LABOR ZIONISM

'Labor Zionism' ('Labour Zionism', Heb. 'ציונות סוציאליסטית', ''tsionut sotsialist'') can be described as the major stream of the left wing of the Zionist movement. If if it was not for many years the major stream in the Zionist movement, it was a significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizational structures. It saw itself as the Zionist sector of the historic Jewish labor movements of Eastern and Central Europe, eventually developing local units in most countries with sizeable Jewish populations. Unlike the "political Zionist" tendency founded by Theodor Herzl and advocated by Chaim Weizmann, Labor Zionists did not believe that a Jewish state would be created simply by appealing to the international community or to a powerful nation such as Britain, Germany or the Ottoman Empire. Rather, Labor Zionists believed that a Jewish state could only be created as part of the class struggle through the efforts of the Jewish working class settling in Palestine and constructing a state through the creation of a progressive Jewish society with rural kibbutzim and moshavim and an urban Jewish proletariat.
Labor Zionism grew in size and influence and eclipsed "political Zionism" by the 1930s both internationally and within the British Mandate of Palestine where Labor Zionists predominated among many of the institutions of the pre-independence Jewish community Yishuv, particularly the trade union federation known as the Histadrut. The Haganah -- the largest Zionist paramilitary defence force -- was a Labor Zionist institution. Labor Zionists played a leading role in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and Labor Zionists were predominant among the leadership of the Israeli military for decades after the formation of the state of Israel in 1948.
Major theoreticians of the Labor Zionist movement included Moses Hess, Nahum Syrkin and Ber Borochov and leading figures in the movement included David Ben-Gurion. Albert Einstein was among a number of prominent Jewish personalities that supported the Labor Zionist Movement. The main vehicle of the Labor Zionist movement was the Poale Zion party which split into left and right factions in 1920. The Left Poale Zion party ultimately merged with the kibbutz-based Hashomer Hatzair, the urban Socialist League and several smaller left-wing groups to become the Mapam party, which in turn later joined with other parties to create Meretz. The Right Poale Zion became the Mapai party, later the Israeli Labor Party, which for a number of years was linked with Mapam in Alignment. These two parties were initially the two largest parties in the Yishuv and in the first Knesset, whilst Mapai and its predecessors dominated Israeli politics both in the pre-independence Yishuv and for the first three decades of Israel's independence, until Revisionist Zionism (represented by Herut, later Gahal and then Likud) became an increasingly strong power in Israeli politics and surpassed Labor Zionism in the late 1970s, winning the 1977 election.

Contents

Decline and transformation

Movements

See also

External links

Decline and transformation

With the decline of socialist movements generally, the destruction of European Jewry and the ascent of North American Jews into the middle class, the Labor Zionist movement has moved away from its working class and socialist roots. In Israel the Labor Party has followed the general path of other governing social democratic parties such as the British Labour Party and is now fully oriented towards capitalism and even neo-liberalism, though recently it has rediscovered the welfare state under the leadership of Amir Peretz. Labor Zionism is ironically associated within Israeli society as representing the country's ruling class and political elite whereas working-class Israelis have traditionally voted for the Likud. Until the ascension of Peretz as party chairman, Labor Zionism was culturally associated with an Ashkenazi political elite more influenced by the Western world than the majority of Israelis. What distinguishes modern Labor Zionism from other streams is not economic policy, an analysis of capitalism or any class analysis or orientation but its attitude towards the peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Labor Zionists tending to support the Israeli peace camp to varying degrees.

Movements

Labor Zionism exists today organizationally, manifesting itself in such Zionist youth movements as Habonim Dror, Hashomer Hatzair and college-age campus activist groups such as the Union of Progressive Zionists of the U.S. and Canada.

See also

★ Zionism

★ Kibbutz

★ Histadrut

★ Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed

★ Ameinu

★

★ Farband

★ Jewish left

★ Havlagah

★ ''Rome and Jerusalem'' ( at Wikisource), a classic 1862 work on Labor Zionism by Moses Hess.

External links

★ A history of labor and socialist zionism

★ Ber Borochov - The Economic Development of the Jewish People

★ The Jewish Problem and the Socialist Jewish State

★ A general history of Zionism and the Creation of Israel

★ Ameinu - Liberal Values, Progressive Israel