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What could there be in common between Jewish messianism and twentieth-century libertarian utopias: between a religious tradition indifferent to the realm of politics, turned towards the supernatural and the sacred, and a revolutionary social imaginary that has generally been atheist and materialist? It seems evident that the messianic religiosity of rabbis and Talmudists, so deeply rooted in tradition and ritual, had no common ground with the subversive anarchist ideology of a Bakunin or a Kropotkin – especially since the cultural ethno-centrism of the Jewish religion was poles apart from the militant universalism of revolutionary utopias.

Yet the increasingly active role of Jewish intellectuals (from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards) in generating radically anti-establishment ideas inspired attempts to find Jewish religious roots within socialist utopias. Max Weber was probably one of the first among the sociologists of religion to suggest that the religious tradition of ancient Judaism had a potentially revolutionary nature. In the Bible, he argued, the world was perceived not as eternal or unchanging, but as an historical product destined to be replaced by a divine order. The whole attitude to life was determined by this conception of a future God-guided political and social revolution.¹ Weber’s hypothesis, though extremely fertile, is still too general. For it does not allow us to identify, within the heterogeneous group of modern revolutionary doctrines, those that might have had a real affinity with the Jewish tradition. In the opinion of many authors, such as Max Scheler, Karl Löwith and Nikolai Berdyaev – some of whom were Weber’s disciples – Marx’s thinking was typically a secularized version of biblical messianism. However, this is a questionable and rather reductionist interpretation of the Marxist philosophy of history.

Karl Mannheim would seem to have stood on firmer and more accurate ground when, in Ideology and Utopia (1929), he put forward the idea that ‘radical anarchism’ was the modern figure par excellence of the chiliastic principle, the purest and most genuine form of the modern utopian/millennial consciousness. Mannheim did not differentiate between Christian millenarianism and Jewish messianism; but in his opinion, the twentieth-century thinker who most completely personified that ‘demoniacally deep’ spiritual attitude was Gustav Landauer, the Jewish anarchist writer.² It is a well-known fact that Landauer was one of the leaders of the Munich Commune in 1919; and it is interesting to note that, according to the German sociologist Paul Honigsheim (a former member of the Max Weber circle in Heidelberg and a friend of Lukács and Bloch), some of the participants in the Republics of Workers’ Councils in Munich and Budapest were instilled with the sense of a mission to achieve world redemption and with the belief that they belonged to a collective Messiah.³ In fact, apart from Gustav Landauer, other Jewish intellectuals such as Kurt Eisner, Eugen Leviné, Ernst Toller and Erich Mühsam played an important role in the Councils Republic in Bavaria; and in 1919, Georg Lukács and other members of the Jewish intelligentsia of Budapest were among the leaders of the Hungarian Councils.

Are there aspects of Jewish messianism, then, which can be linked to a revolutionary (and particularly anarchist) world-view? Gershom Scholem’s remarkable analyses may serve as a starting-point for closer examination of this question. In his essay ‘Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea in Judaism’, Scholem was not afraid to state that ‘for popular apocalypticism … there is an anarchic element in the very nature of Messianic utopianism: the dissolution of old ties which lose their meaning in the new context of Messianic freedom’.⁴ This is a very profound remark, but it seems to me that the analogy (or ‘correspondence’) between messianic and libertarian utopia stretches much further and emerges in several other decisive ‘moments’ of the two cultural configurations. Let us consider this correspondence by referring to the theoretical paradigm – the ideal type, one might say – of Jewish messianism, as constructed by Gershom Scholem, and to several remarks made by Karl Mannheim on radical anarchism.

(1) Jewish messianism embodies two tendencies that are at once intimately linked and contradictory: a restorative current focusing on the re-establishment of a past ideal state, a lost Golden Age, a shattered Edenic harmony; and a utopian current which aspires to a radically new future, to a state of things that has never existed before. The proportion between the two tendencies may vary, but the messianic idea crystallizes only on the basis of their combination. They are inseparable within a dialectical relationship that Scholem draws out so admirably:

Even the restorative force has a utopian factor, and in utopianism restorative factors are at work. … The completely new order has elements of the completely old, but even this old order does not consist of the actual past; rather, it is a past transformed and transfigured in a dream brightened by the rays of utopianism.⁵

According to the felicitous expression of the great historian of Messianism, Sigmund Mowinckel, in the Jewish tradition ‘eschatology is a reinterpretation of the mythology of primordial time’.⁶

The Hebraic concept of Tikkun is the supreme expression of this duality in Jewish messianism. For the cabbalists – notably Isaac Luria and the Safed school – the Tikkun re-establishes the great harmony that was disturbed by the Breaking of the Vessels (‘Shevirat Ha-Kelim’) and later by the fall of Adam. As Scholem notes, ‘the Tikkun, the path to the end of all things, is also the path to the beginning’. The Tikkun implies ‘restoration of the original harmony’; in other words, ‘the re-institution, the re-integration of every original thing’. The coming of the Messiah is the accomplishment of Tikkun, the Redemption is the ‘return of all things to their original contact with God’. This ‘World of Tikkun’ (‘Olam Ha-Tikkun’) is, therefore, the utopian world of messianic reform, of the removal of the blemish, the disappearance of evil.⁷

In libertarian thought, there is clearly an analogous duality between restoration and utopia, which was noted by Mannheim.⁸ For Mikhail Bakunin, Georges Sorel, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Gustav Landauer, revolutionary utopia was always accompanied by a deep nostalgia for aspects of the pre-capitalist past, the traditional peasant community, or the artisan economy. Landauer went so far as to offer an explicit apology for the Middle Ages. In reality, the majority of the great anarchist thinkers integrated a romantic attitude towards the past into the core of their thinking.

The parallel can be drawn even further. In an article written in 1904, the anti-militarist writer Georges Darien complained about the ‘religious nature of Anarchism’, whose doctrine he defined in the following terms: (i) There was once a Golden Age, which disappeared with the birth of authority, (ii) We must return to that Golden Age, and for that a revolution is desirable, (iii) Once the revolution has been carried out, there will be a general interruption in life on earth, (iv) After that, the Golden Age will return.⁹ This is, of course, a caricature, yet it does relate to an aspect of anarchist prophecy. For his part, in Economy and Society, Max Weber argued that anarcho-syndicalism was the sole form of socialism in Western Europe that could claim to be ‘the real equivalent to a religious faith’.¹⁰

Contrary to what is generally thought, a romantic-nostalgic dimension has been present in all anti-capitalist revolutionary thought – including Marxism. In the case of Marx and his disciples, this dimension was tempered by their admiration for industry and for the economic progress that capital brings. But in the anarchists, who in no way shared that industrialism, the same dimension manifested itself with a particular, even unique, intensity and fire. Of all the modern revolutionary movements, anarchism (along with Russian populism) was undoubtedly the one in which utopia had the most powerful romantic and restorative charge. In this respect, Gustav Landauer’s work was the supreme expression of the romantic spirit of libertarian utopia.

It is perhaps here that the analogy between Jewish messianism and anarchism is the most significant, fundamental and decisive; it alone would suffice to create the possibility of a privileged spiritual link between the two. We shall return to this idea later in the text.

(2) According to Gershom Scholem, for Jewish (as opposed to Christian) messianism, redemption is an event which necessarily takes place on the historical stage, ‘publicly’ so to speak, in the visible world; redemption is not conceivable as a purely spiritual process, within the soul of each individual, which results in an essentially inward transformation. What type of ‘visible’ event is it? In the Jewish religious tradition, the arrival of the Messiah is a catastrophic eruption: ‘Jewish messianism is in its origins and by its nature – this cannot be sufficiently emphasized – a theory of catastrophe. This theory stresses the revolutionary, cataclysmic element in the transition from every historical present to the Messianic future.’¹¹

There is an abyss between the present and the future, between current decline and redemption: moreover, in many talmudic texts there appears the idea that the Messiah will come only in an era of total corruption and guilt. This abyss cannot be overcome by just any ‘progress’ or ‘development’: only revolutionary catastrophe, with colossal uprooting and total destruction of the existing order, opens the way to messianic redemption. The secularized messianism of nineteenth-century liberal Jewish thought (the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen, for example), with its idea of uninterrupted progress and gradual perfection of humanity, has nothing to do with the tradition of the prophets and the Haggadists, for whom the advent of the Messiah always implies a general upheaval and a universal revolutionary tempest. As Scholem so aptly puts it: ‘The Bible and the apocalyptic writers know of no progress in history leading to redemption … it is rather transcendence breaking in upon history, […] struck by a beam of light shining into it from an outside source.’¹² Along the same line, Max Weber had already noted in Economy and Society that the Jewish people always lived in ‘mute, faithful and questioning expectation’ for the Great Day on which Yahveh ‘by an act that might come suddenly at any time but that no one could accelerate … would transform the social structure of the world, creating a messianic realm’.¹³

Scholem himself suggested the analogy between that structure of meaning and modern revolutionary doctrines: ‘Messianism in our age proves its immense force precisely in this form of the revolutionary apocalypse, and no longer in that of the rational utopia (if one may call it that) of eternal progress as the Enlightenment’s surrogate for Redemption.’ In Scholem’s eyes, the inheritors of that Jewish tradition are those he calls ‘the most important ideologists of revolutionary messianism’ of our century: Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse.¹⁴

None the less, without denying the more general scope of that comparison, it seems to me that the most striking parallel is with libertarian thought (including that of Walter Benjamin and the young Ernst Bloch). Indeed, the revolutionary/catastrophic aspect of emancipation is most obvious in the anarchists: ‘Destructive passion is a creative passion’, wrote Bakunin. On the other hand, as Mannheim again noted with reference to Gustav Landauer, the abyss between every existing order (‘Topie’) and Utopia was most sharply defined in the anarchists. A qualitative differentiation of time contrasted epochs pregnant with meaning and epochs devoid of meaning: any possibility of progress or evolution was denied, and revolution was conceived as an eruption into the world.¹⁵

(3) In the Jewish (notably biblical) tradition, the Et Ketz, the Time of the End, brings general, universal and radical change. Et Ketz does not mean an improvement of everything hitherto experienced on earth, but rather the creation of a wholly other world.¹⁶ The advent of the Messiah, ba’akharit hayyamim, at the end of days, will establish (or re-establish) an age of harmony between man and God, between man and nature, and among men. These are the well-known images of Isaiah 11:8, which show the child playing with the asp, or of Isaiah 2:4, which proclaim eternal peace: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more (‘lo essa goy el goy cherev ve lo ilmedu od milchama’).¹⁷

Here the correspondence with revolutionary utopias relates both to the absolute, radical nature of the transformation and to the actual content of the new (or restored) world. However, of all the socialist movements, the one that most sharply rejects any idea of improvement in the established order is, in fact, anarchism.

(4) One of the main aspects of generalized eschatological subversion is the overthrow of the powers of this world. To restate the famous words of the prophet Isaiah (13:11, 14:5–6), when the day of the Lord comes, the Everlasting will overthrow the pride of the arrogant (‘geut aritzim’) and will break the rulers’ sceptre (‘shevet moshlim’) that smote the peoples in wrath with an incessant stroke, that ruled the nations in anger with a persecution that none restrained.¹⁸

However, certain biblical and apocalyptic texts go further still. They suggest the abolition of all power or human authority – to the benefit of theocracy, in the strictest sense of rule by God himself, directly, without intermediaries or ‘vicars’. As Mowinckel noted, Yahweh himself was the king of the future messianic kingdom:¹⁹ God was both King of Israel ‘Melekh Israel’ and its redeemer ‘ve-Goalo’ (Isaiah 44:6). Jakob Taubes, an eminent historian of eschatological systems, wrote the following on this aspect of Jewish messianism: ‘Theocracy is built on the anarchist spiritual foundation (Seelengrund) of Israel. Mankind’s tendency to free itself from all earthly constraints and to establish a pact (Bund) with God is found in theocracy.’²⁰

That is, of course, very far from modern anarchism, whose motto, ‘Neither God nor master’, demonstrates its rejection of all authority, divine as well as secular. Yet the negation of all human power ‘in flesh and blood’ is a significant analogy-correspondence, which by itself makes it possible to understand why certain twentieth-century Jewish intellectuals (Benjamin and Scholem, among others) display this astonishing spiritual combination: theocratic anarchism.

(5) Finally, there is the aspect of Jewish messianism that Scholem referred to as intrinsically ‘anarchist’: namely, the idea to be found in several talmudic or cabbalistic texts that the advent of the Messiah implies an abolition of the restrictions that the Torah has until then imposed on the Jews. In the messianic age, the former Torah will lose its validity and be replaced by a new law, the ‘Torah of the Redemption’, in which bans and prohibitions will disappear. In this new, paradisiacal world, dominated by the light of the Tree of Life, the force of evil will be broken and the restrictions imposed by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil will lose their significance. As Scholem aptly demonstrates, this ‘anarchist’ element is also present in certain interpretations of Psalms 146:7 which offer a new reading of the Hebrew text: in place of the traditional version, according to which in the messianic age, ‘The Lord releases the prisoners’ (mattir asurim), we should read, ‘The Lord allows the forbidden’ (mattir isurim).²¹ Scholem is not wrong to qualify this as an ‘anarchist’ theme. We need think only of Bakunin’s famous expression, which Mannheim quotes as a characteristic example of the chiliastic stance of radical anarchy: ‘I do not believe in constitutions or in laws… We need something different: storm and vitality and a new lawless and consequently free world.’²²

The above analysis, which treats the five aspects in turn, must nevertheless be considered as a single whole. It then reveals a remarkable structural homology, an undeniable spiritual isomorphism, between two cultural universes, apparently set in completely distinct spheres: namely, the Jewish messianic tradition and modern revolutionary, especially libertarian, utopias. By ‘libertarian utopia’, I mean not only anarchist (or anarcho-syndicalist) doctrines in the strictest sense, but also the revolutionary trends of socialist thought – including some that claim allegiance to Marxism – which have been characterized by a strongly anti-authoritarian and anti-statist orientation.

So far, we have only defined the field of correspondences (in the Baudelairean sense): that is, a subterranean network of analogies, similitudes or equivalences among several elements of the two cultural configurations. These correspondences in themselves do not constitute an effectual link: the anarchism of a Proudhon or a Bakunin (both anti-Semites, incidentally) bears no relation to the Jewish religious tradition. It was only during a given historical era – the first half of the twentieth century – and in the precise social and cultural arena of the Central European Jewish intelligentsia that the homology or connection became dynamic and, in the works of some thinkers, took the form of a true elective affinity. In other words, to use a concept that Mannheim very successfully transplanted from astrology to the sociology of knowledge, there had to appear a certain constellation of historical, social and cultural factors. Only then could a process of attractio electiva or ‘cultural symbiosis’ develop between messianism and revolutionary utopia within the Weltanschauung of a large group of German-speaking Jewish intellectuals, involving mutual stimulation and nourishment and, in certain cases, even combination or fusion of the two spiritual figures. The concrete form of the articulation or alloy and of its component elements – one or several of the correspondences we have discussed – varied according to the authors in question.

The simplest explanation for this relationship, appearing to the mind as immediately self-evident, is to consider the messianic tradition as the more or less direct source for the development of libertarian utopianism in Jewish writers and thinkers. Without rejecting that hypothesis completely, as it probably holds some element of truth, one must recognize that it creates more problems than it solves:

(a) Influence alone is not a sufficient explanatory factor. The influence itself needs to be explained. Why does a particular doctrine and not another influence a particular author? This is all the more pertinent in that nearly all the authors in question, like the great majority of Jewish intellectuals of German cultural background, were far removed through their upbringing from Jewish religious traditions (which remained much more alive in Eastern Europe). The milieu of their origins was largely assimilated: the Jewish intelligentsia of Central Europe drew its cultural references from German literature and philosophy. Goethe, Schiller, Kant and Hegel were the recognized and respected sources, and not the Talmud or the cabbala, which, for the most part, were considered atavistic and obscurantist vestiges of the past.

(b) The Jewish messianic tradition lends itself to multiple interpretations: purely conservative, as in some rabbinical texts, or purely rationalist (Maimonides), or even influenced by the liberal-progressive spirit of the Aufklärung (Enlightenment) and its Jewish equivalent, the Haskala, as in Hermann Cohen. Why was it precisely the apocalyptic interpretation, at once restorative and utopian, which was ‘selected’ by a certain group of thinkers? The opposite explanation, according to which the utopian tendency of these authors accounts for their interest in the messianic tradition, is as limited and narrow as the first. One of the great merits of the concept of Wahlverwandtschaft is precisely that it allows us to go beyond these two unilateral approaches, and to move towards a dialectical understanding of the relationship.

Another explanatory model that seems unsatisfactory centres on the concept of secularization, which is frequently used to account for the link between religion and social or political ideologies. Its significance for the phenomenon under study here is limited, because the religious messianic dimension is never absent from the writings of the majority of these authors; it remains (explicitly) a central aspect of their world-view. In fact, in this German-Jewish thought, there is as much ‘making sacred’ of the profane as there is secularization of the religious: the relationship between religion and utopia is not here, as in the case of secularization, a one-way movement, an absorption of the sacred by the profane, but rather a mutual relationship that links the two spheres without suppressing either one.

It seems more useful to start from the larger socio-cultural context, the general framework common to the two tendencies which grew organically, so to speak, out of the Central European societies in crisis. I am referring to the development of neo-romanticism from the late nineteenth century until the beginning of the 1930s. In this context, the term romanticism denotes not a literary or artistic style but a much broader and deeper current that emerged both in the field of art and literature and in economic, sociological and political thought. Essentially it involved nostalgia for pre-capitalist cultures and cultural critique of industrial/bourgeois society.

Anti-capitalist romanticism – to use Lukács’s expression – is a specific political and cultural phenomenon which, in eluding all the usual classifications, has not so far received the attention it deserves. It is not captured within the traditional division of the political field into left/centre/right – or conservatives/liberals/revolutionaries or even regression/status quo/progress; it slips between the cracks of that classical grid and appears not to fall within the categories that have defined the major political options since the French Revolution. This problem is even more acute when applied to that tendency within romanticism which might be described as romantic revolutionary, and to which thinkers such as Hölderlin, Fourier, William Morris and Landauer belong. In this tendency, restoration and utopia, nostalgia for the pre-capitalist past (real or imaginary, near or remote) and revolutionary hope in a new future, are intimately and inseparably bound up with each other.²³

Thus, the concept of neo-romanticism helps us to understand more clearly the resurgence, the rapprochement through elective affinity, and the occasional convergence and fusion of Jewish messianism (in its restorative/utopian interpretation) and libertarian utopia. The two had their roots in the same ethico-cultural and ‘ideological’ ground and grew in the same spiritual climate, that of the anti-capitalist romanticism of the German intelligentsia. Indeed, that cultural movement, particularly in its revolutionary romantic version, could not but favour the discovery, the revitalization or the development of both a restorative/utopian interpretation of messianism and a restorative/utopian interpretation of revolution (anarchism).

This dual process characterized a number of Jewish intellectuals from Central Europe, who made up an extremely heterogeneous group but were united by a common problematic. Among them were several of the greatest minds of the century: poets and philosophers, revolutionary leaders and religious guides, people’s commissars and theologians, writers and cabbalists, and even writers-cum-philosophers-cum-theologians-cum-revolutionaries: for example, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Gustav Landauer, Franz Kafka, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Ernst Toller, Erich Fromm, Manes Sperber, Georg Lukács (to name but a few).

These authors have all been studied in sufficient detail, but until now no one has ever suggested that their thinking could have had a fundamental dimension in common. It seems paradoxical and even arbitrary to group under the same roof personalities so diverse and remote from each other. But let us note, first of all, that although they did not form a group in the concrete and immediate sense of the word, they were linked together by a complex and subtle social network: relationships based on deep friendship and/or intellectual and political affinity united Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukács, Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, Gustav Landauer and Ernst Toller; Scholem was attracted by Buber and Landauer; Buber corresponded with Kafka, Bloch and Lukács; Erich Fromm was a student of Scholem. At the heart of this network, at the intersection of all the threads of this cultural fabric, embodying opposite poles, was Walter Benjamin. On very close terms with Scholem, he was also a friend of Bloch, was profoundly influenced by Lukács, Rosenzweig and Kafka, and was a critical reader of Landauer, Buber and Fromm.

This is not, however, the most important reason why these personalities (and others lesser known, whom I will also discuss, such as Hans Kohn, Rudolf Kayser, Eugen Leviné and Erich Unger) can be thought of as a group. The key point is that their work, resting upon a neo-romantic cultural basis and a relationship of elective affinity, contained a Jewish messianic and a libertarian-utopian dimension. For some, this relationship is but a brief episode in their intellectual journey (Lukács); for others, it is the central axis of their entire work (Benjamin). Of course, the relative weight of the two dimensions is not the same: for some the religious component is decisive (Rosenzweig), while for others the utopian/revolutionary project is predominant (Bloch); yet, both aspects are found in every one of these personalities.

It would be pointless to look in these writers for a systematic and explicit presence of the two configurations in their entirety. Both Jewish messianism and libertarian utopia are powerful currents in their work, sometimes running beneath the surface, at other times more clearly visible. Now one theme and now another is manifest, depending on the author or the period in his life. Sometimes the themes are separate, sometimes combined (or merged), sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit or ‘deep set’. At one point they may dominate the thinker’s entire work, while at others they may do no more than flash here and there in his writings.

According to whether one dimension or the other plays the dominant role, it seems possible to divide this network into two distinct poles. First, the religious Jews with anarchist tendencies: Franz Rosenzweig, Rudolf Kayser, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem and Hans Kohn, among others. The latter were Zionists, the former rather hostile or reticent toward Zionism. Despite their refusal to assimilate and despite their return to Judaism as a religion and a national culture, universal political and social concerns (utopian and libertarian) were present in their work and removed them from narrow or chauvinistic nationalism. Thus, Scholem and Buber led organizations in Palestine (Brit Shalom for Scholem, Ihud for Buber) which preached fraternization with the Arab population and opposed the establishment of an exclusively Jewish nation-state. To a certain extent, Kafka could be added to this current, but his relationship with the Jewish religion was much more problematic, and his attitude towards assimilation was less negative.

At the other pole are the assimilated (religious-atheist) libertarian Jews – that is to say, anarchists, anarcho-bolsheviks and anti-authoritarian Marxists: Landauer, Bloch, Fromm, Toller and Lukács, among others. Unlike those in the first category, they more or less distanced themselves from their Jewish identity, all the while maintaining a (more or less explicit) link with Judaism. Their religious atheism (a phrase coined by Lukács) drew on both Jewish and Christian references, and several of them developed their anarchist ideas in the direction of Marxism or Bolshevism.

Outside all currents (as Adorno put it), at the crossing of the ways, and linked to both the above groups at the same time was the person who, more than any other, personified the German-Jewish messianic/libertarian culture: Walter Benjamin.

That a distinction can be made between the two groups shows that, within the elective affinity between Jewish messianism and libertarian utopia, there is also a tension, if not a contradiction, between the Jewish (national-cultural) particularism of messianism and the universal (humanist/internationalist) nature of the emancipatory utopia. In the first group, the predominance of Jewish particularism tends to limit the universal revolutionary aspect of utopia, without causing it to disappear altogether; in the second group, the universality of utopia is the preponderant dimension, and messianism tends to be stripped of its Jewish specificity – without being entirely erased.

Why did this political and cultural phenomenon arise in Central Europe and not in another European Jewish community? And why at that precise moment in history? To answer these questions, and to understand the specific reception of anti-capitalist romanticism by Jewish intellectuals of German cultural origin, we need to examine from a sociological point of view their peculiarly contradictory situation within the social and cultural life of Central Europe.