Political discourse in exile: Karl Marx and the Jewish question

Abstract

Over the years, Karl Marx's tangled relation with Judaism has provoked heated debate among followers and critics alike. Can the Jewish tradition better help us understand Marx's political theory? Which themes in Marx's writings become clearer when read in a Jewish context? In this provocative book, Dennis Fischman addresses these questions by showing how Marx's work, from his doctoral dissertation to Capital, resounds with the characteristic concerns of Jewish thought. Fischman identifies three key elements that Marx's theory shares with Judaism: its ontology, its use of texts, and its conception of reality underlying Marx's writings and that of the Hebrew Bible, including the notion that human beings are obliged by their own needs to repair and perfect the world. Similarly, Marx's way of commenting on earlier authors, especially Hegel, resembles the rabbinic style of textual interpretation called midrash: both interrogate existing texts to make them speak to the urgent needs of the readers' situation. Finally, Fischman draws on legend, history, and poetry to explore how the Jewish theme of exile can be read in the Marxian theory of alienation. Just as exile disrupts the dialogue between God and humanity and sets all awry, alientation under capitalism corrodes human powers and social relations. Marx himself, Fischman suggests, is a figure in exile. Estranged from his Jewish roots, he is unable fully to understand himself or to explain himself to those who hold a fundamentally different view of reality.