Bruno Powell: The Ability of Modern Jews and Christians to Be Free

Under this heading, Powell explores the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, as well as their relationship to criticism. Their relationship to criticism is their "ability to gain freedom."

The conclusion is:

"Christians can be free by crossing a step, that is, by crossing their own religion," and thus attaining freedom, "on the contrary, the Jews must abandon not only their Jewish essence, but also the development of their own religion that tends to complete, that is, the development of their own religion that is always different from themselves" (p. 71).

It can be seen that Powell here turned the question of Jewish emancipation into a purely religious one. Who has more hope of salvation, Jew or Christian? This theological question of doubt is reproduced here in the form of enlightenment: Which of them is more capable of liberation? Indeed, the question is no longer asked: Is it Judaism or Christianity that sets people free? Rather, it is the opposite: what makes man freer, a negation of Judaism or a negation of Christianity?

"If the Jews want to be free, then they should not believe in Christianity, but in dissolved Christianity, in dissolved religion, that is, in enlightenment, criticism and its consequence—free humanity." (page 70)

Again, it's about Jews who should have believed, but no longer Christianity, but dissolved Christianity.

Bauer's demand for the Jews to abandon the essence of Christianity did not emerge, as he himself said, from the development of Jewish nature.

At the end of The Jewish Question, Powell argues that Judaism is only a crude religious critique of Christianity, and that "only" religious meaning is found in Judaism. That being the case, it is not difficult to foresee that the emancipation of the Jews would also become a philosophical and theological act in his writing. (2)

Powell saw the abstract nature of the Jewish ideal, his religion, as his whole essence. Therefore, he has reason to conclude that

"If a Jew despises his narrow precepts" and if he abolished his entire Judaism, "it will not contribute anything to mankind" (p. 65).

In this way, the relationship between Jews and Christians is as follows: Christians' only interest in Jewish emancipation is the interest of ordinary people, the interest of theory. Judaism is an insulting fact in the religious eyes of Christians. Once the Christian vision is no longer religious, this fact ceases to be insulting. The emancipation of the Jews itself is not something for Christians to do.

On the contrary, if the Jews want to liberate themselves, they must not only do their own things, but also the Christian things, study the "Study of the Gospel Stories of the Gospel Writers of the Symbolic Gospels", "The Biography of Jesus", and so on.

"They themselves can see: they themselves will decide their own destiny; But history does not make people mock themselves. (p. 71)

We now try to break through the theological formulation of the problem. In our view, the question of the ability of the Jews to attain emancipation becomes the question of what special social elements must be overcome in order to abolish Judaism. Because the ability of modern Jews to achieve emancipation is the relationship between Judaism and the emancipation of the modern world. This relationship was inevitable because of the special position of Judaism in the modern enslaved world.

Now let's examine the real secular Jews, but not the Jews of the Sabbath, as Powell did, but the everyday Jews.

We do not go to the Jewish religion to find the secrets of the Jews, but to the actual Jews to find the secrets of their religion.

What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, selfishness.

What is Jewish secular worship? Doing business for profit. What is their worldly God? Money.

All right! Liberation from business and money—and thus from practical, tangible Judaism—would be modern self-liberation.

If there is a social organization that eliminates the premise of profit-making and thus the possibility of profit-making, then such social organization also makes it impossible for Jews to exist. His religious consciousness would disappear on its own like a faint smoke in the real, life-essential air of society. On the other hand, if the Jew acknowledges the worthlessness of this actual essence of himself and works for its elimination, then he frees himself from his previous developments, works directly for man's emancipation, and turns against the highest practical manifestation of man's self-alienation.

In short, we see in Judaism the general modern antisocial element which, through the development of history with the enthusiastic participation of Jews in this evil aspect, reaches its present height, that is, to the height of its inevitable disintegration.

The liberation of the Jews, in its ultimate sense, is the liberation of humanity from the Jewish spirit(3).

The Jews have liberated themselves in the Jewish way.

In Vienna, for example, the Jews were tolerant Jews who decided the fate of the entire empire by their financial power. Jews, who may have no rights in one of Germany's smallest states, decided the fate of Europe. Although the various guilds and guilds did not accept Jews, or still did not sympathize with them, the bold spirit of industry laughed at the stubbornness of these medieval organizations. (Powell, The Jewish Question, p. 114)

This is not an isolated fact. The Jew liberated himself in the Jewish way, not only because he had the power of money, but because money became a world power through the Jews or others, and the actual spirit of the Jews became the actual spirit of the Christian peoples. The extent to which Christians become Jews is the extent to which Jews liberate themselves.

For example, Colonel Hamilton said:

The devout and politically free inhabitants of New England were men like Laocoon, who made no minimal effort to break free from the two snakes that had bound him. Mammon is their idol, and they worship it not only verbally but also physically and mentally. In their eyes, the earthly world was nothing more than an exchange, and they were convinced that they had no other mission in this world than to be richer than their neighbors. Profit from business occupies all their thoughts, and changing the goods they deal in is their only rest. For example, they also have to carry their goods or counters when they travel, and they are talking about either interest or profit. Even if they don't think about their own business for a while, it's just to find out how other people's business is doing. ”(4)

Indeed, in North America, the de facto domination of the Jewish spirit over Christendom has taken a definite and normal expression: the proclamation of the gospel itself, the Christian ministry, has become a commodity, bankrupt merchants have spoken the gospel, and wealthy evangelists have bought and sold.

"The man you see who presides over a decent sermon assembly started out as a businessman, and only after business failed did he become a clergyman. The other, at first, held the priesthood, but when he had some money, he left the pulpit to go into business for profit. In the eyes of most people, the clergy is really a money-making industry. (Beaumont, op. cit. pp. 185, 186)

Powell believes that

"This situation is false: in theory the Jew is not given political rights, but in practice he has a lot of power and shows his political influence on a large scale, although this influence is minimized in some details." (The Jewish Question, p. 114)

The contradiction between the actual political power of the Jew and his political power is the contradiction between politics and the power of money. Although politics is conceptually above money power, the former is actually a slave of the latter.

Judaism has been able to maintain its coexistence with Christianity not only because it is a religious critique of Christianity, not only because it embodies doubts about the religious origins of Christianity, but also because the actual spirit of the Jews—the Jewish spirit—has maintained its place and even been highly developed in Christian society itself. Jews, as special members of civil society, are only a special expression of the Jewish spirit of civil society.

The Jewish spirit is not against history, but preserved through history.

Civil society constantly produced Jews from within itself.

What is the basis of Jewish religion itself? Practical needs, egoism.

Thus, the monotheism of the Jews is in reality the polytheism that is needed for many, a polytheism that turns the toilet into the object of divine law. Practical needs and egoism are the principles of civil society; This principle becomes naked as long as civil society produces a political state entirely from itself. The God of practical needs and selfishness is money.

Money was the god of envy of the Israelites; Before him, all gods will abdicate. Money devalues all the gods that man worships and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal, independent value of everything. It thus deprives the whole world — the human world and the natural world — of its inherent value. Money is the alienated essence of human labor and human existence; This alien nature rules man, and man worships it.

The Jewish god was secularized, and it became the god of the world. The bill is the real god of the Jews. The god of the Jews is just a bill of fantasy.

The view of nature, formed under the rule of private property and money, is a genuine contempt for nature and a practical debasement. In the Jewish religion, the natural world, while existing, exists only in the imagination.

It is in this sense that Thomas Minzer considers the following situations intolerable:

"All living beings, fish in the water, birds in the sky, plants on the ground, become property; But living beings should also be free. ”(5)

The kind of contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in the abstract, which exists abstractly in Jewish religion, is a realistic, conscious view and conduct of money. Even the relationship itself, the relationship between men and women, etc. have become the object of sale! Women are also bought and sold.

The imaginary nation of the Jews is a nation of merchants and, in general, a nation of money.

The foundationless law of the Jews is only a religious caricature of groundless morality and the law as a whole, only a religious caricature of the kind of worship adopted in vain form of a selfish world.

In this selfish world, the supreme relationship of man is also the relationship of law, the relationship of man to law, and these laws are effective against man not because they are laws that embody his own will and essence, but because they play a dominant role because their violation is punished.

The cunning of the Jews, the kind of actual cunning that Powell discovered in the Talmud 24, is the relationship between the selfish world and the laws that govern it, and circumventing these laws is the main trick of this world. (6)

Indeed, the movement of the world within the confines of these laws must be the constant abolition of laws. The Jewish spirit cannot continue to develop as a religion, that is, in theory, because the worldview of practical needs, by its very nature, is narrow and will soon be exhausted.

The religion that is actually needed cannot be accomplished in theory, but only in practice, because practice is its truth.

The Jewish spirit cannot create any new world, it can only draw new worldly creations and worldly relations into its sphere of activity, because the practical need to be wise with selfishness is passive and cannot be arbitrarily expanded, but expands with the further development of the social condition.

The Jewish spirit reached its culmination with the completion of civil society; But civil society can only be accomplished in Christendom. Christianity turns all national, natural, ethical, and theoretical relations into something external to man, so that only under Christian rule can civil society be completely separated from national life, torn off all kinds of human relations, and replaced by egoism and selfish needs, so that the human world can be decomposed into atomic, mutually hostile individual worlds.

Christianity originated in Judaism and was reduced to Judaism.

Christians were initially theorized Jews, so Jews were actual Christians, and actual Christians became Jews.

Christianity only superficially subdued Judaism. Christianity is too noble, too spiritual, so the only way to remove the crudeness of practical needs is to ascend it to heaven.

Christianity is the ideological sublimation of Judaism, and Judaism is a vulgar utilitarian application of Christianity, but this application can only become universal after Christianity, as a perfect religion, has theoretically completed the self-alienation of man from himself and from nature.

Only in this way can Judaism achieve universal domination, and can it turn the externalized man, the externalized nature, into an object that is transferable, sellable, subservient to self-interested needs, and allowed to be bought and sold.

Alienation is the practice of externalization. Just as a person bound by religion can objectify this essence only by making his essence the essence of an alien fantasy, likewise, under the rule of egoistic needs, man can only actually carry out his activities and actually produce goods by subjecting his products and his activities to the role of alien essence, money.

The Christian egoism of heavenly happiness, through its own practice, must become the egoism of the Jewish flesh, the needs of heaven must become earthly needs, and subjectivism must become selfishness. We do not use Jewish religion to illustrate Jewish tenacity, but, on the contrary, use the human foundation, practical needs, and egoism of Jewish religion to illustrate this tenacity.

Because the true essence of the Jew has been universally realized in civil society and has been universally secularized, civil society cannot convince the Jew of the unreality of his religious essence, which is only an expression of what is actually needed in ideas. Thus, not only in the Pentateuch or the Talmud, but also in modern society, we see that the essence of modern Jews is not an abstract essence, but a highly empirical essence, which is not only the narrowness of Jews, but also the Jewish narrowness of society.

Once society has eliminated the empirical essence of the Jewish spirit, that is, the profit of business and its premises, the Jew cannot exist, because his consciousness will no longer have an object, because the subjective basis of the Jewish spirit, that is, the practical need, will be humanized, because the contradiction between the individual sensibility of man and the quasi-existence will be eliminated.

Jewish social emancipation is the liberation of society from the Jewish spirit.

Karl Marx wrote in mid-October-mid-December 1843

Published in the Franco-German Yearbook, February 1844

The original text is in German

Chinese is based on the historical research edition of the Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Part 1, Volume 2, and refers to the German edition of the Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 1

(1) The word "abolition" (aufheben) in the quotation is: "aufgeben" (abandonment) in Baufer's article. —Editor's note

(2) Bowell, The Jewish Question, Brunswick, 1843, pp. 114-115. —Editor's note

(3) Marx's "Jewish spirit" here is Judentum. In this article, Marx uses the term Judentum in two different senses: one in the religious sense, referring to the religion that the Jews believe, Chinese translated as "Judaism"; One is in the secular sense, which refers to the mercenary and money-seeking ideas and habits displayed by Jews in the activities of business for profit, Chinese translated as "Jewish spirit". —Editor's note

(4) Toh Hamilton, Americans and American Customs, Mannheim 1834, vol. 1, pp. 109-110. —Editor's note

(5) To. Mintzel, "A Sufficient Defence and Reply to Wittenberg's Arguments Against Wittenberg's Unbelievers, Comfortable Lives, and Misdefiled Poor Christianity by Plagiarizing the Bible in a Distorted Way," Nuremberg edition, 1524. Marx's quotation is taken from Leigh Ranke, A History of Germany during the Reformation, Berlin Edition, 1839, vol. 2, p. 207. —Editor's note

(6) See Bowell The Jewish Question, Brunswick, 1843, pp. 24-30; "The Freedom of Modern Jews and Christians," in Twenty-One Sheets from Switzerland, Zurich-Winterthur, 1843, vol. 1, pp. 60-62. —Editor's note