The Jews are to blame for everything! We are getting this hammered into our ears wherever we go. The Jews are responsible for the war, the Treaty of Versailles, the occupation of the Ruhr, rising prices for consumer goods, unemployment, corruption of the workers' parties and trade unions. In short, for every misfortune, for every event, there is only one guilty party: the Jew. If someone slips on something and breaks a leg, that does not matter, it's the Jew's fault! There used to be an insignificant political group in Germany, which, in order to hide its own follies, transformed the Jew into a scapegoat.
And today? Unfortunately, these stupid arguments have taken root deep in the ranks of the working class. The nationalist stupidity of our younger generation in the schools and older workers during the war and the revolution has paved the way for them. The workers' organisations have overlooked this problem and have unwittingly promoted this propaganda. So today we face the danger of a race war. Appropriate organisations have already been set up (National Socialists in South Germany, German Freedom Party in Northern Germany). This warning of danger ahead does not just concern the Jews themselves. We should expect not only pogroms against the Jews but also the enslavement of the workers in the interest of Capital. “Capital? That’s the Jews”, respond the advocates of these parties pointing to the unemployed as proof. Oh, no! There are certainly some Jewish capitalists, but the capital that counts the most is in the hands of Messrs. Stinnes, Thyssen, and Krupp, all three of whom are allegedly "Christians."
Whatever. Our struggle must not be against individuals, but against a class. Not against the members of this class as human beings, but against the economic and state system directed by them. Our struggle is not about their lives. What is at stake is a change in the means of production, the transformation of private property into collective ownership. For this reason, it doesn’t matter whether the capitalist is a Christian or a Jew. Capital is our enemy and not those who belong to this or that religion or this or that race.
Workers, open your eyes! They want to inject this pogromist virus directed against the Jews into your minds. They only want to divert you from your goals, using the method of shouting: “Stop thief!”. But do not be fooled. We are all the same race, whether we are Germans, Slavs, Latins, Mongols, or Semites. In each of us flows the same red blood that makes us brothers. Moreover, as workers, we have absolutely no reason to be populists. Our sufferings, under identical conditions, are absolutely the same, regardless of race or nationality, and it is only by acting in common that we can liberate ourselves. So do not succumb to lies, do not be fooled. Your enemy is not the Jew, but Capital. It is not the struggle between races but the class struggle that opens the way to freedom, that is the way out of poverty.
Der Arbeitslose, organ of the German Action Committees, No. 1, 4, May 1923, Berlin.
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