The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation

by Abraham Léon

During the opening years of the 21st century, anti-Semitic venom and incidents of violent assault on Jews have begun spreading. They are not a historical aberration. They are fueled by today s capitalist crises and fracturing of the post World War II imperialist order, described in recent decades as globalization.
At every turning point in history from antiquity through feudalism, to capitalism s rise and the imperialist death throes of the past century Jews have been targets of persecution. Including the genocide cold-bloodedly touted by Hitler as the Final Solution.


Why is Jew-hatred still raising its ugly head? What are its class roots? Why is there no solution to the Jewish question under capitalism, just as there is no solution to other problems before humanity, without revolutionary struggles that transform us as we fight to transform our world?


Abram Leon was killed in October 1944, at age 26, in the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz. He left us this book to help answer those questions.


2020 edition includes new introduction by Dave Prince, 32 pages of photos and illustrations, 7 pages of maps, a glossary, expanded index and revised translation.

Genres: History, Politics, Religion, Jewish, Nonfiction, Judaism, Sociology

346 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1950

About the author

Abraham (Abram) Léon (born Abraham Wejnstok), was a Belgian Jewish Trotskyist party leader and theorist.

Leon was born in Warsaw in 1918. His parents, adherents of "official petit-bourgeois Zionism", left Poland to pursue the Zionist dream in Palestine; the family quickly re-emigrated in 1926 to Belgium. Leon became a member and then leader of the Belgian branch of Hashomer Hatzair, a left wing Zionist youth movement. In 1936, after hearing speeches of the Trotskyist leader Walter Dauge (nl) of the Revolutionary Socialist Party (nl) to militant Belgian coal miners, Leon was won over politically from Stalinism to Trotskyism. Between 1936 and 1940 Leon slowly and methodically made his political transition from the Hashomer Hatzair to revolutionary Trotskyism.

When the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939 threw Dauge's Belgian Trotskyists (and Dauge himself) and the Belgian Communist Party into deep demoralization, it was Leon who was instrumental in keeping the flame of revolutionary Marxism alive in Belgium. According to Ernest Mandel, "[c]orrectly establishing the reasons which we had for hope, Leon noted that the workers’ movement in Europe had already reached the lowest point of its ebb. It was now necessary to count upon a new rise. It was necessary not to await it passively but to prepare for it, preparing for it the cadres and insofar as possible the masses. [...] When, on August 20, 1940 we were overwhelmed by the tragic news of the assassination of L.D. Trotsky, Leon immediately wrote the first illegal pamphlet of the Belgian Trotskyist movement. He established contact with several former regional leaders of the party in Brussels. The first leadership began to take form. The illegal Trotskyist organization was born on the day following the death of its spiritual father. [...] From this moment on, the story of Leon was linked with the history of the Trotskyist movement in Belgium."

Mandel credits Leon with being 'the principal inspirer of the [Belgian Trotskyist] party". He states that Leon "served as political secretary from the time the first executive committee was set up" and that Leon served as the editor-in-chief of the illegal Belgian Trotskyist newspaper La Voie de Lénine (The Road of Lenin); he also wrote many of the most important articles for this paper.

Leon was also instrumental in making contact with other sections of the Fourth International in wartime Europe - a most difficult and hazardous task; in August 1942 Leon co-organized the first meeting between the Belgian and French Trotskyist parties; he also led the illegal "party work among the proletarian soldiers of the Wehrmacht" and "attended meetings of the underground factory committees" at tremendous risk to himself.

Leon exhorted Belgian workers to fight both Hitler and Churchill in the classical Leninist fashion of turning imperialist World War II into a civil war.

In 1943-44, as the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini collapsed in Italy, the revolutionary socialist workers of Europe began to sense that the end of the war was near and that with it would come opportunities for revolutionary struggle - as had happened at the end of WWI. Leon, preparing for that eventuality, played a leading role "in the work of the European Conference of the Fourth International" held in February 1944. When news of the Allied landings in Europe reached him, Leon decided that the time had come, finally, when it would once again be safe for him to return to his home in Charleroi; but on the very night of his arrival his home was raided by the police and he was arrested. He was taken to prison and tortured by the Gestapo; yet even under these conditions Leon was able to smuggle letters from prison and establish a tenuous link with his Belgian party comrades. The Nazis wasted no time in deporting Leon to Auschwitz where he was brutalized until he became sick and was then selected by the SS to be sent to the gas chamber.

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful if you're interested in the debate between Zionism and Internationalism going on among Jewish socialists/communists in the early half of the 20th century, or in a Marxist understanding of the roots of antisemitism. Leon overuses the word "puerile," but other than that wrote a pretty excellent book. Published by Pathfinder, so it is approved by some Trotskyists. Author participated in various resistance activities in occupied Belgium and was captured and executed by the Nazis in 1944.

this book can be read in its entirety for free at this URL:
http://www.marxists.de/religion/leon/

[Cool_guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given the title, it's best to read this book at home. I was getting a lot of odd looks at the coffee shop this afternoon.

[Daniel]

Pretty compelling. Leon wrote this in occupied Europe. It makes devastating challenges to myths I grew up with about the formation of Judaism. For starters, it simply isn't true that Christians were constantly trying to convert Jews. To the contrary, Jews were so useful to nobles and kings that in certain periods they were fined for converting to Christianity. Leon makes the argument that the Jewish faith was not preserved DESPITE the forces of history, but that it was preserved BECAUSE of them. Essential if you're interested in a more than mystical/superstitious understanding anti-Semitism or Judaism. It also provides fascinating insight into the ancient and medieval worlds.

[Martin Empson · Rating 5 out of 5]

While it is undoubtably dated in places, and suffers due to Abram Leon writing this during the Nazi occupation, this is a remarkably clear and insightful attempt to grapple with the question of antisemitism and the historical position of Jewish people in European society before World War II. It is particularly prescient when it comes to the discussion of Zionism, and the limitations of Zionism as a political strategy for Jewish people. Leon's anticipation of what a Zionism State would be like, and the role of American-British imperialism is remarkbly accurate. The tragedy is that Leon would be murdered in Auschwitz. The world lost a clear and insightful thinker. This book is a tremendous legacy and deserves continued study.

[BROM STONKER · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterclass in historical materialism, which also touches on numerous other topics with really useful insights on things like racism, imperialism, and zionism. Really useful for understanding anti semitism and zionism from a Marxist point of view.

My edition is marred somewhat by having been published by an irrelevant geriatric sect - which once contained some great marxists and now contains only genocidal racists. They seem to have produced this version without actually having read it. But the good news is you can safely ignore the ramblings of the introduction they slapped on and just read the actual text.

[Bhaskar Sunkara]

Apparently this is one of the more prominent Marxist texts on Jewish socio-economic history. A Trotskyist, Abram Leon wrote this in his early 20s. He died in Auschwitz when he was just 26.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Abram Leon was a Belgian Jew active in both a socialist Zionist youth group and an anti-Stalinist faction within the Fourth International. Murdered by the Nazis in 1944, he left behind this manuscript on the history of anti-Semitism. In classic Marxist fashion, Leon traced the origins of anti-Semitism to the premodern and proto-capitalist worlds in which Jews were involved in usury and then analyzed its continuity in the modern capitalist world dominated by bourgeois notions of wealth. Leon’s work is firmly rooted in Wissenschaft des Judentums, the scientific study of Jewish history, a movement first developed among German scholars in the 19th century that dominated the study of Jewish history for several generations. Today, however, Leon’s history is no longer plausible. This is not to say that the manuscript has no value.
Although the historiography of anti-Semitism is robust, the history of the fight against anti- Semitism is still developing. As such, Leon’s work is a valuable document to students in that subfield. The editor’s introduction and later biographical profile of Leon are of only limited use as they are situated in the polemical tradition of Marxist propaganda.
Summing Up: Recommended. With reservations. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
--F. Krome, University of Cincinnati – Clermont College



The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation Abram Leon

Synopsis: During the opening years of the 21st century, anti-Semitic venom and incidents of violent assault on Jews have once again begun to spread across the country and around the world. This is not an historical aberration. These incidents are fueled by today s capitalist crises and the fracturing of the post World War II imperialist order described in recent decades as globalization.
At every turning point in history from antiquity through feudalism, to capitalism's rise and the imperialist death throes of the past century Jews have been targets of persecution. Including the genocide cold-bloodedly touted by Hitler as the Final Solution.
Why is Jew-hatred still raising its ugly head? What are its class roots? Why is there no solution to the Jewish question under capitalism, just as there is no solution to other problems before humanity, without revolutionary struggles that transform us as we fight to transform our world?
Abram Leon was killed in October 1944, at age 26, in the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz. He left us "The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation" to help future generations answer those questions.
Critique: This newly published fourth edition includes new introduction by Dave Prince, 32 pages of photos and illustrations, 7 pages of maps, a glossary, expanded index and revised translation, making it an ideal and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, community, and college/university library Judaic Studies, Holocaust Studies, and Anti-Semitism Studies collections and supplemental curriculum reading lists.

Micah Andrew's Bookshelf, Midwest Books

……….
REVIEW

The Study of Man: Prejudice and Capitalist Exploitation
BY OSCAR HANDLIN
The question of how and why this situation came to exist has usually been skirted. McWilliams, too, passes the question by with the comment that it is interesting but irrelevant. But the importance of the problem did not escape the attention of a young Pol- ish Jew who spent most of his short life in Belgium. As a member of Hashomer Hatzair—a left-wing Zionist group—Abram Léon absorbed Borochov's interpreta- tion of the Jewish situation, and his awareness of the problem must certainly have been sharpened during the war, when he became a member of the section of the anti-German underground allied with the Fourth International. Actively engaged in the resistance move- ment, he nevertheless found time to compose a shrewd analysis of the historical sources of the Jewish econom- ic position, and had just about finished this book when he was arrested. In Auschwitz, at the age of 26, he met the fate of millions of his fellows.
Léon's approach is that of the orthodox Marxist (by this, I do not mean to dismiss, but only to identify his point of view). His analysis, despite errors of detail, is refreshingly lucid and sensible, and it offers us the op- portunity to examine a solid statement of the material- istic interpretation of the Jewish question.
Running through two and a half millenia of the Jewish past, Léon finds two points of crisis in the secu- lar history of that people. The first crisis occurred at the point when the economy of the Roman empire broke down and gave way to the kind of natural economy as- sociated in Western Europe with feudalism, a mode of production characterized by self-sufficient agriculture and the absence of commerce. This transformation co- incided with the emergence, as state religions, first of Christianity and then of Islam. Léon believes that these developments set in motion a selective process that froze the Jews in commerce; that is, the settled Jewish farmers tended to be absorbed by the dominant creeds, and only those continued to adhere to Judaism who had the relative independence of the trader's status.
At this stage, Léon continues, a rigid and exception- al occupational pattern was fixed upon the Jews. In the
long period until the 13th century, while the whole of Europe lived by agriculture, the Jews engaged in itiner- ant trade. And since all those with whom the Jews dealt were self-sufficient, that commerce of necessity cen- tered largely on the importation of luxuries and catered to the tastes of the nobility, who alone had the surplus- es to pay for them. Of necessity also, the Jews engaged in usury to finance the feudal lords in the frequent intervals when the manors failed to produce sufficient surplus. Naturally, the status of the Jews was high and they enjoyed the protection of the highly-placed.
❧
This relatively pleasant situation began to change in the era of the Crusades. The natural economy disinte- grated as exchange developed. But now commerce and mercantile capital were directly connected with pro- duction; the objects of trade were no longer exotic lux- uries, but the products of industry. (The famous Italian banking houses, for instance, established themselves in the woolen business.)
The Jewish merchants, unable to enter the new commerce, were gradually excluded from all trade. Consequently they were compelled to live by usury and by its ancillary occupations, pawnbrokering and dealing in secondhand goods. In this role they bat- tened off the nobility and off the townspeople who ul- timately became their bitter enemies. For a time the sovereign, who profited by extorting the wealth of his subjects through the Jews, offered some protection. But ultimately the hostility of the new middle class and the gentry led to harsh measures, to the growth of the ghetto, and finally to exclusion. A remnant of Jews saved themselves only by migrating eastward to Poland and Bohemia, less-developed regions still in the natural economy stage.
Thereafter the Jews hung on in the West only on a very marginal basis until the end of the 18th century, when emancipation loosed the old restrictions and as- similative forces began steadily to absorb the new citi- zens into the sprouting national states. But at that very

moment the position of the Eastern Jews, which had been quite favorable until then, began to deteriorate through the workings of the same forces which had operated in the West several centuries earlier. In Po- land and in Russia, a new middle class rising from the disintegration of the old economy was jealous of the place of the Jews in commerce and in the professions. Competition for status led to political restrictions upon the Jews and to emigration to France, Germany, and England, which only worsened the position of their co-religionists in the West.
At this point the internal contradictions of capital- ism deprive the Jews, a marginal group at best, of the last vestiges of security. Excluded from the cartels of the great capitalists, the Jews are driven into speculation, a development which offers the monopolists an opportu- nity to divert the discontent of the masses to the Jews
alone. Theorists begin to distinguish between "bad" (speculative) capital and "useful" (productive) capital, terms which Nazi economists eventually translate into parasitic-Jewish and productive-national. Ultimately the masses fall subject to a new ideology which identi- fies speculative capitalism with Judaism, and contrasts it with a planned national socialist economy, which is really war capitalism. Under the successive blows of persecution in the name of this ideology, the Jews are helpless and take refuge in a nationalism of their own.
❧
By this survey Léon attempts to demonstrate that the Jewish question is the outcome of an identification of the Jewish group, through definite historical circum- stances, with certain limited occupations which the rest of the society finds inferior or degrading or hostile.
---Excerpt from review of original French edition of The Jewish Question by Abram Leon run in Commentary magazine, July 1948.

Clarin review:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/048...



Holy Land Studies Review:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/048...

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over and over, we hear middle class liberals condemning “hatred,” “racism,” “white nationalism,” “homophobia,” “Islamophobia,” “transphobia,” lumping different things together. After a brutal machete attack on a Chanukah celebration in Monsey, N.Y., some liberals put “white nationalist hate” on their websites, then took down any mention of the occurrence after the attacker turned out to be African American! If it doesn’t fit into their schema, they have nothing to say. So many failed to get why Jeremy Corbyn was a Jew-hater, although it was intrinsic to his politics. Of course, anti-Semitism is a form of racism, but it’s a unique form, and people who respond to it saying simply they’re “against all forms of racism” either don’t understand what it is or aren’t being honest. For those who want to understand, this is the book to read.

Anti-Semitism is the only form of racism that can disguise itself as a form of socialism--What the German socialists for years called "the socialism of fools." This book explains that by explaining the history of the Jewish people, who were forced into particular economic roles by Christian society.

I read an article in the ‘Forward,’ which I subscribe to, claiming that any use of the term “Jewish question” is anti-Semitic. The word “question” in this context means, according to Merriam-Webster, “a subject or aspect in dispute or open for discussion: issue.” The term is frequently used by Marxists: the “national question,” the “colonial question,” the “woman question.” This claim is a way of shutting down discussion and stigmatizing Marxism in particular. Others write that the book is anti-Semitic—whether they’ve read it or not is questionable—since they never bother to explain why.

They’re afraid that attempts to explain the past may reveal facts that they don’t deny but think in the wrong hands (which usually includes the working class) may be used to promote hatred. Whatever happened to “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Tearing down statues or imposing censorship doesn’t end racism; it’s built into the social system. Mass anti-racist protests lead in the direction of making that change, which can only be done by millions of conscious people.

The ‘Forward’ and other Jewish publications would better serve the interests of their readers by reviewing the book and opening a discussion on the content. But instead, they’re publishing articles complaining that Facebook isn’t sufficiently censoring rightist hate speech. Censorship can never serve progressive aims.

This is a Marxist study by a Jewish Trotskyist, as our current was then called, living in German-occupied Belgium as he wrote this book. The Jewish question is a central question, not only for Jews, but for the entire working class. The Stalinist parties’ policies had led to defeat after defeat and they were even becoming breeding grounds for Jew-hatred. Abram Leon left this book as his legacy; he wound up dying in Auschwitz. It was written in French, based on sources in French, German, and Yiddish. It has been in English since 1950, but this new edition adds a new introduction, 32 pages of photos and illustrations, 7 pages of maps, a glossary, expanded index and a revised, improved translation. It of course maintains the biographical sketch of Leon by Ernest Mandel. It is also available in Spanish and French.

The new introduction contains excerpts from an interview that Fidel Castro did with 'Atlantic' magazine: In 2010, after then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had proclaimed the Holocaust — the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis — was an “unprovable and mythical claim,” Castro invited Atlantic magazine writer Jeffrey Goldberg to come to Cuba and interview him. Iran has been developing its nuclear capacities. Fidel told him the Iranian government would better serve the cause of peace by acknowledging the “unique” history of antisemitism and trying to understand why Israelis fear for their existence. “I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims,” Castro told Goldberg. “They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything.”

“Over 2,000 years they were subjected to terrible persecution and then to the pogroms,” Castro said. “The Jews have lived an existence that is much harder than ours. There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.” “Let’s imagine that I were [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Castro said, “I would remember the 6 million Jewish men and women, of all ages who were exterminated in the concentration camps” when making decisions.

Jews have always been disproportionately represented in the workers movement: Karl Marx, Ferdinand Lassalle, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and in this country, Daniel De Leon, are only among the best known. This is yet another reason why reaction attacks them. Leon wrote,

“The high percentage of Jews in the proletarian movement is only a reflection of the tragic situation of the Jewish people in our time. The intellectual faculties of the Jews, fruit of the historic past of Judaism, are thus an important support for the proletarian movement.

“In this latter fact lies a final—and not the least important—reason for modern anti-Semitism. The ruling classes persecute with special sadism the Jewish intellectuals and workers, who have supplied a host of fighters to the revolutionary movement. To isolate the Jews completely from the sources of culture and science has become a vital necessity for the decaying system that persecutes them. The ridiculous legend of ‘Jewish Marxism’ is nothing but a caricature of the bonds that actually exist between socialism and the Jewish masses.”

Anti-Semitism, which some Zionists thought would disappear with the establishment of Israel, is making a big come-back on both the “left” and the “right” because of the crisis of capitalism, not because of the grave injustice done to the Palestinians—which for years was largely ignored in the U.S. Anti-Semitism has always been considered by Marxists to be the “socialism of fools,” and it still serves that purpose, as Abram Leon’s book explains in detail. It lets the main capitalists off the hook by attacking “Jewish capital.” Most capitalists aren’t Jews and most Jews aren’t capitalists, but many people still believe the conspiracy theories associated with this.

It isn’t a coincidence that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has grown precisely during a period of capitalist crisis, when for years few other than Arab Americans, some radical Jews, and a section of “the left” was interested in the plight of the Palestinians.

I wasn’t in favor of a Jewish state in Palestine, but there’s a fine line between saying that Israel, with six million Jews has “no right to exist” and saying that the Jews have “no right to exist.” Yes, there were bourgeois leaders who were motivated by colonial-settler ambitions, but there were thousands of desperate Jews, mostly working class, with no place else to go. The Roosevelt administration, supported by the bourgeois Jewish leadership, refused to let in more than a handful of Jews facing extermination. The communist political current this book represents called for “Open the doors to victims of Hitler’s Nazi terror!”

There is a Palestinian national struggle, but also a class struggle in Israel, as there is everywhere in the world. BDS, which holds all Israelis (if not all Jews!) responsible for the oppression of the Palestinians, is as anti-working-class as it is anti-Semitic. But those who try to ban their activities are equally reactionary; we must debate those we disagree with, not ban them. I don’t give political support to the US imperialist government, army, and cops, but I don’t say the US has “no right to exist”; I’m for a workers and farmers government to replace the big business government.

Other essential reading is The Fight Against Jew-Hatred and Pogroms in the Imperialist Epoch with writings by Lenin, Trotsky, and leaders of the Socialist Workers Party. I also recommend Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerin, based on Trotsky’s writings on the rise of fascism, collected in The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany’ which is a more difficult book for most people to read, based on its polemical character and extensive references to German and world working class history.

[T · Rating 1 out of 5]

Socialism kills millions and causes genocides. Its deadliness is explained in part by four different books with the same or similar titles, "The Jewish Question," or "On the Jewish Question," and written independently by the socialists Abram Leon, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Karl Marx. They should each be read for comparison to discover the naive origins of the world's worst genocides. When will the daft dogma of socialism end?

The original publication dates for the three socialist authors were: Leon (1946); Marx, 1844; Trotsky, 1934; Lenin 1934;

Independent of their books, the socialist authors inspired Jewish people to embrace socialism (although Leon's book was published the latest, he had spent his pre-publication life promoting socialism too). Then bad things began to happen.

In 1936, Soviet socialism created the "Jewish Autonomous Oblast" (JAO). Two years after the JAO was founded, Stalin targeted Jews living in the JAO in purges.

A few years later, in 1939, German socialism & Soviet socialism joined to launch WWII, invading Poland together, and going onward, leading to massive genocides (of which the Holocaust was a part). It would also lead to other genocides under the socialists Mao, Pol Pot, the Kim thugs, etc.

German socialism (and its leader, the socialist Hitler) obtained bad ideas from Marx's publication "On The Jewish Question" (and from Lenin and Trotsky). Soviet socialism obtained similar bad ideas from Marx's publication. Hitler and German socialism obtained horrid ideas from Soviet socialism.

Soviet socialism killed the socialist Leon Trotsky on August 21, 1940, in Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico. What was Stalin doing during the time that he had Trotsky assassinated? Answer: Stalin was collaborating with Hitler in WWII (that they started together) and they had invaded Poland, going onward to even more socialist genocide.

It is telling to note that German socialism also killed Abram Leon, in Auschwitz in 1944.

Never forget how socialism kills. More of these reminders are in the book "WORLD'S DUMBEST CRIMINALS - Stalin, Mao, & Hitler" by the author Ian Tinny (and citing the work of the Political Scientist Dr. Rex Curry).

[Judy]

"It was war and revolution which cradled Abram Leon and which later closed his eyes. On the day of his birth the footsteps of the revolution rang through the streets of his native city Warsaw. Abram Leon was born in Warsaw, 1918, and he died in Auschwitz, 1944. "
"When on August 20, 1940 we were overwhelmed by the tragic news of the assassination of L.D. Trotsky, Leon immediately wrote the first illegal pamphlet of the Belgian Trotskyist movement." p. 20 "Thus, the rise of fascism in Western Europe was accompanied by the mass extermination of European Jewry, which stands to this day as the most atrocious case of calculated genocide every perpetrated."
"Socialism is the only road to Jewish survival." 50 from the Introduction
"The cause of ancient anti-Semitism is the same as for medieval anti-Semitism: The antagonism toward merchants is not solely of Christian or pseudo-Christian inspiration. It also "real" pagan sources. The latter was strongly rooted in a class ideology in the disdain which the leading classes of Roman society - the senatorial gentes as well as the provincial curia - felt, out of a deep peasant tradition, toward all forms of economic activity other than those deriving from agriculture." p. 71
"Whenever a class attains a certain degree of maturity and consciousness, its opposition to ruling classes takes a religious form." 76
" According to Leon, Jews who assimilated were no longer Jews. Where ever the Jews cease to constitute a class, they lose, more or less rapidly their ethical, religious and linguistic characteristics, the became assimilated." p. 81

[Mahmoud Moftah · Rating 4 out of 5]

لو أن للكتب أرواحاً لكانت روح هذا الكتاب تكمُن في الصفحتين التاسِعه و العاشره من محتواه ؛ ستجد فيهما مضمون الكتاب علي هيئة كلمات وأفكار منثوره بين الأسطُر

من بين كل الكتب التي قرأتها عن (المسأله اليهوديه) يعد هذا أكثرهم تحديداً ومباشره .. لكن منهجه الفكري في تحليل المسأله مبني علي الماديه التاريخيه وكي أكون مُنصِفاً تلك الماديه في النظره التاريخيه تجعل التفسيرات التي ستقرأها تبدو مَنطقيه كثيراً ولكنها في جوهرها ليست كذلك حيثُ أن النظره الماديه في الجانب التاريخي لا تري المجتمع مكون من الأفراد وإنما تراه ملخص للعلاقات المتبادله التي يتخذها الأفراد بمعني أبسط تتبع ميول الجماعه وسلوكها الذي تتخذه في سبيل تطورها والمحافظه علي وجودها وبقدر ما يبدو هذا منطقي إلا أن فيه تجاهل للعوامل والنزعات الفرديه الغير ماديه المبنيه علي جوانب أخلاقيه وجماليه وروحيه

في رأيي الكتاب جيد كصوره عامه ولكن التفاصيل دائماً ما تحمل حقائق أدق

[Grace Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super interesting book which takes you on an extremely comprehensive journey through Jewish history (Roman empire, feudalism etc) & migration.

Abram Leon was a Zionist, but then he later denounced his own work, instead choosing to fight for internationalism, arguing that Zionism was inextricably linked to capitalism, and that Zionism would be an obstacle to both Jewish and Arab workers coming together.

I would have liked to see what he’d have thought about the current state of things, but unfortunately his life was taken in Auschwitz, and unfortunately some of the people that wrote the introductions to this book didn’t do him justice in the spirit of socialism.

[Iago · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesante repaso a la historia de la diáspora judía y a todo el desarrollo de la cuestión judía hasta el año 1942. La visión materialista que ofrece el autor se corresponde muy bien con la realidad, pero me pareció que quedaba explicada de manera un poco pobre una de las tesis centrales de la obra, que trata sobre la explicación económica de la supervivencia de la religión judía en la diáspora.

[Judd Maltin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though limited as it is by the Trotskyist position, this is an excellent introduction to class and material analysis applied to the history of the Jewish people in Europe.

The modern introduction by Prince is an entertaining bit of propaganda, that in its brevity manages to not spoil the book.

Most useful is Leon's conception of a "people-class," i.e. an identifiable group that plays a unique economic role in the structure of class society

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exhilarating read.

"Capitalism destroyed feudal society, and with it the function of the Jewish people-class. History doomed this people-class to disappearance; and thus the Jewish question arose. The Jewish question is the question of adapting the Jewish people to modern society, of liquidating the heritage bequeathed to humanity by feudalism."

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

"La cuestión judía no tiene solución dentro del régimen capitalista, así como no la hay para otros problemas de la humanidad, sin profundas conmociones sociales."

"Únicamente la más amplia democracia proletaria puede permitir que se resuelva el problema judío con un mínimo de sufrimiento."

[Robert Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent resource and relevant to the current social crisis.

[Ignacio Frutos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muy god