Marx' Response To Bauer

The article “On the Jewish Question” was Karl Marx' reply to counter the claims that Bruno Bauer believes in his article “The Jewish Problem.” Marx immediately wrote his article the same year Bauer published his. In Bauer's article he stated that the Jews will have to relinquish their particular religious faith in order for them to attain their desire for political emancipation.

Marx presented two separate arguments against Bauer’s idea. His first argument states, that “the existence of religion is not at all opposed to the perfection of the state” (31). He takes the case of North America, despite the widespread of religion it does not have a “state religion” and it completely separates the state from any religion. His second argument discusses the connection of political emancipation and human emancipation. Marx claims that for the Jews “to be politically emancipated without emancipating yourselves humanly, the incompleteness and contradiction lies not only in you but in the essence and category of political emancipation” (40). In contrary to Bauer’s demands, Marx believes that political emancipation does not require for the Jews to renounce their religious faith. In relation to this, Marx claims that, “the political elevation of man above religion shares the weaknesses and merits of all such political measures” (33.) From this he tried to make a comparison between the right to private property and the right to one’s own religion and concluded that both are not significant to human emancipation (33).Marx was never clear on the definition of human emancipation, though it can be assumed that it is related to man and his work.