Among the socialists in Western Europe, it can be said, the recognition of the special interest of the Jews as a national group and of their right to survive was brought about almost entirely through the efforts of the Socialist Zionist movements, especially the Poale Zion Party, during and after the World War.

The earliest attempts to conduct socialist propaganda among Jews were mainly of the assimilationist cosmopolitan variety. The earliest Jewish socialist circle, which was organized in the Government Rabbinical Seminary at Vilna about 1875, had as its only purpose "to mingle with the people." Its founders, except Lieberman, were not interested in propaganda among the Jews. In 1880, a group of Jewish socialists in Switzerland, who intended to conduct socialist propaganda in Yiddish, stressed the fact that they were not interested in any Jewish questions, their only purpose being "to preach the ideas of social revolution among the Jewish masses. In order to do this successfully, the masses must be approached in the language which they understand." The first Yiddish socialist newspaper, Die Arbeiter Zeitung (1881), had no specific aims. The early Hebrew and Yiddish publications of Morris Vintchevsky, who continued Lieberman’s work in London in the 1880s, were typically cosmopolitan. He even raised doubt as to the possibility of the continued existence of the Jewish people. The Narodnik movement counted many Jews among its members and teachers.

The pogroms of 1881 came as a rude shock to all the Jewish intelligentsia of Russia. The revolutionaries particularly were faced by the recognition of the pogroms on the part of their Russian contemporaries as a progressive revolutionary tendency. In 1881, the executive committee of the Narodnaya Volya issued a proclamation calling upon the Ukrainian peasants to continue their pogrom activities because the Jews were guilty of all their sufferings. In 1882 this proclamation was further popularized. The official organ of the movement stated that "we have no right to be negative or even indifferent to a pure folk movement," and that it was impossible to avoid the fact that the revolution would begin with the beating up of the Jews. The attitude of the leaders of this movement changed later, but the bitter taste remained in the mouths of many of the Jewish revolutionaries.

The reactions of the Jewish revolutionaries were varied. Some abandoned their socialism and became Jewish nationalists. Others justified the interpretations of the role of pogroms. Some remained indifferent and even for years after continued to maintain that "there were no Jewish people, no Jewish language, and no Jewish workers." Some awakened to the realization that socialists ought to pay some attention to the Jewish problem. P.B. Axelrod, for instance, in his brochure, About the Tasks of the Jewish Socialist Intelligentsia, criticized them for their neglect of the Jewish masses. He pointed out the mistake of ignoring the fact that "the Jews as a nation occupy in Russia an exceptional position" and that the population of the country was far from having the cosmopolitan views of international solidarity among the poorer classes. He seriously thought of Palestine as a place of immigration for Russian Jewry. The opinion of a noted geographer that Palestine was not fit for mass settlement dissuaded him from further action in that direction. Most characteristic was the attitude of complete bewilderment such as was expressed by Leo Deutsch, a leading revolutionary, in a letter to P. Lavrov. "It is impossible for a revolutionary to solve the Jewish problem in a practical way. What can be done by revolutionaries in places where the Jews are attacked? To defend them would mean to arouse the hostility of the peasants against the revolutionaries. It is bad enough that they killed the Czar; yet in addition they are defending the Zhids. The revolutionaries are faced with two contradictions. It is simply a situation without an escape, both for the Jews and for the revolutionaries…Do not think that I was not embittered and faced by a dilemma. Nevertheless I shall always remain a member of the Russian Revolutionary Party and will not leave it even for one day, because this contradiction, the same as many others, were not created by the Party."

At the time when cosmopolitan socialism made its beginnings among the Jews in Russia, there arose a national tendency as well. Aaron Lieberman, who organized the first "Society of Hebrew Socialists" (London, 1876), never speculated about definitions of Jewry. He took its national existence for granted, at least on a cultural basis. He always referred to the Jews as a nation. He was too much a product of his own generation of cosmopolitan socialists to become an adherent of the nebulous Zionism of his period. He was, however, a lover of the Hebrew language, and his last public appearance in New York was at a meeting of a Hebrew speaking society. He insisted on the observance of the Ninth of Ab as a national holiday and looked upon his earlier propaganda work in Russia "not only as a means of gaining recruits for the Russian revolutionary army, but also as a means of heightening the national consciousness of the Jews." But his influence among the contemporary Jewish socialists was nil.

The next effort at the introduction of specific Jewish issues into the revolutionary movement came strangely enough from the Ukrainian, M. Dragomanov, who in his theory of the free union of peoples (promulgated in the early 1880’s) promised autonomy to the Jewish cities. His follower, the Jewish revolutionary, Rodin, issued a proclamation calling on Jews to join the revolutionary movement and to demand cultural autonomy with Yiddish as their language.

The most significant effort of this early period to bring the Jewish needs to the attention of active socialists was made by Chaim Zhitlovsky, who was one of the founders and leading spirits of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. Beginning with the publication of an essay in 1887, which dealt with the Essenes from an economic point of view, this thinker developed his interpretation of Jewish life and socialism which so greatly influenced the Jewish labor movement at a much later stage. Zhitlovsky maintained that "scientific" Marxism was not a scientific system, but merely a metaphysical theory. He denied the need and utility of the theory of economic materialism for the socialist movement. His approach to socialism was of the agrarian ethical variety. From the point of view he denied the "iron laws" of Marxism about the disappearance of the Jewish people. He maintained that the Jewish people had always fought for its national existence and that religion was merely a means for this struggle. He saw the need for a Jewish progressive renaissance, the aim of which he visualized in the establishment of a secular, Yiddish speaking, mainly agricultural, group life. The main obstacle in the way was assimilation which to him was at the same time the main cause of anti-Semitism. Under capitalistic Russia, the Jewish bourgeoisie was bound to increase in number and to become Russianized. The Jews thus would be identified by the masses with reaction. Assimilationist socialism took away the best elements of the Jewish nation and forced them to work for their ideas among the non-Jews, whereas they could have done this same work among their own people. The return of the Jewish intelligentsia to Jewish nationalism would, in his opinion, revive agriculture and the Yiddish language among the Jews, and would eliminate the artificial religious factor in their survival. The best way of fitting this scheme into the frame of the Galut was the orientation of the Narodnik movement, which was based on agricultural Russia, and later of the Socialist Revolutionary movement which had the most liberal nationality policy. Zhitlovsky’s earlier efforts at organization and propaganda failed to bring any direct results within the Jewish labor movement. He is known better for his later contributions.

The early workers’ mutual aid societies and study circles among the Jews in Russia and Poland, which later developed into trade unions and gave rise to the Bund, also began without any specific Jewish aim. When at their beginnings in the 1880’s they were very small, they served as educational and Russianizing agencies. Later, the increase in the number of members and the maturity of the leadership caused them to utilize the Yiddish language in their propaganda, which remained of the purely Narodnik or Social-Democratic variety. At the earliest celebration of May First by the Jewish workers in Russia, held in Vilna in 1892, one of the speakers discussed the question as to whether the Jewish workers ought to join the socialist movement or follow those who advise the Jews to go to Palestine and to settle there the Jewish and social problems. He condemned the idea of the existence of a "separate Jewish nationality" and called upon the Jewish workers to join the "great world-embracing fighting party of workers" which would achieve "true freedom, brotherhood, and happiness for all mankind without the exclusion of the Jews." This attack on the Chovevei Zion movement shows that he workers refused to swallow easily the cosmopolitan theories of their intelligentsia leadership. In 1895, A. Martov, later an outstanding Social-Democrat and Menshevik, called in his May First speech for the creation of "a special Jewish workers organization which would be the leader and educator of the Jewish proletariat in its struggle for economic, civil and political liberation." It would, of course, join the other parties in the struggle. His main reason was his fear that the Russian or Polish working classes might in their difficult struggle yield on certain issues "which concern us Jews in particular, such as, for instance, freedom of religion and equality for the Jews." He also thought that "as long as the present order exists every nation ought to strive, if not for political independence, at least for fully equal rights." "National indifference of one nation to another which is robbed of general civil rights is the greatest obstacle to the development of the oppressed nation." It was the duty of the Socialist Party to awaken it in order that it might liberate itself from civil inequality. Since his ideas were frowned upon by the leadership and members of the Jewish groups, he recanted very soon after.

What individual theorists and propagandists failed to achieve was accomplished by a mass movement. The Bund (General Jewish Workers’ Alliance) was organized in September, 1897 (the same year in which Theodore Herzl convoked the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland) as a culmination of tendencies and discussions about the necessity of the establishment of a Jewish workers’ movement within the various propaganda circles and elementary trade unions which conducted their activities among the Jewish artisans and proletarians in Russia. The Bund began as an economic organization, and its progress in the direction of a consistent ideology was slow and hesitant. It refused to face the Jewish problem as one international in its scope. It maintained that the Jews, having lost the characteristics of a nation could never regain them. At best Jewry can be called a composite of different groups without any strong link of unity. The Bund considered itself merely a local Russian party for Jewish workers. Its early leaders were completely neutral to assimilation, linguistic or otherwise. In their minds, assimilation was neither desirable nor undesirable. History alone would determine its future. The difference between the Bund and the Russian Social-Democratic movement of that period was the fact that the Bund conducted its propaganda in Yiddish among Jewish workers. It maintained its cosmopolitan outlook for some time; but very soon, mainly under the pressure of Zionism and of the initial momentum inherent in its Jewish membership, it began to concern itself more and more with Jewish issues. These tendencies culminated with cultural work in Yiddish and a modest demand for national cultural autonomy for the Jews in Russia, after the Austrian theoreticians had made such demands kosher from a socialist point of view. The militancy of the Bund and its political action in the early stages of its development fill a glorious chapter in the history of the Jewish labor movement. But it certainly failed to furnish a solution for those desiring a socialist road to Jewish survival.

The attempts to arrive at a synthesis of Zionism and socialism began contemporaneously with political Zionism. Some intellectuals discussed this problem at the First Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897. Individual socialists of prominence (as for instance, Bernard Lazare, Farbstein) were active Zionists since the beginning of the movement. The first man to make a serious attempt at this task was Nachman Syrkin. His propaganda began with the publication of a series of essays (1898), and culminated in 1904 with his organization of the first Socialist Zionist group, Heirut, in Berlin. Syrkin’s ideology was non-Marxian. He believed that the abnormal economic situation of the Jewish masses in the Galut, which is expressed in their frequent migrations, leads them directly to Zionism. The solution of their problem can take place only in a free Jewish land of labor and socialism. Attempts at productivization in the Galut can be successful only temporarily, because as soon as conditions improve a return to middle class occupations takes place. Because of the interests of the upper and middle classes in maintaining their economic positions in the Galut, assimilation is their expression. But the Zionism of the proletariat, in which he also included the petty employers as well as all the working people, has little in common with the various bourgeois varieties, such as the modest colonization plans of the Chibat Zion, the Maskilim’s longings for a cultural center, or the West European Jews’ philanthropic approach of saving their poorer brethren. Yet, he believed in working in common with the bourgeois Zionists. The task of the proletarian Zionists was to organize the Jewish masses, to fight against the Jewish moneyed and assimilated bourgeoisie in order to force it to aid the upbuilding of the national home. The achievement of Zionism was one area in the activities of the movement, and must proceed independently of the work in the second area, namely, that of political socialism in the Galut. Syrkin’s "double area" theory of socialist activities did not become very popular because of the lack of coordination between the work for socialism in the Galut and the Zionist work for Palestine. Yet, his ideology has been a factor in the later development of the non-Marxian groups in the Labor Zionist movement.

At the time when Syrkin was conducting his propaganda in Berlin, there arose (since 1900) different Socialist Zionist groups in Russia under the name "Poale Zion" ("Workers of Zion"). They were scattered in different cities without any organizational unity. At first, their only distinction from the General Zionists was their working class membership. They denied the connection between the Jewish proletariat and the socialist and revolutionary movement. Their denial was based on the interpretation that the revolution could not solve the problem of Jewish poverty which sprang from the Galut. Later they maintained that a struggle for socialism in the Galut was impossible because there was no Jewish ruling class and no healthy Jewish proletariat. They did, however, concern themselves with economic issues and conducted trade union work. The ideological leaders of this trend were the Minsk groups.

A different development took place in Southern Russia. There, under the leadership of Borochov, the groups which were also organized under the name of "Poale Zion" based their ideology on a unity between Social-Democracy and Zionism. In those days which Syrkin so aptly termed "the period of theoretical chaos," the different ideologies of the several Socialist Zionist, or rather Socialist Territorialist groups were slowly and laboriously evolved through a great deal of discussion, pamphleteering, and the appearance of the early press of the movement.

A breaking point in the evolution of the ideologies was caused by the offer on the part of England, presented at the Sixth Zionist Congress at Basle in 1903, to create in Uganda a Jewish national home. This offer was rejected because of the strenuous objections of the Russian Zionists. The Zionist movement split into two warring groups, the pro-Palestinians and the anti-Palestinians. This dispute finally led to the establishment of the "Jewish Territorial Organization" (ITO) under the leadership of Israel Zangwill.

The same issue came to a head among the various labor groups in Zionism. The enticing offer of Uganda appealed to those who looked for an immediate realistic solution in terms of mass emigration. The possibilities of Palestine as a land capable of absorbing the Jewish masses within a reasonable time seemed to be remote and visionary. Thus the movement was immediately divided into two trends, namely of Palestinianism and territorialism. The Minsk groups were territorialists. The Southern Russian group retained their Palestinian sympathies. Out of this chaos of discussions and orientations there arose several distinct movements, all of them oriented on some combination of socialism and Zionism and on the impossibility of solving the Jewish problem without a territory. They were divided on the questions of Palestine, Galut activities, and the theory of non-proletarianization.

The theories of non-proletarianization or limited proletarianization were accepted by all the early Socialist-Zionist and Socialist-Territorialist groups. The proponents of the first theory believed together with all the Russian Social-Democrats of this period that the development of capitalism was constantly increasing the ranks of the proletariat at the expense of the petty bourgeoisie. This in turn would bring about the realization of socialism in the classical revolutionary manner. It was impossible, however, for the Jewish declassed bourgeoisie to become proletarians, because of the competition of their non-Jewish fellow workers and national oppression. Declassment or emigration must be the lot of the Jewish masses. Emigration could be but a temporary relief, for the same process of declassment was bound to be repeated eventually in the new lands. The only way out was the territorial solution. The theory of abnormal proletarianization is different only in degree from the non-proletarianization. It grants that the Jewish petty bourgeoisie is becoming proletarianized, but not to the same degree as the non-Jewish bourgeoisie, because the major basic industries are closed to Jewish workers with the usual resulting evils. Territorialism was to prevent this and allow the Jewish proletariat to develop in a normal manner.

The Z.S. (Zionist Socialist) Party, organized after the rejection of the Uganda offer, soon became the strongest group within proletarian territorialism. They, too, arrived at their ideology from a Marxian approach. They maintained that the realization of socialism can be accomplished only through the existence of a highly advanced stage of production and a culturally developed rising proletariat, fully confident of its role in the conduct of the class struggle. The historical mission of overthrowing the capitalistic system would be achieved only by the industrial proletariat. They believed in the theory of non-proletarianization in its pristine purity. The Jewish masses, they taught, cannot be proletarianized or industrialized. Their class struggle is a helpless, negative one. Its results are nil. The revolutionary tendencies of the Jewish proletariat are not due to its place in the scheme of production but to ideological motives and particular tendencies to abstraction. The results of the steadily and irrevocably increasing impoverishment of the Jewish masses are seen in emigration, which is a historical necessity and as inevitable a tendency and a positive factor as the role of the basic industries among the non-Jews. Emigration leads to the concentration of the masses in certain territories where the tendency to enter basic industries cannot be satisfied because of the ever repeated conditions of national oppression. Therefore, the emigration movement has to be converted into one of colonization. The basic tendencies in emigration must eventually lead both to class consciousness and to the attempt to settle the Jewish masses in a free territory, where the class struggle will be given a normal expression. Thus territorialism is complementary to the class struggle. The actual realization of territorialism is complementary to the class struggle. The actual realization of territorialism is a long process which will enable the Jewish proletariat to improve its class position through organization and will power. Territorialism cannot be achieved by the proletariat alone. It will be aided in its tasks by the masses and some layers of the middle classes in different countries. The task of the proletariat is to strengthen the territorialist ideology, to struggle for democracy within the Jewish community, to introduce proletarian elements into the process of colonization and socialist ideology into all cultural and educational institutions. The Z.S. adopted the name Zionist Socialists and not Social-Democratic Territorialists and continued to participate in the Zionist Congress for a short period because of two very practical reasons. By retaining the name "Zionists" and being counted as such they hoped to gain more adherents. By calling themselves Socialists and not Social-Democrats they hoped to gain the adherence to their movement of an outstanding group of intellectuals which was then in the process of formulating the ideology of a new movement, the Vozrozhdenye.

Its concern with the Galut later led this group far astray from its original position. Its offspring, the Seimist Party (Jewish Socialist Workers Party, Serp), abandoned the Marxian interpretation for one similar to that of the Socialist Revolutionaries. The ultimate reason for all historical development was according to its theoreticians the perpetual striving for limitless self-development. They placed the main emphasis on the national aspect of life through which all other aspects find their expression and are reflected. National consciousness thus is the reason for the historical progress and development of both the individual and the national group. The national consciousness of a ruling class shows very often tendencies of chauvinism and exploitation of other peoples. That of a subject nation is a progressive one. To them, the proletariat was classified according to its nationality. The achievement of socialism in their opinion implied component and separately conducted struggles for economic liberty and for political and cultural salvation.

The Seimists also evolved a concept of exclusive Galut work. Territorialism according to them would be a logical result of Galut activities, just as socialism was to develop out of capitalism. It could grow out only of healthy Galut conditions. The salvation for the subdued nationalities would be the change of all multiple nationality states into federations of free nations to be ruled by a parliament composed of the representatives of the different component nationalities. Each nationality would have its own parliament (Sejm is the Polish term for Parliament) with the rights of legislation and taxation. The task of the Jewish proletariat would be to force within the Jewish parliament the representatives of the bourgeoisie to follow a policy suitable to the interests of the masses. It would be aided in this struggle by the intelligentsia and by the progressive elements of the bourgeoisie. Thus it would achieve the twofold aim of normalizing Jewish life in the Galut and of obtaining eventually a territorial center. Very soon the Seimists followed the logical conclusion of their policy that "the better conditions are in the Galut, the easier it will be to build the national home." They devoted their activities completely to the class struggle, Yiddish, cultural work, and to the strengthening of the Kehillah, which they would rebuild into a secular institution, a preliminary step in the attainment of the parliament.

Competition between these different schools of territorialist thought was quite sharp. In the beginning the Z.S. was the most energetic in its activities and successful in gaining the most adherents. Very soon it became the strongest competitor to the Bund. It was strengthened in 1907 by the adherents of the Minsk Poale Zion, which for a while was organized under the name, Jewish Territorialists Workers Party. The Z.S. called Socialist Territorialists in the United States, outnumbered the other two territorialist groups in this country, the Anarchist Territorialists and the Seimist Social Revolutionary Territorialists. They were also quite strong in Austria and in other centers of Jewish life in Europe. The Seimists, on the other hand, remained a small but vocal and influential party of intellectuals. Very soon they all lost their positions to the Poale Zion, after the unity of this party was achieved as a result of the indomitable efforts of Ber Borochov and his youthful associates.

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