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No. 9. | Vienna, 27 February 1903 — 30 Shebat 5663. | 7th Year

Franz Oppenheimer and Zionism.

It is not long since I saw Franz Oppenheimer for the first time. He was expounding his well-known theory before the Vienna Social Science Society. It was a lecture that demanded the most strained attention and, indeed, fairly compelled it. Oppenheimer attacked orthodox Marxism vehemently. Not vehemently in form, but vehemently in merito. He chose the famous theory of surplus value as the starting-point of his attacks, in order finally to set against the industry-centred system of Marx his own agriculture-centred system; for he regards precisely this industry-centred conception as the fundamental error of all economic theory from Adam Smith down to and including Marx. The urban thinkers, to whom the problems of economic life naturally first presented themselves, had, he said, regarded urban economic life as the centre of things, as the sun about which agriculture, if it was considered at all, revolved as a serving satellite. But the relation is exactly the reverse. Agriculture, primary production, is the primary thing; industry, the refining of materials, the secondary. Only from the land can the social question be solved. The sole way of solving it on the basis of the present social order is the agricultural workers' productive co-operative. For those who do not know Oppenheimer's theory it will suffice to repeat his well-known principal thesis. It runs: "Agrarian large landed property is the sole disturber of the peace of the developed exchange economy, the sole obstacle to a society of social justice."

The discussion that followed Oppenheimer's lecture was very lively. At the close, after Oppenheimer's summing-up, I was certain that no one in that circle could refute him, and I rejoiced at it; for those who had come forward against him were quite adroit champions, trained debaters in political economy. I rejoiced not, as it happens, because I saw in Oppenheimer a Philo-Zionist, but because I said to myself: "He is not the first Jew to have achieved great things in this difficult field. What is to be improved upon in Marx is most readily found by the Bernsteins and the Oppenheimers. We may look forward without anxiety to the future, to the resurrection of our people, when the deepest problems are being brought towards their solution by men of our people. Those who point out new paths for the future of mankind will not leave our people in the lurch either." Well, today I know that Oppenheimer at least not only knows Zionism, but comprehends it as an advance in civilisation, is interested in its growth, and is ready to serve it wherever his science enables him to do so. Once before he has made himself heard in the "Welt" on the subject of Jewish colonisation*). The Neudorf in "Altneuland," where David Littwak, the hero of the novel, tells the story of the Irish estate of Ralahine, Oppenheimer too has helped to build, and it would have to come about by strange means indeed if it should not one day show these family features in reality.

This is not nearly so visionary as it appears. Oppenheimer, who in his writings pleads for a rational internal colonisation in Germany, has already raised considerable means in order to carry out his ideas in practice on a large estate. The Deutsche Landbank will likewise make the experiment with the agricultural workers' productive co-operative on a larger scale. We Zionists shall follow these experiments with the keenest interest. The Jewish colonisation societies, which have hitherto been unable to achieve any real success, although rich material means and a select human material stood at their disposal, will, willy-nilly, have to turn his experience to account. Perhaps the time is no longer distant when the great ones of the "Ica," for example, will find that their manner of colonisation was not only mistaken from the very beginning, but also offers the colonists little prospect for the future. I still remember clearly what an outcry the friends of the "Ica" raised when from the Zionist

*) Vide Vol. V, No. 50 ("Jewish Settlements"), No. 51, No. 52; Vol. VI, No. 4.