Arbeit und "jüdisches Kapital"

Description

As an antifascist party, the German Communist Party (KPD) has always spoken out against antisemitism. Nevertheless, in all phases of the Weimar Republic, antisemitic statements can be found in the KPD's newspaper, Die Rote Fahne. An analysis of this newspaper shows that these statements are linked on the one hand to the specific nationalism of the KPD, and on the other hand are based on a fetishized and personified anticapitalism. The "Jewish capital" appears only as a particular group within the capitalists, in contrast to which the KPD constructed the collective of "workers." Self-understanding as a "worker" shaped, therefore, antiintellectualism as much as it shaped anti-Zionism.