The Secret Origins of Bolshevism: 1879 Letter to Karl Marx from Baruch Levy

Published in 1928 in the French periodical La Revue de Paris

Original source:
https://archive.org/details/sim_la-revue-de-paris_1928-06-01_11/page/574/

The original French¹ has been translated into English using https://www.deepl.com/translator.

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Marx was from a family of wealthy Jewish bankers.² Marx is considered the father of communism, but Marx was inspired by others. This edition of La Revue de Paris gives some insights into its secret origins in an article entitled Les Origines Secretes Du Bolchevisme, Henri Heine et Karl Marx.³

There is no certainty exactly who the purported author of the letter, Baruch Levy, actually is. Some say he wasn’t even real.⁴ It could be this man, even though the spelling is slightly different. Though if was him and the dates are all correct, he was aged 19 or 20 when he wrote this letter. Either way, he’s a particularly nasty piece of work.

Baruch Epstein or Baruch ha-Levi Epstein (1860–1941) was a Ashkenazi Jewish rabbi… source.

This whole article deserves and will get its own post, but this is just a taste. Some Jews say the letter is a forgary.⁵ Maybe. The La Revue de Paris article is not a forgery.

Note: it appears the terms communism and bolshevism are used interchangeably.⁶

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The Secret Origins of Bolshevism

Henri Heine and Karl Marx

It will be ten years since a fortunate coup de main delivered the former Tsarist empire to the members of an extremist party that had scarcely been known until then, even in Russia. Since then, the advent of this handful of adventurers has seemed like a new era…Bolshevism has used its immense material resources to set fire to the five parts of the world… (pp 267-268)

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(from p274)

It is one of these occult forces that we must study if we are to learn from where Karl Marx drew the inspiration and material help that enabled him to formulate the programme of Communism and propagate it throughout the world.

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The secret association in question was called the Union of Jews for Civilisation and Science. It was founded in 1819 by a group of German Israelites belonging to rabbinical families, foremost among whom were the famous scholar Leopold Zunz, who was later to become director of the Israelite Normal School in Berlin, and his friends Ganz and Moses Moser. The Union's apparent programme seems to have been a first draft of the one later adopted by the Alliance israëélite universelle: to come to the aid of Jews throughout the world and to develop among them all useful knowledge. But the real programme went much further: it involved a change, in a sort of positivist sense, in Israel's policy towards the Christian nations; above all, it aimed to make specifically Jewish ideas penetrate the civilisation born of Christianity, which would gradually bring about its dissolution.

The main thought of the leaders of the Union was that the Synagogue was wrong to persist in its age-old expectation of a human Messiah. The old rabbinical texts had been misunderstood when they announced a temporal king, all bloody battles, who would crush under the wheels of his chariot the nations that had tried to resist the universal empire promised to Israel, and who would govern with a rod of iron those who had submitted. It was the Jewish people itself, and not this or that of its sons, who, realising their ethnic superiority, were to conquer the world and bend it under the yoke of the chosen race.

This thesis, already presented on various occasions in history by isolated Talmudists, was one day formulated with rare precision by a Neo-Messianist, Baruch Lévy, in a letter to Karl Marx. He wrote

The Jewish people taken collectively will themselves be their Messiah. Its reign over the Universe will be achieved by the unification of the other human races, the abolition of frontiers and monarchies, which are the bulwark of particularism, and the establishment of a Universal Republic which will recognise everywhere the rights of citizens to the Jews.

In this new organisation of Humanity, the sons of Israel, spread from now on over the whole surface of the globe, all of the same race and of the same traditional formation without, however, forming a distinct nationality, will become without opposition the leading element everywhere, especially if they succeed in imposing on the working masses the stable leadership of some of their number.

The governments of the Nations forming the Universal Republic will all pass effortlessly into Israelite hands, thanks to the victory of the proletariat. Individual property can then be abolished by the rulers of the Judaic race who will administer the public fortune everywhere. In this way the promise of the Talmud will be fulfilled, that when the Times of the Messiah have come, the Jews will hold under their keys the property of all the peoples of the world.

This language, singularly materialistic under a phraseology still tinged with traditional Judaism, is enough to explain how the new sect differed from the Synagogue, and why Leopold Zunz, for example, was twice forced to renounce his duties as rabbi, in Berlin (1822) and Prague (1835).

One of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Union of Jews for Civilisation and Science was the poet Henri Heine, who joined at the age of twenty-three on 4 August 1822. The case of this son of Israel, whose poetic genius allows him to be ranked among the greatest writers of the 19th century, is quite characteristic from the neo-Messianist point of view.

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1. This is the original French of the part discussing Levy’s letter to Marx.

C’est l’une de ces forces occultes qu'il nous faut étudier si nous voulons apprendre d’où Karl Marx tira les inspirations et l’aide matérielle qui lui permirent de formuler le programme du Communisme et de le propager dans le monde.

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L'association secrète en question portait le titre d'Union des Juifs pour la Civilisation et la Science. Elle fut fondée en 1819 par un groupe d’Israélites allemands appartenant à des familles rabbiniques, au premier rang desquels on remarquait le célèbre érudit Léopold Zunz, qui devait devenir plus tard directeur de l’École normale israélite de Berlin, et ses amis Ganz et Moïse Moser. Le programme apparent de l’Union semble avoir été une première ébauche de celui qu’adopta plus tard l’Alliance israëélite universelle : venir en aide aux Juifs dans le monde entier et développer chez eux toutes les connaissances utiles. Mais le programme réel allait bien au delà : il comportait un changement, dans un sens en quelque sorte positiviste, de la politique d'Israël à l'égard des nations chrétiennes; il visait surtout à faire pénétrer, dans la civilisation issue du Christianisme, des idées spécifiquement juives, qui en provoqueraient peu à peu la dissolution.

La pensée maîtresse des chefs de l’Union était que la Synagogue avait tort de s’obstiner dans son attente, déjà tant de fois séculaire, d’un Messie humain. On avait mal compris les vieux textes rabbiniques quand ils annonçaïent un roi temporel, tout sanglant de batailles, qui écraserait sous les roues de son char les nations ayant voulu résister à l’empire universel promis à Israël, et qui gouvernerait avec une verge de fer celles qui se seraient soumises. C’était le peuple juif lui-même, et non tel ou tel de ses fils, qui, prenant conscience de sa supériorité ethnique, devait vaincre le Monde et le ployer sous le joug de la race élue.

Cette thèse, déjà présentée à diverses reprises dans l'Histoire par des Talmudisants isolés, devait être formulée un jour avec une rare pfécision par un Néo-Méssianiste, Baruch Lévy, dans une lettre à Karl Marx. Voici en quels termes :

Le peuple juif pris collectivement sera lui-même son Messie. Son règne sur l'Univers s’obtiendra par l'unification des autres races humaines, la suppression des frontières et des monarchies, qui sont le rempart du particularisme, et l'établissement d’une République Universelle qui reconnaîtra partout les droits de citoyens aux Juifs. Dans cette organisation nouvelle de l Humanité, les fils d'Israël répandus dès maintenant sur toute la surface du globe, tous de même race et de même formation traditionnelle sans former cependant une nationalité distincte, deviendront sans opposition l'élément partout dirigeant, surtout s'ils parviennent à imposer aux masses ouvrières la direction stable de quelques-uns d'entre eux. Les gouvernements des Nations formant la République Universelle passeront tous, sans effort, dans des mains israëélites, à la faveur de la victoire du prolélariat. La propriété individuelle pourra alors être supprimée par les gouvernants de race judaïque qui administreront partout la fortune publique. Ainsi se réalisera la promesse du Talmud que, lorsque les Temps du Messie seront venus, les Juifs tiendront sous leurs clefs les biens de tous les peuples du monde.

Ce langage, singulièrement matérialiste sous une phraséologie encore teintée de judaïsme traditionnel, suffit à expliquer en quoi la nouvelle secte se distinguait de la Synagogue, et pourquoi Léopold Zunz, par exemple, fut amené à renoncer par deux fois aux fonctions de rabbin, à Berlin (1822), puis à Prague (1835).

Un des plus enthousiastes adeptes de l’Union des Juifs pour la Civilisation et la Science fut le poète Henri Heine, qui yadhéra, à l’âge de vingt-trois ans, le 4 août 1822. Le cas de ce fils d'Israël, que son génie poétique autorise à classer parmi les plus grands écrivains du 19 siècle, est tout à fait caractéristique au point de vue néo-messianiste.

2. See

3. The Secret Origins of Bolshevism, Henri Heine and Karl Marx
https://archive.org/details/sim_la-revue-de-paris_1928-06-01_11/page/566

4. Guess who.

5. What is Israel’s Mossad’s motto (supposedly, but of course they’ll deny it)?

Here’s a link to the other side. https://www.jta.org/archive/j-d-b-news-letter-219

6. This is not the place to get into the whole Bolsheviks/Menshevik/Social Democrat/Communist thing, but if you’re interested this does go deeper. Happy digging.