ABSTRACT
Though there was a measure of civil equality, there was considerable discrimination against Jews in the professions: Karl Marx's father was obliged to undergo a nominal conversion to Protestant Christianity in order to retain his position as a legal official. As Marx's interest turned towards philosophy, he abandoned the idea of a legal career, embarking instead on the doctoral dissertation that necessary to secure an academic post. Early in 1845 the French government responding to Prussian pressure expelled Marx and other German radicals from Paris, and Marx and Engels left for Brussels. Marx's silence on issues of political organization, then, from the publication of On the Jewish Question in 1844 to his death in London nearly forty years later, is not difficult to explain. Marx took very seriously the distinction in the title of the French Declaration between the rights of man and the rights of the citizen.
