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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, a theory identified by Karl Popper as pseudoscience. Although Marx always considered himself an economist,^[7] "the Marxist system as a whole is not regarded as economics by the mainstream," according to Don Ross, co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Economics.^[8] Ex-Marxist^[9] economist Thomas Sowell agrees:

William Coleman of the Australian National University actually goes so far as to identify Marx as an "anti-economist."^[11] Ross concurs, labeling Marx "the most influential anti-economist of all."^[12] Even Michael Harrington, a well-known Marxist,^[13] in his book, The Twilight of Capitalism, devoted an entire chapter to Marx "The anti-economist."^[14] Nevertheless, men and women of zeal, often well-meaning but without understanding^[15] of economics, ravaged the 20th century reifying Marx's anti-economics—in the process killing more people than all the century's wars combined.^[16]

Early life

Marx was born "Carl Marx"^[17] in the Rhineland city of Trier, then in the Kingdom of Prussia (now in the Federal Republic of Germany),^[18] the son of Heinrich Marx and Henriette Pressborck.^[19] Marx's father was a successful lawyer^[20] and owner of several Moselle vineyards.^[21] Philosophically, he was a liberal^[22] who “knew his Voltaire and Rousseau by heart.”^[23] After the Prussian Edict of 1812 effectively banned Jews from public office and the professions,^[24] he converted from Judaism to the Evangelical Church^[25] (established in 1817 as the state church of Prussia),^[26] changing his name from Hershel Mordechai to Heinrich Marx.^[27] In 1824, he had his seven children, including six-year-old Karl, baptized.^[28]

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.”^[29] 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..."^[30] 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?"^[31] Marx, a descendant of famous Talmudic scholars and sages on both sides of his family,^[32] apparently studied Greek and French, but not Hebrew.^[33] 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."^[34]

Bonn University

As a Christian, Marx appears to have been one of those whom Jesus described as seeds "sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness," but who "have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time..."^[35] 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,^[37] confirming his father's opinion “that in your heart egoism is predominant.”^[38] 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.^[39] He spent 24 hours in jail “for disturbing the peace by rowdiness and drunkenness at night.”^[40] 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.”^[41]

His father's warning had no discernible effect. Years later, in London, Marx went on “many a pub crawl.”^[42] 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”^[43] 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.”^[44] When he participated in this crime, Marx was a husband and father himself, nearly 40 years old.^[45]

Marx's personal economy

Marx's youthful bacchanalia seem to have been ruinously expensive; while he was still a student, there emerged what was to become a dominant theme of his life: his "grotesque incompetence"^[46] in real-world economics.^[47] 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 [equivalent to approximately $900 today]...”^[48]
• “I sent... 50 talers. With what you took with you, that makes 160 talers [~$2,880].... 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.”^[49]
• “You are receiving 100 talers [~$1,800] 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 [~$360] through Rabe.”^[50]
• “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.”^[51]
• “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.”^[52]
• “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.”^[53]
• "As if we were men of wealth, my Herr Son disposed in one year of almost 700 talers [~$12,600] contrary to all agreement, contrary to all usage, whereas the richest spend less than 500 [~$9,000]."^[54]
• "...we are now in the fourth month of the law year and you have already drawn 280 talers [~$5,040]. I have not yet earned that much this winter."^[55]

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."^[56] "Marx, the economist of the proletarian class," writes former Soviet economist Yuri Maltsev, "was hardly what we would call a sound financial administrator."^[57] As Sowell observes:

As a young man, Marx's financial irresponsibility "drove him into the hands of moneylenders at high rates of interest."^[59] 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...."^[60] Marx's relations with his mother were "icy and distant," according to biographer Francis Wheen, at least in part because "she had been inconsiderate enough to stay alive," delaying Marx's eagerly-anticipated inheritance.^[61] Upon the death of Engels' mistress, Mary Burns, Marx wrote, "Instead of Mary, ought it not to have been my mother," whom Marx judged "has had her fair share of life."^[62]

By Marx's own admission he was paying interest rates as high as 50% in 1866, when he was 48 years of age.^[63] 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."^[64]

In 1869, Marx told Engels he was £210 in debt (the equivalent of nearly $24,000 today),^[65] "of which about 75 are for pawnshop and interest."^[66] 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,^[67] equivalent to an income of more than $280,000 today.^[68] According to Maltsev (using figures from an 1867 study presented to the Statistical Society of London),^[69] that put Marx's income in the top 2% of the British population—at the time the wealthiest in the world.^[70] Yet even this sum was not enough for Marx, who by his own admission was spending from £400 to £500 per year,^[71] the income-equivalent of $300,0000-$400,000 per year today.

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.'"^[72] (Elsewhere, he called Bamberger a member of "the stock-exchange synagogue.")^[73]

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)^[75] with "cynical, oily-obtrusive, phony Baronial Jew-manners."^[76] He continually referred to him as "Jew-boy Braun,"^[77] "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," asserted Marx. "Lazarus, the leper, is therefore the prototype of the Jew, and so also of Lazare-Lassalle."^[78]

Marx's style was shared by his companions: his wife referred to Lassalle "the little Berlin Jew,"^[79] while Engels called him a "greasy Jew."^[80]

Marx's self-loathing

"That Karl Marx was an inveterate antisemite is today considered a commonplace which is hardly ever questioned," wrote Shlomo Avineri, professor of political science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.^[81] Marx “was at best negative towards Jews in theory,” according to University of London historian David Cesarani;^[82] he was "a particularly caustic antisemite," wrote Edward H. Flannery, a professor at the Institute of Judeo-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University.^[83] Indeed, Marx's "entire theory of class was rooted in anti-Semitism," charges Johnson.^[84] Thus Shlomo Sharan of Tel Aviv University calls Marx an “anti-Semitic Jew,”^[85] while Sander Gilman of Emory University's Tam Institute for Jewish Studies ranks him among the most influential “Jewish anti-Semites” of his generation of Germans.^[86] Albert S. Lindemann, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History, University of California–Santa Barbara, dubs Marx “a self-hating Jew”;^[87] 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."^[88]

"On the Jewish Question"

In his essay, "On the Jewish question," Marx makes it clear that he considered Jews "worshippers of mammon," writes Flannery. ^[89] "The Jew of Marx's essay," agrees Lindeman, "worships money...."^[90] As Marx put it in that essay:

Marx hammers the point:

Judaism has only contempt, according to Marx, for non-monetary values:

Despite political disenfranchisement in Prussia, claims Marx, Jews have come to dominate politics through "the power of money":

Marx claimed that the Jews had elevated "their greedy, exploitive spirit"^[92] 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

This theme, the "practical domination" of Judentum over America, would later be exploited by the Nazis, who would label the United States a "Jewish Dictatorship,"^[93] claiming that Jews had "economic life in New York... entirely under their control," and through newspapers "controlled by the Jews" influenced 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."^[94] This argument has since been reclaimed by the left, with charges of Jewish influence once again leading America into war.^[95] This idea linking America and the Jews has powerful roots.^[96]

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

Analysis

Although Marx was "more than a little tainted with that most ignoble of pastimes, Jew-baiting," observes British writer Alexander Baron, apologists for Marx "are extremely coy about it nowadays, for obvious reasons."^[98] Henderson and Manchester University historian W.H. Chaloner comment:

A case in point is the Marxists Internet Archive, which bowdlerizes some of Marx's writings (including On the Jewish Question)^[100] and deletes others, such as “The Russian Loan” (See below)^[101] altogether. Others engage in 'denialism': “To designate Marx as an anti-Semite is nothing but cold war propaganda,” wrote the Marxist^[102] Erich Fromm.^[103] The idea that Marx was an anti-Semite, agrees David Hirsh of the University of London, is "a standard misreading" of On the Jewish Question.^[104] The idea that Marx was in any sense anti-Semitic is a “myth,” concurs Warwick University Sociology Professor Robert Fine (a member of the Conference of Socialist Economists), arising in part out of what he calls a “deafness” to Marx's “ironic style.” Marx's claim that “Money is the jealous god of Israel,” contends Fine, is actually a “witty and deeply ironic” critique of that claim.^[105]

"Eco-socialist" Joel Kovel disagrees: "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."^[106] Moreover, Marx expressed his contempt for Jews, not only in On the Jewish Question, but in other writings as well. In The German Ideology, Marx likens the bourgeoisie to Jews, whom he describes as criminals and hypocrites: “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.”^[107] In The Holy Family Marx expands on the theme of "the material, mass-type Jews," arguing that "real secular Jewry, and hence religious Jewry too... finds its final development in the money system," concluding 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."^[108]

Extreme as these German works were, Marx surpassed them in vituperation with an article he wrote for publication in America, where according to Marx the "practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world" had achieved what he called "its unambiguous and normal expression."^[109] "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:

More important, Marx did not limit his disparagement of Jews to his public writing and his creditors, but extended it to Jews in general. "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."^[111] Marx "sprayed anti-Semitic insults at his enemies with savage glee," writes Francis Wheen:^[112] "The Jew [Heymann] Steinthal, with the bland smile"; "that pig... is a Jew by the name of Meier"; he called the journalist Max Friedländer "the cursed Jew of Vienna," French Minister of Finance Achille Fould a "stock-exchange Jew," and Joseph Süß Oppenheimer "the Jew Süß of Egypt." He once referred to a woman who, he wrote, "swamped me with her benevolence" as "the most ugly creature I ever saw in my life, a nastily Jewish physiognomy."^[113] On another occasion he refers to a Jewish man as "a cunning-looking Jew-boy."^[114] He even called his doctor a Jew for pressing him for payment.^[115]

Nor did Marx merely disdain Jews, but Judaism itself: "the Israelite faith is repugnant to me," he wrote.^[116] He wrote to Engels from Ramsgate: "Many Jews and bedbugs hereabouts."^[117] In thus lumping Jews together with parasites, Marx prefigured a trope that would later figure prominently in the writing of the Nazis.^[118]

In On the Jewish Question itself, writes Dennis K. Fischman, assistant professor of social science at Boston University, "Marx seems fairly to bristle with anti-Jewish sentiments."^[119] 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.^[120] It is “almost a classic anti-Semitic tract,” agrees Johnson.^[121] It is "without any question an anti-Semitic tract," admits even Kovel, former Alger Hiss Professor of Social Studies at Bard College.^[122] Indeed, concurs Lewis, it has become “one of the classics of anti-Semitic propaganda.” ^[123] This essay was "reprinted, widely quoted, and praised," adds Himmelfarb, "and became the exemplar of a classic genre of socialist anti-Semitism."^[124]

"Much of the essay seems simply to borrow from standard anti-Semitic fare," writes Lindemann.^[125] Coleman identifies this work as "perhaps, the most condensed identification of Jews with self-interest."^[126] Marx exploits the stereotype of Jews “linked in the popular imagination with usury, sharp dealing, and ruthless cunning,” writes Stephen J. Greenblatt of Harvard.^[127] He uses the “widespread antisemitic caricature of Jews as inveterate moneylenders and hucksters along with the use of the term Judentum [Judaism] as a metaphor for commerce,” writes Larry Ray, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent.^[128] Not only are Judaism and capitalism "described as basically the same," according to Lindeman,^[129] but in Marx's view, Jews are "responsible for capitalism," writes Lewis.^[130] Marx considered Jews "the very soul of the corrupt capitalism he fought," wrote Flannery.^[131] The essay, writes Johnson, is “based upon a fantasied Jewish archetype and a conspiracy to corrupt the world.”^[132]

Marx expresses “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....”

"[T]he net result of Marx's essay is to reinforce a traditional anti-Jewish stereotype," concludes Robert S. Wistrich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, "the identification of the Jews with money-making—in the sharpest possible manner."^[134] "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."^[135] “Marx’s position is essentially an assimilationist one," according to Ray, "in which there is no room within emancipated humanity for Jews as a separate ethnic or cultural identity.”^[136] "Jews, Marx seems to be saying, can only become free when, as Jews, they no longer exist," observes Fischman.^[137] Marx expresses a "bitter grudge against Judaism which borders on the desire to see it destroyed," wrote long-time Haaretz editor Moshe Glickson.^[138] Marx "did not hesitate to besmirch the traditions of the Jewish people and to place a sword in the hands of its enemies," writes Glickson.^[139] Marx's "solution of the Jewish question was not very different from Adolf Hitler's," comments Marx's biographer Robert Payne, "for it involved the liquidation of Judaism...."^[140] Indeed, Marx's anti-Semitic rhetoric “may have contributed mightily to the bloodshed and the fire to come,” writes Max Geltman.^[141] Of this essay, Gérard Lyon-Caen, professor of labor law at the University of Paris, concludes:

From the writings of Karl Marx it is but a short distance to Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels' justification for the Holocaust: "The Jews are the incarnation of capitalism.”^[143]

Notes