...But whether you might not be doing more harm than good 
with your anti-Semitism is something I would ask you to consider. 
For anti-Semitism betokens a retarded culture, which is why it is 
found only in Prussia and Austria, and in Russia too. Anyone 
dabbling in anti-Semitism, either in England or in America, would 
simply be ridiculed, while in Paris the only impression created by 
M. Drumont’s writings—wittier by far than those of the German 
anti-Semites—was that of a somewhat ineffectual flash in the pan. 
Moreover, now that he is standing for the Municipal Council he 
has actually had to declare himself an opponent of Christian no 
less than of Jewish capital. And M. Drumont would be read even 
were he to take the opposite view. 

In Prussia it is the lesser nobility, the Junkers with an income of 
10,000 marks and outgoings of 20,000, and hence subject to 
usury, who indulge in anti-Semitism, while both in Prussia and 
Austria a vociferous chorus is provided by those whom competi- 
tion from big capital has ruined—the petty bourgeoisie, skilled 
craftsmen and small shop-keepers. But in as much as capital, 
whether Semitic or Aryan, circumcised or baptised, is destroying 
these classes of society which are reactionary through and through, 
it is only doing what pertains to its office, and doing it well; it is 
helping to impel the retarded Prussians and Austrians forward 
until they eventually attain the present-day level at which all the 
old social distinctions resolve themselves in the one _ great 
antithesis—capitalists and wage-labourers. Only in places where 
this has not yet happened, where there is no strong capitalist class 
and hence no strong class of wage-labourers, where capital is not 
yet strong enough to gain control of national production as a 

On Anti-Semitism 51 

whole, so that its activities are mainly confined to the Stock 
Exchange—in other words, where production is still in the hands 
of the farmers, landowners, craftsmen and_ suchlike classes 
surviving from the Middle Ages—there, and there alone, is capital 
mainly Jewish, and there alone is anti-Semitism rife. 

In North America not a single Jew is to be found among the 
millionaires whose wealth can, in some cases, scarcely be expressed 
in terms of our paltry marks, gulden or francs and, by comparison 
with these Americans, the Rothschilds are veritable paupers. And 
even in England, Rothschild is a man of modest means when set, 
for example, against the Duke of Westminster.* Even in our own 
Rhineland from which, with the help of the French, we drove the 
aristocracy 95 years ago and where we have established modern 
industry, one may look in vain for Jews. 

Hence anti-Semitism is merely the reaction of declining medie- 
val social strata against a modern society consisting essentially of 
capitalists and wage-labourers, so that all it serves are reactionary 
ends under a purportedly socialist cloak; it is a degenerate form of 
feudal socialism and we can have nothing to do with that. The 
very fact of its existence in a region is proof that there is not yet 
enough capital there. Capital and wage-labour are today indivisi- 
ble. The stronger capital and hence the wage-earning class 
becomes, the closer will be the demise of capitalist domination. So 
what I would wish for us Germans, amongst whom I also count 
the Viennese, is that the capitalist economy should develop at a 
truly spanking pace rather than slowly decline into stagnation. 

In addition, the anti-Semite presents the facts in an entirely false 
light. He doesn’t even know the Jews he decries, otherwise he 
would be aware that, thanks to anti-Semitism in eastern Europe, 
and to the Spanish Inquisition in Turkey, there are here in 
England and in America thousands upon thousands of Jewish 
proletarians; and it is precisely these Jewish workers who are the 
worst exploited and the most poverty-stricken. In England during 
the past twelve months we have had three strikes by Jewish 
workers. Are we then expected to engage in anti-Semitism in our 
struggle against capital? 

Furthermore, we are far too deeply indebted to the Jews. 
Leaving aside Heine and Borne, Marx was a full-blooded Jew; 
Lassalle was a Jew. Many of our best people are Jews. My friend 
Victor Adler, who is now atoning in a Viennese prison for his 
devotion to the cause of the proletariat, Eduard Bernstein, editor 

a H. L. Grosvenor.— Ed. 

of the London Sozialdemokrat, Paul Singer, one of our best men in 
the Reichstag— people whom I am proud to call my friends, and 
all of them Jewish! After all, I myself was dubbed a Jew by the 
Gartenlaube and, indeed, if given the choice, I’d as hef be a Jew as 
a ‘Herr von’*! 

London, April 19, 1890 
Frederick Engels 

No. 19, May 9, 1890 paper 

a A German honorific indicating membership of the nobility.— Ed. 

53