Handelsvolk: Marx's View of the Jews as a Trading-People and its Implications

This article analyses the usage of the German term Handelsvolk (trading-people) by Karl Marx and other Marxists in relation to Jewish history. The question is: what can we learn from the different interpretations of this term on the evolution of the relationship between Marxism and the so-called Jewish question? This exploration sheds new light on shifts in the definition of the Jews, both by Marx in the mid-19th century and by Jewish Marxists of various political parties in the mid-20th century. These shifts reflect changing social and political circumstances. In Marx's case, it was mainly his own migration that exposed him to different social environments and thus influenced his theoretical understanding. In the case of the Jewish Marxists, active during the period of the Third Reich, the term served as a means to qualify Jewish nationalism vis-à-vis the persecution and destruction of European Jewry.