The Marxists and the Jewish Question - The History of a Debate (1843-1943) (Hardcover, 2nd edition)

Does a synthesis between Jewishness and socialism exist? For a century, the workers' movement and the Marxists tried to answer this question. A wide range of views were advanced, from those of Karl Marx to Abram Leon, generating a great debate. The theorists of the Second International conceived history as a long march toward "Progress" and - adhering to the model inherited from the Enlightenment - made no distinction between the emancipation and the assimilation of the Jews. In contrast, the Jewish Socialists of Eastern Europe considered themselves rooted in Jewish history and culture. Walter Benjamin, romantic German intellectual and Marxist outsider, attempted to re-interpret historical materialism in a Messianic light, seeing the revolution as the "redemption" of history in the name of the vanquished. Afer World War II and the Holocaust, this debate was forgotten. This book, first published in France in 1990, reconstructs this debate, emphasizing both its richness and its limitations.