On the Jewish Question
I’m pleased to announce that I’ll once again be working with my friend and co-author Alex Gourevitch on a new writing project: an introduction to a new edition of Marx’s On the Jewish Question.
The translation will be done by the excellent Paul Reitter, who did that new translation of Capital, and will be published by NYRB Classics, which has issued so many wonderful translations since its founding.
It’s hard for me to think of a more timely text than On the Jewish Question. Despite his traffic in antisemitism, Marx is trying here to get us to think about religion, identity, and politics outside the framework of culture war, which had engulfed so many intellectuals of the Enlightenment. Instead of that approach, Marx sets the Jewish Question against the backdrop of the two most important developments of the modern world: capitalism and the state.
Though it’s often forgotten or never recognized, Marx’s essay is a contribution to a live debate in the Europe of the early nineteenth century: the emancipation of the Jews. Two of his of most formidable partners in that debate—Bruno Bauer and Moses Hess—wound up taking dramatically different paths from that of Marx. Bauer turned to antisemitism, Hess, to Zionism.
Given that Zionism and antisemitism are now offered in our current moment as the only two alternatives to how to think about Jews and politics, Alex and I firmly believe that Marx, with his insistence on reading cultural questions through the lens of politics and economics, may still, whatever his own issues with Jewishness, have something to offer a world newly inflamed over the Jewish Question.
I believe the NYRB Classics edition should be out in 2027.
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6 Comments
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Lynn Peterfreund
Corey. i think i am remembering correctly that the very first question I ever asked Nick was, “ Was Marx Anti Semitic?” re The Jewish Question. The beginning our our long conversation.
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none too soon
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I am excited about this development. I expect the commentary in the Intro will be relevant and illuminating. I have begun Reitter’s “Capital” and find it refreshing.
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Hi Corey,
This is a rigorous and thought-provoking engagement with a foundational—and fraught—text. Your effort to disentangle Marx’s critique of political emancipation from the toxic afterlife of the phrase’s title is crucial. Focusing on the “imaginary sovereignty” of the political state versus the “real sovereignty” of civil society feels particularly resonant today, where similar tensions play out across different identity groups.
My question is about the limits of the analogy in the present. You argue that the essay’s core logic can be applied to other groups seeking emancipation within a liberal framework. In today’s context, where does that logic illuminate a similar ‘imaginary sovereignty,’ and where might it break down due to factors Marx couldn’t anticipate, such as the role of non-state international institutions or digital civil society?
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Igor
This is a very timely and important project. In case you aren’t aware of this already (if so, advance apologies), there were two recent issues of special issues of Historical Materialism devoted to Marxism and the Critique ofbAnti-Semitism. I contributed a lengthy essay that may be of interest to you and your co-author. I’ve tried to connect the reception of Marx’s work with our contemporary predicament: https://brill.com/view/journals/hima/32/2/article-p72_4.xml
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Saaz s
Hi! I believe you had shared a quote related to this, a year or two ago on facebook. About how the fate of a small minority became the fulcrum of world history, and how it seems to be happening again. Am I hallucinating this??
