[OPE-L:6486] Re: Re: Re: RE: Marx and the bible

From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@stanford.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 31 2002 - 15:53:30 EST


re Patrick's 6472


>The reference to "Moses and the Prophets" is most definitely not 
>intended to be anti-Semitic. Technically, it is a reference to a 
>society's most fundamental law. So, the fundamental "law" of 
>capitalism is accumulation. It is not an identification of 
>money-making with Judaism. "Moses and the Prophets" is equally a 
>Christian and a Jewish reference.

I agree here especially since it is the industrial capitalist who 
here is the focus of Marx's critique, not putatively purely money 
making financial and commercial capitalists on whom anti Semites had 
focused to the exclusion of industrial capital. The industrial 
capitalist would be later depicted as heroic, productive Aryan 
capital as opposed to parasitic Jewish financial and commerical 
capital. I think it Hal Draper who has shown how Marx moved quite 
quickly from his conflation in the Bauer critique of money making 
activities and putatively Jewish forms of capital to a critique of 
industrial capital in terms of the alienation of labor in the 1844 
mss.


rb



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Feb 02 2002 - 00:00:06 EST