Dov Ber‐Borochov: a marxist‐zionist ideologist

Abstract

The Socialist-Zionist movement played a key role in Zionist colonization of Palestine. Its ideology became the most influential and persistent in the Jewish community in Palestine (the Yishuv) before the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Socialist-Zionism has been associated with most of the pioneer and colonizing efforts, institutions and procedures since the second Zionist immigration wave (hadAliya ha-Shnia) to Palestine in 1904-05, and became the chief force in the nation-building of Israel. It dominated Zionist immigration, consolidated the nationalist movement, and diffused the principles of an egalitarian social system into the Yishuv in Palestine. All this was accomplished by accumulating the social, economic and military functions in two all-encompassing political, economic and social structures, the Histadrut-the General Confederation of Labour, and the Hityashvut -the system of settlement.' The ideology of Socialist-Zionism supported the organizational and institutional structures of the Socialist-Zionist colonists and thus spread among the Jewish community in Palestine. Despite resistance from non-socialist groups and individuals, this ideology persisted and was incorporated into social and economic institutions, behaviour and procedures. Socialist-Zionist ideology was not a unitary, totalitarian, and single ideology. It was iconoclastic-as all ideologies are. It blended messianic with progranumist tendencies and integrated a variety of trends, doctrines and formulations of socialism and Zionism. It contained elements of the Russian Social Democratic variety of Marxism, Bundism, the Austrian and German Social Democracy, Russian Anarchism, Bolshevism and even of utopian pre-Marxian socialism. Its Zionist elements can be traced from the utopian Zionism of Moses Hess and Theodor Herzel to the practical Zionism of Sokolow and Weizmann. Thus, the Socialist-Zionist movement had many forerunners, as well as philosophers and ideologists. This essay examines some of the doctrines of one of the early SocialistZionist ideologists, Dov Ber-Borochov, and particularly focuses on Borochov's attempt to integrate Marxism and nationalism. This essay is no attempt to examine the philosophical and political writings and contributions of Borochov. It focuses only on Borochov's interesting attempt to find a Zionist-Marxist formula.2