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alanjjohnstone wrote:A very extensive reading list can be found here, scroll down to the Bund sectionhttps://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/
In addition: (1) A section of Otto Bauer's 1907 book 'The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy', a PDF of which is available on libcom. Backround: the Social-Democratic Workers Party of Austria was formed in 1889. In 1897, '[f]ollowing Czech demands, the party decided to transform itself into a federative organization of six national parties (Ukrainian, Czech, Polish, German, Italian, and Slovene) with a common executive committee'. In 1905 a split occurred in the Polish party with the universally condemned formation of the Jewish Social Democratic Party. This is the starting point of the sub-section of Bauer's book titled 'National Autonomy for the Jews?' (pages 291-308) . He judges himself incompetant to speak of Russia and the Bund, and he is indeed is not speaking of rationales for party-formation, anyway, but of the demand for Jewish national autonomy in a somewhat re-jiggered future Austria (he was a reformist after all), but you can extrapolate from what he says that he is opposed to Jewish-exclusive organisation. The language is different, but the thesis is similar to that of Abram Leon: Jewry is not an ethnicity so much as the decaying remainder of an economic caste left over from the middle ages. So: in the interests of working-class solidarity between Jewish and non-Jewish proletarians, further decay — ie integration — is to be encouraged, not hindered. (2) The 1989 book 'Class and Ethnicity in the Pale: The Political Economy of Jewish Workers' Nationalism in Late Imperial Russia', by Yoav Peled, which is downloadable from a book site whose url I will not cite here but will be known many forum participants. In it, these parts are of value: The two chapters 'The Historical Setting' and 'From Emancipation to Autonomy: The Evolution of the Bund's National Programme' (ie pp 16-71). And then, for regarding some problematic peculiarites of the Jewish proletariant in the Pale, pages 73-76 (the section titled 'The Jewish Working Class'). Much of the rest of the book is academic twaddle. And by the way, the Bund claimed to be the exclusive representative of Jewish workers not only in tthe Pale (already bad enough) but throughout the Russian Empire. (Logically meaning also of course regardless of whether said Jewish workers — whether in the Pale or outside of it — were monoglot Yiddish speakers or not.)
alanjjohnstone wrote:As for its nationalism, we have to remember that Jewish pales and ghettoes were well-defined territories for a Party to organise on the basis of. We also got to remember the importance of Yiddish as the lingua franca of many geographically diverse Jewish communities.A special language-section of an existing party (cf the 'language federations' of the De Leonist or Hillquit-Debs parties in the US ) would take care of that. But in the event, the overlapping of parties (even leaving aside for the moment whether the Bund suffered from nationalism) resulted in the situation reported by Warski to Kautsky here on page 112, beginning 'Recently we have got to the point […]': https://books.google.com/books?id=347-digzQXMC&pg=PA110&dq=%22the+bund%22+Rosa+luxemburg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz7_-Fk8HbAhUDmJQKHeF0DkAQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=we%20have%20got%20to%20the%20point&f=false Of course what he says goes both for the Bund in Russia, and for its ideological homologue in Habsburg Galicia — the wrong-headedly formed The Jewish Social-Democratic Party.
A very extensive reading list can be found here, scroll down to the Bund sectionhttps://www.marxists.org/subject/jewish/I fully recognise the limitations of the SS article but the main purpose was simply to demonstrate that there existed a popular Jewish movement outside of Zionism which was left-wing and part of the social democracy of the period and that the state of Israel was never the be all and end all of the Jewish people. Bund history if not forgotten has often been misinterpreted. As for its nationalism, we have to remember that Jewish pales and ghettoes were well-defined territories for a Party to organise on the basis of. We also got to remember the importance of Yiddish as the lingua franca of many geographically diverse Jewish communities.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I fully recognise the limitations of the SS article but the main purpose was simply to demonstrate that there existed a popular Jewish movement outside of Zionism which was left-wing and part of the social democracy of the period and that the state of Israel was never the be all and end all of the Jewish people.Ok.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Bund history if not forgotten has often been misinterpreted.In what way would you say it has been misinterpreted?
alanjjohnstone wrote:The New York Times accused of conflating criticism of Israel with anti-semitismhttps://www.truthdig.com/articles/with-literal-nazis-running-for-office-nyt-suggests-candidates-israel-criticism-is-antisemitic/The site http://mondoweiss.net has a lot of this sort of thing.
As another curiosity: Socialists (on libcom I would write 'internationalist communists') of course don't support a Two State Solution or a One State Solution but rather a No State Solution (and not just over the territory of Mandate Palestine), so it's nothing to stand up and applaud, but it is interesting that there existed 'cultural zionist' (?) groups that while supporting Jewish immigration to Mandate Palestine, opposed partition (ie two states) in favor of a a single bi-ethnic state: Brit Shalom (the name later hijacked to other purposes), Hashomer Hatzair Workers Party, and Ihud. The lattermost, if I recall correctly, continued to exist and maintained its position for a while even after the Israeli state came into being.
Robbo203: Or better yet, go straight to the horse's mouth: http://www.nkusa.org . (And it's not the only such group.) Anyway, it's not so strange. Orthodox Judaism was largely anti-zionist before opportunistically accommodating itself (the 'religious parties' in Israel) to the newly formed state. This receives some mention in Israel Shahak's 'Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years': https://archive.org/details/JewishHistoryJewishReligion .
There's also this: http://mondoweiss.net/2017/02/jews-iran-travelogue/ .
Speaking of China, see Michael Roberts' argument that China is not capitalist , followed by some 60 comments, including one by the SPGB's own Red Deathy ( = YMS?). I guess Roberts is some kind of Trot, on this subject anyway, according to which, China's is a 'planned economy'; the only thing missing is democracy.It won't be acceptable to readers of this forum, but there is also a nuanced comment from a left-communist (or left-leninist?) which begins:We have two distinct, but intertwined threads to deal with here. First, we have Michael’s argument that China is not, or not yet, capitalist, or fully capitalist, or dominated by capitalism because of the weight, specific and general, of the state property. The second thread is the long debated designation of “state capitalism” as a proper characterization of — then the former Soviet Union and now, China.The url: https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/xi-takes-full-control-of-chinas-future
Mattick reviews Piketty here: http://www.brooklynrail.org/2014/06/field-notes/editors-note-much-ado-about-something
There is a new book from Kurzians (a group apparently unconnected to Chronos Publications) titled Marxism and the Critique of Value. It is freely downloadable here: http://www.mcmprime.com , where a blurb for it can first be read. I am only starting the introduction and have already laughed several times (at things not intended to be funny). Clever name for the publisher, though — " MCM' Publishing ".
