Introduction Marx 3/13 on Marx's Critique of Hegel and "On the Jewish Question" and Claude Lefort

Bernard E. Harcourt introduces Marx 3/13 on Marx’s 1844 articles on the Critique of Hegel and "On the Jewish Question" and Claude Lefort's commentary in "Human Rights and Politics," with the critical theorist Jean Louise Cohen @Columbia. Read more here: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/3-13/ The full text of this introduction to Marx 3/13 is here: https://the1313.law.columbia.edu/2024/11/08/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-marx-3-13-marxs-1844-articles-on-the-critique-of-hegel-and-the-jewish-question-claude-lefort-on-human-rights-and-politics-with-jean-louise-cohen/ Information about Marx 13/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/ Information on the 13/13 series: https://cccct.law.columbia.edu/content/13-13 *** In February 1844, Marx published two articles in the Deutsch-französische Jahrbücher (“German-French Annals”), which he and Arnold Ruge edited in Paris: “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” and “On the Jewish Question.” The first article, Jean Hyppolite referred to as “a first communist manifesto.” The second article, “On the Jewish Question,” called for human, as opposed to merely legal or political emancipation. Together, these two articles from 1844 push Marx beyond the legal remedies that he had proposed in his 1842 articles on the thefts of wood, which we discussed at Marx 2/13. There, you will recall, Marx called for a legal settlement based on an internationalist customary right of the poor, universal as to the class of poor peoples of all countries, because of their condition in the social order. By contrast, in these 1844 articles, Marx recognizes the thoroughgoing political and social nature of the struggle and turns instead to the working class and to social revolution for the realization of human emancipation. From Marx’s juridical writings in 1842, then, we turn now in Marx 3/13 to his political writings on the state and the true nature of human emancipation. At Marx 3/13, we will read and discuss Marx’s 1844 articles with the philosopher and political theorist Jean Louise Cohen of Columbia University, in conversation with a commentary on Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” by the French political philosopher Claude Lefort. A former Trotskyist and co-founder with Cornelius Castoriadis of the journal and social movement Socialisme ou Barbarie (“Socialism or Barbarism”) in the 1950s, Claude Lefort became a staunch critic of the Soviet régime and an expert on questions of totalitarianism. In an article published in 1980, under the title “Politics and Human Rights,” Claude Lefort returned to Marx’s article “On the Jewish Question” to discuss the rise of human rights discourse within dissident movements in the East Bloc. Welcome to Marx 3/13! Readings for Marx 3/13: https://marx1313.law.columbia.edu/3-13-readings-marxs-critique-of-hegel-and-on-the-jewish-question/