Description
Book SynopsisFor figures ranging from Karl Marx to the luminaries of the Frankfurt School, the 'Jewish Question' — a set of problems related to emancipation and anti-Semitism, cultural assimilation and Zionism — raised significant controversies within Marxist theory. Renowned scholar Enzo Traverso carefully reconstructs this intellectual debate that runs over more than a century, discussing both its generative aspects and its blind alleys. In The Jewish Question: History of a Marxist Debate, Traverso explores the causes and the forms of the encounter that took place, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the Holocaust, between the intelligentsia of a cosmopolitan minority and the most radical ideological current of Western modernity.
This is the second edition, completely rewritten and updated, of a book already translated into many languages (originally published in French, then translated into English, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Turkish).
Trade Review"This is a rich, complex, fascinating, if at times difficult, intellectual history that brings to life an old debate that is still very topical and relevant today."
–Deborah Maccoby, Jewish Voice for Labour
Table of ContentsTable of Contents
Historicising the Marxist Jewish Question: Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Marx, Radical Enlightenment, and the Jews
1 Marx: the Jew as Geldmensch
2 Engels: the Jews as a &'People without History'
3 The Struggle against Anti-Semitism
2 The Jewish Marxist Intelligentsia
1 Central Europe
2 Eastern Europe
3 Hypotheses
3 The German and Austrian Marxists (1880-1920)
1 Anti-Semitism
2 Zionism
3 The Paradigm of Assimilation: Otto Bauer
4 The Paradigm of Assimilation: Karl Kautsky
4 Russian Marxism (1900-20)
1 Lenin
2 Stalin
3 Trotsky
4 Rosa Luxemburg
5 Conclusion
5 Jewish Marxism
1 Russian Marxism and Jewish Marxism
2 The Jewish Workers' Movement
3 National Autonomy: Vladimir Medem
4 Zionism: Ber Borokhov
Intermezzo: The Jews and the Russian Revolution (1917-37)
6 Gramsci and the Jewish Question
7 From Weimar to Auschwitz: Anti-Semitism and the German Left
1 The KPD: From the &'Schlageter Line' to the &'Third Period'
2 The &'Roofless Left'
3 Trotsky's Warnings
8 The Messianic Materialism of Walter Benjamin
1 German Culture and Jewishness
2 Marxism
3 Critique of Progress
4 Historical Materialism and Theology
5 Outsider
9 The Theory of the People-Class: Abram Leon
1 Historiographical Limitations
2 Capitalism and Assimilation
3 Anti-Semitism
4 Solutions
10 Postwar Marxism and the Holocaust
1 The Frankfurt School
2 Ernest Mandel
3 Capitalism and the Holocaust
Conclusion
Glossary
Chronology
Bibliography
Index
