Judge Dennis Davis
Marx and his Relationship to Judaism: A Radical Rethink

Judge Dennis Davis - Marx and his Relationship to Judaism: A Radical Rethink

- Good evening to everybody. Good afternoon. The lecture which I’m going to give today, of course, in some significant way, I suppose follows the mention of Karl Marx over many lectures over the period of Lockdown University. And the reason I’m doing this lecture is because there’s a new book. See, let me try to… By Shlomo Avineri called “Karl Marx, Philosophy and Revolution.” And it’s published, and this is not insignificant to my purpose, it’s published as part of a series which Yale University have done on Jewish lives. In other words, there’s a collection of books on a whole bunch of prominent Jews, And Karl Marx has now been included within the series. And the author of this particular volume is a hugely distinguished political scientist, Shlomo Avineri, professor emeritus now of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a member of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities. He’s written a whole lot of very important books. And those of us who were young students in the ‘70s, regarded his book, “The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx” and as absolutely a crucial text at that time, if you want to understand Marx and of course, amongst others, he’s also written a seminal text called “The Making of Modern Zionism.” So, I found this book particularly interesting and I thought I wanted to share with the community of Lockdown University why I found this interesting.

And if I can foreshadow my argument or the argument that Avineri puts that the traditional argument of Karl Marx as being arabid, anti-semite, totally and utterly unconnected to any Jewish background, which he had that Avineri contests this and suggests that there is a far more complex relationship between Karl Marx and his Jewish background than meets the eye and he produces this book in 2019, which really in many ways puts up a slightly different case, a case which is, well, I think argued and the case which is well worth listening to and has a lot of implications for our contemporary world in all manner of ways. I suppose again to foreshadow my argument, I remember very distinctly as a young student in South Africa complaining bitterly about the manner in which the established Jewish community remained so appallingly silent about apartheid and the way in which apartheid contradicted all manner of Jewish tradition. And I remember Rabbi Norman Bernhard, who may be, I’m sure is remembered by a number of people, he was the chief rabbi of the Oxford Synagogue saying to us that a whole lot of people who essentially were Jews and were in opposition to the government through the ANC, even the communist party, that notwithstanding that they didn’t espouse their Judaism and expressed terms, that much of the source of the opposition to apartheid from these traditions could be sourced in at least a subliminal acceptance of much of Jewish history and Jewish suffering. And I thought about this when I read Avineri’s book and what I wanted to share with you now is just basically what he’s got to argue, but in order to do that, just as a summary, I just… There was a sort of a kind of a publicity type clip and I thought I’d share it with you to start with.

So, if we can deal with that first, Lauren, and then we can move on. If I could pick up on the second of those themes that is that the Jews of the Rhineland who had been emancipated and Napoleon and then lost their equal rights. According to Avineri, since that affected the Marx’s family, one cannot discount this particular issue within Marx’s thinking, and let me explain to you in a short while as to why. But now, what Avineri, in his book, he’s sensitive to the objection that because Marx is by no means led a conventional Jewish life, it’ll be inappropriate to include his biography in Yale University’s precious collections of indicated of Jewish lives. Avineri says that the concern is misplaced. He says there’s no contradiction in saying that one made this test and on the other hand, one adores one’s own family, that there is a… That for many, there’s huge contradictions within this, and perhaps Marx was the quintessential contradiction. For after all, he was the grandson of two rabbis. He was the brother of the rabbi of Trier, he was the son of a learning successful lawyer who significantly, when the Rhineland Jews found that equal rights protection had been taken away from them, converted to Christianity to obtain a passport. But he used that passport of course, to travel to Holland, where he married a rabbi’s daughter and continued as it were to practise law upon his return. So, there’s a sense in which this is a family that has been totally disrupted by the various attacks to which the Jewish community was subjected as a result of the Napoleonic advantages having been taken away from them. And we don’t really know, we don’t really know what Marx thought about his father’s conversion, but in many ways as a number of commentators suggested, Marx never wrote a single line about the humiliation which is imposed upon his father who was forced to convert in order to continue to practise law.

Some suggest, this may be as revealing as Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous dog that did not bite in, did not bark in the night. But the fundamental point is that Marx came from that particular tradition and therefore, one cannot abstract the human being from that which had happened to his father, the humiliation, which unquestionably he felt and to a large degree the broader context in which Jews found themselves at that time. It is very interesting in this particular connection, if I may just again, refer to the book that of Marx’s three daughters, the one who was most educated and who was most politically activists, Eleanor. And she wrote a whole bunch of stuff, but it’s very interesting including a track called “The Woman’s Quest,” and she learned Yiddish and on one occasion she’s declared in Yiddish, “I am one of you” to a Jewish audience. And another, she accepted an invitation to address a rally protesting Russian anti-Jewish policies and pogroms adding, “I should be more glad to participate in this as my father was a Jew.” So, the daughter, in a sense recognised the linkage to which I’ve been speaking. The real… By the way, just anecdotally, one of the issues was that when the Rhineland Jews were forced as it were to to give up all their rights, it was also true that they had to change their names, that they had to change their names to more secular names. And in effect, Marx was not Marx but Levi and his father, his father’s name was Levi as was his grandfather, which is of nearly suggests is could it… How would it possibly have sounded if Marx had remained Karl Levi? Would we have spoken about, as he says Levi, Levism and Leninism in the same breath rather than Marxism-Leninism, but the name was Levi.

And so, the point that I’m making is that one has to start as Avineri does in the foundational background in which Karl Marx brought up. Now, the single text in which Marx essentially was accused of being an anti-semite and in which a self-hating Jew was of course, the text, famous text called, “On The Jewish Question.” But what happens is that people only read the second part of “On The Jewish Question” and not the first, which essentially means that Marx’s view about Jews, Judaism and in fact, of his own background is riddled with contradiction. Avineri doesn’t give us necessarily a satisfactory answer to it, but he does something that no other author who’s dealt with this and given his pedigree as, you know, the leading political scientist in Hebrew University, and I might add as I shall indicate towards the end of my lecture, the director general at one point to the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Israeli government does mean that once you take what he has to say very, very seriously and what he was… What effectively he says about “On The Jewish Question” is the first part of it is a response to two essays by Bruno Bauer, who is a central figure in a circle in which Marx as a 25-year-old writer was part. And the essence of Bauer’s attack on the Jewish community was effectively that to qualify for citizenship, German Jews should announce Judaism. In other words, his argument was you couldn’t be Jewish and also, be a German citizen. And so, Bauer’s attack on Jews was central to the first part of the text “On The Jewish Question.” And in that, Marx’s text fundamental issue with Bauer, his argument is that Bauer is actually completely wrong and in the first part of “On The Jewish Question,” Marx’s argument is fundamentally that there is no reason why Jews should not have enjoyed the same set of rights that they always did.

In fact, as Avineri says, the strong language of the first sentence of Marx’s essay clearly suggests, he’s more than purely theoretical engagement for Jewish emancipation and as insistence that the issue is political and not religious. Quote, “the German Jews desire emancipation. What kind of emancipation do their desire? Civic, political and civil, civic and political emancipation.” His argument in the first part of “On the Jewish Question” was fundamentally this, that Jews were entitled to the same civic rights as anyone else, that it was absolutely outrageous for Bauer to suggest that Jews be denied equal rights qua their Judaism. And Marx develops the view of human emancipation, which should in fact include Jews. He argues for equal rights for the Jews in the existing Bourgeois Societies, which like mine and criticises Bauer for excluding Jews from society unless they converted. If on the Jews question had stopped at the end of part one, there would never have any in suggestion that Karl Marx was in fact a self-hating Jew because the first part of “On The Jewish Question” is an evisceration of the notion that Jews should be second-class citizens and should not enjoy similar rights to that of the rest of society. But the problem is that he goes further, it’s the second part of “On The Jewish Question,” which ultimately is the one that gets him into trouble. And here, there’s no doubt about it, that there are outrageous phrases, which effectively are the ones that get Marx into the category of the self-hating Jew. I’m not going to read all of them but just to give you some indication from the book as to… Because they’re all extracted here, he says, “What is the secular cult of the Jews? Hackstring. What is the secular code? Money. What in itself was the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism.

The monotheism of the Jews therefore is in reality the polytheism of the many needs, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory and object of divine law. Practically, I mean, referring there to various brokers that are made then, practical need. Egoism is the principle of this kind of civil society. Money is the jealous God of Israel in the face of which no other God may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man and turns them into commodities. The God of the Jews has become secularised, has become the God of the real people, of the real world. The bullet exchange is the real God of the Jew. His God is only in an illusory, bullet exchange. The numerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.” Now, there’s no escaping, both the venom and the hatred which effectively follows from this. These are outrageous phrases and what is so interesting and which Avineri tries to deal with this. How do you reconcile the one or the other? How do you reconcile part one? The attack on Bauer, who suggests that Jews must convert with the notion that Jews should have equal rights and the fact that the Jews should be no bar to full participation in the society with the second outburst in which he’s talking about Jews in this quite scornful and outrageous way. And there’s no doubt that Avineri struggles with this. He struggles with it because he’s clearly confronted with two particular points of view, part one and part two.

And he poses the question as to whether in fact one was talking here in what he calls in code, because the word that is used and is basically translated in Jew is the word Judentum, which also stood for commerce, trade, hackstring in general, right? Almost is as just as the word to Jew, which has now been excised as he correctly writes from the English Oxford dictionary used to mean to cheat. So, when rights Avineri, Marx says that American society is the apotheosis of the power of Judaism or that society should be emancipated from the thought of Judaism. There is a subtext here. Contemporary readers were recognised that he was not writing just about Jews, Pierre-Joseph might have also convinced Marx to use the colloquial Judentum, rather than capitalism. Secondly, and ironically, Marx’s identification of Judaism and capitalism has a paradoxical literal origin. It appeared for the first time in Germany in an article by Marx, a socialist colleague… Moses Hess, who became one of the great sort of political advocates of Zionism. And so, Hess had said something not dissimilar to Marx. So, I’m not sure that I’m satisfied at all that the second part can be wild away as being a broader attack on capitalism by virtue of reference to the German word Judentum, which may mean something more than just Jew. But there is something troubling about the tension between the first part of Marx and the second part and what makes it even more interesting, very interesting, is the fact that this was not the last word that Marx said about Jews because he wrote a further pamphlet essay one year later called “Zur Judenfrage,” right? It’s overlooked says Avineri 'cause it wasn’t very well written.

It was written a year after “On The Jewish Question.” But this is the important part about it, that here, he says something quite extraordinary in a sense picking up the earlier themes of part one. He says this, he describes in detail in this text the acrimonious exchange between Bauer and the German Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. When Hirsch, in a typical Jewish apologetic argument rights, Avineri, meant that tame that after all the Jews did contribute something to history in modern times. Bauer dismisses this by apparently agreeing, but then adding that the Jews have always been an iso to Christian society. In 1845, a year after the Jewish question, this is what Marx wrote, “Something that has been an iso to me from birth as the Jews have been to the Christian world and which persists and develops with the eyes is not an ordinary soul, has a wonderful one, one that really belongs to my eye and must even contribute to a highly original development of my eyesight.” This revealed to have Bauer the significance of Jews in the making of modern times. And then, he then supports the position of another contributor to the debate between Bauer and Rabbi Hirsch, Gabriel Risa. And he writes this, Mr. Risa correctly expresses the meaning of the Jews desire for recognition of their free humanity when he demands amongst other things the freedom of movement, sojourn travel earning one’s living.

These manifestations to free humanity are expressly recognised in the French declaration of the rights of man. And in the very same pamphlets, he also engages with a debate which took place in the French Chamber of delegates, when Adolphe Cremieux declared that French Jews should accept the public observance of Sunday as an official day of rest out of respect for the religion of the majority. But then Marx adds a surprisingly critical note, Bringing out the dilemma of Jews, even a liberal state that grants some equal rights. This is what he said, “Now, according to free theory, Jews and Christians are equal, but in practise Christians have the privilege over Jews for otherwise, how could the Sunday of the Christians have a place in a Jew made for all… Sorry, have a place in a law made for all Frenchmen. Should not the Jewish Sabbath have equal rights.” So, this is extraordinarily curious if you think about it. If you take the full body, it’s hard and Avineri struggles with us to actually just simply say, “Oh, Marx was an anti-semite who distanced himself fundamentally from everything Jewish. It is possible, and Avineri argues this, that whilst Marx certainly went over the top in the second part of, "On The Jewish Question.” He was talking beyond Jews, he was talking more broadly about capitalism, which he in a sense used the word Judentum, which of course, doesn’t only mean Jew, but it is hard to kind of reconcile part one of the Jewish question, which I’ve outlined to you.

And the later article 1845, where he is with… He’s criticising Cremieux for suggesting that Jews should accept Sunday service. He’s criticising Bauer for disparaging Hirsch’s argument that Jews haven’t contributed manifestly and significantly to civilization. This is hardly the stuff of somebody that we read about Karl Marx on an everyday basis. And so, I suppose what I’m trying to suggest here by through the lens of Avineri is that it is possible that we need to look at Marx from a very different lens, from the one that traditionally we do. And I think that then makes a lot of differences, which Avineri talks about. Let me just highlight too and of course, my object in this lecture is essentially to provide you with a framework. It does seem to me that when it comes to questions of religion, Avineri, sorry, Marx’s attitude was a far more complex one then in sense just to argue that religion was the opium of the masses. Avineri points out that what Marx was talking about in this particular connection was something entirely different, that what he saw was that religion essentially personified to a large degree, the suffering of human beings, that human beings suffered and the religion essentially was a form of comfort to them. But that ultimately religion could never change their suffering fundamentally because the restructuring of society had to take place. So, it wasn’t just some sort of cavalier remark, it was an acknowledgement of the kind of degradation of what millions of people faced that they turned to religion as a bomb against their suffering.

That religion to a large degree personified the very suffering which Marx turned his attention to looking at the causes thereof in order to develop a framework for a society, which was be very different from the capitalist work. And fundamental to these analysis of capitalism was the concept of alienation. And what do I mean by that? I mean by that, that Marx suggested and Avineri makes a big case for this. That when we look at the concept of alienation, capitalism was very different from any previous system because it basically took people off the land, it essentially wrenched them as it were, off their families and put them in factories and ultimately made them produce goods which were not theirs, even though they produced them. But were for the profit of the capitalists. And in these large factories and in the condition of capitalism, which rendered some people very wealthy and some very poor, that ultimately capitalism essentially, which had taken people off the land, which they’d been, even the serfs in the feudal system or in some pre-feudal system where people sold the land. Now, they were alienated from everything other than a job, they were lucky, which gave them money and he’s to for basic survival. And the concept of people being alienated from their communities, from their land, from basic property was central to Marx. Now, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that fundamentally, to the whole physicist Jews of Jewish history was the process of alienation. Alienation from the societies in which we were ostracised, killed, expelled, et cetera. And so, the idea that central to Marx’s analysis of trying to find a society in which alienation wouldn’t dominate is essentially not that far removed from the very tradition, which unquestionably he did, he assured, but which he was still part of given his background.

And so, it does seem to me that Avineri has made out a case that we have to look at Marx in an entirely different way. And he then makes a couple of arguments towards the end of the book that I would like to share with you because they are relevant to I think our contemporary condition. What he says is when we look at what Marx was on about, right? Of course, in many ways capitalism did not collapse. That essentially, whatever the alienation of the vast majority of people were from the products of capitalism, capitalism did not collapse. And that therefore, the idea which was central to “The Communist Manifesto” and to “Das Kapital” did not survive. But what he goes on to say, which I think is important, he says that why is the form of capitalism, which Marx described effectively did not in a sense implode and did not produce the kind of society that he had predicted. This is what Avineri says, “Capitalist economics as he described them, were premised on the principle of total non-intervention by the state in the economy.” Because his argument was that capitalism essentially was the market gone mad and that’s where the alienation of the majority came in. But he then says this, this is what Avineri says, he says, Nonetheless, he said, “The fact of non-intervention by the state and the economy. But towards the end of the 19th century and even more, after the financial crisis of the 1920s and 1930s and World War II, social welfare reforms gave workers significant protection from the brutalities of early capitalism, legislation, limited working hours, and the employment of children and women and unemployment, medical aid and old age insurance benefits offered meaningful protection as did vacation, paid vacations and other welfare measures.”

And then he goes on, he says, “If you look at the more modern era, the modern welfare state with further extended through writings of John Maynard Keynes and the new deal under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wistfully, it can be argued that Marx’s dire prophecies about the doom of unbridled free market capitalism have been taken seriously and absorbed by the paths that be, it’s making it possible that the capitalist system is able to reform defensively and therefore survive.” He does go on to say, “Contrary developments under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher weakened some of these achievements. But they did not do away with the major premises. A totally unregulated free market does not exist anywhere anymore.” And so, Avineri’s first point is Marx got it wrong, but he’s very analysis of the framework and weaknesses and capitalism were taken seriously by social democratic thinkers, by Keynesians, who essentially therefore brought about a series of mechanisms which were the antidote to the problems that… Sorry, that Marx had predicted so long ago. Now, what is interesting about this is if we fast forward to the 21st century and we look at the level of inequality and discontent, if we look at something that we’ve concentrated on in a number of lectures over our series of Lockdown University, the threat against constitutional democracy. Then the reality is that the replacement of constitutional democracy by authoritarian regimes and the rise of populism can be in many ways attributed to the way in which capitalism has produced such uneven forms of development. That is the large millions and millions to literally live on the margins and be very, very fertile soil for an expedient populists.

In my own country in South Africa, where on Monday, we may face a shutdown by the fascist political party, and I use that word advisory called the economic freedom fighters, aping the 1920s of Mussolini who also called similar action in order to destroy democracy. The idea that at root cause is a system which is to a largely dispense with many of the guardrails that Keynes, Roosevelt, the German social democrats, et cetera, put in place does make one pause that whilst Marx got it wrong, his actual core analysis is not one that one should simply reject without more and certainly not because one rejects him as some mad, self-hating Jew. But there’s another aspect that Avineri raises and bear in mind he wrote this in 219, which is not uninteresting to me. He refers to the fact of that Marx had never predicted, in fact to the country that Marx was of the view that a real communist society could not take place in Russia. That Russia was far too underdeveloped to become a true communist society that it would always end in disaster for that reason. And the interesting point about that Avineri makes is this is the following, there is very little support as it were within Russia himself, he suggests. For the kind of egalitarian society which Marx had in mind. And he goes on to say this, which I think is really interesting. He says, “As we’ve seen, there is very little support for such an interpretation in Marx’s own writings. In retrospect, it’s now clear that many of the repressive Soviet measures, not only resulted from the attempt to force a socialist world onto a pre-industrial society, but also, deep roots in its authoritarian traditions of Russian state graft and the country’s weak civil society, an issue that Marx himself had addressed in his polemic with Bakunin.

This dynamic continues to torn Russia today, the quick reversal from the liberalising goals of Mikhail Gorbachev’s spare striker, to the authoritarian methods of Vladimir Putin suggests that the continuity and deep-seated presence of traditional Zara structures and methods is the major determinant of Russian political development under Lenin and Stalin as well as Putin. A similar analysis can be made for the Confucian authoritarian traditions that are currently the backbone of the remaining communist regimes in China, Vietnam, and North Korea.” He wrote that in 219, and what he’s trying to suggest is that to a large degree, when Marx analysed Russia, he never thought it could be a communist society because it was too pre-industrial, and it would inevitably turn into an authoritarian repressive society, which might have bolstered its authoritarian regime with Marx’s rhetoric. But was a million miles removed as Avineri correctly points from what Marx had really suggested. And on that point, what Marx was trying to do was to develop a society which transcended the limitations of liberalism, not to destroy liberalism, but to make a society one where in a sense rights were essentially granted to all, not just small elite classes as he saw in liberalism. And again, as Avineri points out and if I want to emphasise the fact that Marx did defend the idea of Jewish emancipation, even though he saw Jewish emancipation as inextricably bound with the emancipation of all because repression of regimes will always ultimately go for the others such as the Jew.

The fact is that his defence of those equal rights, the Jews, located within his broader vision is I think support for the argument that his vision wasn’t what ended up and landed up in Russia, but was something which unfortunately may have been more too complex, maybe even too modern for our world. I want to sort of end just with one other aspect, which I thought was delightful in Avineri’s book. As I indicated to you, Avineri was the director general of the Department of Foreign Affairs. And towards the end of his book, he makes a very interesting point in which at some point Marx actually wrote about Jerusalem, and this is what he said, “Nothing equals the misery and the suffering of the Jews at Jerusalem. Inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town called Harat Al-Yahud in the quarter of dirt between Zion and Maria, where the synagogues are situated. The constant objects of Muslim men oppression and intolerance resulted by the… Sorry, which it started with the Greeks and person and other forms of persecution. The Jews on might be not natures, but from different and distinct countries are not only attracted to Jerusalem by the desire to inherit inhabiting the Valley of Josaphat and to die on the very place where the redemption is to be expected. Attending their death says a French author, they suffer and pray. Their regards turned into that mountain of Maria, where once rose the temple of Lebanon and which they have not and which they did not approach, they shed tears on the misfortunes of Zion and the dispersion over the world.”

And he then went on to say that the Jews notwithstanding the awful conditions, which they are actually are the majority inhabitants of Jerusalem at the time. So, Marx was defending this, Avineri points out very interestingly that when he was the director general, he quoted from Marx’s article, which clearly stated that Jerusalem had a Jewish majority as far back as the mid-19th century, “That I introduced the Marx’s passage without naming him, merely referring to it,” he said in a speech, “As a description by one of the most important 19th century thinkers, viewed by some as the most important thinker of the century. Then after I’d finished the lengthy passage, having addressed a whole group of Soviet diplomats, I added, and I hope our Soviet colleagues realised I was quoting from a 1954 article written by Karl Marx.” Then an incredible thing happened, he writes. “A member of the Soviet delegation sprung up, interrupting me and shouted, this is forgery, Marx never wrote this, still at the speakers podium. I took out the volume I was reading from, showed it to the audience and said, "I am quoting from a volume of Marx, which was published in Moscow by the Soviet Official Foreign Languages Publishing Marx.” I am sure that Soviet delegates, not implying that an official Soviet publication is involved in the forgery of the text of Karl Marx.“ And the point that he was making is that to a large degree, Marx was totally misinterpreted and misjudged and therefore, has gone down in history in a way seeing him in a binary fashion.

It does seem that when you read Avineri’s book, what are he saying in summary is this, Marx’s entire theory was to develop a society which was freer, which essentially meant that all including Jews would enjoy full and equal rights after all. Although he never wrote anything about his father, incredibly significant. There’s no doubt that there was huge pain in the family, a family of rabbis whose father, himself, who was born of various rabbi parents and grandparents had to convert to Christianity because Jews in the Rhineland had lost their rights as equal citizens. It cannot be surely suggested, the young Marx did not see the pain, his father and mother. And what he saw then was ultimately the way in which Jews had been alienated, how ephemeral their rights were and whilst it is true that he did write, as I say, the second part of "On The Jewish Question,” which is shocking on one level. Avineri battles to try to give it a different context. You may suggest that he failed and that may be so, but what does seem clear is if you read the whole over of Marx’s writings, and if you read part one of the Jewish question, never ever quoted or the other texts on the on Jews, which I suggest that must requires attention from 1845. And if you read what he had to say about Jerusalem, all of that suggests a much more complex, fraught relationship with his tradition. And one in which as Avineri suggests in the book, means that it was justified to write a biography of Marx within a collection which ultimately celebrated Jewish life. I’m going to end there and see whether there are any questions, which I think there are.

Q&A and Comments:

I wasn’t going to touch on “Das Kapital.” I’m happy to do that, Lorna. I mean, what I was trying… I was trying to focus more on the complexity of his relationship with Judaism, which is a fundamental factor of the book. But when I did speak as I have about Marx getting it wrong with regard to the fact that a sort of market orientated form of capitalism itself was going to collapse and something else would effectively take its place. What I was suggesting there was he got it wrong, he did not get wrong, it was an analysis, a class analysis, which suggested that if you even take the global capitalism of the first part of this century, it created the kind of fissures and fractures in the society. Deep forms of alienation, which unfortunately, if not replaced by some broader conception of democracy is inevitably and inexorably destined to be addressed by some forms of populism. And for that reason, I think it’s worth thinking about and reading Marx more carefully. William, I find no contradiction between one and two. They address different issues. I agree.

Social obligation, I personally disagree with personality questions, some to you is not infringing civil and political white superiority believers through hateful. I’m not entirely sure I understand that, but I do think it’s absolutely correct that what he was… What Avineri was suggesting in part two was a political analysis of the forms of capitalism. But the part one was suggesting that the idea of Bauer, that you would force people to take on a different identity as the requirement, the CNA QAnon for getting rights in a society was totally unacceptable, and I think that has some… And I think, you know, in that sense you can reconcile the two. Well, I’m very pleased that Shlomo and Maria is a cousin of yours. I think he’s a fabulous academic.

Arlene, I find it ironic that communist leaders in nation like Russia and China really behave like the czars and mandarins. But you see, it’s not ironic. It’s precisely what Avineri was talking about. What Marx was suggesting is that you could only have a more advanced society than let’s say, a liberal capitalist society in circumstances where you… You had already that kind of fairly developed notion of an economy and something beyond that would then be your new and kind of as it were, revamped society, the communist society. What Marx said was that if you took a pre-industrial society like Russia or China for that matter, you could never ever reach that point because it hadn’t reached the stage of development, which would give rise to capitalism. It would inevitably, essentially turn towards authoritarian regimes of authoritarian leaders trying to force through a whole series of programmes, which could not, as it were take place in circumstances where there was a participatory democracy of any kind. And the Stalinist interplant from the '30s and '40s, through before the war and then after the war are great examples of that, as is an experience in China. So, what he was saying, what Marx is saying is he got that absolutely right if you read his stuff carefully.

Thank you very much, Dr. Jack. Yes, Professor Shlomo Avineri, Carol.

I never said Uri Avnery, Tommy. Uri Avnery is an entirely different person, you’re quite right.

No, the grand… Shelly, the point was that Marx lived in the area when Napoleon had granted rights, they were taken away and that’s the significance of the proposition. Marx did not have a Jewish upbringing as such. No, but I mean, not in that sense because by then his father had converted and there was obviously ambivalence. But it is interesting. His brother was a rabbi, his father, his grandparents were rabbi. So, the, you know, but there’s no indication and Avineri suggested that. Strange that he would refer in one or two parts of the text to various Jewish blessings. But there’s no evidence that he had a, if you could call it a complete education of any kind. Well, I think, Brenda, the point was that at the time we were talking about, it was the Jews who were subject to greater marginalisation than any other group at all.

So, that’s really my talk for this evening. I would hope that you’d want to read Shlomo Avineri’s book. It’s a fabulous book and I think it’s worth reading because as I’ve indicated and summarised again, I think it gives a much more nuanced picture of Marx. It’s a brilliant attempt to suggest that Marx talks to us today. He talks to us because even if he got his predictions wrong, he got some of them right, Russia and China, talks to us today that if we don’t actually have social democratic guardrails and they may not be the same as they were under FDR or under Keynes, we are asking for trouble. If we can’t in fact produce, reduce levels of inequality in alienation and poverty, were in trouble. And it would be wrong, says Avineri, and I think this is correct to kind of relegate Marx to obscurity because you only read part two of the Jewish question. Don’t at least attempt to reconcile with part one and with the other text to which I’ve made references.

So, on that note, I hope you go and read the book and I hope you found that this lecture gives you the stimulus to think these questions through. Goodnight.