The Socialist Roots of Modern Anti-Semitism; T. Cowen

-ULRlKE MEINHOF, left-wing German terrorist of the 1970s1 C apitalism and the market economy en courage racial, ethnic, and religious tol erance, while supporting a plurality of diverse lifestyles and customs. Heavily regulated or socialist economies, in contrast, tend to breed intolerance and ethnic persecution. Socialism leads to low rates of economic growth, dis putes over resource use, and concentrated political power-all conditions which encour age conflict rather than cooperation. Ethnic and religious minorities usually do poorly when political coercion is prevalent. Eco nomic collapses-usually associated with in terventionism-worsen the problem by un leashing the destructive psychological forces of envy and resentment, which feed prejudice and persecution. While discrimination is present in societies Dr. Cowen teaches economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

8 of all kinds, discriminators must pay pecuni ary costs for indulging their prejudices in a market setting. Even the prejudiced usually will trade with minorities; bigots attempt to oppress minorities by socializing the costs through government action, but bigots usually are less willing to bear these costs themselves. Repeated commercial interactions also in crease the social familiarity of customs or lifestyles that otherwise might be found un usual or alien. Sustained economic growth alleviates political and social tensions by cre ating more for everybody. The history of the Jewish people illustrates the relatively favorable position of minorities in a market setting. Hostility toward trade and commerce has often fueled hostility to ward Jews, and vice versa. The societies most congenial to commercial life for their time Renaissance Italy, the growing capitalist economies of England and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, and the United States-typically have shown the most toler ation for Jews. Ellis Rivkin, in his neglected masterpiece, The Shaping ofJewish History:A Radical New Interpretation, wrote: Since World War II Jews and Judaism have been liberated in every country and territory where capitalism has been restored to vigorous growth-and this includes Germany. By con trast, wherever anticapitalism or precapitalism has prevailed the status of Jews and Judaism has either undergone deterioration or is highly pre carious. Thus at this very moment the country where developing global capitalism is most ad vanced, the United States, accords Jews and Judaism a freedom that is known nowhere else in the world and that was never known in the past. It is a freedom that is not matched even in Israel. ... By contrast, in the Soviet Union, the citadel of anticapitalism, the Jews are cowed by anti-Semitism, threatened by extinction, and barred from access to their God.2 The socialist origins of modern anti Semitism illustrate the link between statism and the persecution of minorities. Anti Semitism as a formal, intellectual movement arose in the middle of the nineteenth century, when Jewish conspiracy theories grew in popularity. German writers picked up on earlier anti-Enlightenment theories of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to rule the world.

During the French Revolution, the Jews, along with the Masons, were identified as forces for liberalism, secularism, and capital ism. German writers quickly found the Jews to be a more popular target than the Masons, perhaps because they were more visible or more different. The originally Judeo-Masonic theories eventually discarded the other con spirators, such as the Templars and the Illu minati, and focused on the Jews. Anti-Semitism in Nineteenth Century Germany and Austria The anti-Jewish creed was formalized by Wilhelm Marr, the German writer who coined the term "anti-Semitic." In 1879 Marr pub lished his book The Victory of Judaism over Germandom, which went through twelve edi tions in six years. He also founded the "An tisemitic Journal," and started an "Anti semitic League." Marr idolized Tsarist Russia, and earlier in his career he had been a radical socialist. The new anti-Semites who followed Marr expanded the medieval attacks on Jewish traders and usurers and developed them into a full-scale economic critique. The Jews who provoked the most anger were those who embraced cosmopoli tan, Enlightenment values, and who achieved economic success.

In the second half of the nineteenth cen tury, Germany became the first country to 9 develop systematic anti-Semitic political and intellectual movements. In Germany, Adolf Stocker's Christian Social Party (1878-1885) combined anti-Semitism with left-wing, re formist legislation. The party attacked laissez faire economics and the Jews as part of the same liberal plague. Stocker's movement syn thesized medieval anti-Semitism, based in religion, and modern anti-Semitism, based in racism and socialist economics. He once wrote: "I see in unrestrained capitalism the evil of our epoch and am naturally also an opponent of modern Judaism on account of my socio-political views."Stocker had revered the Prussian aristocracy since his youth. Georg Ritter von Schonerer led the left wing, anti-Semitic movement in Austria. Schonerer's German Liberal Party, devel oped a lower-middle-class, anti-Semitic, anti capitalistic platform in the 1880s. Schonerer directed his anti-Semitism at the economic activity of the Rothschilds; he advocated nationalization of their railroad assets. Later, he broadened his charges to attack Jewish merchants more generally. Hitler was an avid admirer of Schonerer, and as a young man even hung Schonerer's slogans over his bed.

The growing nineteenth-century socialist movements did little to stem the anti-Semitic tide and often explicitly promoted anti Semitism. The initial link between socialism and anti-Semitism arose through intellectual affinity. Throughout the nineteenth century, the socialist critique of capitalism and the anti-Semitic critique used the same argu ments. Many socialists considered anti Semitism to be a way station on the path toward a more consistent socialist viewpoint. The very first systematic socialist philoso phers, the French Utopians of the early nineteenth century, had implicated the Jews in their critique of capitalism. French Jewry was highly commercial, financial, and capital istic. Proudhon and Fourier, who stressed the abolition of usury, saved their most vitriolic anti-Semitic tirades for Jewish moneylenders. Karl Marx continued the anti-Jewish po lemics of the socialists. The historical associ ation between Jews, private property, and commerce led to his well-known anti-Semitic diatribes. Marx, who sought to reconstruct 10 THE FREEMAN • JANUARY 1997 society according to his master plan, detested the particularistic nature of Jewish religion and custom. Some. of Marx's followers, such as Diihring and Lassalle, used anti-Semitism as a means of introducing anticapitalist doc trine. They believed that if the public could be convinced to hate Jewish capitalists, the pub lic would eventually come to hate non-Jewish capitalists as well.

A widely circulated nineteenth-century witticism described anti-Semitism as "the so cialism of fools" [der Sozialismus des bladen Mannes]. It was widely recognized that the anti-Semites shared the same gripes as the socialists; the anti-Semites simply chose too narrow a target. The socialists happily ac cepted the spirit of anti-Semitism, provided the target was widened to the entire capitalist class. More recently, the historian Paul John son has noted with irony that socialism has served as the "anti-Semitism of the intellec tuals.,,3 Even when socialists opposed anti Semitism, as later came to pass for tactical reasons, European socialist parties failed to provide effective opposition to anti-Semitic trends. Most socialists, with their dislike of capitalism, were unwilling to defend the eco nomic activities of Jews. Socialism pretended to be a revolutionary, liberal movement but in fact embraced the conservative doctrine of concentrated state power. Most socialists supported World War I, which provided a tremendous boost to anti-Semitism, without hesitation. Later, the Nazi party, the most dedicated enemy of the Jews, was a national socialist party from the beginning.4 Soviet Anti-Semitism The actual practice of socialism has not been kind to its religious and ethnic minori ties, including Jews. The Soviet government adopted consistently anti-Semitic policies.

Lenin was strongly opposed to anti-Semitism, but Soviet policy reversed shortly after his death. Totalitarian states, with their inevita ble economic failures, eventually need scape, goats. Economic performance rarely matches the official promises, and the subsequent privations feed social resentment; one person gains only at the expense of another. The necessities of totalitarian government, in time, override whatever nonracist feelings might be held by the leaders, and create strong pressures for political support of rac ism. Control over the press and rights of speech makes racist feeling relatively easy to whip up. Soviet anti-Semitism flourished after the Second World War, as the Communist lead ers were unable to resist the target that had proven so successful for Hitler. In 1953 Stalin alleged the existence of a "Doctors' Plot," masterminded by Jews, to poison the top Soviet leadership. Stalin died before a trial was called, but he had been planning to forcibly deport two million Jews to Siberia. .

The "economic crimes" executions of the early 1960swere directed largely against Jews. Textbooks were rewritten either to remove the Jewish role in history, or to provide negative stereotypes of Jews. Government texts dealing with Germany and World War II mentioned neither the Jews nor the Holo caust. The Russian pogroms were reinter preted as justified retribution for the capital istic excesses of the Jews. The Soviet government attacked all forms of religion, but Judaism most of all. Eastern Germany continued the earlier Nazi polemics against Jews, substituting the words "Zionist" or "Israel" for Jew, and referring to the salutary effects of "progres sive socialist forces," a scant difference from the earlier Nazi terminology of "national socialism." Many former Nazi journalists were hired to write these "anti-Zionist" po lemics. Similar trends came to pass through out eastern Europe. In the early 1950s, thir teen leaders in the Czech Communist party (ten were Jewish), were accused of being "Zionists," and were hanged. In 1968 the Polish media spent months debating the "un masking of Zionists in Poland," although Jews comprised less than one-fifteenth of one per cent of the population. The anti-Zionist cam paign was accompanied by demonstrations, arrests, surveillance, police persecution, and other typical methods of totalitarian oppres sion.

The contrast with the more capitalistic THE SOCIALIST ROOTS OF MODERN ANTI-SEMITISM 11 United States is striking. The United States started off with few Jews but attracted many Jewish immigrants with its relatively free economy and atmosphere of relative toler ance. By the 1920s,three of the four cities with the most Jews were located in the United States. New York had the largest number of Jews, and Chicago and Philadelphia were third and fourth (Budapest was second). To day Jews account for only two percent of the American population, but they account for half of the billionaires. The history of the Jews provides a stark illustration of the differences between capitalism and socialism. 0 1. My translation draws upon that of Paul Lawrence Rose, Revolutionary Antisemitism in Germany: From Kant to Wagner (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 304. 2. Ellis Rivkin, The Shaping ofJewish History:A Radical New Interpretation (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), pp.

239-240. 3. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper Collins, 1987), p. 353. 4. European socialist attitudes toward anti-Semitism shifted in the last decade of the nineteenth century. At this time the socialists realized several truths. First, anti-Semitism was a way station to state control, but the rightwing and fascist parties were likely to capture the benefits. Second, the socialists realized that the anti-Semites (like Judaism itself, in socialist eyes) had become precisely the kind of particularist sympathy that held back the more universalist socialist ideal. These points became clearest in Germany, where most leftists had abandoned anti-Semitism by the early twentieth century. The French left, in contrast, was much slower to repudiate the ideology of racism, perhaps because French politics never polarized the way German politics did. Now available in a Leather Edition!

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