It's no secret that I oppose socialism and communism. However, my outspokenness about my economic beliefs often leads antisemites to attempt to manipulate them so that I turn against Jews. They frequently assert that Jews are behind socialism and communism, bringing up arguments like the supposed Jewish overrepresentation in the Bolshevik Revolution. Yet, upon closer examination, their arguments reveal a profound historical ignorance and fail to withstand any scrutiny. So I will go through them one by one and demonstrate how nonsensical they are.
Who is behind socialism?
The first man to label himself a “socialist” was the French gentile economist Pierre Leroux.1 Leroux was a disciple of the early utopian socialist Henri de Saint-Simon, another French gentile. Leroux became quite popular in socialist circles. He even received a highly sought-after nomination from Karl Marx for membership on the Central Council of the International Working Men's Association.2 Leroux, as with many socialists, had a deep-seated hatred of capitalism. But if there was anything he hated more than capitalism, it was Jews. He saw the two as inherently linked. He once wrote
It is quite evident, is it not, my friends, that when we speak of Jews we mean the Jewish spirit, the spirit of profit, of lucre, of gain, the spirit of commerce, of speculation…3
Not only was the first socialist not a Jew, but he was also a raging antisemite. And Leroux was not alone in this regard. Many early socialists explicitly hated Jews because of their perceived connection to capitalism or hated capitalism because of its perceived connection to Jews.
The French socialists were especially outspoken in this regard. Charles Fourier frequently referred to Jews as “parasites” and usurers, the Mutualist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon advocated for a violent expulsion or genocide of the Jews, and journalist Alphonse Toussenel was well-known for his antisemitic rants.4 The historian Zosa Szajkowski performed an exhaustive study of 100 years of French socialist literature from 1820 to 1920, and he couldn’t find a single positive word about Jews.5
The socialist movement in Germany was not always quite as antisemitic.6 However, two men played significant roles in changing that: Wilhelm Marr and Eugen Dühring. Marr is credited with doing “more than any single figure in the last quarter of the 19th century to popularize racial hatred of Jews in Germany.”7 He popularized the term “anti-Semitism” and viewed it as a “Socialist movement.”8
Dühring’s racial antisemitism was also very influential. Perhaps the biggest influence he had was on a nationalist socialist activist by the name of Theodor Fritsch, who was also an avid fan of Marr.9 Fritsch would go on to be one of the founders of National Socialism and a major influence on Adolf Hitler. There is even evidence that Fritsch’s 1887 book Anti-Semites Catechism was the biggest influence on Hitler’s antisemitism.10
Early American socialism wasn’t very Jewish either. Robert Owen, Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl Andrews, and Joseph Weydemeyer were all Gentiles. Although these men were heavily inspired by the aforementioned French socialists, American socialism was not nearly as antisemitic. There were prominent Jewish socialists to be found, such as August Bondi, Morris Hillquit, and Emma Goldman. Except for Goldman, these Jews had far less influence than other American socialist figures.
Only a “small but salient minority of Jews” came to embrace communism or socialism, according to historian Jerry Z Muller.11 Those who did join these movements often did so not because of their opposition to capitalism, but because of their opposition to nationalism.12 In my opinion, there are no good arguments for why Jews would be drawn toward socialism, other than those presented by Muller.
Marxism and the Jews
The supposed Jewish role in Marxism and communism is much more of a discussed topic than their role in traditional socialism. Antisemites will point to Karl Marx’s Jewish heritage, and claim Jewish overrepresentation in or role in funding Russia’s Bolshevik movement. Naturally, these conversations seldom contain nuance or good faith.
Marx may have been ethnically Jewish, but he grew up a Lutheran, had no Jewish education, and rejected Judaism and his Jewish heritage.13 Marx didn’t just reject his Jewishness, he despised it. Marx is known to be a vehement antisemite. It’s quite ironic that his existence is meant to prove some sort of Jewish-communism conspiracy, while in reality, he wrote things about Jews that would have modern antisemites shouting in agreement. He claimed that money was the “jealous God of Israel,” referred to Jews as “dirty” in body and soul, and believed they were both inherently bourgeois and inherently counter-revolutionary.14
The antisemites almost always ignore Engels. When they do bring him up they typically lie and say he was Jewish, such is the case with the neo-Nazi “documentary” Evropa: The Last Battle. Engels was white and also grew up Christian, but later turned atheist like Marx. Engels played a key role in the development of Marx’s philosophy.15 Marxism could just as easily have been called Engelism, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue in the same way. Engels was very much antisemitic just like Marx. He even praised Marx’s takes on Jews. But there is evidence that later in his life Engels became opposed to antisemitism.16
Judeo-Bolshevism
When it comes to the Jewish role in the Bolshevik Revolution, there is a lot of disinformation. Antisemites often claim that the Jews funded the revolution from the very beginning. Their sources often trace back to banker Stephen Goodson’s book The History of Central Banking and The Enslavement of Mankind, which is largely complete nonsense. Goodson both cites nonexistent sources and misrepresents credible ones. Goodson claims the “Judeo-Bolshevik” revolution was funded by the Rothschilds, but gives no actual sources for this claim.17 His footnotes point readers to an article by Winston Churchill, but Churchill does not refer to the Rothschilds.
Goodson goes to claim that the Jews funded the revolution through banker Jacob Schiff.18 His only source for this is a, quite funny, satirical article by a Jewish journalist, that doesn’t even mention Schiff.19 He cites the satirical article via The White Man’s Bible, a Nazi cult Bible which calls for the genocide of black people. Schiff’s role in the revolution is a long-debunked myth, there was never any evidence for it. Records show that Schiff funded anti-Bolshevik groups.20
Goodson should have known this, and maybe he did because one of his sources proves it. In his bibliography, we see economist Anthony Sutton’s book Wall Street and The Bolshevik Revolution, which observes that “the investment banker Jacob Schiff, often cited as a source of funds for the Bolshevik Revolution, was in fact against support of the Bolshevik regime.”21
And he goes on to completely refute anyone who claims Jews were the ones behind funding the Bolsheviks:
The persistence with which the Jewish-conspiracy myth has been pushed suggests that it may well be a deliberate device to divert attention from the real issues and the real causes. The evidence provided in this book suggests that the New York bankers who were also Jewish had relatively minor roles in supporting the Bolsheviks, while the New York bankers who were also Gentiles (Morgan, Rockefeller, Thompson) had major roles.22
Further evidence against the Judeo-Bolshevism conspiracy is the Bolshevik’s explicit hatred of Zionism and Hebrew culture. In 1918, the Bolsheviks created a Jewish faction of the party known as “Yevsektsiya” or “Evsektsii.” Lenin ordered them to destroy “traditional Jewish life, the Zionist movement, and Hebrew culture.”23 Historian Richard Pipes wrote that in September of 1919,
…the Evsektsii shut down the Zionist Central Office and the following year got the Cheka to arrest and exile numerous Zionists. In 1922, the campaign resumed with arrests and trials in Russian and Ukrainian cities. In September 1924, police raids resulted in the detention of several thousand Zionist activists. The movement managed, nevertheless, to survive underground for several years longer, so deep were its roots.24
Antisemites will also share random memes that claim Jews were 85-98% of the Bolshevik government but they are not based on any actual data. Some of these numbers can be traced back to Robert Wilton, a British journalist. Wilton claimed that out of 556 “important functionaries of the Bolshevik state,” 457 of them were Jews, without evidence.25 Even the Institute for Historical Review, a Holocaust “revisionism” nonprofit, doubts his assertions.26 He also claimed that 9 of the 15 members of the Bolshevik Central Committee were Jews, but we now know only 4 of them were: Sverdlov, Trotsky, Zinovyev and Sokolnikov.27
The actual prevalence of Jews in the party was quite low. The historian Benjamin Pinkus used data from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's annual party congresses to assess the statistical and organizational representation of Jews within the party's power institutions—the Central Committee, Politburo, Secretariat, and government bureaucracies.
Pinkus writes that the question of “whether the Bolshevik regime was 'the handiwork of the Jews' is misconceived - it has no historical basis…”28 Looking at the available membership data he found that in 1922, “the year of the membership census, there were 19,564 Jews in the Party - 5.21% of all Communist Party members…”29 And in 1927, “there were 49,627 Jewish members, 4.34% of all Party members.”30
Jews were more prominent in the leadership of the party. Although, their numbers were much lower than the antisemites claim. Pinkus writes:
In 1939 there were eleven Jewish full members and three candidate members, in all 10.1% of the ruling body, at a time when the Jews formed just over 4% of the Party membership. In the Politburo in the first half of the 1920s the Jews comprised from 23% to 37% (Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinovyev), but after the 'United opposition' had been ousted from the party leadership in 1926 not one Jew remained in the Politburo.31
While there was some “overrepresentation” in the party leadership, this is to be expected based on the socioeconomic status, high urbanization, high education levels, and high average IQ of the Jews in Russia.
Jews were more likely than Gentiles to be literate. This substantially higher literacy among Jews was the result of religious and educational reforms that began in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC and became the primary goal of religious leaders beginning in the 3rd century AD. Literacy was essential so that Jews could read and study the Torah and Talmud.32 Christianity, and Europeans in general, historically were not very concerned about widespread literacy until the spread of Protestantism.33 Russia’s 1897 census shows that it was 69% Orthodox, 9% Catholic, and less than 5% Protestant.34 With these demographics, it isn't surprising that Jewish literacy was above average.
In 1926, 85% of Jews were literate, compared to 58% of Russians; in 1939, 94% of Jews were literate, compared to 83% of Russians. Compared to 7.8% of the Soviet Union's total population and 8.1 percent of Russians living in the Russian Federation, 26.5 percent of Jews had completed high school in 1939.35 In 1926, researchers found that in the US, the children of Jewish immigrants from Russia had IQs 9.5 points higher than the children of Gentile Russian immigrants.36
The Bolshevik party certainly had thousands of Jews within it, but leftist Jews tended to favor other socialist parties rather than the Bolsheviks. For a while, some of the explicitly Jewish socialist parties had more members than the Bolsheviks did.37 Jerry Z. Muller observed that among socialist Jews, “most identified with the Yiddishist Bund, a smaller number with the Zionist Poalei Zion, a smaller number yet with the Mensheviks, and the tiniest minority with the Bolsheviks.”38
Even Stalin called attention to the Jewish representation in the Menshevik party and referred to them as “a Jewish faction” and the Bolsheviks as “a genuine Russian faction.”39 These Jewish parties were explicitly opposed to and in conflict with the Bolshevik party.40 If even the socialist Jews were overwhelmingly against the Bolsheviks and their strategies, it’s hard to argue that Bolshevism was a Jewish conspiracy.
Stalin and the Jews
What Jewish representation that did exist within the Bolsheviks was largely eliminated after Joseph Stalin took power. Towards the end of his reign, Jews made up less than 1% of the Soviet elite.41 This was largely because many Jews were killed or forcibly removed from power in and after Stalin’s purges.42 Even Hitler viewed Stalin’s purging of the elites as a turning point for Russia, and because of it he no longer believed in the Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy.43 Stalin even directly told Ribbentrop, the Nazi foreign minister, that he was waiting for a wide enough stratum of local intelligentsia to be formed before finishing off the Jews as a ruling elite.44
One specific Jew that Stalin targeted was Maxim Litvinov, the Commissar for Foreign Affairs. The Nazis despised Litvinov. They called him Jewish slurs and referred to him as “Finkelstein-Litvinov.”45 Stalin had realized that it would be much more favorable to the Soviet Union, and communism, to side with the Nazis and start a Great War than to form an alliance with Great Britain and France.46
Stalin initially favored Litvinov, but he realized he had to go to make the war happen. On May 3rd, 1939, NKVD troops marched into the Soviet Foreign Ministry and removed Litvinov, along with most of the Jewish employees.47 Just two days later, Astakhov, the Soviet ambassador to Germany, sought the Nazis’ approval of Litvinov’s removal.48
Once Litvinov was replaced with Molotov, Stalin was free to establish closer relations with Germany and eventually sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. After the pact was signed, Stalin handed over the gift of about 600 German Communists, most of whom were Jews, to the Gestapo in Brest-Litovsk.49 Many more prisoners were later handed over to the Nazis. The transfer of prisoners happened several more times through the NKVD-Gestapo conferences. The existence of these conferences refutes anyone who claims this was not a Soviet-Nazi alliance.
Stalin and his Soviet Union could be considered the first Holocaust deniers. Stalin’s government actively covered up what the Nazis were doing after they invaded Poland. Journalist Louis Rapoport writes:
In the spirit of the Stalin-Hitler pact, all Soviet organs deliberately remained silent about the genocidal slaughtering of the Jews by the Nazi conquerors of Poland between September 1939 and June 1941, when the Nazis invaded the USSR.50
Later researchers confirmed this by reviewing all available Pravda (the official newspaper of the Communist Party) archives from 1938 to 1942.51 Because so many people were left in the dark, many Eastern European Jews had no clue they had to fear the Nazis. A July 1941 Wehrmacht report remarked how Jews were “strikingly ill-informed” about the Nazis’ attitudes and intentions.52 Even after Operation Barbarossa the Soviets very rarely acknowledged the Jewish victims of the Nazis.53 Their report on the crimes at Auschwitz didn’t mention Jews once.54
Capitalism and the Jews
The notion that capitalism and Jews are inherently connected has been touched on previously. Quite a few individuals have espoused this belief, notably Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler. Hitler even asserted that Jews were responsible for both capitalism and communism. However, it’s evident that Jews did not "invent" capitalism.
The most prominent thinkers who contributed to modern capitalism, such as Adam Smith, Richard Cantillon, Jean-Baptiste Say, John Locke, and Carl Menger, were not Jewish. Although some later figures like Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Ayn Rand were Jewish, this does not support the notion that Jews invented capitalism. It does, however, refute the idea that Jews inherently align with Bolshevism. Mises even played a key role in preventing a second Bolshevik revolution from occurring in Austria.55
Though Jews have played an important role in spreading capitalism and contributing to economic theory, it was mainly white Protestant Christians behind it.56 Protestants, and almost all other Christian denominations, are far more pro-market than Jews, but Jews are still largely in support of markets.57
The broad Jewish and Christian preference for markets largely stems from the New Testament’s support for private property rights.58 Christians are likely more pro-market because of the virtue ethics taught in the New Testament and their incompatibility with big government.59 Economist and Rabbi Meir Tamari has noted that Judaism “recognizes the legitimacy of private property, the profit motive, and market mechanism.”60
But, as Tamari points out, Judaism doesn’t adhere to laissez-faire capitalism, or a system of “unlimited private property”, so that explains the religious gap in pro-market views.61 But Judaism’s recognition of private property institutions still excludes it from socialism.
Another reason for the Jewish preference for capitalism over socialism is that Jews are far more successful and free in comparative capitalist societies than in socialist ones.62 Jerry Z Muller argues that the Jew’s “premodern commercial experience, together with their emphasis on literacy, predisposed them to do disproportionately well in modern capitalist societies, where success increasingly depended on commercial acumen and book-learning.”63
Conclusion
The economic argument for antisemitism doesn’t hold up. Jews are not the ones behind socialism or communism. In fact, most of the major figures in these ideologies have been brazen antisemites. Jews are not behind capitalism either, although some Jews have been majority contributors to economic theory and Jews are generally successful and less persecuted in capitalist societies.
Further reading
Judaism, Capitalism, and Marx by David Gordon
Judaism, Capitalism, and Communism by David Gordon
Why Are Most Socialists Anti-Semitic? By L.K. Samuels
Jewish Theology and Economic Theory by Corinne Sauer
Alt-Right Lies: Russian Revolution Not Actually Dominated by Jews by Colin Liddell
Videos
Bolshevism and The Jews by Lucien Wolf
Modern Economics in the Talmud - Nobel Prize Winner, Professor Yisroel Aumann
Kołakowski, Leszek. Main Currents of Marxism. W. W. Norton and Company, 2005, p. 151.
Breckman, Warren. Adventures of the Symbolic. Columbia UP, 2013, p. 58.
Silberner, Edmund. “Pierre Leroux’s Ideas on the Jewish People.” Jewish Social Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, 1950, pp. 367–84.
Brustein, William I., et al. The Socialism of Fools? Cambridge UP, 2015, pp. 33-37.
Szajkowski, Zosa. “The Jewish Saint-Simonians and Socialist Antisemites in France.” Jewish Social Studies, vol. 9, no. 1, 1947, pp. 33–60.
Herzig, A. “The Role of Antisemitism in the Early Years of the German Workers’ Movement.” The Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, vol. 26, no. 1, 1981, pp. 243–59.
Brustein, William I., et al. The Socialism of Fools? Cambridge UP, 2015, p. 110.
Pulzer, Peter G. J. The Rise of Political Anti-semitism in Germany and Austria. Harvard UP, 1988, p. 47.
See Asaf Kedar’s doctoral dissertation “National Socialism Before Nazism: Friedrich Naumann and Theodor Fritsch, 1890-1914”
Gellately, Robert. Hitler’s True Believers. Oxford UP, USA, 2020, pp. 21-22, Waite, Robert. The Psychopathic God. Da Capo Press, 1993, p. 97.
Muller, Jerry Z. Capitalism and the Jews. Princeton UP, 2010, p. 6.
Ibid, pp. 10-11.
Johnson, Paul. A History of the Jews. Associated UPe, 1987, pp. 346-50
Mendelsohn, Ezra. Essential Papers on Jews and the Left. NYU Press, 1997, pp. 361-95.
Sowell, Thomas. Marxism. New York : Morrow, 1985.
Silberner, Edmund. “Friedrich Engels and the Jews.” Jewish Social Studies, vol. 11, no. 4, 1949, pp. 323–42.
Goodson, Stephen Mitford. A History of Central Banking and the Enslavement of Mankind. Black House Publishing Ltd, 2015, p. 83.
Ibid, p. 87.
Ravage, Marcus Eli. A Real Case Against the Jews, 1928.
Ackerman, Kenneth D. Trotsky in New York, 1917. Catapult, 2016, pp. 319-21.
Sutton, Antony. Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution. Clairview Books, 2016, p. 189.
Ibid.
Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Knopf, 1993, p. 363.
Ibid, p. 366.
Wilton, Robert. The Last Days of the Romanovs. The Institute for Historical Review, 1993, pp. 184-85.
Ibid, p. vii.
Pinkus, Benjamin. The Jews of the Soviet Union. Cambridge UP, 1988, p. 80.
Ibid, p. 79.
Ibid, p. 78.
Ibid, p. 79.
Ibid. p. 80.
Botticini, Maristella, and Zvi Eckstein. “Jewish Occupational Selection: Education, Restrictions, or Minorities?” The Journal of Economic History, vol. 65, no. 4, 2005, pp. 922–48.
Woodberry, Robert D. “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy.” American Political Science Review, vol. 106, no. 2, Cambridge UP (CUP), May 2012, pp. 244–74.
Lynn, Richard. The Chosen People. 2011, pp. 221-22
Ibid, 217.
Pinkus, Benjamin. The Jews of the Soviet Union. Cambridge UP, 1988, p. 77.
Muller, Jerry Z. Capitalism and the Jews. Princeton UP, 2010, p. 140.
Pinkus, Benjamin. The Jews of the Soviet Union. Cambridge UP, 1988, p. 144.
Gitelman, Zvi Y. Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton UP, 1972, pp. 151-230; Nedava, Joseph. Trotsky and the Jews. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1972, p. 154.
Mawdsley, Evan, and Stephen White. The Soviet Elite From Lenin to Gorbachev. OUP Oxford, 2000, p. 109.
Rapoport, Louis. Stalin’s War Against the Jews. First Glance Books, 1990, pp. 41-54.
Zitelmann, Rainer. Hitler’s National Socialism. Management Books 2000, 2022, pp. 510-517.
Picker, Henry. Hitlers Tischgespräche Im Führerhauptquartier 1941 - 1942. 1951, p. 119.
Herf, Jeffrey. The Jewish Enemy. Harvard UP, 2008, p. 97.
Nordling, Carl O. “Did Stalin Deliver His Alleged Speech of 19 August 1939?” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, vol. 19, no. 1, Informa UK Limited, Apr. 2006, pp. 93–106.
McMeekin, Sean. Stalin’s War. Basic Books, 2021, p. 76.
Sontag, Raymond James, and James Stuart Beddie. Nazi-Soviet Relations 1939-1941. 1948, p. 3
Rapoport, Louis. Stalin’s War Against the Jews. First Glance Books, 1990, p. 57.
Ibid, p. 58.
Schwarz, Solomon M. The Jews in the Soviet Union. 1951, p. 310.
Feferman, Kiril. Soviet Jewish Stepchild: The Holocaust in the Soviet Mindset, 1941-1964. VDM Verlag, 2009.
USSR-8 Soviet War Crimes Report on Auschwitz Nuremberg Trial - 6 May 1945
Hülsmann, Jörg Guido. Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism. Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2007, p. 332.
Woodberry, Robert D. “The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy.” American Political Science Review, vol. 106, no. 2, Cambridge UP (CUP), May 2012, pp. 244–74; Stark, Rodney. The Victory of Reason. Random House, 2007.
Jones, Adam T., et al. “Capitalist Views and Religion.” Eastern Economic Journal, vol. 45, no. 3, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Mar. 2019, pp. 384–414.
Kaiser Jr., Walter C. “Ownership and Property in the Old Testament Economy.” Journal of Markets and Morality, vol. 15, no. 1, 2012, pp. 227–36.
Moreland, J. P. A Biblical Case for Limited Government. Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics, 2013.
Tamari, Meir. With All Your Possessions. 1987, p. 2.
Ibid, p. xii.
Friedman, Milton. “Capitalism and the Jews.” Foundation for Economic Education, fee.org/articles/capitalism-and-the-jews.
Muller, Jerry Z. Capitalism and the Jews. Princeton UP, 2010, p. 9.
This is an absolute banger. Loved the read.
great work! you're the man