Zionism – A case study in nationalism (2024)

From the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the nineteenth century there were conflicting views in Jewish communities as to how their best interests might be served. Some opted for a liberal view that assimilation was possible in an increasingly enlightened Europe.

Those favouring a reformed Judaism considered it best for the religion to be confined to the private sphere. The resolutely orthodox strove to maintain a traditional faith.

However, Europe was witnessing the emergence of an ideology that appealed to an increasing minority of Jews: nationalism.

Wider European society was embracing notions of national histories, distinctive cultures and languages, and self-determination. Jews found themselves faced with a choice between their Jewish or national identities. The latter was often compromised by persistent anti-semitism.

The concept of a Jewish national state began to emerge. Auto-emancipation was the term coined in the 1882 pamphlet of the same name written by the Russian Leon Pinsker.

Twenty years prior, in Rome and Jerusalem, Marx’s ‘communist rabbi’ Moses Hess proposed an independent Jewish socialist commonwealth, a blending of socialism with the nationalist ideas of Giuseppe Mazzini.

These declarations of Jewish nationalism did not initially attract widespread support. This began to change following the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the subsequent pogroms, the development of pan-Germanism voicing racist myths about all-powerful Jews, and the anti-semitism in the 1890s exposed by the Dreyfus affair.

Theodor Herzl, an Austrian journalist, began observing developments. Assimilated and relatively prosperous, he had little or no interest in the culture or religion of his forebears. His influences were Bismarck, Wagner and the pan-Germanists. However, he could not ignore the rising anti-semitic trend and came to the conclusion that assimilation had failed due to economic competition between Jews and gentiles. Liberated from physical ghettos, Jews were becoming confined socially.

Determined to free Jews from this emerging ghetto, Herzl considered both mass conversion to Christianity and socialist revolution. He eventually settled on the prevailing nationalist concept of self-determination.

In The Jewish State (1896), he argued for founding a European Jewish homeland that would remove the competition between Jews and non-Jews. Subsequently, both Argentina and East Africa were considered as possible locations. The Holy Land, Palestine, became the dream.

Palestinian Arabs, unsurprisingly, opposed this prospect. Herzl though regarded non-Europeans as backward, arguing that a Jewish homeland would be ‘a rampart of Europe against Asia’. In 1897 he organised the First Zionist Congress in Basel that established the World Zionist Organisation (WZO).

When Herzl died in 1904, his ideas were not universally accepted by all Jews. Another strand of Zionism aimed at renewing Judaism rather than confronting anti-semitism. Herzl’s supporters were accused of furthering assimilation, rejecting their forebears’ faith. This Zionist strand favoured a country that was uniquely Jewish, not a Jewish state on a European model.

Despite its disparate beginnings, Zionism gathered a momentum focused on Palestine, both as a reaction to anti-semitic nationalisms in Europe and as a nationalism in its own right.

Via the Balfour Declaration of 1917, made as the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, and the Nazi-instituted Holocaust, the Zionist cause achieved its objective in 1948 when David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the state of Israel.

However, this was by no means the beginning of Jewish settlement in Palestine. There had already been a small Jewish community in that predominantly Muslim Ottoman area. The first formal Jewish community that can be considered an expression of Zionist aspirations was a kibbutz founded in 1910. This was followed by dozens more across the area that would become Israel. The kibbutz movement is significant as it was an expression of an ideological link that was destined to become horrifically problematic. That is the linking of nationalism with socialism.

From its early days Zionism was associated by some advocates with socialism. Moses Hess regarded it as an amalgam of socialism and Italian-style nationalism. Then Theodor Herzl introduced the notion of revolutionary socialism as a potential element of Zionism. Certainly, the kibbutz movement claimed Marxist influence in its organisation of communities. The goal was collective living. There was no private property, as all of it was held collectively by the community. Meals were even taken together.

Stanford economics professor Ran Abramitzky has stated, ‘Jewish immigrants who founded kibbutzim rejected capitalism and wanted to form a more socialist society.’ The paradox the professor seems not to have realised is that socialism is not something that can become the private preserve of one ethnic group, even if they do hold their property in common.

Herzl certainly made no secret of his view of the racial superiority of a Jewish homeland as a bastion against the barbarians beyond. The exclusive nature of the kibbutz reflected this attitude.

There is also the seemingly unquestioned acceptance that taking already occupied land for living space is justified. This is an idea that can be traced back to the very earliest days when humans began to develop a stratified society.

Certainly, in modern times the European conquest and settlement of the Americas paid little regard to any sense that indigenous populations had any rights.

For European Jewry, the concept of national exclusivity tied to ‘socialism’ and lebensraum became a monumental tragedy.

Before that tragedy could fully unfold, the seemingly antagonistic nationalisms had a moment of common purpose. In 1937 two SS officers, Herbert Hagen and Adolf Eichmann, visited Palestine and met with Fevel Polkes, an agent of Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary force formed to protect Jewish communities in Palestine from Arab attacks. After 1948 it was incorporated into the Israeli Defence Force.

Polkes took the two Nazis to visit a kibbutz. In 1960 Eichmann wrote, ‘I did see enough to be very impressed with the way the Jewish colonists were building up their land… had I been a Jew, I would have been a fanatical Zionist.’

It would be a grievous mistake to equate Zionism with Nazism. But one thing all nationalisms have in common is that they pit what they see as their national collective interest against that of the ‘other’, those beyond, outside, excluded.

Whatever socialist pretensions Zionism had they have been subsumed into reformist politics that makes no claim to abolishing capitalism. Kibbutzim now only account for about 3 percent of Israel’s population. Collective living has been abandoned and the kibbutz has turned into village life.

Antagonistic nationalisms and competing economic interests are at the root of Hamas atrocities in Israel and Israeli atrocities in Gaza. While the outpouring of support for Gaza by Palestinian flag-waving demonstrators is an understandable reaction, the solution to the ongoing conflict is surely not to counterpose one nationalism with another.

A one-state or two–state solution will not remove the underlying tensions. It may ameliorate the situation for a while, but only until the next time competition flares into conflict.

To simply oppose Zionism could be interpreted as being anti-semitic. It would invite the question, why just pick on Jewish nationalism? The socialist response has to be opposition to all nationalisms.

The oxymoron ‘National Socialism’ is particularly mistaken. The definitions are mutually exclusive. Not only in the Nazi formulation, but also in such seemingly reasonable and moderate forms as ‘Scottish socialism’, a variant of Scottish nationalism.

Whatever label is attached to it, nationalism, as it arose variously in the nineteenth century, persists as an ideological shackle for the workers of the world, keeping them bound as wage slaves to capitalism. While workers continue to identify themselves with their countries of birth they will deny themselves the worldwide possibilities of socialism, without borders and the wars fought to maintain them.

The irony is that while Herzl thought Jews had been confined to an invisible ghetto, Zionism is confining them to a very visible one, Israel, even for those choosing to live beyond its borders. The way forwards is not assimilation, but socialism.

Dave Alton

Are we Utopians? (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

A common response to the case of the World Socialist Movement is the word utopian! It is uttered with a note of finality as though it needs no elaboration. "You are utopian !” they tell us, and whether they are one-hundred percent defenders of what is called the American way of life or blood-and-thunder type, self-styled, revolutionists they regard us with an expression of pity and usually change the subject. The anti-establishment radical and the defender of the status quo are, on this subject, allies because they are both convinced that our goal of a world without nations, without buying and selling, without wage labor and capital — employers and employees — is an impossible dream in our lifetime, the lifetimes of our children, grandchildren and possibly our great and ever-so-great grandchildren. It is utopian, they tell us. to feel otherwise.

Well, we are not so certain that our detractors of either variety know quite what they are talking about, that they really understand the meaning of the term utopian as applied to the advocates of world socialism. For the word does have a definite meaning and utopianism did have a definite role to play at an earlier period in the development of capitalism. In fact, it still has at least a debatable reason for existence in lowly-developed areas of the capitalist world. We refer to the organisation of colonies such as New Harmony, Brook Farm, Oneida, and a host of others in early America; to the kibbutzim of modern, but industrially weak Israel; to all of the attempts in the past and the present here, there and everywhere to build islands of peaceful cooperation in a violent sea of capitalism. This is utopianism, and whether it is the idealist who seeks to get away from it all by retiring to a kibbutz or even to a hippie community, or the so-called socialists and communists who believe that socialism — even communism, as they like to put it — can be built within the borders of a nation it is they, not us. who are the utopians.

There will be no peace for them as long as they exist in a capitalist world and to blame this on people of ill-will, on reactionaries, on Republicans or Democrats or liberals or conservatives is to indulge in more escapism from reality, in more utopianism. The pressures of capitalist economics and the pressures of the capitalist state are all around and will allow no peace, no escape, no utopianism. Do we have to dwell on this point?

We are not utopians. We are hard-headed, practical, scientific socialists. We know that capitalism and the suffering for most of the population that goes with it cannot be abolished simply by changing the organization from private ownership to state ownership. Nor can capitalism be improved for most of the population by passing reform legislation in congress or parliament or whatever it is called. Nor does It make sense to retire to some backwoods area where one can live a desperate, hand-to-mouth existence while one is free to toll from sunup to sundown on infertile soil even if the capitalist state were to maintain a complete hands-off attitude, an unlikely probability.

This is not our concept of freedom. Friends! Fellow-workers! There is a world of potential plenty for everybody who inhabit the earth. And it is there for the taking. How do we take it? Not by idle, utopian dreaming. Not by the encouragement of nations whether designated capitalist, communist, or anything else. The way to abolish poverty, war, hatreds based upon skin color and ethnic background is to organize on the political field to abolish nations, to abolish buying and selling, to abolish wage labor and capital, to introduce a world society based upon production for use, not for sale. Anything short of this goal is utopian, will not work. Do you really need more evidence than the history of the last fifty years? Let’s organize now, not for more utopianism but for world socialism.

Letters: World Without Money (2012)

Letters to the Editors from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

World Without Money

Dear Editors

I remember the struggling “thirties” for my Mum and Dad, hard to find work and being abused by the capitalist system. Then with five children war took place and sent three of us to evacuation. Money I thought of was pounds shillings and pence and farthing and three penny piece Mum put in the Christmas pud.

Peace arrived and as time has gone by you heard of money crisis, tighten your belt, “you’ve never had it so good”, “a new beginning” and “we’re all in this together”, ” big society”, yes Cameron rich and poor!

Money blinds me with calculations I don’t understand, not pounds shillings and pence but millions, billions and trillions now.

The needs for people are to be fed well, sheltered and to understand to have the best of everything. Hospital, housing, schools and everything that provides a good living.

I don’t want to hear that I have an enemy today, I didn’t know him yesterday but my so-called country tells me and my family to fight him and his family. So where in the present money crisis we are unable to put money into every good and necessary need they can suddenly find millions and trillions for fighter planes and every killing machine you can think of.

Is this all insane or could there be another way to live on this great planet of ours. A global moneyless society for the whole human race. Co-operation not competition. We have the manpower, technology, resources and voluntary know-how. Capitalism has shown us how it could be but money gets in the way! So?

I’ve never been any good at understanding maths and missed out education during the war but am able to think about and see things that I hear and see. I don’t need leaders telling me what’s good or bad for me and at the same time dancing to the tune of capitalism putting profit before need.

Florrie Barwick, 

Aveley, Essex

What about the family?

Dear Editors

How do we see the Family and the upbringing of children in society after the transition from capitalism to socialism?

In the Kibbutzim in Israel from the 1950s to the 1980s people lived in a collective environment without private property where there were communal children’s homes and sleeping arrangements and the collective upbringing of children. Kibbutzim would ultimately fail as ‘socialist’ enterprises because they existed inside a capitalist framework.

In 1884 in The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, Engels describes how humanity in its hunter-gatherer stage of development lived in a primitive-communist society with female solidarity, a brotherhood of man and collective upbringing of children. It is with the end of the matrilineal clan and the beginning of patriarchy we get the beginnings of the family and private property. Professor Chris Knight’s 1991 book Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture follows on from the work of Engels and he states that for 95 percent of our existence, our species lived as egalitarian hunter-gatherers without family, private property and the state.

I am not proposing some return to primitivism-communist society but that the capitalist system has only been in existence a short time and is not the eternal state of things the bourgeoisie would like us to believe.

Wilhelm Reich in his 1933 The Mass Psychology of Fascism sees the family as one of the most important institutions that supports the authoritarian (capitalist?) state and is basically the centre for the production of reactionary men and women.

Following from Reich we have critique of the family in the writings of RD Laing in the 1960s, the seminal work The Death of the Family (1971) by ‘Marxist Existentialist’ psychoanalyst David Cooper, and volume 1 of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus (1972) by Deleuze and Guattari.

Marxists have seen the family as an important conditioning agent in capitalist society, the cause of gender inequality and also the cause of much psychological damage to individuals. With the transition from capitalism to socialism will the family be redundant and collective upbringing the way forward?

Steve Clayton, 

London SW8.

Not free

Dear Editors

Regarding ‘From Handicraft to the Cloud Part 2’ (April Socialist Standard), when you say “Linux”, you probably mean the GNU operating system that I launched in 1983, in combination with the kernel Linux. People often call this combination “Linux”, which is unfair to us.

Linux is just one component of the combination. That component was developed starting in 1991 by Torvalds, who never agreed with the ethical principles of the free software movement. Thus, when people call the whole system “Linux” and give all the credit to him, they lead people away from our ideas of freedom.

Torvalds’ current version of Linux actually includes non-free pieces, and depends on other external non-free pieces. When we make 100% free GNU+Linux distributions, we have to remove those pieces from Linux before putting it into the distribution.

See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html for more explanation of this issue, and http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html about the name question.

If you were thinking of the complete system that people use, that is GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux.

If you were thinking of Torvalds’ program, I never particularly supported that.

Dr Richard Stallman, 

President, Free Software Foundation, 

Boston, USA

Letters: A Long Way to Go (1967)

Letters to the Editors from the February 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Long Way to Go

Sir: 

There is a great deal to be done both in continuing the pressure and education required to build a real Socialist Britain but also in alleviating the worst results of this free for all society in which it is usually the least fit that are most unable to look after themselves.

Enoch Powell's dictum of survival of the fittest is OK if you are healthy and in a high income group. It is because almost everyone is outside these two categories that an educated working class is so important. And it is here that the different working class organisations are so important.

I realise that there are differences in approach but with so few active, militant, politically aware Socialists I would have thought that finding and cultivating avenues of common cause and agreement were far more important than emphasising the differences.

It is because of this that the Socialist Medical Association was founded in 1936 and as it forms a focus for Socialist medical and lay workers, it allows for the production of plans for a real Socialist health system. We have no bans and prescriptions and this allows a wide variation of ideas and larger numbers of specialists to meet and discuss.

We are able lo advise a wide variety of working class organisations and as our own members come from many different groups we are able to spread our ideas widely.

Agreed that we have a long way to go: but if we all stood aloof (as unfortunately the SPGB does) from ‘main stream” politics then our society would have remained in the Middle Ages, with all the poverty, ill health and dominations by the Barons and Church.

M.S. 

London

Reply: 

The Socialist Party of Britain is prepared to cooperate with any other group which stands for socialism. This is why we have allied ourselves with our companion parties. M.S.. however, wants us to join in along with the “wide variety of working class organisations” operating in Britain. But where are all these political organisations which are supposed to have the interests of the working class at heart?

The only name our correspondent gives us is that of the ‘Socialist' Medical Association and he himself seems lo be in the unfortunate situation of both accepting our criticisms of the National Health Service and, at the same time, attempting lo support the SMA. This is, of course, an impossible feat because any analysis of the NHS necessarily involves an exposure of the SMA’s position. After all. they wrote themselves in their official journal only a couple of months ago that "everything now embodied in the National Health Service found its clearest expression and soundest advocacy in these pages". As for the complete lack of socialist understanding in the SMA, we need give only one example. One of their members recently wrote a flattering article on the health service in East Germany, praising it because its fundamental principle was that "the capacity to work will be protected by the Stale”’. Can't M.S. see that the State looks after the interests of the ruling class and is only concerned with the health of workers to the extent that it affects their working capacity and impairs their ability lo produce surplus value?

Finally. M.S. makes the point that “if all stood aloof (as unfortunately the SPGB does) from main stream’ politics and buried our heads in the sand then our Society would have remained in the Middle ages . . .” Clearly, as an argument, this is a non-starter. The Socialist Party far from standing aloof, is actively working for socialism. If we all did just that then it would not be a case of our still enduring feudalism, or even capitalism: instead we would have socialism here and now.

Editorial Committee

From a Kibbutznik

Sir: 

I have now been able to go carefully through the Socialist Standard. I have no important counter-criticism. I accept it as just about right. It is such complete Socialism that I would call it more than that really; it stands for my world-federal ideal I learned from H. G. Wells’ Shape of Things to Come long ago and which inspires me throughout life; it seems to be absolute humanism, and to be, in fact, what Marx called the last stage of full communism. I think it is all these things. I never knew you had such a full policy, and I think it utterly worthy in the extreme.

Even so, a great difficulty remains for me. All that is written in your journals is negative criticism, fully justified, with only rare, vague references to the constructive alternative. It is true there is no difference between Labour and Tory in Britain (in fact the position is utterly comical under Wilson today: he is a first rate capitalist!), that Russia and China are simply going in for state capitalism (this may be a bit more responsible than the private version, but it still has nothing lo do with the final stage of communism which Marx wanted, as you rightly suggest), and so on. But what is the programme for achieving full Socialism? The workers taking over everything, as stated in the Declaration of Principles, is far too vague as it stands.

I contend all the time, as a kibbutznik, that parliamentary government is a flop: as you say. parliaments should be abolished. Only direct democracy counts, not the indirect, voted-for representatives stuff, which just plays into the hands of the Establishment. But what is the immediate alternative? Do the workers one day refuse to go to work, march into the rich men's houses, take out the furniture, divide it up in their slum homes, set up workers' councils and run the factories as in Yugoslavia (alas. 1 fear the managerial talent is not at once available: the capitalists are skilled technicians, unfortunately, and few workers are), and hope lo have enough to make everyone fairly well off and happy? Alas, even in quite rich England, let alone poorer Spain and Peru. etc., production and transport would be in a wild muddle at once, and everyone would be in a ghastly, disorganised mess. Besides, the capitalists would start shooting. Are you for civil war? So. accepting the destructive side of your case. I now inquire for the constructive side of it. Where are the plans?

In this connection, I wonder what your attitude is to Anarchism? It seems to me that in their local self-government, without buying and selling internally, the kibbutzim have strong anarchist as well as localised-socialist elements in them. Their federations are like syndicates, nationally arranged, as suggested once in Spain, I believe, and begun to be carried out there till Franco killed them. Would you be inclined to take this as a pattern — local direct democracy leading to national workers’ organisation? If so, the kibbutzim would be giving you an excellent lead indeed.

It seems to me you have to build up somehow. A ready made over-night global Wellsian total socialism is just not practicable.

A. C. Ben-Yosef 

Door No Meron, Hagalil, Israel

Reply: 

Our correspondent rightly understands (though we wouldn’t put it the way he has) that the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain holds that Socialism can only be world-wide; that there is no essential difference between Labour and Tory in Britain; and that Russia and China are state capitalism. He goes on to ask the quite legitimate question; How will Socialism he established?

First of all we don’t of course suggest anything so ridiculous as dividing up the wealth of the rich. Nor do we think that Socialism will appear ready-made overnight.

Socialism will be the outcome of a process of social evolution that is going on now. The culmination of this process will be the capture of political power for Socialism by the working class and the consequent social revolution from capitalism to Socialism. It is capitalism that paves the way for Socialism. Capitalism has already brought into being a world-wide productive system that could provide a plenty for all and the people to run this system. What it has yet to bring into being is the desire for Socialism on the part of those who work for wages throughout the world. This is the only real barrier to Socialism today. If what our correspondent implies at one point is correct — if workers can’t run society without the capitalist class — then the time is not ripe for Socialism. Our answer to this is clear and the evidence for it can be easily seen by looking at the world in which we live: the working class do now, as industrial, agricultural, clerical and, yes, managerial workers, run society from top to bottom even if not in their own interest. The capitalist class play no role in production; they are superfluous. On the personal-level few are even '‘skilled technicians”. Let’s get this straight: it is the working class who run the world today without the help-of the capitalist class.

We are merely arguing that means of wealth production that are at present socially operated should also be socially owned and controlled, and that the people who run society today can and should — run it in their own interests.

But where are our plans? We have no detailed plans for Socialism. This is because Socialism can only be established by the working class once they have become socialist. It is up to those people around at the time to work out the exact forms of running social affairs in a Socialist society. It would be presumptuous and foolish of us today to predict the future. All we can do now is say where we think the general trends we see operating today are leading.

When a majority of workers have become Socialists they will organise for political power; then use this power to end private property in the means of wealth production, thus ending also their position as wage-slaves. This done, society can set about reorganising itself on a socialist basis, with production for use and free access for all to what has been produced. In such a society the government of people (and all that goes with it like armed forces, police, judges and jailers) will be unnecessary. Parliament as the means for controlling the machinery of government too will be unnecessary. But this does not mean that there will be no means for exercising democratic control over social affairs. The exact form of such democratic social control once again we can’t predict and don’t try to.

We must say, however, that in rejecting any form of election and delegation you are obviously going too far. Such a complex productive apparatus as exists today can only be controlled democratically by society through such means. If you find difficulty in envisaging world wide organisation and control of production consider that many organisations today are already world wide: General Motors, Royal Dutch Shell, World Health Organisation, International Postal Union, to mention a few. Socialist society will allow a great variety of forms of social control from the local to the world-wide. Beyond this we can’t go today.

We are opposed to Anarchism in all its many forms. At best its schemes are irrelevant for advanced industrial countries; at worst they are dangerous nonsense. Hie idea of a federation of co-operative communities, which has a long history, just isn’t practicable as a means of running the productive system of today. Everything points not to this but to social ownership and democratic social control.

Finally, and briefly, we are not for civil war. We don’t think that violence will be a part of the social revolution from capitalism to Socialism.

Editorial Committee

Letter: Back to the land? (1997)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

What would the members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain do with the money, if they unwittingly won (through a third party perhaps) millions of pounds on the Lottery. Pools or suchlike?

Would they (1) take large tracts of land out of conventional land ownership (and use), and live and share the resources of that land according to Socialist principles as much as is possible, in their own lives, more than they do at present, and amongst increasing numbers of new members further increasing their share of land, or (2) put the money towards doing what they do at present and that is to pay for the use of capitalist "machinery" to spread socialist knowledge and awareness, paying their members capitalist expenses, paying capitalist printing costs, hire of halls, and other capitalist expenses that it takes to run a political party and magazine, postage, telephone, stationery, etc.?

Personally speaking I would say (1) would be better and the most effective, because you could still do no. (2). i.e. spread awareness, but at increasingly less and less money cost because "true" socialists would begin to own collectively more and more socialist and not capitalist resources, such as their own energy supplies, wood, recycled paper, mills, etc. to use, as well as their own moneyless food supplies, etc. thus allowing more effective use of what money is available, and have a much greater impact on the increase of the present activities of the Socialist Party.

This land which would be the physical practical place of where socialists arc practising socialism (albeit constrained by the limits of capitalism that we are all forced to live under) and would be an interesting, inspiring enjoyable place to visit, and also given that you do stick to socialist principles, would not this land, lands, unlike Animal Farm stay socialist? And another thing—you have already spent the time and energy put in by your loyal members.You in fact could be doing two things at the same time—creating socialism and educating socialism.

Frank Bowman,

Flint

Reply:

If we were to obtain such a windfall, since we are a democratic organisation the decisions as to how to use it would be taken democratically by the membership. We can’t see our membership, however, deciding to spend it on the sort of land project you have in mind since that would be contrary to our conception of how socialism will come about.

We imagine the money would be spent on doing what we do now better and on a bigger scale. We could obtain our own printing press and perhaps bring out a weekly paper as well as a glossy monthly. We could pay socialists to work full-time as journalists, designers, printers and experts in distribution. We could put organisers in the field. We could start a publishing house to bring out books and pamphlets, both reprints and new material. We could contest more seats at elections and run a more high-profile campaign: if we put up more than 50 candidates we could have party election broadcasts which we would have the money to do well. We could help our companion parties and socialist groups in other parts of the world expand their activities too. We could step up our advertising and publicity.

Such a windfall would enable us to redress a bit the present imbalance in favour of pro-capitalist propaganda. It would enable us to convince more and more people that socialism is the only lasting solution to the problems they face and that socialism can only be established when a majority of people have come to want and understand it and organise to take democratic political action to achieve it.

That—democratic political action by a majority that wants and understands socialism—is the way we see socialism coming about, not by "socialistic land colonies gradually becoming more and more self-sufficient and eventually squeezing out entirely capitalist production for profit.

This argument amongst those who want a classless moneyless society of common ownership and democratic control goes back a long time, right back to the origins of the modern socialist movement in the first part of the last century. On the one side was Robert Owen, who spent (and lost) the fortune he had made as a textile capitalist on founding communistic colonics in Britain and America. On the other were the Chartists, whose position was later supported by Marx and Engels, who argued that political action for social change was the most effective way to achieve a co-operative commonwealth.

It might be more pleasant to live in the moneyless communistic community you envisage, at least to start with, but the trouble is they never last. Not because communism is against human nature as opponents claim, but because they can’t escape from the surrounding capitalist environment. Far from them overwhelming capitalism it’s been the other way round.

Either they isolate themselves as much as they can from capitalism, in which case they arc only able to offer a very frugal existence, or they engage with the surrounding capitalist economy, for instance by selling their products, in which case they get more and more sucked into capitalist ways of doing things.

The kibbutzim in Israel are a good example of this. Some of them did start out as communities which didn’t use money internally and in which affairs were run democratically with everyone having an equal say. But over the years they have not only competed successfully on the capitalist market as sellers; they have also taken to employing non-members as wage workers, i.e. become capitalist enterprises.

Two further points. First, we are not saying that people shouldn’t live in communistic communities if they want to—we are not in the business of telling people how they should live their lives under capitalism—only that it’s not the way socialism is going to come. Second, we can imagine that, when socialists are measured in millions rather than thousands so that it has become clear that sooner or later socialism will be established in the near future, people will be making all sorts of plans and experiments in anticipation of the coming of socialism and that this will include communal living in the countryside as well as in towns, but we are not there yet since this presupposes the existence of a mass socialist movement which must come first. So at the moment we need to concentrate on spreading socialist ideas rather than promoting experiments in "socialist” living—Editors.

Kibbutz conflict (1988)

Book Review from the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Status. Power and Conflict in the Kibbutz by Eliezer Ben-Rafael, Avebury 1988

The first kibbutz was established in 1910 and the movement now involves about 3.5 per cent of the population of Israel. This study is concerned with systems of stratification that have arisen in Kibbutzim and not with an overall analysis of their social organisation.

Kibbutzim are democratic to the extent that all members are entitled to participate in all debates and top executive positions are elected bi- or tri- annually. The absence of private ownership of the means of production and the irrelevance of money in defining status also make the kibbutz an interesting phenomenon. Yet we ought not to forget the existence of hired workers, who participate in the production process but are not commune members. With an average membership of 300-400 the kibbutz is also a very limited alternative.

The absence of wages or shares ensures that material differentials do not create social distinctions. although social status exists as "a function of one's prestige (esteem and sympathy) and power (influence, authority and independence)" (p.33). The fact that kibbutzim are entrepreneurial also means that prevailing social perspectives are carried through to the workings of the kibbutz, with top executive posts often limited to those with specialist abilities.

Ben-Rafael argues that the kibbutz represents a conflict between the spirit of democracy" and the "spirit of capitalism"; increasingly it is the latter that prevails. This affects not only internal stratification but the relationship of the kibbutz to its environment. Increasingly, due to professionalisation of jobs, members must look beyond the kibbutz for employment. The philosophy of the kibbutz has also undergone changes — the family is reasserted and early notions of equality between the sexes have not been achieved. In short, capitalism has inevitably had its way.

Philip Bentley

Old Harmony (1968)

From the February 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The story of the Kibbutzim the golden egg of that peculiar version of Social Democracy in Israel, Mapam, (though all the major parties run a few settlements all on fairly exclusive lines, politically), seems only too reminiscent of the utopian ideals of early 19th Century Europe. Substitute the name Ber Borochov for Owen or Fourier and we get surprisingly near to the misguided adventurers of those days.

At a time when the rising European bourgeoisie was still battling to break its feudal fetters, and when the proletariat was still in its early formative years, it is understandable that here and there socialist ideals, lacking the materials basis for their implementation, should find expression in the attempted establishment of utopian communities. In the modern world however, where technology and the forces of production have been raised to an unprecedented level, the notion that isolated communities can be established unaffected by the anarchic and alienating conditions of capitalism is completely unrealistic.

The Kibbutz provides, it is true, a living example of the practicability of the socialist demand for a society in which each shall give according to his ability. The problem of the “lazyman” is almost non-existent, but this was true also of the communities established in America some 160 years ago. (Charles Nardoff in his Communistic Societies of United States wrote in 1874 that “the lazy men who are the budbears of speculative communists are not so far as I have heard to be found in the existing communes".) The experiment has been performed and in this direction proved successful, now is the time to progress. We must move away from this variation of the ‘opt out' illusion and consciously pursue the class struggle to a successful conclusion. This means building up international class solidarity without the provision of illusory escapes into the little world of the Kibbutz.

The fact is that the Kibbutzim, like its earlier models in the New World, have merely paved the way for class-divided capitalism. The pioneers regarded these communal farms as the pattern of a future nation, but those remaining have seen instead the growth of a way of life which is the very antithesis of what they stood for. In the United States those communities were invaluable in developing the previously uncultivated areas of the West, and in doing the hard and exhausting work necessary in the opening up of the country for others to exploit. They extended the boundaries of ‘civilisation' and vastly increased the value of surrounding land. Precisely the same purpose has been served by the Kibbutzim of Israel, though on a more planned and systematised basis. The settlement of the arid and desert zones, and the extension of effective Israeli state control has been their contribution to the increased dominance of capitalism in the Middle East.

In the 19th Century America dozens of these communities went painfully out of existence. Those which remained so changed in character that they were no longer recognisable as 'experiments in communism', they became experiments in capitalism. The freedom from any lord or master which, for instance, the Rappites so cherished did not it seems extend to the two hundred Chinese workers whom they exploited in their cutlery factory. Similarly the Perfectionists employed some three hundred persons in manufacture, and even went so far as to hire servants. They became just another employer of labour, industrial and agricultural corporations, despite some unusual characteristics. The kibbutz, by definition a small scale enterprise, cannot hope to be self-sufficient. It could never fulfil the fundamental requirement of a Socialist society that each should take according to his need, but even to maintain the modest standard of living which they now have they are required to sell their produce on the capitalist market in exchange for those necessaries they are unable to produce. To this end they have entered the field of light industry, producing plastics, crockery, furniture and a host of other goods. Here again, as with their American predecessors, they become hirers of labour. They face all the problems of capitalism in regard to price fluctuations, wages, strikes and, as a capitalist organisation, are not backward in their methods of dealing with them.

The old communities of the United States relied heavily for their continuation on attracting more immigrants and, to a lesser degree, on financial contributions from their country or origin (which in many cases was Germany).

Similarly the kibbutz relies for its survival to some extent on the increase of Jewish immigrants encouraged by such organisation as the Mapai-Habonim and the Mapam-Hashomer Hatzair (“the builders” and the “young guardian”), also to contributions from Zionist organisations, and to government and private capital aid. The idealistic kibbutzniks have of course been a very useful adjunct to the Israeli military forces. The Shakers young men joined in Civil war on the side of Unionists, but this was exceptional for such communities. In this respect the kibbutzim have not even reached their predecessors standard. But if and when their use in these respects diminishes the government’s benevolence and support will undoubtedly fail.

Persecution in Europe by state and established church authorities has more than once led to emigration and attempts at forming a new and saner society. Some of the qualities achieved may be applauded but it is an unfortunate fact that their desired aims have not been fulfilled. The limited success and abundant failures of the 19th century experiments and those in the 20th century should be a lesson to workers everywhere. The building up of a strong revolutionary Socialist movement on an international scale is the immediate task to be faced.

Michael Bradley

The Socialist attitude to the Kibbutznik (1963)

From the October 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

First, we had better define our terms. Most of our readers will probably know what a Socialist is. But if, for example, you think he is a follower of say, Harold Wilson or Nikita Kruschev, you would be sadly mistaken. Socialists are people who want political power for one purpose only, to revolutionise the world we live in, and change it from a Capitalist system to a Socialist one, where the means of life are owned by society as a whole. Which of course rules out the Kruschevs and the Wilsons. They want power sure enough. But whatever labourites and communists have used power for, they have never used it for making the means of life into the common property of all the people. No sensible person even expects them to.

What are kibbutznik? They are Israelis who live in various kinds of communal settlement (the kibbutz). It is the purpose of this article to tell something about this interesting experiment, to show what the kibbutznik aim at, what they achieve, and to see what lessons they provide for those interested in Socialism.

The general background of the kibbutz movement is that among the many Jews who became Zionists (people who believed that the remedy for anti-semitism and persecution from which Jews have suffered for centuries was to form a Jewish State in Palestine) were some who felt that the economic basis of their life should be communal. These people were dissatisfied not only with anti-semitism but also with capitalism and considered themselves to be Socialists. They therefore formed themselves into groups, varying in size from a few dozen to a few hundred, for the purpose of organising their lives on farm settlements in what was formerly Palestine and is now Israel.

Most members of these groups were young Jews from Eastern Europe. They had to be young because the conditions were arduous, the land often barren and malarial, and the surrounding Arab population hostile and dangerous. And it is no coincidence that the bulk of these pioneers came from countries like Poland and Tsarist Russia, because there antisemitism was rife and so-called Socialist movements were thick on the ground. There were a number of different “movements " among the settlers roughly corresponding to the kind of left-wing movements they were used to in Europe—Labour (Mapai). left-wing and somewhat fellow-travelling labour (Hashomer Hatsair) and various orthodox religious groups.

One thing they had in common was that they were all idealists who wanted to show that there was another kind of life (and another kind of Jew) than the one of sweating in tailoring factories or furniture works or, for the go-getters and the successful minority, the chance of becoming rich exploiters themselves. They wanted to show the world that people can live in a spirit of one-for-all and all-for-one. They obtained land mainly with funds raised from the charity of Jews rich and poor who stayed in the countries of the west, and from the same source they also obtained the capital to buy materials for building their living quarters and farm buildings. The land was usually cheap because in many cases it was desert and swamp and the main asset of the group was the enthusiasm, the sweat and tears (often also the blood) of the kibbutzniks themselves.

Many readers will have already detected a similarity between this sort of movement and others which have been tried in various countries of Europe and. particularly, of America. The one important difference appears to be that, after a history of up to about 50 years, with new settlements being formed even now, the kibbutz movement can make a reasonable claim to have stood the test of time — some time at least. Any visitor to Israel can see for himself that the kibbutz are viable institutions; they work. And by and large, the majority of the people are reasonably satisfied with their daily lives.

Now perhaps we can take a look at the way a typical kibbutz is run and in so doing we may be able to see how their ideas compare with those of Socialists. We will find that the kibbutzniks are not Socialists. The fact that they call themselves Socialists proves nothing. After all. so does Kruschev, so does Wilson. But we may find some features of kibbutz life which we are happy to salute as demonstrating the truth of some of the things we Socialists claim.

“From each according to his ability." That, the first half of the Socialist's golden rule for the kind of society he wants to create, is by and large a principle which works in practice in the settlements. The problem of the scrounger, the lazy man who will let his fellows do the work, is one that is always thrust at Socialist propagandists; it is not a problem that causes much loss of sleep in the kibbutz. The average settler does his best for the settlement because he knows that it belongs to him as much as to anyone. He knows he is working for his own wife and children as well as others. And he knows that the work is necessary for the settlement to survive; and acting on this knowledge, he behaves not like a rat in a capitalist rat race but like a human being.

The problem of “ who will do the dirty work " is also one that does not loom large. There is a lot of dirty work on a communal farm. It gets done because it has to be done. Those who are used to looking down on the dustman forget that this is only the case because he is regarded as an also-ran who has failed in the rat-race towards so-called better (and of generally better-paid) jobs. The kibbutznik who cleans the cowshed does so because it needs cleaning. He is doing a job for the good of all. And because of this he is looked up to and not down upon by his fellows. Surprisingly enough, this makes the cow-dung less smelly. Some people like doing the job and have only pity for the white-collared clerk in a London bank who adds up his incessant rows of figures of other people's money. Of course, they are sensible enough to rotate jobs as much as possible, when elections take place for administrative committees to run the affairs of the community, the cowman’s vote is equal to the secretary’s. He is in fact just as likely to be elected himself, and in such a process, the principle of leadership tends to get lost. Which is the best thing that can happen to it.

“To each according to his need." It is in this second half of our dictum that the kibbutz shows its essential failing. Socialism encourages a world which is built upon the enormous powers of production which capitalist society has engendered. A world where goods are so plentiful that we can all have free access to them in the way that we have virtually free access to water now. The kibbutz, far from utilising the enormous powers created by international capitalism, is by very definition a small-scale isolated enterprise. As such it cannot produce goods in teeming abundance so that all can help themselves freely. On the contrary, kibbulzniks can only have a limited ration of limited supplies. It is only their idealism that enables the settlers to run with reasonable smoothness a society where everyone must be spartan enough to take only an equal share of the modest amount available. And partly for this reason, most of the workers of Israel prefer to work for private capitalists. But think how life could be if only we all had a chance to share, not in parsimony, but in abundance.

The kibbutz is an attempt to make little islands in the worldwide ocean of capitalism. It cannot be self-sufficient (not even a giant country like Russia or the US. could be that) so it must produce its goods—normally farm produce—for sale on the capitalist market. In return it buys the things it cannot produce—clothes, bricks, glass, tractors, radios and the countless other essentials. It is therefore at the mercy of the market like all capitalist enterprises and the demand for (and the price of) its products shows the usual anarchic fluctuations of glut and shortage that the capitalist world knows so well. Socialism means, among other things, production not for sale on a market but directly for the use of human beings. No kibbutznik, be he never so convinced that he is a living exponent of Socialism, can claim that his movement has anything like this basic feature of Socialism: most of them, in fact, will hardly be aware that Socialism poses this as a basic fundamental. The kibbutz is as far from this as is every other section of our capitalist world.

The kibbutz movement has to struggle with the fact that many of its younger members become dissatisfied with their small island and are lured to the big world where there are so many of the things that large scale production offers—not to speak of theatres and pavement cafes and sea-beaches. But it has an advantage over most such experiments in that the Israeli government finds the settlements and their idealistic (and often chauvinistic) members to be valuable adjuncts of their military forces. If and when their use in this respect is less important, the kibbutz will find that the government's benevolence and support, which have been so valuable to their survival, will tend to disappear. Such are the facts of life in a capitalist world.

In a word then—the kibbutznik is not a Socialist But he is a human being who is demonstrating in practice what we Socialists have always maintained—that people can behave like human beings. And if they can do this under their own difficult restricted circumstances, how much better and easier could it all be in a society of world-wide abundance. For that is what Socialism will be.

L. E. Weidberg