A hot debate on Zionism in the Socialist Party sees the Party’s Jewish Bureau secretary, Charles Kramarsky, intervene.

‘Zionism and International Socialism’ by Charles Kramarsky from Socialist Call. Vol. 4 No. 36-37. September 17, 1938.

CHICAGO, Illinois. Comrade John Mill’s comments on Zionism and the present situation in Palestine appearing in the CALL have caused Frank Trager to write his letter in the August 27th issue. In it Comrade Trager tries to justify his Zionist sympathies and in the course of his remarks makes, to us in the American Jewish Socialist movement, misinformed and unwarranted statements. It requires a reply.

He asserts, for instance, that the “Forward” is the American voice of the Bund–The Jewish Socialist Party of Poland. Has he forgotten the recent history of our Party; is he fully acquainted with the relative positions of the several political groups in the Jewish working class here? Political babes-in-arms know that the “Forward” has considered it for a long time a matter of principle to fight the Bund tooth and nail; that it is pro-Palestine and pro-Zionist; that it began its bitter conflict in the Socialist Party because, at the 1934 Paris Conference of the L.S.I., our delegates worked and voted with those representing the Bund, leading the left wingers.

Only a few weeks ago the “Forward” stated there could not be unity among American Socialist, because we in the S.P. accept the Bund as our model. When the latter sent its representative, Comrade Erlich, to the U.S. last year, the “Forward” went out of its way to ignore him and its mission. How can Trager say that the “Forward” is the American voice of the Bund?

ERLICH’S LEFTISM

He also casts a slur on the Leftism of the Bund and of Erlich and says that the Bundist leader is supposed to have given American Socialists advice which to Trager was not left enough. The question of the Leftism of Erlich we leave to the judgment of the leaders of International Socialism, who know his position better than Trager does.

Comrade Trager states further that Comrade Mill has falsified history, because the latter, in Trager’s opinion, “concealed the existence of several politically distinct varieties of Zionism,” and dealt with Zionism only generally. In this connection Trager refers to varieties of Socialism, including German Fascism.

What a comparison! No cynic or reactionary has gone so far as to make Naziism a brand of Socialist thought.

ZIONIST VARIATIONS

True it is that the Zionist cause has adherents who classify themselves as Fascists, Democrats and those who call themselves Right and Left Labor Zionists. But all these varieties are Zionists: they believe in Zionism, though they differ in the method of realizing their aim. We, international Socialists, participants in the Jewish Labor movement, are indifferent to the various Zionists methods and groupings. We are Anti-Zionists and are not interested in methods, because Zionism cannot solve the Jewish problem, cannot liberate the Jewish masses throughout the world. It is not Comrade Mill who falsifies history; but is it possible that it may be Comrade Trager? Trager is seemingly convinced that Zionism is the “national liberation” of the Jewish minority. Among all peoples there is national-chauvinist wing which persuades the exploited masses that they, the masses, can find liberty only through nationalism and separatism. Fortunately there is also a Socialist wing, which wants to free the oppressed through Socialism, through internationalism, through the fraternization of the exploited national minorities with the exploited of the dominant national group. This is true of Jews as well.

Zionists, including all factions, assert that Jews have a historic right to Palestine, because their ancestors lived there 2000 years ago. Because of the persecution of Jews in many countries, Zionists continue, Jews should resettle Palestine and establish a National Home. This is Trager’s conception of the “national liberation” of the Jewish masses.

A JOINT STRUGGLE

International Socialists, active in Jewish life, have stated repeatedly that Jews have historic rights in those countries where they have been for centuries and have labored and created national wealth and in turn have been exploited. The liberation of Jews there as a national minority goes hand in hand with the liberation of the working class in those countries.

Comrade Trager is right when he says that many changes have occurred in Zionism for the past 41 years. If the Zionist founders then could dream of a Jewish state, of a Palestinian paradise, our present Zionist leaders surely cannot offer to the Jewish masses a paradise in Palestine under today’s tragic circumstances. He errs, however, if he thinks that we Bundists-International Socialists- have not been affected by movements of the historical clock. Of course, we have been influenced, but in what direction? The clock moved, not in the Zionist direction, but in ours.

The Left Poale Zionists, to which Comrade Trager adheres, like to cover their Zionism with a phrase “an Arabian-Jewish workers state.” Surely they don’t mean an Arabian-Jewish state in the present epoch–the period of fascism and imperialism when world labor is on the defensive. We will be able to talk of a workers state only when workers take the offensive and consummate social revolutions in one or more countries. When this occurs, don’t the Palestinians believe that emigration to Palestine will be unnecessary?

A QUESTION

A Polish Zionist leader, Isaac Greenbaum, recently stated that it is better for Jews to be murdered in Palestine with an Arab knife than to die of hunger in Poland. Is this the “national liberation” Trager together with his Zionist friends offer persecuted Jews, instead of a “cold pogrom” which consists chiefly of an economic boycott of Jews, a hot Arab blade in Palestine is substituted? We understand the position of Mr. Greenbaum, who prefers a dead Jew in the Holy Land instead of a starving militant Jew in Poland. But how can Trager, the Socialist, call it “national liberation”?

For real Jewish Socialists, the Palestine Arab knife is more horrible, more brutal than even the economic boycott in Europe. We diagnose Jewish life by dialectic Marxism. According to our analysis, history has made it possible for the national liberation of persecuted Jewish masses to coincide with the social liberation of the working class.

FOR SOCIALISM

Fascism, reaction and terror, which strike the Jewish minority strike simultaneously workers of the prevailing majority. Thus, the fate of the persecuted Jews throughout the world are closely knit with that of the exploited elements of the countries where Jews live, and has made them associates in the struggle against national oppression, against fascism, and for democracy, for Internationalism, for Socialism.

This is our conception of the national liberation of Jewish people. Who are right: Zionists of all shades of opinion, including Comrade Trager, or we who accept the Bundist position, we International Socialists?

-CHARLES KRAMARSKY, Executive Secretary Jewish Bureau of Chicago, Socialist Party, U.S.A.

Socialist Call began as a weekly newspaper in New York in early 1935 by supporters of the Socialist Party’s Militant Faction Samuel DeWitt, Herbert Zam, Max Delson, Amicus Most, and Haim Kantorovitch, with others to rival the Old Guard’s ‘New Leader’. The Call Education Institute was also inaugurated as a rival to the right’s Rand School. In 1937, the Call as the Militant voice would fall victim to Party turmoil, becoming a paper of the Socialist Party leading bodies as it moved to Chicago in 1938, to Milwaukee in 1939, where it was renamed “The Call” and back to New York in 1940 where it eventually resumed the “Socialist Call” name and was published until 1954.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/socialist-call/call%204-36-37.pdf