PAULA RAYMAN clàss struggle over control of the means of production (1). This concept posits that workers compete among themselves for land and capital. Since Jews did not have a base for control in the Diaspora they needed a homelànd which would allow them such an opportunity. Only by becoming owners of land could Jews then participate as revolutionaries in the class struggle. The non-Marxist · Zionist socialists were infiuenced by Eure> pean scouting culture, the Tolstoian sacred view of a return to nature and elements of the Haskelah (Jewish Enllghtenment) whlch embraced the ideals of equality, mutual aid and communlty, A. D. Gordon's philosophy of the 'religion of labour' synthesised the productiveness of the Puritan Ethic with the release that comes !rom meaningful labour. It gave the klbbutzniks a spiritual bas1s for their organisational lite-style. Both torms of Zionist socialism emphasised the concept of 'normalisation' for the Jewish people. Assimilation was not seen as a solution to the problem of anti-semitism or Jewish exclusion trom primary production. If Jews wère to be excluded people, .the solution was for them to control their own excluslvity in thelr own State. Zionist Soclalism thus became an integral part of political Zlonism. It subverted all other goals, including that of Joinlng an !nternationallst workers' struggle, to the prtmary .task of bullcUng a Jewish nation-state. Klbbutzlm dlrected thelr energy to strictly national priorities and the lack of any international concem, parUcularly among klbbutz youth 1s still very evident today. Zionism, Jewish colonial nationallsm, was itselt an unusual rorm of nationalism. As Isalah Berlin suggests, cJews could not be defined by ordinary definltion of nation - to do so. is artiticlal and unnaturab Ü). The constituents of the proposed Jewish nation were scattered throughout the Diaspora and were, in a sense, pltted aga1nst an non-Jews rather than agalnst a single specific enemy. Zlonism afflrmed the 'otherness' of Jews and linked selt-realisation for Jews to national rennalssance. The natlon-state was prophesised to be the securtty-guarantee of a people emerging !rom Olarginallty. The historical result bas been an 'exile from exile' - an escape from the Diaspora to a Middle East ghetto; from the shtetl of Europe to a Jewish State whose security cornes from the barrel of a gun. The kibbutzniks were first and foremost Zionlsts and thelr form of sociallsm indicates this: «Settlement was never simply a way of making a living but of creating the reallty of Zionism. Sorne Mapam kibbutzniks claimed that ail they really sought was a place to create a more just society (1) Ben Halpern The Idea of a Jewtsh Sta.te, p. 90, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1960. (2) Isalah Berlln's «Orlglns of Israel» ln Walt.er Laqueur, The Middle East ln Transition, Books for Llbra.ry Press, NY 1971. 126
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