----- Original Message ----- From: "Jan Coffey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 1:37 PM Subject: Re: Dogmatism
> As Spock would say when confronted in such a way, ...Indeed. > > He did, however, sound to me like one of many "Everyone who isn't a staunch > conservative is out to get the Jews" kind of thinker. Well, he certainly wasn't foolish enough to call Tom anti-Semetic. :-) >If he can come off that way to someone such as myself then he definitely needs to back up his claims > that Marx was an anti-Semite. He did. He gave the work of Marx that he based his opinion on. Its easy to find and read on the web; its quite short. I just typed marx jewish question and got http://csf.colorado.edu/psn/marx/Archive/1844-JQ/ let me quote from it. <quote> Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man -- and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world -- both the world of men and nature -- of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man's work and man's existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it. The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. The view of nature attained under the domination of private property and money is a real contempt for, and practical debasement of, nature; in the Jewish religion, nature exists, it is true, but it exists only in imagination. It is in this sense that [ in a 1524 pamphlet ] Thomas Munzer declares it intolerable "that all creatures have been turned into property, the fishes in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth; the creatures, too, must become free." Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in himself, which is contained in an abstract form in the Jewish religion, is the real, conscious standpoint, the virtue of the man of money. The species-relation itself, the relation between man and woman, etc., becomes an object of trade! The woman is bought and sold. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of of the merchant, of the man of money in general. <unquote> > > You would think that if Marx was an anti-Semite, we would have learned that > in my survey course. We did after all learn that many Germans of the time > were. > Dan, you have many times requested references, and in this case I think that > some reference is warranted. We are talking about what someone said after > all. What Gautam has said is to me akin to being told that Hitler was a > Communist, or that Stalin was a Christian. He gave the reference. <quote> Marx _certainly_ would have approved of Lenin's and Stalin's anti-semitism. "On the Jewish Question" is so viciously anti-semitic that the historical affinity of some Jewish intellectuals for Marxism has always confused the hell out of me. <unquote> > You can't just blurt stuff like that out with out some proof. You would think > that if it were the case, then it would be just as common knowledge as that > Stalin was an Atheist and Hitler hated Communism. I certainly knew it for a long time. I guess that simply reflects the differences in the schools we went to. I studied origional works of philosophy from my freshman year on. I tend to have a bias towards that tyoe of study. Lots of things that are true should be but are not common knowledge. The reasons for this could be the subject of a long thread. :-) > Besides, if you are going to say something so incredible, and provocative, > and you have the credentials to be believed, then you have the responsibility > to at least list said credentials. But, it wasn't incredible and provocative. How could any serious student of Marxism not think of "On the Jewish Question" when trying to understand Marx's philosophy with regards to the Jews? >Otherwise it's just another form of > trolling. Intellectual trolling, is no better than the idiotic variety. If > you have such a position then you gain a lot of responsibility, wouldn't you > say? Responsibility like that of a black belt not to get into a fight, since > such a fight might be lethal for the opponent. You didn't know Gautam went to Harvard? I guess those of us who are old timers just took it for granted. This exact subject has been debated at length here too, probably before you were on list. The thing that I objected to was assuming you knew more than you did about Gautam. I really don't understand why you didn't ask for a quote from "On the Jewish Question" I significantly differ with the idea that one must trot out one's credentials every time one knows a lot more than someone else about a subject. Sometimes I do; sometimes I don't. I do admit that, if someone starts to claim that I'm ignorant about a subject that I have studied in detail, I give them enough rope to hang themselves sometimes. Dan M. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
