The Marxist Origins of Hitlerian Hate

It seemed like a plausible thesis: the value of a product is determined by the amount of labor needed to produce it. Yet the idea may well have contributed to the appeal of Nazism and lead directly to the European holocaust.

Marx was the best known of the proponents of the labor theory of value. In fact much of his economic system is built on this premise. But Marx didn’t originate the idea. Before him David Ricardo proposed it and before Ricardo there was Adam Smith. And if Prof. Murray Rothbard is right then Smith probably adopted the idea from the teachings of John Calvin. As Marx said: “A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labor in the abstract had been embodied or materialized in it.”

Since value is created by labor, more specifically by what appears to be physical labor as embodied by the manual laborer, it was clear to Marx that certain classes of individuals produced nothing of value at all. If the value of a product was the sum total of the labor put into it then how was it that the entrepreneur or capitalist made a profit? For Marx the answer was easy. He clearly cannot pay the worker the full value of his labor and thus he exploits the workers and lives off of their productivity. For Marx the essence of capitalism was the exploitation of workers by capitalists.

Class warfare was thus inevitable as the workers sought to free themselves from the exploitation of capitalists. This meant the world was divided into two fundamental classes: those that exploit and those who are exploited — no other option could exist, said Marx, under liberal capitalism. He concluded: “In order that one class should be the class of emancipation par excellence, another class must contrariwise be the class of manifest subjugation.”

Marx and his followers certainly were the main propagandists for the idea that labor produce value. And until the rise of the Austrian school of economics this was the dominant theory of value in Europe.

Marx, however, was quite specific when it came to denouncing capitalists. For him the archetype capitalist was the Jew.

The "Jewish Question"

To follow this idea to its culmination in the Nazi campaign against the Jews we must go back to Marx and his ideas. One hundred years before the Nationalist Socialist regime of Adolph Hitler Marx was writing on what was called the "Jewish Question" Marx’s anti-Semitism, now well documented, was derived from his economic theories. And his anti-Jewish tract makes the connection quite clear. (See On the Jewish Question, by Karl Marx.)

For Marx the Jews were not so much a religion, or a race, but a cultural phenomenon. What created Judaism, said Marx, was a desire to seek monetary profits. His polemic stated:

“Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew.

“What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest.

“What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money.”

For Marx profit-seeking was Judaism and the Jew was the personification of capitalism. They personified evil because they tended to work in finance, retail merchandising, or as entrepreneurs. And in the Marxist theory these professions did not produce value but stole it from the source of real wealth: the manual laborers. The Jewish financier produced nothing in Marx’s view and thus only lived off the exploitation of others. Moreover this, in Marx’s view, was the essence of capitalism. “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. ... The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world.”

This Judaic concept of profit-seeking, said Marx, had corrupted the Christian world as well through what he called the “Judaism of civil society” that is the transformation of civil society in a Judaic culture of profit-seeking.

Marx’s tract was a reply to another book dealing with the emancipation of Jews from feudalist laws which restricted their civil and economic freedom. Marx argued that to talk about emancipating Jews was absurd since everyone was a slave to capitalism which was fundamentally the culture of Judaism. The only true emancipation possible was the destruction of profit-seeking Judaism and it’s step-child, liberal capitalism. As he wrote: “The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism.”

Anti-Capitalism = Anti-Semitism

Under the feudal structures social mobility was restricted. Jewish merchants and entrepreneurs didn’t exist because laws restricted their ability to trade. But with the rise of Liberal capitalism such laws were disregarded. And those non-Jewish businessman who didn’t succeed resented the success of Jews. Professor Peter Pulzer wrote: “Dissatisfaction with the practical consequences of Liberalism was even stronger in economic than in political matters; anti-capitalism was, after all, one of the oldest and most natural forms of anti-Semitism. Liberal society was characterized by a high degree of social mobility with a premium on individual worth and ability. Perhaps this pill was the hardest to swallow. All those who had an assured place in an ordered hierarchy, even if it was a comparatively low one, looked with distaste on an order which allowed others to rise to positions of eminence and influence...” (p. 42)

He also said that “anti-Semitism is anti-capitalist since capitalism is one of the causes of social mobility.” (p. 43)

Building on Marx’s theory the socialists of the late 1800s clearly saw Jews as their prime enemy. And almost without exception the anti-Semitic movements of the era were all variants of socialism. Wilhelm Marr, who some attribute as the man who coined the term anti-Semitic, bragged: “anti-Semitism is a Socialist movement, only in nobler and purer forms than Social Democracy.” Even the pre-Marxian socialists were convinced anti-Semites. Pierre Leroux, in an 1834 article, one of the first to use the word socialist, said: “This merchant is a real Jew. It is applied, in familiar style, to all those who show great greed for money and eagerness to make it.” He later clarified: “It is quite evident, is it not my friends, that when we speak of Jews we mean the Jewish spirit, the spirit of profit, of lucre, of gain, the spirit of commerce, of speculation, in a word, the banker’s spirit.” Leroux’s contemporary and fellow socialist Charles Fourier argued that Jews were “parasites, merchants, usurers” who “pillage the country like pirates and were guilty of mercantile depravities.” Edmund Silberner in Jewish Social Studies noted: “Socialist anti-Semitism is indeed as old as modern Socialism, and is not limited to any particular country.”

The ability of the Jews to succeed in business ventures was despised by many in the lower middle classes who themselves had failed at similar ventures. Marx argued that such success was indicative of exploitation and these would-be merchants were all too happy to accept that theory. It certainly was more palatable than the one that said they failed because they didn’t have the necessary abilities.

Marx said capitalism was Judaic in nature. Later anti-Semites weren’t sure this was true but if it wasn’t the alternative was that Jews had the ability to twist Liberal economic systems to their advantage. As “Die Judenfrage”, an anti-Semite publication, stated: “The doctrine of egalitarian free economics and of corresponding human rights in economics, as they were formulated in a humanely well-meaning way the Scotsman Hume and Smith, were used by the Jews in order to derive from them their monopoly.” The anti-Semite mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, said that “only fat Jews can survive the murderous competition of economic freedom. Christian people must be protected from insatiable capitalism.”. The Nazi Adolf Stocker put it this way: “the Jewish questions — always and everywhere — has to do with economic exploitation.”

Throughout Europe Marx-inspired anti-Semites jumped on the bandwagon. Taking their clue from their mentor they announced that capitalism allowed the Jews to dominate others and that capitalism itself was the manifestation of the Judaizing of civil society. Some anti-Semites turned things slightly. For them capitalism, in the form of industrial production, was good while “financial” capitalism was evil. The Marxists denounced the entire system. They both agreed that the Jews were capitalists it was only on the specific details that they disagreed.

Jim Peron is the author of Die, the Beloved Country?, a book exposing the misrule by mismanagement of the African National Congress during its first term of office in South Africa. He recently finished an expose of the Mugabe regime: Zimbabwe: the Death of a Dream. He can be contacted at peron@gonet.co.za.