Reviews for Marxists and the Jewish Question The History of a Debate

The average rating for Marxists and the Jewish Question The History of a Debate based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-05-23 00:00:00 Jordon Daniel This is a great book. It's an intellectual history, but one in which the ideas debated across time are grounded in the evolving material reality of us Jews, primarily in Europe. Traverso is pursuasively and by turns harsh and judicious in his critiques of the writers he discusses. The tension between universalist perspectives and "actually existing" oppression on a national basis (i.e. antisemitism) is the core of the long running debate. In Traverso's recounting, those in the Marxist tradition are pretty much consistently principled in opposition to anti-semitism (in contrast, for example, to the explicit anti-semitism of Proudhon and others), but not always sensitive to the need to go beyond that. Furthermore, he demonstrates that among Jewish leftists themselves, there were similarly diverse responses to the same set of questions. His thumbnail biographies of some of the key participants in the debate also demonstrate that one's class position, AND one's relative degree of assimilation, played important roles in driving perspectives on these questions, albeit without being strictly reductionist. Those for whom Yiddish was their first language, who were immersed in the material realities of the Jews of the Pale of Settlement, were more inclined, in general, to politics which gave prominence to the specific national oppression of the Jews. Traverso handles the history of this debate in such a deft manner, that one couldn't help but think of the applicability of the debate on "the Jewish Question" and the more recent debate about "identity politics", which touches on similar tensions. Although well beyond Traverso's frame, the fact that it could prompt such questions is a testament to the sophistication and complexity with which Traverso covers his material.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-12-11 00:00:00 Malcolm Vandersluys Traverso's version of Marxism never rises above the level of caricature and academic kitsch. Neither Marx, Lenin, Engels, or Trotsky ever promoted the idea of linearity or inevitability in history in general or in the contemporary class struggle. They were conscious polemical opponents of such ideas; at their best, so were Kautsky, Labriola, and Plekhanov, not to mention Mandel and George Novack. Traverso, for a "man of the left," seems to be satisfied with a knowledge of Marxism obtained second-hand, not from the works of the movement's founders and leaders. To tackle subjects of the scope Traverso undertakes, this is simply not good enough.