socialism answers anti-semitism

SOCIALISM ANSWERS ANTI-SEMITISM

By Eric Hass

PUBLISHING HISTORY

FIRST PRINTING ............................ September 1944SECOND PRINTING ....................... October 1944THIRD PRINTING .......................... April 1946FOURTH PRINTING ...................... April 1960FIFTH PRINTING .......................... December 1971

ONLINE EDITION .......................... August 2006

NEW YORK LABOR NEWSP.O. BOX 218

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA 94042-0218http://slp.org/nyln.htm

Socialist Labor Party 3 www.slp.org

NOTE TO THE FOURTH PRINTING

Although there have been many portentous his-torical developments since this essay was written16 years ago it remains an accurate Marxist guideto an understanding of the cause and cure of anti-Semitism. During World War 11, optimists ex-pected that the defeat of Nazi Germany would ex-tirpate anti-Semitism at least in its virulent form.The same wishful thinkers greeted the founding ofthe State of Israel as the salvation of the Jews. Butit should now be apparent to the blindest that theanti-Semitic evil has survived both Hitler’s defeatand Israel’s birth. The fact of anti-Semitic prejudicegrowing out of the strife-ridden conditions de-scribed in the essay continues to make of anti-Semitism a convenient instrument of politicaldemagogues, of nations (especially those wooing thefrankly anti-Jewish Arab countries), and of rulingclasses bent on keeping the workers divided andsubjugated.

A note is in order here on anti-Semitism in So-viet Russia. Stalin’s death terminated a savageconspiracy against the Jews of the Soviet Union,but it no more removed latent prejudice in Russiathan did Hitler’s death in Germany. The evil re-mains, the product of competitive conditions in theSoviet bureaucratic system.

Only the advent of bona fide Socialism can freesociety of religious and racial prejudice completelyand forever.

Eric HassMarch 14, 1960


I.

Anti-Semitism and the Social Question.

“Settle the economic question and you settleall other questions. It is the Aaron’s Rod whichswallows up the rest.”—William Morris.

Anti-Semitism is a word which embodies one ofthe saddest and most shameful chapters in the his-tory of what we are pleased to call civilization. Weare accustomed to hear it with but a fleeting shud-der. Yet, gathered within this word is a world ofanguish and cruelties, of human suffering and tor-ment that language cannot describe. Anti-Semitismreflects a black and putrid stain on the varicoloredface of life. Originating 2,000 years ago, it hasblighted the lives of countless millions throughthree succeeding systems of class rule. It is spread-ing now. It is spreading in America.

Before us is a file which expands daily with newreports of violent assaults on Jewish children in theplaygrounds and streets of American cities, of thedefilement of synagogues, of snide anti-Semitic ut-terances in the halls of Congress, and of the sys-tematic spread of rumors calculated to incite Jew-hatred. Even that section of the capitalist presswhich, with marvelous restraint, has heretoforedeigned to ignore anti-Semitic outbreaks, has re-cently been compelled to bring the unpleasant topicto the attention of its readers. It does so, however,in terms which encourage a variety of false hopesand assumptions. One is that community educationin “tolerance” can solve the problem. Another, that

SOCI ALI SM ANSWER S ANTI -SEMI TI SM


laws punishing the expression of anti-Semitic ut-terances would restrain Jew-baiters. A third, thatanti-Semitism in America is a juvenile disease, in-deed, a part of the juvenile delinquency problem,and that it will subside when parents once againhave time to give their children “proper attention.”

Such assumptions are dangerously misleading.They are dangerously misleading because they failutterly to touch the basic causes of anti-Semitismin the modern world. Nay, they are positivelyharmful, for they divert attention from the basiccauses. Moreover, they cannot help but lead tocruel disillusionment when, with the approachingtermination of war, anti-Semitic outrages continuewith renewed virulence. And that they will con-tinue, no serious student of the subject doubts. Theywill continue as long as the basic causes remain, aslong as the social soil is hospitable to the rank andpoisonous anti-Semitic weed.

The defeat of the arch-anti-Semite, Adolf Hitler,and the destruction of the Nazi party will probablyafford European Jewry a respite. But it is nowabundantly clear that Allied victory will not eradi-cate the noxious growth. For here, in America, areall the elements which, in Germany, led not only tothe practical extermination and exile of the Jews,but also to the degradation of the German workersto industrial serfdom. We, too, have big businessmen who, as Mr. Henry Wallace puts it, “financeanti-Semitic movements.” We, too, have a slum pro-letariat, ever the tool of reaction. And, most signifi-cant, we, too, have a system of class rule beset byinsoluble contradictions—contradictions which

ER I C HASS


have now brought society to a state of permanentand mounting crisis-and a ruling class which willstop at nothing to preserve its privileges.

The solution to anti-Semitism does not lie in leg-islating or preaching against its effects; the solu-tion lies in removing the cause, in cleansing the so-cial soil of those impurities which nourish it. It is,therefore, necessary, at the outset, to determinewhat these impurities are. Only then can we actintelligently to remove them.

And we can remove them! Deep-rooted though theproblem is, it is not beyond the compass of humanintelligence to solve it. To those who throw up theirhands at the magnitude of the Social Question, ofwhich the anti-Semitic problem is a part, we say, asDarwin said in rebuking skeptics of his day: It isnot those who know much, but those who know lit-tle, who positively assert that this or that problemcannot be solved by science.

Anti-Semitism arose out of certain historical de-velopments in the evolution of society. This weshall prove. But we shall also prove that the con-tinuing evolutionof society and the historical developments whichare impending offer mankind the opportunity toput an end to internecine strife by abolishing theconditions whichproduce it, and the further opportunity so to recon-struct our society as to place a premium on coop-eration and fraternity. In other words, the solutionto anti-Semitism lies in abolishing the system ofclass rule, with its exploitation, competition andbrute-jungle laws, and its replacement with a soci-



ety of collective ownership and collective interests.We state this as our premise,a premise we intend to prove to the hilt. In the lan-guage of the great American Marxist, Daniel DeLeon:

“Anti-Semitism, like class rule, cannot prevail. Asclass rule is doomed, so is anti-Semitism—and for thesame reason. The race of man will break through thebarriers that accident has raised, and private interesthas cultivated. Mechanical progress destroys the acci-dents, the Social Revolution will abolish the private in-terest. Anti-Semitism will vanish with both-along withoppression of the working class—aye, because of the abo-lition of such oppression.”


II.

The Beginning of Jewish Persecution.

“As Cain was a wanderer and an outcast, notto be killed by anyone but marked with the signof fear on his forehead, so the Jews—againstwhom the voice of the blood of Christ criesout—although they are not to be killed, mustalways be dispersed as wanderers upon the faceof the earth.”—Pope Innocent III.

To assert that capitalism is responsible for anti-Semitism immediately elicits the response thatwhat is called the Jewish problem existed hundredsof years before the advent of the capitalist system.This is true, for the ugly phenomenon arose for thefirst time during the decline of the Roman Empire.For information concerning the earlier history ofthe Jews one may consult any number of excellenthistories. It suffices here to point out that in theirPalestinian home they were caught between thehammer and anvil of great warring powers. Con-quered, enslaved and exiled, they were scatteredthroughout the civilized world, only to regroupthemselves in the commercial communities of theMediterranean theater.

In the earlier era they were often the victims ofrapine and conquest. Friction also existed betweenthem and Greek and Phoenician commercial rivals.On the other hand, it may be recorded that theircommercial pursuit and trading skill (acquired byreason of the geographical accident which placedPalestine athwart the caravan route to the East)raised them in eminence and won for them special



privileges in Alexander’s empire and in the RomanEmpire while it was still in the ascendant. Persecu-tion of the Jews as Jews did not begin until Romehad passed her zenith and was in decay.

Within the Roman community the Jews were anunprotected, therefore vulnerable, minority. Theirimportance as cogs in the Roman juggernaut haddeclined with the decline of trade and commerce.Simultaneously violent unrest among the half-starved proletarian freemen, whose labor was ren-dered superfluous by the hordes of captive slaves,threatened the very existence of the Roman rulingclasses. Ignorant, as the workers of our own timesare ignorant, of the real cause of their misery, thewrath of the Roman masses was easily diverted tothe handiest scapegoats, the Jews. Emperor afteremperor encouraged incitements against the Jews,some of which led to terrible massacres, the mosthorrible being that at Alexandria in A.D. 38. Notonly did these incitements divert the attention ofthe masses, but they also, albeit incidentally, re-lieved many dissolute patricians of the necessity ofpaying debts owed to Jewish bankers.

Be it noted, however, that it was neither becauseof his race nor religion, but because a host of his-torical accidents placed him as a vulnerable minor-ity in the Roman community that the Jew wasmade the victim of these class-inspired pogroms.Where the religious issue entered into the tragedy,it was injected cynically by the ruling classes whosepagan gods had long proved useful in holding prop-ertiless freemen in superstitious subjugation. Itwas not until the rise of Christianity that religion

ER I C HASS


became a central issue of the conflict.

The Conflict Between Christianity and Judaism.

Both religions, Christianity and Judaism,emerged from Palestine. Both sought to beguile thepeoples from their pagan gods to monotheism. For,like Christianity, Judaism was then a proselytizingreligion and its followers zealously sought converts.In the resultant rivalry the Christians sought toinsure their triumph by making the line of demar-cation between Christianity and Judaism deep andunbridgeable, and, at the same time, to cast in animmoral light those who remained on the Jewishside of it. This was not difficult in view of the com-plex events by which Christianity, whose apostleswere Jews, and whose first converts were Jews, be-came a non-Jewish religion within a century . It wasa simple matter to convince Gentiles that “theJews” were responsible for the tragedy on Gol-gotha, for the crime of the Crucifixion of Christ.

The terrible indictment was read into the gospelsand became a basis of Christian teaching. The ha-tred it engendered prevented the assimilation ofthe Jews, as other minorities have been assimi-lated, into European races, and, as Christianity be-came more powerful, and finally emerged as aState religion, resulted in their segregation anddegradation. For fifteen centuries, practically everyChristian child had it dinned into him that “theJews” killed Christ. To this distortion of historywere added innumerable fantastic myths calculatedto incite contempt. From time to time economic fac-tors—opportunities to profit from the slaughter and



expulsion of Jews—played a role in their persecu-tion. But behind the Jew-hatred that survived thecenturies was the Jew’s religion, Judaism, the veryexistence of which was an affront in the eyes of theChurch.

It is noteworthy that the Jew was not the onlyvictim of “Christian” ferocity in the Middle Ages. In“Christian” Spain, the Moors, whose worship ofMohammed likewise offended the Church, weresubjected to similar persecution. Like the Jews,they were compelled to wear distinguishing badgesand coarse clothing and forbidden to shave or cutthe hair round. And, like the Jews, they were ex-cluded from most occupations and subjected to ru-inous penalties. To the Church, both Judaism andMohammedanism were equally execrable.

It is not our purpose here to write a history ofanti-Semitism across the ages, nor to answer thenumerous reproaches and accusations leveled atthe Jew. Most of these are based on myths and su-perstitions. Where they have even a remote ele-ment of validity, it is not because the Jews arenaturally endowed with this or that virtue or vice,but because of habits and customs shaped by seg-regation into Ghettos and exclusion from all but atiny circumscribed sphere of society’s economic life.Our purpose is to underscore the fact that through-out the feudal era anti-Semitism was a religiousphenomenon, at least in all its outward manifesta-tions, and that the flames of Jew-hatred were regu-larly and systematically replenished by the Chris-tian Church.1

1 For a detailed and documented account of the role of the Roman Catholic

ER I C HASS


Indeed, the Jew in the Middle Ages could, in the-ory at least, escape from his plight by renouncinghis religion and by being baptized into the Church.Many did, and by embracing Christianity they wereable to remain when their brethren were drivenfrom country after country by orders of expulsion.We say they found an escape “in theory at least”because actually these Marranos, or “new Chris-tians,” as they were called, did not escape persecu-tion altogether. In times of social unrest, they werestill available as scapegoats. But the significantpoint here is that the Church admitted them intoits fold and, barring periods of extreme socialstress, they lived peacefully in the Christian com-munity.

The Bourgeois Revolution and the Decline of Anti-Semitism.

The gradual emancipation of the Jew from thecrudest aspects of “Christian” persecution beganwhen Protestantism destroyed Roman Catholicpredominance. Protestantism is, historically, thereligious reflex of the struggle of the revolutionarybourgeoisie against feudal trammels. In the capital-ist system which it was sought to establish, the Jewhad a socially useful place and he entered more and Church in the persecution of the Jews, read “The Roman Catholic Church—Age-Old Scourge of the Jews,” by John Timm (WEEKLY PEOPLE, November 4–25,1939).

It is pertinent to emphasize here that the Church, though ostensibly a religiousinstitution, was a potent political organization and a vested interest. Much of theriches of the feudal period were concentrated in its hands and its landholdingsexceeded by far those of the richest potentate and prince. It was estimated by theFrench historian, Taine, that at one time the Church had a third of the territory,one-half of the revenue, and two-thirds of the capital of Europe. Property andpolitical power were the primary factors in its religious militancy.



more openly into the growing commercial life ofHolland, France, England and, later, of America.Cromwell permitted him to return to England, fromwhence he had been expelled in 1290, not out oflove for the Jew but because he recognized the use-ful role the Jew played in the society aborning.

With the triumph of the bourgeois revolution theold ecclesiastical anti-Semitism declined sharply.The Wandering Jew, who listened through thepanel of a door to the French National Assembly of1791 as that body debated the question of admit-ting Jews to full citizenship, threw down his packwhen the motion was carried. Casting off his stoopand straightening his shoulders, he walked firmlyinto the chamber, a free man. His gesture symbol-ized the change in the Jews’ status, a change forthe better, at least in the more advanced capitalistnations.

This is not to say that the old hostility, deeplyingrained as it was, completely vanished. It hadnot. Ancient myths and accusations were stillwhispered, but anti-Semitism had lost its old viru-lence. Capitalism was expanding. It needed boththe labor of the proletarian Jews and the capitaland commercial and banking experience of wealthyJews to complete its conquest. As broad economicspheres opened to them, the Jews believed theyforesaw the day when the ugly and bloody chapterof anti-Semitism would end.

Alas! They did not foresee that capitalism, thesystem which rescued Jewry from the feudalGhetto, would itself generate economic and socialantagonisms that pollute the social soil. As capital-

ER I C HASS


ist competition sharpened and, with it, class an-tagonisms, the Jews faced, not a declining, but arising hostility. But it is important to understandthat, while not disconnected from previous religiousanimosity, recrudescent anti-Semitism was not re-ligious but political. Although an umbilical cordconnected latter-day anti-Semitism with the past,it aimed, not at the Jews’ religion (exceptobliquely), but at his race. Whatever its affinitywith the ecclesiastical anti-Semitism of feudalism,the persecution of the Jews which commenced inthe latter half of the nineteenth century was thedistinct product of the capitalist system of classrule.


III.

The Scapegoat.

“Every time things are had for the Germans,they blame the Jews. And at the present timethings are particularly bad for the Germans. Ah-ha! The scapegoat!”—Mussolini, in an interviewwith Emil Ludwig in 1932.

One of the conditions imposed by Germany onFrance at the Peace of Frankfurt, which concludedthe Franco-Prussia war (1870-71) was the paymentof a huge indemnity. The subsequent flow of goldacross the Rhine provided German capitalism withthe means to launch an unprecedented program ofindustrial expansion. As is almost invariably thecase, the rapid increase in capital was accompaniedby a stock- and company-promotion mania thatreached fantastic proportions. All strata of thepopulation were infected by the speculative fever.Well known names were used (with their owners’consent) to peddle huge blocks of worthless stock.The bubble was stretched to the bursting point.Then, quite suddenly, it was pricked.

On February 7, 1873, a Jewish liberal leader,Eduard Lasker, revealed the real state of affairs ina famous speech before the Prussian Diet. Theslump which followed left a large section of theGerman capitalists ruined. Bankruptcy and discon-tent were widespread, and were reflected in a ris-ing interest in the Socialist or labor movement.Clearly a scapegoat was needed, and the GermanJunker-capitalist rulers found him in the Jew.

Several Jews were associated (together with

ER I C HASS


hosts of non-Jews) in the fraudulent promotions,and popular resentment was deliberately divertedto these. The most blatant falsehoods were circu-lated, charging “the Jews” with conspiring withFrenchmen to cripple the Fatherland. An obscurejournalist, Wilhelm Marr, wrote a sensationalpamphlet called The Victory of Judaism over Ger-manism , which was disseminated eagerly byJunkers and clerics. Subsequently, when Bismarckand the National Liberal party (so-called liberalbourgeois) parted company, the regime gave itstacit support to anti-Semitic agitation.

Anti-Semitic publications poured upon the mar-ket. A German Anti-Semitic league was founded.Anti-Semites electioneered boldly as anti-Semitesand won several seats in the Diet and Reichstag.Increasingly vocal, the movement resulted in spo-radic violence, but such outbreaks usually had theopposite effect of that intended. Subsequently, dueto scandals and internal dissension within the or-ganized German anti-Semitic movement, the agita-tion against the Jew waned. Not, however, before ithad radiated into other countries, and particularlyCzarist Russia.

The Inspired Pogroms in Czarist Russia.

If ever a scapegoat was needed by a dissolute rul-ing class, it was needed in Czarist Russia of the‘eighties. Centuries behind Western Europe eco-nomically and socially, Russia was seething withunrest. Capitalism had succeeded in securing afoothold, forcing the feudal rulers to give way inchby inch. But with every concession yielded to the



capitalists the Czar’s government and the class itrepresented intensified the exploitation of the massof peasants. In 1881, Alexander II was assassi-nated. The effect was electric. Every thought of re-form vanished as the fear-ridden rulers sought todivert the rebellious energies of the people awayfrom themselves. The Jews were the victims.

Nearly half of all the Jews in the world, some5,000,000, lived in the western provinces of Russiain 1881. Like all other ethnic minorities, they hadtheir own costume, distinctive occupations and lan-guage. They had few political rights, but neitherhad other ethnic groups. However, unlike others,they had their own religion. As Louis Golding ob-serves in The Jewish Problem, “the Jew was re-garded by every moujik as the slayer of Christ andthe enemy of Christians.”

This, then, was the magazine in which the matchof German “scientific” anti-Semitism fell. Deliber-ately incited by the Czar’s government, murderousrioters and incendiaries swept through 167 townsand villages, torturing and killing thousands ofJewish men, women and children. But this wasonly the first of several inspired Russian pogroms.

In 1903 there occurred the Kishineff massacre, acarefully organized expedition of looting and butch-ery that lasted three days. While mobs of slum pro-letarians led by slummist aristocrats murdered androbbed at will, the police and military stood by(much as the police stood by while Negroes weremurdered in the Detroit riots of 1943), laughingand “leisurely eating sunflower seeds.” Even thelegal newspapers commented on the political char-

ER I C HASS


acter of the Kishineff massacre. But it was the ille-gal and revolutionary press which, understandingits class nature, correctly assayed the event.

“Rejoice then, you reactionists, you literary gut-tersnipes, whose main stock in trade is nationaland religious hatred,” cried the Socialist organ,Revolutionary Russia. “You succeeded in enragingthe ignorant poor of one nationality against thepoor of the other. Rejoice, then, you bourgeois Jew-baiters. You have succeeded in diverting the dis-content of the exploited against the whole class ofthe exploiters toward your Jewish competi-tors....Rejoice, then, you uniformed instigators.With mischievous [satisfaction] you will see that apart of the Jewish bourgeoisie, who were dissatis-fied with you, will appeal to you and beg of you toprotect and defend them.”

In this cry of defiance is summed up the uses towhich latter-day anti-Semitism is put. For here it isexposed as a means of dividing the workers againstthemselves, and as a weapon of capitalist competi-tive warfare. And here, also, the Jewish bourgeoisieare revealed in their proper class perspective andtheir ignoble role.

The Kishineff massacre was by no means the lastof the Russian pogroms. Between 1905 and 1909 itis estimated that 284 outbreaks took no fewer than50,000 lives. Other eastern European countriesimitated Russia as social unrest spread. As a resultof this protracted terror, thousands of destitute fu-gitives sought refuge in other lands, some2,300,000 emigrating to America.



Immigrants As Scapegoats.

American capitalism welcomed this influx of ex-ploitable labor. Its agents encouraged and assistedin organizing the immigration. But this did notprevent the capitalists themselves from incitingJew-hatred among native-born American workers.Experienced in the use of racial hostility as a goadand of immigrants as scapegoats, they encouragedthe plausible but fallacious assumption that thenative workers’ plight—low wages, unemployment,reduced living standards—was is due to immigra-tion and the competition in the labor market of thenewcomers.

At various times the Swedes, Italians, Germansand Irish had been the targets of this class-inspiredracial animosity. With each wave of immigrationthe newcomers were blamed “for taking Americanworkers’ jobs”—the American workers frequentlybeing those who had arrived with the previous in-flux and who were, themselves, the objects of ear-lier incitations!

But where the Swedes, Italians, etc., were as-similated in the American melting pot, and gradu-ally lost their “racial” identity, the Jews remained“Jews.” Long after the stock charges leveled againstimmigrants—that they lived in overcrowded, dis-ease-breeding tenements and brought down wagestandards—ceased to apply (except insofar as Jew-ish workers shared with other workers these capi-talist-imposed conditions), the Jews were lookedupon as “strangers.” Unlike other scapegoats ofclass rule, they were to serve again and again in

ER I C HASS


that unhappy role.

Revival of German Anti-Semitism.

The organized anti-Semitic movement whicharose in. Germany in the ‘seventies, and later sub-sided, reappeared after the First World War. It wasgiven a fillip by a new legend, or series of legends,growing out of Germany’s defeat. Militarily the Fa-therland had been considered invincible. Even withthe conclusion of war the army represented a for-midable power. How, then, explain the disastrouscollapse in the fall of 1918. Why, the Jew, of course!“Jews” stabbed the army in the back. “Jews” engi-neered the revolution at home. “Jews” controlledthe Social Democratic party; the Social Democraticparty controlled the new Republican government;the Republican government signed the Peace ofVersailles. Ergo: the “Jews” betrayed the Father-land!

Nor did the monstrous fiction end here. Not onlydid the “Jews” betray the Fatherland; they also di-rected and controlled the Bolshevik Revolution!“Jewish-Bolsheviks” became a commonplace epi-thet.

Books were written to “prove” this myth “scien-tifically.” Junker militarists eagerly seized the anti-Semitic weapon to explain Germany’s defeat anddefend the “honor” and “prestige” of Prussian mili-tarism. Lengthy essays were inscribed recalling themilitary prowess of the barbaric Germanic tribesagainst whom the Romans sent their finest legionsto destruction. But these simple tribesmen werecorrupted and softened by the “Jews.” Eric von



Ludendorff even goes so far as to blame the “Jews”for Christianity which, according to the Kaiser’squartermaster general, infected the Nordic racewith pacifism!

The “Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion.”

The fiction was elaborated upon. The plot to un-dermine society was not confined to Germany andRussia alone. It was a world plot. And to back it up,the anti-Semites produced “proof” of the plot, thefantastic, and now thoroughly discredited, Protocolsof the Wise Men of Zion.

A farrago of fantasy and nonsense, the Protocolswere nevertheless translated into several lan-guages and given wide circulation. They purport tobe a report of a meeting of Zionist leaders at Baslein 1897 at which a conspiracy was allegedly en-tered into to conquer the world. The alleged meth-ods that were to be employed in this prodigiousconquest were the organization of economic crises(as if capitalism, by its very nature, did not throwsociety into periodic crises and convulsions), thecorruption of European womanhood, the ample useof liquor to befuddle the leaders of public opinion,the blowing up of European capitals, etc., etc.

To the astonishment of rational people every-where the Protocols gained credence! The LondonMorning Post believed implicitly in their authentic-ity. Even the staid London Times asked: “Have weescaped a German peace . . . only to submit to aJewish peace?” It sounded a veritable alarm anddemanded a public inquiry into the authenticity ofthe Protocols. Ford’s Dearborn Independent pub-

ER I C HASS


lished them as “documentary evidence” of a Jewishconspiracy. Taken aback by this unexpected recep-tion, Jewish scholars were utterly at a loss. Dis-proving the Protocols was much like disproving Al-ice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Then, quite suddenly, the real origin of the Pro-tocols was discovered. The subsequent exposure ofthe forgery is a story in itself and we shall do nomore than summarize it here. Purely by accident,the Constantinople correspondent of the LondonTimes, Philip Graves, came across an anonymoussatire on Napoleon III, published in 1864. Struckby the similarity between this work and the Proto-cols, he made a detailed comparison. It was re-vealed that the program for world conquest out-lined in the Protocols was substantially the same asthat which, according to the satirist, was recom-mended to Louis Bonaparte by the ghost of Ma-chiavelli. Of the first 110 pages of the Protocols nofewer than twenty were an almost verbatim trans-lation of the satire, and the remainder were largelya paraphrase. The paraphrasing was incrediblyclumsy at that because the Russian translator (theProtocols first appeared in Russian) left not onlythe French idioms and turns of speech intact, butalso the French spelling of proper names. And thiswork, published in 1864 as fiction, reappeared inthe twentieth century as historic!

Later the authorship of the French satire wastraced to a certain Maurice Joly. An attempt wasmade to prove that he was Jewish, that his realname was Moses Joel, and that he was a Commu-nist. This claim was made by the British aristocrat,



Lord Alfred Douglas. But the records revealed thathe was descended from a strictly Catholic familyrelated to provincial nobility and that his fatherand grandfather were high officials.

The exposure of the forgery was printed in theLondon Times on August 16, 17 and 18, 1921. Butthis was by no means the end of the malicious“Wise Men of Zion” fabrication. Dozens of editionsof the Protocols continue to circulate. Revision afterrevision was made to make the accusation moreplausible. The name and prestige of Henry Fordlent it “authenticity,” even after that industrial po-tentate had been compelled publicly to retract. To-day the Protocols are a part of the arsenal of everyanti-Semitic-fascist outfit in the country. No otherrecent work on world affairs has had anywherenear as great a circulation. For the Nazis it wasready-made ammunition. As the arch-anti-Semite,Adolf Hitler, wrote in his work, Mein Kampf:

“The very enormity of a lie contributes to its suc-cess. . . . The masses of people easily succumb to it, asthey cannot believe it possible that anyone should havethe shameless audacity to invent such things. . . . Evenif the clearest proof of its falsehood is forthcoming, some-thing of the lie will nevertheless stick.”


IV.

Racial Jingoism.

“Race is an empty phrase, an utter swindle.”—Friedrich Mueller.

Between the two world wars anti-Semitismspread rapidly with the deepening crisis of capital-ism. It spread to countries formerly relatively freefrom the blight, to Great Britain and America. Butit was in Germany, where economic, social and fi-nancial crisis followed hard on the heels of militarydefeat, that the “Jewish problem” received thegreatest attention.

Nazi anti-Semitism revived many of the anti-Jewish myths of the Middle Ages. But its techniquediffered from that of the Church in that its indict-ment was leveled at the Jews as a race. The Jewsare, of course, no more of a race than the English.As the alleged Anglo-Saxon is “dashed and dousedand strained by all the races of civilization”—as DeLeon put it—so are the Jews. Anthropological sci-ence has proved this, and only the race theorists,“the astrologers of sociology,” dispute it.2

2 “What nationality, as far as the nations of Europe and America are concerned,

is based on race?” asked Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu. “Is it England with her Bretons,Saxons, Danes and Normans? Is it France with her Cimbri, Gauls, Iberians, Ger-mans and Latins? Is it Germany where the Teutons have interbred in the Westwith the Celts and in the East with the Slavs to such an extent that in many dis-tricts of Germany the blue eyes and fair hair of the Germans are no longer to bemet with in the majority of the population? Is it Russia, the old Muscovite Russia,with her conglomeration of never Russified Scythians, Sarmathians, Slavs, Tartarsand Finns?. . . . All of us, be we Frenchmen, Russians, Germans, Englishmen,Italians, Spaniards, Hungarians, Greeks, Rumanians or Bulgarians are . . . mixedblood.”

And the Jews are probably the most mixed “race” of all. Soon after their peace-ful conquest of Canaan they interbred with and assimilated the native aborigines.During their Babylonian captivity they married non-Semitic alien women, else



Race Vanity of the German Social Democracy.

For the Nazis it was highly important that thealleged racial stigma stick, for this not only broughtall Jews under attack, but simultaneously it tendedto inflate the national ego and arouse the chauvin-ism of “pure” Aryans. And here it might be addedthat German Social Democracy had done little toimmunize the German workers against the racialmyth. For decades the Social Democratic leadershad set themselves up as the oracles of Socialism,and the German movement as something intrinsi-cally superior. This jingoistic presumption wasglaringly evident in the relations of the GermanSocial Democracy with non-German parties. SocialDemocratic emigrants carried it with them intoother countries. Typical of these was HermanSchlueter, an arrant and pretentious humbug who,in endeavoring to impose his reformism on theAmerican workers, arrogantly declared: “We Ger-mans speak from above down.” This and a similardisplay of race vanity by the Social Democrat,Ernest Untermann, provoked De Leon to write thefollowing trenchant rebuke:

“There is no virtue and there is no vice that is peculiar why did Ezra and Nehemiah make such a fuss about mixed marriages when theJews returned to Jerusalem. The great-grandmother of David, the most Jewish ofall the Jewish kings, was a Moabite, i.e., non-Jewish! Then in the Graeco-Romanperiod, heathens and pagans by the thousands adopted Judaism and were absorbedby the “race.” From historical sources we learn that whole non-Jewish Arabictribes converted themselves to the Mosaic faith. And so on.

Similarly, in their wanderings about Europe, the Jews mixed with Spaniards,Gauls, Germans, etc. This is proved conclusively by the fact that laws were de-creed which forbade it, for a thing is not forbidden if it isn’t done. Indeed, farmore so than Defoe’s Englishman, the Jews are—

“A race uncertain and unev’n,Derived from all the nations under Heaven.”

ER I C HASS


to any one race, and that any other race could not, ordoes not indulge in. Indeed, even before natural sciencescorned race theorists as the ‘astrologers of sociology,’the averagely informed man made the experience thatvirtues as well as vices are international. The fact ispreeminently illustrated by the universality of the viceof jingoism: there is no nationality or race, using theterm loosely, whose folklore does not indicate that, in itsinfancy, that particular race did not consider itself the‘salt of the earth,’ the ‘elect of the Lord’; and there is norace, some of whose literature, even at this present date,does not indicate that the writer considers his race ‘thething.’ Even the general common sense of the humanrace has relegated the jingo to the shelves where curiosare kept that recall the infancy and barbaric period ofman; and Socialist science, based upon the materialfacts, rejects the jingoistic presumption of any race,while Socialist morality, the reflex of the material facts,condemns the posture of the jingo as immorally harmful.All this notwithstanding, there is a curious phenomenonthat appears in our days, a phenomenon all the morecurious because it appears in the Socialist camp-thephenomenon consists in the impudent presumption onthe part of a certain element . . . to set itself up, as Ger-mans, as superior to all other people, and, of course, asoracles of Socialism.

“....It [national jingoism],” De Leon continued, “canonly tend to play into the capitalist’s hand by tending tokeep the nationalities of the land divided. . . . To the So-cialist movement in particular, this abscess is danger-ous; the movement’s safety requires that it be lanced.”

No Escape Through Apostasy.

Unhappily the abscess was not lanced, at leastinsofar as the German movement was concerned.And Nazi technique exploited this race vanity forall that it was worth. For the “non-Aryan” Jew itleft no avenue of escape. The Jew of the Middle



Ages could, through religious apostasy, gain somemeasure of safety. But the “Jew” in Germany, evenif his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were converted to Christianity, and ifhe was himself a zealous son of the Church, wasvulnerable to the same persecution the Nazis vis-ited upon his remote kinsman who professed Juda-ism. Nor did it matter that one was only half-Jew,or quarter-Jew. To have even a tiny quantum of“Jewish blood” was sufficient to read one out of theNazi pale.3

When the German ruling class withdrew theirsupport from the Social Democratic betrayers of theworkers, and raised Hitler to power in 1933, it wasthat arch anti-Semite’s declared object to drive theJews from German national life. For a time manyof the bourgeois Jews hoped for immunity. Theypaid fat bribes to Nazi officials, applauded the “firmmeasures” of the Nazis toward workers’ organiza-tions, and otherwise sought to purchase safety. Buttheir poltroonery was in vain. The majority fell vic-tim to the “cold pogrom” of economic exclusion.Only a few wealthy Jews escaped the ban—by pur-chasing an Aryan “bill of health”! One, whose fa-ther was Jewish, bought the boon of immunity after“proving” in court that his Gentile mother was un-faithful!

Such is the obscene nature of Nazi-capitalistanti-Semitism. Its victims are legion. And they in-clude, besides the Jews of all classes, the Gentile

3 *The Nazis have recently extended their discrimination to Aryans married toJews and Mischlinge (part Jews). “Even entirely Aryan women married to Misch-linge,” says an O.W.I. [Office of War Information] publication, “are now re-garded as belonging to the Jewish group (juedisch versippt).”

ER I C HASS


German workers. For anti-Semitism has proved apotent weapon in keeping the workers divided andprolonging and intensifying their slavery.


V.

Anti-Semitism-Instrument of ForeignPolicy.

“We can see, now, that anti-Semitism has be-come a permanent and deliberate instrument ofdomestic and foreign policy of several of themost powerful countries in the world. We canobserve that this instrument is being wieldedwith deadly effect in the knockdown and drag-out fight for redivision of the earth’s sur-face....”—Demaree Bess in the Saturday EveningPost, March 19, 1939.

What is it in the capitalist social soil that nour-ishes the anti-Semitic seed? It is conflict, conflictbetween capitalist nations, conflict between classes,conflict within classes. The capitalist system is onein which an owning class monopolizes natural andsocial opportunities; in which the privately ownedmeans of wealth-production are used to exploit apropertiless working class; in which the exploitersthemselves engage in perpetual competitive war-fare with each other, nationally and individually.Thus capitalist society presents the aspect of a jun-gle of wild beasts, in which the “fittest” terrorizethe less “fit,” as De Leon expressed it, and these inturn imitate among themselves the “fit” qualities ofthe biggest brute. “The raw-boned struggle isthere,” wrote De Leon. “It is inevitable. It is ashadow cast by the angles of fact of the capitalistsystem.”

In the incessant international struggle betweencapitalist nations for foreign markets, sources ofraw materials and spheres of economic and political

ER I C HASS


influence, anti-Semitism has proved a potentweapon. Polish imperialists have long used thepauperized Polish Jews as an instrument to bar-gain for colonies and markets; give Poland colonies,they say, and she can settle her “superfluous” Jew-ish population there. And in Rumania, the anti-Semitic Iron Guard, influenced and aided by Ger-many, accentuated the “Jewish question” in orderto replace the old regime, allied with France, withone that would orient itself toward Berlin.

But it was German capitalism which developedanti-Semitism into a more formidable and far-reaching instrument of foreign policy than anyother national capitalist group. And it is significantto note here that by utilizing this infernal policy toestablish a bond with fascist and imperialist ele-ments in Latin and Balkan nations, Nazi anti-Semitism did not disturb the cozy relations existingbetween the German plunderbund and its Anglo-American class colleagues. The workers should notsoon forget that Anglo-American capitalism showedevery disposition to shut its eyes to the Nazi anti-Semitic terror—if only German capitalism wouldrelax its aggressive commercial policies. “...norwould the world have failed to acclaim Hitler as agreat German if he had known where to stop,” SirNevile Henderson, British Ambassador to Berlin,wrote in Failure of a Mission, “even, for instance,after Munich and the Nuremberg decrees for theJews.” (Italics ours.)

The Nazi capitalists were the first to realize thatanti-Semitism might be effectively used as a rally-ing cry in southeastern Europe in their campaign



to dominate the Balkans. Notwithstanding Nazislurs directed toward Slav “sub-races,” Germancapitalists found themselves on common groundwith the landlords and capitalists of Balkan na-tions in dealing with the Jews. The result was allthe Nazi capitalists desired, accelerating both theirpolitical and economic advance.

Why Mussolini Adopted the Anti-Semitic Policy.

But the Balkans were also an important marketfor the plunder levied against Italian workers byItalian capitalists. Every economic and political ad-vance of German capitalism in this sphere markeda corresponding retreat for the Italian plunderers.It was partly in consequence of this, and not of di-rect coercion by Hitler, that Mussolini, early in1938, announced that his government was about toadopt anti-Jewish measures.

We say “partly” advisedly. A second reason foradopting anti-Semitism as a policy of the FascistState arose out of the contest between England andItaly for predominance in the Arab world. In anagreement with England, Mussolini had committedhimself not to conduct anti-British propagandaamong the Arabs. But this did not prevent himfrom replacing anti-British broadcasts in Arabicwith anti-Semitic broadcasts in the same language.Thus he could exploit the difficulties England washaving over the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestineand pose as champion of the Arab cause.

As recently as 1932 Mussolini had boasted thatItalian Fascism had nothing in common with anti-Semitism. “Anti-Semitism does not exist in Italy,”

ER I C HASS


he told Emil Ludwig. “Italian Jews have alwaysbehaved well as citizens and fought bravely as sol-diers. They occupy eminent positions in the univer-sities, in the army, in the banks.” He might alsohave added, “in the Fascist party!” Among Italy’s45,000 de-Judaized, assimilated and ItalianizedJews, the majority were workers and only a fewwere persons of wealth. These few did not scrupleto support Fascism as a means to preserve theirclass privileges. Nevertheless, the anti-Semitic pol-icy was adopted by the Fascist party. It wasadopted by the Fascist party, not because a “Jewishproblem” existed in Italy, but because anti-Semitism at home aided Italian capitalism in itspower politics abroad.

One could go on indefinitely illustrating the useof the anti-Semitic weapon in international capital-ist competition. The foregoing, however, we believewill suffice. Germany, Italy, Vichy France, Spain,the Balkan nations, even Japan, have used it boldlyas an instrument of foreign policy. Nor has Eng-land been above exploiting the plight of the Jews toenhance its imperialist interests. The Balfour Dec-laration4 of November 2, 1917, in which the Britishgovernment declared that it viewed “with favor theestablishment in Palestine of a National Home forthe Jewish People” and would 41 use their best en-deavors to facilitate the achievement of this object”

4 “Although it was issued in the name of the British Government, the BalfourDeclaration was, as a matter of fact, a joint policy of the Governments of GreatBritain and the United States. Before its official publication, it was the subject ofprolonged and cordial negotiations between Mr. Woodrow Wilson and Mr. LloydGeorge, the respective heads of the two Governments. In the words of Hon. Jose-phus Daniels, the United States was a moral cosponsor of the entireplan.”—Senator Robert F. Wagner (Congressional Record, February 1, 1944).



was a measure of imperialist warfare. And, lest itbe assumed that British “high-mindedness” was afactor in the formulation of this policy, let it be re-called that Lloyd George supported it, and LloydGeorge, as the Earl of Oxford and Asquith pointedout, “does not give a damn for the Jews or theirpast or future.”

In his History of the Peace Conference of Paris,H.W.V. Temperley described the Balfour Declara-tion as “a war measure adopted by the Powers ofthe Entente in their own interests . . . a bold,imaginative and statesmanlike effort to prevent theinfluence of Jewry being exerted on the side of theCentral Powers.”

It should be noted, however, that there was asecond purpose behind the Balfour Declaration,and one which coincided with imperialist aims inthe Middle East. Far-sighted British statesmen en-visaged a little “loyal Jewish Ulster” in a sea of po-tentially hostile Arabism. In 1920, when he wasSecretary of State, Winston Churchill said:

“If, as may well happen, there should be created inour lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish Stateunder the protection of the British Crown, which mightcomprise 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 Jews, an event will haveoccurred in the history of the world which would fromevery point of view be beneficial and would be especiallyin harmony with the truest interests of the British Em-pire.”

As is well known, the British government repu-diated its pledge in a White Paper in 1939. Thiswas British capitalism’s counter-move to Nazi-Fascist penetration in the Arab world. By limiting

ER I C HASS


Jewish immigration to 75,000, and closing Pales-tine’s doors to the Jews in 1944, the White Paperwas meant to conciliate the Arab nationalists. Now,however, Nazi-Fascist influence in the Middle Easthas ebbed and this policy may once more be re-versed. If it is, it will be largely because of the rapidgrowth of Anglo-American imperialist interests inthe area which a Jewish State would have the dutyto guard.

From this it is readily seen that Anglo-Americancapitalism uses the Jewish problem to achieve anend not unlike that for which Nazi-Fascist capital-ism strives, albeit not in the same way. The policyof Anglo-American capitalism is, in other words,the obverse of the same coin of which Nazi-Fascistanti-Semitism is the reverse.


VI.

Anti-Semitism—Capitalist Weapon in theClass Struggle.

“Socialism knows not such insulting, iniqui-tous distinctions as ‘inferior’ and ‘superior’ racesamong the proletariat. It is for capitalism to fanthe fires of such sentiments in its scheme tokeep the proletariat divided.”—De Leon.

No stratum of capitalist society is free from war,conflict, struggle. Jews are a part of all strata. Thegreat majority of the four million Jews in capitalistAmerica, as well as the millions elsewhere, arewage-workers. Many are petty capitalists. Someare part and parcel of the ruling plutocracy. Thus,at every level they are involved in the conflicts en-gendered by capitalism. Hence, also, at every levelanti-Semitism flourishes.

Against Jewish competitors, Gentile business-men can employ not only the ordinary weapons ofcompetitive warfare, but the special weapons re-served exclusively for use against the Jew—Jew-baiting, Jew-black-listing, Jew-boycotting. Thereare thousands of big and little Gentile labor-skinners who are anti-Semitic for no other reasonthan that their rival labor-skinners are Jews.

But capitalism also engenders competition be-tween workers—competition for jobs. The greaterthe number of workers without jobs, the sharper isthe competition; the sharper the competition, allthe more fertile is the soil for anti-Semitism. Thecapitalist class, Jew and Gentile, looks upon a sur-plus of workers not only as natural and desirable,

ER I C HASS


but -as necessary. Capitalism recruited the indus-trial reserve army largely through the displace-ment of workers by machines and improved tech-nique. The industrial reserve army, wrote Marx,“belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the lat-ter had bred it at its own cost. Independently of thelimits of the actual increase in population, it cre-ates, for the changing needs of the self-expansion ofcapital, a mass of human material always ready forexploitation.”

Capitalism requires an army of unemployed ofsufficient size to provide for capital expansion.Capitalism creates such an army. But the laws andcontradictions operating within the system place norestrictions on the size of the army. Among otherthings these laws and contradictions decree that anever larger portion of the capital outlay be constantcapital (machines, raw material, etc.) and an eversmaller portion variable capital (wages). The devel-opment may be seen in our new monster semi-automatic strip steel mills which multiply the out-put per worker many times and greatly decreasethe over-all demand for steel labor. Indeed, thisprocess is so accelerated that today, except in timeof war, the army of unemployed reaches Franken-stein proportions. It numbered in excess of ten mil-lion when the Second World War began; in view ofthe tremendous strides in improving productiontechnique since 1939 few doubt that it will be farlarger when the war ends.

Mass unemployment, the tacit admission bycapital that it cannot provide jobs for its slaves,stimulates social unrest and increases the demand



among the workers that the wage-capital relation-ship be ended once and for all. To counter this de-mand all the agencies at the command of the rulingclass are directed to the appeasement and the divi-sion of the workers—especially to their division.For, once the working class unites, once it seesthrough the tricks and stratagems which keep itdivided, Gentile against Jew, white against Negro,craft against craft, and even male against fe-male—in short, once the working class becomesconscious of its class interests, it will make shortshrift of the system which consigns to the indus-trial scrapheap millions of useful producers in theirprime. It will build a system in which involuntaryunemployment will be unknown, and machines, in-stead of kicking workers out of jobs, will kick hoursout of the working day.

Divide et Impera—Divide and Rule!

Our modern exploiters, in inciting racial animos-ity, but emulate the debauched and surfeited rulersof another age. In ancient Rome, where slaves faroutnumbered Roman freemen, the great secret ofthe latter’s dominance was summed up in the Latinmotto: Divide et impera—divide your slaves and sorule them. At one time sixty million slaves of theRoman Empire were held in subjugation chieflythrough this device. The ‘skilled slaves were en-couraged to look with contempt on the unskilled.The slaves from Greece were pitted against theslaves from Gaul, and the slaves from Gaul againstthe slaves from Ethiopia, etc. In his Decline and

ER I C HASS


Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon describes howslaves were used to guard slaves, and oversee theirlabor, and how races were craftily set in competi-tion with one another.

It is a lesson our modern rulers have learnedwell, as witness their preeminent success in thusfar keeping the potentially invincible Americanworking class divided against itself. Anti-Semitismis but one device employed to this end, but it is onewhich bids fair to do untold harm to the cause ofworking class emancipation in the years immedi-ately ahead. For if the capitalists can succeed inputting the onus for the war, for unemployment, forpoverty amidst plenty, on the Jews, and thus divertthe masses from the real culprit, capitalism, theymay postpone the doom of their system for years,possibly for decades.

The Role of the Slummery.

Make no mistake about it. A powerful element ofour ruling class is trying to do just that. It has atits command the two elements needed to sow anti-Semitism among the masses—a slum proletariatand money—in large measure. The slum proletar-iat—touts and roughnecks, declassed bourgeois,pool-hall loafers, drunkards, bootleggers, racket-eers, prostitutes and pimps, sadists, the vast multi-tude who people the underworld and near-underworld—is ever the tool of reaction.5 In his

5 “The ‘dangerous class,’ the social scum, that passively rotting class thrownoff by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into themovement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare itfar more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.”—Communist Mani-festo, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.



Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marxwarns the workers against this element and showshow the nineteenth century political adventurerand usurper (who later became Napoleon III, Em-peror of France) organized the slummery into aprivate army to insult and club republicans anddisperse counter-demonstrations. Mussolini’s Fas-cist hoodlums and Hitler’s Brown Shirts were like-wise recruited largely from the slum proletariat-theoffal of capitalist society. American native fascistand anti-Semitic groups are almost wholly drawnfrom the slummery and near-slummery.

The slummery is attracted to anti-Semitism. InGermany the slummists, drilled and disciplined bythe “armed bohemians” (as Konrad Heiden de-scribes the Nazi leaders), supplied with cash fromthe contributions of bankers and industrialists, andenjoying virtual immunity from punishment fortheir crimes, vied with one another in their barba-rous assaults on the Jews. Zealous and ferociousfanaticism meant prominence in the Nazi party,and prominence in the Nazi party often broughtwith it a place in the party hierarchy, a soft job inthe State bureaucracy, and opportunity for extor-tion and bribe-taking.

Similarly the slummery excreted by Americancapitalism, the elements which compose the Indus-trial Workers’ League, National Workers’ League,Industrial Legion of America, Committee of a Mil-lion, Christian Front and Christian Mobilizers, andother Coughlin outfits, look to their own interests,to their own “emancipation” from the wretchednessimposed by class rule. Anti-Semitism is the nexus

ER I C HASS


between the slum proletariat and the “Park Avenueslummery.” The slummist who puts anti-Semiticstickers on Jewish shops, who sells the vile publica-tions of the priest, Coughlin, on the cathedral steps,who operates in gangs and assaults Jews, and oth-erwise engages in anti-Semitic activity, is deeplyconscious that behind him are powerful forces. Asin Germany, so in America, big industrialists andfinanciers, though not openly anti-Semitic, areknown to finance anti-democratic movements. Theyare men with big names, such as Henry Ford, Al-fred P. Sloan, J.H. Alstyne, Lammot DuPont, E. T.Weir, and many others.

Only a Class Solution.

In commenting upon the proposal said to havebeen made by prominent Jews and non-Jews to theJewish people to “keep out of politics” as a means offighting anti-Semitism, The Economist, of London,a top-capitalist organ, said:

“But even if the Jew abstains from all political activ-ity, will not increasing social conflict introduce anti-Semitism into England in any case? The problem in thelast analysis is therefore not whether England is im-mune from anti-Semitism, but whether England is im-mune from social conflict.” (June 10, 1933.)

The statement epitomizes the problem. It fails,however, to point out that “increasing social con-flict” is unavoidable in the capitalist premises. And,unless one recognizes this latter fact, unless heopens his eyes to realities, and perceives that theconflicts generated by capitalist society must grow



fiercer, his efforts to find a solution to the problemof anti-Semitism availeth naught. In other words,there is no JEWISH solution to anti-Semitism; thereis only a CLASS solution. This is so because anti-Semitism is an integral, if subordinate, port of theSocial Question and can only be solved when theSocial Question is solved. However complicated thehistory of anti-Semitism, however multitudinous itsramifications, its solution is the simple one of end-ing class rule.

As the Gentile capitalist throws the dust of racialprejudice in the eyes of the Gentile worker, so theJewish capitalist seeks to blind the Jewish workerto the class solution to his problem with Jewishchauvinism. For it must be understood that thecapitalist class interests of the Jewish capitalistspredominate. Jewish capitalists, in other words,will entertain no solution of anti-Semitism whichcompromises their interests as capitalists, i.e., asjoint exploiters with the Gentile capitalists of theworking class. That is why their role has ever beena pusillanimous one, why, at times, they have evensupported anti-Semitic politicians when the alter-native meant supporting a Socialist candidate, whythey have grasped eagerly at every opportunity toally themselves with potentates of the Church andother social reactionaries.

Examples of pusillanimity on the part of class-conscious Jewish capitalists are almost endless. Wecite, briefly, two.

1. One of the most prominent Jewish leaders inAmerica is judge Joseph M. Proskauer, leader ofthe American Jewish Committee. Judge Proskauer

ER I C HASS


was one of the founders of the now defunct LibertyLeague, an organization in which he worked cheekby jowl with plutocratic anti-Semites, and an orga-nization which gave direct financial assistance to anotorious anti-Semitic outfit called the “Sentinels.”

2. In the feudal bailiwick of Boss Hague there isa Jewish religious leader, Rabbi Benjamin Plotkin,of Congregation Emanu-El. Rabbi Plotkin is nofriend of Boss Hague. He is, in fact, the only Jewishreligious leader in Jersey City with the courage andmanliness to denounce from the pulpit Hague’srape of civil liberties. For his temerity in challeng-ing the corrupt Hague machine, according toWillard Wiener, writing in The New Republic, Plot-kin was evicted from the Jewish Community Cen-ter. The influential Jews who control the centerwere afraid the people of Jersey City it “wouldthink they were Communists.”

These examples are merely intended to typify theclass outlook of Jewish capitalists and to show howclass interests eclipse all other interests. The “solu-tions” to anti-Semitism that emanate from thisquarter must, therefore, be as futile as “solutions”offered by equally classconscious Gentile capital-ists. Indeed, they can only serve to divert the Jew-ish workers from the real solution, and waste theirenergies in activities that must lead to bitter disil-lusionment.

No Redemption in Zionism.

We have not space here to deal with all the vi-sionary proposals for dealing with the “Jewishproblem.” There is one, however, which, because of



the powerful backing it receives not only from in-fluential Jews but from Gentiles and even fromgovernments, requires comment, viz., Zionism, themovement to establish a Jewish national homelandin Palestine.

Even if Zionism were not the football of imperial-ist powers, even if it were not allied with thesepowers, it would still be a cruel deception. For onething, it could offer escape from anti-Semitic perse-cution only for those with the means to migrate.For another, Zionism cannot eradicate the evils ofclass rule, hence could offer no redemption for Jew-ish workers who comprise the majority of the Jew-ish population. The Jews who migrated to Americaseeking redemption found the sweatshop and Jew-ish masters. The Jewish workers who scrape to-gether the wherewithal for transportation to Pales-tine would find there the conditions of class rulewhich prevail here. In the measured words of DeLeon:

“Migration, whithersoever, spells ‘redemption’ for theoppressed Jew as little as for any other creed or race:Redemption is not, cannot be in the cards that leave en-throned the international tyrant—Capitalist Domina-tion. So, likewise, ‘Zionism’ spells ‘redemption’ for theoppressed Jew as little as similar nationalistic move-ments spell ‘redemption’ for any other and numerousoppressed races: Redemption is not, cannot be, in thecards where racial and creed vanities are made a cloakfor class exploitation.”


VII.

The Socialist Solution.

“In Socialism lies the worlds only hope forhuman conditions on earth—just because Social-ism knows that Sentiment is to Matter and Factwhat powder is to the bullet. As powder, withoutthe bullet, produces but a flash in the pan, Sen-timent without Matter produces hypocrisy.”—DeLeon.

“Intellectuals” and so-called “leaders of thought,”Gentile and Jewish, grapple with the problem ofanti-Semitism in vain. Accepting capitalist prem-ises, they must, perforce, accept also the inevitableand roiling conflicts of capitalist society. They ap-proach anti-Semitism as they approach other evilsspawned by capitalism, unemployment for exam-ple, by seeking to minimize the effects, leaving thecause untouched.

Involuntary idleness is a raw and cankerous soreon the body politic. Gone forever are the days whenthe Alleged “laziness” and “improvidence” of theworkers could be blamed. Everyone knows todaythat the economic system is wholly at fault. Theanarchy of capitalist production, the slumps thatfollow industrial expansion as night the day, thesteady and inexorable displacement of men by ma-chines-these alone explain why, except in time oftotal war, the specter of mass unemploymenthaunts the capitalist world.

Yet how do our “intellectuals” and “leaders ofthought” seek to exorcize this specter? Do they facethe palpable facts? Do they acknowledge that astechnology resulted in the disemployment of mil-



lions in the past it must disemploy additional mil-lions in the future; that the competing capitalistsare under the compulsion of economic forces tolower the value of commodities by reducing the la-bor time required to produce them; that, therefore,external coercive factors compel the capitalists toadopt new and better labor-displacing machines ?

And do the “intellectuals” and “leaders ofthought” accept the logic of the palpable facts? Dothey advocate a social system freed from the bane-ful caprices of the market, a society in whichwealth is produced to satisfy human needs, inwhich machinery really lightens the labor of thetoilers and shortens their working day?

They do not! They may speak glibly of “economicdislocations.” They may admit the fact of techno-logical unemployment. But, when it comes to thequestion of finding a solution, they put the cause ofunemployment firmly and resolutely out of theirminds - as though it were irrelevant and only re-motely related to the problem I Hence their “solu-tions” consist of political poultices, of patent reme-dies concocted to allay the pain of unemploymentinsurance, public works, and similar so-calledpanaceas.

By the same token, the “intellectuals” and “lead-ers of thought,” Gentile and Jewish, seek to mini-mize the effects of anti-Semitism with “good-will”drives, “tolerance” pledges, “good-behavior” cam-paigns, and inter-religious “cooperation.” They ad-dress themselves to the problem, in other words,with the same obstinate and willful blindness withwhich they address themselves to the problems of

ER I C HASS


war, unemployment, crime and prostitution. Theresult is ignominious failure-and disillusionmentand bitterness among those whom the “leaders ofthought” mislead.

What Is Socialism?

Socialism alone can cope with this problem andcleanse the social soil of the element that nourishesthe hateful anti-Semitic seed. But what is Social-ism?

“Socialism,” wrote De Leon in a terse definition,“is that social system under which the necessariesof production [factories, tools, land, etc.] are owned,controlled and administered by the people, for thepeople, and under which, accordingly, the cause ofpolitical and economic despotism having been abol-ished, class rule is at an end. That is Socialism,nothing short of that.”

Along with private ownership, Socialism abol-ishes the class State and substitutes therefor anentirely new form of government, an industrialgovernment, based upon the industrial configura-tion of modern production. Industrial representa-tion will take the place of geographic representa-tion, and an Industrial Congress will replace thepresent political Congress. Such a form of govern-ment is rendered absolutely necessary by the com-plex nature of our vast productive mechanism.Modern production cuts across all arbitrary bound-ary lines and can no more be controlled and di-rected by Congressmen elected from geographicalareas than a modern streamliner can be drivenwith a bull-whip. Yet it will be the first duty of gov-



ernment under a collectivist society to direct andadminister production. Only a government directlyconnected with industry can fulfill this function, agovernment, in other words, whose administratorsare elected from the industries, and by the workerswho run the industries.

The worker under Socialism will be a free man.He will receive the full social value of his product.And he will enjoy, besides security and abundance,that sense of being a part of things. All who laborwill have a direct share in their government, in itshigher councils, as well as in the council of the shopwhere each will perform the duties of his democ-ratic citizenship.

Socialism implies also production of things foruse, instead of for sale and profit as under capital-ism. By planning over-all production, by establish-ing production goals for every industry based onestimates of human needs and desires, Socialismwill put an end to the domination of society by acapricious market, and with it the anarchy thatmanifests itself in so-called business cycles.

Finally, Socialism abolishes the antagonisms andstrife fomented by class rule. By making social andeconomic opportunity accessible to all, it abolishesclasses, hence conflict between classes, and conflictwithin classes. It replaces the raw-boned struggleengendered by class rule with the principle of coop-eration. And Socialism insures the success of thisprinciple by placing a premium on cooperation.

There can be no such thing as “too many work-ers” under Socialism, just as there can be no suchthing as “too efficient machinery.” Indeed, the pres-

ER I C HASS


sure of technological improvements and improve-ments in the conditions of labor will be constantand unrelenting, for new techniques and new ma-chinery, instead of throwing men out of work, willthrow hours out of the working day and render la-bor less arduous. Similarly, the greater the numberof workers the greater the production, and thegreater the production all the greater will be thewealth available for society’s needs and enjoyment.

Under Socialism “The More the Merrier.”

In truth, it will be “The More the Merrier.”Prejudices instilled by a society of insecurity willvanish before the wholesome and cooperative rela-tions of Socialist society. At last men will face oneanother, not as enemies competing for business orjobs or place and position, but as human beings. Incooperating systematically with one another, toparaphrase Marx, they strip off the fetters fromtheir individuality and develop the capabilities oftheir species.

As well imagine that men will literally cut offtheir noses to spite their faces as to imagine thatworkers under Socialism will object to their indus-try’s recruits because of their race, or sex, or relig-ion.

We do not claim for Socialism the power ofmagic. We have shown that anti-Semitic prejudicesare of ancient origin. They will not vanish instan-taneously from the minds they have poisoned themoment the revolution triumphs. Among those whohave actively opposed, or passively accepted, thelogic of history, prejudices will linger.



Aye, they will linger, but under conditions whichneutralize their effect and deprive them of all nour-ishment. Penicillin, the wonder drug, the nemesisof parasitic bacteria in the human body, does notattack the coccus germ directly. It prevents thebacteria from utilizing a vital substance (pyruvicacid) and thereby literally starves it to death. Simi-larly with Socialism and the prejudices inheritedfrom class rule. Socialism destroys the social strifeand unrest from which anti-Semitism derives itsnourishment. It thereby destroys anti-Semitism!

More Capitalism Means More Strife.

There is no escape from this logic. If the night-mare of capitalism is prolonged, social strife willgrow increasingly malignant. Competition betweenthe great powers, irrespective of Cairo agreementsand Teheran pacts, must inevitably sharpen as thecapitalist nations are under greater compulsionthan ever to dispose of their surpluses. The prob-lem of world markets has not been solved by thewar; on the contrary, it has been aggravated by ourcolossal wartime expansion. If capitalism remainsthe ruling principle of society, bitter and desperaterivalry for markets will bring new and even moregigantic wars. Meanwhile., within each nation, theaccelerated concentration of wealth throws smallbusiness into fiercer competition as the petty capi-talists struggle to survive as exploiters of labor.Nor can the quack medicines now being concoctedin Washington, it social security” plans, and road-building schemes, prevent the plague of mass un-employment from rising again among us, and with

ER I C HASS


it profound social unrest.Does anyone imagine that present “good will”

drives and “tolerance” campaigns can stop thespread of anti-Semitism under these conditions?Why, already it is whispered that the “Jews”started the war, and that the “Jews” are schemingto “win the peace.” The Jews are the capitalist reac-tion’s patented alibi. They are the scapegoats readyat hand. The more violent the unrest among themasses, all the more energetically will the capital-ists and their slummist agents spread the anti-Semitic poison. He who disputes this closes his eyesto the lessons of history. For him the millions ofvictims of German capitalism’s pogrom have per-ished in vain.

The Enlightenment of Classconsciousness.

What is to be done? For the workers, Gentile andJewish, there is but one course. That is to conductan unremitting struggle for Socialism. A stupen-dous job of organizing lies ahead. It will require theenergy and fortitude of every enlightened worker.The class interests of the working class, thatmighty amalgam that will one day unite all whotoil, must be underscored, emphasized, iterated andreiterated again and again. Sentiment has its placein this struggle, but sentiment, as De Leon pointsout, must be accompanied by logic and facts. Oth-erwise, it leads to hypocrisy- And nowhere is sen-timental hypocrisy more evident than among thosewho grapple with the problem of anti-Semitism, yetignore its social and economic cause.

You will never find a classconscious worker who



harbors anti-Semitic thoughts, much less. commitsanti-Semitic acts. The classconscious worker isimmune to anti-Semitism. He not only fights itwith vigor, he fights it intelligently. He is not de-ceived by the machinations of the capitalist class.With De Leon he understands that—

“The capitalist class knows no country and no race,and any ‘God’ suits it so that ‘God’ approve of the exploi-tation of the worker. Despite all seeming wranglings,sometimes even wars, among them, the capitalist class isinternational, and presents a united front against theworking class. But for that very reason the capitalistclass is interested in keeping the workingmen dividedamong themselves. Hence it foments race and religiousanimosities that come down from the past.”

Knowing this, the classconscious worker knowsalso that there are just two races in this world, justtwo nations and two religions. One of these is theexploiting class; the other the exploited. Betweenthe two the struggle is irreconcilable. It can endonly with the complete triumph of the worker andthe abolition of classes.

Program of the S.L.P.

The program to achieve the classless society ofSocialism in America is determined by the condi-tions at hand. “ . . . the historic theory of Marx isthe fundamental condition of all reasoned and con-sistent revolutionary tactics; to discover these tac-tics one has only to apply the theory to the eco-nomic and political conditions of the country inquestion.” (Frederick Engels.)

The program of the Socialist Labor Party is

ER I C HASS


based foursquare on this scientific principle. Ourpolitical set-up, our traditions, and, above all, ourConstitution with its amendment provision, dictatethat the workers unite in a party of their class todemand the unconditional surrender of capitalism.Article V of the Constitution is, in the words ofAbraham Lincoln, “the constitutional substitute for[armed] revolution.”

But the very nature of class rule, the ferocity,lawlessness and tenacity of all ruling classesthreatened with extinction as rulers dictate the or-ganization by the workers of a physical power toenforce the mandate of the Socialist ballot. Inhighly industrialized America this power consistsof the economic organization of the workers, alongindustrial lines, into a union inspired by its loftymission, and disciplined to act with resolution andspeed by taking over the instruments of wealth-production and distribution. The Socialist Indus-trial Union is the workers’ power. It is the power ofpowers.

But it is more than that. It is also the adminis-trative organization of future society. “IndustrialUnionism is the Socialist Republic in the making,”wrote De Leon, “and the goal once reached, the In-dustrial Union is the Socialist Republic in opera-tion. Accordingly, the Industrial Union is, at once,the battering ram with which to pound down thefortress of capitalism, and the successor of the capi-talist social structure itself.”

This is the program and this the goal. It is a pro-gram and goal that merit the ungrudging supportof all enlightened men and women. It is the only



answer to the anti- and pro-Semites; it is the solu-tion to the transcending Social Question of whichanti-Semitism is but a part. In the incomparablelanguage of De Leon:

“Socialism, with the light it casts around and withinman, alone can cope with these problems. Like the seathat takes up in its bosom and dissolves the innumer-able elements poured into it from innumerable rivers, toSocialism is the task reserved of solving one and all theproblems that have come floating down the streams oftime, and that have kept man in internecine strife withman.”

(The End.)

socialism answers anti-semitism

Documents