Anti-Semitism and National Socialism: Notes on the German Reaction to "Holocaust"

Author(s): Moishe Postone

Source: New German Critique , Winter, 1980, No. 19, Special Issue 1: Germans and Jews
(Winter, 1980), pp. 97-115
Published by: Duke University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/487974

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Anti-Semitism and National Socialism:
Notes on the German Reaction
to "Holocaust"

by Moishe Postone

The great and profound response to the tv film "Holocaust" in West

Germany raises questions concerning the relation of anti-Semitism and
National Socialism and their public discussion in the Federal Republic o
Germany.' This discussion has been characterized by an apparent
antinomy.
In emphasizing the discontinuity between the Nazi past and the present,
liberals and conservatives have focused attention on the persecution and
extermination of the Jews when referring to that past. Hence, other aspects
central to Nazism have been deemphasized. The emphasis on anti-Semitism
has served to underline the supposed total character of the break between

1. With regard to the film itself, a great deal of the criticisms in West German publications
concentrated on its commercial character and its tendency to trivialize. In my opinion, other
aspects of the film were, within the context of the Federal Republic, far more important.
Particular weaknesses of the film were precisely its strengths in evoking public response.
The portrayal of the fate of a single Jewish family, for example, allowed for and induced
sympathy with the victims. A German public found itself identifying with the Jews, an identifi-
cation process facilitated by the portrayal of an assimilated, middle-class family. The awareness
of the murder of six million Jewish people was thereby heightened. This portrayal and response,
however, remain bound within the liberal response to racism and do not confront their own
majoritarian implications. By simply reacting to the racist and anti-Semitic negative evaluation
of the Other, they tend to negate the fact of, and right to, Otherness. What was therefore veiled
was that not only were millions of Jewish lives destroyed, but also the life of European Jewry. In
strengthening the possibility of identification, the film weakened the perception that what was
exterminated was another people, another culture.
Another weakness of the film was that the depiction of conditions in the ghettos and in the
camps was mild compared to the horrors of the reality. Yet, this very fact allowed for a feeling of
horror on the part of the public. People could be open in a manner most can't when confronted
with documentary footage which present an almost inconceivable horror, show the victims as
dehumanized skeletons - living or dead - and which, therefore, frequently elicit a negative
reaction, defensive in character.
Finally, the film treated the persecution and extermination of the Jews purely phenomeno-
logically. No attempt was made to explain anti-Semitism or indicate the social and historical
dimensions of National Socialism. Yet, perhaps this very lack forced people to confront the raw
phenomenon itself and not hide behind analytic categories or moralizing pieties.

97

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98 Postone

the Third Reich and the Federal Republic and to avoid a con
the social and structural reality of National Socialism, a real
completely vanish in 1945. It is telling that, whereas t
government pays reparations to the Jews, it rarely does
and other radical opponents of the Nazis who had been
Resistance officially honored is that of June 20, 1944. In ot
happened to the Jews has been instrumentalized and tra
ideology of legitimation for the present system. This in
was only possible because anti-Semitism has been treate
form of prejudice, as a scapegoat ideology -a view which
intrinsic relationship between anti-Semitism and other a
Socialism.
On the other hand, the Left has tended to concentrate on the function of
National Socialism for capitalism, emphasizing the destruction of working-
class organizations, Nazi social and economic policies, rearmament,
expansionism and the bureaucratic mechanisms of party and state
domination. Elements of continuity between the Third Reich and the
Federal Republic have been stressed. The extermination of the Jews has
not, of course, been ignored. Yet, it has quickly been subsumed under the
general categories of prejudice, discrimination and persecution.2 In other
words, the extermination of the Jews has been treated outside of the frame-
work of an analysis of Nazism. Anti-Semitism is understood as a peripheral,
rather than as a central moment of National Socialism. The intrinsic
relationship between the two has been obscured by the Left as well.
Both of these positions share an understanding of modern anti-Semitism
as anti-Jewish prejudice, as a particular example of racism in general. The
stress the mass psychological nature of anti-Semitism in a manner which
precludes its incorporation into a socio-economic examination of Nationa
Socialism. In the second half of this essay, I will outline an interpretation of
modern anti-Semitism which will indicate its intrinsic connection to National
Socialism, as an attempt to overcome this interpretative antinomy, and as an
approach to understanding the extermination of European Jewry.
The weaknesses of the understanding of anti-Semitism outlined above
emerged with particular clarity in the discussions on the "Holocaust" film
held after each showing on West German television. The panel member
were at their best when presenting information: conditions in the concentra-
tion camps; the activities of the Einsatzgruppen and their composition
(police as well as SS units); the mass murder of Gypsies; and the material
difficulties and extent of Jewish resistance. They were at a loss, however
when they attempted to explain the extermination of European Jewry. They
dealt with the question primarily in terms of a lack of civil courage in th

2. All Jews in East Germany, regardless of their political background, receive higher
pensions from the government. They do not, however, receive these pensions as Jews, but as
"anti-fascists."

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 Anti-Semitism and National Socialism 99

population (thereby implying that the overwhelming majority of the

German population was at least passively opposed to Nazi anti-Semitism);
or in general terms of suspicion and fear of the Other; or in terms of
individual psychology ('"the potential Dorf in each of us").3 There was
relatively little talk of anti-Semitism, and no attempt was made to define
modern anti-Semitism more closely and to relate it to Nazism. Consequently,
the question of how such a thing could have happened remained necessarily
rhetorical, as an expression of shame and horror.
The horror and shame evoked by the film focused discussion on the
question of whether Germans had known what had been happening to the
Jews, a question discussed very heatedly and emotionally on television as
well as in the press.4 By showing mass shootings of Jews by the Einsatz-
gruppen, "Holocaust" undermined the fiction that Nazi genocide was the
affair of a small handful of people operating within a context hermetically
sealed off from most of the soldiers as well as the rest of the German popula-
tion. The fact that millions of Jews, Russians and Poles were murdered or
starved to death outside of the camps with the knowledge and, at times,
active help of the Wehrmacht, could no longer be repressed from public
consciousness.5 Public reaction to "Holocaust" made clear that millions of
Germans had, in fact, known, even if many had not known all the details.
This fact of knowledge raises the problem of the typical post-war
German insistence on not having known about the extermination of
European Jewry and other Nazi crimes against humanity. It is clear that this
denial of knowledge was an attempt to deny guilt. It could, however, be
argued that, even had people known, there was little that they could have
done. Knowledge of Nazi crimes need not necessarily imply guilt. More-
over, what was the significance of this denial of knowledge after the war,
when most people certainly did know?
The post-war insistence on not having known should probably be inter-
preted as a continued insistence on not wanting to know. "We didn't know"
should be understood as "we still don't want to know." Admission of
knowledge - even if post factum acquired - would have necessarily
demanded an internal distancing from past identification and would have led
to political and social consequences. Had people been open to thi

3. Dorf was the name of the (fictional) central Nazi character in the film.
4. Whereas Rudolf Augstein of Der Spiegel wrote an editorial emphasizing (but not
excusing) his lack of knowledge, Henri Nannen of Stern wrote one condemning himself fo
knowing and not acting, and even continuing to wear a Luftwaffe uniform with pride. A
dramatic moment occurred on television when, after many statements pleading ignorance had
been made, a newscaster, who had been reporting on the public reaction, broke his report to
make a personal statement. During the war he had served on a submarine in the Atlantic. The
had known about Auschwitz even there.
5. As early as 1940, internal memoranda of Heydrich's SD (security service) refer to the
"problem" of German soldiers - most of whom were, after all, on the eastern front - coming
home on leave and describing their experiences.

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100 Postone

knowledge after the war, that which was conspicuously lac

occurred - a massive public reaction of horror and the d
Perhaps it wouldn't have been possible for so many Na
lawyers and judges to continue exercising those functio
Republic.6 Mass anti-Nazi revulsion was not, however, o
goal was "normalcy" at all costs - one to be achieved wit
the past. The strong identification with that past was n
simply buried beneath a surfeit of Volkswagens.
The result was psychic self-denial and repression. There
pretations of the nature of this massive psychic re
punishment, shame, continued identification, or denial o
very strong identification, rather than its overcoming (Mits
the inability to mourn). That such a repression took place i
kind of collective somnabulism resulted, with the majority
sleep-walking its way through the Cold War, the "econ
reemergence of politics with the student revolt, repressing
That sleep-like state has been shattered, at least m
"Holocaust." This is probably as much a function of time as
itself. Thirty-four years after the end of World War II, hi
down. The forward-directedness of the post-war era - the
of the world into two camps; the period of economic
happiness was to be achieved through coihsumerism; t
student and youth revolt, when happiness was to be a
experiential politics - is over. The past, which was tho
left far behind, has reemerged. It had always been in tow,
That has now become apparent. However, it is too early to
reactions to '"Holocaust" will lead to a confrontation with t
have long-range consequences, or whether they will pr
passing catharsis.

II

The problem of knowledge of the Nazi past has played a very specific role
in the German New Left, one not immediately obvious. This past and its
collective psychic repression were very important moments in the
emergence of the New Left. Yet, despite the fact that there has been
discussion of Nazism and the Holocaust within the Left, many recent
conversations in Frankfurt have revealed a remarkable phenomenon. While
most of the older generation of the New Left had, in the 1960s, concerned
themselves intensively with the problem, a great many, perhaps most, of the

6. I don't believe that the lack of such a reaction can only be attributed to the conservative
policies of the Allies after 1945. The "Antifa" committees were small and isolated. Anti-fascists
released from Nazi camps found little popular acclaim.

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 Anti-Semitism and National Socialism 101

younger generation politicized in 1968 and afterwards, had never seen

documentaries or read documents on the extermination of European Jewry.
For this generaion, "Holocaust" was a shock. It was the first time that they
had concretely and viscerally been confronted with the fate of the Jew
They had known, of course, but apparently only abstractly. The reality o
that horror had never been concretely confronted. The absence of this
confrontation was reflected in the treatment of history by the post-196
German New Left and in its understanding of National Socialism.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the New Left devoted far more attention
to the history of the working-class movement, especially from 1918 to 1923,
and to resistance against the Nazis, than to the history of National Socialism
itself. The study of history became the search for identification - a searc
which was particularly strong, given the Nazi past. A historical confront
tion with the Third Reich was, however, thereby avoided. The focus on th
revolutionary moments following World War I obscured the fact that th
history came to an end, at the very latest in 1933 and no longer represents a
living historical tradition - whether in the FRG or the GDR. The need fo
identification led to an emphasis on resistance to Hitler which avoided
coming to terms with the popularity of the Nazi regime. It also served t
block an understanding of the situation of the Jews in Europe 1933-194
"Lack of Jewish resistance" became an implicit accusation rather than th
point of departure for closer examination.
The lack of real knowledge of Nazi activities and policies in Poland and
the Soviet Union, in the ghettos and extermination camps, led to a
incomplete image of Nazism. The result was an analysis of Nationa
Socialism which drew upon those moments of the phenomenon mo
apparent in the years 1933-39: a terroristic, bureaucratic police sta
operating in the immediate interests of big capital, based on authoritaria
structures, glorifying the family and using racism as one means of soci
cohesion. This sort of analysis was strongly reinforced by the communis
habit of speaking of fascism rather than Nazism, thereby emphasizing i
class function to the exclusion of other moments. In other words, both the
non-dogmatic Left and orthodox Marxists tended to treat anti-Semitism
an epiphenomenon of National Socialism. Hence, Nazi crimes again
humanity were isolated from a socio-historical examination of Nationa
Socialism. One result is that the extermination camps appear as instances
imperalist (or totalitarian) mass murder in general, or they remai
inexplicable.
The insistence on a confrontation with the specificity of Nazism and the
extermination of European Jewry has frequently been misunderstood in
in Germany - by the Left as well - as an accusation that terror, mass
murder, racism and authoritarianism are a German monopoly, a misunde
standing that produces defensive reactions. A typical example: the menti
of Nazism to a German is followed immediately by "answers" with examples
of other atrocities in Vietnam and Palestine, etc. Left theories of Nation

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102 Postone

Socialism also tend to express this defensiveness. Objectivisti

either collapse Horkheimer's dictum relating fascism and capit
posited identity, or mediate the two economistically. Subjectivi
(such as that, for example, of Theweleit, which deals with Nazism
male fantasies7) also neglect the specificity of National Socialism.
Reich comes to be identified with capital or patriarchy, i.e., u
historically non-specific terms.
Theory itself became a form of psychic repression. Concepts w
in order to block an unmediated perception of Nazism rather
used to grasp that reality and render it understandable. This tran
of the function of analysis resulted, in my opinion, from the abh
guilt felt by the post-war generation in relation to the Nazi past. T
guilt was elusive and difficult to deal with, inasmuch as it wasn't
real guilt. The combination of abhorrence and guilt led to a co
Nazism - but one characterized by defensive reactions which p
coming to terms with the specificity of the past. An admiss
specificity became associated with an admission of guilt. The resul
a tendency to treat Nazism as an empty abstraction, one asso
capitalism, bureaucracy and authoritarian structures - an ex
species of the "normality" we all know. The specificity of the
has not only been thereby avoided, but the term "fascism" has be
to a rhetorical inflation which has devalued its meaning. On th
this one-sided emphasis on the above-mentioned moments of
Socialism ignored its anti-bourgeois aspects: the revolt, the ha
Establishment and of the greyness of capitalist everyday life.
hand, the struggle against the authoritarian capitalist present in t
present with important elements of continuity with the Nazi past
interpreted as a direct struggle against fascism, an attempt to ma
for the lack of German resistance then. Such tendencies strongly

7. Theweleit, Maiinnerphantasien, Roter Stern Verlag, Frankfurt 1977. The b

source of documents and interpretations on male fantasies. As an analysis of
structures, its weakness is that the examination of the relation of patriarchy and N
shortened as an attempt to explain the latter essentially in terms of the former.
course, sexist. However, that was not its distinguishing hallmark. By collap
Theweleit makes use of a category non-specific to National Socialism in order
specificity of that phenomenon (analogous to the use of "capital" in objectiv
That specificity becomes thereby dissolved and the problem becomes posed in te
it is at all possible to speak of "non-fascist" men (p. 44). In other words, the atte
the subjective dimension of a historically specific phenomenon becomes tran
subjectivistic, transhistorical, non-specific ideology.
Miinnerphantasien has been a huge success in Germany. It was extensivel
richly praised by the liberal press. (Die Zeit gave it a full page.) At the same tim
extremely popular in the Left "scene." In my opinion, precisely what I have
reason for its popularity: the interpretation of the Nazi past is trendy - an inau
to the women's movement - and is so non-specific that the problem of the succ
Socialism in Germany is dissolved into the problem of men in general, out of t

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 Anti-Semitism and National Socialism 103

political discussion in Frankfurt during the 1970s, which was determined to a

great degree by a confrontation with the theory, strategy and tactics of the
West German underground.
A great deal of political activity in the FRG is presented in terms of
"learning from the past." The foci of political concern and activity in West
Germany today are the struggles against repression, Berufsverbot, the
infringement of civil liberties, court procedures, the appalling mistreatment
of political prisoners (of all prisoners, in fact), discrimination of foreign
workers, racism, and atomic energy in its political as well as ecological
consequences. Do they, however, require learning from the Nazi past? They
are all, of course, directed against an authoritarian state. That determina-
tion, however, by no means exhausts that of National Socialism. To present
these campaigns - as important as they are - as "learning from the past"
is somewhat equivocal, for here the learning is somewhat too quick and
represents, in part, a flight from the specificity of that past as well.
The effects of this flight have been ambiguous. I doubt if there is another
Left in the West as open to, and aware of, developments in other countries,
as that in West Germany. Yet, one senses an underlying desperation, a
search for identity, in the degree to which large segments of the non-
dogmatic Left have attempted to relate to developments abroad in an
unmediated fashion - from the Italian "Hot Autumn" of 1969, through
Panther Defense, Palestine, Portugal, alternative projects in the USA, the
Italian "metropolitan Indians," French "New Philosophy," etc.
These problems of learning and repression, flight and the search for
identification, were expressed most clearly in the attitudes of the German
New Left towards Israel. No western Left was as philo-Semitic and pro-
Zionist prior to 1967. Probably none subsequently identified so strongly
with the Palestinian cause. What was termed "anti-Zionism" was in fact so
emotionally and psychically charged that it went far beyond the bounds of a
political and social critique of Zionism. The very word became as negatively
informed as Nazism, in the one country where the Left should have known
better.8 The moment of reversal was the war in 1967. I would suggest that a
process of psychological reversal took place in which the Jews as victors
became identified with the Nazi past - positively by the German Right,
negatively by the Left. Their victims, the Palestinians, became identified as

8. A not infrequent reason given by some leftists for refusing to look at "Holocaust" was
that they heard it was a piece of Zionist propaganda. This neglects the obvious fact that the
extermination of European Jewry was the reason that most Jews became sympathetic to
Zionism after 1945. This was not only because of the Nazis, but also because of the eagerness of
Rumanian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Croatian, Flemish and French anti-Semites and fascists to
help them, as well as the policy of "benign neglect" pursued by the Americans and British.
Zionism, as a nationalist response, became convincing to many Jews after having experienced
how the projected image of the Jewish World Conspiracy became realized as its opposite: a
world "conspiracy" against the Jews. Understanding the grounds for mass Jewish support of
Zionism does not, however, necessarily entail accepting and condoning Zionist policies.

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104 Postone

the Jews. It is significant in this regard that the trigger for such a
not the explusion and the suffering of the Palestinians which, af
long before 1967. It was, rather, the victorious "Biltzkrieg" of
Philo-Semitism revealed its other side: if Jews aren't victims and therefore
virtuous, and if Israelis are brutal and racist, they must be "Nazis."
Moreover, after the battle of Karameh in 1968, the Palestinians proved
themselves to be the "better Jews" - they resisted. An opportunity was
finally given to identify with the "Jews" and with their resistance. The
struggle against Zionism was transformed into the long-yearned-for struggle
against the Nazi past, freed of guilt.
This cycle of psychic reversal was most grotesquely manifested in
Entebbe in 1976. An Air France plane had been highjacked and all non-
Jewish passengers had been released. The hostages held were the Jewish
passengers. (Not simply all the Israelis - which would have been bad
enough.) This process of "selection" was undertaken, among others, by two
young German leftists, less than four decades after Auschwitz! There was no
public negative response - not to speak of a general outcry - within the
German New Left. "Learning from the past" has been far from realized. It
had been blocked by guilt, hindered by ignorance, and repressed by the
overwhelming need for objects of unequivocal identification.
It may very well be that the immediate problems facing a German Left
have much more to do with an increasingly authoritarian technocratic
capitalism, than with Nazism and anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, the weight of
that past has been too heavy to be ignored; the attempt to push aside the past
in order to confront the present has not worked. The repressed past has
remained, has continued to operate subterraneously, and has helped
determine the mode of dealing with the present.

III

An important aspect of confronting this past would entail trying to come

to terms with anti-Semitism and its relation to National Socialism, to try to
understand the extermination of European Jewry. This cannot be done so
long as anti-Semitism is understood as an example of racism sans phrase and
so long as Nazism is understood only in terms of big capital and a terroristic
bureaucratic police state. Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Maidenek, Sobibor
and Treblinka should not be treated outside of the framework of an analysis
of National Socialism. They repiesent one of its logical endpoints, not

Similarly, understanding Palestinian responses to decades of Zionist oppression does not

necessitate agreeing with the politics of radical nationalists such as Habash or Wadi Haddad.
Such distinctions are really not so difficult to make. That can't be the problem. Does a German
leftist not have to deal with the extermination of European Jewry by the Nazis because of the
realities of Zionism?

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 Anti-Semitism and National Socialism 105

simply its most terrible epiphenomenon. No analysis of National Socialism

which cannot account for the extermination of European Jewry is fully
adequate.
My intention here is not to explain why Nazism and modern anti-
Semitism achieved a breakthrough and became hegemonic in Germany.
Such an attempt would entail an analysis of the specificity of the develop-
ment of German history, about which a great deal has been written. The
attempt in this essay is, rather, to examine what it was which achieved a
breakthrough - i.e., to suggest an analysis of those aspects of modern anti-
Semitism which indicate its intrinsic connection to National Socialism, as an
approach to understanding the extermination of European Jewry. Such an
examination is a necessary precondition to any fully adequate analysis of
why it succeeded in Germany.
The first step must be a specification of the Holocaust and of modern
anti-Semitism. The lack of a serious and intensive consideration of modern
anti-Semitism renders inadequate any attempt to understand the extermina-
tion of European Jewry. The problem should not be posed quantitatively,
whether of numbers of people murdered or of degree of suffering. There are
too many historical examples of mass murder and genocide. (Many more
Russians than Jews, for example, were killed by the Nazis.) The question, is,
rather, one of qualitative specificity. Particular aspects of the extermination
of European Jewry by the Nazis remain inexplicable so long as anti-Semitism
is treated as a specific example of prejudice, xenophobia and racism in
general, as an example of a scapegoat strategy whose victims could very well
have been members of any other group.
The Holocaust was characterized by the sense of mission, the relative
lack of emotion and immediate hate (as opposed to pogroms, for example)
and, most importantly, its apparent lack of functionality. The extermination
of the Jews was not a means to another end. They were not exterminated for
military reasons, or in order to violently acquire land (as was the case with
the American Indians and the Tasmanians), or in order to wipe out those
segments of the population around whom resistance could most easily
crystallize so that the rest could be exploited as helots (as was Nazis policy
towards the Poles and Russians), or for any other "extrinsic" goal. The
extermination of the Jews not only was to have been total, but was its own goal
- extermination in order to exterminate - a goal which acquired absolute
priority.9
No functionalist explanation of the Holocaust and no scapegoat theory
of anti-Semitism can even begin to explain why, in the last years of the war,
when the German armies were being rolled over by the Red Army, a signifi-
cant proportion of vehicles was used to transport Jews to the gas chambers,
rather than for logistical support. Once this qualitative specificity of the

9. The only recent attempt in the West German media to qualitatively specify the Nazi
extermination of the Jews was made by Jirgen Thorwald in Der Spiegel, Feb. 5, 1979.

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106 Postone

extermination of European Jewry is recognized, it bec

attempts at an explanation which deal with capitalism, racis
sexual repression or the authoritarian personality, rema
The specificity of the Holocaust requires a much m
mediation in order to even approach its understanding.
The extermination of European Jewry is, of course,
Semitism. The specificity of the former must be related to
Moreover, modern anti-Semitism must be understood w
Nazism as a movement - a movement which, in terms
understanding, represented a revolt.
Modern anti-Semitism, which should not be confused wit
Jewish prejudice, is an ideology, a form of thought, w
Europe in the late 19th century. Its emergence presup
earlier forms of anti-Semitism, which has almost alway
part of Christian western civilization. What is common to a
Semitism is the degree of power attributed to the Jews
God, unleash the Bubonic Plague and, more recently, in
and socialism. In other words, anti-Semitic thought is st
with the Jews playing the role of the children of darkness
It is not only the degree, but also the quality of power a
Jews which distinguishes anti-Semitism from other f
Probably all forms of racism attribute potential power
power, however, is usually concrete - material or sexu
the oppressed (as repressed), of the "Untermensch
attributed to the Jews is not only much greater and "r
potential, it is different. In modern anti-Semitism it
intangible, abstract and universal. This power does not
such, but must find a concrete vessel, a carrier, a mod
Because this power is not bound concretely, is not
staggering immensity and is extremely difficult to chec
phenomena, but is not identical with them. Its source is
conspiratorial. The Jews represent an immensely powe
international conspiracy.
A graphic example of this vision is provided by a N
depicts Germany - represented as a strong, honest wo
in the West by a fat, plutocratic John Bull and in the
barbaric Bolshevik Commissar. Yet, these two hostile f
puppets. Peering over the edge of the globe with the puppe
his hands is the Jew. Such a vision was by no means a mono
It is characteristic of modern anti-Semitism that the Jews a
be the force behind those "apparent" opposites: plutocra
socialism. "International Jewry" is, moreover, perceived
the "asphalt jungles" of the newly emergent urban mega
"vulgar, materialist, modern culture" and, in general, all fo
to the decline of traditional social groupings, values and

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 Anti-Semitism and National Socialism 107

Jews represent a foreign, dangerous, destructive force undermining the

social "health" of the nation. Modern anti-Semitism, then, is characterized
not only by its secular content, but also by its systematic character. Its claim
is to explain the world - a world which had rapidly become too complex
and threatening for many people.
This descriptive determination of modern anti-Semitism, while necessary
in order to differentiate that form from prejudice or racism in general, is in
itself not sufficient to indicate the intrinsic connection to National Socialism.
That is, the aim of overcoming the customary separation between a socio-
historical analysis of Nazism and an examination of anti-Semitism is, on this
level, not yet fulfilled.
What is required is an explanation of the anti-Semitism described above
which is capable of mediating the two. It must be grounded historically in the
same categories which could be used to explain National Socialism. The
intention is not to negate socio-psychological or psychoanalytical explana-
tions,'0 but rather to elucidate a historical-epistemological frame of
reference within which further psychological specifications can take place.
Such a frame of reference must be able to ground the specific content of modern
anti-Semitism and must be historical, i.e., must contribute to an understanding
of why that ideology became so prevalent when it did - beginning in the late
19th century. In the absence of such a frame, all other explanatory attempts fo-
cused on subjectivity remain historically indeterminate. What is required, then, is
an explanation in terms of socio-historical epistemology.
A full development of the problematic of anti-Semitism would go
beyond the bounds of this essay. The point to be made here, however, is that
a careful examination of the modern anti-Semitic worldview reveals that it is
a form of thought in which the rapid development of industrial capitalism
with all of its social ramifications is personified and identified as the Jew. It is
not that the Jews merely were considered to be the owners of money, as in
traditional anti-Semitism, but that they were held responsible for economic
crises and identified with the range of social restructuring and dislocation
resulting from rapid industrialization: explosive urbanization, the decline of
traditional social classes and strata, the emergence of a large, increasingly
organized industrial proletariat, etc. In other words, the abstract
domination of capital, which - particularly with rapid industrialization -
caught people up in a web of dynamic forces they could not understand,
became perceived as the domination of International Jewry. This was
particularly true in countries such as Germany, in which the development of
industrial capitalism was not only very rapid, but occurred in the absence of
a previous bourgeois revolution and its consequent hegemonic liberal values
and political culture.
This, however, is no more than a first approach. The personification has
been described, not yet explained. It has not been grounded epistemologically.

10. For example, see N. Cohen Warrant for Genocide, London, 1967.

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108 Postone

There have been many attempts at an explanation. The problem w

theories, like that of Max Horkheimer,"I which concentrate on the
identification of the Jews with money and the sphere of circulation, is that
they cannot account for the notion that the Jews constitute the power behind
social democracy and communism. At first glance, those theories, such as
that of George Mosse,'" which interpret modern anti-Semitism as a revolt
against modernity, appear more satisfying. The problem, however, with
that approach is that "the modern" would certainly include industrial capital
which, as is well known, was precisely not an object of anti-Semitic attacks,
even in a period of rapid industrialization. What is required, then, is an
approach which allows for a distinction between what modern capitalism is
and the way it appears, between its essence and appearance. The concept
"modern" does not allow for such a distinction.
These considerations lead us to Marx's concept of the fetish, the strategic
intent of which was to provide a social and historical theory of knowledge
grounded in the difference between the essence of capitalist social relations
and their manifest form.'3 When one examines the specific characteristics of
the power attributed to the Jews by modern anti-Semitism - abstractness,
intangibility, universality, mobility --it is striking that they are all
characteristics of the value dimension of the social forms analyzed by Marx.
Moreover, this dimension - like the supposed power of the Jews - does
not appear as such, rather always in the form of a material carrier, such as
the commodity. The carrier thus has a "double character" - value and
use-value.

11. Horkheimer, Die Juden und Europa, 1939.

12. George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology, New York, 1964.
13. The epistemological dimension of Marx's critique is immanent to all of Capital but was
explicated only within the context of his analysis of the commodity. What underlies the concept
of the fetish is Marx's analysis of the commodity, money, capital as social forms and not merely
as economic concepts. In his analysis, capitalist forms of social relations do not appear as such,
but are expressed in material form. As expressions of alienation, these materialized forms of
social relations acquire a life of their own and reflexively form social action as well as social
thought. The commodity as a form, for example, represents a duality of social dimensions
(value and use-value) which interact such that the category simultaneously expresses particular
"reified" social relations and forms of thought. This is very different from the mainstream
Marxist tradition in which the categories are understood in terms of an "economic base," and
thought is considered superstructural, to be derived from class interest and needs. This form of
functionalism cannot - as was argued above - adequately explain the non-functionality of
the extermination of the Jews. On a more general level, it cannot explain why a form of thought,
which may very well be in the interests of particular social classes or other social groupings, has
the specific content it does. The same applies to the Enlightenment notion of ideology (and
religion) as the product of conscious manipulation. The popular belief in a particular ideology
implies that it must have a resonance, the source of which must be explained. On the other
hand, the Marxian approach, further developed by Lukacs, the Frankfurt School and Sohn-
Rethel, stands opposed to those one-sided reactions to traditional Marxism which have given
up any serious attempt to ground forms of thought historically and view any such attempt as
"reductionist."

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 Anti-Semitism and National Socialism 109

At this point we can commence with a brief analysis of the way in which
capitalist social relations present themselves in order to explain the personi-
fication described above and to solve the problem of why modern anti-
Semitism, which railed against so many aspects of the "modern," was so
conspicuously silent, or was positive, with regard to industrial capital and
modern technology.
I will begin with the example of the commodity form. The dialectical
tension between value and use-value in the commodity requires that this
"double character" be materially externalized in the value form, where it
appears "doubled" as money (the manifest form of value) and the
commodity (the manifest form of use-value). The effect of this externaliza-
tion is that the commodity, although it is a social form expressing both value
and use-value, appears to contain only the latter, i.e., appears as purely
material and "thingly"; money, on the other hand, then appears to be the
sole repository of value, i.e., as the manifestation of the purely abstract,
rather than as the externalized manifest form of the value dimension of the
commodity itself. The form of materialized social relations specific to
capitalism appears - on this level of the analysis - as the opposition
between money, as abstract, as the "root of all evil," and "thingly" nature.
Capitalist social relations appear to find their expression only in the abstract
dimension - for example as money and as externalized, abstract, universal
"laws." 14
One aspect of the fetish, then, is that capitalist social relations do not
appear as such and, moreover, present themselves antinomically, as the
opposition of the abstract and concrete. Because, additionally, both sides of
the antinomy are objectified, each appears to be quasi-natural: the abstract
dimension appears in the form of "objective," "natural" laws; the concrete di-
mension appears as pure "thingly" nature. The structure of alienated social
relations which characterize capitalism has the form of a quasi-natural
antinomy in which the social and historical do not appear. This antinomy is
recapitulated as the opposition between positivist and romantic forms of
thought. Most critical analyses of fetishized thought have concentrated on
that strand of the antinomy which hypostatizes the abstract as transhistorical
- so-called positive bourgeois thought - and thereby disguises the social
and historical character is existing relations. In this essay, the other strand
will be emphasized - that of forms of romanticism and revolt which, in
terms of their own self-understandings, are anti-bourgeois, but which in fact
hypostatize the concrete and thereby remain bound within the antinomy of
capitalist social relations.

14. Proudhon, who in this sense can be considered one of the forefathers of modern anti-
Semitism, therefore thought that abolishing money - the manifest mediation - would
suffice to abolish capitalist relations. He did not realize that capitalism is characterized by
medicated social relations, objectified in the categorial forms, one of whose expressions, not
causes, is money. Proudhon, in other words, mistook a form of appearance - money as the
objectification of the abstract - for the essence of capitalism.

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110 Postone

Forms of anti-capitalist thought which remain bound

immediacy of this antinomy tend to perceive capitalism, and
specific to that social formation, only in terms of the manifesta
abstract dimension of the antimony. The existent concrete dime
positively opposed to it as the "natural" or ontologically hu
stands outside of the specificity of capitalist society. Thus, as w
for example, concrete labor is understood as the non-capita
which is opposed to the abstractness of money. That concret
incorporates and is materially formed by capitalist social rel
understood.
With the further development of capitalism, of the capital form and its
associated fetish, the naturalization immanent to the commodity fetish
becomes increasingly biologized. The mechanical world view of the 17th and
18th centuries begins to give way; organic process begins to supplant
mechanical stasis as the form of the fetish. The proliferation of racial
theories and the rise of Social Darwinism in the late 19th century are cases in
point. Society as well as historical process become increasingly understood
in biological terms. I shall not develop this aspect of the capital fetish any
further here. For our purposes what must be noted are the implications for
how capital becomes perceived. As indicated above, on the logical level of
the analysis of the commodity, the "double character" allows concrete labor
to appear as a purely material, creative process, separable from capital.
social relations, and allows the commodity to appear as a purely material
entity rather than as the objectification of mediated social relations. On the
logical level of capital, this "double character" allows industrial production
to appear as a purely material, careative process, separable from capital.
Industrial capital then appears as the linear descendent of "natural" artisanal
labor, in opposition to "parasitic" finance capital. Whereas the former
appears "organically rooted," the latter does not. Capital itself - or what is
understood as the negative aspect of capitalism - is understood only in
terms of the manifest form of its abstract dimension: finance and interest
capital. In this sense, the biological interpretation, which opposes the
concrete dimension (of capitalism) as "natural" and "healthy" to
"capitalism" (as perceived), does not stand in contradiction to a glorification
of industrial capital and technology. Both are on the "thingly" side of the
antinomy.
This is commonly misunderstood. So, for example, when Norman
Mailer, in a defense of neo-romanticism (and sexism) in The Prisoner ofSex,
wrote that Hitler spoke of blood, to be sure, but built the machine. The point
is that, in this form of fetishized "anti-capitalism," BOTH blood and the
machine are seen as concrete counter-principles to the abstract. The positive
emphasis on "nature," on blood, the soil, concrete labor, and Gemeinschaft,
can easily go hand in hand with a glorification of technology and industrial

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 Anti-Semitism and National Socialism 111

capital.5 This form of thought, then is not to be understood as anachronistic,

as the expression of historical nonsynchronism (Ungleichzeitigkeit), any
more than the rise of racial theories in the late 19th century should be
thought of as atavistic. They are historically new forms of thought and in no
way represent the reemergence of an older form. It is because of the
emphasis on biological nature that they appear to be atavistic or anachro-
nistic. However, this is itself a part of the fetish which presents the "natural"
as more "essential" and closer to origins, and the course of history as one of
increasing artificiality. Such forms of thought become prevalent with the
development of industrial capitalism. They are expressions of that antinomic
fetish, which gives rise to the notion that the concrete is "natural," and
which increasingly presents the socially "natural" in such a way that it is
perceived in biological terms. It is precisely the hypostatization of the
concrete and the identificaion of capital with the manifest abstract which
renders this ideology so functional for the development of industrial
capitalism in crisis. National Socialist ideology was in the interests of capital
not only for the very obvious reason that it was virulently anti-Marxist and
that the Nazis destroyed the organizaions of the German working class. It
was also in the interests of capital in the transition from liberal to quasi-state
capitalism. The identification of capital with the manifest abstract overlaps,
in part, with its identificaion with the market. The attack on the liberal state,
as abstract, can further the development of the interventionist state, as
concrete. This form of "anti-capitalism," then, only appears to be looking
backwards with yearning. As an expression of the capital fetish its real thrust
is forwards. It is an aid to capitalism in the transition to quasi-state capitalism
in a situation of structural crisis.

15. Theories of National Socialism which present it as "anti-modern" or "irrationalist"

cannot explain the interrelation of these two moments. The term "irrationalism" tends not to
call into question prevailing "rationalism" and cannot explain the positive relation of an
"irrationalist," "biologistic" ideology to the ratio of industry and technology. The term "anti-
modern" tends to ignore the very modern aspects of Nazism and cannot account for the attack
on some aspects of "the modern" and not on others. In fact, both analyses are one-sided and
represent only the other, the abstract, dimension of the antinomy outlined above. They tend to
defend prevailing, non-fascist "modernity" or "rationality" in an uncritical fashion. They have
therefore left open the possibility for the emergence of new one-sided critiques (this time from
the Left), such as those of M. Foucault or A. Glucksmann, which present modern capitalist
civilization only in terms of the abstract. All of these approaches not only do not allow for a
theory of Nazism which provides an adequate explanation of the relation of "blood and the
machine," but also cannot show that the opposition of the abstract and concrete, of positive
reason and "irrationalism," does not define the parameters of an absolute choice, but that the
terms of these oppositions are related to one another as the antinomic expressions of the dual
manifest dimensions of the same essence: the social relations characteristic of the capitalist
social formation. (In this sense, Lukaics, in Die Zerstorung der Vernunft - horrified by the
unspeakable brutality of the Nazis - fell behind his own critical insights on the antinomies of
bourgeois thought which he developed 25 years earlier in History and Class Consciousness.)
Such approaches further retain the antinomy rather than theoretically overcoming it.

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112 Postone

This form of "anti-capitalism," then, is based on a on

the abstract. The abstract and concrete are not seen as
antinomy where the real overcoming of the abstra
dimension - involves the historical overcoming of the a
well as each of its terms. Instead there is the one-sided attack on abstract
Reason, abstract law or, on another level, money and finance capital. In this
sense it is antionomically complementary to liberal thought, where the
domination of the abstract remains unquestioned and the distinction
between positive and critical reason is not made. The "anti-capitalist"
attack, however, does not remain limited to the attack against abstraction.
Even the abstract dimension also appears materially. On the level of the
capital fetish, it is not only the concrete side of the antimony which is
naturalized and biologized. The manifest abstract dimension is also
biologized - as the Jews. The opposition of the concrete material and the
abstract becomes the racial opposition of the Arians and the Jews. Modern
anti-Semitism involves a biologization of capitalism - which itself is only
understood in terms of its manifest abstract dimension - as International
Jewry.
According to this interpretation, the Jews were not merely identified
with money, with the sphere of circulation, but with capitalism itself.
However, because of its fetishized form, this did not appear to include
industry and technology. Capitalism appeared to be only its manifest
abstract dimension which, in turn, was responsible for the whole range of
concrete social and cultural changes associated with the rapid development
of modern industrial capitalism. The Jews were not seen merely as represen-
tatives of capital (in which case anti-Semitic attacks would have been much
more class-specific). They became the personifications of the intangible,
destructive, immensely powerful, and international domination of capital as a
social form. Certain forms of anti-capitalist discontent became directed
against the manifest abstract dimension of capital, in the form of the Jews,
because, given the antinomy of the abstract and concrete dimensions,
capitalism appeared that way - not because the Jews were consciously
identified with the value dimension. The "anti-capitalist" revolt was,
consequently, also the revolt against the Jews. The overcoming of capitalism
and its negative social effects became associated with the overcoming of the
Jews.

IV

Although the immanent connection between the sort of "anti-capitalism"

which informed National Socialism, and modern anti-Semitism has been
indicated, the question remains why the biological interpretation of the
abstract dimension of capitalism found its focus in the Jews. This "choice"
was, within the European context, by no means fortuitous. The Jews could

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 Anti-Semitism and National Socialism 113

not have been replaced by any other group. The reasons for this are
manifold. The long history of anti-Semitism in Europe, and the related
association of Jews with money are well known. The period of the rapid
expansion of industrial capital in the last third of the 19th century coincided
with the political and civil emancipation of the Jews in central Europe.
There was a veritable explosion of Jews in the universities, the liberal
professions, journalism, the arts, retail, i.e., the Jews rapidly became visible
in civil society, particularly in spheres and professions which were expanding
and which were associated with the newer form society was taking.
One could mention many other factors. There is one which I wish to
emphasize. Just as the commodity, understood as a social form, expresses its
"double character" in the externalized opposition between the abstract
(money) and the concrete (the commodity), so is bourgeois society
characterized by the split between the state and civil society. The split is that
between the individual as citizen and as person. As a citizen, the individual is
abstract. This is expressed, for example, in the notion of equality before the
(abstract) law or in that of one person, one vote (at least in theory). As a
person, the individual is concrete, embedded in real class relations which are
considered to be "private," that is, pertaining to civil society, and which do
not find political expression. In Europe, however, the notion of the nation as
a purely political entity, abstracted from the substantiality of civil society,
was never fully realized. The nation was not only a political entity, it was also
concrete, determined by a common language, history, traditions and
religion. In this sense, the only group in Europe which fulfilled the deter-
mination of citizenship as a pure political abstraction, were the Jews
following their political emancipation. They were German or French
citizens, but not really Germans or Frenchmen. They were of the nation
abstractly, but rarely concretely. They were, in addition, citizens of most
European countries. The quality of abstractness, characteristic not only of
the value dimension in its immediacy, but also, mediately, of the bourgeois
state and law, became closely identified with the Jews. In a period when the
concrete became glorified against the abstract, against "capitalism" and the
bourgeois state, this became a fatal association. The Jews were rootless,
international and abstract.

Modern anti-Semitism, then, is a particularly pernicious fetish form. Its

power and danger is that it provides a comprehensive worldview which
explains and gives form to certain modes of anti-capitalist discontent in a
manner which leaves capitalism intact, by attacking the personifications of
that social form. Anti-Semitism so understood allows one to grasp an
essential moment of Nazism as a foreshortened anti-capitalist movement,
one characterized by a hatred of the abstract, a hypostatization of the

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114 Postone

existing concrete and by a single-minded, ruthless - b

hate-filled - mission: to rid the world of the source of all evil.
The extermination of European Jewry is the indication that it is far too
simple to deal with Nazism as a mass movement with anti-capitalist over-
tones which shed that husk in 1934 ("Roehm Putsch") at the latest, once it
had served its purpose and once state power had been seized. In the first
place, ideological forms of thought are not simply conscious manipulations.
In the second place, this view misunderstands the nature of Nazi "anti-
capitalism" - the extent to which it was intrinsically bound to the anti-
Semitic worldview. Auschwitz indicates that connection. It is true that the
somewhat too concrete and plebeian "anti-capitalism" of the SA was
dispensed with by 1934; however, not the anti-Semitic thrust - the
"knowledge" that the source of evil is the abstract, the Jew.
A capitalist factory is a place where value is produced, which
"unfortunately" has to take the form of the production of goods. The
concrete is produced as the necessary carrier of the abstract. The extermina-
tion camps were not a terrible version of such a factory but, rather, should be
seen as its grotesque, Arian, "anti-capitalist" negation. Auschwitz was a
factory to "destroy value," i.e., to destroy the personifications of the
abstract. Its organization was that of a fiendish industrial process, the aim of
which was to "liberate" the concrete from the abstract. The first step was to
dehumanize, that is, to rip the "mask" of humanity away and reveal the Jews
for what "they really are" -- "Miisselmdinner," shadows, ciphers, abstrac-
tions. The second step was then to eradicate that abstractness, to transform
it into smoke, trying in the process to wrest away the last remnants of the
concrete material "use-value": clothes, gold, hair, soap.
Auschwitz, not 1933, was the real "German Revolution" - the real
"overthrow" of the existing social formation. By this one deed the world was
to be made safe from the tyranny of the abstract. In the process, the Nazis
"liberated" themselves from humanity.
The Nazis lost the war against the Soviet Union, America and Britain.
They won their war, their "revolution" against the European Jews. They not
only succeeded in murdering six million Jewish children, women and men.
They succeeded in destroying a culture - a very old culture - that of
European Jewry. It was a culture characterized by a tradition incorporating
a complicated tension of particularity and universality. This internal tension
was duplicated as an external one, characterizing the relation of the Jews
with their Christian surroundings. The Jews were never fully a part of the
larger societies in which they lived; they were never fully apart from those
societies. The results were frequently disasterous for the Jews. Sometimes
they were very fruitful. That field of tension became sedimented in most
individual Jews following the emancipation. The ultimate resolution of this
tension between the particular and the universal is, in the Jewish tradition, a
function of time, of history - the coming of the Messiah. Perhaps,
however, in the face of secularization and assimilation, European Jewry

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 Anti-Semitism and National Socialism 115

would have given up that tension. Perhaps that culture would have gradually
disappeared as a living tradition, before the resolution of the particular and
the universal had been realized. This question will never be answered.
"Learning from the past" must also include learning the lesson of anti-
Semitism, of foreshortened "anti-capitalism." It would be a serious mistake
if the Left today were to view capitalism only in terms of the abstract
dimension of the capital antinomy, whether in terms of technocratic
domination or in terms of abstract Reason. Similarly, more than a smal
degree of caution should be exercised towards phenomena such as "new"
forms of psychotherapy which hypostatize the emotions in opposition to
thought, or biologistic understandings of the social problem of ecology. Any
"anti-capitalism" which seeks the immediate negation of the abstract and
glorifies the concrete - instead of practically and theoretically considerin
what the historical overcoming of both could mean - can, at best, b
socially and politically impotent in the face of capital. At worst it can be
dangerous, even if the needs it expresses could be interpreted as
emancipatory.
The Left once made the mistake of thinking that it had the monopoly on
anti-capitalism or, conversely, that all forms of anti-capitalism are, at least
potentially, progressive. That mistake was fatal, not least of all for the Left.

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