Jewish Anarcho-Nationalism

The journal article Anarcho-Nationalism: Anarchist Attitudes towards Jewish Nationalism and Zionism provides a fascinating overview of this mostly forgotten theo-political alternative of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Some background:

Many Jewish radicals, socialists as well as anarchists, initially subscribed to the universalist ideas common to radical thought, ideas that [Moses] Hess himself used to advocate before his nationalist conversion in Rome and Jerusalem. In The Holy History of Mankind (1837), Hess maintained that Jews have a future in the modern world only as individuals, and that a solution to the Jewish problem would only emerge via a process of assimilation and integration into the universal socialist revolutionary movement. But while it took Hess a relatively short time to sober up to the reality, whereby national affinities were deeper and stronger than class solidarity, most Jewish radicals continued to believe for a long time that the social revolution, which would solve the problems of the masses throughout the world, would also solve the specific problems of the Jews in a manner divorced from a national context. In fact, many Jewish radicals accepted Marx's rather hostile dissection of the Jewish question in his "Zur Judenfrage" (1844), in which he maintained that the social emancipations of Jews is equal to the emancipation of society from Judaism, concluding that Jews, whom he defined as a "caste," would ultimately disappear with the downfall of capitalism.

It is worth emphasizing the fundamentally anti-Jewish attitude of Marx and his nominally Jewish descendants (i.e. a disproportionate number of Bolsheviks). Anti-Semites seem to think of the Russian revolution as a Jewish plot, when it was ultimately a revolution against Judaism (as well as all other nations and religions).

A few Jewish anarchists, however, did maintain an interesting compromise between the universal and the particular, social change and religious integrity. For instance, Gustav Landauer:

Landauer regarded the state as an artificial, fortuitous political structure born out of the accidents of history, rather than the outcome of a common natural experience of a given people. . . . In fact, both the folk and the state were illusions, according to Landauer, but while the former was a life-giving organismic illusion which encouraged self-determination and promoted activism, the latter was an illusion leading to enslavement and perpetual passivity. In order to make a distinction between these two non-entities - one good, the other bad - Landauer invented one more non-entity. The new introduction was the "Spirit" (Geist). According to Landauer, the state lacks Spirit, whereas the folk possesses a disembodied "Spirit," through which each individual is tied to the rest of the community.

Landauer perceives the folk as a spiritual and cultural unit, not as a political or economic structure, and definitely not as a biological entity determined by fixed and unalterable blood ties. In contrast to Bakunin, who urged anarchists to abandon the false principle of nationality in favor of universalism, Landauer viewed one's nationality as an essential part of one's existence. Moreover, according to Landauer, an individual can entertain many loyalties; in effect belonging to various folks. In a letter to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, Landauer described himself as "first an animal, then a man, then a Jew, then a German, then a South German, and finally that special I."

Landauer's understanding of the state-nation-geist distinction is relevant today. We must remember that Israel is a state (the political entity founded after the Second World War), a nation (the Jewish people above and beyond the state) but also a geist (the Jewish spirit encompassing history, religion and culture). Zionists and anti-Zionists alike tend to conflate the three. The first loyalty of a member of any people should be to its geist, not to the state or even to the nation.

It is possible for both a state and a nation to betray its geist. Consider Germany during the Nazi era. Many German Jews (Heine, Mendelssohn, Rathenau) were truer to the German geist than the German state and nation of the time. Von Stauffenberg and the other would-be assassins of Hitler also put their loyalty to the German geist above the Nazi state and Nazi-enthused nation.

The state of Israel is not equivalent to Nazi Germany, and those who make that argument tend to oppose not just the state of Israel, but Israel as nation and geist. Arabs can be Israeli citizens and Gentiles can convert to the Jewish nation; thus neither the state of Israel nor the nation of Israel is "a biological entity determined by fixed and unalterable blood ties." That is not to say most Jews don't share blood ties, but that the Jewish geist transcends mere biology.

That being said, we should be able to criticize the state of Israel and even the nation of Israel for not living up to the Israelite geist our ancestors bequeathed to us.

. . . for Landauer, socialist universalism was neither an attempt to sidestep the problem of antisemitism nor an escape into a vision of humanity where national differences would disappear, as it as for many other radical Jews. On the contrary, Landauer rejected the assimilationist tendencies of most German Jews, insisting that Jews and Germans were separate folks, both endowed with the potential to make unique contributions to mankind's heritage. But, it was imperative that the potential special contributions of the Jews should not be channelled into the formation of yet another state.

The Jewish folk had an advantage over other nationalities because it was not confined within the boundaries of any given state. This historical fact should not be considered as a disadvantage, but rather as an advantage, for it liberates the Jews from the yoke of conformity; it enables them to remain a folk while at the same time strive not only for national self-betterment but also for an ideal future of universal unity encompassing all of humanity's components. According to Landauer, the territorial deprivation of the Jews made them distinct from all other nations in the sense that they were not addicted to the cult of the state. Therefore, the Jews were entrusted with a historical mission which was destined to become the driving force behind the construction of socialist communities divorced from any connection to the state. Thus, while for other nations socialism meant a combination of party and politics, for the Jews socialism was a unison between practice and spirituality.

Landauer provides answers to many of the issues that I struggle with. For instance: how to reconcile the universal (humanity) and the particular (Judaism). The answer is that the universal is composed of a plurality of particulars. Thus the Jew should seek to serve humanity from the particularity of his Judaism, as the German should from his Germanism, and so on. The alternative is global homogeneity and the deadening of difference.

Another issue I struggle with: how to reconcile the differences between Israel (Hebrew for "He has striven with God") as ideal, state and people. The nation-state-geist distinction is one way of doing so. Before loyalty to the Jewish state or nation there must be loyalty to the Jewish geist, which in turn is a part (a unique, if not chosen, part) of the human geist.

Nietzsche called the state the new idol. Jews are traditionally a nation of iconoclasts. Sadly, however, "the cult of the state" has taken ahold of much of the Jewish nation. I am not an anti-Zionist, but I would not call myself a Zionist either; because Zionism too often becomes a form of statolatry. I support the existence of the Jewish state, but I am opposed to blind equivalence between the Jewish state and the Jewish nation, much less the Jewish geist.

Landauer does not have all the answers. Certainly the moral calamities wrought in the name of socialism, and the abject failure of any sustainable anarchist community to emerge should cause us to question his political assumptions. Nonetheless, from his vision of Jewish anarcho-nationalism valuable lessons can be drawn. Skepticism toward the cult of the state and the valuing of multinational pluralism over anti-national universalism should be integral to Jewish theo-politics.