The German Jews desire emancipation. What kind of emancipation dothey desire? Civic, political emancipation.
Bruno Bauer replies to them: No one in Germany is politically emancipated. Weourselves are not free. How are we to free you? You Jews are egoists ifyou demand a special emancipation for yourselves as Jews. As Germans, you oughtto work for the political emancipation of Germany, and as human beings, for theemancipation of mankind, and you should feel the particular kind of youroppression and your shame not as an exception to the rule, but on the contraryas a confirmation of the rule.
Or do the Jews demand the same status as Christian subjects of the state?In that case, they recognize that the Christian state is justified andthey recognize, too, the regime of general oppression. Why should theydisapprove of their special yoke if they approve of the general yoke? Why shouldthe German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is notinterested in the liberation of the German?
The Christian state knows only privileges. In this state, theJew has the privilege of being a Jew. As a Jew, he has rights which theChristians do not have. Why should he want rights which he does not have, butwhich the Christians enjoy?
In wanting to be emancipated from the Christian state, the Jew is demandingthat the Christian state should give up its religious prejudice. Does he,the Jew, give up his religious prejudice? Has he, then, the right todemand that someone else should renounce his religion?
By its very nature, the Christian state incapable of emancipating theJew; but, adds Bauer, by his very nature the Jew cannot be emancipated. So longas the state is Christian and the Jew is Jewish, the one is as incapable ofgranting emancipation as the other is of receiving it.
The Christian state can behave towards the Jew only in the way characteristicof the Christian state -- that is, by granting privileges, by permitting theseparation of the Jew from the other subjects, but making him feel the pressureof all the other separate spheres of society, and feel it all the more intenselybecause he is in religious opposition to the dominant religion. But theJew, too, can behave towards the state only in a Jewish way -- that is, bytreating it as something alien to him, by counterposing his imaginarynationality to the real nationality, by counterposing his illusory law to thereal law, by deeming himself justified in separating himself from mankind, byabstaining on principle from taking part in the historical movement, by puttinghis trust in a future which has nothing in common with the future of mankind ingeneral, and by seeing himself as a member of the Jewish people, and the Jewishpeople as the chosen people.
On what grounds, then, do you Jews want emancipation? On account of yourreligion? It is the mortal enemy of the state religion. As citizens? In Germany,there are no citizens. As human beings? But you are no more human beings thanthose to whom you appeal.
Bauer has posed the question of Jewish emancipation in a new form, aftergiving a critical analysis of the previous formulations and solutions of thequestion. What, he asks, is the nature of the Jew who is to beemancipated and of the Christian state that is to emancipate him? He replies bya critique of the Jewish religion, he analyzes the religious oppositionbetween Judaism and Christianity, he elucidates the essence of the Christianstate -- and he does all this audaciously, trenchantly, wittily, and withprofundity, in a style of writing what is as precise as it is pithy and vigorous.
How, then, does Bauer solve the Jewish question? What is the result? Theformulation of a question is its solution. The critique of the Jewish questionis the answer to the Jewish question. The summary, therefore, is as follows:
We must emancipated ourselves before we can emancipate others.
The most rigid form of the opposition between the Jew and the Christian isthe religious opposition. How is an opposition resolved? By making itimpossible. How is religious opposition made impossible? By abolishingreligion. As soon as Jew and Christian recognize that their respectivereligions are no more than different stages in the development of the humanmind, different snake skins cast off by history, and that man is thesnake who sloughed them, the relation of Jew and Christian is no longerreligious but is only a critical, scientific, and human relation. Science,then, constitutes their unity. But, contradictions in science are resolved byscience itself.
The German Jew, in particular, is confronted by the general absence ofpolitical emancipation and the strongly marked Christian character of the state.In Bauer's conception, however, the Jewish question has a universal significance,independent of specifically German conditions. It is the question of therelation of religion to the state, of the contradiction between religiousconstraint and political emancipation. Emancipation from religion is laiddown as a condition, both to the Jew who wants to be emancipated politically,and to the state which is to effect emancipation and is itself to be emancipated.
"Very well", it is said, and the Jew himself says it,"the Jew is to become emancipated not as a Jew, not because he is a Jew,not because he possesses such an excellent, universally human principle ofmorality; on the contrary, the Jew will retreat behind the citizenand be a citizen, although he is a Jew and is to remain a Jew. That is tosay, he is and remains a Jew, although he is a citizen and livesin universally human conditions: his Jewish and restricted nature triumphsalways in the end over his human and political obligations. The prejudiceremains in spite of being outstripped by general principles. But if itremains, then, on the contrary, it outstrips everything else."
"Only sophistically, only apparently, would the Jew beable to remain a Jew in the life of the state. Hence, if he wanted to remain aJew, the mere appearance would become the essential and would triumph; that isto say, his life in the state would be only a semblance or only atemporary exception to the essential and the rule." ("The Capacity ofPresent-Day Jews and Christians to Become Free", Einundzwanzig Bogen,pp.57)
Let us hear, on the other hand, how Bauer presents the task ofthe state.
"France," he says, "has recently shown us"(Proceedings of the Chamber of Deputies, December 26, 1840) "in theconnection with the Jewish question -- just as it has continually done in allother political questions -- the spectacle of a life which is free, butwhich revokes its freedom by law, hence declaring it to be an appearance, and onthe other hand contradicting its free laws by its action." (The JewishQuestion, p.64)
"In France, universal freedom is not yet the law, theJewish question too has not yet been solved, because legal freedom -- thefact that all citizens are equal -- is restricted in actual life, which is stilldominated and divided by religious privileges, and this lack of freedom inactual life reacts on law and compels the latter to sanction the division of thecitizens, who as such are free, into oppressed and oppressors." (P.65)
When, therefore, would the Jewish question be solved for France?
"The Jew, for example, would have ceased to be a Jew ifhe did not allow himself to be prevented by his laws from fulfilling his duty tothe state and his fellow citizens, that is, for example, if on the Sabbath heattended the Chamber of Deputies and took part in the official proceedings.Every religious privilege, and therefore also the monopoly of aprivileged church, would have been abolished altogether, and if some or manypersons, or even the overwhelming majority, still believed themselves bound tofulfil religious duties, this fulfilment ought to be left to them as a purelyprivate matter." (P.65)
"There is no longer any religion when there is no longerany privileged religion. Take from religion its exclusive power and it will nolonger exist." (P.66)
"Just as M. Martin du Nord saw the proposal to omitmention of Sunday in the law as a motion to declare that Christianity has ceasedto exist, with equal reason (and this reason is very well founded) thedeclaration that the law of the Sabbath is no longer binding on the Jew would bea proclamation abolishing Judaism." (P.71)
Bauer, therefore, demands, on the one hand, that the Jew shouldrenounce Judaism, and that mankind in general should renounce religion, in orderto achieve civic emancipation. On the other hand, he quite consistentlyregards the political abolition of religion as the abolition of religionas such. The state which presupposes religion is not yet a true, real state.
"Of course, the religious notion affords security to thestate. But to what state? To what kind of state?" (P.97)
At this point, the one-sided formulation of the Jewishquestion becomes evident.
It was by no means sufficient to investigate: Who is to emancipate? Who is tobe emancipated? Criticism had to investigate a third point. It had to inquire: Whatkind of emancipation is in question? What conditions follow from the verynature of the emancipation that is demanded? Only the criticism of politicalemancipation itself would have been the conclusive criticism of the Jewishquestion and its real merging in the "general question of time".
Because Bauer does not raise the question to this level, he becomes entangledin contradictions. He puts forward conditions which are not based on the natureof political emancipation itself. He raises questions which are not partof his problem, and he solves problems which leave this question unanswered.When Bauer says of the opponents of Jewish emancipation: "Their error wasonly that they assumed the Christian state to be the only true one and did notsubject it to the same criticism that they applied to Judaism" (op. cit., p.3),we find that his error lies in the fact that he subjects to criticism onlythe "Christian state", not the "state as such", that he doesnot investigate the relation of political emancipation to human emancipationand, therefore, puts forward conditions which can be explained only byuncritical confusion of political emancipation with general human emancipation.If Bauer asks the Jews: Have you, from your standpoint, the right to want politicalemancipation? we ask the converse question: Does the standpoint of politicalemancipation give the right to demand from the Jew the abolition of Judaism andfrom man the abolition of religion?
The Jewish question acquires a different form depending on the state in whichthe Jew lives. In Germany, where there is no political state, no state as such,the Jewish question is a purely theological one. The Jew finds himself inreligious opposition to the state, which recognizes Christianity as itsbasis. This state is a theologian ex professo. Criticism here iscriticism of theology, a double-edged criticism -- criticism of Christiantheology and of Jewish theology. Hence, we continue to operate in the sphere oftheology, however much we may operate critically within it.
In France, a constitutional state, the Jewish question is a questionof constitutionalism, the question of the incompleteness of politicalemancipation. Since the semblance of a state religion is retainedhere, although in a meaningless and self-contradictory formula, that of a religionof the majority, the relation of the Jew to the state retains the semblanceof a religious, theological opposition.
Only in the North American states -- at least, in some of them -- does theJewish question lose its theological significance and become a really secularquestion. Only where the political state exists in its completely developed formcan the relation of the Jew, and of the religious man in general, to thepolitical state, and therefore the relation of religion to the state, showitself in its specific character, in its purity. The criticism of this relationceases to be theological criticism as soon as the state ceases to adopt atheological attitude toward religion, as soon as it behaves towards religion asa state -- i.e., politically. Criticism, then, becomes criticismof the political state. At this point, where the question ceases to betheological, Bauer's criticism ceases to be critical.
"In the United States there is neither a state religionnor a religion declared to be that of the majority, nor the predominance of onecult over another. The state stands aloof from all cults." (Marie ou l'esclavageaux Etats-Unis, etc., by G. de Beaumont, Paris, 1835, p.214)
Indeed, there are some North American states where "theconstitution does not impose any religious belief or religious practice as acondition of political rights." (op. cit., p.225)
Nevertheless, "in the United States people do not believethat a man without religion could be an honest man." (op. cit., p.224)
Nevertheless, North America is pre-eminently the country ofreligiosity, as Beaumont, Tocqueville, and the Englishman Hamilton unanimouslyassure us. The North American states, however, serve us only as an example. Thequestion is: What is the relation of complete political emancipation to religion?If we find that even in the country of complete political emancipation, religionnot only exists, but displays a fresh and vigorous vitality, that is proof thatthe existence of religion is not in contradiction to the perfection of thestate. Since, however, the existence of religion is the existence of defect, thesource of this defect can only be sought in the nature of the state itself. Weno longer regard religion as the cause, but only as the manifestation ofsecular narrowness. Therefore, we explain the religious limitations of the freecitizen by their secular limitations. We do not assert that they must overcometheir religious narrowness in order to get rid of their secular restrictions, weassert that they will overcome their religious narrowness once they get rid oftheir secular restrictions. We do not turn secular questions into theologicalones. History has long enough been merged in superstition, we now mergesuperstition in history. The question of the relation of political emancipationto religion becomes for us the question of the relation of politicalemancipation to human emancipation. We criticize the religious weakness of thepolitical state by criticizing the political state in its secular form, apartfrom its weaknesses as regards religion. The contradiction between the state anda particular religion, for instance Judaism, is given by us a human form as thecontradiction between the state and particular secular elements; thecontradiction between the state and religion in general as the contradictionbetween the state and its presuppositions in general.
The political emancipation of the Jew, the Christian, and, in general, ofreligious man, is the emancipation of the state from Judaism, fromChristianity, from religion in general. In its own form, in the mannercharacteristic of its nature, the state as a state emancipates itself fromreligion by emancipating itself from the state religion -- that is to say, bythe state as a state not professing any religion, but, on the contrary,asserting itself as a state. The political emancipation from religion isnot a religious emancipation that has been carried through to completion and isfree from contradiction, because political emancipation is not a form of humanemancipation which has been carried through to completion and is free fromcontradiction.
The limits of political emancipation are evident at once from the fact thatthe state can free itself from a restriction without man being really free fromthis restriction, that the state can be a free state [ pun on wordFreistaat, which also means republic ] without man being a free man.Bauer himself tacitly admits this when he lays down the following condition forpolitical emancipation:
"Every religious privilege, and therefore also themonopoly of a privileged church, would have been abolished altogether, and ifsome or many persons, or even the overwhelming majority, still believedthemselves bound to fulfil religious duties, this fulfilment ought to be left tothem as a purely private matter." [The Jewish Question, p.65]
It is possible, therefore, for the state to haveemancipated itself from religion even if the overwhelming majority isstill religious. And the overwhelming majority does not cease to be religiousthrough being religious in private.
But, the attitude of the state, and of the republic [ free state ] inparticular, to religion is, after all, only the attitude to religion of the menwho compose the state. It follows from this that man frees himself through the mediumof the state, that he frees himself politically from a limitation when, incontradiction with himself, he raises himself above this limitation in anabstract, limited, and partial way. It follows further that, by freeing himselfpolitically, man frees himself in a roundabout way, through an intermediary,although an essential intermediary. It follows, finally, that man, even if heproclaims himself an atheist through the medium of the state -- that is, if heproclaims the state to be atheist -- still remains in the grip of religion,precisely because he acknowledges himself only by a roundabout route, onlythrough an intermediary. Religion is precisely the recognition of man in aroundabout way, through an intermediary. The state is the intermediary betweenman and man's freedom. Just as Christ is the intermediary to whom man transfersthe burden of all his divinity, all his religious constraint, so the state isthe intermediary to whom man transfers all his non-divinity and all his humanconstraint.
The political elevation of man above religion shares all the defects and allthe advantages of political elevation in general. The state as a state annuls,for instance, private property, man declares by political means that privateproperty is abolished as soon as the property qualification for the right toelect or be elected is abolished, as has occurred in many states of NorthAmerica. Hamilton quite correctly interprets this fact from a political point ofview as meaning:
"the masses have won a victory over the property ownersand financial wealth". [Thomas Hamilton, Men and Manners in America,2 vols, Edinburgh, 1833, p.146.]
Is not private property abolished in idea if the non-propertyowner has become the legislator for the property owner? The propertyqualification for the suffrage is the last political form of giving recognitionto private property.
Nevertheless, the political annulment of private property not only fails toabolish private property but even presupposes it. The state abolishes, in itsown way, distinctions of birth, social rank, education, occupation, when itdeclares that birth, social rank, education, occupation, are non-politicaldistinctions, when it proclaims, without regard to these distinction, that everymember of the nation is an equal participant in national sovereignty,when it treats all elements of the real life of the nation from the standpointof the state. Nevertheless, the state allows private property, education,occupation, to act in their way -- i.e., as privateproperty, as education, as occupation, and to exert the influence of their specialnature. Far from abolishing these real distinctions, the state only exists onthe presupposition of their existence; it feels itself to be a political stateand asserts its universality only in opposition to these elements of its being.Hegel, therefore, defines the relation of the political state to religion quitecorrectly when he says:
"In order [...] that the state should come into existenceas the self-knowing, moral reality of the mind, its distraction from the form ofauthority and faith is essential. But this distinction emerges only insofar asthe ecclesiastical aspect arrives at a separation within itself. It is only inthis way that the state, above the particular churches, has achieved and broughtinto existence universality of thought, which is the principle of its form"(Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1st edition, p.346).
Of course! Only in this way, above the particularelements, does the state constitute itself as universality.
The perfect political state is, by its nature, man's species-life, as opposedto his material life. All the preconditions of this egoistic life continue toexist in civil society outside the sphere of the state, but as qualities ofcivil society. Where the political state has attained its true development, man-- not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, in life -- leads atwofold life, a heavenly and an earthly life: life in the political community,in which he considers himself a communal being, and life in civil society, inwhich he acts as a private individual, regards other men as a means, degradeshimself into a means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers. The relation ofthe political state to civil society is just as spiritual as the relations ofheaven to earth. The political state stands in the same opposition to civilsociety, and it prevails over the latter in the same way as religion prevailsover the narrowness of the secular world -- i.e., by likewise havingalways to acknowledge it, to restore it, and allow itself to be dominated by it.In his most immediate reality, in civil society, man is a secular being. Here,where he regards himself as a real individual, and is so regarded by others, heis a fictitious phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand, where man isregarded as a species-being, he is the imaginary member of an illusorysovereignty, is deprived of his real individual life and endowed with an unrealuniversality.
Man, as the adherent of a particular religion, finds himself in conflict withhis citizenship and with other men as members of the community. This conflictreduces itself to the secular division between the political stateand civil society. For man as a bourgeois [here, meaning, member of civilsociety, private life ], "life in the state" is "only a semblanceor a temporary exception to the essential and the rule". Of course, thebourgeois, like the Jew, remains only sophistically in the sphere of politicallife, just as the citoyen only sophistically remains a Jew or a bourgeois. But,this sophistry is not personal. It is the sophistry of the political stateitself. The difference between the merchant and the citizen, between theday-laborer and the citizen, between the landowner and the citizen, between themerchant and the citizen, between the living individual and the citizen.The contradiction in which the religious man finds himself with the politicalman is the same contradiction in which the bourgeois finds himself with thecitoyen, and the member of civil society with his political lion's skin.
This secular conflict, to which the Jewish question ultimately reduces itself,the relation between the political state and its preconditions, whether theseare material elements, such as private property, etc., or spiritual elements,such as culture or religion, the conflict between the general interest andprivate interest, the schism between the political state and civil society --these secular antitheses Bauer allows to persist, whereas he conducts a polemicagainst their religious expression.
"It is precisely the basis of civil society, the needthat ensures the continuance of this society and guarantees its necessity, whichexposes its existence to continual dangers, maintains in it an element ofuncertainty, and produces that continually changing mixture of poverty andriches, of distress and prosperity, and brings about change in general." (P.8)
Compare the whole section: "Civil Society" (pp.8-9),which has been drawn up along the basic lines of Hegel's philosophy of law.Civil society, in its opposition to the political state, is recognized asnecessary, because the political state is recognized as necessary.
Political emancipation is, of course, a big step forward. True, it is not thefinal form of human emancipation in general, but it is the final form of humanemancipation within the hitherto existing world order. It goes without sayingthat we are speaking here of real, practical emancipation.
Man emancipates himself politically from religion by banishing it from thesphere of public law to that of private law. Religion is o longer the spirit ofthe state, in which man behaves -- although in a limited way, in a particularform, and in a particular sphere -- as a species-being, in community with othermen. Religion has become the spirit of civil society, of the sphere of egoism,of bellum omnium contra omnes. It is no longer the essence of community, but theessence of difference. It has become the expression of man's separation from hiscommunity, from himself and from other men -- as it was originally. It is onlythe abstract avowal of specific perversity, private whimsy, and arbitrariness.The endless fragmentation of religion in North America, for example, gives iteven externally the form of a purely individual affair. It has been thrust amongthe multitude of private interests and ejected from the community as such. Butone should be under no illusion about the limits of political emancipation. Thedivision of the human being into a public man and a private man,the displacement of religion from the state into civil society, this is not astage of political emancipation but its completion; this emancipation, therefore,neither abolished the real religiousness of man, nor strives to do so.
The decomposition of man into Jew and citizen, Protestant and citizen,religious man and citizen, is neither a deception directed againstcitizenhood, nor is it a circumvention of political emancipation, it ispolitical emancipation itself, the political method of emancipating oneself fromreligion. Of course, in periods when the political state as such is bornviolently out of civil society, when political liberation is the form in whichmen strive to achieve their liberation, the state can and must go as far as theabolition of religion, the destruction of religion. But, it can do so only inthe same way that it proceeds to the abolition of private property, to themaximum, to confiscation, to progressive taxation, just as it goes as far as theabolition of life, the guillotine. At times of special self-confidence,political life seeks to suppress its prerequisite, civil society and theelements composing this society, and to constitute itself as the realspecies-life of man, devoid of contradictions. But, it can achieve this only bycoming into violent contradiction with its own conditions of life, onlyby declaring the revolution to be permanent, and, therefore, the political dramanecessarily ends with the re-establishment of religion, private property, andall elements of civil society, just as war ends with peace.
Indeed, the perfect Christian state is not the so-called Christianstate -- which acknowledges Christianity as its basis, as the state religion,and, therefore, adopts an exclusive attitude towards other religions. On thecontrary, the perfect Christian state is the atheistic state, the democraticstate, the state which relegates religion to a place among the other elements ofcivil society. The state which is still theological, which still officiallyprofesses Christianity as its creed, which still does not dare to proclaimitself as a state, has, in its reality as a state, not yet succeeded inexpressing the human basis -- of which Christianity is the high-flown expression-- in a secular, human form. The so-called Christian state is simply nothingmore than a non-state, since it is not Christianity as a religion, but only the humanbackground of the Christian religion, which can find its expression inactual human creations.
The so-called Christian state is the Christian negation of the state, but byno means the political realization of Christianity. The state which stillprofesses Christianity in the form of religion, does not yet profess it in theform appropriate to the state, for it still has a religious attitude towardsreligion -- that is to say, it is not the true implementation of the human basisof religion, because it still relies on the unreal, imaginary form of this humancore. The so-called Christian state is the imperfect state, and the Christianreligion is regarded by it as the supplementation and sanctification of itsimperfection. For the Christian state, therefore, religion necessarily becomes ameans; hence, it is a hypocritical state. It makes a great difference whetherthe complete state, because of the defect inherent in the general nature of thestate, counts religion among its presuppositions, or whether the incompletestate, because of the defect inherent in its particular existence as a defectivestate, declares that religion is its basis. In the latter case, religion becomesimperfect politics. In the former case, the imperfection even of consummatepolitics becomes evident in religion. The so-called Christian state needs theChristian religion in order to complete itself as a state. The democratic state,the real state, does not need religion for its political completion. On thecontrary, it can disregard religion because in it the human basis of religion isrealized in a secular manner. The so-called Christian state, on the other hand,has a political attitude to religion and a religious attitude to politics. Bydegrading the forms of the state to mere semblance, it equally degrades religionto mere semblance.
In order to make this contradiction clearer, let us consider Bauer'sprojection of the Christian state, a projection based on his observation of theChristian-German state.
"Recently," says Bauer, "in order to prove theimpossibility or non-existence of a Christian state, reference has frequentlybeen made to those sayings in the Gospel with which the [present-day] state notonly does not comply, but cannot possibly comply, if it does not want todissolve itself completely [as a state]."
"But the matter cannot be disposed of so easily. What dothese Gospel sayings demand? Supernatural renunciation of self, submission tothe authority of revelation, a turning-away from the state, the abolition ofsecular conditions. Well, the Christian state demands and accomplishes all that.It has assimilated the spirit of the Gospel, and if it does not reproduce thisspirit in the same terms as the Gospel, that occurs only because it expressesthis spirit in political forms, i.e., in forms which, it is true, aretaken from the political system in this world, but which in the religiousrebirth that they have to undergo become degraded to a mere semblance. This is aturning-away from the state while making use of political forms for itsrealization." (P.55)
Bauer then explains that the people of a Christian state is onlya non-people, no longer having a will of its own, but whose true existence liesin the leader to whom it is subjected, although this leader by his origin andnature is alien to it -- i.e., given by God and imposed on the peoplewithout any co-operation on its part. Bauer declares that the laws of such apeople are not its own creation, but are actual revelations, that its supremechief needs privileged intermediaries with the people in the strict sense, withthe masses, and that the masses themselves are divided into a multitude ofparticular groupings which are formed and determined by chance, which aredifferentiated by their interests, their particular passions and prejudices, andobtain permission as a privilege, to isolate themselves from one another, etc.(P.56)
However, Bauer himself says:
"Politics, if it is to be nothing but religion, ought notto be politics, just as the cleaning of saucepans, if it is to be accepted as areligious matter, ought not to be regarded as a matter of domestic economy."(P.108)
In the Christian-German state, however, religion is an "economicmatter" just as "economic matters" belong to the sphere ofreligion. The domination of religion in the Christian-German state is thereligion of domination.
The separation of the "spirit of the Gospel" from the "letterof the Gospel" is an irreligious act. A state which makes the Gospel speakin the language of politics -- that is, in another language than that of theHoly Ghost -- commits sacrilege, if not in human eyes, then in the eyes of itsown religion. The state which acknowledges Christianity as its supreme criterion,and the Bible as its Charter, must be confronted with the words of HolyScripture, for every word of Scripture is holy. This state, as well as the humanrubbish on which it is based, is caught in a painful contradiction that isinsoluble from the standpoint of religious consciousness when it is referred tothose sayings of the Gospel with which it "not only does not comply, butcannot possibly comply, if it does not want to dissolve itself completely as astate". And why does it not want to dissolve itself completely? The stateitself cannot give an answer either to itself or to others. In its ownconsciousness, the official Christian state is an imperative, the realization ofwhich is unattainable, the state can assert the reality of its existence only bylying to itself, and therefore always remains in its own eyes an object of doubt,an unreliable, problematic object. Criticism is, therefore, fully justified inforcing the state that relies on the Bible into a mental derangement in which itno longer knows whether it is an illusion or a reality, and in which the infamyof its secular aims, for which religion serves as a cloak, comes into insolubleconflict with the sincerity of its religious consciousness, for which religionappears as the aim of the world. This state can only save itself from its innertorment if it becomes the police agent of the Catholic Church. Inrelation to the church, which declares the secular power to be its servant, thestate is powerless, the secular power which claims to be the rule of thereligious spirit is powerless.
It is, indeed, estrangement which matters in the so-called Christianstate, but not man. The only man who counts, the king, is a being specificallydifferent from other men, and is, moreover, a religious being, directly linkedwith heaven, with God. The relationships which prevail here are stillrelationships dependent of faith. The religious spirit, therefore, isstill not really secularized.
But, furthermore, the religious spirit cannot be really secularized,for what is it in itself but the non-secular form of a stage in the developmentof the human mind? The religious spirit can only be secularized insofar as thestage of development of the human mind of which it is the religious expressionmakes its appearance and becomes constituted in its secular form. This takesplace in the democratic state. Not Christianity, but the human basis ofChristianity is the basis of this state. Religion remains the ideal, non-secularconsciousness of its members, because religion is the ideal form of the stage ofhuman development achieved in this state.
The members of the political state are religious owning to the dualismbetween individual life and species-life, between the life of civil society andpolitical life. They are religious because men treat the political life of thestate, an area beyond their real individuality, as if it were their true life.They are religious insofar as religion here is the spirit of civil society,expressing the separation and remoteness of man from man. Political democracy isChristian since in it man, not merely one man but everyman, ranks as sovereign,as the highest being, but it is man in his uncivilized, unsocial form, man inhis fortuitous existence, man just as he is, man as he has been corrupted by thewhole organization of our society, who has lost himself, been alienated, andhanded over to the rule of inhuman conditions and elements -- in short, man whois not yet a real species-being. That which is a creation of fantasy, adream, a postulate of Christianity, i.e., the sovereignty of man -- butman as an alien being different from the real man -- becomes, in democracy,tangible reality, present existence, and secular principle.
In the perfect democracy, the religious and theological consciousness itselfis in its own eyes the more religious and the more theological because it isapparently without political significance, without worldly aims, the concern ofa disposition that shuns the world, the expression of intellectualnarrow-mindedness, the product of arbitrariness and fantasy, and because it is alife that is really of the other world. Christianity attains, here, the practicalexpression of its universal-religious significance in that the most diverseworld outlooks are grouped alongside one another in the form of Christianity andstill more because it does not require other people to profess Christianity, butonly religion in general, any kind of religion (cf. Beaumont's work quoted above).The religious consciousness revels in the wealth of religious contradictions andreligious diversity.
We have, thus, shown that political emancipation from religion leavesreligion in existence, although not a privileged religion. The contradiction inwhich the adherent of a particular religion finds himself involved in relationto his citizenship is only one aspect of the universal secularcontradiction between the political state and civil society. The consummation ofthe Christian state is the state which acknowledges itself as a state anddisregards the religion of its members. The emancipation of the state fromreligion is not the emancipation of the real man from religion.
Therefore, we do not say to the Jews, as Bauer does: You cannot beemancipated politically without emancipating yourselves radically from Judaism.On the contrary, we tell them: Because you can be emancipated politicallywithout renouncing Judaism completely and incontrovertibly, politicalemancipation itself is not human emancipation. If you Jews want to beemancipated politically, without emancipating yourselves humanly, thehalf-hearted approach and contradiction is not in you alone, it is inherent inthe nature and category of political emancipation. If you findyourself within the confines of this category, you share in a generalconfinement. Just as the state evangelizes when, although it is a state, itadopts a Christian attitude towards the Jews, so the Jew acts politically when,although a Jew, he demands civic rights.
[ * ]
But, if a man, although a Jew, can be emancipated politically and receivecivic rights, can he lay claim to the so-called rights of man and receivethem? Bauer denies it.
"The question is whether the Jew as such, that is, theJew who himself admits that he is compelled by his true nature to livepermanently in separation from other men, is capable of receiving the universalrights of man and of conceding them to others."
"For the Christian world, the idea of the rights of manwas only discovered in the last century. It is not innate in men; on thecontrary, it is gained only in a struggle against the historical traditions inwhich hitherto man was brought up. Thus the rights of man are not a gift ofnature, not a legacy from past history, but the reward of the struggle againstthe accident of birth and against the privileges which up to now have beenhanded down by history from generation to generation. These rights are theresult of culture, and only one who has earned and deserved them can possessthem."
"Can the Jew really take possession of them? As long ashe is a Jew, the restricted nature which makes him a Jew is bound to triumphover the human nature which should link him as a man with other men, and willseparate him from non-Jews. He declares by this separation that the particularnature which makes him a Jew is his true, highest nature, before which humannature has to give way."
"Similarly, the Christian as a Christian cannot grant therights of man." (P.19,20)
According to Bauer, man has to sacrifice the "privilege offaith" to be able to receive the universal rights of man. Let us examine,for a moment, the so-called rights of man -- to be precise, the rights of man intheir authentic form, in the form which they have among those who discoveredthem, the North Americans and the French. These rights of man are, in part,political rights, rights which can only be exercised in community with others.Their content is participation in the community, and specifically int hepolitical community, in the life of the state. They come within the category ofpolitical freedom, the category of civic rights, which, as we have seen,in no way presuppose the incontrovertible and positive abolition of religion --nor, therefore, of Judaism. There remains to be examined the other part of therights of man -- the rights of man, insofar as these differ from the rightsof the citizen.
Included among them is freedom of conscience, the right to practice anyreligion one chooses. The privilege of faith is expressly recognized either as aright of man or as the consequence of a right of man, that of liberty.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, 1791, Article 10:
"No one is to be subjected to annoyance because of hisopinions, even religious opinions."
"The freedom of every man to practice the religion ofwhich he is an adherent."
Declaration of the Rights of Man, etc., 1793, includes among therights of man, Article 7: "The free exercise of religion." Indeed, inregard to man's right to express his thoughts and opinions, to hold meetings,and to exercise his religion, it is even stated: "The necessity ofproclaiming these rights presupposes either the existence or the recent memoryof despotism." Compare the Constitution of 1795, Section XIV, Article 354.Constitution of Pennsylvania, Article 9, S 3:
"All men have received from nature the imprescriptibleright to worship the Almighty according to the dictates of their conscience, andno one can be legally compelled to follow, establish, or support against hiswill any religion or religious ministry. No human authority can, in anycircumstances, intervene in a matter of conscience or control the forces of thesoul."
Constitution of New Hampshire, Article 5 and 6:
"Among these natural rights some are by natureinalienable since nothing can replace them. The rights of conscience are amongthem." (Beaumont, op. cit., pp.213,214)
Incompatibility between religion and the rights of man is to sucha degree absent from the concept of the rights of man that, on the contrary, aman's right to be religious, is expressly included among the rights ofman. The privilege of faith is a universal right of man.
The droits de l'homme, the rights of man, are, as such, distinct from thedroits du citoyen, the rights of the citizen. Who is homme as distinct fromcitoyen? None other than the member of civil society. Why is the member of civilsociety called "man", simply man; why are his rights called the rightsof man? How is this fact to be explained? From the relationship between thepolitical state and civil society, from the nature of political emancipation.
Above all, we note the fact that the so-called rights of man, the droits del'homme as distinct from the droits du citoyen, are nothing but the rights of amember of civil society -- i.e., the rights of egoistic man, of manseparated from other men and from the community. Let us hear what the mostradical Constitution, the Constitution of 1793, has to say: Declaration of theRights of Man and of the Citizen. Article 2. "These rights, etc., (thenatural and imprescriptible rights) are: equality, liberty, security, property."What constitutes liberty?
Article 6. "Liberty is the power which man has to do everything thatdoes not harm the rights of others", or, according to the Declaration ofthe Rights of Man of 1791: "Liberty consists in being able to do everythingwhich does not harm others."
Liberty, therefore, is the right to do everything that harms no one else. Thelimits within which anyone can act without harming someone else aredefined by law, just as the boundary between two fields is determined by aboundary post. It is a question of the liberty of man as an isolated monad,withdrawn into himself. Why is the Jew, according to Bauer, incapable ofacquiring the rights of man?
"As long as he is a Jew, the restricted nature whichmakes him a Jew is bound to triumph over the human nature which should link himas a man with other men, and will separate him from non-Jews."
But, the right of man to liberty is based not on the associationof man with man, but on the separation of man from man. It is the right of thisseparation, the right of the restricted individual, withdrawn intohimself.
The practical application of man's right to liberty is man's right to privateproperty.
What constitutes man's right to private property?
Article 16. (Constitution of 1793): "The right ofproperty is that which every citizen has of enjoying and of disposing at hisdiscretion of his goods and income, of the fruits of his labor and industry."
The right of man to private property is, therefore, the right toenjoy one's property and to dispose of it at one's discretion (a son gre),without regard to other men, independently of society, the right ofself-interest. This individual liberty and its application form the basis ofcivil society. It makes every man see in other men not the realization of hisown freedom, but the barrier to it. But, above all, it proclaims the right ofman "of enjoying and of disposing at his discretion of his goods and income,of the fruits of his labor and industry."
There remains the other rights of man: equality and security.
Equality, used here in its non-political sense, is nothing but the equalityof the liberty described above -- namely: each man is to the same extentregarded as such a self-sufficient monad. The Constitution of 1795 defines theconcept of this equality, in accordance with this significance, as follows:
Article 3 (Constitution of 1795): "Equality consists inthe law being the same for all, whether it protects or punishes."
And security?
Article 8 (Constitution of 1793): "Security consists inthe protection afforded by society to each of its members for the preservationof his person, his rights, and his property."
Security is the highest social concept of civil society, theconcept of police, expressing the fact that the whole of society existsonly in order to guarantee to each of its members the preservation of his person,his rights, and his property. It is in this sense that Hegel calls civil society"the state of need and reason".
The concept of security does not raise civil society above its egoism. On thecontrary, security is the insurance of egoism.
None of the so-called rights of man, therefore, go beyond egoistic man,beyond man as a member of civil society -- that is, an individual withdrawn intohimself, into the confines of his private interests and private caprice, andseparated from the community. In the rights of man, he is far from beingconceived as a species-being; on the contrary, species-like itself, society,appears as a framework external to the individuals, as a restriction of theiroriginal independence. The sole bound holding them together it natural necessity,need and private interest, the preservation of their property and their egoisticselves.
It is puzzling enough that a people which is just beginning to liberateitself, to tear down all the barriers between its various sections, and toestablish a political community, that such a people solemnly proclaims (Declarationof 1791) the rights of egoistic man separated from his fellow men and from thecommunity, and that indeed it repeats this proclamation at a moment when onlythe most heroic devotion can save the nation, and is therefore imperativelycalled for, at a moment when the sacrifice of all the interest of civil societymust be the order of the day, and egoism must be punished as a crime. (Declarationof the Rights of Man, etc., of 1793.) This fact becomes still more puzzling whenwe see that the political emancipators go so far as to reduce citizenship, andthe political community, to a mere means for maintaining these so-called rightsof man, that, therefore, the citizen is declared to be the servant of egotisticman, that the sphere in which man acts as a communal being is degraded to alevel below the sphere in which he acts as a partial being, and that, finally,it is not man as citizen, but man as private individual [ bourgeois ] who isconsidered to be the essential and true man.
"The aim of all political association is the preservationof the natural and imprescriptible rights of man." (Declaration of theRights, etc., of 1791, Article 2.)
"Government is instituted in order to guarantee man theenjoyment of his natural and imprescriptible rights." (Declaration, etc.,of 1793, Article 1.)
Hence, even in moments when its enthusiasm still has thefreshness of youth and is intensified to an extreme degree by the force ofcircumstances, political life declares itself to be a mere means, whosepurpose is the life is civil society. It is true that its revolutionary practiceis in flagrant contradiction with its theory. Whereas, for example, security isdeclared one of the rights of man, violation of the privacy of correspondence isopenly declared to be the order of the day. Whereas "unlimited freedom ofthe press" (Constitution of 1793, Article 122) is guaranteed as aconsequence of the right of man to individual liberty, freedom of the press istotally destroyed, because "freedom of the press should not be permittedwhen it endangers public liberty". ("Robespierre jeune", Historieparlementaire de la Revolution francaise by Buchez and Roux, vol.28, p.159.)That is to say, therefore: The right of man to liberty ceases to be a right assoon as it comes into conflict with political life, whereas in theorypolitical life is only the guarantee of human rights, the rights of theindividual, and therefore must be abandoned as soon as it comes intocontradiction with its aim, with these rights of man. But, practice ismerely the exception, theory is the rule. But even if one were to regardrevolutionary practice as the correct presentation of the relationship, therewould still remain the puzzle of why the relationship is turned upside-down inthe minds of the political emancipators and the aim appears as the means, whilethe means appears as the aim. This optical illusion of their consciousness wouldstill remain a puzzle, although now a psychological, a theoretical puzzle.
The puzzle is easily solved.
Political emancipation is, at the same time, the dissolution of the oldsociety on which the state alienated from the people, the sovereign power, isbased. What was the character of the old society? It can be described in oneword -- feudalism. The character of the old civil society was directlypolitical -- that is to say, the elements of civil life, for example,property, or the family, or the mode of labor, were raised to the level ofelements of political life in the form of seigniory, estates, and corporations.In this form, they determined the relation of the individual to the state as awhole -- i.e., his political relation, that is, his relation ofseparation and exclusion from the other components of society. For thatorganization of national life did not raise property or labor to the level ofsocial elements; on the contrary, it completed their separation from the stateas a whole and constituted them as discrete societies within society.Thus, the vital functions and conditions of life of civil society remained,nevertheless, political, although political in the feudal sense -- that is tosay, they secluded the individual from the state as a whole and they convertedthe particular relation of his corporation to the state as a whole intohis general relation to the life of the nation, just as they converted hisparticular civil activity and situation into his general activity and situation.As a result of this organization, the unity of the state, and also theconsciousness, will, and activity of this unity, the general power of the state,are likewise bound to appear as the particular affair of a ruler isolatedfrom the people, and of his servants.
The political revolution which overthrew this sovereign power and raisedstate affairs to become affairs of the people, which constituted the politicalstate as a matter of general-concern, that is, as a real state, necessarilysmashed all estates, corporations, guilds, and privileges, since they were allmanifestations of the separation of the people from the community. The politicalrevolution thereby abolished the political character of civil society. It brokeup civil society into its simple component parts; on the one hand, the individuals;on the other hand, the material and spiritual elementsconstituting the content of the life and social position of these individuals.It set free the political spirit, which had been, as it were, split up,partitioned, and dispersed in the various blind alleys of feudal society. Itgathered the dispersed parts of the political spirit, freed it from itsintermixture with civil life, and established it as the sphere of the community,the general concern of the nation, ideally independent of those particularelements of civil life. A person's distinct activity and distinctsituation in life were reduced to a merely individual significance. They nolonger constituted the general relation of the individual to the state as awhole. Public affairs as such, on the other hand, became the general affair ofeach individual, and the political function became the individual's generalfunction.
But, the completion of the idealism of the state was at the same time thecompletion of the materialism of civil society. Throwing off the political yokemeant at the same time throwing off the bonds which restrained the egoisticspirit of civil society. Political emancipation was, at the same time, theemancipation of civil society from politics, from having even the semblance of auniversal content.
Feudal society was resolved into its basic element -- man, but man as hereally formed its basis -- egoistic man.
This man, the member of civil society, is thus the basis, theprecondition, of the political state. He is recognized as such by thisstate in the rights of man.
The liberty of egoistic man and the recognition of this liberty, however, israther the recognition of the unrestrained movement of the spiritual andmaterial elements which form the content of his life.
Hence, man was not freed from religion, he received religious freedom. He wasnot fred from property, he received freedom to own property. He was not freedfrom the egoism of business, he received freedom to engage in business.
The establishment of the political state and the dissolution of civil societyinto independent individuals -- whose relation with one another on law,just as the relations of men in the system of estates and guilds depended on privilege-- is accomplished by one and the same act. Man as a member of civil society,unpolitical man, inevitably appears, however, as the natural man. The"rights of man" appears as "natural rights", becauseconscious activity is concentrated on the political act. Egoistic man isthe passive result of the dissolved society, a result that is simply found inexistence, an object of immediate certainty, therefore a natural object.The political revolution resolves civil life into its component parts, withoutrevolutionizing these components themselves or subjecting them to criticism. Itregards civil society, the world of needs, labor, private interests, civil law,as the basis of its existence, as a precondition not requiring furthersubstantiation and therefore as its natural basis. Finally, man as amember of civil society is held to be man in his sensuous, individual, immediateexistence, whereas political man is only abstract, artificial man, man asan allegorical, juridical person. The real man is recognized only in the shapeof the egoistic individual, the true man is recognized only in the shape of theabstract citizen.
Therefore, Rousseau correctly described the abstract idea of political man asfollows:
"Whoever dares undertake to establish a people'sinstitutions must feel himself capable of changing, as it were, human nature, oftransforming each individual, who by himself is a complete and solitary whole,into a part of a larger whole, from which, in a sense, the individual receiveshis life and his being, of substituting a limited and mental existence for thephysical and independent existence. He has to take from man his own powers, andgive him in exchange alien powers which he cannot employ without the help ofother men."
All emancipation is a reduction of the human worldand relationships to man himself.
Political emancipation is the reduction of man, on the one hand, to a memberof civil society, to an egoistic, independent individual, and, on the other hand,to a citizen, a juridical person.
Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself the abstractcitizen, and as an individual human being has become a species-being in hiseveryday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation, onlywhen man has recognized and organized his "own powers" as -socialpowers, and, consequently, no longer separates social power from himself in theshape of political power, only then will human emancipation have beenaccomplished.
It is in this form that Bauer deals with the relation between theJewish and the Christian religions, and also with their relation to criticism.Their relation to criticism is their relation "to the capacity to becomefree".
The result arrived at is:
"The Christian has to surmount only one stage, namely,that of his religion, in order to give up religion altogether",
and therefore become free.
"The Jew, on the other hand, has to break not only withhis Jewish nature, but also with the development towards perfecting his religion,a development which has remained alien to him." (P.71)
Thus, Bauer here transforms the question of Jewish emancipationinto a purely religious question. The theological problem as to whether the Jewor the Christian has the better prospect of salvation is repeated here in theenlightened form: which of them is more capable of emancipation. Nolonger is the question asked: Is it Judaism or Christianity that makes a manfree? On the contrary, the question is now: Which makes man freer, the negationof Judaism or the negation of Christianity?
"If the Jews want to become free, they should professbelief not in Christianity, but in the dissolution of Christianity, in thedissolution of religion in general, that is to say, in enlightenment, criticism,and its consequences, free humanity." (P.70)
For the Jew, it is still a matter of a profession of faith, butno longer a profession of belief in Christianity, but of belief in Christianityin dissolution.
Bauer demands of the Jews that they should break with the essence of theChristian religion, a demand which, as he says himself, does not arise out ofthe development of Judaism.
Since Bauer, at the end of his work on the Jewish question, had conceivedJudaism only as crude religious criticism of Christianity, and therefore saw init "merely" a religious significance, it could be foreseen that theemancipation of the Jews, too, would be transformed into aphilosophical-theological act.
Bauer considers that the ideal, abstract nature of the Jew, his religion,is his entire nature. Hence, he rightly concludes:
"The Jew contributes nothing to mankind if he himselfdisregards his narrow law", if he invalidates his entire Judaism. (P.65)
Accordingly, the relation between Jews and Christians becomes thefollowing: the sole interest of the Christian in the emancipation of the Jew isa general human interest, a theoretical interest. Judaism is a fact thatoffends the religious eye of the Christian. As soon as his eye ceases to bereligious, this fact ceases to be offensive. The emancipation of the Jew is, initself, not a task for the Christian.
The Jew, on the other hand, in order to emancipate himself, has to carry outnot only his own work, but also that of the Christian -- i.e., the Critiqueof the Evangelical History of the Synoptics and the Life of Jesus,etc.
"It is up to them to deal with it: they themselves willdecide their fate; but history is not to be trifled with." (P.71)
We are trying to break with the theological formulation of thequestion. For us, the question of the Jew's capacity for emancipation becomesthe question: What particular social element has to be overcome in orderto abolish Judaism? For the present-day Jew's capacity for emancipation is therelation of Judaism to the emancipation of the modern world. This relationnecessarily results from the special position of Judaism in the contemporaryenslaved world.
Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew -- not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does,but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion,but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is thesecular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldlyreligion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.
Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently frompractical, real Judaism, would be the self-emancipation of our time.
An organization of society which would abolish the preconditions forhuckstering, and therefore the possibility of huckstering, would make the Jewimpossible. His religious consciousness would be dissipated like a thin haze inthe real, vital air of society. On the other hand, if the Jew recognizes thatthis practical nature of his is futile and works to abolish it, heextricates himself from his previous development and works for humanemancipation as such and turns against the supreme practical expression ofhuman self-estrangement.
We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the presenttime, an element which through historical development -- to which in thisharmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed -- has been brought to itspresent high level, at which it must necessarily begin to disintegrate.
In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation ofmankind from Judaism.
The Jew has already emancipated himself in a Jewish way.
"The Jew, who in Vienna, for example, is only tolerated,determines the fate of the whole Empire by his financial power. The Jew, who mayhave no rights in the smallest German state, decides the fate of Europe. Whilecorporations and guilds refuse to admit Jews, or have not yet adopted afavorable attitude towards them, the audacity of industry mocks at the obstinacyof the material institutions." (Bruno Bauer, The Jewish Question, p.114)
This is no isolated fact. The Jew has emancipated himself in aJewish manner, not only because he has acquired financial power, but alsobecause, through him and also apart from him, money has become a worldpower and the practical Jewish spirit has become the practical spirit of theChristian nations. The Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as theChristians have become Jews.
Captain Hamilton, for example, reports:
"The devout and politically free inhabitant of NewEngland is a kind of Laocoon who makes not the least effort to escape from theserpents which are crushing him. Mammon is his idol which he adores not onlywith his lips but with the whole force of his body and mind. In his view theworld is no more than a Stock Exchange, and he is convinced that he has no otherdestiny here below than to become richer than his neighbor. Trade has seizedupon all his thoughts, and he has no other recreation than to exchange objects.When he travels he carries, so to speak, his goods and his counter on his backand talks only of interest and profit. If he loses sight of his own business foran instant it is only in order to pry into the business of his competitors."
Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaismover the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expressionthat the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have becomearticles of trade, and the bankrupt trader deals in the Gospel just as theGospel preacher who has become rich goes in for business deals.
"The man who you see at the head of a respectablecongregation began as a trader; his business having failed, he became a minister.The other began as a priest but as soon as he had some money at his disposal heleft the pulpit to become a trader. In the eyes of very many people, thereligious ministry is a veritable business career." (Beaumont, op. cit., pp.185,186.)
According to Bauer, it is
"a fictitious state of affairs when in theory the Jew isdeprived of political rights, whereas in practice he has immense power andexerts his political influence en gros, although it is curtailed endetail." (Die Judenfrage, p.114)
The contradiction that exists between the practical politicalpower of the Jew and his political rights is the contradiction between politicsand the power of money in general. Although theoretically the former is superiorto the latter, in actual fact politics has become the serf of financial power.
Judaism has held its own alongside Christianity, not only as religiouscriticism of Christianity, not only as the embodiment of doubt in the religiousderivation of Christianity, but equally because the practical Jewish spirit,Judaism, has maintained itself and even attained its highest development inChristian society. The Jew, who exists as a distinct member of civil society, isonly a particular manifestation of the Judaism of civil society.
Judaism continues to exist not in spite of history, but owning to history.
The Jew is perpetually created by civil society from its own entrails.
What, in itself, was the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism.
The monotheism of the Jew, therefore, is in reality the polytheism of themany needs, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory an object of divine law.Practical need, egoism, is the principle of civil society, and as such appearsin pure form as soon as civil society has fully given birth to the politicalstate. The god of practical need and self-interest is money.
Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist.Money degrades all the gods of man -- and turns them into commodities. Money isthe universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore,robbed the whole world -- both the world of men and nature -- of its specificvalue. Money is the estranged essence of man's work and man's existence, andthis alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.
The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of theworld. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only anillusory bill of exchange.
The view of nature attained under the domination of private property andmoney is a real contempt for, and practical debasement of, nature; in the Jewishreligion, nature exists, it is true, but it exists only in imagination.
It is in this sense that [ in a 1524 pamphlet ] Thomas Munzer declares itintolerable
"that all creatures have been turned into property, thefishes in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth; thecreatures, too, must become free."
Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end inhimself, which is contained in an abstract form in the Jewish religion, is thereal, conscious standpoint, the virtue of the man of money. The species-relationitself, the relation between man and woman, etc., becomes an object of trade!The woman is bought and sold.
The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of of the merchant,of the man of money in general.
The groundless law of the Jew is only a religious caricature of groundlessmorality and right in general, of the purely formal rites with which the worldof self-interest surrounds itself.
Here, too, man's supreme relation is the legal one, his relation to laws thatare valid for him not because they are laws of his own will and nature, butbecause they are the dominant laws and because departure from them is avenged.
Jewish Jesuitism, the same practical Jesuitism which Bauer discovers in theTalmud, is the relation of the world of self-interest to the laws governing thatworld, the chief art of which consists in the cunning circumvention of theselaws.
Indeed, the movement of this world within its framework of laws is bound tobe a continual suspension of law.
Judaism could not develop further as a religion, could not develop furthertheoretically, because the world outlook of practical need is essentiallylimited and is completed in a few strokes.
By its very nature, the religion of practical need could find itsconsummation not in theory, but only in practice, precisely because its truth ispractice.
Judaism could not create a new world; it could only draw the new creationsand conditions of the world into the sphere of its activity, because practicalneed, the rationale of which is self-interest, is passive and does not expand atwill, but finds itself enlarged as a result of the continuous developmentof social conditions.
Judaism reaches its highest point with the perfection of civil society, butit is only in the Christian world that civil society attains perfection.Only under the dominance of Christianity, which makes all national,natural, moral, and theoretical conditions extrinsic to man, could civilsociety separate itself completely from the life of the state, sever all thespecies-ties of man, put egoism and selfish need in the place of thesespecies-ties, and dissolve the human world into a world of atomistic individualswho are inimically opposed to one another.
Christianity sprang from Judaism. It has merged again in Judaism.
From the outset, the Christian was the theorizing Jew, the Jew is, therefore,the practical Christian, and the practical Christian has become a Jew again.
Christianity had only in semblance overcome real Judaism. It was toonoble-minded, too spiritualistic to eliminate the crudity of practical need inany other way than by elevation to the skies.
Christianity is the sublime thought of Judaism, Judaism is the commonpractical application of Christianity, but this application could only becomegeneral after Christianity as a developed religion had completed theoreticallythe estrangement of man from himself and from nature.
Only then could Judaism achieve universal dominance and make alienated manand alienated nature into alienable, vendible objects subjected to theslavery of egoistic need and to trading.
Selling [verausserung] is the practical aspect of alienation [Entausserung].Just as man, as long as he is in the grip of religion, is able to objectify hisessential nature only by turning it into something alien, somethingfantastic, so under the domination of egoistic need he can be active practically,and produce objects in practice, only by putting his products, and his activity,under the domination of an alien being, and bestowing the significance of analien entity -- money -- on them.
In its perfected practice, Christian egoism of heavenly bliss is necessarilytransformed into the corporal egoism of the Jew, heavenly need is turned intoworld need, subjectivism into self-interest. We explain the tenacity of the Jewnot by his religion, but, on the contrary, by the human basis of his religion --practical need, egoism.
Since in civil society the real nature of the Jew has been universallyrealized and secularized, civil society could not convince the Jew of theunreality of his religious nature, which is indeed only the ideal aspect ofpractical need. Consequently, not only in the Pentateuch and the Talmud, but inpresent-day society we find the nature of the modern Jew, and not as an abstractnature but as one that is in the highest degree empirical, not merely as anarrowness of the Jew, but as the Jewish narrowness of society.
Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism --huckstering and its preconditions -- the Jew will have become impossible,because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basisof Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, nd because the conflict betweenman's individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.
The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society fromJudaism.