"...even under the relatively difficult conditions of a backward country, the proletariat can solve the Jewish problem. The Jews have penetrated en masse into Russian economy. The "productivisation" of the Jews has been accompanied by two parallel processes: assimilation and territorial concentration. Wherever the Jews penetrate into industry, they are rapidly assimilated. As early as 1926 there were hardly 40 percent of the Jewish miners in the Donetz Basin who spoke Yiddish...Only in those places where fairly dense masses of Jews have been colonised, especially in Birobidjan, do we witness a kind of national renaissance".
Thus life itself demonstrates that the problem which so bitterly divides Judaism - assimilation or territorial concentration - is a fundamental problem only to petty-bourgeois dreamers. The Jewish masses want simply an end to their martyrdom. That socialism alone can give them. But socialism must give the Jews, as it will to all peoples, the possibility of assimilation as well as the possibility of having a special national life.
The end of Judaism? Certainly. Despite their apparently irreconcilable opposition, assimilationists and nationalists are agreed in combating Judaism as history has known it - the mercantile Judaism of the Diaspora, the people-class."
<and>
"The "new Jew" resembles neither his brother of the Diaspora nor his ancestor of the era of the fall of Jerusalem...Everything will add up to estrange the Palestinian Jew from the Judaism of the Diaspora. And tomorrow, when national barriers and prejudices begin to disappear in Palestine, who can doubt that a fruitful reconciliation will take place between the Arab and Jewish workers, the result of which will be their partial or total fusion."
<and>
""Eternal" Judaism, which, moreover, has never been anything but a myth, will disappear. It is puerile to pose assimilation and the "national solution" as opposites. Even in those countries where Jewish national communities will eventually be created, we will be witnessing either the creation of a new Jewish nationality, completely different form the old, or the formation of new nations."
As I understand it, Leon saw a clean break between the people class and the new Jew of the modern era. However while he was - as were other Marxists of Jewish origin of that era - in favour of assimilation, he nevertheless favoured the right to national self-determination for the Jewish people. He understood that Jews had to make up their own minds about the appropriateness of the two options - an assimilationist 'solution' could not simply be decreed.
Sadly, as we know, Leon died in Auschwitz in 1944. He was destined never to experience the disastrous imperialist 'solution' to the Jewish question in the bloody trap of a 'little Jewish Ulster' in Palestine.
Russell
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Marvin Gandall Sent: 19 October 2007 02:51 PM To: LBO-Talk Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Jewish "nation"? (Was Armenian genocide?)
Russell Grinkler wrote:
> Very long time since I read Leon too. But I suppose the difference is that
> while a nation is a modern era construct, the 'people-class' was
> pre-capitalist and served purposes specific to an era before capitalist
> institutions were fully developed. Consequently, as Eastern Europe
> underwent
> capitalist development, the old people-class ceased to have any social
> role.
=============================
The social role of the Yiddish-speaking Jews undoubtedly changed under
capitalism, but Leon, like his mentor Trotsky, still understood them to be a
nation. I don't know whether he continued to use the term "people-class"
interchangeably or as a means of somehow distinguishing the Jews from other
oppressed national minorities, or what conceptual significance, if any, this
would have had on his thinking.
In the tradition of classical Marxism, the Trotskyists believed that socialism would see the gradual assimilation of the Jews and other nationalities. In the interim, they all had the right to cultural and political autonomy within the framework of a socialist state. Trotsky and Leon opposed Zionism as a chimerical and unjust colonial exercise would would not resolve the "Jewish Question", and Trotsky had earlier attacked the Bund for promoting a separate Jewish workers' party. But it's noteworthy that Trotsky did not in principle reject the formation of the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan under Stalin.
___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk