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Mina Grauer
ANARCHO-NATIONALISM: ANARCHIST
ATTITUDES TOWARDS JEWISH
NATIONALISM AND ZIONISM
Modern Judaism 14 (1994): 1-19 ? 1994 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
2 Mina Grauer
II
not possess a state of its own, it does not follow that it should neglect
its national heritage. On the contrary, the development of language
and culture by nations should be regarded as an important contri-
bution to the overall progress of humanity. Thus, Kropotkin urged
the Jews to develop their culture and national folklore, similarly to
other nations devoid of country, such as the Ukrainians, the Bohe-
mians and the Georgians. This could take place in their countries of
residence, without resorting to geographical displacement." Accord-
ing to Kropotkin, if the political current of Zionism would realize this
task as its target, it would stop being Zionism and Palestinism, and
would then become a genuine national ideal suitable for the purposes
of the Jews.
III
IV
The solution Bernard Lazare came up with was for the Jews to
cease their attempt to assimilate within other nations, and instead
develop their own sense of nationalism. The poor Jewish masses of
Eastern Europe and North Africa should be taught to retain their
Judaism. They should understand that Emancipation would not solve
their problems, as it did not solve the problems of the rich, assimilated
Jews of Western Europe. Emancipation could never be a solution for
the Jews, for although it provides them with a legal status within their
place of residence, this status is neither effective nor protective as
long as racism and antisemitism exist. Emancipation, therefore, is only
a stage on the way to nationhood, but never its final target,24 and Jews
will be able to embark on the road to nationhood only when they will
liberate themslves from its false promises.
Bernard Lazare viewed the nation as a unity of sentiments,
thoughts, and morals, not as a unity of blood. Whenever a certain
number of individuals possess a common past, common traditions
and ideas, they belong to the same group, they form a nation.25Jews
are a nation because their feeling of unity is derived from a commonly
shared past. Their history involves many shared traditions and cus-
toms, not all of which have survived, but which nevertheless have left
their marks upon the Jews, endowing them with a commonality of
habits and a similar frame of mind. Moreover, the Jews also qualify
as a nation in Lazare's eyes, because they possess both a common
language and a common territory. Unlike Gustav Landauer, for whom
a folk was a unity divorced of material realities, such as territory and
language, Bernard Lazare was the only Jewish anarchist who main-
tained that Jews do, in fact, possess these two material attributes,
commonly thought to define all other national entities. The common
territory, according to Lazare, was the Jewish Ghetto, which although
initially erected for purposes of segregation and oppression, in reality
became a state within a state where Jews lived according to their own
laws, traditions and unique social and moral codes. Similarly, Lazare
categorized Hebrew as the common language of the Jews, a language
in which they created a massive body of works of literature, philos-
ophy, and theology.26 Furthermore, Bernard Lazare noted that Jews
also share common physical traits. Those were the result of a process
whereby the spiritual type of the Jew emerged as a distinct mor-
phological phenotype.27 Thus, although Lazare rejected the "pure
blood" arguments of race theorists, he himself endowed the Jewish
people with the main attributes so dear to advocates of racism, a special
Jewish phenotype which is distinguishable from all other people.
The most important characteristic of a nation, according to Ber-
nard Lazare, was its national solidarity, which survives long after all
other national traits have been discarded. Lazare's version of national
Anarchists and Jewish Nationalism 13
Dr. Hillel Solotaroff was born in Russia and emigrated to the United
States in 1882. An active member of the first Jewish anarchist group
in the United States, "Pioneers of Liberty," and a gifted journalist and
propagandist, Solotaroff also studied medicine and wrote plays in the
Yiddish language. Like Gustav Landauer and Bernard Lazare, So-
lotaroff, too, was awakened from his cosmopolitan Weltanschauungby
an act of atrocity directed against the Jewish people, the Kishinev
pogrom of 1903. In an article that he wrote that year, entitled "Erneste
Fragen" (Serious Questions), Solotaroff confronted anarchist beliefs
and caused an ideological schism within the Jewish anarchist move-
ment. In the article he points out that one has to be blind not to realize
that the force of nationalism is spreading all over the world. It is
saddening, he continues, to see the powerful aspirations of nation-
alism threatening to destroy the beautiful ideas of solidarity and broth-
erhood advanced by the French Revolution. However, it looks as if
the exalted ideas of the revolution are no match for the driving forces
behind nationalism. It is even more distressing for Solotaroff that the
ideas preached by socialism and anarchism could not stop the ever
intensifying outbursts of antisemitism. Assimilation did not signifi-
cantly alter the situation either, for even if Jews suppress and deny
their Jewishness they will forever remain Jews in the eyes of their
neighbors.31 Solotaroff claims that the time has come for Jewish an-
archists to decide what stand to adopt in order to confront the forces
of nationalism, and how to merge the noble ideas of anarchist freedom
and communal life with the inescapable realization that only a Jewish
national entity could rescue the Jewish people from physical annihi-
lation.
The anarchist "Shulhan Aruch" maintains that the division of
mankind into different nations is unnatural and destructive. There-
fore, anarchists should work to achieve international unity in complete
disregard of racial or national variability. This argument, claims So-
lotaroff, is in need of a thorough revision.32 The ideas of universalism
and a united civilization are unrealistic, for this world is characterized
by both within-group uniformity and between-group variability. The
world is peopled by individuals, each of whom follows his own path
and conducts himself in an egotistical manner. The similarity among
various communities that share the same territory and are subject to
similar natural conditions create a "further grouping of people, a
natural wholeness,... a folk unity, a nationality."33Mankind is com-
posed of many such nations, big and small, which have created mark-
edly different societal systems and have pursued unique national lives.
Thus, a nationless mankind is an unrealistic proposition. Solotaroff
Anarchists and Jewish Nationalism 15
VI
and Rocker, Peter Kropotkin did not view nationalism and interna-
tionalism as conflicting theses. Rather, he regarded them as comple-
menting each other. He maintained that true harmony between
nations would be attained when each nation had the chance to develop
its faculties freely and separately. The full development of each nation
will secure the comfortable existence of all humanity and will see to
its progressive development. Kropotkin emphasized the importance
of the individual for the achievement of internationalism, as true
harmony between nations and national freedom would only be pos-
sible as a result of the free development of the individual within his
nation.
Giuseppe Mazzini once remarked that the only way of belonging
to humanity is to belong to a specific nation. In contrast to Mazzini,
Landauer maintained that an individual can entertain commitments
not only to one nation but to various national groups, without one
commitment necessarily coming into conflict with others. As Landauer
regarded nationhood as a form of spiritual fulfillment rather than a
concrete expression of national feelings, and as his idea of a nation
did not presuppose the need for a political and territorial framework,
Landauer's synthesis between nationalism and internationalism could
still fit into the framework of anarchist dogma. The first anarchists
to challenge the concept of internationalism and to demand not only
a spiritual but also a concrete, territorial basis for the Jewish nation
were Bernard Lazare and Hillel Solotaroff. As a consequence, they
were often subjected to severe criticism from their fellow anarchists,
some of whom maintained that those who support a separate solution
to the Jewish national problem should stop calling themselves an-
archists.38And indeed, an apologetic note can occasionally be detected
in Lazare's and Solotaroffs writings, as if they felt the need to prove
that despite their nationalistic sentiments they did not in fact renounce
their basic anarchist convictions. Thus, in their schemes for a future
world order, they tried to combine the two seemingly incompatible
theses of nationalism and anarchist internationalism. Hillel Solotaroff,
whose Serious Questions wrecked the ideological unity of the Jewish
anarchist movement in the United States, advocated an anarcho-com-
munist world in which anarcho-communist principles were applied to
societal structures larger than intended by the originator of anarcho-
communism. Nations would not disappear, but would live harmoni-
ously together according to Anarcho-communist principles applied to
an international scale. Solotaroff, like Bernard Lazare, regarded the
unification of all mankind as an unnatural process designed to rob
humanity of its diversity. They believed that nationalism can coexist
with internationalism, viewing the latter not as the destruction of
nations, but as a state of affairs where autonomous nations are linked
18 Mina Grauer
NOTES
1. Jacob L. Talmon, The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution
(London, 1981), p. 184.
2. Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem (New York, 1958), p. 85.
3. Karl Marx, "ZurJudenfrage," Karl Marx FriedrichEngels Werke(Berlin,
1961), pp. 347-377.
4. ListokNarodni Voli, July 22, 1881.
5. G. P. Maximoff (ed.), The Political Philosophyof Bakunin: ScientificAn-
archism(London, 1953), p. 326.
6. Georges Lichtheim, "Socialism and the Jews", Dissent (July-August
1968) p. 322. See also Edmund Silberner, "Two Studies on Modern anti-
semitism," HistoriaJudaica (October 1952), pp. 93-118.
7. ListkiKhleb i Volia, June 7, 1907.
8. It is possible that Kropotkin referred to the efforts of the Jewish
philanthropist, Baron Maurice de Hirsh, who attempted to establish Jewish
farming colonies in Argentina.
9. ListkiKhleb i Volia, June 7, 1907.
10. Peter Kropotkin, "Noch Vegen Anarchizm un Tsionizm", Kropotkin-
Zamelbuch(Buenos Aires, 1947), p. 219.
11. Ibid, p. 220.
12. Gustav Landauer to Immanuel von Bodeman, October 18, 1912. In
Gustav Landauer, Ketavim Umichtavim 1900-1919, (Kibbutz Merkhavia,
1982), pp. 230-231.
13. Martin Buber (ed.), Landauer, der WerdendeMensch:AufsdtzeUberLeben
und Schrifttum(Potsdam, 1921), p. 107.
14. Martin Buber (ed.), GustavLandauer: Sein Lebensgangin Briefen (Frank-
furt am Main, 1929).
15. M. Mratshani, "In Vayte Vegen tsu Vayte Tsiln," Freie ArbeiterStimme,
March 31, 1944.
16. Rudolf Rocker, Nationalism and Culture (Los Angeles, 1937), pp. 200-
201.
17. Gustav Landauer, "Judentum und Sozialismus", Die Arbeit,June 1920,
pp. 50-51.
Anarchists and Jewish Nationalism 19