On Zur Judenfrage

Within the boundaries in which sale and purchase of commodities and labor-power goes on is the birthplace of the "innate rights of man" (343). For the fulfillment of their needs, humans rely on the help of others. As Marx says in The German Ideology, "there exists a materialistic connection of men with one another, which is determined by their needs and their mode of production" (157). In modern capitalism people are connected through a complex global system of trade. This system of production and consumption affects the way people view each other in general. When one participates in the giant domain of production and consumption which generates generic products for generic individuals, she recognizes herself as just one of many like animals. The system is indifferent to her individuality in a sense that reveals the universality of her character. The economic system adds a new political dynamic to her being.

One's political life is one's species life; it is one's role within the mass of all humans which is mediated by the state. Under this system of organization, people are given equal Ð''rights.' The state claims that the support or irritation that they may provide is spread evenly to all. The rights that political citizens receive are supposed to show no preference for birth, social rank, education, or occupation. This suggests that people have some universal human characteristics. However, it presupposes that those distinctions do exist; if people were actually equal there would be no need to set their differences aside. "Far from abolishing these differences, [the state] only exists so far as [the differences] are presupposed; it is conscious of being a political state and it manifests its universality only in opposition to these elements" (33).

In feudalism elements of civil life such as property, family, and occupation were raised to elements of the political life. The relation of the individual to the state, his political situation, was often set for him. For instance, if a man was born to a poor family he would remain a serf for all his life and his lack of connection to the king was a lifelong situation. His political role would forever be to plow fields for his superior and he had no rights as an individual to do otherwise.

The state evolved into a system that dissolved life into its basic elements: individuals and materials. The modern political system, "liberated the political spirit from its connection with civil life and made of it the community sphere, the general concern of the people, in principle independent of these particular elements of civil life" (45). While politics and world trade have provided people with a sense of their universality, they are also highly individualistic modes of organization. People are not necessarily connected to their origin; the individual is supposedly able to live any lifestyle if he works hard enough. The rights that people are given in this economy are directed towards independent individuals. Every man is for himself Ð'- to survive in the world one must work hard to support one's self.

Capitalism is a system of the exchange of goods based on their relative expenditure of human labor. All of human life seems spent either working to produce goods for others to buy or buying goods from others in order to meet personal wants. Exchange is truly the root of why human rights as they are known were constructed. People must be assured that they will be treated fairly when they come to sell their goods or labor. Political rights exist only when one is a member of an exchanging community. If a family lived in the woods and grew crops it is unlikely that they would proclaim equal rights as independents. They would always work together and have their needs met. Under capitalism people have needs of which they do not have the resources to meet. They must rely on others somewhere else in the world to make and then exchange those for money (or their labor hours quantified.)

According to Marx, "[the individual owner of labor-power] and the owner of money meet in the market and deal with each other as on the basis of equal rights, with this difference alone, that one is a buyer , the other seller, both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the law." (337) Despite the fact that people attain different qualities of life (some struggle while others wallow in excess), the political law infers freedom and equality. Humans are connected to most others only by means of the economy and therefore what rules seemed necessary for economic purposes have begun to appear as the natural, only way that humans interrelate. For reasons of fair economic representation, people are treated and recognize themselves as independent separate individuals.

In the market (who's rules are duplicated in generic political terms), men are promised the rights of equality, liberty, property, and security. Equality is the equal right to the other rights. Liberty is the right to do everything which does not harm others. Property is the right to enjoy one's fortune and to dispose of it at one's own will. Security is the right to equal protection of rights and property Ð'- a promise to be equally policed. Each one of these implies a right and assurance of egoism. For a man to be given liberty or protection against others it must be assumed that he stands alone apart from them and needs the aid of the state to promise that he can maintain his individual interests. The individual's right to own, buy, or sell his property is so given "without regard to other men and independently of society" (42).

Within the dualism, the egoistic separate self seems more real than the abstract political self. To be one of six billion like creatures seems disconnected to most of an individual's daily happenings. The human political universal role does not connect with the concrete reality of the person, and so instead of feeling like a simple demographic, people tend to view themselves as the independent monad's that their economic rights suggest. (This focus on separateness is obvious in the philosophy of for instance Hegel or Kant who begin systems of thought from a Ð''transcendental I' or a single consciousness.) In On the Jewish Question, Marx says "man identified as a member of civil society is identified with authentic man, man as distinct from citizen, because he is man in his sensuous, individual, and immediate existence, whereas political man is only abstract, artificial man, man as an allegorical, moral person" (46). The man of civil society is the man within his immediate social surroundings who still considers himself in terms of individual rights but has a more direct connection with real specific others.

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