Chapter 42 Part II Results Chapter 10 Occupations Open to Talented Persons 3

3 Of all groups, no group more enthusiastically welcomed the opening of advancement to talented men, whatever their occupations, than the minority, which at the time was not allowed to rise to prominence.This is not only because of their poor background, but also because they have been discriminated against by officials and collectives.French Protestants devoted themselves to public life during and after the Revolution with a fervor rivaled only by the outburst of talent of the Jews of the West. The rationalism of the eighteenth century prepared for this emancipation, and the French Revolution brought it into practice.Before that, there were only two paths for a Jew to succeed: one was in business or finance, and the other was to explain the holy law, but both of these confined him to a small and isolated Jewish ghetto.Only a small group of "court Jews" or other wealthy individuals loomed out of their enclaves half-hidden, and even in England and Holland they were careful not to venture too far into danger and unpopularity situation.Even this limited outpouring was only unpopular among the drunken infidels, who by and large made it clear that Jewish emancipation was not welcome.Generations of social repression have made the Jewish ghetto self-enclosed, rejecting any departure from strict orthodoxy as unbelief and rebellion.In the eighteenth century, the pioneers of the Jewish emancipation movement in Germany and Austria, especially Mendelssohn (1729-1786), were denounced as defectors and atheists.

Large numbers of Jews lived in the eastern part of the Old Kingdom of Poland and in the Jewish ghettos in Lithuania, which grew rapidly.The Jews of the district continued to lead a life of self-discipline and suspicion among the hostile peasantry, divided only by sectarian belief, between the allegiance of one side to the learned rabbis of the Lithuanian Orthodox, and the other He is a devout Hasidic who is self-absorbed but tortured by poverty. In 1834, Austrian authorities arrested 46 Galician revolutionaries, only one of whom was a Jew, which is quite typical.But in the smaller communities of the West, Jews clutched their new opportunities with both hands, and wanted official positions anyway, even if they had to pay the nominal price of baptism, which in semi-liberated countries often is also like this.Industrialists want more than official positions.The Rothschild family is the king of the Jewish people in the world, and they are not just rich.They could have made their fortunes earlier, although the political and military changes of this period provided unprecedented opportunities for international finance.They, too, were now regarded as rich, with a social status roughly commensurate with their wealth, and even aspired to aristocracy.In fact, the princes of Europe have been granting them peerages since 1816 (in 1823 they became hereditary Habsburg barons).

Even more astonishing than the wealth of the Jews is the prodigious prowess of the Jews in the secular arts, sciences, and occupations of all kinds.By 20th-century standards, the display of this talent was limited.By 1848, however, both the greatest Jewish thinker and the most successful statesman of the nineteenth century had reached maturity.They are Marx and Disraeli (Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881).At this time, there were no great Jewish scientists, only a few mathematicians who were not first-class but had a prominent position.Meyerbeer (Meyerbeer, 1791-1864) and Mendelssohn (Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, 188-1847) were not the most outstanding composers at the time; but among poets, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) His poems have been handed down and are highly praised.At this time, there were no great Jewish performers and conductors, no important Jewish painters, and the only important theater actor was the actress Rachel (1821-1858).In fact, the birth of genius is not the measure of a people's emancipation, but rather the sudden emergence of a large number of not the most outstanding Jewish talents and their integration into the cultural and public life of Western Europe-especially France, and most importantly The German states—the emancipation is even more visible.The emergence of these talents provided language and ideology for Jewish immigrants from remote inland areas, and gradually filled the gap between the Middle Ages and the 19th century.

The dual revolution gave the Jews the closest thing to equality they had ever enjoyed under Christian rule.Those Jews who took their chances could hope for nothing more than to "assimilate" into the new society, and for obvious reasons, their sense of belonging was almost exclusively liberal.However, even if demagogue politicians have not yet seriously exploited the anti-Semitism prevalent among the exploited masses (by this time, the working masses can already see Jews as capitalists), the Jewish situation remains uncertain and disturbing . (The Germanic bandit "The Butcher" Bueckler [Johannes Bueckler, 1777-1803] became famous for exclusively killing Jews; there were also instances of anti-Semitism in the labor unrest of Prague in the 1840s.) In France and Germany In the West (and nowhere else), some young Jews found themselves dreaming of a more perfect society.There is a distinctly Jewish quality in French Saint-Simonism (Olinde Rodrigues, Brothers Pierre, Leon Halevy, d'Eichthal), and in the lesser Existed to an extent in communism in Germany. (Moses Hess, the poet Heine, and of course Marx, who, however, displayed a complete indifference to his Jewish origin.)

The status of the Jews makes them particularly willing to integrate into capitalist society.They are minorities.The vast majority of them already live in cities and are largely immune to the diseases of urbanization.Statisticians have noticed that they have lower rates of death and disease in cities.The vast majority of them are literate and not engaged in agriculture; and a large proportion are already engaged in commerce or various specialized occupations.As long as they are aware of the potential threats of new situations and new ideas, their own situation will constantly force them to think about these new situations and new ideas.But on the other hand, for most peoples in the world, adapting to the new society is not an easy task.

This maladjustment is partly due to stubborn old habits that make it almost impossible for them to understand what is expected of them in the new society.For example, in the 1840s, a young Algerian gentleman was sent to Paris to receive a European education.They were astonished to find themselves invited to any event in the imperial capital except the social banquets of the king and nobles.Moreover, the new society is not easier to adapt to than the old one.Those who accept the baptism and ways of middle-class civilization are free to enjoy its benefits; but those who refuse or are unable to do so are simply hopeless.The insistence on property qualifications for suffrage was characteristic of moderate liberal governments in 1830, and the bias was not merely political.They believed that a person who failed to demonstrate the ability to accumulate wealth was not a complete human being, and therefore hardly a complete citizen.This attitude was most extreme in the contacts of the European middle classes with pagans.The middle classes of Europe endeavored to convert pagans to Christianity, to commerce, and to wear trousers (without drawing a sharp line) through wise and innocent missionaries, or to impose upon them liberal legislative truths.As soon as they accepted this, liberalism (at least among the revolutionary French) was ready to grant them citizenship with all rights, or, as among the subjects of the British Empire, fulfill their hope of becoming an Englishman someday.This attitude was fully reflected in Napoleon III's Senate.In the years following the end of, but still under the influence of, the era in which this book is concerned, the French Senate opened citizenship to the Algerian: "At his request, he was allowed to enjoy the rights of French citizenship, and he was therefore bound by the French civil law and policy.” What the Algerian has to give up is, in fact, the Islamic faith; and if he doesn’t want to—and very few do—then he remains a people and not a citizen.

Much of the contempt of "civilized people" for "savages" (including the large number of working poor in the country) is based on this blatant sense of superiority.The middle-class world is free and open to all.Those who did not get in, either because they lacked intellect, morals, or energy, deserved it, or were weighed down by history or racial heritage, had already made the most of their opportunity.This development reached its apogee about the middle of the century, and that period became a period of unprecedented cruelty.Not only because the rich at the time were completely blind to the appalling poverty around them, the kind of horrific poverty that only shocks outside visitors (as is the case in India's slums today); but also because they brought up the attitude of the poor , as if speaking of foreign savages, without treating them as human beings at all.If their fate were to be industrial labourers, they would be nothing but a mob forced to fit into the proper mode of discipline by absolute coercion, severe factory discipline, supplemented by state assistance. (It is rather characteristic that the middle class at the time believed that there was no contradiction between the principle of equality before the law and the manifestly discriminatory labor codes; Servant Act, where the worker is punished with imprisonment for breach of contract, and the employer with only a small fine for breach of contract, if at all.) The poor should be kept on the brink of starvation, because otherwise they would not work and would Will not have motives that qualify as "human".Employers said to Vickinmey in the late 1830s: "The worker, for his own sake, should make himself constantly compelled by need, because then he will not set a bad example for his children. Moreover, poverty will ensure that he good behavior." Still, there are still too many poor people for the middle class, who can only hope that Malthus' law of population will work to starve enough poor people to establish a maximum surviving population; unless, of course, Every irrational poor can birth control and rationally establish their own population control.

This attitude is only fifty steps away from officially recognized inequality. In 1853, Henri Baudrillart proposed in his inaugural speech at the French Academy: Inequality is one of the three pillars of human society, the other two being property and inheritance.Thus, class society is thus rebuilt on the basis of formal equality.What is lost is only what it tolerated in the past: the general social belief that people have both responsibilities and rights, and that virtue and goodness are not equal to money; , the right to live a simple life.