A major change in the general opinion of the day is usually coupled with bloodshed and/or war.
Which brings me to the figure of Moses Hess. Moses Hess worked along side Karl Marx and was devoted to communism for decades. He lavished praise on Karl Marx in the manner of a person under the sway of a divinely inspired prophet.
However, Moses Hess eventually settled on a much more practical world view. According to wiki, "Hess became reluctant to base all history on economic causes and class struggle (as Marx and Engels did), and he came to see the struggle of races, or nationalities, as the prime factor of history."
His seminal work is his final book, published in 1862, which came after a lifetime of communist devotion; it is called, `Rome and Jerusalem: The Last National Question'.
Much like Herzl a generation or two later, Hess witnessed the rise of specific nationalism in Europe and extreme anti-Semitism and began to, " interpret history as a circle of race and national struggles."
His grave today lies in Israel. He was not recognized by his contemporaries and he is largely ignored today.
Some of his more famous quotes include, "You may don a thousand masks, change your name and your religion and your mode of life, creep through the world incognito so that nobody notices that you are a Jew yet every insult to the Jewish name will wound you more than a man of honor who remains loyal to his family and defends his good name."
"The Germans hate the religion of the Jews less than they hate their race - they hate the peculiar faith of the Jews, less than their peculiar noses."
"The race struggle is the primal one, and the class struggle secondary."
So it is unfortunate that Karl Marx with his pied piper tune of the "class struggle" led the people in formation to his toxic song. Indeed there are many graduates of Karl Marx's thought even today who spin ever new webs of deceptive utopian dreams to catch the unsuspecting in their nets. And yet, somewhere in Israel lies the largely forgotten grave of Moses Hess.
Moses Hess was correct: the national struggle, the race struggle is the primal one.
Here is one Israelite supporting the side of our people on the right side of history.
