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For 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).
“The Jewish Question undoubtedly accomplishes Traverso’s aim of reconstructing a historical debate, and more. In doing so, the work illuminates both the diversity of the Marxian tradition and the crucial shortcomings of Marxist orthodoxy.”
—Chamsy el-Ojeili, Thesis Eleven
“Traverso’s book is, above all else, a corrective to the prevailing naivety that assimilation can solve, or already has solved, the Jewish question.”
—Naomi Bennet, Tempest
“With the rise of neo-fascist movements and the resurgence of authoritarianism around the world, there is no more pressing a time for revisiting the moral and political stakes of the ‘Jewish Question’ which has always been bound up with the unfinished project of human emancipation. In this respect, Traverso’s book is a welcome contribution.”
—Igor Shoikhedbrod, Marx & Philosophy 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
Enzo Traverso (1957) is Susan and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University. He has taught in different countries and published many books, translated into a dozen languages, among which are Fire and Blood: The European Civil War (Verso, 2016) and Left-Wing Melancholia (Columbia University Press, 2017).
Table 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