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Title: Anti-Semitism and Revolution Author: Bernard Lazare Date: 1899 Language: en Topics: religion, revolution, letter Source: Retrieved on 2016-10-28 from http://marxists.architexturez.net/reference/archive/lazare-bernard/1899/antisemitism.htm Notes: Source: Antisémitisme et Révolution. Stock Editeur. Paris, 1899. Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor; CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2005. Edouard Drumont’s La France Juive (Jewish France) went through 210 printings between its first publication in 1886 and 1941. An amalgamation of all the varieties of anti-Semitism: religious, racial and economic, it reached all classes. Its popularity, along with that of his newspaper La Libre Parole, made Drumont a redoubtable figure during the era of the Dreyfus Affair. Lazare wrote the following to counteract his influence among the working class.
My dear Jacques:
It’s a long time since I've written to you. Work has been tough for the
past few months, and I came home in the evening so exhausted that I
didn’t have the heart to read. I went to bed and slept like a log until
the time to go back to the factory. I have to admit that during these
days of hard labor I envied you your fate; and while I sweated in front
of the furnace I had a vision of you peacefully standing before your
cases composing a book you would then read.
The last couple of weeks things have finally calmed down, so I once
again took up my reading, and I naturally need your advice. Benoit the
bookseller — you know him, I think; the little old man who has a store
at the corner of your street and rue Neuve — loaned me a copy of La
France Juive by Drumont, and I just finished the first volume. The book
left me perplexed, and I'm going to frankly explain why.
You know that if I've become something more than a beast of burden I owe
it to you. You educated me, you taught me a little — too little, alas! —
history; you made me familiar with books of those who were friends of
the people; you taught me that our future well-being was a little bit up
to we proletarians; and finally, you showed me who our enemies were, how
we'd been domesticated by capital and what needed to be done to escape
the jug that brutalized us. Perhaps it’s because I haven’t seen you in a
while, or because you haven’t supported me through your letters, but I
found that Drumont — who nevertheless is not in agreement with you on
many points — says things that are correct and good. I leave aside his
religious pretensions and his avowed wish to place us once again under
the domination of the Mother Church — from which we were just delivered
— but putting that aside it seemed to me that his work wasn’t bad. He
seems to know a lot about French history, and even ancient history, and
he must be a well-educated person. He isn’t always in agreement with the
little manual that you sent me, but I'm not sure that the little manual
is correct, since it doesn’t talk about the Jews, and Drumont makes it
abundantly clear that it has always been the Jews who have brought on
the misery of poor buggers by exploiting them in every possible way. The
proof is that they have been massacred, and there were always good
reasons for doing so. According to Drumont, poverty used to be less
terrible — and I believe him with no difficulty, for I see all of the
unfortunates there are around us. He is perhaps correct when he assures
us that if distress and despair have increased it’s because we have
allowed the Jews to live freely, that we know longer make them surrender
to us, that we've let them pillage and rob everything at their ease,
that we've permitted them to put their hands on finance, commerce,
industry in such a way that today they are the masters of France, that
they own everything and are the cause of the misery of the proletarian.
They have also corrupted morality, they've made money the modern god,
they solicited consciences and then bought them, and they have
demoralized the Aryans.
How is it that you never spoke to me about all this? I'm really
surprised. Do you find that his ideas aren’t correct, and the
affirmations of Drumont exaggerated? I'd really like you to give me your
opinion on this. But until you've proved the contrary, I'm quite ready
to believe that if — according to Drumont’s counsels — we put in place a
chamber of justice with the charge of seizing the throats of financiers;
if we took measures to prevent the Jews from invading and cheating us,
everything would be better. In any event, we don’t go to their
Jerusalem, so why do they come here?
Answer me quickly, my dear Jacques, because this question interests me a
great deal. I talk about this every day with Benoit, who’s very
anti-Semitic and, I have to tell you, he has converted me a little bit.
If Benoit is wrong I really need your arguments to prove him wrong. Do
your best, because I'm going to show him your letter.
I shake your hand. Your friend.
Jean
My dear Jean:
Let me tell you that I was very happy to receive your letter, since I
was afraid that you had been ill. You're good, work is okay, you're not
unemployed, the little ones can have their feet warm and the stomachs
full: all this is excellent. I would like it if all the comrades were
like you; that they have a tranquil spirit and the time to read and
discuss in order to form their ideas. Your epistle pleased me: I see
that you are still every bit as ardent in your desire to learn, and it
put me in mind of our talks of four years ago.
You haven’t changed since then, Jean; you are still the same: the best
of proselytes, and you are quick to get annoyed. Don’t make that face;
you know I'm right, and you are quickly swept up. So sit astride your
chair, take your head in your hands and listen to me. We're going to
talk a little bit about what interests you.
So you think these Jewish scoundrels have conquered France, if not the
world; that they've infected us with every sin, with every vice; that
they are our masters, that the govern us at the same time that they
cause us to rot; and you think that if we did away with them Golden Age
would be reborn on Earth, because France would belong to the French,
Germany to the Germans, Russia to the Russians, etc. When I say that you
think so, I mean that Benoit made you think this, and that Drumont made
Benoit believe this. So it’s Drumont that I must respond to. If you
will, I'm going to summarize in a few lines anti-Semitic theory.
“The Jews,” Drumont and others say, “are Asiatics, Orientals, strangers,
different from us in race and constitution. They can’t understand our
ideas and our feelings. They contribute to the altering of the French
spirit; they're immoral and have no notion of the just; they corrupt
Christians who, without them, would possess all virtues. Finally, it’s
to them that we owe all the excesses of the capitalist regime. They are
the cause of “the nation’s agony” which is under the subjection of a
minuscule minority. Thanks to this “foreign body introduced into a body
that had been healthy until then;” thanks to him, “money, to which the
Christian world attached only a secondary importance” — for example, the
conquest of the New World by the most Christian of nations — “has become
all-powerful. If we were strictly between Aryans everything would be
much better. We've been Jew-ified.”
As you see, my good Jean, Drumont, whose phrases you will recognize, see
things every bit as clearly when he says “the Duke de la Rochefoucauld
and Prince Kropotkin have more or less the same ideas concerning
property;” and that “the notion of good and evil is equally obliterated
in both of them.” Let’s leave aside the Aryan and Semite question — I'll
return to it — we'll talk about it and you'll see that there are neither
Aryan nor Semitic peoples, and that all these beautiful phrases that
oppose the noble Aryan to the vile Semite are empty and prove only the
complete ignorance of those who write them.
In reality, the anti-Semites are all simplistic spirits, a little naĂŻve
and often little educated. They proceed a bit like those savages who
don’t see very clearly the true causes of events, and who take one
phenomenon as the cause of another, simply because these two phenomena
occur at the same time. Let’s suppose that the very day a house burned
down we had noticed that it had been invaded by rats. Would you say that
the rats provoked the fire, or were the cause? No, right? Nevertheless,
this is the way Anti-Semites reason.
They find themselves in the presence of an extremely complex
organization, one that is the result of a slow economic development, and
where the reign of capital — the triumph of money, of financial and
industrial royalty — are only the end term. They only consider the
present, and they attribute to the Jews what is in reality the result of
thousands of causes which have acted over the course of centuries. But
the Anti-Semites ignore the centuries long labor that prepared the
current capitalist domination. They don’t seem to know that in order to
bring on the preponderance of the contemporary bourgeoisie two great
expansionist movements were necessary: the Crusades — the moment when
the Orient began to civilize the brutal and barbaric Occident — and the
discovery of America. The multiple colonizations by Spain, Portugal,
England, Holland, and France were needed, as were all the efforts of the
commercial regime. The establishment of public credit and the extension
of the great banks was needed. The development of industrial manufacture
and scientific progress, which brought with it the creation and the
perfecting of machines was needed. Full legislative elaboration
concerning wages, up to the moment where — under the French Revolution —
the bourgeoisie even took from the proletariat the rights of association
and coalition was needed. Many other causes were necessary. moral,
historical and religious ones in order to create bourgeois society. And
they say that the Jews did all that! Really, now! Those who can say such
a thing lie knowingly, or they are possessed of an ignorance that is
absolute and stupefying. There are no other choices.
I know that many Anti-Semites imperturbably say: “Everything was going
along for the best in France, in the land of the lily, faithful to God
and his king. Authority was respected, as were holy things; altruism was
practiced, the monarchs — fathers of the people- were cherished , as
were the nobles, who were ready to defend the little people. There were
no Jews then; we were among Frenchmen, and we always get along best when
we are among family.”
That’s why, after years of ignominies and misery, the people covered the
coffin of Louis XIV with mud and insults; that’s why the history of
France can be written as a history of the revolts of the unhappy people,
oppressed by those who were then the capitalist class, the capitalist of
the land — who were every bit as tough as the capitalists of
speculation: the nobles and the clergy who joined the bourgeoisie as
soon as they could.
You are told that it’s only today that financiers have the upper hand
and live off the poor; you are told that it’s only today that corruption
is the master, and that it’s the Jews who have perverted the descendants
of the nobles and the sons of the Gauls. These are lies, my poor Jean.
Under Louis XIII and Louis XIV — and I don’t want to go any further back
— the traders were already masters. If you read the memoirs written
during these times — those of Tallemant des Réaux, for example — you
will see how rapacious they were, how they built their fortunes, how
they held the upper hand and how the nobility — while mocking them —
married their daughters and lived off them. Cupidity was every bit as
frightful as today, and it clearly demonstrated this when, under the
regency of the Duc d’ Orléans, the Scotsman Law came here to apply his
system , founded his bank and his Company of the Indies. Everyone then
speculated, was thirsty for money and wanted to get it by whatever
means. Duchesses were at Law’s feet; they kissed his hands in order to
get a few shares from him, which led the mother of the Regent to say:
“If duchesses act like that what will the other women leave him?” The
Papal Nuncio attended the Scotsman’s parties; dukes and princes asked to
marry his daughter — who was then eight years old. Marquis and counts
took as fathers-in-law the most notoriously tainted of speculators and
were content to let their wives go when the dowry was devoured and the
system collapsed. Then when everything seemed to be compromised, the
great speculators converted their bad paper for good marketable values;
they took control of all subsistence. It was a time when the Duke de la
Force — peer of France, president of the Council of Finance and Commerce
— with the complicity of the convent of the Grands Augustins took over
several millions worth of food and necessities. The Duke d'Antin, the
Duke de Guiche, the Marshal of Estrées did the same thing, and their
convents were their storehouses. To set an example — which is to say:
forced by the clamor and the anger of the people — the government
condemned to the galleys... the steward of the Duke de la Force.
At the same time Father La Valette, a Jesuit, the Superior of Missions
in Martinique and a big merchant, went bankrupt to the sum of three
million, but was surpassed by another celebrated bankrupt: the Prince of
Guémenée. As for the clergy, they got out of this — after Law’s fall —
by a fraud; they authorized themselves to pay their debts with bills
that had no value.. But, you will say, there were the High Courts of
Justice. From time to time the bloodsuckers were made to cough up. Yes.
When the treasury was misappropriated to such a point that it was empty
the cashbox was filled by other financiers who were chosen to squander
it again. Let’s talk about the High Courts of Justice. In 1716 the
ruined nobles had the people rise up against the financiers. They
enriched themselves at the expense of the traders, leaving their allies
as empty-handed as before. The people danced in front of the buffet,
while at this time the people of the royal court and the judges filled
their pockets; and the Duke de Saint-Simon could say of Lamoignon, who
presided over the Chamber of Justice: “He earned much money there, and
dishonored himself.” Dishonor was mediocre, for everyone did the same as
him. Courtesans sold their influence and received bribes to stop
judicial proceedings and blackmailed the recalcitrant.
Do you find their mores very different from those of today? No, right?
Well, at that time the Jews were nothing. Do you know how many there
were in Paris at that time? 110, of which four were bakers, the others
merchants, second-hand dealers or metal- or stone-engravers.
Do you think it was 110 Jews who brought about this corruption? No. This
decrepitude was the sign of the end of a regime, and it’s the same
today. When the Anti-Semites talk about France’s agony they are wrong:
it’s only the agony of the bourgeoisie, and it’s not the 80,000 Jews of
France who brought it about, not any more than the 8,000,000 Jews on
Earth who are causing the death of capitalist society. Think of what
8,000,000 Jews can do among the 1,500,000,000 people who live on the
planet; or, if you want to consider only those of the white race, among
507,000,000 people.
Anti-Semitism, my poor Jean, is good for priests, reactionaries and
bourgeois, for they are the only ones who can — or who hope — to get
something from this. Thanks to anti-Semitism they hope to escape the
blows that threaten them and to reinforce their power. By maintaining,
fomenting, spreading anti-Semitism priests hope to turn back
anticlericalism; reaction hopes to strangle the Republic and rebuild the
throne; and the bourgeoisie — Christian or Voltairian -to save its
cashbox. As for you and me — poor buggers and proletarians — what can we
expect of this movement? Nothing at all, and our situation will not have
changed.
A certain number of Anti-Semites — and Drumont is among them ��� tell you
that the French Revolution was an abomination because it overturned the
old Christian state; and they tell you — without laughing — that it’s
the Jew who made the revolution due to hatred of Jesus Christ. Send them
back to school and ask them if they want you to believe any old thing.
The Revolution was our labor, and if Jews participated in it I don’t
hold it against them; not any more than I wish ill for Karl Marx, or
Lasalle — who were Israelites. To the contrary! I like these Jews better
then I do Drumont who, deep down, along with all Christian
anti-Semitism, hates the modern spirit and sees salvation in religion
and faith, which is to say, in intellectual and moral oppression and
imbecility. Distrust these people, Jean. They want to realize the reign
of God, and the reign of God, you see, is the reign of barbarism,
stupidity, ignorance and tyranny.
You will say that not all Anti-Semites are religious. It’s true. Apart
from Catholic and Protestant Anti-Semites — who tell you the Jew is
dangerous because he is anti-Christian — there are the patriotic
Anti-Semites. These latter gravely announce that France is the Queen of
Nations, that all other peoples are inferior to it, and nothing bad can
come from that national divinty. So if evil exists in France — if there
are exploiters of the poor world, dishonest speculators, bribers,
blackmailers — the fault belongs to the foreigners who corrupt the noble
Gauls and , naturally, the Jews. This is the concept of a vain
simpleton, that the French chauvinist shares with the German chauvinist,
the Italian chauvinist, with all chauvinists. Didn’t Benhazin have
himself called the King of Kings, and didn’t he consider the people of
Dahomey the most perfect of people? These are nothing but words, and if
there were no foreigners in France you'd still have to work the same 12
hours to earn your meager livelihood. Distrust this patriotic egoism,
this national protectionism: it will one day cost you dearly. It’s with
this that they will one day draw out the best of your blood. Distrust
pseudo-socialists who declare that if your salaries are low it’s the
fault of foreign workers and Jews, and that you'll be happier when both
will have been chased away. How happy the bourgeois would be if he could
push you against your brothers in misery, against your companions at the
factory, and so save his skin.
But let’s go back to the Jews. Do you think you will have gotten
anywhere the day you'll have chased from France — or massacred — little
Jacob, the neighbor you know who is a rug worker and earns five francs a
day when he’s not unemployed, which happens 100 days of the year? Will
you have resolved the social question when little Jacob will have
disappeared? Your neighbor Jacob is an exception, you'll say. But my
poor friend, of 8,000,000 Jews, there are 7,000,000 who are in Jacob’s
situation, or worse. In Russia, in Galicia, in Romania, in Serbia, in
Turkey, in London, in New York, in certain neighborhoods in Paris their
poverty is horrible. Most of them are artisans and as such they suffer
from the social state. They are even among the poorest proletarians,
among those with the lowest salaries; one day I'll prove all this to you
if you're interested.
There remain a million Jewish capitalists — or petit-bourgeois — in the
entire world. The day they tell you that this million oppresses the
other hundreds of millions, you'll hurt yourself laughing, and should
send your Anti-Semite to learn what he doesn’t know. And rest assured
that the day you suppress this million Jews — and others besides —
capitalist society will remain the same. Just as it’s false to say that
the Jews made society what it is, it’s false to say that their
suppression would bring about a change.
Do you know what result that would have? First there'd be no more Jewish
functionaries. But tell me, what difference could that make for you that
there are many Jews in administration, in the ministries, in the
prefectures, etc.? If you chased them, as the good M. Denis and other
excellent bourgeois with sons who need jobs would like, all you'd have
would be the mediocre advantage of feeding budgetophage Christians in
place of budgetophage Jews. What a happy day that would be for you, no?
The second advantage you'd draw from the suppression of the Jews would
be to have nothing but Christian bosses! Do you really believe that it’s
only the Jews who want to restrict your right to affiliate? Is it they
who prepared the new law on unions and strikes? Are they the ones who
cause unemployment, or the lowering of salaries? Is it only the Jews who
refuse to accept the eight-hour day and systematically reject all our
demands? You saw what happened when there weren’t any Jews. Take the
children of Israel from the world and you'll see if the financial
associations, the employers’ associations, the trusts, and the
capitalist syndicates won’t survive. You'll see if, even so, whenever
possible the “Sweating-system” — as the English call it — won’t be
practiced; that is, the art of making the proletarian sweat and killing
him on the job.
When it comes down to it, and you should understand this by now, the
Anti-Semite simply and naively says to you that it’s better to be
devoured by Frenchmen from France than by the sons of Abraham. As part
of which sauce would you rather be eaten / None, right? So mock those
who tell you that only the Jews should be suppressed.
Anti-Semitism isn’t very important to you as a proletarian, and it
leaves me totally indifferent. Nevertheless, you'll say, it has a cause.
For the bourgeois, yes, but as for you, you have no reason to be
anti-Semitic. The Jew doesn’t wrong you; he can only wrong the
capitalist, and anti-Semitism is a struggle of the rich; a combat among
those who hold capital. It’s the merchant, the financier, the Christian
industrialist who have reason to complain about the Jew. The
petit-bourgeois devoured by speculation holds the Jew responsible for
the state of things of which he is but the least of causes — and I speak
of the Jewish financier, that is to say, a handful of individuals in
France. But the true reason for bourgeois anti-Semitism is competition,
direct competition between the money handlers, between the Jewish and
Christian merchants and producers. But we don’t suffer any more under
Jewish bosses than Protestant or Catholic bosses; on the contrary, since
here it’s the number of bosses who count, it’s not the Jews who are the
most numerous. Expel Rothschild and the prisons of Schneider, Lebaudy,
Sommier, Chagot, Motte, Harmel, Rességuier, Reille, etc. will still
remain standing.
Anti-Semitism is the capitalist bourgeoisie’s lightning rod. Wait, let
me give you an example. You've heard the story about the voyagers
followed in the snow by wolves. They're on their sled, well covered in
their furs, and the pack is pursuing them. So to slow down their assault
— or to escape them completely — they throw their provisions to the
pursuers, and end up sacrificing one of their horses, around which the
wolves fight like fools, letting the sled escape. To the unfortunate who
suffer, to the proletarians who struggle, the bourgeoisie would like to
sacrifice a few dozen Jews, and in this way save the sled full of loot.
What would happen if we were to confiscate the goods of Jewish
capitalists? The Christian capitalists would naturally share the
remains, and there'd be no limit to their power because they will have
suppressed a dangerous competiitor. They would then be the only masters,
and we'd have the joy of being exclusively devoured by people Drumont
would recognize as good Frenchmen and who will have been carefully
baptized.
The Anti-Semites aren’t people who share, my poor Jean. They love their
potage, and they want to eat it among their family. But they aren’t our
relatives and they want even less to share with us than with the Jews.
So don’t let yourself be taken in by empty phrases. Look closely at what
the Anti-Semites are: they are the enemies of everything we hold dear.
But Drumont hits all the rich, you'll say. Assuredly if he were capable
of reflection, he'd recognize that it is I who am right and that his
ideas are false, narrow, incomplete and incorrect; he'd admit that he
wrote a bad book. He has now gone too far to dare recognize the
mediocrity of his conception. In any event, he is perturbed by the
religious hysteria; and if he deludes himself with a great jumble on
many points he is as dumb as a stump, and his way of writing history is
the same as that of Pere Loriquet.
Nevertheless, hasn’t he done well? you could ask me. To those who
thought him sincere he gave the illusion that he is a demolisher.
Leaving aside the historian and the sociologist — who are inferior and
negligible — they esteemed Drumont as a destroyer, an agent of disorder,
an element of revolution. And my friend Nathan — who is a Jew — thought
that he could deliver hard blows at capital and society and that — the
irony of things — this representative of the past could serve to prepare
a future which would horrify his Christian soul if he could conceive it
as it would be.
But it’s necessary to back up to see in Drumont what he is; the
mouthpiece of idiots who eat their daily Jew; of bourgeois who think of
saving their safe deposit boxes; of social parasites who want to be
named sub-prefect in M. Abraham’s place, or tax collector in M.
Nephtari’s place. Finally, the agent of our worst enemies; that herd of
sacristans who want to bring us into the bosom of the Roman Church,
which we had so much difficulty escaping from.
So let that band of bourgeois talk to you about Semites and Aryans; of
Aryan conceptions and Semitic corruptions; of Aryan noblesse and Semitic
abjection. These are big words that don’t have any meaning. Don’t worry
your head about this: they don’t mean anything. There are no Aryans and
there are no Semites. There are the poor and there are the rich;
exploited and exploiters. There is no Aryan morality and Semitic
morality, the one admirable and the other ignoble. There is a universal
morality: secular, generous and free; and there are religious
moralities: intolerant and particular to a few groups of men degraded by
an unreasoning faith. As for the Semitic religions which were rightly
depicted to you with such horror, I only know of one that is alive
today: it’s the Catholic religion, which a great number of Ant-Semites
want to restore.
Do these explanations suffice, my good Jean? If they can convince you —
which I hope — communicate them to your friend Benoit and tell him to
profit by them as well. To those who will from now on come to you to
vaunt anti-Semitism, respond that anti-Semitism simply tends to put
religious prejudices at the service of commercial and private industrial
interests, of the competition between two categories of capitalists, and
of the chauvinistic egoism that is one of the forms of this competition.
To those who denounce the Jewish peril before you, respond by attacking
capital, whatever kind it might be, Jewish or Christian. Capital without
any qualifier. To those who enlist you to cry “Down with Israel!” answer
“Down with Capital! Down with property!” and don’t go any further than
that; don’t allow yourself to be distracted from your route by those who
want to guide you into an impasse which will lead you to nothing.
Finance, speculation, capital, property, in one word, all your enemies
are not Jews, they are universal: they are Christian, Muslims,
Buddhists. Be careful not to help them and to compromise the cause by
unconsciously supporting theirs. They will laugh at you after you will
have foolishly served them as an auxiliary, and they will profit from
their victory to better enslave you. Au revoir, my dear Jean. If you
have any more questions to ask me don’t hesitate. In the evening I have
the time to answer you.
A hearty handshake from your friend
Jacques
Cc: Bernard Lazare