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notuncommon for democratic leftists, Jewish ones in particular, to believe that the state of Israel wason the road to exemplifying -- as Irving Howe once put it -- "the democratic socialist hope ofcombining radical social change with political freedom."¹ But times have obviously changed. Today, no one would arguewith the assertion that Israeli socialism "is going the way of the kibbutz farmer," even if thegovernment continues to be the major shareholder in many Israeli banks, retains majority controlin state-owned enterprises, owns a sizable percent of the country's land, and exerts considerableinfluence in most sectors of the economy.²The kibbutzim themselves, held up as "the essence of the socialist-Zionist ideal of collectivism andegalitarianism," are fast falling victim "to the pursuit of individual fulfillment."³ The Labor Party is ever more estranged fromIsrael's trade union movement, and when it governs it does so less and less like a social-democratic party, and its economic program has become ever more classically liberal. To manyIsraelis, who remember the years of Labor bureaucratic power, "socialism" means little more than"state elitism."

In examining"what happened," it is worthwhile to ask what precisely the content of Israeli socialism was fromits inception. There are essentially two narratives of "actually-existing" Labor (Socialist) Zionism.One argues that the most important of the Zionist colonists were utopian socialists who had nointent to be either exploiter or exploited. These socialists set up communistic agrariancommunities,kibbutzim. But over time Labor Zionists compromised their ideals inorder to win the leadership of theyishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine. Toachieve this they shifted "to a policy of ‘revolutionary constructivism' that separated the conceptsof class and nation, stressing the development of theyishuvas a whole rather thanclassical socialist goals. This strategy isolated and overwhelmed the Revisionist opposition of thetime, but at the cost . . . of subverting Labour Zionism's own future."⁴ In time, the governing Labor-Zionist MAPAI party "subsume[d]the will to revolution [with] the will to normalcy," as Mitchell Cohen puts it, as the state replacedthe working class as the agent of universal interests. However, non-Zionist or "post-Zionist"socialists argue that to claim that Labor Zionism (or more specifically MAPAI, later the LaborParty) "degenerated" fails to acknowledge the content of the "socialism" of the dominant strain ofIsrael's founding Labor Zionists. Zeev Sternhell claims that for most Labor Zionist leaders"socialism" was a rhetorical means of legitimating the national project of creating a Jewish stateand little else. Universalistic, internationalist socialist principles stood in the way of national andcultural goals and were therefore subverted. MAPAI's leaders, says Sternhell, never reallybelieved in the idea of the socialist, classless society, or even in the individual rights held dear byliberalism. By the 1920s, the foundations of David Ben-Gurion's principle ofmamlachtiut, "the primacy of the nation and supremacy of the state over civil society,of political power over social action and voluntary bodies," had already been laid.⁵ MAPAI's ideology did not move from socialism tomere nationalist statism -- its "Socialist" Zionismwas nationalist statism, or moreconcretely, a nationalism thatused the working class for statist ends under a socialistguise. The Zionism of Ben-Gurion and his colleagues was, Sternhell argues, a "nationalistsocialism" which appeared in Europe at the end of the nineteenth century and

preached the organic unity of the nation and the mobilization of all classes ofsociety for the achievement of national objectives...[and held that] the fate of each social groupwas organically linked to that of all other classes, and all members of the nation were responsiblefor each other...it refused to accept society as a theater of war . . . it never objected to privatecapital as such . . . If capitalists did not sink their money in production, contribute to theenrichment of society, or employ workers, they were incorrigible parasites, but the fault lay withunproductive capitalists, not private capital itself.⁶

This article willexamine and assess these conflicting viewpoints. It will become obvious that the mainstream ofSocialist Zionist leaders never really conceived of the working class as "the identical subject-object of Jewish history."⁷ If Ben-Gurionand his co-thinkers were socialists, theirs was a socialism purely of the state, not the workingclass.

in Palestine emergedthat put forth a combination of Jewish nationalism and socialism. What became known asPo'alei-Tzion (Workers of Zion), itself part of a world federation of similar parties,began to take shape and developed two wings, one moderately social democratic and the otherexplicitly Marxist. The main theoretician of Marxist Zionism was Ber Borochov. Borochovposited that the Jews were an "abnormal" people, with a class structure resembling an "invertedpyramid": "rather than workers and peasants constituting the broad base of their society, andlesser numbers of petty bourgeois and capitalists at the top of the social ‘pyramid,' among theJews the masses were in large part urban petty bourgeois, engaged in increasingly marginaloccupations far from the point of production."⁸ As Mitchell Cohen explains,

Borochov's argument is that anti-Semitism, national competition (in which theJews, lacking a territorial base, are at a disadvantage), and the continuing development ofcapitalism force a continual pattern of Jewish migration, and make the abnormal Jewish conditionsof production more and more insecure. Jewish labor, not employed by non-Jews, follows themigration of Jewish capital, and because of the competition the Jewish petty bourgeoisie becomesmore and more proletarianized. Yet if ‘the Jewish problem migrates with the Jews,' then a radicalsolution that does not simply lead to another inhospitable roadside inn is needed. The solution wasproletarian Zionism; the ‘conscious Jewish proletariat' had the task of directing the migration. Inthe final analysis the abolition of capitalismand national liberation were the salvationfor the Jewish working class.⁹

The nationalismof the oppressed Jewish proletariat, Borochov argued, "is emancipatory. If we were theproletariat of a free nation which neither oppresses nor is oppressed, we would not be interestedin any problems of national life."¹⁰ Whatwas needed to "normalize" the Jews -- and avoid their destruction -- was the founding of a Jewishstate where Jewish capitalists and workers would wage class struggle. Migration to Palestinespecifically "was ideal because it would be, in Borochov's view, the only land available to theJews. It lacked advanced political and cultural development, and would be a land in which bigcapital would find no possibility while Jewish petty and middle capital would."¹¹ Palestine would then develop along capitalistlines and the Jewish proletariat -- in solidarity with the world proletariat -- would fight forsocialism. However, while Borochov's theories may have been critical to the mobilization of theZionist labor movement, the actual development and rise to power of MAPAI -- the hegemonicSocialist Zionist party -- was ultimately "a result of its rejection of Borochov's programmaticconclusions."¹²

Between 1904and 1914, the mainly Eastern European immigrants of the "Second Aliyah" joined two Zionistlabor parties: Po'alei-Tzion, which, though internally divided, called itself socialist and called forclass struggle, andHapo'el Hatza'ir (the Young Worker), which rejected classstruggle as harmful to the national cause. It was on the initiative of Po'alei-Tzion that the non-party trade union of guards in the Jewish colonies,Hashomer, was founded, whichtook upon itself the protection and defense of the colonies from attack by their Arab neighbors.Attempts were also made to organize the Jewish agricultural workers and to create cooperativesof workers in city and country.¹³ Thefounding program of Po'alei-Tzion defined the party as the Zionist wing of worldwiderevolutionary Marxism; the "Ramle Platform" declared, "the chronicles of humanity consist ofnational and class wars." Sternhell explains this revision of the famous line fromTheCommunist Manifesto:

At the beginning of the century, every person . . . knew that a view of history interms of class struggle formed part of a complete and comprehensive system of thought. Onemight criticize this system, but to combine it with a conception of history as consisting of nationalstruggles was absurd. The drafters of the Ramle Platform knew this very well . . . they were awarethat struggles between nations were a recent phenomenon in the history of humankind . . . If theyknowingly decided to commit such a gross error, it was because they had no other means ofreconciling the two schools of thought, which at the end of 1906 divided the socialist communityin Palestine.¹⁴

Future primeminister of Israel David Ben-Gurion, then a member of Po'alei-Tzion, argued for the Jewish rightto the land of Palestine through a version of the labor theory of value: "The source of true rightsto a land . . . is not in political or legal authority, but in the rights of labor. The true, actual ownersof the land are its workers."¹⁵ Thoughthe echo of the Marxian labor theory of value is obvious, Ben-Gurion would later abandon alltraces of what he labeled "proletarian Zionism" after 1919, with the founding of theAhdutHa'avoda (Unity of Labor) party; indeed, despite his familiarity with Marxist terminology,he never shared Borochov's conception of Zionism. His was a voluntaristic Zionism that echoedEuropean "organic" nationalism, one that shunned the economic determinism of Borochov.

The views ofHapo'el Hatza'ir more closely echoed Ben-Gurion's. It shunned strikes, class struggle, and theword "socialism," and espoused the theories of Aaron David Gordon, who believed that only byphysical labor and by "returning to the land" could the Jewish people achieve national salvation.Hapo'el Hatza'ir oriented to the workers solely "because of their national value, not because ofworking-class issues in and of themselves."¹⁶ Supposedly the Marxist stress on class struggle was irrelevant toa primarily agricultural country such as Palestine. The party's leading ideologue, YosefAharonovitch, claimed there were no "struggling classes within the Jewish people as a whole andamong the Jews in the Land of Israel, in particular."¹⁷ By the eve of World War One much of the Po'alei Tzion partywas espousing much the same view; Borochovism was eclipsed by what was called a "specificallyJewish socialism" which was ever more radically nationalistic and more and more removed fromthe universal principles of classical social democracy. Furthermore, as Sternhell notes, thedismissal of Marxist categories by both Zionist parties contradicted the fact that "Marxism at thebeginning of the century remained . . . first and foremost a critique of capitalism. It is hard tounderstand how Marxism could have been relevant to Russia, Poland, and Romania but not toPalestine . . . [social democracy's] adherence to [Marxist] principles made the socialists thespearhead of the struggle against tribal nationalism and the cornerstone of ideologicalmodernity."¹⁸ It was no accident thatBen-Gurion would later help found a party built on other principles.

Po'alei Tzion met in Europe in1909. It was then that Borochov's Marxist paradigm was decisively rejected. Among theopponents of Borochov were the Austrian Po'alei Zionists led by Shlomo Kaplansky. Theyadvocated not only inter-class cooperation within the Zionist movement, but also what was latertermed the "constructivist" strategy of Labor Zionism. Kapalansky argued that the working classought to lead the Zionist movement and "pursue a general strategy of building economicinstitutions and cooperative settlements in Palestine that would be the harbingers of the futuresociety. This was, in fact, to become Po'alei Tzion policy."¹⁹ The idea of building cooperative workers' settlements and thebuilding of a "labor economy" owed much to Nachman Syrkin, leader of the American Po'aleiZion until his death and an avowed anti-Marxist and voluntarist. The "constructivist" strategy ofbuilding Jewish Palestine involved collecting funds "to finance socio-economic institutions capableof organizing and settling significant numbers of immigrant workers. The initiative of privatecapital . . . was thereby relegated to a secondary status . . . workers' settlements, such as thekibbutz, became strategically central in this effort."²⁰

The socialistcontent of such a strategy seems obvious, as its goal appears to be the bypassing of capitalism infavor of building directly socialist institutions, something that even Marx and Engels had hoped tobe possible in Russia on the basis of peasant village communes. Cohen argues that "constructivismmeant the possibility of identifying the interests of the emerging workers' movement and itsinstitutions with the interests and needs of the Jewish people as a whole . . . this allowed a Zionistreworking of the classic Marxist theme of a universal class."²¹ But if constructivism owed much to Syrkin,²² then it is worth noting the problematical aspectsof Syrkin's thought:

[Syrkin's] anti-Marxism went hand in hand with a belief in the determinant roleof heroic characters in history . . . [he believed that] human progress occurred as the result of anideological revolution that took place from time to time among minorities. He sought explanationsin places that social democracy avoided like the plague: the collective national soul, theVolksgeist, and the various peoples' mysterious cultural and historical symbolisms . . . The truetest of a political strategy, wrote Syrkin, is not the degree to which it corresponds to the situationor to reality but its power to penetrate the souls of the masses and to activate the will of thepeople . . . Unlike the democratic socialists, Syrkin believed that a nation is a fact of nature. Thusin his system of thought, the nation is given greater importance with class interests . . . his viewthat ‘Zionism, being the Jewish enterprise of national construction, does not conflict with classwarfare but simply transcends it,' is a classic nationalist socialist formulation.

Syrkin'scooperative program -- along with that of Franz Oppenheimer and Shlomo Kaplansky -- played amajor part in moving Po'alei Tzion away from Borochovism. This program was, in fact, explicitlynon-socialist. Syrkin argued that "We wish only to build cooperatives . . . A socialist society is . . .impractical, because people have been talking about it for a hundred years, and we still do notknow what it is. Cooperative experiments, however, have already been made in present society,and we are able to build on them."²³Neither the labor movement nor the Socialist International could provide the funds; that wouldhave to be "the affair of the whole Jewish people," with the Jewish workers as the main agent ofcooperative construction.²⁴

Though he wasless concerned with cooperatives, Ben-Gurion's thinking largely echoed Syrkin's. He believedthat the creation of a specifically Jewish working class in Palestine was necessary for Jewish"redemption." Should the "petit-bourgeois" socioeconomic practices of Jews in the diaspora berepeated in Palestine, it would mean the end of the Zionist enterprise. "A distinction between theneeds of the individual and the needs of the nation," Ben-Gurion argued, "has no basis in the livesof the workers of Eretz Israel . . . Our movement makes no distinction between the nationalquestion and the socialist question . . . we have fused the working population into a singleunit."²⁵ Socialist and nationalistaspirations were harmonious, but the latter took priority; Ben-Gurion said little in hisprogrammatic speech at the Po'alei Tzion convention in 1919 on socialism, save that cooperativeswould reduce -- not abolish -- dependence on private capital. This runs contrary to the assertionmade by latter-day Socialist Zionists that Ben-Gurion, at least initially, set out to create theinstitutional framework for a Jewish workers' state in Palestine.

That year theWorld Union of Po'alei Tzion began to split between right and left over whether or not to applyto the Communist International or participate in the bourgeois-led international Zionistorganizations. In the final split the right wing majority of the Palestinian Po'alei Tzion partymerged with independent left Zionists to formAhdut Ha'avoda (Unity of Labor),with Ben-Gurion and other significant labor movement figures among its leaders. Thisorganization was less a party than a federation (histahdut) intended "to mobilize allwage earners by providing for their needs and all the services they required in order to facilitatethe construction of the nation."²⁶Though for some years it used the rhetoric of the class struggle and was officially "socialist," it isnotable that at its founding convention the principal speech given by Berl Katznelson stressed thatthe labor movement in Eretz Israel aimed "not just to lead a class but to lead the nation . . . to bethe whole nation, to create a working Hebrew nation"; "socialism" was described purely as amatter of shared "existence" by Jews and not an alternative to capitalism, or even as an ideologywhich critiqued capitalism.²⁷

, or General Federationof Jewish Labor in Palestine, was founded as a united project of Ahdut Ha'avoda, Hapo'elHatza'ir, and other Left Zionist parties. Membership was open to all Jewish workers regardless ofpolitical beliefs. Ben-Gurion became the Federation's first Secretary-General. In Cohen'sinterpretation -- often repeated elsewhere²⁸ -- Ben-Gurion "acted forcefully to centralize the Histadrut'sresources and power structure as a nascent workers' state within the state of Mandate Palestine.For a short period he championed the idea of turning the entire country into a singlecommune."²⁹ Through its building of avast array of institutions such as a sickness and disablement fund (Kupat Cholim),labor exchanges, building firms (Solel Boneh), a company for the sale of agriculturalproducts (Tnuva), a wholesale sales cooperative (Hamashbir Hamerkazi),a labor schools network, housing cooperatives, and kibbutzim, Ben-Gurion argued that theHistadrut was "an organization of the working classin the making as distinct from theTrade Union which is the classic form of organization of a working classinbeing."³⁰ But what this trulymeant, as Michael Shalev notes, was that the Histadrut "did not emerge out of the class strugglescontingent upon capitalist industrialization and political democratization; it was primarilyconcerned with the realization of national interests in the rural sector rather than with the classinterests of urban wage-earners; and it was founded from the top down rather than crystallizingand aggregating spontaneous processes of working-class formation."³¹ It may have been a means to achieve political and economicsupremacy for labor, but it did so not through class struggle but through attempting to realizeobjectives that were primarily national, i.e. cross-class. Though the Histadrut may have beenmeeting the needs of the "Jewish nation," it excluded Arab workers and encouraged the variouscampaigns to replace Arab with Jewish labor; it was argued that "the unorganized and poorly-paidArab workers were a threat to the organized Jewish workers, and a trade union must protect itsmembers."³² Ben-Gurion may have saidthat he was "for Bolshevism," but in practice what this meant is that he was for a stronglycentralist orientation for both the Histadrut and Ahdut Ha'avoda.³³ He was opposed to the traditional Marxist belief that thesolution to the problem of competition from rural, unorganized labor working for minusculewages was to organize the backward workers together with the unionized workers.³⁴ Though they did not make it explicit, theHistadrut labor elite feared that "the logic of collective action in the market arena might leadJewish workers to join with their Arab counterparts in struggles against Jewish employers. Thiswould have contradicted the core commitment of the labor movement . . . to place the Jewishworking class at the head of the nation-building struggle," even though it would have beenconsistent with the socialist principles to which Ben-Gurion and his colleagues supposedlyadhered.³⁵

In the 1920sthere were left wing Socialist Zionists led by Menahem Elkind whose "Bolshevism" differedgreatly from that of Ben-Gurion. They criticized the top-down character of the Histadrut andbecame involved with theGdud Ha'avoda (Labor Battalion), an attempt to promotethe development of the Jewish state through "establishing a General Commune of Jewish Workersin Palestine."³⁶ Sternhell argues that "theGdud represented a new departure and had real revolutionary potential. Its idea of a singlecountrywide commune was the only chance of building a true socialist society."³⁷ Ben-Gurion may have once advocated the ideaof the Histadrut as a general commune³⁸-- albeit as a way to concentrate economic power and the reserves of manpower into the hands ofthe Agricultural Center and the Bureau of Public Workers³⁹ -- but he vigorously opposed Elkind and his "impractical"supporters:

[Ben-Gurion] wanted to concentrate power in the hands of the executive,whereas the latter defended the autonomy of the settlers . . . values such as individual freedomand the hope for a better society were subordinated [by Ben-Gurion] to national interests. TheGdud wanted to apply the principles of equality to the urban sector . . . whereas the leadership ofthe movement wished to restrict public ownership of the means of the production to agriculturalsettlements . . . freeing the urban sector from the yoke of communal ownership put an end to allhope of large-scale social change.⁴⁰

Gdud leftistsacted as a left opposition within the Histadrut for a few years, arguing for its democratization, fora complete equalization of salaries and "the delegation of work to organized kibbutzim on theirfull responsibility."⁴¹ But the Gdud didnot exist for long. By 1927, after campaigns by Ben-Gurion which included economic pressureand expulsions,⁴² and a deep recessionwhich undermined the left,⁴³ thisalternative society which took the socialist pretensions of Socialist Zionism seriously was nomore.

was Hapo'elHatza'ir, whose main theoretician was Haim Arlosoroff. Before moving to Palestine he hadwritten a pamphlet explaining what he called JewishVolkssozialismus(People'sSocialism), an outlook that opposed class-struggle theories of socialism (such as Marxism) andechoed the ideas of Aaron David Gordon and Russian populism. In a 1926 speech, "Class War inthe Reality of the Land of Israel," he argued that

[t]he two facts that Palestine was a British colony and a bi-nationalsociety...subverted the application of class struggle . . . The ‘state' in Palestine was the Mandatoryauthority, and rather than being a reflection of indigenous class forces and relations, its politicalcharacter was due to the ‘class forces of English society' . . . the horizontal cleavages of class inPalestine were cross-cut and undercut by a vertical national cleavage [Arabs and Jews] . . . ‘Theorganized workers' movement' in Palestine could not even be classified as ‘proletarian' . . .because the Histadrut represented the ‘aristocracy of the settlement' and the worker was ‘theleader of the Yishuv' . . . Furthermore, the Yishuv was still in the process of self-creation; thePalestinian Jewish workers were constantly renewing their ranks by means of immigrants, most ofwhom came from non-proletarian backgrounds and were in the process of being transformed intoworkers; the Jewish economy . . . had no normal cycle of production or division of nationalincome within a cycle. These were characteristics of a society-in-the-making -- a society entirelyunsuited to Marxist theories of class warfare.⁴⁴

Arlosoroffclaimed that the inapplicability of class struggle to Eretz Israel did not make the socialist ideainapplicable. Yet urbanization was continuing apace in Palestine, and the emergence of a wage-earning proletariat -- as well as a Jewish bourgeoisie -- was bound to lead to class struggle.Despite the "socialist" label, mainstream Socialist Zionism "did not deny the legitimacy of privateproperty or seek to change society but wanted only to control it, and at the same time wasunwilling to acknowledge the ability of the private sector to implement Zionism," i.e. build theinfrastructure of a Jewish state.⁴⁵ Anddespite the moral claims made for the kibbutzim, as late as 1936 no more that 8.4 percent ofHistadrut members were living in one.⁴⁶As Nathan Weinstock explains, "although the sacrifices and the socialist convictions of itsmilitants are not open to doubt, the kibbutz movement has never . . . represented a threat of anysort to the Zionist bourgeoisie; quite the contrary. Thus the Jewish Agency subsidised these‘socialist oases in the capitalist desert' to the best of its ability . . . the Jewish working-classmovement was led to substitute itself for a Jewish bourgeoisie which was almost non-existent as aclass in Palestine in the Twenties in order to lay the foundations of Zionist capitalism through theeconomic organisations of the Histadrut."⁴⁷ The selfless idealism of the kibbutzim "relieved the Zionistbourgeoisie of the need to make unprofitable investments"⁴⁸ and thus contributed to Zionist national goals without affectingthe class character of the economy as a whole.

On one hand,Labor Zionists such as Ben-Gurion declared, "If all the capitalists in Palestine were Jews . . . thecountry would be no more Jewish than it is now . . . If the workers in country were Jews . . . itwould be a Jewish country."⁴⁹ On theother hand, Ben-Gurion wrote that class conflict in Palestine was "only about theuse ofcapital . . . It is not capital itself that is the subject of dispute, but only its destination" -- theprivate sector or collective settlement administered by the Histadrut.⁵⁰ "Class warfare" was a code word for this struggle overresources; it was not about the struggle between labor and capital at the point of production, letalone socialization of privately-owned industry. "Class warfare" was a means towards "nationalunity"; while socialist parties of other nations were, by definition, concerned only with theinterests of the working class and believed (at least in theory) that those interests were in conflictwith those of the capitalist class, the dominant strain of "Socialist" Zionism -- Ben-Gurion's strain-- was of a wholly different character: "Our movement has always had the socialistic idea that theparty of the working class, unlike the parties of other classes, is not only a class party solelyconcerned with matters affecting the class but a national party responsible for the future of theentire people. It regards itself not as a mere part of the people but as the nucleus of the futurenation."⁵¹ This was a peculiar"movement of the universal class," as it effectively denied that the interests of the workers alonewere truly universal.

The mutualcommitment to "constructivism" by Ahdut Ha'avoda and Hapo'el Hatza'ir made possible theirmerger in 1930 into a single party, MAPAI (a Hebrew acronym forMiflegeth Poalim Eretz-Israel, Palestine Workers' Party). It controlled the Histadrut and became the largest party inboth Palestine and the Zionist Organization. To achieve this position in the ZO, Ben-Gurionworked towards an alliance with the moderate Zionist bourgeoisie (though not their uppermostranks, which were few in number). Cohen explains the strategy undertaken by MAPAI:

Labour's strategic shift . . . was occasioned by a bitter battle with the far right;consequently, in order to vanquish the latter, Labour sought to head as broad a coalition aspossible. This, in turn, implied a new relation with groups it had previously fought, together withacceptance of a ‘compromise equilibrium' and an ‘economic corporate' sacrifice, in particularaccepting the Histadrut as one pillar among others . . . even though Labour frequently continuedto employ its class rhetoric of the past, its operative assumptions, implicitly, had been very muchtransformed.⁵²

This shift byMAPAI "signified the abandonment of the concept on which Labour power had been built in thefirst place: the identity of the interests of the working class and the nation. This was an importantdeparture from the past and from a fundamental element of socialist politics."⁵³ A departure from socialism it indeed was, butthe "break with the past" was not as great as might be imagined; neither Ahdut Ha'avoda norHapo'el Hatza'ir had had a commitment to the socialization of capital. Cohen deplores MAPAI'sacceptance of the principle that "class, nation and state were separate, if not opposed, categories,things unto themselves above and beyond the project of Labour Israel -- which henceforth becamea particular, not a universalizing, endeavour . . . the working class los[t] its role as the subject-object of Zionist history." But it seems more correct to say that for Ben-Gurion and his co-thinkers the working class was never more than the object of Zionist history; it was the Histadrutelite that was the real subject. The Jewish working class might build the Jewish nation-state, but itwas not going to own and control that state's means of production, distribution and exchange.Both before and after MAPAI's "historic compromise," "socialism" was a myth used formobilization.

Socialist Zionistparties whose socialism was more than rhetorical also found their nationalism eating away at theircommitment to universal, democratic principles.Hashomer-Hatzair (The YoungGuard) sought the "integration of pioneering Zionism with revolutionary socialism, colonizationwith class struggle,"⁵⁴ though in its viewthe realization of socialism could only occur after the realization of Zionism. Though it put forththe idea of a bi-national state in Palestine -- one neither exclusively Jewish nor exclusively Arab --it participated energetically in the effort to exclude Arab workers from Jewish firms. It orientedalmost exclusively towards the kibbutz, and while it stressed the practical tasks of building up thematerial basis of the Jewish home (constructivism), some of its kibbutzim were on land taken fromArab peasants. One of the party's leaders even argued that Zionists, like the British, had beenentrusted the "historical and humanitarian mission" of settling among "backward and hostilenatives."⁵⁵

bycoalitions led by MAPAI from 1949 to 1977. Ben-Gurion served as prime minister until 1963.From the start of its reign there was unease within MAPAI that its socialism "was being forsakenin the din of state-making"; Ben-Gurion had already labeled the kibbutzim as a "socialistaristocracy detached from the needs of the state."⁵⁶ He went on to declare that the Israeli state was neither socialistnor capitalist (i.e., it was above classes), that the term "socialism" was of no relevance, andthat

the working class's interests and its institutions could no longer be seen asgeneral. For many Histadrut members . . . their interests in the Labour organization were private,i.e. what it could give them in terms of services. The working class's vision, unity and pioneeringspirit had faded, and a particularism had asserted itself instead. Consequently, ‘In the state thereexists a more efficient and comprehensive tool than the Histadrut. It is up to us to draw theproper conclusions from these two facts'. The conclusions were that the state's institutions, notthe working class's, were universal, and that ‘The Histadrut is neither the state's rival orcompetitor, but rather its faithful aid and loyal supporter'.⁵⁷

To argue thatany Israeli institution should be purely for workers was denounced by Ben-Gurion as "partisan."Shalev explains the difference between the Israeli version of social democracy and that of theEuropean social democrats:

[European] social-democratic parties made the particularistic interest of theworking-class in higher wages synonymous with the general interest of all classes in stimulatingproduction. In contrast, the material basis for the status of Jewish labor in Palestine as auniversal class did not rest solely on the positive implications of working-classprosperity for other classes. It also relied on the shared interest of workers, the middle strata, andmuch of bourgeoisie in the economic separation of Arabs and Jews; and on the crucial role of thelabor movement in guaranteeing the present security and future of the entire Zionist community inPalestine.⁵⁸

Though Ministerof Labor Golda Meir might have spoken of "socialism in our time" in 1950, MAPAI's economicpolicy increasingly allowed for income inequality. Ben-Gurion insisted that full employment andhousing depended on attracting foreign capital, and MAPAI's socialist rhetoric masked thedevelopment of a "restricted capitalism . . . propelled by a large influx of desperately neededforeign investment capital, particularly in the form of loans from foreign governments and banks,private funds through the sale of Israeli Bonds, Jewish contributions from abroad and Germanreparations . . . there was no attempt at nationalizations of the private sector and wage policyshifted from . . . principles of need . . . to one based on professionalism and less socialist oregalitarian criteria."⁵⁹ Where rival partiescame to be supported by elements of the working class, MAPAI earned the support of the "statemade middle class" -- a generously treated (by MAPAI) group of "entrepreneurs and middlemenwho made their fortunes through government concessions and subsidies, as well as theconsiderable salariat of managerial and professional workers in public employ."⁶⁰ Over the first twenty years of MAPAI's rule, atechnocratic group of army officers who entered the economy as administrators and specialistsemerged in the party and came into conflict with its "old guard"; statist technocracy would cometo define MAPAI and its successor, the Labor Party. Indeed, aside from the fact that there werestill opposition parties and some degree of freedom for non-Arab minority opinion, Israel underMAPAI had aspects that were eerily reminiscent of Stalinism. One small group of leaders(MAPAI) controlled the political party of the workers, the trade union of the workers, the state-owned industry ("of the workers"), and through a series of coalitions, the government (also "ofthe workers"). This "workers'" state could break strikes (how could workers sensibly strikeagainst "themselves," after all) and then deny strikers further employment in the "socialist" sectorby a labor court presided over by appointees of MAPAI.*

Israel's welfarestate also varies greatly from social-democratic norms. In terms of social security spending it hasbeen dubbed a "welfare-state laggard."⁶¹Its social policy has favored benefits to children over pensions for the retired. Most notable in itsdefiance of universalistic social-democratic principles is the difference in policy provisions forArabs and Jews; the latter get all the benefits and the former only some, while Arabs in occupiedPalestine "are entitled to virtually no income maintenance support and are offered a limited rangeof public social services which bear no comparison with those of Israel proper."⁶² Even among Israeli Jews there is a two-tiersystem of welfare:

Essentially, the upper tier was reserved for the veterans of the period beforesovereignty, most of whom were Ashkenazim . . . Here social protection depended primarily onthe employment relationship. The veterans had access to the best job and enjoyed a high degree ofjob security . . . [and] entitlements to a variety of insurance-based income maintenance schemes . .. In contrast, recent arrivals naturally lacked job seniority and a great many were unemployed, intemporary jobs, or administratively barred from entering the labor market . . . they were dealt withharshly by means of a ‘residual' system of niggardly means-tested benefits and manipulative formsof so-called treatment and rehabilitation. The ones who suffered the most were...mostly the‘Eastern' Jews who immigrated to Israel from North Africa and the Middle East.⁶³

MAPAIattempted to simultaneously retain the loyalty of its traditional supporters while winning overother constituencies, such as the new middle strata. Had it governed in a more universal,traditionally social democratic fashion, this would have undermined the clientelism on which theparty so heavily relied. Hence MAPAI's welfare state policy -- more properly defined asdualist than socialist.⁶⁴

A result of suchpolicies were that many Israeli workers came to see "socialists" as the society's elite, with manysecond-class Sephardic and Eastern Jews opting to support the right-wing Likud Party. Thecontrol of the Labor bureaucracy over the flow of foreign capital allowed it "to exercise a far-reaching control over the broad masses of the population, not only in political and economicmatters, but even in aspects of everyday life. The majority of the Israeli population depend[ed]directly, and daily, on the goodwill of this bureaucracy for their jobs, housing and healthinsurance. Some of the workers who . . . rebelled against the bureaucracy, like the seaman in thegreat strike of December 1951, were denied employment, and some who refused to surrenderwere forced in the end to emigrate."⁶⁵ Inthe Histadrut, blue-collar workers came to constitute "only a minority of the Histadrut'sconstituency, which includes all grades of white collar and professional workers, and even manyof the self-employed."⁶⁶ Left oppositionto MAPAI was weakened when the party took into the state functions of the Histadrut that wereimportant leftist power bases (the Palmach military force and the labor school system). TheHistadrut's social services and its affiliated economic enterprises "were permitted to remain [non-state] and came to enjoy substantial informal privileges, on the understanding that they wouldcontinue to serve the needs of the party."⁶⁷ Those enterprises had always functioned according to marketlogic and were managed in traditional capitalist fashion. Histadrut leader and Minister ofAgriculture Haim Gvati admitted in 1964 that

We have not succeeded in transforming this immense richness into socialisteconomic cells. We have not succeeded in maintaining the working-class nature of our economicsector. Actually there areno characteristics to differentiate it from the rest of thepublic sector, and sometimes even from the private sector. The atmosphere, work-relations andhuman relations of our economic sector are in no way different from any other industrialenterprise.⁶⁸

Pinhas Lavon,General Secretary of the Histadrut, argued that the federation had no specific class character:"Our Histadrut is a general organization to its core. It is not a workers' trade union, although itcopes perfectly well with the real needs of the worker."⁶⁹ Employment in the public or Histadrut sectors "often meanthaving the right connections in MAPAI. As major employers, the Histadrut and the state had aninterest in restraining working-class militancy, and since they were controlled by the same party,they generally cooperated to do so."⁷⁰While restraint of militancy is hardly unknown among social democratic parties and trade unions,the alienation that Israeli workers felt towards the Histadrut was notable; by the mid 1960s, fewof its members said that they had joined because of ideological reasons or because the Histadrutdefended workers' interests, many felt that the Histadrut made no difference in their worksituations, that the local trade-union branches in their workplaces should be independent of theHistadrut, and that the trade-union conference had no influence on the functioning of the centralbody -- i.e., that the ordinary trade unionist had little influence.⁷¹ Beginning in 1952, it became official Histadrut policy to put "thegood of the state" and "the needs of the economy" above the needs of workers -- it traded offwage concessions "not only, or even mainly, in return for compensatory material benefits for theworking class," but in return for state subsidies for the Histadrut-owned sector of the economyand its health clinics and pension funds.⁷²

implementedpolicies that ultimately weakened the institutions that supported it, most notably the Histadrut.Today, it is no longer guaranteed an authoritative role in government or of hegemony over theHistadrut, and as mentioned before, its political program has ever less resemblance to traditionalsocial democracy.

Years ofsupposed socialism in Israel have not left any positive legacy where Israel's labor laws areconcerned. The law allows only a very limited, very specific strike, against a particular employerwho fails to respect the promise of good working conditions. This kind of strike must beapproved beforehand, as it is already considered a violation of contract. In collective bargainingagreements, the worker agrees to industrial peace and is obligated to not strike. Solidarity strikeswith other workers are illegal, as are strikes against government policy or Knesset decisions. Ifthe government is about to discuss raising taxes, or privatization, or cutting subsidies, the workersare not allowed to strike -- it would be considered a "political strike," forbidden by law. Thecourts do permit a "semi-political" strike of no more than three hours if the workers believe that aparticular policy may hurt them directly, but the possibility that a three-hour strike might have anykind of effect is quite small.⁷³

A 1997 generalstrike in the public sector gave hints of a possible long-term realignment of Israeli politics thatmight ultimately displace the current hawk/dove division by a new politics based on social class.That year saw the first serious talk in decades of the formation of a new workers' party in Israel,as many Labor Party leaders are estranged from the trade union movement; some of them evensupported the Netanyahu government against the strike. Today there exists the Am Ehad (OneNation) Party, headed by Histadrut Chairman Amir Peretz, which presents itself as Israel's only"real" social-democratic party and "aspires to economic and social equality among all citizens ofthe State of Israel."⁷⁴ But this party isnot yet anywhere near majority status. Nor does it claim to be anything other than a party ofsocial reform, though by doing so it has avoided the misleading rhetoric-along with theethnonationalism-of classical Labor Zionism.

As a massmovement, Socialist Zionism is finished. One might say that it accomplished its actual goal-thebuilding of the Jewish state-without falling prey to the illusion that it "failed" to ensure that thestate was a socialist one. For unless one identifies "socialism" with statism, socialism was never agoal of Ben-Gurion and his co-thinkers. One cannot compromise ideals one does not have. It willdoubtless be a long time before the majority of the Israeli working class-or for that matter mostother working classes-embraces internationalist democratic socialism. In the meantime, however,no tears need be shed over the death of Labor Zionist nationalist socialism.

1. Quoted by Norman Finkelstein in "Palestine: The Truth About 1948,"http://www.nimn.org/history/finkelstein.html.return

2. Lori Epstein, "Socialism doomed, business interns say here,"JewishBulletin of Northern California, May 29, 1998,http://www.jewishsf.com/bk980529/sfadoom.htm.return

3. Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Death of the Kibbutz,"The Guardian,Monday, May 14, 2001,http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4186081,00.html.return

4. Alan Dowty,The Jewish State: A Century Later (Berkeley:University of California Press, 2001), p. 56. "Revisionism" refers to the movement led byVladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s, which asserted the exclusive right of Jews to all of Eretz(Greater) Israel, and explicitly upheld order, discipline, and authority over democracy andindividual rights.return

5. Zeev Sternhell,The Founding Myths of Israel: Nationalism,Socialism, and the Making of the Jewish State (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1998), p. 35.return

6. Ibid., pp. 7-9.return

7. Mitchell Cohen,Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping ofModern Israel (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).return

8. Zachary Lockman, "The Left in Israel: Zionism vs. Socialism,"MERIP Reports, 49 (July 1976), p. 4.return

9. Mitchell Cohen, "Ber Borochov and Socialist Zionism," in MitchellCohen, ed.,Class Struggle and the Jewish Nation: Selected Essays in MarxistZionism (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1984), p. iv.return

10. Quoted in Cohen,Zion and State, p. 91.return

11. Cohen, "Ber Borochov and Socialist Zionism," p. iv.return

12. Cohen,Zion and State, p. 92.return

13. Lockman, op cit.return

14. Sternhell, p. 84.return

15. Quoted in Cohen, op. cit., p. 94.return

16. Ibid., p. 97.return

17. Ibid., p. 96.return

18. Sternhell, op. cit., pp. 91-92.return

19. Cohen, op. cit., p. 99.return

20. Ibid., p. 101.return

21. Ibid., p. 102.return

22. "In 1919, Syrkin . . . was the key figure in the World Po'alei TzionConference in Stockholm, which assigned him the task of heading a study commission to visitPalestine to draw up a plan for mass cooperative settlement" (http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/biography/nsyrkin.html).return

23. Quoted in Sternhell, op. cit., p. 104. Syrkin was either unaware oruninterested in the outlines of socialist society provided by Karl Kautsky inThe SocialRevolution (1902) or the writings of British Guild Socialists such as G. D. H. Cole.return

24. Ibid.return

25. Quoted in Ibid., pp. 93-4.return

26. Ibid., p. 108.return

27. Ibid., p. 112-13; Lockman, op. cit., p. 5.return

28. An example, from http://jewishpeople.net/labourzionism.html:"Beginning in the 1920s, [Ben-Gurion] set out to create the immense institutional framework for aJewish workers' state in Palestine." Excerpted from Helen Chapin Metz, ed.,Israel: ACountry Study (Washington, D. C.: Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress,1988).return

29. Cohen, op. cit., p. 109.return

30. Quoted in Cohen, ibid., p. 110.return

31. Michael Shalev,Labour and the Political Economy in Israel(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 27.return

32. Lockman, op. cit.return

33. Cohen, op. cit., p. 111.return

34. "This organization of the proletarians into a class . . . is continuallybeing upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again,stronger, firmer, mightier." Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, "The Communist Manifesto," inDavid McLellan, ed.,Karl Marx: Selected Writings (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1988), p. 228.return

35. Shalev, op. cit., p. 40.return

36. Cohen, op. cit., p. 112.return

37. Sternhell, op. cit., p. 199.return

38. Cohen, op. cit., p. 113.return

39. Sternhell, op. cit., p. 202.return

40. Ibid., p. 198.return

41. Ibid., p. 205.return

42. Ibid., p. 212.return

43. Cohen, op. cit.return

44. Ibid., p. 117.return

45. Sternhell, op. cit., p. 220.return

46. Ibid., p. 220.return

47. Nathan Weinstock, Zionism: False Messiah (London: InkLinks, 1979),http://www.marxists.de/middleast/weinstock/10-wclass.htm.return

48. Ibid.return

49. Quoted in Cohen, op. cit., p. 125.return

50. Sternhell, op. cit., p. 224.return

51. Quoted in Ibid., p. 225.return

52. Cohen, op. cit., p. 128.return

53. Ibid.return

54. Lockman, op. cit., p. 6.return

55. Ibid., p. 8; Weinstock, op. cit.return

56. Cohen, op. cit., p. 212.return

57. Quoted in Cohen, Ibid., p. 217.return

58. Shalev, op. cit., p. 117.return

59. Cohen, op. cit., pp. 249-50.return

60. Shalev, op. cit., p. 110.return

61. Ibid., p. 241.return

62. Ibid., p. 242.return

63. Ibid., p. 244.return

64. Ibid., p. 252.return

65. Haim Hanegbi, Moshe Machover, and Akiva Orr, The ClassNature of Israel (Cambridge, Mass.: Middle East Research and Information Project, 1971),pp. 16-17.return

66. Shalev, op. cit., p. 85.return

67. Ibid., p. 104.return

68. Quoted in Hanegbi, Machover, and Orr, op. cit., pp. 13-14.return

69. Ibid., p. 15.return

70. Joel Beinin,Was The Red Flag Flying There? Marxist Politics andthe Arab-Israeli Conflict in Egypt and Israel, 1948-1965 (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1990), p. 72.return

71. Hanegbi, Machover, and Orr, op. cit., p. 17. The Histadrut was notcontrolled by workers at the shop level, but governed by "parliamentarily" elected party lists.return

72. Shalev, op. cit., p. 194.return

73. Information received through Eric Lee of Labourstart(www.labourstart.org), who has lived in Israel.return

74. www.am1.org.il/eng_platform.html.return

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