Selected Essays Part 2

1. BRUNO BAUER, _Die Judenfrage_ (_The Jewish Question_), Brunswick 1843.

2. BRUNO BAUER, _Die Fahigkeit der heutigen Juden und Christen, frei zu werden_ (_The Capacity of Modern Jews and Christians to become free_), Zurich 1843.

1. BRUNO BAUER, _Die Judenfrage_, Brunswick 1843.

The German Jews crave for emanc.i.p.ation. What emanc.i.p.ation do they crave? Civic, political emanc.i.p.ation.

Bruno Bauer answers them: n.o.body in Germany is politically emanc.i.p.ated. We ourselves are unfree. How shall we liberate you? You Jews are egoists, if you demand a special emanc.i.p.ation for yourselves as Jews. As Germans you ought to labour for the political emanc.i.p.ation of Germany, as men for human emanc.i.p.ation, and you ought to feel the special nature of your oppression and your disgrace not as an exception from the rule, but rather as its confirmation.

Or do Jews demand to be put on an equal footing with Christian subjects? Then they recognize the Christian State as justified, then they recognize the regime of general subjugation. Why are they displeased at their special yoke, when the general yoke pleases them?

Why should Germans interest themselves in the emanc.i.p.ation of the Jews, if Jews do not interest themselves in the emanc.i.p.ation of Germans?

The Christian State knows only privileges. In that State the Jew possesses the privilege of being a Jew. As a Jew, he has rights which a Christian has not. Why does he crave the rights which he has not, and which Christians enjoy?

If the Jew wants to be emanc.i.p.ated from the Christian State, then he should demand that the Christian State abandon its religious prejudice. Will the Jew abandon his religious prejudice? Has he therefore the right to demand of another this abdication of religion?

By its very nature the Christian State cannot emanc.i.p.ate the Jews; but, adds Bauer, by his very nature the Jew cannot be emanc.i.p.ated.

So long as the State is Christian and the Jew is Jewish, both are equally incapable of granting and receiving emanc.i.p.ation.

The Christian State can only behave towards the Jew in the manner of a Christian State, that is in a privileged manner, by granting the separation of the Jew from the other subjects, but causing him to feel the pressure of the other separated spheres, and all the more onerously inasmuch as the Jew is in religious antagonism to the dominant religion. But the Jew also can only conduct himself towards the State in a Jewish fashion, that is as a stranger, by opposing his chimerical nationality to the real nationality, his illusory law to the real law, by imagining that his separation from humanity is justified, by abstaining on principle from all partic.i.p.ation in the historical movement, by waiting on a future which has nothing in common with the general future of mankind, by regarding himself as a member of the Jewish people and the Jewish people as the chosen people.

Upon what grounds therefore do you Jews crave emanc.i.p.ation? On account of your religion? It is the mortal enemy of the State religion. As citizens? There are no citizens in Germany. As men? You are as little men as He on whom you called.

After giving a criticism of the previous positions and solutions of the question, Bauer has freshly posited the question of Jewish emanc.i.p.ation. How, he asks, are they const.i.tuted, the Jew to be emanc.i.p.ated, and the Christian State which is to emanc.i.p.ate? He replies by a criticism of the Jewish religion, he a.n.a.lyses the religious antagonism between Judaism and Christianity, he explains the nature of the Christian State, and all this with boldness, acuteness, spirit, and thoroughness, in a style as precise as it is forcible and energetic.

How then does Bauer solve the Jewish question? What is the result? The formulation of a question is its solution. The criticism of the Jewish question is the answer to the Jewish question.

The summary is therefore as follows:

We must emanc.i.p.ate ourselves before we are able to emanc.i.p.ate others.

The most rigid form of the antagonism between the Jew and the Christian is the religious antagonism. How is this antagonism resolved? By making it impossible. How is a religious antagonism made impossible? By abolishing religion.

As soon as Jew and Christian recognize their respective religions as different stages in the development of the human mind, as different snake skins which history has cast off, and men as the snakes encased therein, they stand no longer in a religious relationship, but in a critical, a scientific, a human one. Science then const.i.tutes their unity. Antagonisms in science, however, are resolved by science itself.

The German Jew is particularly affected by the lack of political emanc.i.p.ation in general and the p.r.o.nounced Christianity of the State.

In Bauer's sense, however, the Jewish question has a general significance independent of the specific German conditions.

It is the question of the relation of religion to the State, of the contradiction between religious entanglement and political emanc.i.p.ation. Emanc.i.p.ation from religion is posited as a condition, both for the Jews, who desire to be politically emanc.i.p.ated, and for the State, which shall emanc.i.p.ate and itself be emanc.i.p.ated.

"Good, you say, and the Jew says so too, the Jew also is not to be emanc.i.p.ated as Jew, not because he is a Jew, not because he has such an excellent, general, human principle of morality; the Jew will rather retire behind the citizen and be a citizen, although he is a Jew and wants to remain one: that is, he is and remains a Jew, in spite of the fact that he is a citizen and lives in general human relationships: his Jewish and limited nature always and eventually triumphs over his human and political obligations. The prejudice remains in spite of the fact that it has been outstripped by general principles. If, however, it remains, it rather outstrips everything else." "Only sophistically and to outward seeming would the Jew be able to remain a Jew in civic life; if he desired to remain a Jew, the mere semblance would therefore be the essential thing and would triumph, that is, his life in the State would be only a semblance or a pa.s.sing exception to the rule and the nature of things" ("The Capacity of modern Jews and Christians to become free," p. 57).

Let us see, on the other hand, how Bauer describes the task of the State: "France has recently (proceedings of the Chamber of Deputies, 26th December 1840) in connection with the Jewish question--as constantly in all other political questions--given us a glimpse of a life which is free, but revokes its freedom in law, and therefore a.s.serts it to be a sham, and on the other hand contradicts its free law by its act." "The Jewish Question," p. 64.

"General freedom is not yet legal in France, the Jewish question is not yet solved, because legal freedom--that all citizens are equal--is limited in practice, which is still dominated by religious privileges, and this unfreedom in practice reacts on the law, compelling the latter to sanction the division of nominally free citizens into oppressed and oppressor," p. 65.

When, therefore, would the Jewish problem be solved for France?

"The Jew, for instance, must cease to be a Jew if he will not allow himself to be hindered by his law from fulfilling his duties towards the State and his fellow-citizens, going, for example, to the Chamber of Deputies on the Sabbath and taking part in the public sittings.

Every religious privilege, and consequently the monopoly of a privileged Church, must be surrendered, and if few or many or even the great majority believe they ought still to perform religious duties, this performance must be left to themselves as a private matter," p.

65. "When there is no longer a privileged religion, there will no longer be a religion. Take from religion its excommunicating power, and it exists no longer," p. 66.

On the one hand, Bauer states that the Jew must abandon Judaism, and that man must abandon religion, in order to be emanc.i.p.ated as a citizen. On the other hand, he feels he is logical in interpreting the political abolition of religion to mean the abolition of religion altogether. The State, which presupposes religion, is as yet no true, no real State. "At any rate the religious idea gives the State guarantees. But what State? What kind of State?" p. 97.

At this point we are brought up against the one-sided conception of the Jewish question.

It was by no means sufficient to inquire: Who shall emanc.i.p.ate? Who shall be emanc.i.p.ated? Criticism had a third task to perform.

It had to ask: what kind of emanc.i.p.ation are we concerned with? Upon what conditions is the desired emanc.i.p.ation based? The criticism of political emanc.i.p.ation itself was only the eventual criticism of the Jewish question and its true solution, in the "general question of the time."

Because Bauer does not raise the question to this level he falls into contradictions. He posits conditions which are not involved in the nature of political emanc.i.p.ation itself. He suggests questions which his problem does not imply, and he solves problems which leave his questions unsettled. Whereas Bauer says of the opponents of Jewish emanc.i.p.ation: "Their mistake was that they a.s.sumed the Christian State to be the only real State, and did not subject it to the same criticism that they applied to Judaism," we find Bauer's mistake to consist in the fact that it is only the Christian State, and not the "general State," that he subjects to criticism, that he does not investigate the relation of political emanc.i.p.ation to human emanc.i.p.ation, and consequently lays down conditions which are only explicable from an uncritical confusion of political emanc.i.p.ation with general human emanc.i.p.ation.

When Bauer asks Jews: Have you the right from your standpoint to crave political emanc.i.p.ation? we would inquire on the contrary: Has the standpoint of political emanc.i.p.ation the right to demand of Jews the abolition of Judaism, or from men generally the abolition of religion?

The complexion of the Jewish question changes according to the State in which Jews find themselves. In Germany, where no political State, no State as State exists, the Jewish question is a purely theological question. The Jew finds himself in religious antagonism to the State, which acknowledges Christianity as its basis. This State is theologian _ex professo_. Here criticism is criticism of theology, is two-edged criticism, criticism of Christian and criticism of Jewish theology.

But however critical we may be, we cannot get out of the theological circle.

In France, in the const.i.tutional State, the Jewish question is the question of const.i.tutionalism, of the incompleteness of political emanc.i.p.ation. As the semblance of a State religion is there preserved, although in a meaningless and self-contradictory formula, in the formula of a religion of the majority, the relationship of Jews to the State retains the semblance of a religious and theological antagonism.

It is only in the North American Free States--at least in part of them--that the Jewish question loses its theological significance and becomes a really secular question. Only where the political State exists in its completeness can the relation of the Jew, of the religious man generally, to the political State, and therefore the relation of religion to the State, be studied in its special features and its purity. The criticism of this relationship ceases to be theological criticism when the State ceases to adopt a theological att.i.tude towards religion, when its att.i.tude towards religion becomes purely political. The criticism then becomes criticism of the political State. At this point, where the question ceases to be theological, Bauer's criticism ceases to be critical. In the United States there is neither a State religion nor a religion declared to be that of the majority, nor the predominance of one cult over another.

The State is alien to all cults. (_Marie ou l'esclavage aux Etats-Unis_, etc., by G. Beaumont, Paris 1835, p. 214.) There are even North American States where "the const.i.tution does not impose religious beliefs or the practice of a cult as a condition of political privileges" (l. c. p. 225). Yet "n.o.body in the United States believes that a man without religion might be an honest man" (l. c. p.

224). Yet North America is pre-eminently the country of religiosity, as Beaumont, Tocqueville and the Englishman Hamilton a.s.sure us with one voice. Meanwhile, the North American States only serve us as an example. The question is: What is the att.i.tude of completed political emanc.i.p.ation towards religion? If even in the country of completed political emanc.i.p.ation we find religion not only existing, but in a fresh and vital state, it proves that the existence of religion does not contradict the completeness of the State. But as the existence of religion indicates the presence of a defect, the source of this defect may only be looked for in the nature of the State. We are no longer concerned with religion as the basis, but only as the phenomenon of secular shortcomings. Consequently we explain the religious handicap of the free citizens from their secular handicap. We do not a.s.sert that they must remove their religious handicap as soon as they cast off their secular fetters. We do not transform secular questions into theological questions. We transform theological questions into secular questions.

After history has for so long been dissolved in superst.i.tion, we dissolve the superst.i.tion in history. The question of the relation of political emanc.i.p.ation becomes for us the question of the relation of political emanc.i.p.ation to human emanc.i.p.ation. We criticize the religious weakness of the political State by criticizing the political State in its secular construction, apart from the religious weaknesses. We trans.m.u.te the contradiction of the State with a specific religion, like Judaism, into the contradiction of the State with specific secular elements, and the contradiction of the State with religion generally into the contradiction of the State with its general a.s.sumptions.

The political emanc.i.p.ation of the Jew, of the Christian, of the religious man in general, means the emanc.i.p.ation of the State from Judaism, from Christianity, from religion generally. In its form as State, in the manner peculiar to its nature, the State emanc.i.p.ates itself from religion by emanc.i.p.ating itself from the State religion, that is, by the State as State acknowledging no religion.

Political emanc.i.p.ation from religion is not a thorough-going and consistent emanc.i.p.ation from religion, because political emanc.i.p.ation is not effectual and consistent human emanc.i.p.ation.

The limit of political emanc.i.p.ation is immediately seen to consist in the fact that the State can cast off a fetter without men really becoming free from it, that the State can become a free State without men becoming free men. Bauer tacitly a.s.sents to this in laying down the following condition for political emanc.i.p.ation. "Every religious privilege, and therefore the monopoly of a privileged Church must be surrendered, and if few or many or even the great majority believe they ought still to perform religious duties, this performance must be left to themselves as a private matter." The State may therefore achieve emanc.i.p.ation from religion, although the great majority are still religious. And the great majority do not cease to be religious by being religious privately.

The political elevation of the individual above religion shares all the defects and all the advantages of political elevation generally.

For example, the State as State annuls private property, the individual declares in a political manner that private property is abolished as soon as he abolishes the census for active and pa.s.sive eligibility, which has been done in many North American States.

Hamilton interprets this fact quite correctly from the political standpoint: "The great mult.i.tude has won the victory over the property owners and the monied men." Is not private property ideally abolished when the have-nots become the legislators of the haves? The census is the last political form to recognize private property.

Yet private property is not only not abolished with the political annulment of private property, but is even implied therein. The State abolishes in its fashion the distinctions of birth, status, education, and occupation when it declares birth, status, education, and occupation to be unpolitical distinctions, when, without taking account of these distinctions, it calls upon every member of the community to partic.i.p.ate in the popular sovereignty on an equal footing, when it deals with all the elements of the real popular life from the State's point of view. Nevertheless the State leaves private property, education, occupation operating in their own manner, that is, as education, as occupation, and developing their potentialities.

From abolishing these actual distinctions, it rather exists only upon their basis, and is conscious of being a political State and enforcing its communal principle only in opposition to these its elements. Consequently Hegel defines the relation of the political State to religion quite correctly when he says: "If the State is to have reality as the ethical, self-conscious realization of spirit, it must be distinguished from the form of authority and faith. But this distinction arises only in so far as the ecclesiastical side is in itself divided into several churches. Then only is the State seen to be superior to them, and wins and brings into existence the universality of thought as the principle of its form." ("Philosophy of Right," Eng. tr. p. 270.)

By its nature the completed political State is the generic life of man in contradistinction to his material life. All the a.s.sumptions of this egoistic life remain in existence outside the sphere of the State, in bourgeois society, but as the peculiarities of bourgeois society.

Where the political State has attained its true development, the individual leads not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, a double life, a heavenly and an earthly life, a life in the political community, wherein he counts as a member of the community, and a life in bourgeois society, wherein he is active as a private person, regarding other men as a means, degrading himself into a means and becoming a plaything of alien powers.

The political State is related to bourgeois society as spiritualistically as heaven is to earth. It occupies the same position of antagonism towards bourgeois society; it subdues the latter just as religion overcomes the limitations of the profane world, that is, by recognizing bourgeois society and allowing the latter to dominate it. Man in his outermost reality, in bourgeois society, is a profane being. Here, where he is a real individual for himself and others, he is an untrue phenomenon.

In the State, on the other hand, where the individual is a generic being, he is the imaginary member of an imagined sovereignty, he is robbed of his real individual life and filled with an unreal universality.