Page 25 - Issue 20

but sprang quite naturally from an inbuilt set of
assumptions which the Jews carried with them.

Once again, a lack of total success does not prove
failure or the inability to achieve more in the future.
Israel today is decidedly not a shining example of
socialism in practice (which country is?) but it has
developed enough socialistic forms to indicate the
potential. At any rate, so long as the nation-
state/capitalist system dominates the international
scene no country can become truly socialistic. To
achieve this will require a breakdown of state
boundaries with a devolution of power towards
smaller social and economic units which are then
federated in broad regional groupings. Socialism
and the modem nation-state are contradictions in
terms, but socialism on the basis local autonomy
and regional co-operation is quite feasible. Under
the latter conditions the Jews, like other national
groupings, will have the means of expressing both
their national identity and their implicit socialistic
propensities: indeed, they can even be trailblazers,
as in some respects they have already been -
either as individuals (the prominence of Jews in
socialist thinking is no coincidence) or as a nation
(Histadrut, kibbutz etc.).

Socialist Pluralism

There is another aspect in whim Jewish
nationalism and socialism coincide. Socialism, as
said, is about human freedom, which means the
fullest realisation of one's personal and social
potential. To realise one's potential is to engage