Revisiting the ‘Jewish Question’ and Its Contemporary Discontents

Abstract

Abstract This article revisits the so-called ‘Jewish Question’ against the combined background of Marxist historiography and the resurgence of antisemitic and neofascist politics. It begins by analysing the critical reception of Marx’s formative essay, ‘On the Jewish Question’, and assesses its contemporary relevance in the aftermath of institutionalised antisemitism in the USSR, the monstrosity of the Shoah, the consolidation of the Israeli state, and the catastrophic ramifications of the ongoing Nakba. Despite the various defects of Marx and Engels’s reflections on the ‘Jewish Question’, their critical insights vividly anticipate the failings of liberalism, Soviet socialism, and Zionism in emancipating Jews, while also reminding contemporary Marxists about the political urgency of human emancipation. At its core, the ‘Jewish Question’ remains a universal question, extending to all oppressed peoples and classes that have been rendered abandoned and dispensable beings.