ordinary Americans they have a point?” Clooney responded, “in general we tend to be, you know, is there a liberal bend, sure. I don't make any apologies about that. I'm a liberal, you know. I believe in it.” Interview With George Clooney, “Larry King Live,” CNN, February 16, 2006. Likewise, when Clooney made his acceptance speech at the 2006 Academy Awards, he said, “you know, we are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while. I think it's probably a good thing.” (Eric Olsen, Oscar 2006 Quotes for Posterity, Blogcritics, March 20, 2006) Clooney emphasized the point: “I'm proud to be a part of this Academy. Proud to be part of this community, and proud to be out of touch.” Miguel Marquez, Is Clooney Right About Hollywood's Social Agenda?, ABC News, March 6, 2006. For this speech, Clooney caught not only from conservatives, but from Hollywood director Spike Lee (“Spike Lee criticises Clooney’s Oscar speech,” Malaysia Star, March 22, 2006) and Comedy Central's South Park (Script from “Smug Alert!” South Park, Season 10, Episode 1002)
5. ↑ Anne Stockwell, “Clooney vs. the far right,” The Advocate, December 6, 2005, p. 56
6. ↑ Sheldon Goldman, Picking Federal Judges: Lower Court Selection from Roosevelt Through Reagan (Yale University Press, 1999) ISBN 0300080735, p. 128. Cf. Dean L. Yarwood, When Congress Makes a Joke: Congressional Humor Then and Now (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004) ISBN 0742530434, p. 71
7. ↑ Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade: America, 1945-1955 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), p. 274
8. ↑ Erik A. Bruun and Jay Crosby, Our Nation's Archive: The History of the United States in Documents (Black Dog Publishing, 1999) ISBN 1579120679, p. 698
9. ↑ Neil Miller, Out of the Past: Gay and Lesbian History from 1869 to the Present (Advocate Books, 2005) ISBN 1555838707, p. 147
10. ↑ Sam Szurek , An Interview with Emile de Antonio, Reverse Shot, Issue 19
11. ↑ Robert D. Novak, “McCarthy=Bad,” The Weekly Standard, Vol. 13, No. 11 (November 26, 2007)
12. ↑ As late as 2006, the teachers' guide to the popular American History textbook The American People: Creating a Nation and a Society" recommends both films as enrichment materials. (Mark Simon, Teaching The American People: A Guide for Instructors (Pearson Education, Inc., 2006) ISBN 0-321-39894-7, p. 138. Cf.
13. ↑ Paul F. Boller, Not so!: popular myths about America from Columbus to Clinton (Oxford University Press US, 1996) ISBN 0195109724, p. 165. Cf. Robert Griffith, The Politics of Fear: Joseph R. McCarthy and the Senate (University of Massachusetts Press, 1987) ISBN 0870235559, p. 259
14. ↑ Nicholas Von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn (Doubleday, 1988) ISBN 0385236905, p. 237
15. ↑ Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective (Oxford University Press US, 1991) ISBN 0195043618, p. 216. Cf. Arthur Herman, Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator (Simon and Schuster, 2000) ISBN 0684836254, p. 276; Tom Wicker, Shooting Star: The Brief Arc of Joe McCarthy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006) ISBN 015101082X, p. 163