The Jewish Question

For figures ranging from Karl Marx to the luminaries of the Frankfurt School, the 'Jewish Question' — a set of problems related to emancipation and anti-Semitism, cultural assimilation and Zionism — raised significant controversies within Marxist theory. Renowned scholar Enzo Traverso carefully reconstructs this intellectual debate that runs over more than a century, discussing both its generative aspects and its blind alleys. In The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate, Traverso explores the causes and the forms of the encounter that took place, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the Holocaust, between the intelligentsia of a cosmopolitan minority and the most radical ideological current of Western modernity.

This is the second edition, completely rewritten and updated, of a book already translated into many languages (originally published in French, then translated into English, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Turkish).

Publication date: October 29, 2019

Table of Contents

Historicising the Marxist Jewish Question: Preface to the Second Edition

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Marx, Radical Enlightenment, and the Jews

1 Marx: the Jew as Geldmensch

2 Engels: the Jews as a &'People without History'

3 The Struggle against Anti-Semitism

2 The Jewish Marxist Intelligentsia

1 Central Europe

2 Eastern Europe

3 Hypotheses

3 The German and Austrian Marxists (1880-1920)

1 Anti-Semitism

2 Zionism

3 The Paradigm of Assimilation: Otto Bauer

4 The Paradigm of Assimilation: Karl Kautsky

4 Russian Marxism (1900-20)

1 Lenin

2 Stalin

3 Trotsky

4 Rosa Luxemburg

5 Conclusion

5 Jewish Marxism

1 Russian Marxism and Jewish Marxism

2 The Jewish Workers' Movement

3 National Autonomy: Vladimir Medem

4 Zionism: Ber Borokhov

Intermezzo: The Jews and the Russian Revolution (1917-37)

6 Gramsci and the Jewish Question

7 From Weimar to Auschwitz: Anti-Semitism and the German Left

1 The KPD: From the &'Schlageter Line' to the &'Third Period'

2 The &'Roofless Left'

3 Trotsky's Warnings

8 The Messianic Materialism of Walter Benjamin

1 German Culture and Jewishness

2 Marxism

3 Critique of Progress

4 Historical Materialism and Theology

5 Outsider

9 The Theory of the People-Class: Abram Leon

1 Historiographical Limitations

2 Capitalism and Assimilation

3 Anti-Semitism

4 Solutions

10 Postwar Marxism and the Holocaust

1 The Frankfurt School

2 Ernest Mandel

3 Capitalism and the Holocaust

Conclusion

Glossary

Chronology

Bibliography

Index