Political Discourse in Exile: Karl Marx and the Jewish Question

Over the years, Karl Marx’s tangled relation with Judaism has provoked heated debate among followers and critics alike. Can the Jewish tradition better help us understand Marx’s political theory? Which themes in Marx’s writings become clearer when read in a Jewish context? This book argues that Marx’s work, from his doctoral dissertation to Capital , resounds with characteristic concerns of Jewish thought, identifying three key elements that Marx’s theory shares with Judaism – its ontology, its use of texts, and its conception of liberation as a return from exile.