On 2012-12-06, at 3:32 PM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Marv: "The process is what I described earlier as the "logic of
> settler colonialism".
>
> [WS:] I think this is something to be expected once people embark on a
> settler colonization project. This happened many times before in
> European colonization of Africa that strictly follows this pattern.
> The settlers became the most rabidly racist and xenophobic element -
> much more so than the general population from which they originated-
> and were often looked down by the British colonial authorities (e.g.
> one British official called the British settlers in Kenya "white Mau
> Mau." While it is deplorable, it is also understandable, as being
> determines consciousness. If your "being" consists largely of robbing
> natives of their resources and land, your consciousness typically
> follows.
Yes. Fully agree.
> What I find far more interesting is the transformation of European
> Jews from founders of socialism to Zionist settlers. As I see it,
> socialism is fundamentally rooted in the Jewish experience in Europe,
> specifically the sense of community and solidarity, the mostly working
> class status (as opposed to either gentry or peasantry), and the lack
> of national territory to defend, which explains internationalism of
> the socialist/communist movement of which Jews were a prominent part
> (cf. Rosa Luxemburg). This is very much different from other European
> nations that did have territorial claims, and thus were nationalists
> first and socialists second, as the fate of the Second International
> demonstrates. There would be no socialism as we know it without
> European Jews.
I agree with your comment about the lack of a national territory facilitating the development of a strong internationalist impulse within the Jewish community, although the Bundists and Zionists each yearned for such a territory within the USSR and in Palestine respectively. The Jews, BTW, were not uniformly working class; they were mostly small traders in their villages, becoming textile workers when they emigrated to the larger centres, often in Jewish-owned firms.
While It's widely accepted that Jews were disproportionately prominent in the socialist movement of many countries, I don't think we can extrapolate "that there would be no socialism as we know it without European Jews." Socialism was preeminently the product of the rise of the industrial working class everywhere, and not all, or even most, of the movement's great thinkers and leaders in Europe and elsewhere were Jewish. And even those who were Jews by birth like Marx and Trotsky arrived at their understanding not from their early (in Marx's case, non--existent) contact with traditional Jewish values but from their observations of capitalist society and immersion in the workers' movement. The movement was a class movement which transcended national cultures, including that of the Yiddish-speaking community in Eastern oEurope.
> As I understand it, the Jewish community in EE (or whatever was left
> of it) was deeply divided by the issue of emigrating to Palestine
> (this is based on the empirical work of Irena Hurwic Nowakowska
> http://books.google.com/books/about/A_social_analysis_of_postwar_Polish_Jewr.html?id=VbltAAAAMAAJ
> ). Those who opposed it, remained in EE and assimilated, often by
> joining the ruling communist party or, ironically, by becoming
> Catholic. Those who emigrated became a part of the settler
> colonialism project, as you say.
Yes. I assume you meant Palestine. The other emigrants, as we know, we're deeply involved in the mass social democratic and Communist parties. Incidentally, my wife and I have just finished reading Gillian Slovo's memoir of her parents, Joe Slovo and the martyred Ruth First, which I' recommend highly. It's titled "Every Secret Thing". It illustrates that Jewish immigrants did indeed play an outsized role in the South African Communist Party and in the ANC, but that the movement for black liberation was nonetheless very clearly inspired and led by Mandela, Tambo, Sisulu and other black intellectuals and oarose out of the working class majority in the country.
> What I find ironic - or tragic perhaps - is that neither group managed
> to escape the perils of nationalism - which I guess is a contributing
> factor to the global demise of socialism.
>
Yes, the biggest surprise for me was how quickly all the old shit of national chauvinism and religion surfaced in the wake of the collapse of the USSR, Yugoslavia, and all of the other states where capitalism was restored.