In Judenhass und Judentum (1914), Kautsky devotes significant time to demonstrating that there is no such thing as a Jewish race, in the sense of specific "physical" or "mental" traits, and he dismantles the prevailing prejudices on this subject, including those held by the antisemitic sociologist Werner Sombart. (Not surprisingly, Kontrekulture, the publishing house associated with the French fascist agitator Alain Soral, recently reissued Sombart’s 656-page book The Jews and Modern Capitalism (1)). Kautsky argues that while Jews are neither a race nor a nation—he was therefore critical of Zionism— and that they do form a distinct transnational social group characterized by three fundamental elements :

1. They have primarily lived in cities, embodying what he considers the archetype of the homo urbanus.
2. They have maintained a special relationship with reading, technical knowledge (thanks to their experiences in various crafts), and scientific knowledge.
3. They have historically occupied certain professions related to trade and finance (such as intermediaries, commercial representatives, tax collectors, loan sharks), crafts (including clothing and leather), and various professions (doctors and scholars).

Kautsky suggests that over the centuries, Jews have formed "an association of members of a particular class scattered throughout the world," which he believes led to the emergence of specific "hereditary traits !" He goes even further, stating that "the great mass of Jews have constituted, for two thousand years, an exclusive, hereditary caste of merchants, financiers, urban intellectuals, and some craftsmen. Through practice and the accumulation of experience from generation to generation, they have developed more traits specific to these social strata, in opposition to the peasant masses that make up the rest of the population."

Due to this mechanistic analysis, which is supported by minimal empirical data (Kautsky provides very few historiographical sources for his thesis) and relies heavily on impressionistic views aligned with anti-Jewish prejudices, it is not surprising that German Communists and Socialists trained in the Marxist and Kautskyian schools of thought struggled to effectively combat antisemitism.

Kautsky, referred to as the "pope of Marxism," later claimed that after 1921, antisemitism stemmed from resentment among white-collar workers, petty bourgeois, and intellectuals (produced by the University in an « exaggerated » proportion…) towards the Jews’ "ability to advance more rapidly" in the social ladder. However, he also noted that the emigration of Jewish workers from Eastern Europe and Russia to Germany added another dimension to understanding antisemitism : competition among proletarians. "Today, it is increasingly the proletarian Jew (the penniless student, the broke salesman, and the home worker), who suffers the hostility of antisemites. (...) Antisemitism has now entered the phase of the struggle against the proletariat, and has become one of the most brutal forms of struggle."

Since Kautsky died in 1938, I cannot ascertain whether he developed more nuanced analyses of Nazi antisemitism and the Jewish question. Unfortunately, these analyses are not mentioned in the works I have consulted. Additionally, it seems that Marxists have made little progress in analyzing the wrongly called « Jewish question (2) » since 1921—indeed, one could argue that they have made no progress since 1844 !

2/09/2014

1. https://historyofeconomicthought.mcmaster.ca/sombart/jews.pdf . Published in 1911.

2. This expression is incorrect, according to Dany Trom (La promesse et l’obstacle - La gauche radicale et le problème juif, Cerf, 2017) ; it reflects a so-called "problem" that non-Jews find in the very existence of Jews, rather than a "question" that Jews debate among themselves.