[lbo-talk] Frankfurt on the Hudson

[Matthias Wasser]

On Wed, Aug 19, 2009 at 2:03 PM, Wojtek Sokolowski
<swsokolowski at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
> [WS:]  It is interesting to note how much socialism, an essentially
> universalist and internationalist project, was nonetheless embedded in
> national and ethnic cultures, especially those with collectivist bend - such
> as Jewish, Eastern European, Ibero-American or French.  This embeddedness in
> national and ethnic cultures already favorably predisposed to collectivist
> approaches to social issues may explain why socialism has never been popular
> in individualistic societies, such as the US or Anglo-Saxon countries in
> general.
>
> Wojtek

Was European Jewry particularly "collectivist?" The diaspora in Europe
produced a lot of successful businessmen and capitalist (but, tellingly, not
organic conservative) intellectuals (not to mention artists et cetera) too.
If I had to guess I'd say that their unwilling estrangement from national
culture allowed them to stand outside of it, identify *as* Universal
Humanity rather than the particularistic irrational category of nation. N.B.
that Israel, with similar genes and traditions, has produced rather less
cultural/intellectual achievements than the diaspora, and that its founders'
very enthusiastic embrace of socialism finds much less purchase in the
current generation, even compared to other First World countries.