Selected Essays | Page 8

finally which cannot emancipate itself without emancipating
all the other spheres of society, which represents in a word the
complete loss of mankind, and can therefore only redeem itself through
the complete redemption of mankind. The dissolution of society
reduced to a special order is the proletariat.
The proletariat arises in Germany only with the beginning of the
industrial movement; for it is not poverty resulting from natural
circumstances but poverty artificially created, not the masses who are
held down by the weight of the social system, but the multitude
released by the acute break-up of society--especially of the middle
class--which gives rise to the proletariat. When the proletariat
proclaims the dissolution of the existing order of things it is merely
announcing the secret of its own existence, for it is in itself the virtual
dissolution of this order of things. When the proletariat desires the

negation of private property, it is merely elevating to a general
principle of society what it already involuntarily embodies in itself as
the negative product of society.
With respect to the nascent world the proletariat finds itself in the same
position as the German king occupies with respect to the departed
world, when he calls the people his people, just as he calls a horse his
horse. In declaring the people to be his private property, the king
acknowledges that private property is king.
Just as philosophy finds in the proletariat its material weapons, so the
proletariat finds in philosophy its intellectual weapons, and as soon as
the lightning of thought has penetrated into the flaccid popular soil, the
elevation of Germans into men will be accomplished.
Let us summarize the result at which we have arrived. The only
liberation of Germany that is practical or possible is a liberation from
the standpoint of the theory that declares man to be the supreme being
of mankind. In Germany emancipation from the Middle Ages can only
be effected by means of emancipation from the results of a partial
freedom from the Middle Ages. In Germany no brand of serfdom can
be extirpated without extirpating every kind of serfdom. Fundamental
Germany cannot be revolutionized without a revolution in its basis. The
emancipation of Germans is the emancipation of mankind. The head of
this emancipation is philosophy; its heart is the proletariat. Philosophy
cannot be realized without the abolition of the proletariat, the
proletariat cannot abolish itself without realizing philosophy.
When all the inner conditions are fulfilled, the German day of
resurrection will be announced by the crowing of the Gallic Cock.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Speech in defence of hearths and homes.
[2] Shameful part.
[3] listigen, a play on the name of the protectionist economist F. List.

[4] In English in the original.
[5] In conformity with principles.

ON THE JEWISH QUESTION
1. BRUNO BAUER, Die Judenfrage (The Jewish Question),
Brunswick 1843.
2. BRUNO BAUER, Die Fähigkeit der heutigen Juden und Christen,
frei zu werden (The Capacity of Modern Jews and Christians to
become free), Zurich 1843.
1. BRUNO BAUER, Die Judenfrage, Brunswick 1843.
The German Jews crave for emancipation. What emancipation do they
crave? Civic, political emancipation.
Bruno Bauer answers them: Nobody in Germany is politically
emancipated. We ourselves are unfree. How shall we liberate you? You
Jews are egoists, if you demand a special emancipation for yourselves
as Jews. As Germans you ought to labour for the political emancipation
of Germany, as men for human emancipation, and you ought to feel the
special nature of your oppression and your disgrace not as an exception
from the rule, but rather as its confirmation.
Or do Jews demand to be put on an equal footing with Christian
subjects? Then they recognize the Christian State as justified, then they
recognize the régime of general subjugation. Why are they displeased
at their special yoke, when the general yoke pleases them? Why should
Germans interest themselves in the emancipation of the Jews, if Jews
do not interest themselves in the emancipation of Germans?
The Christian State knows only privileges. In that State the Jew
possesses the privilege of being a Jew. As a Jew, he has rights which a
Christian has not. Why does he crave the rights which he has not, and
which Christians enjoy?

If the Jew wants to be emancipated from the Christian State, then he
should demand that the Christian State abandon its religious prejudice.
Will the Jew abandon his religious prejudice? Has he therefore the right
to demand of another this abdication of religion?
By its very nature the Christian State cannot emancipate the Jews; but,
adds Bauer, by his very nature the Jew cannot be emancipated.
So long as the State is Christian and the Jew is Jewish, both are equally
incapable of granting and receiving emancipation.
The Christian State can only behave towards the Jew