The Marxists and the Jewish Question: The History of a Debate

by Enzo Traverso, Bernard Gibbons (Translator)

English (translation)
Original French

Genres: Religion, History, Judaica

276 pages

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Enzo Traverso is an Italian scholar of European intellectual history. He is the author of several books on critical theory, the Holocaust, Marxism, memory, totalitarianism, revolution, and contemporary historiography. His books have been translated into numerous languages. After living and working in France for over 25 years, he is currently the Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book. It's an intellectual history, but one in which the ideas debated across time are grounded in the evolving material reality of us Jews, primarily in Europe. Traverso is pursuasively and by turns harsh and judicious in his critiques of the writers he discusses. The tension between universalist perspectives and "actually existing" oppression on a national basis (i.e. antisemitism) is the core of the long running debate. In Traverso's recounting, those in the Marxist tradition are pretty much consistently principled in opposition to anti-semitism (in contrast, for example, to the explicit anti-semitism of Proudhon and others), but not always sensitive to the need to go beyond that. Furthermore, he demonstrates that among Jewish leftists themselves, there were similarly diverse responses to the same set of questions. His thumbnail biographies of some of the key participants in the debate also demonstrate that one's class position, AND one's relative degree of assimilation, played important roles in driving perspectives on these questions, albeit without being strictly reductionist. Those for whom Yiddish was their first language, who were immersed in the material realities of the Jews of the Pale of Settlement, were more inclined, in general, to politics which gave prominence to the specific national oppression of the Jews. Traverso handles the history of this debate in such a deft manner, that one couldn't help but think of the applicability of the debate on "the Jewish Question" and the more recent debate about "identity politics", which touches on similar tensions. Although well beyond Traverso's frame, the fact that it could prompt such questions is a testament to the sophistication and complexity with which Traverso covers his material.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent, if incomplete overview of the various ways Marxists understood Judaism and anti-semitism, mainly before the Second World War. Traverso begins by dispensing with some common myths about Marx and Engels’ relationship to Judaism, then proceeds to survey the ways Bundists, Bolsheviks and others looked at it. Of course, almost none of them, despite possessing great insight and knowledge, were prepared for the holocaust, which wiped most of them out. Traverso is less thorough when looking at what came after.
I have to disagree with reviews that claim Traverso misunderstands or distorts Marxism in this book. Marxism is not one thing, there are many different and opposing currents within it, and I would say Traverso fairly characterizes what he chooses to cover, and his knowledge of even obscure theorists is obvious. These thinkers, although admirable, were limited by the circumstances they faced, as we all are. Perhaps he should have looked at some other theorists, but I don’t think the book claims to be comprehensive.
Although the updated edition has a chronology of various Marxist texts about Judaism, Zionism and anti-semitism that comes up to the present, certainly the impact of Zionism and Israel and how Marxists look at it demands its own book, one that looks at how Arab Marxists understood it as well.

[Luis Agustín Txanpongile Münasteriotar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uno de los libros que más me ha gustado últimamente. Uno toma conciencia de la dimensión de la presencia judía en el movimiento obrero (de Europa occidental) y de la dimensión del movimiento obrero específicamente judío (en Europa oriental). Quizás una de las cosas más interesantes es la descripción del tratamiento de la cuestión nacional por el Bund (que defendía la autonomía nacional cultural extraterritorial, opuesta al sionismo y a la teoría defendida por muchos marxistas de que una nación necesita de un territorio) y los debates que tuvieron con Lenin al respecto. También es un libro trágico en la medida en que describe un mundo que el genocidio contra los judíos y los comunistas ha borrado de la historia.

[AHW · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve got to agree with the reviewer who complained of the superficial nature of Traverso’s glosses on the various authors covered. He badly misunderstands Marxist analysis of fascism, which he subjects to the usual reactionary harangues about “economic determinism” and “class reductionism”; he equates investment in Jewish particularism with investment the liberation of Jews from oppression, which is absurd. How could one write a book four decades after the Nakba that portrays Marxist Zionists like Ber Borokov as the proper “Judeo-Marxists” while Rosa Luxemburg had nothing useful to say about the plight of Jews? But of course she did: her internationalism. Here Traverso falls victim to the logic of representation. He privileges ideas and thinkers that are represented as Jewish or specific to Jews rather than thinking through the upshot and outcomes of the various ideas.

The various classical Marxist ideas are made rather more uniform than they actually were. No distinction is made between two very different ideas: one, assimilation to the dominant society within capitalism, that is, identifying as, and making oneself appear, German (or French, Russian, etc) rather than Jewish; and the other, the amalgamation of nationalities and cultures within a stateless communist society. These are distinct. Refusing to treat them as such distorts the entire discussion.

Space is wasted sussing out the few brief remarks that the Stalinist opportunist Gramsci made on the subject. Marxist Zionists are explained at length, but anti-Zionist Marxists in the Middle East are ignored, which is a grievous error. Marxist-Leninists are generally ignored after the Birobidzhan farce - I don’t like them any more than Traverso does, but would like to know what they thought. They are part of Marxism, unfortunately. Marxism to the left of Lenin is ignored too, aside from a footnote which misunderstands the Vielle Taupe fracas.

Theoretically very poorly grounded.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Traverso's version of Marxism never rises above the level of caricature and academic kitsch.

Neither Marx, Lenin, Engels, or Trotsky ever promoted the idea of linearity or inevitability in history in general or in the contemporary class struggle. They were conscious polemical opponents of such ideas; at their best, so were Kautsky, Labriola, and Plekhanov, not to mention Mandel and George Novack.

Traverso, for a "man of the left," seems to be satisfied with a knowledge of Marxism obtained second-hand, not from the works of the movement's founders and leaders.

To tackle subjects of the scope Traverso undertakes, this is simply not good enough.

[Jacob Richter · Rating 2 out of 5]

I came to this book originally due to the contemporary controversy that attempts to argue that Marxism has been antisemitic and that Marx himself was an antisemite. I’ve been quite happy that this wasn’t the case from my own reading of Marx’s ‘On ‘The Jewish Question’’ and from informed study of it as well as my own knowledge of the history of Marxism. To his credit, Traverso deals well with this and we really are now in the position where anyone claiming that Marx was an antisemite is either stupid, unable to read or dishonest.

There’s much that is interesting here concerning the way that Marxists have tried to understand the condition and position of Jews, to understand and oppose antisemitism. Also the way in which there has been a close association between Jewish intellectuals and Marxism is interesting.

The problem, however, concerns Traverso’s understanding of Marxism. I was under the impression that Traverso was a Marxist but, in this work at least, he has a very immature grasp of Marxism. He seems to view it as teleological and economically deterministic and seems unaware of the dialectical methodology central to Marxian analysis.

This misunderstanding, possibly originating with Popper, underpins Traverso’s critique of Marxism’s engagement with Jewish issues. Traverso seems to imagine that there has been no Marxist engagement with forms of oppression that are not straightforwardly class based nor with attempts to understand ideology. This is just bizarre. This error leads, among other things, to Traverso breezing over one of the best Marxian attempts to understand the Holocaust with Arno Mayer’s ‘Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?’ precisely because it is not economically deterministic!