by proldic » Fri Aug 19, 2005 2:22 pm
R, <br>This history is not easily reduced to stereotypes, but, as you know and do, generalize and draw conclusions and parallels to today we must. I appreciate intelligent challenges as spurring me to probe deeper.<br> <br>I put "bolshevik" in quotes to take the (big, I know) liberty of using it out of historical context, so as to make the point that the bolshevik "spirit", of revolutionary jews that (just go ask the Nazis) SIGNIFICANTLY influenced the Bolshevik party, and of course pre-dated the term. <br><br>Marx, as an atheist living in Germany, had little understanding of "jews" as a united people, and hence certainly was no great friend of the idea of a "jew" as a homogenous religious group. <br><br>He was born to a Jewish father who had converted to Christianity, and was a freethinker, an admirer of people like Locke, Diderot, and Voltaire. As quite a number of Jewish bourgeois intellectuals at the time, his Dad accepted Christianity in order to take up professional careers which, as I mentioned before, were then barred to jews. <br><br>Actually, like Pruodhun, and many other socialist intellectuals then, Marx fell prey to the common usage of "jew", using the word as a reference to money-lenders and debt collectors. Without the sometimes-racist intent - but similar meaning - to the way people today will say "he jewed me out of my money". <br><br>This was something that was used later to twist his entire body of work, which culminated in "Cointelpro" run by a member of the Henry Ford-funded fascist Native Sons group going by the name of "Dagobert D. Runes", releasing a widely-distributed false CP pamphlet called "A World Without Jews". This pamphlet took writing by Marx, which was actually a CRITIQUE of an essay by a guy named Bruno Bauer that was of that name, changed and omitted words, and put Marx's name on the cover, all in an attempt to make it seem as if Marx was endorsing jewish elimination, and to split poor eastern city Jews - who were a huge part of their power base - from the CP. <br><br>Which is ridiculous, considering Marx strongly supported <br>the fight of the Rhineland jews for equal rights without restriction or qualification, which was a radical view among liberal circles at the time. Or the fact that, at the same time he wrote the critique of Bauer, he also wrote -at the request of the German Jewish community - the petition they submitted to the government demanding equal rights for the jews. <br><br>So for anti-marxist scholars to attempt to charge Marx, someone who the non-marxist, politically- conservative editors of the "Russian Jewish Encyclopedia" (1907, St. Petersburg Press) spoke of as one who "...all his life fought for ideals common to all mankind and for universal equality", with anti-semitism is wack. <br><br>As David Shub, the completely anti-Soviet editor of the Jewish Daily Forward said in 1959, "Only a contemptible maniac who hasn't the slightest knowledge of either the biography of Marx or the history of the European socialist movement could have written the words [attributed to Marx by Runes]."<br><br>Marx's opposition to ALL religious priveledges, irrespective of type, is clear and unequivocal: "The political emancipation of the Jew, the Christian, or the religious man in general, is a question of the emancipation of the STATE from religion in general". Marx specifically did not discriminate between Jew or Christian. <br><br>However, Marx's place in the historical development of Germany, which as you pointed out was more enlightened then the surrounding countries at the time, still caused him to not really know too much about the working class jews of eastern Europe, and the only German jews he did run into on a regular basis were all of the bourgeois class. <br><br>The deeper level is that the revolutionary spirit of working-class jews, brought about through a combination of the repression and, as you mentioned, their historical Religious-based focus on learning, and the encouragment of debating morality and ethics, led Marx to where he was, not the other way around.<br><br>Although it pre-dated Marxism, I would be careful not to fall into the trap of claiming, however that the revolutionary socialist impulse was part-and-parcel of jewish intellectualism. I'd claim that jews, and hence their intellectualism, were part-and-parcel of the overall consciousness of the eastern & western European working-class peasants, though. <br><br>" In the European agricultural feudal era that preceded the 19th century, there wasn't even much of a "capitalist system" to rebel against."<br><br>Oh but rebel they did. Awhile back, I set about to compile a list of all the peasant rebellions during the late middle ages. Holy shit! It actually painted a picture of Europe awash in class-based revolt. Now of course, some of these battles were in the form of internecine religious and monarchial proxys, but that did not change the significance of the motivations of those specific (and frequent) instances where the class dynamic was behind it. I'm kicking myself because I can't find it right now, I'll post it when I do. I found it quite powerful.<br><br>"Come on. We both know that there are older ones."<br><br> I know, like the Protocols, which as we speak are being watched by millions of people in the Muslim world as a TV series called "Horseman Without a Horse" produced by Egyptian National TV. <br><br>Please don't think I was saying that YOU were anti-semitic by bringing up the Rothschilds to try and counter the idea that jews lived for centuries as the lowest-caste citizens of Europe.<br><br>I just thought it was out of character for you to play with much-abused "memes" such as the "Rothschilds" as an example of Jewish power. <br><br>Although the Indian example isn't a straight fit, I'd say there are paralells. I'd say that in India, members of the lowest caste who do find themselves in the government, (most often through kidnapping or child-selling), cannot openly wear their caste heritage on their sleaves in this day. Just like the Jews of Europe at the time, as I showed above. <br><br>The Rotschilds were complicit in funding the Nazis and stage-managing the "bolshevik" holocaust. The question is, were they just "allowed" to push Zionism and the creation of the state of Israel, as some "thanks" for helping out, in some amazing show of generosity to their lesser jewish cousins? Or were they "put" into that role to place the "Jewish" stamp on it? Who were they working for, anyway, the masses of poor wandering jews yearning for a socialist homeland, or their superiors and contemporaries in the non-Jewish elites?<br><br>I'd say they were lapdogs, just like Black "elites" and "sub-elites" (and I'm not talking Colin Powell - how about like Bell Hooks?) are used today to put the PC stamp on the most refined and topical aspects of the current push to crypto-fascist ideology.<br> <br>" Unless one views the establishment of the State of Israel as part of a diabolical plot against the Jews, that is...that's a position that I've heard argued before. Not by yourself, though."<br><br>Well, hear it now. That doesn't negate my views on how to analyze the current situation, however. It just gives them depth. <br><br>As an aside, one awesome book touching on this subject that I read was "Jews Without Money" (Carrol & Graff), by American marxist writer Thomas Gold. <br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
