Beyond Particularity and Universality: Moishe Postone and the Possibilities of Jewish Marxism

Abstract

Marx notoriously claimed that Judaism was particularistic and must be sacrificed in the process of universal human emancipation. In the past few decades, some Marxists have responded to Marx’s alleged antisemitism and attempted to rethink his work in relation to Jewish identity by supplementing his theory with poststructuralist critiques of universality. However, such methods risk ontologizing both Jewish identity and universal emancipation, being blind to how their conditions change historically. Moishe Postone’s rereading of Marx’s work enables us to avoid the political pitfalls associated with both the violent teleology of the universal and the radical indeterminacy of the particular by historicizing them in relation to capitalism. This article brings Postone’s work into dialogue with other Marxists and argues that he presents a Jewish, nonteleogical reading of Marx’s theory of history, which is especially relevant for us today.