Marx’s analysis of the difference between the real position of Jews in Germany and the false claims of liberal democracy
Therefore, Marx showed there was a complete distinction between the myths of liberal democracy and the reality of human beings life: In a classic passage, going to the core of the myths of liberal democracy: “Where the political state has attained its true development, man – not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, in life – leads a twofold life, a heavenly and an earthly life: life in the political community, in which he considers himself a communal being, and life in civil society”.
He went on: “The relation of the political state to civil society is just as spiritual as the relations of heaven to earth. The political state stands in the same opposition to civil society… in the same way as religion prevails over… the secular world… In his most immediate reality, in civil society, man is a secular being…. In the state, on the other hand… he is the imaginary member of an illusory sovereignty, is deprived of his real inpidual life and endowed with an unreal universality.”
Marx showed that there was a move towards a purely formal equality of Jews in German society, but this concealed the real existing inequality. Liberal/parliamentary democracy obscured this reality by defining “equality” and “democracy” in only a narrow artificial and formal way while ignoring the real inequalities, and the discriminations, that existed.
This situation, and Marx’s analysis of it, later, of course, culminated in one of the greatest crimes in human history - the development of German antisemitism into the Nazi holocaust.
This analysis of the position of the Jews in Germany provided a model for the analysis of the real situation in capitalism. It is exactly this which is shown by the difference of the position of women in China and India, or the difference in deaths from Covid.
The claim by Western capitalist theory is that women in India enjoy better human rights than women in China because of the existence of Parliamentary democracy. This precisely shows the difference between what Marx termed the “heavenly” rights, that is non-existent ones, and “earthly life” – the real one.