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Socialism and Judaism in Moses Hess's Holy History of Mankind
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
Moses Hess is customarily described as Karl Marx's erstwhile mentor, later colleague and eventual protagonist in the socialist movement, who in his later years surprised most of his friends in publishing in 1862 a proto-Zionist treatise, Rome and Jerusalem. In this book Hess advocated the establishment of a socialist Jewish commonwealth in Palestine as the only way to the solution of the Jewish problem. As both a colleague of Marx and a precursor of Zionism, Hess is in the unique position of being claimed, in various ways, by both the Socialist and Zionist movements.
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References
1 The most detailed biography of Hess is Silberner's, EdmundMoses Hess — Geschichte seines Lebens (Leiden, 1966)Google Scholar. Two other valuable biographical studies are: Zlocisti, Theodor, Moses Hess — Der Vorkämpfer des Sozialismus und Zionismus (Berlin, 1921)Google Scholar; and Frei, Bruno, Im Schatten von Karl Marx (Wien-Köln-Graz, 1977)Google Scholar. For an excellent discussion of Hess's political ideas, see Goitein, Irma, Probleme der Gesellschaft und Staates bei Moses Hess (Leipzig, 1931)Google Scholar; also Cornu, August, Moses Hess et la gauche hegelienne (Paris, 1934)Google Scholar. In English, the best summary of Hess's thought is to be found in Isaiah Berlin's “The Life and Opinions of Moses Hess,” now reprinted in his Against the Current (New York, 1980)Google Scholar; see also: Lukács's, George, “Moses Hess and the Problem of Idealist Dialectics” (1926), now available in English in Telos, No. 10 (Winter, 1971), pp. 3–34Google Scholar; McLellan, David, The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (London, 1969), pp. 137–160CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hook, Sidney, From Hegel to Marx, new ed. (Ann Arbor, 1962), pp. 186–204Google Scholar; Weiss, John, Moses Hess — Utopian Socialist (Detroit, 1960)Google Scholar; and Schulman, Mary, Moses Hess — Prophet of Zionism (New York, 1963)Google Scholar. Cf. also my “The New Jerusalem of Moses Hess” in Powers, Possession and Freedom: Essays in Honour of C.B. Macpherson, ed. Kontos, A. (Toronto, 1969), pp. 107–118.Google Scholar
2 For the turbulence of Hess's search for self-identity and his struggle to break out of the constricting atmosphere of his Jewish orthodox parental home, see his diaries for the years 1836–37 now published in Mönke, Wolfgang, Neue Quellen zur Hess-Forschung (Berlin-DDR, 1964), pp. 38–42.Google Scholar
3 Thus, Martin Buber, for example, who edited a Hebrew edition of Hess's selected writings did not include any selection from the Holy History of Mankind in his anthology and barely mentions the volume in his own Introduction. Cf. Hess, Moshe, Ktavim Klaliyim [General writings] (Jerusalem, 1955), Introduction by M. Buber, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar
4 “Die heilige Geschichte der Menschheit” in Hess, Moses, Philosophische und sozialistiche Schriften, ed. Cornu, August and Mönke, Wolfgang (Berlin-DDR, 1969), p. 9.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., p. 19.
6 Ibid., p. 37.
7 Ibid., p. 32.
8 Ibid., p. 34.
9 Some commentators have suggested (e.g., McLellan, Young Hegelians, p. 140) that Hess's discussion of the future is indebted to the future-oriented philosophy of August von Cieszkowski. Yet Hess's Holy History of Mankind was published one year before Cieszkowski published his Prolegomana zur Historiosophie, and there is no doubt that Hess arrived at his views independently. In later years, he did, though, relate his views on the future to those of Cieszkowski, which had by then been published. (See Hess's reference to Cieszkowski, in Die Europäische Tziarchie (1841), pp. 79, 83, 89–90 and 93 in the Cornu-Mönke edition of Philosophische und sozialistiche SchriftenGoogle Scholar.
10 Die heilige Geschichte der Menschheit, ed. cit., p. 50.
11 Ibid., p. 51.
12 Ibid., p. 52.
13 See my Hegel's Theory of the Modern State (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 72–80.Google Scholar
14 Hess, Die heilige Geschichte, p. 53.
15 Ibid., p. 57.
16 Ibid., p. 54.
17 Ibid., pp. 56, 62.
18 Ibid., p. 64.
19 Ibid., p. 62.
20 Ibid., p. 65.
21 Ibid. Cf. Marx's, statement in 1843 that “the day of German insurrection will be announced by the crowing of the French rooster” (Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, ed. Easton, Lloyd D. and Guddat, Kurt H. [Garden City, 1967], p. 264)Google Scholar. In his later The European Triarchy, Hess adds England, with its industrial potential and development to Germany and France as the third pillar of the New World.
22 Hess, Die heilige Geschichte, p. 70.
23 Ibid., p. 66.
24 It is fascinating to note how many of the specific formulations here advocated reappear, albeit in a different philosphical language, in such instances as Marx's descriptions of the future society in The Communist Manifesto as well as his Critique of the Gotha Programme.
25 Hess, Die heilige Geschichte, p. 71.
26 Ibid., p. 72.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., pp. 73–74.