Summary
In Lev Grinberg’s account, the joint strategy of the Hebrew workers’ parties and the World Zionist Organization under which socialism in Palestine would be built not by class struggle against capitalism but by political control of markets and cooperative institutions coexisting with private capital, with Hebrew Labour as its highest value (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.64).
Details
- The strategy was formulated only after the Second Aliyah parties’ initial strategies — lowering Jewish wages to compete with Arab labor, appeals to Jewish farmers’ ethnic solidarity, and importing cheaper Yemenite Jewish workers — had all failed (Shafir 1989) (PDF p.63-64).
- It was a blend of meticulous colonization planning (note: Franz Oppenheimer’s cooperative planning) and spontaneous colonization practices, merging Eastern European immigrants motivated by Zionist and Socialist ideologies with West European Zionist capital mobilized for victims of East European anti-Semitism; it was supported by the liberal bourgeoisie led by the General Zionists and WZO Chair Chaim Weizmann, who coined “another goat and another acre” (PDF p.64).
- Its vision was a Jewish economy segregated from the Arab economy, lands bought and kept out of the free market by national institutions securing employment exclusively to Jewish workers; the decisive condition was that Zionist money go to endeavors dictated not by profit maximization but by political institutions controlled by Labor Zionist parties (Shapiro 1976) (PDF p.64-65).
- Its first settlement form, the Kibbutz and Moshav, reduced labor costs by internal cooperative organization while land ownership by the Jewish National Fund and the bar on Arab employment with Zionist public funds obviated the need to employ cheap labor — in Grinberg’s words, Labor Zionism sought geographic and economic segregation, displacing Arabs from lands and markets (PDF p.65).
Related pages
Moments of Resistance, Constructivism, Hebrew Labour, Labor Zionism, Histadrut, Lev Grinberg