A Prussian Jew dies in London

Marx wasn't a Jew, he's from a Jewish Family but was a baptized member of the Evangelical Established Church in Prussia
 
Marx wasn't a Jew, he's from a Jewish Family but was a baptized member of the Evangelical Established Church in Prussia

Call him a Jew for Jesus if you like, I call him a Jew by ethnicity as I would a Jew who believes there is no God. If Marx can't be Jewish than neither can Trotsky, Freud, Woody Allen, Einstein, and many of the people that Israel gives the right to move there.
 
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wow... I like that the mere mention of a jew (as a side description) throws some people entirely off the topic at hand.

Jew - a person belonging to the nation of Israel. nation is a term in political science that describes members of an ethnic group. However, does this mean someone who converts is not a jew? Its a... difficult definiton. A simply a member of the faith or a member of a certain bloodline?

Back on topic, I am not familiar enough with Marx to comment. Surely any interaction with and influence to and from other thinkers such as engels would be different. Fewer Red Revolutions around the world? Someone else takes over the socialist soapbox and the basics still get across, again with butterflies.
 

Susano

Banned
Call him a Jew for Jesus if you like, I call him a Jew by ethnicity as I would a Jew who believes there is no God. If Marx can't be Jewish than neither can Trotsky, Freud, Woody Allen, Einstein, and many of the people that Israel gives the right to move there.

Of course all those people self-identified as ethnic Jews. IIRC, Marx never did. Hence, no ethnic Jew, either, IIRC. Not that its important.

Personally, I dont think Engels alone would have the appeal to make their brand of communism so popular...
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Call him a Jew for Jesus if you like, I call him a Jew by ethnicity as I would a Jew who believes there is no God. If Marx can't be Jewish than neither can Trotsky, Freud, Woody Allen, Einstein, and many of the people that Israel gives the right to move there.

While both Marx parents was born Jews, they converted before the birth of Marx, and Marx was raised as a German Christian with little to no contact to his Jewish relatives. He didn't himself identify as Jew and didn't have a high opinion of Jews, to identify him as Jew is both unfair toward Jews and Marx himself. The other you mentioned has been raised in Jewish homes, and while of them show a distaste toward their heritage, there's no doubt that they was m uch more aware of it than Marx.
 

Ibn Warraq

Banned
Call him a Jew for Jesus if you like, I call him a Jew by ethnicity as I would a Jew who believes there is no God. If Marx can't be Jewish than neither can Trotsky, Freud, Woody Allen, Einstein, and many of the people that Israel gives the right to move there.

Except all those other people identified themselves as Jews.

For that matter, probably at least a third of all American Jews identify themselves as Jews but don't believe in God.
 
I don't see what the problem is here. If you consider Jewishness a matter of ethnicity, and I do, then the fact that Marx wasn't raised in the Judaic religion and didn't self-identify as a Jew is irrelevant. The former is true of many people that we consider Jews while the latter was not unheard of in the age of assimilation.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
I don't see what the problem is here. If you consider Jewishness a matter of ethnicity, and I do, then the fact that Marx wasn't raised in the Judaic religion and didn't self-identify as a Jew is irrelevant. The former is true of many people that we consider Jews while the latter was not unheard of in the age of assimilation.

Except that etnicity doesn't work like that, Satrkozy the President of France was born to Hungarian father and mother of Sephadic origin, it would be artificial to call him either Hungarian or Jewish, when he doesn't self identify as such. Etnicity is based on identity not on blood alone.
 
Huge difference between being a non-practicing Jew and being born to Christian converts.

To claim Marx was Jewish you have to explain why his parents' conversion to and his birth in Christianity were invalid.


Also Trotsky didn't consider himself Jewish or, for that matter, Russian. When specifically asked he described himself as a social democrat.
 
Etnicity is based on identity not on blood alone.

So Vanilla Ice was actually African-American?

To claim Marx was Jewish you have to explain why his parents' conversion to and his birth in Christianity were invalid.

Not really, if one can be a Jew without belonging to the Judaic religion, and most of us accept this of the irreligious, than one can implicitly be a Jew while belonging to a different religion, though this is rarer. In any case, Karl Marx the adult belonged to none.

Can we please discuss the WI rather than the title?
 

Susano

Banned
So Vanilla Ice was actually African-American?
Is "the hip-hop/rapping scene" another name for "the African-American community" now or what?

Descant alone does not make ethnicity. Its a bit confusing because nationality, too, is based on self-identity, but well, those terms all do blur. But simply taking descant is that annoying American definition of "ethnicity" that really means "race" (i.e., black, white, Asian, whatever). Ethnicity as I see it is that thing similar to nationality - so for example "ethnically German", "ethnically French" etc etc etc.
 
In 1854 there was a cholera epidemic in Soho, London. WI Karl Marx, who was then living there, had been one of its victims?

It would be after the Manisfesto, but before Das Kapital. What would it mean to Communism? Would it during the XIX century be even more "pro-action" and less theorical?
 
It would be after the Manisfesto, but before Das Kapital. What would it mean to Communism? Would it during the XIX century be even more "pro-action" and less theorical?

have we all forgotten the guy that edited Das Kapital? Friedrich Engels any one? likely Engels will write works a lot like Marx's in OTL, maybe look into Engels solo work.
 
Susano, now you've got me confused, especially since I don't like butter.


Ba dum bum! Take my wife, please!:)


OK, from the sounds of horror and retching I'll assume my alleged humor fell flat...again, so I'll just note that we're talking about prissy Western religions intolerant of other views, not more mellow Asian/Pacific faiths.
 
A) If you really want to argue it and try to find an answer: Marx was a Jew, but not Jewish. Fair enough?

B) If the Communist Manifesto was already published, you already have the drive of Communism itself. You have the ideas of class struggle and inevitable revolution established. What you lack in Marx's death is his in depth analysis of capitalism and economic theory present in Das Kapital, which one could argue or dismiss as "frills" to the bulk of the ideas already formulated and presented in the Manifesto.
That said, you do still have Engels around, who was much more philosophical than Marx and who would presukmably (butterflies ignored) go on to publish Socialism and The Origins, which may prove to be far more influential without Marx's Das Kapital.
In all honesty, we may see a more "French" philosophical approach to socialism, as opposed to the "German" economic approach favored by Marx.
 
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