Abstract The increased interest in law and capitalism has not translated into an engagement in legal scholarship with the transition-to-capitalism debate. This article contributes a critique of commercialisation approaches to the history of capitalism and law from a Political Marxist perspective. It argues that combining jurisdiction and legal form provides a more flexible conceptual architecture to account for early-modern juridical practices. Conceptually, this enables an encounter between the structural and subject-centred commodity-form theory of law (cftl) and the more granular, agentic, and class-centred Political Marxist approach. Empirically, exploring two key institutions – property and sovereignty – provides an opportunity to focus on their jurisdictional dimensions driven by specific class struggles and agencies. These reflect, through the concept of jurisdiction, the ruptures and discontinuities of the transition, while form analysis accounts for the more continuous and structural processes of key institutions shaping the apparent linearity of law.

Abstract A set of rediscovered revolutionary posters by the Reprint Collective (which was presented as part of Documenta fifteen) in Brussels provided an incredibly moving window into times past. Notwithstanding how the events addressed by those political artefacts now lie in the historical past, the revolutionary reverberations of the posters remain something to treasure. They bring to life political causes that underline the importance of radical solidarity and activist alliances. To understand why such artefacts were banned, we need to recognise the role of contemporary racism – the projection of the figure of a Palestine-radical left-Muslim subject that encompasses everything the liberal mainstream supposedly is not. This article argues that the New Anti-Semitism is a merely ideological manifestation that has no contribution to make toward the struggle against antisemitism. The posters remind us that 1) the struggle against antisemitism cannot be separated from the struggle against Islamophobia, but also that 2) the erasure of a particular Jewish and Left revolutionary subjectivity is intrinsic to the workings of hegemonic forces that maintain contemporary politics. Going against the account in which antisemitism has conventionally been framed, this article aims to come to terms with the erasure of a left epistemology that had emerged from the region in the 1970s. Moroccan revolutionary Abraham Serfaty is an example of how the erasure of the radical history of Arab and Jewish progressives was no coincidence. Reversing this erasure not only helps in understanding progressive Jewish interventions in liberation politics but also that the flattening of complex histories and Arab, Left, and Jewish subjectivities is in fact a prerequisite for Zionism. Arab Jews do not fit neatly within a pro-Israel ideological framework that itself systematically feeds off anti-Arab racism. This article furthermore reflects on New Anti-Semitism as a key political instrument and as a powerful moralistic force that muzzles the expression of political context and social ambiguity. The notion ‘Arab Anti-Semitism’ arose against the backdrop of Israeli state terror and regional warfare. This article also provides insights into important intellectual interventions of the left between the 1960s and the 1980s. In combination with the rise of counter-revolutionary forces and major anti-left crackdowns, this emancipatory approach building on a critique of imperialism and capitalism, and solidarity politics based on progressive universal values, was undermined. Finally, coming to terms with the erasure of a left epistemology that had emerged from the region and recovering this very legacy serve as an antidote against historical amnesia. This spirit of a progressive universalism – as, for instance, illustrated in Mahmoud Darwish’s rejection of the opportunistic dictum ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ on the grounds that one can readily speak of a ‘world’s enemy’ – is born from the belief that our ethical and moral constellations carry universal value.

Abstract Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial (1915) is open to many interpretations. One aspect, however, which has not been taken sufficiently into account, is its relation to the antisemitic trials of his times, where Jews were accused of treason or ‘ritual murder’: the trials of Tisza (Austro-Hungary, 1882, in what is now Hungary), Dreyfus (France, 1894–9), Hilsner (Austro-Hungary, 1899–1900, in what is now the Czech Republic), and Beiliss (Imperial Russia, 1912–13, in what is now Ukraine). Kafka knew about them and made comments in his correspondence or diaries. This ‘Jewish moment’ is essential for the understanding of the novel. However, Joseph K. has no religious or ethnic identity: Kafka discovers in the Jewish experience the quintessential human experience of Injustice.

Abstract This article analyses the debate over an ‘antisemitic Marx’ in the French context. Since the republication of On the Jewish Question in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, the French intellectual field has seen continuous conflict between supporters of this ‘thesis’ (Mishari, Kaplan, Birnbaum) and their detractors, who are sometimes militant (J. Aron, Bensaïd) and sometimes academic (De Fontenay, Traverso), including those involved in the Grande édition Marx et Engels (Clochec). First, the article examines at length the French debate which spans over 50 years. Second, building on the insights garnered from this debate, it tackles the limits of materialist criticism of religious views. In light of the contemporary crisis of secularism in France, this problem forces Marxist and critical thinkers (Tosel, Meziane) to reassess the issue of religious minorities and their ‘assimilation’ to the ‘national majority’.

Abstract This article introduces Abraham Serfaty’s ‘Letter to the Damned of Israel’, written in 1982 while he was imprisoned. Serfaty, a Jewish-Moroccan Marxist, reflects on antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and the oppression of both Palestinians and Jews by Zionism. This introduction explores Serfaty’s political thoughts on the relationship between Palestinian liberation, Zionism, and the Jewish Question. It highlights his belief in the importance of Arab-Jewish identity and the role of Arab Jews in the anti-Zionist struggle. ​It also discusses Serfaty’s engagement with various international issues and his influence on the Moroccan leftist movement, particularly through his involvement with the Marxist-Leninist organisation Ila Al Amam and the journal Souffles. ​