On Schwartz, "Liberalism and the Jewish Connection"

On Schwartz, "Liberalism and the Jewish Connection"Author(s): Dennis FischmanSource: Political Theory, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Nov., 1985), pp. 607-609Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/191614 .

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CRITICAL RESPONSES

ON SCHWARTZ, "LIBERALISM AND THE JEWISH CONNECTION"

DENNIS FISCHMAN University of Massachusetts

OEL SCHWARTZ deserves our thanks for paying serious attention to Karl Marx's critique of Judaism. All too often, political theorists read Judaism completely out of "On the Jewish Question," choosing to emphasize the theme of political versus human emancipation exclusively. In this manner, they lose an important key to Marx's theoretical concerns that Schwartz begins to restore to us.

I believe Schwartz oversimplifies, however, when he claims that Marx identifies Judaism with liberalism and communism with Chris- tianity. More carefully, one might say that, to Marx, "practical" Judaism epitomizes civil society, whereas Christianity is the philosophy of the "political state." Viewed from this angle, Marx's attitude toward Judaism is far more ambivalent, less unrelievedly negative than Schwartz supposes.

No one has ever accused Karl Marx of being enthralled by Judaism as a religion. Indeed, whereas religion tout court appears to Marx as an opiate that (although deceptive) offers the semblance of relief to the miserable masses, Judaism seems "some insipid vapour" that "would evaporate . . . in the real, life-giving air of [post-capitalist] society."2 Marx holds this "sabbath" Judaism in contempt, both as a religion and as an ideology. He locates the reality of Judaism not in its sabbath but in its everyday existence, which he defines as "practical need, self interest."3

But "practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society" as well.4 According to Marx, "Judaism attains its apogee with the perfection of

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 13 No. 4, November 1985 607-609 ? 1985 Sage Publications, Inc.

607



608 POLITICAL THEORY / November 1985

civil society."5 Marx is saying here what he continues to say in various forms for the rest of his life. Once civil society (the sphere of survival) becomes divorced from the state (the sphere of politics), everyone, not only the Jews, becomes obsessed with money, commerce, and material interests just because these become in fact the necessary concerns of human life.6 Marx's identification of both everyday Judaism and civil society, on one hand, with practical need, on the other, is a compliment to the former. "Jewish" civil society fascinates Marx precisely because it is practical: It constitutes the effective reality in which people live.

The same division in the world that produces civil society as an independent entity establishes the "political state," political in the double sense that power is exercised within governmental institutions and that the other realms of human life (economic, social, religious) lie outside it. The political state regulates the forms of nonpolitical life without overtly contributing to its content.7 Clearly, the category of the political state encompasses the liberal model Schwartz says Marx associates with Judaism. Marx, however, sees in liberalism "the perfected Christian state," more Christian even than "the state which is still theological," which is merely "the Christian negation of the state."8

What is Christian about the "political state?" First, by privatizing religion instead of abolishing it, liberalism helps perpetuate the Christian projection of human powers onto a transcendent God.9 Second, in the words of David McLellan, the state represents "the illusory universality of modern political life."l Just as Jews do not become emancipated by the ballot if the legislature only meets on Saturdays, so self-interested individuals do not become free citizens by acquiring political rights.11 Formal democracy cannot abolish the alienation that Marx contends, could only have come about "under the sway of Christianity, which objectifies all national, natural, moral, and theoretical relationships."''2

Because Marx regards Christianity as incapable at best of overcom- ing the estrangement of human life it has helped to create, Schwartz's thesis that "in communist society, social life would no longer be limited and 'Jewish,' but would instead be transcendent and 'Christian"' (pp. 74-75) seems dubious.'3 Marx himself writes,

It was only in appearance that Christianity overcame real [i.e., "practical'] Judaism. It was too refined, too spiritual to eliminate the crudeness of practical need except by raising it into the ethereal realm.'4



Fischman / ON SCHWARTZ 609

Whatever communist society may have meant to Marx when he wrote "On the Jewish Question," it was neither ethereal nor refined. Surely, human emancipation as Marx conceived it involved the transcendence (Aufhebung) of Judaism. Just as certainly, however, Marx did not envision that transcendence as Christian. What he did think it would be remains an open question.

NOTES

1. Joel Schwarz, "Liberalism and the Jewish Connection: A Study of Spinoza and the Young Marx," Political Theory 13 (February 1985): 58-84.

2. Karl Marx, "On the Jewish Question," in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 48. Cf. "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction," in ibid., pp. 53-54.

3. Marx, "On the Jewish Question." 4. Ibid., p. 50. 5. Ibid., p. 51. 6. "The Jew, who occupies a distinctive place in civil society, only manifests in a

distinctive way the Judaism of civil society," ibid., p. 50. 7. Marx discusses the political state most exhaustively in the "Contribution" cited

above, written in the same year as "On the Jewish Question" (in Tucker, pp. 19-23). For his use of the term in the latter article, see Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader, pp. 29-40.

8. Marx, "On the Jewish Question," p. 36. 9. Ibid., p. 38.

10. David McLellan, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 73.

11. Marx, "On the Jewish Question," p. 29. 12. Ibid., p. 51. 13. There is, of course, the terminological quibble that Marx did not write and would

not have spoken of "communist society" in 1843. 14. Marx, "On the Jewish Question," p. 52.



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On Schwartz, "Liberalism and the Jewish Connection"