Die Welt

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The Workers.

By B. Sopher.

The concept of the nation forms the presupposition of Zionism. To translate this concept into life, to create a lasting foundation for the national unification of the Jews upon their own primordial, ancient historic soil — that is the aim of Zionism. In its tendency, therefore, it embraces the whole Jewish people; but as immediate action it has to do — the conceptual national unity being of course maintained — with what are, as it were, splinters of the people, with lesser or greater portions of the people; with individuals, with groups and classes. Their particular attitude towards Zionism will depend upon two factors, of which the one is of a more spiritual, the other of a more material nature. Both must be regarded in like measure, for both are operative, though in varying degree. Where, however, one considers a particular class in its relation to Zionism, it is only fair to fix the eye first upon that factor to which this class itself attaches the greatest weight. One may indeed dispute whether, in the judging of national and social questions, the economic point of view must always be held the highest; but it is certain that it is regarded by the class of the workers as the most important. Let us then allow it to hold good for the Jewish workers also. Let us look to the class interest; let the worker speak first, then the Jew within him. It will appear that precisely out of a closer examination of the class interest of the Jewish workers, and of the reciprocal relations between them and the general working class, their present position towards Zionism will most simply emerge as well, and how that position would shape itself in the near future if certain conditions be given.

The Jewish workers may be divided into two categories. The one is nationally indifferent; for it the class interest alone is decisive. In joining the general working class, the workers of this category are, as it were, absorbed into it; there remains with them no residue of national needs and national wishes. The numerically far larger category comprises the actual masses of the Jewish workers in Austria, especially in Galicia, and further in Russia, England and America. To characterise these Jewish workers according to their essence and their peculiar quality, one would have to write a separate study. These lines neither will nor can be exhaustive; they would only indicate and suggest. These Jewish workers likewise attach themselves to the general working class, at times in considerable numbers. Thus Kohan represented no fewer than 30,000 Jewish workers of America at the international workers' congress at Brussels. For them, however, besides the class interest, much else is present as well — for example a national interest, for example a religious one. Thus they occupy within the general working class a special position which expresses itself very plainly. Where it is a question of improving the economic condition of the working class, of obtaining higher wages, of reducing the hours of labour — in short, in all questions that fall within the sphere of the class interest — they go together with the other workers. As they suffer, like those others, under the distress of unemployment, so they make common cause with them upon special occasions, above all in strikes. But beyond the material questions of existence there is very much that divides them from those others. They are sociable enough to come together with the other workers for a short while where need and interest demand it, but they are not homogeneous enough to unite themselves socially with them. National and cultural differences hinder them in this. Whoever knows the Jewish workers knows that in the camp of the general working class they cannot rid themselves of a certain feeling of strangeness. At the boundary of the economic questions critical points soon appear, and there are revealed the deep antagonisms which are not conjured up by ill will, but are rather conditioned by historical forces that are operative even to-day. What avails it if, in order to proceed summarily, one ascribes this separatism of the Jewish workers to a thousand-year-old atavism. The disclosure of the cause, be it acceptable or not, does not make the fact vanish. And it is a fact that these Jewish workers react very strongly, nationally and religiously; that for them religion is no "private matter," as which the labour programme