Labor Zionism or Socialist Zionism (Hebrew:
צִיּוֹנוּת סוֹצְיָאלִיסְטִית‬,
translit. tziyonut sotzyalistit) is the left
wing of the Zionist movement. For many years,
it was the most significant tendency among
Zionists and Zionist organizations. 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 sizable 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 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 defense force – was
a Labor Zionist institution and was used on
occasion (such as during the Hunting Season)
against right-wing political opponents or
to assist the British Administration in capturing
rival Jewish militants.
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, Nachman Syrkin, Ber Borochov,
and Aaron David Gordon and leading figures
in the movement included David Ben-Gurion,
Golda Meir, and Berl Katznelson.
== Ideology ==
Moses Hess's 1862 work Rome and Jerusalem.
The Last National Question argued for the
Jews to settle in Palestine as a means of
settling the national question. Hess proposed
a socialist state in which the Jews would
become agrarianized through a process of "redemption
of the soil" that would transform the Jewish
community into a true nation in that Jews
would occupy the productive layers of society
rather than being an intermediary non-productive
merchant class, which is how he perceived
European Jews.Ber Borochov, continuing from
the work of Moses Hess, proposed the creation
of a socialist society that would correct
the "inverted pyramid" of Jewish society.
Borochov believed that Jews were forced out
of normal occupations by Gentile hostility
and competition, using this dynamic to explain
the relative predominance of Jewish professionals,
rather than workers. Jewish society, he argued,
would not be healthy until the inverted pyramid
was righted, and a substantial number of Jews
became workers and peasants again. This, he
held, could only be accomplished by Jews in
their own country.Another Zionist thinker,
A. D. Gordon, was influenced by the völkisch
ideas of European romantic nationalism, and
proposed establishing a society of Jewish
peasants. Gordon made a religion of work.
These two figures (Gordon and Borochov), and
others like them, motivated the establishment
of the first Jewish collective settlement,
or kibbutz, Degania, on the southern shore
of the Sea of Galilee, in 1909 (the same year
that the city of Tel Aviv was established).
Deganiah, and many other kibbutzim that were
soon to follow, attempted to realize these
thinkers' vision by creating communal villages,
where newly arrived European Jews would be
taught agriculture and other manual skills.
Joseph Trumpeldor is also considered to be
one of the early icons of the Labor Zionist
movement in Palestine. When discussing what
it is to be a Jewish pioneer, Trumpeldor stated
What is a pioneer? Is he a worker only? No!
The definition includes much more. The pioneers
should be workers but that is not all. We
shall need people who will be "everything"
– everything that the land of Israel needs.
A worker has his labor interests, a soldier
his esprit de corps, a doctor and an engineer,
their special inclinations. A generation of
iron-men; iron from which you can forge everything
the national machinery needs. You need a wheel?
Here I am. A nail, a screw, a block? – here
take me. You need a man to till the soil?
– I’m ready. A soldier? I am here. Policeman,
doctor, lawyer, artist, teacher, water carrier?
Here I am. I have no form. I have no psychology.
I have no personal feeling, no name. I am
a servant of Zion. Ready to do everything,
not bound to do anything. I have only one
aim – creation. Trumpeldor, a Socialist
Zionist, gave his life in 1920 defending the
community of Tel Hai in the Upper Galilee.
He became a symbol of Jewish self-defense
and his reputed last words, "Never mind, it
is good to die for our country" (En davar,
tov lamut be'ad artzenu אין דבר, טוב
למות בעד ארצנו), became famous
in the pre-state Zionist movement and in Israel
during the 1950s and 1960s. Trumpeldor's heroic
death made him not only a martyr for Zionists
Left but also for the Revisionist Zionist
movement who named its youth movement Betar
(an acronym for "Covenant of Joseph Trumpeldor")
after the fallen hero.Albert Einstein was
a prominent supporter of both Labor Zionism
and efforts to encourage Jewish–Arab cooperation.
Fred Jerome in his Einstein on Israel and
Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle
East argues that Einstein was a Cultural Zionist
who supported the idea of a Jewish homeland
but opposed the establishment of a Jewish
state in Palestine "with borders, an army,
and a measure of temporal power." Instead,
he preferred a bi-national state with "continuously
functioning, mixed, administrative, economic,
and social organizations." However Ami Isseroff
in his article Was Einstein a Zionist argues
that Einstein was not opposed to the state
of Israel given that Einstein declared it
"the fulfillment of our dreams." Perceiving
its vulnerability after independence, he again
set aside his pacifism in the name of human
preservation, when president Harry Truman
recognized Israel in May 1948. In the November
1948 presidential election Einstein supported
former vice-president Henry A. Wallace’s
Progressive Party, which advocated a pro-Soviet
foreign policy – but which also at the time
(like the USSR) strongly supported the new
state of Israel. Wallace went down to defeat,
winning no states.
== Parties ==
Initially two labor parties were founded by
immigrants to Palestine of the Second Aliyah
(1904–1914): the pacifist and anti-militarist
Hapo'el Hatza'ir (Young Worker) party and
the Marxist Poale Zion party, with Poale Zion
roots. The Poale Zion Party had a left wing
and a right wing. In 1919 the right wing,
including Ben-Gurion and anti-Marxist non-party
people, founded Ahdut HaAvoda. In 1930 Ahdut
HaAvoda and Hapoel Hatzair fused into the
Mapai party, which included all of mainstream
Labor Zionism. Until the 1960s these parties
were dominated by members of the Second Aliyah.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 Mapai party later became the Israeli Labor
Party, which for a number of years was linked
with Mapam in the 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 the late 1970s.
== Decline and transformation ==
Already in the 1920s the Labor movement disregarded
its socialist roots and concentrated on building
the nation by constructive action. According
to Tzahor its leaders did not "abandon fundamental
ideological principles". However, according
to Ze'ev Sternhell in his book The Founding
Myths of Israel, the labor leaders had already
abandoned socialist principles by 1920 and
only used them as "mobilizing myths".
Following the 1967 Six-Day War several prominent
Labor Zionists created the Movement for Greater
Israel which subscribed to an ideology of
Greater Israel and called upon the Israeli
government to keep and populate all areas
captured in the war. Among the public figures
in this movement associated with left-wing
nationalism were Rachel Yanait Ben-Zvi, Yitzhak
Tabenkin, Icchak Cukierman, Zivia Lubetkin,
Eliezer Livneh, Moshe Shamir, Zev Vilnay,
Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Isser Harel, Dan Tolkovsky,
and Avraham Yoffe. In the 1969 Knesset elections
it ran as the "List for the Land of Israel",
but failed to cross the electoral threshold.
Prior to the 1973 elections, it joined the
Likud and won 39 seats. In 1976 it merged
with the National List and the Independent
Centre (a breakaway from the Free Centre)
to form La'am, which remained a faction within
Likud until its merger into the Herut faction
in 1984.
Other prominent Labor Zionists, especially
those who came to dominate the Israeli Labor
Party, became strong advocates for relinquishing
the territory won during the Six-Day War.
By the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993,
this became the central policy of the Labor
Party under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and
Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. What distinguishes
Labor Zionism from other Zionist streams today
is not economic policy, an analysis of capitalism
or any class analysis or orientation but its
attitude towards the Israeli–Palestinian
peace process with modern Labor Zionists tending
to support the Israeli peace camp to varying
degrees. This orientation towards Israel's
borders and foreign policy has dominated Labor
Zionist institutions in recent decades to
the extent that socialist Zionists who support
a Greater Israel ideology are forced to seek
political expression elsewhere.
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.
The Israeli Labor Party and its predecessors
have ironically been associated within Israeli
society as representing the country's ruling
class and political elite whereas working-class
Israelis have traditionally voted for the
Likud since the Begin Revolution of 1977.
== Labor Zionism today ==
Labor Zionism manifests itself today in both
adult and youth organizations. Among adults,
the World Labor Zionist Movement, based in
Jerusalem, has affiliates in countries around
the world, such as Ameinu in the United States
and Australia, Associação Moshé Sharett
in Brazil and the Jewish Labour Movement in
the United Kingdom. Youth and students are
served through Zionist youth movements such
as Habonim Dror, Hashomer Hatzair and college-age
campus activist groups such as the Union of
Progressive Zionists of the U.S. and Canada.
In Israel, Labor Zionism has become nearly
synonymous with the Israeli peace camp. Usually
Labor Zionist political and educational institutions
activists are also advocates of a two-state
solution, who do not necessarily adhere to
socialist economic views.
== See also ==
Ameinu
Farband
Hashomer Hatzair
Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed
Habonim Dror
Havlagah
Hebrew labor
Histadrut
Jewish left
Kibbutz
Left-wing nationalism
Movement for Greater Israel
Partners for Progressive Israel
Rome and Jerusalem (text at Wikisource), a
classic 1862 work on Labor Zionism by Moses
Hess
The Founding Myths of Israel by Zeev Sternhell
== Further reading ==
Cohen, Mitchell (1992). Zion and State: Nation,
Class, and the Shaping of Modern Israel (Columbia
University Press morningside ed.). New York:
Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231079419.
== References ==
== 
External links ==
A history of labor and socialist zionism
The Jewish Problem and the Socialist Jewish
State
Ameinu – Liberal Values, Progressive Israel
