Historical
151-564: Zionism (since 2023) Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary The Socialist Workers Party ( SWP ) is a communist party in the United States . The SWP began as a group which, because it supported Leon Trotsky over Soviet leader Joseph Stalin , was expelled from the Communist Party USA . Since the 1930s, it has published The Militant as
302-641: A Semitic language which flourished as a spoken language in the ancient Kingdoms of Israel and Judah during the period from about 1200 to 586 BCE, and continued to be used in some parts of Judea during the Second Temple period and up until 200 CE. It is the language of the Hebrew Bible and the Mishnah , central texts in Judaism . Hebrew was largely preserved throughout later history as
453-517: A colonialist , racist , or exceptionalist ideology or as a settler colonialist movement. Some proponents of Zionism accept the characterization of Zionism as settler-colonial or exceptionalist. The term "Zionism" is derived from the word Zion ( Hebrew : ציון , romanized : Tzi-yon ) or Mount Zion , a hill in Jerusalem , widely symbolizing the Land of Israel. Mount Zion
604-583: A secular nationalist movement in the late 19th century, in reaction to newer waves of antisemitism and in response to the Haskalah , or Jewish Enlightenment. During this period, as Jewish assimilation in Europe was progressing, some Jewish intellectuals framed assimilation as a humiliating negation of Jewish cultural distinctiveness. The development of Zionism and other Jewish nationalist movements grew out of these sentiments, which began to emerge even before
755-501: A " workers' state " and should be supported in any war with capitalist states, despite their opposition to Stalin's government. The minority faction, led by Shachtman, held that the Soviet Union should not be supported in its war with Finland . One of its leaders, James Burnham , held in addition that the Soviet Union had degenerated so far that it deserved no defense whatsoever. Like this debate, most later factional disputes within
906-548: A "pure Jewish settlement" in Palestine on the basis of "100 per cent Jewish labor" and the claim to an exclusively Jewish economy. The Zionist leadership aimed to establish a fully autonomous and independent Jewish economic sector to create a new type of Jewish society. This new society was intended to reverse the traditional economic structure seen in the Jewish Diaspora, characterized by a high number of middlemen and
1057-608: A Great Power was seen as fundamental to the success of Zionism and in 1917 the Balfour Declaration established Britain's support for the movement. In 1922, the British Mandate for Palestine would explicitly privilege the Jewish settlers over the local Palestinian population. The British would assist in the establishment and development of Zionist institutions and a Zionist quasi-state which operated in parallel to
1208-459: A Jewish demographic majority, the Zionist movement was faced with a problem, namely the presence of the local Arab (and primarily non-Jewish) population. The practical issue of establishing a Jewish state in a majority non-Jewish region was an issue of fundamental practical importance for the Zionist movement. Zionists used the term "transfer" as a euphemism for the removal, or ethnic cleansing, of
1359-774: A break with the party. Recognizing that the Clarity faction had chosen to stand with the Altmanites and the Thomas group, Trotsky recommended that the Appeal group focus on disagreements over Spain to provoke a split. At the same time, Thomas, freshly returned from Spain, had concluded that the Trotskyists had joined the Socialist Party not to make it stronger, but to capture it for their own purposes. On June 24–25, 1937,
1510-404: A call to Jews to take it upon themselves to appropriate the land. Zionism saw itself as bringing Jews into the modern world by redefining what it means to be Jewish in terms of identification with a sovereign state, rather than Judaic faith and tradition. Zionism sought to reconfigure Jewish identity and culture in nationalist and secular terms. This new identity would be based on a rejection of
1661-441: A century after the beginnings of emancipation , Jews had moved from the margins to the forefront of European society. In the urban centers of Europe and America, Jews played an influential role in professional and intellectual life, considered in proportion to their numbers. During this period as Jewish assimilation was still progressing most promisingly, some Jewish intellectuals and religious traditionalists framed assimilation as
SECTION 10
#17327797935761812-648: A common orientation with the radicalized Socialist Party in their opposition to the European war, their preference for industrial unionism and the Congress of Industrial Organizations over the trade unionism of the American Federation of Labor , a commitment to trade union activism, and the defense of the Soviet Union as the first workers' state, while at the same time maintaining antipathy toward Stalin's government. Cannon went to Tujunga, California ,
1963-587: A humiliating negation of Jewish cultural distinctiveness. The development of Zionism and other Jewish nationalist movements grew out of these sentiments, which began to emerge even before the appearance of modern antisemitism as a major factor. In this sense, Zionism can be read as a response to the Haskala and the challenges of modernity and liberalism, rather than purely a response to antisemitism. Emancipation in Eastern Europe progressed more slowly, to
2114-406: A leading role. The settlements established by Hibbat Zion lacked sufficient funds and were ultimately not very successful but are seen as the first of several aliyahs, or waves of settlement, that led to the eventual establishment of the state of Israel. The conditions in Eastern Europe would eventually provide Zionism with a base of Jews seeking to overcome the challenges of external ostracism, from
2265-423: A liberated, dignified person eager to defend both personal and national pride. The Zionist goal of reframing of Jewish identity in secular-nationalist terms meant primarily the decline of the status of religion in the Jewish community. Prominent Zionist thinkers frame this development as nationalism serving the same role as religion, functionally replacing it. Zionism sought to make Jewish ethnic-nationalism
2416-464: A like attempt to bring to Palestine the Jewish proletariat of Poland, Lithuania, Romania, and the Turkish Empire (1879 and 1882). Reform Jews rejected this idea of a return to Zion. The conference of rabbis held at Frankfurt am Main over July 15–28, 1845, deleted from the ritual all prayers for a return to Zion and a restoration of a Jewish state. The Philadelphia Conference, 1869, followed
2567-666: A meeting of the Appeal faction's National Action Committee voted to ratchet up the rhetoric against the American Labor Party and Republican nominee for mayor of New York Fiorello LaGuardia (a favorite son of many in Socialist ranks) and to reestablish their newspaper, The Socialist Appeal. This was met with expulsions from the party beginning August 9 with a rump meeting of the Central Committee of Local New York, which expelled 52 New York Trotskyists by
2718-603: A more active way than most Christians viewed the Second Coming." The religious Judaic notion of being a nation was distinct from the modern European notion of nationalism. Ultra-Orthodox Jews strongly opposed collective Jewish settlement in Palestine, viewing it as a violation of the three oaths sworn to God: not to force their way into the homeland, not to hasten the end times , and not to rebel against other nations . They believed that any attempt to achieve redemption through human actions, rather than divine intervention and
2869-569: A nation is reflected in the nature of the symbolism of the movement, which are drawn from modern sources and appropriated as Zionist, instancing the fact that the melody of the Hatikvah anthem drew on the version composed by the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana . The rejection of life in the diaspora was not limited to secular Zionism; many religious Zionists shared this opinion, but not all religious Zionism did. Abraham Isaac Kook , considered one of
3020-469: A national language was the sense of legitimacy it gave the movement, by suggesting a connection between the Jews of ancient Israel and the Jews of the Zionist movement. These developments are seen in Zionist historiography as a revolt against tradition, with the development of Modern Hebrew providing the basis on which a Jewish cultural renaissance might develop. Zionists generally preferred to speak Hebrew ,
3171-555: A nationalist project. They drew on religious Jewish sources and non-Jewish texts in reconstructing a national identity and consciousness. This new Jewish historiography divorced from and, at times at odds with, traditional Jewish collective memory. It was particularly important in early nation building in Israel, because Jews in Israel are ethnically diverse and the origins of Ashkenazi Jews were not known. Notable proponents of this racial idea included Max Nordau , Herzl's co-founder of
SECTION 20
#17327797935763322-495: A nationalistic context. It adapted traditional Jewish religious concepts, such as the devotion to the God of Israel, reverence for the biblical Land of Israel, and the belief in a future Jewish return during the messianic era, into a modern nationalist framework. To be sure, the yearning for a return to the land of Israel "was entirely quietistic" and the daily prayers of a return to Zion were all accompanied by an appeal to God, rather than
3473-631: A new political organization—the Socialist Workers Party. The October 2, 1937 issue of the Socialist Appeal included a convention call from the so-called "Left Wing" to "All Locals and Branches of the Socialist Party", accusing the NEC of the party of having "betrayed the principles of socialism" by withdrawing the party's candidate for mayor of New York in favor of LaGuardia and for having ordered "the bureaucratic expulsion of all
3624-596: A newspaper in Chicago with a Trotskyist orientation, The Socialist Appeal , later to serve as the organ of the Trotskyists inside the Socialist Party. In January 1936, just as the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party was expelling the Old Guard for their factional organization and alleged "violation of party discipline", James Cannon and his faction won their internal battle in
3775-473: A reality. The Zionist solution to the perceived deficiencies of diasporic life (or the " Jewish Question ") was dependent on the territorial concentration of Jews in Palestine, with the longer-term goal of establishing a Jewish demographic majority there. Early Zionists were the primary Jewish supporters of the idea that Jews are a race, as it "offered scientific 'proof' of the ethno-nationalist myth of common descent". According to Raphael Falk , as early as
3926-427: A reinterpretation of Messianism along traditionalist lines in which human intervention would prepare (and specifically only prepare) for the final redemption. Accordingly, the Jewish immigration in this vein was intended to be selective, involving only the most devout Jews. Their idea of Jews as a collective was strongly tied to religious notions distinct from the secular movement referred to as Zionism which developed at
4077-707: A reunification of the ISFI and the International Committee of the Fourth International, leading to the creation in 1963 of the reunified Fourth International . Two sections of the ICFI, including Gerry Healy 's Socialist Labour League , rejected the merger and turned against the SWP leadership, working with opponents within the party. The most important faction opposing the SWP leadership's new line
4228-549: A revolutionary leader. This faction ended up leaving the SWP in 1958 after supporting the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 , a position contrary to that of the SWP and other Trotskyist tendencies. It went on to form the Workers World Party . Meanwhile, throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s the remaining members of the SWP clung to its firmly held beliefs and grew older. Consequently,
4379-526: A sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning a Jewish state". Jewish settlements were proposed for establishment in the upper Mississippi region by W.D. Robinson in 1819. Ideas of Jewish cultural unity developed a specifically political expression in the 1860s as Jewish intellectuals began promoting the idea of Jewish nationalism. Zionism would be just one of several Jewish national movements which would develop, others included diaspora nationalist groups such as
4530-443: A scarcity of productive workers. By developing fundamental sectors such as industry, agriculture, and mining, the goal was to "normalize" Jewish life which had grown "abnormal" as a result of living amongst non-Jews. Most of the Zionist leadership saw it as imperative to employ strictly Jewish workers in order to ensure the Jewish character of the colonies; indeed they sought to minimize mixing with Arabs to, amongst other reasons, avoid
4681-484: A settlement in Gaza, but moved later to Smyrna . After deposing the old rabbi Aaron Lapapa in the spring of 1666, the Jewish community of Avignon, France , prepared to emigrate to the new kingdom. Proto-Zionist figures in the eighteeenth and nineteenth centuries include the rabbis Yehuda Bibas (1789–1852), Tzvi Kalischer (1795–1874), and Judah Alkalai (1798–1878). Alkalai and Kalischer developed their ideas as
Socialist Workers Party (United States) - Misplaced Pages Continue
4832-467: A suburb of Los Angeles, to establish another new newspaper, Labor Action, targeted to trade unionists and Socialist Party members and aimed at winning them over to Trotskyist views while Shachtman and Burnham handled the bulk of the faction's activities in New York. Norman Thomas attracted nearly 188,000 votes in his 1936 Socialist Party run for President, but performed poorly in historic strongholds of
4983-518: A vote of 48 to 2 (with 18 abstentions) and ordering 70 more to be brought up on charges. Wholesale expulsions followed, with a major section of the Young People's Socialist League (YPSL) leaving the party with the Trotskyists. The 1,000 or so Trotskyists who entered the Socialist Party in 1936 exited in the summer of 1937 with their ranks swelled by another 1,000. On December 31, 1937, representatives of this faction gathered in Chicago to establish
5134-557: A wave of revolutionary struggles like those that accompanied the end of the previous war. Indeed, revolutions did occur in Yugoslavia , Albania , Korea and China , to name only those that resulted in the overthrow of capitalism, but contrary to Trotskyist expectations they were headed by Moscow-oriented " Stalinist " parties. The largest strike wave in United States history, involving over five million workers, occurred with
5285-591: A weekly newspaper. It also maintains Pathfinder Press . Until the collapse of the Soviet Union , the SWP was the largest Trotskyist organization in the United States. During the 1960s and 1970s, the SWP and its youth wing, the Young Socialist Alliance , were the third-largest socialist organizations, after the Communist Party USA and Students for a Democratic Society . The SWP suffered many splits and its membership declined. The modern SWP
5436-642: A word, that Soviet America will become the counterpart of what they have been told Soviet Russia looks like. Actually American soviets will be as different from the Russian soviets as the United States of President Roosevelt differs from the Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II. Yet communism can come in America only through revolution, just as independence and democracy came in America. Trotsky on If America Should Go Communist in 1934. At its inception,
5587-467: Is also a term used in the Hebrew Bible . Throughout eastern Europe in the late 19th century, numerous grassroots groups promoted the national resettlement of the Jews in their homeland, as well as the revitalization and cultivation of the Hebrew language . These groups were collectively called the " Lovers of Zion " and were seen as countering a growing Jewish movement toward assimilation. The first use of
5738-615: Is ingrained in the man's 'blood', in his physical-racial type, and only in it." According to Hassan S. Haddad, the application of the Biblical concepts of Jews as the chosen people and the " Promised Land " in Zionism, particularly to secular Jews, requires the belief that modern Jews are the primary descendants of biblical Jews and Israelites. This is considered important to the State of Israel, because its founding narrative centers around
5889-435: Is not a psychosis... nor is it a lie. Anti-Semitism is a necessary outcome of a collision between two kinds of selfhood [or 'essence']. Hate is dependent upon the amount of 'agents of fermentation' that are pushed into the general organism [i.e., the non-Jewish group], whether they are active in it and irritate it, or are neutralized in it. In this sense, Zionism did not seek to challenge anti-semitism, but rather accepted it as
6040-767: Is smaller than its progeny, such as the Trotskyist Socialist Alternative and the Marxist-Leninist Party for Socialism and Liberation . The SWP places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba . During the 2020s, the SWP has defended " Israel's right to exist " and "right to defend itself", especially during the Israel–Hamas war . This contrasts with other U.S. socialist organizations, which take an anti-Zionist position and defend Palestinian nationalism . The SWP traces its origins back to
6191-444: Is viewed as an essentially negative factor, even in religious Zionist ideology, and seen as responsible for the diminishing status of Jews living as a minority. Responding to the challenges of modernity, Zionism sought to replace religious and community institutions with secular-nationalistic ones, defining Judaism in "terms of Christianity." Indeed, Zionism maintained primarily the outward symbols of Jewish tradition, redefining them in
Socialist Workers Party (United States) - Misplaced Pages Continue
6342-629: Is widely seen as the start of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict . The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that the Jews' historical right to the land outweighed that of the Arabs. In 1884, proto-Zionist groups established the Lovers of Zion , and in 1897 the first Zionist Congress was organized. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a large number of Jews immigrated first to Ottoman and later to Mandatory Palestine . The support of
6493-596: The American Socialist Union , which lasted until 1959. That 1953 opposition supported some of the positions of Michel Pablo , the Secretary of the Fourth International, although Pablo disagreed with their wish to dissolve the Fourth International. The next, smaller split was that of Sam Marcy 's Global Class War faction, which called within the SWP for support of Henry Wallace 's Progressive Party presidential run in 1948 and regarded Mao Zedong as
6644-661: The Ashkenazi an augury—" Next year in Jerusalem —which was then included in the thrice-daily Amidah (Standing prayer). The biblical prophecy of Kibbutz Galuyot , the ingathering of exiles in the Land of Israel as foretold by the Prophets , became a central idea in Zionism. The forerunners of Zionism, rather than being causally connected to the later development of Zionism, are thinkers and activists who expressed some notion of Jewish national consciousness or advocated for
6795-656: The Correspondence Publishing Committee . Dunayevskaya and her supporters eventually formed the News and Letters Committees in 1955 after splitting with James, who was deported from the United States to Britain, where he continued to advise the Correspondence Publishing Committee, which split again in 1962, with those loyal to James taking the name Facing Reality . The brief postwar wave of labor unrest gave way to
6946-481: The FBI during this time, the arrests were made swiftly. The party put into practice the so-called Proletarian Military Policy of opposing the war politically while attempting to transform what they saw as an imperialist war into a civil war. The party lost a number of its members while sailing in extremely perilous convoys to Murmansk. Problems caused by some experienced leaders' imprisonment and many others' enlistment in
7097-608: The Land of Israel in Judaism , and of central importance in Jewish history . Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews , and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism became Israel's national or state ideology . Zionism initially emerged in Central and Eastern Europe as
7248-635: The Shachtmanites as they joined the Socialist Party of America . Many of the new recruits were drawn from the student movement, unlike those who had led the party since the 1930s; as a result, the party's internal culture began to change. Despite such growing signs of an end to the isolation the group endured during the McCarthyite period, it experienced a new split in the early 1960s. A number of small oppositional groups developed within
7399-707: The Socialist Party of America seeking a united front hunger march of the two organizations followed by a general strike. This suggestion was dismissed as " poppycock " by SP Executive Secretary Clarence Senior , but the seed of the idea of joint action had been planted. Early in 1934, some French Trotskyists of the Communist League conceived of the idea of entering the French Socialist Party (the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière or SFIO) in order to recruit members for
7550-610: The Workers and Peasants Socialist Party (PSOP). The French Trotskyists were dispersed when World War II began, but in 1944 they re-unified into the Internationalist Communist Party (PCI). In other countries, the French Turn was repeated by Trotsky's other followers: The French Turn remained a lasting issue of debate between Trotsky's often-divided followers after World War II. Some believed that
7701-586: The Young People's Socialist League , forming the Workers Party . A number of members were imprisoned under the Smith Act of 1941, under Franklin D. Roosevelt 's administration, including Cannon (see Smith Act Trials ). Those imprisoned included the main national leaders of the SWP and those members most prominent in the Midwest Teamsters. With Roosevelt's decision to increase the power of
SECTION 50
#17327797935767852-550: The " French Turn " and was replicated by various Trotskyist parties around the world. In 1934, the Communist League of America merged with the American Workers Party led by A. J. Muste , forming the Workers Party of the United States . Throughout 1935, the Workers Party was deeply divided over the " entryism " tactic called for by the "French Turn" and a bitter debate swept the organization. Ultimately,
8003-595: The "surplus of Jews, the inassimilable residue" from Eastern Europe who had arrived in Germany in response to the pogroms. The pogroms motivated a small number of Jews to establish various groups in the Pale of Settlement and Poland aimed at supporting Jewish emigration to Palestine. The publication of Autoemancipation provided these groups with an ideological charter around which they would be confederated into Hibbat Zion ("Lovers of Zion") in 1887 where Pinsker would take
8154-418: The 1870s Zionist and pre-Zionist thinkers conceived of Jews as belonging to a distinct biological group. This re-conceptualization of Jewishness cast the " volk " of the Jewish community as a nation-race, in contrast to centuries-old conceptions of the Jewish people as a religious socio-cultural grouping. The Jewish historians Heinrich Graetz and Simon Dubnow are largely credited with this creation of Zionism as
8305-406: The 1890s, Theodor Herzl (the father of political Zionism) infused Zionism with a practical urgency and would work to unify the various strands of the movement. His efforts would lead to the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, which created the Zionist Organization (ZO), renamed in 1960 as World Zionist Organization (WZO). The Zionist Organization was to be the main administrative body of
8456-409: The Arab Palestinian population. The concept of "transfer" had a long pedigree in Zionist thought, with moral considerations rarely entering into the discussions of what was viewed as a logical solution-opposition to transferring the Arab population outside Palestine was typically expressed on practical, rather than moral grounds. The concept of forcibly removing the non-Jewish population from Palestine
8607-420: The British mandate government. After over two decades of British support for the movement, Britain restricted Jewish immigration with the White Paper of 1939 in an attempt to ease local tensions. Despite the White Paper, Zionist immigration and settlement efforts continued during WWII . While immigration had previously been selective, once the details of the Nazi Holocaust reached Palestine in 1942, selectivity
8758-430: The Bund . Zionism emerged towards the end of the "best century" for Jews who for the first time were allowed as equals into European society. During this time, Jews would have equality before the law and gain access to schools, universities, and professions which were previously closed to them. By the 1870s, Jews had achieved almost complete civic emancipation in all the states of western and central Europe. By 1914,
8909-399: The French Turn was a success, and they promoted the idea that entryism should be continued. The main advocates of this view in the 1950s and 1960s were Michel Pablo , secretary of the International Secretariat of the Fourth International , and Gerry Healy , secretary of the International Committee of the Fourth International , which both supported entrism. Pablo developed a special type of
9060-456: The GBL's leadership. While Naville supported a split, Molinier hoped to develop connections with Marceau Pivert , one of the primary leaders of the SFIO's left wing. This led to a confused and awkward departure by the Trotskyists from the Socialist Party in early 1936, which drew only about six hundred people from the party. Molinier and Naville formed two separate parties, and their divisions were reinforced over how to relate to Pivert's new party,
9211-411: The Great Powers, and would "form part of a defensive wall for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism." In 1902, Herzl published Altneuland , a utopian novel which portrays a Jewish state where Jews and Arabs live together. In the novel, Jewish immigration had not forced the Arabs to leave, orange exports had multiplied tenfold, and Arab landowners profited from selling land to
SECTION 60
#17327797935769362-415: The Jewish identity which developed while living amongst non-Jews . Accordingly, the early Zionists sought to develop a nationalist Jewish political life in a territory where Jews constitute a demographic majority. The early Zionist thinkers saw the integration of Jews into non-Jewish society as both unrealistic (or insufficient to address the deficiencies associated with the demographic minority status of
9513-490: The Jews in Europe) and undesirable, since assimilation was accompanied by the dilution of Jewish cultural distinctiveness. Moses Hess , a leading precursor of Zionism, commented on the perceived insufficiency of assimilation: "The German hates the Jewish race more than the religion; he objects less to the Jews' peculiar beliefs than to their peculiar noses." Prominent leaders of the Zionist movement expressed an "understanding" of antisemitism , echoing its beliefs: Anti-Semitism
9664-452: The Jews. Walter Laqueur describes Herzl in real life as emphasizing the importance of close relationships between Jews and Muslims on several occasions. Altneuland also reflected Herzl's belief in the importance of technology and progress. The Jewish state in the novel is a highly advanced society, where scientific and technological innovation is celebrated and valued. Before World War I, although led by Austrian and German Jews, Zionism
9815-465: The Labour and Socialist International, the international organization of left-wing parties to which the Socialist Party belonged and tension rose along these lines among the Trotskyists. United action between the Clarity and Appeal groups was not forthcoming and an emergency meeting of Vincent Dunne and Cannon was held in New York with leaders of the various factions including Thomas, Jack Altman and Gus Tyler of Clarity. At this meeting, Thomas pledged that
9966-443: The League voted to dissolve into the SFIO in August 1934. In the Socialist Party, they formed the Bolshevik-Leninist Group (Groupe Bolchevik-Leniniste, GBL). Naville split from the group. Upon entering the SFIO, the GBL began to build a base among the party's left wing. The Trotskyists' influence was strongest in the youth affiliate, Young Socialists , and the Parisian party branches. At the Mulhouse party congress of June 1935,
10117-426: The March convention, the Trotskyist Socialist Appeal faction held an organizational gathering of their own in Chicago, with 93 delegates gathering on February 20–22, 1937. The meeting organized the faction on a permanent basis, electing a National Action Committee of five to "coordinate branch work" and "formulate Appeal policies". Two delegates from the Clarity caucus were in attendance. James Burnham vigorously attacked
10268-519: The Palestinians. Religious Zionism is a variant of Zionist ideology which brings together secular nationalism and religious conservatism. Advocates of Zionism have viewed it as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of an indigenous people (which were subject to persecution and share a national identity through national consciousness ), to the homeland of their ancestors as noted in ancient history . Similarly, anti-Zionism has many aspects, which include criticism of Zionism as
10419-456: The SWP centered on different attitudes toward revolutions in other countries. The opposition faction alleged that Cannon's leadership of the SWP was "bureaucratic conservative" and demanded the right to its own publications to express its views outside the party. The majority faction said this was contrary to Lenin's concept of democratic centralism and that disagreements within the SWP should be debated only internally. Similar disagreements over
10570-420: The SWP followed an internal factional debate over the party's internal government, the class nature of the Russian state and Marxist philosophy and other questions. The SWP experienced many other factional conflicts and splits in its history, but this was the largest and foreshadowed many features of those to come. The majority faction, led by Cannon, supported Trotsky's position that the Soviet Union remained
10721-446: The SWP's internal government have surfaced in most later faction fights, with most later opposition factions raising similar demands and accusations. Despite this, most of these later factions claimed political descent from Cannon and the SWP majority, not from earlier opposition factions and splinter parties. The minority faction led by Shachtman eventually split away almost 40% of the party's membership and 80% of its youth organization,
10872-738: The Socialist Party (SFIO) and French Communist Party (PCF) formed a " united front ". The Communist League , the French section of the International Left Opposition , remained at this time a small and predominantly middle-class organization. Leon Trotsky saw a great opportunity in the United Front for an expansion of the Trotskyists' ranks. While he saw no possibility of re-entering the Communist Party because of its lack of internal democracy, he believed that
11023-616: The Spartacist (see Spartacist League ) and the American Committee for the Fourth International , respectively, with the latter becoming aligned with Healy's SLL. Zionism Zionism is the ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in Europe in the late 19th century and aimed for the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people through the colonization of Palestine , an area roughly corresponding to
11174-567: The Trotskyists could build a base in the SFIO, which had moved to the left under the leadership of Léon Blum . Trotsky formally proposed the "French Turn" into the SFIO in June 1934. The Communist League's leaders were divided over the issue of entering the SFIO. While Raymond Molinier was the most supportive of Trotsky's proposal, Pierre Naville vocally opposed the motion, and Pierre Frank remained ambivalent. After two months of formal discussion,
11325-534: The Trotskyists led an unsuccessful campaign to prevent the United Front from expanding into a " popular front ", which would include the middle-class Radical Party . Jean Rous of the GBL was elected to the SFIO's National Administrative Committee. After the formation of the Popular Front , Trotsky advised the GBL to break with the SFIO and begin forming a new revolutionary party. This created new divisions within
11476-448: The Trotskyists, or so some critics have charged. The group retained its identity as a factional organization inside the SFIO and built a base among the party's youth section, continuing their activity until popular front action between the SFIO and the mainline Communist Party of France made their position untenable. This tactic of "entering" the larger social democratic parties of each country, endorsed by Trotsky himself, became known as
11627-574: The Tsarist regime, and internal changes within the Jewish communities there. The groups which formed Hibbat Zion included the Bilu group which began its settlements in 1882. Shapira describes the Bilu as serving the role of a prototype for the settlement groups that followed. At the end of the 19th century, Jews remained a small minority in Palestine. At this point, Zionism remained a scattered movement. In
11778-474: The WP's caution and felt the situation could rapidly become pre-revolutionary. This led them to leave the WP and rejoin the SWP in 1947. This tendency had moved further away from the " orthodox Trotskyism " of the SWP, producing tension. For example, they continued to hold the position that the Soviet Union was a " state capitalist " society. By 1951, their presence in the SWP was ever more anomalous and most left to form
11929-554: The Workers Party to join the Socialist Party, when a national branch referendum voted unanimously for entry. Negotiations commenced with the Socialist Party leadership, with the admissions ultimately made on the basis of individual applications for membership rather than admission of the Workers Party and its approximately 2,000 members as a group. On June 6, 1936, the Workers Party's weekly newspaper, The New Militant, published its last issue and announced "Workers Party Calls All Revolutionary Workers to Join Socialist Party". They fear, in
12080-648: The Workers' International (SFIO, the contemporary name of the French Socialist Party ). The French Turn was repeated by Trotskyists in other countries during the 1930s. The idea of the French Turn originated after the 6 February 1934 riots around the Stavisky Affair in 1934, which led to the downfall of the Daladier government. Fearing that fascists would seize power as they had in Germany and Italy ,
12231-441: The Zionist effort also held similar beliefs regarding Jewish and Arab rights in Palestine. Unlike other forms of nationalism, the Zionist claim to Palestine was aspirational and required a mechanism by which the claim could be realized. The territorial concentration of Jews in Palestine and the subsequent goal of establishing a Jewish majority there was the main mechanism by which Zionist groups sought to realize this claim. By
12382-406: The Zionist settlers of the first aliyah had ventured to create a "pure Jewish settlement," they did grow to rely on Arab labor due to the lack of availability of Jewish laborers during this period. With the arrival of the more ideologically driven settlers of the second aliyah, the idea of "avoda ivrit" would become more central. The future leaders of the Zionist movement saw an existential threat in
12533-565: The activities of the factions at the local level. It also banned factional newspapers, establishing a national organ instead. Constance Myers indicates that three factors led to the Trotskyists' expulsion from the Socialist Party in 1937: the divergence between the official Socialists and the Trotskyist faction on the issues, the determination of Altman's wing of the Militants to oust the Trotskyists, and Trotsky's own decision to move toward
12684-420: The anticipation of restoration were based on messianic beliefs and religious practices, not material nationalistic conceptions. The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on the notion that Jews had a historical right to the land which outweighed the rights of the Arabs, which were "of no moral or historical significance." According to Israeli historian Simha Flapan, the view expressed by the proclamation " there
12835-553: The appearance of modern antisemitism as a major factor. Assimilation progressed more slowly in Tsarist Russia where pogroms and official Russian policies led to the emigration of three million Jews between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of which went to Palestine. Those who went to Palestine were driven primarily by a sense of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than just in response to pogroms or economic insecurity. The arrival of Zionist settlers to Palestine during this period
12986-489: The armed forces meant that the editorship of The Militant passed through a number of hands during the war. The SWP was active in supporting labor strikes that occurred despite the wartime "no-strike pledge" and protests against racist discrimination during the war, such as A. Philip Randolph 's March on Washington Movement . The SWP maintained that the Fair Employment Practice Committee
13137-469: The claim has "remained forever elusive". With the arrival in Palestine of more ideologically motivated settlers after the turn of the century, the Zionist movement began to emphasize the importance of the productivization of Jewish society and the so-called "conquest of labor," the belief that the employment of exclusively Jewish labour was the pre-condition for the development of an independent Jewish society in Palestine. The Zionist movement sought to build
13288-511: The coming of the Messiah , constituted a rebellion against divine will and a dangerous heresy. The cultural memory of Jews in the diaspora revered the Land of Israel. Religious tradition held that a future messianic age would usher in their return as a people., a 'return to Zion' commemorated particularly at Passover and in Yom Kippur prayers. In late medieval times, there arose among
13439-442: The concept of an " Ingathering of the exiles " and the " Return to Zion ", on the assumption that all modern Jews are the direct lineal descendants of the biblical Jews. The question has thus been focused on by supporters of Zionism and anti-Zionists alike, as in the absence of this biblical primacy, "the Zionist project falls prey to the pejorative categorization as 'settler colonialism' pursued under false assumptions, playing into
13590-418: The concept of das völk : people of shared ancestry should pursue separation and establish a unified state. Zionist thinkers view the movement as a "revolt against a tradition of many centuries" of living parasitically at the margins of Western society. Indeed, Zionism was uncomfortable with the term "Jewish," associating it with passivity, spirituality and the stain of "galut". Instead, Zionist thinkers preferred
13741-447: The conservatism of the 1950s, the reform of previously radical labor unions and McCarthyism . The SWP's attempt at entryism into the growing civil rights movement, which continued uninterrupted out of World War II, could not fully offset these trends and the SWP experienced a period of decline and isolation. The party also had a number of splits over these years. One saw the departure of the faction of Bert Cochran and Clarke, who formed
13892-536: The construction of Zionist identity as a militarized nationalism arose in contrast to the imputed identity of the Diaspora Jew as a "feminised" Other . She describes this as a relationship of contempt towards the previous identity of the Jewish Diaspora viewed as unable to resist antisemitism and the Holocaust. Lentin argues that Zionism's rejection of this "feminised" identity and its obsession with constructing
14043-458: The context of ideological developments within modern European nations in the 19th century. The concept of the "return" remained a powerful symbol within religious Jewish belief which emphasized that their return should be determined by Divine Providence rather than human action. Leading Zionist historian Shlomo Avineri describes this connection: "Jews did not relate to the vision of the Return in
14194-418: The crisis of capitalist rule engendered by the war to prosecute the class struggle with the utmost intransigence, to strengthen the independent labor and revolutionary movements, and to bring the war to a close by the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of proletarian rule in the form of the workers state. The convention devoted a full day to discussion of the labor movement's problems and
14345-436: The distinctive trait of Jews rather than their commitment to Judaism. Zionism instead adopted a racial understanding of Jewish identity, which paradoxically mirrored anti-Semitic views by suggesting that Jewishness is an inherent, unchangeable trait found in one's "blood." Framed this way, Jewish identity is only secondarily a matter of tradition or culture. Zionist nationalism embraced pan-Germanic ideologies, which stressed
14496-411: The employment of Arab labor-the fear that the "half-wild natives" would rise up against their "Jewish masters" motivated the movement on a practical level to work towards a society based on purely Jewish labor. Zionism rejected traditional Judaic definitions of what it means to be Jewish, but struggled to offer a new interpretation of Jewish identity independent of rabbinical tradition. Jewish religion
14647-407: The emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism." Herzl's project was purely secular, the selection of Palestine, after considering other locations, was motivated by the credibility the name would give to the movement. From early on, Herzl recognized that Zionism could not succeed without the support of a Great Power. His view was that this Judenstaat would serve the interests of
14798-491: The end of the century. In contrast, Hess advocated for the establishment of an independent Jewish state in pursuit of the economic and social normalization of the Jewish people. Hess believed that emancipation alone was not a sufficient solution to the problems faced by European Jewry; he perceived a shift of anti-Jewish sentiment from a religious to a racial basis. For Hess, religious conversion would not fix this anti-Jewish hostility. Christian restorationist ideas promoting
14949-477: The end of the war and the wartime pledge made by many union leaders not to strike for the duration, but this did not mean there were not many strikes during wartime as there were many wildcat strikes during this period as well as strikes officially called by the United Mine Workers of America . There were also protests by GIs demanding rapid demobilization after the end of the war, sometimes called
15100-469: The entryist tactic was likely made in good faith. Historian Constance Myers writes that "initial prognoses for the union of Trotskyists and Socialists were favorable", but "constant and protracted contact caused differences to surface" later. Party leader Jim Cannon later hinted that the entry of the Trotskyists into the Socialist Party had been a contrived tactic aimed at stealing "confused young Left Socialists" for his own organization. The Trotskyists retained
15251-462: The envisioned European and German culture of the state where Jews were simply the transmitters of imperialist culture rather than producers or creators of culture. Like Pinsker, Herzl saw antisemitism as a reality that could only be addressed by the territorial concentration of Jews in a Jewish state. He wrote in his diary: "I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized
15402-467: The experiences of European Jewry, which the early Zionists believed demonstrated the danger inherent to their status as a minority. In contrast to the Zionist notion of nationhood, the Judaic sense of being a nation was rooted in religious beliefs of unique chosenness and divine providence, rather than in ethnicity. Daily prayers emphasized distinctiveness from other nations; a connection to Eretz Israel and
15553-509: The failure of the communist and social democratic left to stop its rise created a situation where radical parties throughout the world reexamined their priorities and sought mechanisms for building united action. As early as December 1933, a Trotskyist splinter group called the Communist League of Struggle (CLS), headed by former Socialist Party youth section leader Albert Weisbord and his wife Vera Buch, approached Norman Thomas of
15704-702: The former Communist League of America (CLA), founded in 1928 by members of the CPUSA expelled for supporting Russian communist leader Leon Trotsky against Joseph Stalin . Concentrated almost exclusively in New York City and Minneapolis , the CLA did not have more than 100 adherents in 1929. After five years of propaganda work, the CLA remained a tiny organization, with a membership of about 200 and very little influence. The rise of fascism in Nazi Germany and
15855-468: The going-home movement. The SWP participation in this upsurge led to a brief period of rapid growth for the SWP immediately after the war. The end of the war also saw the reorganization of the Fourth International in which the SWP played a major role. As part of this process, moves were made to heal the breach with Shachtman's supporters in the Workers Party (WP) and for the two groups to fuse. This eventually came to nothing, but some SWP members who supported
16006-504: The hands of Israel's critics and fueling the indignation of the displaced and stateless Palestinian people," whilst right-wing Israelis look for "a way of proving the occupation is legitimate, of authenticating the ethnos as a natural fact, and of defending Zionism as a return". A Jewish "biological self-definition" has become a standard belief for many Jewish nationalists, and most Israeli population researchers have never doubted that evidence will one day be found, even though so far proof for
16157-481: The ideological basis for Zionism, Der Judenstaat , is typically translated as The Jewish State. Herzl sought to establish a state where Jews would be the majority and as a result, politically dominant. Ahad Ha'am , the founder of cultural Zionism criticized the lack of Jewish cultural activity and creativity in Herzl's envisioned state which Ha'am referred to as "the state of the Jews." Specifically, Ha'am points to
16308-453: The land over which Israel was established. The Zionist mainstream has historically included liberal , labor , revisionist , and cultural Zionism , while groups like Brit Shalom and Ihud have been dissident factions within the movement. Mainstream Zionist groups for the most part differ more in style than substance, having in some cases adopted similar strategies to achieve their goals, such as violence or compulsory transfer to deal with
16459-424: The late 19th century was among assimilated Central European Jews who, despite their formal emancipation, still felt excluded from high society. Many of these Jews had moved away from traditional religious observances and were largely secular, mirroring a broader trend of secularization in Europe. Despite their efforts to integrate, the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe were frustrated by continued lack of acceptance by
16610-607: The lead of the German rabbis and decreed that the Messianic hope of Israel is "the union of all the children of God in the confession of the unity of God". In 1885 the Pittsburgh Conference reiterated this interpretation of the Messianic idea of Reform Judaism, expressing in a resolution that "we consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community; and we therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor
16761-498: The life of exile. Zionism portrayed the Diaspora Jew as mentally unstable, physically frail, and prone to engaging in transient businesses like peddling or acting as intermediaries. They were seen as detached from nature, purely materialistic, and focused solely on their personal gains. In contrast, the vision for the new Jew was radically different: an individual of strong moral and aesthetic values, not shackled by religion, driven by ideals and willing to challenge degrading circumstances;
16912-462: The local national movements which tended toward intolerance and exclusivity. For the early Zionists, if nationalism posed a challenge to European Jewry, it also proposed a solution. In the wake of the 1881 Russian pogroms , Leo Pinsker , who was previously an assimilationist, came to the conclusion that the root of the Jewish problem was that Jews formed a distinctive element which could not be assimilated. For Pinsker, emancipation could not resolve
17063-457: The main liturgical language of Judaism. Zionists worked to modernize Hebrew and adapt it for everyday use. They sometimes refused to speak Yiddish , a language they thought had developed in the context of European persecution . Once they moved to Israel, many Zionists refused to speak their (diasporic) mother tongues and adopted new, Hebrew names . Hebrew was preferred not only for ideological reasons, but also because it allowed all citizens of
17214-514: The majority faction of Jim Cannon , Max Shachtman and James Burnham won the day and the Workers Party determined to enter the Socialist Party of America . A minority faction headed by Hugo Oehler refused to accept this result and split from the organization into the Revolutionary Workers League . The Socialist Party was itself beset with factional disagreements. The party's left-wing Militant faction sought to expand
17365-872: The membership" of important questions. In December 1937, an agenda was published by the Convention Organizing Committee naming Cannon as the primary reporter on the Trade Union question, Shachtman on the Russian Resolution, Goldman on the Spanish Resolution, Canadian Maurice Spector on the International Resolution, Burnham on the Declaration of Principles of the new organization and Abern on Party Organization and Constitution. The gathering
17516-401: The migration of Jews to Palestine contributed to the ideological and historical context that gave a sense of credibility to these pre-Zionist initiatives. Restorationist ideas were a prerequisite for the success of Zionism, since although it was created by Jews, Zionism was dependent on support from Christians, although it is unclear how much Christian ideas influenced the early Zionists. Zionism
17667-455: The migration of Jews to Palestine. These attempts were not continuous as national movements typically are. The most notable precursors to Zionism were thinkers such as Judah Alkalai and Zvi Hirsch Kalischer (who were both rabbinical figures), as well as Moses Hess who is regarded as the first modern Jewish nationalist. The Jewish expulsion from Spain led to some Jewish refugees fleeing to Ottoman Palestine . In 1564, Joseph Nasi , with
17818-421: The most important religious Zionist thinkers, characterized the diaspora as a flawed and alienated existence marked by decline, narrowness, displacement, solitude, and frailty. He believed that the diasporan way of life is diametrically opposed to a "national renaissance," which manifests itself not only in the return to Zion but also in the return to nature and creativity, revival of heroic and aesthetic values, and
17969-472: The movement and would go on to establish the Jewish Colonial Trust , whose objectives were to encourage European Jewish emigration to Palestine and to assist with the economic development of the colonies. The first Zionist Congress would also adopt the official objective of establishing a legally recognized home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The title of Herzl's 1896 manifesto providing
18120-732: The new state to have a common language, thus furthering the political and cultural bonds among Zionists. The revival of the Hebrew language and the establishment of Modern Hebrew is most closely associated with the linguist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and the Committee of the Hebrew Language (later replaced by the Academy of the Hebrew Language ). The transformation of a religious and primarily passive connection between Jews and Palestine into an active, secular, nationalist movement arose in
18271-695: The organization into an "all-inclusive party"—inviting in members of the Lovestone and Trotskyist movements as well as radical individuals as the first step towards making the Socialist Party a mass party. Although there were no mass entries at this time, several radical oppositionists did make their way into the party, including former Communist Party leader Benjamin Gitlow , youth leader and ex- Jay Lovestone supporter Herbert Zam and attorney and American Workers Party activist Albert Goldman . Goldman at this time also joined with YPSL leader Ernest Erber to establish
18422-517: The original Zionist Organization , Ze'ev Jabotinsky , the prominent architect of early statist Zionism and the founder of what became Israel's Likud party, and Arthur Ruppin , considered the "father of Israeli sociology". Birnbaum, who is widely attributed with the first use of the term "Zionism" in reference to a political movement, viewed race as the foundation of nationality, Jabotinsky wrote that Jewish national integrity relies on "racial purity", and that "(t)he feeling of national self-identity
18573-490: The party membership shrank over these years from a postwar high in 1948 until the tide began to turn in the early 1960s. The Cuban Revolution signaled a change in the SWP's political direction as it embarked on pro-Castro "solidarity work" through the Fair Play for Cuba Committee . The result was a small accretion of youth to the party's ranks. In the same period, longtime SWP leader Murry Weiss won another group of youth from
18724-605: The party. One of the key issues was the Cuban Revolution and the SWP's response to it. Cannon and other SWP leaders such as Joseph Hansen saw Cuba as qualitatively different from the Stalinist states of Eastern Europe . Their analysis brought them closer to the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI), from which the SWP had split in 1953. The SWP successfully negotiated
18875-492: The party. Moreover, the party's membership had begun to decline. The organization was deeply factionalized, with the Militant faction split into right ("Altmanite"), center ("Clarity") and left ("Appeal") factions, in addition to the radical pacifists led by Thomas. A special convention was planned for the last week of March 1937 to set the party's future policy, initially intended as an unprecedented "secret" gathering. Prior to
19026-530: The passing of "Arab values" into Zionist society. The employment of exclusively Jewish labor was also intended to avoid the development of a national conflict in conjunction with a class-based conflict. The Zionist leadership believed that by excluding Arab workers they would stimulate class conflict only within Arab society and prevent the Jewish-Arab national conflict from attaining a class dimension. While
19177-490: The point that Deickoff writes "social conditions were such that they made the idea of individual assimilation pointless." Antisemitism, pogroms and official policies in Tsarist Russia led to the emigration of three million Jews in the years between 1882 and 1914, only 1% of which went to Palestine. Those who went to Palestine were driven primarily by ideas of self-determination and Jewish identity, rather than just in response to pogroms or economic insecurity. Zionism's emergence in
19328-439: The political situation in the United States. He declared: It is entirely inconceivable that American imperialism can succeed in resisting the inexorable tendencies that are pulling it into the vortex of the coming world war. If the working class is unable to prevent the outbreak of war, and the United States enters directly into it, our party stands pledged to the traditional position of revolutionary Marxism. It will utilize
19479-401: The problems of the Jewish people. In Pinsker's analysis, Judeophobia was the cause of antisemitism and was primiarily driven by Jews' lack of a homeland. The solution Pinsker proposed in his pamphlet, Autoemancipation , was for Jews to become a "normal" nation and acquire a homeland over which Jews would have sovereignty. Pinsker primarily viewed Jewish emigration a solution for dealing with
19630-406: The resurgence of individual and societal power. The revival of the Hebrew language in Eastern Europe as a secular literary medium marked a significant cultural shift among Jews, who per Judaic tradition used Hebrew only for religious purposes. This secularization of Hebrew, which included its use in novels, poems, and journalism, was met with resistance from rabbis who viewed it as a desecration of
19781-458: The revolutionary members of the party who oppose and obstruct this sell-out policy". A convention was called by four Socialist Party State Committees, the NEC of the YPSL and the organized Left Wing organizations of Chicago and New York, originally slated for Thanksgiving weekend, November 25–28, in Chicago, but it was soon postponed until December 31 "in order to provide adequate time for discussion by
19932-495: The role of the new organization in the unions, with Cannon delivering the primary report. While criticizing the "reactionary role which the AFL leadership has played", Cannon declared that "our party...takes a clear-cut position in favor of the earliest and completest possible unification of the AFL and the CIO , and also the hitherto unaffiliated Railroad Brotherhoods". The 1940 split in
20083-417: The sacred language. While some rabbinical authorities did support the development of Hebrew as a common vernacular, they did so on the basis of nationalistic ideas, rather than on the basis of Jewish tradition. Eliezer Ben Yehuda , a key figure in the revival, envisioned Hebrew as serving a "national spirit" and cultural renaissance in the Land of Israel. The primary motivator for establishing modern Hebrew as
20234-705: The support of the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, attempted to create a Jewish province in the Galilee, but he died in 1579 and his plans weren't completed. However, the community in Safed continued as did small-scale aliyah into the 17th century. In the 17th century Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) announced himself as the Messiah and gained many Jews to his side, forming a base in Salonika. He first tried to establish
20385-536: The term "Hebrew" to describe their identity which they associated with the healthy and modern sabra. In Zionist thought, the new Jew would be productive and work the land, in contrast to the diaspora Jew who, mirroring the anti-semitic portrayals, was depicted as lazy and parasitic on society. Zionism linked the term "Jewish" with these negative characteristics prevalent in European anti-Semitic stereotypes, which Zionists believed could be remedied only through sovereignty. Israeli-Irish scholar Ronit Lentin has argued that
20536-666: The term is attributed to the Austrian Nathan Birnbaum , founder of the Kadimah nationalist Jewish students' movement; he used the term in 1890 in his journal Selbst-Emancipation ( Self-Emancipation ), itself named almost identically to Leon Pinsker 's 1882 book Auto-Emancipation . Fundamental to Zionism is the belief that Jews constitute a nation and have a moral and historic right and need for self-determination in Palestine . This belief developed out of
20687-421: The time of the 1936 Arab Revolt , the political differences between the various Zionist groups had shrunk further, with almost all Zionist groups seeking a Jewish state in Palestine. While not every Zionist group openly called for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, every group in the Zionist mainstream was wedded to the idea of establishing a Jewish demographic majority there. In order to achieve
20838-475: The turn which involved working underground in the Communist Parties: this was strongly opposed by the ICFI. Others in the Trotskyist movement have who believed the French Turn to be either a failure or unprincipled and advocated the independence of Trotskyists from social-democratic and communist parties: Hugo Oehler developed this view at the time of the French Turn. The issue of entryism remains
20989-530: The upcoming convention would make no effort to terminate the newspapers of the various factions. There was no action to expel the Trotskyist Appeal faction, but pressure continued to build along these lines, egged on by the Communist Party's increasingly vehement denunciations of Trotsky and his followers as wreckers and agents of international fascism. The convention passed a ban on future branch resolutions on controversial matters, an effort to rein in
21140-485: The views of Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman grew dissatisfied with what they saw as the SWP's ultra-leftist attitude towards revolutionary policies. Eventually, they left the SWP in a state of demoralization and some joined the WP. Meanwhile, a faction within the WP called the Johnson-Forest Tendency , named for C. L. R. James (known as Johnson) and Raya Dunayevskaya (Forest), was impatient with
21291-509: The world, including the attempt to rescue Edgardo Mortara , established a colony for Jews in Palestine. In 1854, his friend Judah Touro bequeathed money to fund Jewish residential settlement in Palestine. Montefiore was appointed executor of his will, and used the funds for a variety of projects, including building in 1860 the first Jewish residential settlement and almshouse outside of the old walled city of Jerusalem—today known as Hebrew : Mishkenot Sha'ananim . Laurence Oliphant failed in
21442-559: The year considered as the start of practical Zionism. Moral but not practical efforts were made in Prague to organize a Jewish emigration, by Abraham Benisch and Moritz Steinschneider in 1835. In the United States, Mordecai Noah attempted to establish a Jewish refuge opposite Buffalo, New York , on Grand Isle, 1825. These early Jewish nation building efforts of Cresson, Benisch, Steinschneider and Noah failed. Sir Moses Montefiore , famous for his intervention in favor of Jews around
21593-505: Was a notion that garnered support across the entire spectrum of Zionist groups, including its farthest left factions, from early on in the movement's development. "Transfer" was not only seen as desirable but also as an ideal solution by the Zionist leadership. The notion of forcible transfer was so appealing to the movement's leaders that it was considered the most attractive provision in the Peel Commission . Indeed, this sentiment
21744-535: Was abandoned. The Zionist war effort focused on the survival and development of the Yishuv , with little Zionist resources being deployed in support of European Jews. The State of Israel would be established in 1948 over 78% of mandatory Palestine following a civil war and the first Arab-Israeli war . Primarily due to expulsions by Zionist forces, and later the Israeli army, only a Palestinian minority would remain in
21895-539: Was also dependent on the thinkers of the Haskalah or Jewish enlightenment, such as Peretz Smolenskin in 1872, although it often depicted it as its opponent. The idea of returning to Palestine was rejected by the conferences of rabbis held in that epoch. Individual efforts supported the emigration of groups of Jews to Palestine, pre-Zionist Aliyah , even before the First Zionist Congress in 1897,
22046-470: Was deeply ingrained to the extent that Ben Gurion's acceptance of partition was contingent upon the removal of the Palestinian population. He would go as far as to say that transfer was such an ideal solution that it "must happen some day". From the perspective of the early Zionist thinkers, Jews living amongst non-Jews are abnormal and suffer from impediments which can only be addressed by rejecting
22197-486: Was insufficient to address racist discrimination. The Post Office refused to mail some issues of The Militant and threatened to cancel its third-class mailing permit, citing objections to its articles calling for violent overthrow of the government. The SWP said it was being persecuted for opposing racist discrimination. After the war, the SWP and the Fourth International both expected that there would be
22348-471: Was no such thing as Palestinians " was a cornerstone of Zionist policy initiated by Ben-Gurion, Weizmann and continued by their successors. Flapan further writes that the non-recognition of Palestinians remains a basic tenet of Israeli policy. This perspective was also shared by those on the far-left of the Zionist movement, including Martin Buber and other members of Brit Shalom. British officials supporting
22499-586: Was primarily composed of Russian Jews. Initially, Zionists were a minority, both in Russia and worldwide. Russian Zionism quickly became a major force within the movement, making up about half the delegates at Zionist Congresses. French Turn Historical The French Turn was the name given to the entry between 1934 and 1936 of the French Trotskyists into the French Section of
22650-734: Was the Revolutionary Tendency (RT), led by James Robertson and Tim Wohlforth , which rejected the SWP's "capitulation" to Pabloism and opposed joining the USFI. It was critical of the Castro government, arguing that Cuba remained a " deformed workers' state ". But a split developed within this faction between groups headed by the two men. Nonetheless, both the RT and the Reorganized Minority Tendency split to form
22801-422: Was to conclude with the election of a new National Committee. On December 31, over 100 regular and fraternal delegates gathered in Chicago, where they were greeted by a speech of welcome delivered by Chicago leader Albert Goldman, a labor attorney. As editor of the Trotskyist movement's ongoing theoretical magazine, The New International , Shachtman delivered the first official report to the gathering, dealing with
#575424