Socialism Without Antisemitism

In "On the Jewish Question," published in 1844, Karl Marx famously stood the notion of Jewish emancipation on its head, writing that "Jews have emancipated themselves insofar as Christians have become Jews," i.e., admirers of Mammon. Far from being ghettoized and excluded, deprived of basic freedoms, and subjected to horrific individual and mass accusations and physical violence for centuries, Marx explained to his followers, the Jews of Europe were in fact historical oppressors bent on conquest. "The everyday Jew devoted himself to endless bartering ... It was still Judaism, practical in its nature, that was victorious," Marx explained. "Egotism permeated society."