We want freedom for all: a Jewish anarchist statement - Libertarian Workers Group

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We
Want Freedom for All

A
Jewish Anarchist Statement

Published by the Libertarian Worker’s Group

1. FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT

Back in 1889, amidst the squalor and destitution of New York’s
Lower East Side, a group of young Jewish workers created the first
anarchist journal to be published in Yiddish, Di Varhayt (The
Truth). After 20 issues, the
paper was reconstituted as ­Di Frei Arbeiter Shtimme
(The Free Voice of Labor),
and for the next 86 years it served as one of the major forums of
anarchist thought in the Yiddish-speaking world as well as a leading
journal of the Jewish labor movement and Yiddish subculture.

It[sic] its heyday, Di Frei
Arbeiter Shtimme was the voice of a movement composed of
thousands of Jewish working women and men who were not only fighting
the bosses in the sweatshops but also combatting domination and
exploitation wherever encountered: in their unions, in their
communities, in their homes and schools. They defied the puritanical
conventions of their day by advocating such things as noncoercive
open education, sexual freedom and equality, free love, birth
control, atheism, resistance to conscription, and direct action
against the capitalist system, militarism, and the State.

With the closing of Di Frei
Arbeiter Shtimme in 1978 came the end of an era. Long in decline,
the closing of the paper and the death of the movement behind it
illuminated several shifts which have become apparent since the
1930’s. The vibrant Yiddish culture of the Jewish immigrant working
class – its language, literature, music, theatre, political and
social institutions – has all but disappeared from contemporary
Jewish life, jettisoned like so much excess baggage in the dirve for
acceptance and upward mobility in American society.

The Jewish communities and Jewish
youth of today identify more with American and/or Israeli culture and
political institutions than they do with Yiddishkeit and the
revolutionary social aspirations and struggles of the bygone
immigrant days. The older Jewish socialists and anarchists, who
found[sic] and fought in the “Jewish” unions, have generally
moved to the right as the unions themselves have become increasingly
undemocratic and bureaucratized.

Yet still there are Jewish
anarchists.

We identify ourselves as Jews
because our primary cultural affiliation is with the Jewish people.
Our “Jewishness” rests on cultural and political traditions as
well as an awareness of anti-Semitism here and abroad, which has
almost forced community upon us. While we reject nationalism and
theocracy as well as the authoritarian and sexist aspects of Jewish
life, we find in our past a tradition of free thought and militance
which must be constantly revolutionized and revitalized.

We are anarchists because we align
ourselves with that movement and theory which poses the most radical
challenge to the state and capitalism: which proposes a society based
on the free asociation and cooperation of individuals for mutual aid
and the production of real social wealth, without bosses or classes
of any sort. In other words, a society in which people control their
own lives and not each other. Our anarchism is class-based because we
are workers and it therefore reflects our day-to-day concerns and
struggles for human dignity, environmental and occupational safety,
and democratic self-management of our workplaces, communities and
schools.

Like many young Jews growing up in
the 60’s and 70’s, we were led by our concerns as Jews and as
people committed to social justice to seek out progressive Jewish
alternatives to the reactionary institutions that dominate Jewish
life in America. Most of us participated in the various movements of
the Jewish left, such as the Jewish Socialist Youth Bund, the Radical
Zionist Alliance, the Jewish Liberation Project, and the
leftist-Zionist youth movements. While we encountered good ideas and
good intentions in all of these groups, we were not satisfied with
their overall perspectives on contemporary social struggle and Jewish
life in America.

The left, in general, did not seem
to be much more of a viable alternative, with its adherence to
sectarianism, statism, and political authoritarianism. We turned to
the libertarian left and found in it a revolutionary movement and
analysis which corresponded with our own views. Returning to the
heritage of the Jewish labor movement, we found a strong libertarian
current within the tradition of Jewish working-class radicalism,
which despite its unjustified obscurity is still viable today-namely,
anarchism.

From our perspective as Jewish
anarchists, we recognize that the liberation of the Jewish people is
inextricably bound up with that of humanity as a whole. This
liberation can only happen by means of the revolutionary
reorganization of society.

We believe that every oppressed
group must take control of its own destiny and must take control of
its own destiny and liberate itself. This, however, cannot be
achieved in a vacuum, isolated from the struggles of the rest of
oppressed humanity. True liberation will only be achieved in the
context of a universal social struggle for a new world order.

Therefore, while participating in
the Jewush[sic] struggle for survival and autonomy, we actively
support and take part in the following:

1. Opposition to all forms of
   discrimination and oppression that bar people from fully
   participating in society and realizing their total potential as free
   individuals because of their age, sex, race, nationality, sexual
   orientation, economic/social class, or disability.

2. Solidarity with working and
   oppressed peoples’ struggles throughout the world.

3. The building of a
   revolutionary, democratic labor movement through autonomous,
   rank-and-file self-activity.

4. Opposition to those forms and
   uses of technology which pose serious threats to public health and
   safety as well as the overall negligent abuse and destruction of our
   environment.

5. Opposition to war, militarism,
   conscription, and the arms race.

6. Autonomous movements such as
   community organizations, self-help networks, and alternative
   educational, media, and cultural projects that seek to create
   self-managing, democratic non-hieracrhical alternatives to the State
   and the established order.

In all our endeavors, we oppose
party building, political manipulation, and attempts to centralize
activity and communication. Only through militant self-activity,
self-organization, and self-direction can a revolutionary democratic
movement develop. Consequently, we reject utilizing the political and
legislative machinery of the State as a vehicle for fundamental
social change. We advocate, instead, popular forms of democratically
coordinated direct attention such as general strikes, mass
occupations, boycotts, etc., to directly confront the system and,
ultimately, to reclaim control of our lives and our world.

II. STATE AND CULTURE

We live in a society that embodies
the principle of authority, that is, the rule of one individual or
group over another. In such a society, the culture/religion/ideology
of the group in power necessarily becomes that of the State. The
options for the powerless minority groups are, at best, social
disadvantage, pressure to assimilate or conformity; at worst,
repression and genocide.

This has been the situation of the
Jewish people for the past 2,000 years. The Jewish people have always
constituted a distinct cultural/religious entity. Their inability
and/or unwillingness to assimilate has ofren[sic] made the Jews easy
scapegoats to diver[sic] the discontent and frustration of the
people.

It can be argued that in liberal
democracies, the Jew is a free citizen with full equality. For the
most part, this is true for the Jew as an individual, but for the Jew
as a member of a distinct culture and ethnic group seeking to
preserve its identity, the situation is entirely different. Of course
there is not brutal repression or genocide against Jews here in the
U.S. at the present. Nontheless, the Jews, like every other ethnic
group or national minority, must engage in a desperate fight against
assimilation and communal disintegration.

The enemy in any oppressed people’s
struggle for survival and autonomy is never another people, even
though it may be their culture which is forced upon us and in their
name that we are oppressed. It is the very nature and structure of
class society that creates the objective conditions for the emergence
of anti-Semitism and all other forms of intolerance and oppression.
So long as society institutionalizes violence, exploitation and
domination; so long as people are forced to sell themselves and
compete with each other in order to survive; so long as human life is
considered expendable for the sake of power and profit, there will be
oppressed and oppressors.

Ultimately, there can be but one
enemy in any struggle for liberation-every social system based on
social stratification, wage-labor and the institution of the State.
The State is the hierarchical apparatus through which the ruling
class protects its power and its interests, both domestic and
foreign. It is an integral part of any social and economic system in
which a ruling class dominates and exploits the rest of society. The
authority of the State ultimately rests solely on coercion and armed
force. It legitimizes its existence by invoking nationalism, religion
and ideology.

But while coercion and armed force
are the bulwark of the State, conformity is its foundation. With
regards to national culture, we can see that cultural hegemony is
part and parcel of social and political control. Throughout history
it has always been achieved by replacing thousands of years of
popular creativity and folk process with a bland, homogenized
pseudo-culture organized around patriotism, the real purpose of which
is to promote a false sense of unity of interests with the State and
the ruling class.

There are, however, many instances
when the State seems to promote ethnic diversity by encouraging
minority groups to stage cultural events, or even funds ethnic
cultural and educational programs and institutions. Needless to say,
these are merely token gestures. The tactics can change but the goal
will always remain the same – cultural hegemony, either through
assimilation or by co-opting and neutralizing the minority.

The State is aided in its efforts by
a handful of individuals who have “made it” and are beholden to
the system for their power and privileges. These “respected
community leaders” cynically use the traditions and institutions of
their community to impse[sic] ideology of the ruling class and,
consequently, assimilation on their own people.

The Jewish establishment is no
exception. To be sure, it is not interested in creating a vibrant
Jewish culture. The primary concern of the Jewish establishment is
strengthening those organizations and institutions which enable them
to maintain control over the Jewish community and share in political
power in general.

III. RESTRUCTURING THE JEWISH
COMMUNITY

Just as society as a whole must be
restructured, so too the Jewish community must be restructured. The
control of Jewish communal life can no longer be the private domain
of the self-appointed, self-perpetuating “macherarchy,” i.e., the
established Jewish organizations and their leadership. Administration
of communal resources- cultural, educational and social institutions,
communal funds, etc. – must be decentralized and democratic. New
forms of communal organization must be developed that will enable
every member of the community to fully participate in all aspects of
Jewish communal life, to share in every level of decision-making, and
to have equal access to all communal resources.

The philanthropic apparatus that
exists ostensibly to facilitate efficient fund-raising and
distribution for communal needs has become so bureaucratizes and
centralized that it does not serve the community and, in fact, has
become effectively divorced from the realities and needs of the
present-day Jewish community. Being organs of a Jewish establishment
rather than voluntary associations of the Jewish community as a
whole, the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, United Jewish Appeal,
etc., exist only to centralize control of communal resources into the
hands of their leadership, allowing them to impose their own agenda
on Jewish communal life. The consequence is that Jewish social
services are shamefully inadequate, inefficient, and dehumanizing in
their dealings with both recipients and employees. The real needs of
the community are often forced to take a back seat to the
self-aggrandizing projects of the Jewish establishment, such as
building luxurious synagogues and over-priced hospitals that the
great bulk of the community will never set foot in.

It is clear that what is needed in
the community is a return to the Jewish tradition of mutual aid and
responsibility. The immigrant Jewish working class managed to “take
care of its own” long before the days of large scale government
social services, through an extensive network of self-help
organizations such as landsmanshaft societies and Arbeiter Ring
(Workmen’s Circle), etc. We should draw upon their example by
dismantling the current philanthropic bureaucracy and replacing it
with a decentralized network of community based self-help
organisations that would include everything from schools for the
young to senior citizens centers, administered by the members and
supported by the community. Through direct participation and direct
democracy, all members of the community can derive a sense of
individual dignity and worth, as well as a sense of empowerment,
which is a crucial first step in the struggle for the elimination of
authority and domination in society as a whole.

However, before we can even begin to
restructure and revitalize the Jewish community we must develop a new
understanding of it. Our community today is not a monolithic,
homogenous entity, but rather an amalgam of amny[sic] different
ethnic, political and even religious groups. We have not only Jews of
Eastern European background, but also Jews from other parts of
Europe, from Israel, South America, North Africa, the Middle East and
Asia, all with our own languages, traditions and customs. Our
religious beliefs run the gamut from atheist to orthodox and our
political beliefs from Anarchist to Zionist. Our community contains a
wide variety of lifestyles and sexual preferences, both traditional
and non-traditional.

What binds us together is a personal
affirmation of our membership in the Jewish people, a sense of
personal affinity with a heritage and a culture, no matter how we may
choose to express it. Recognizing this we must reject all attempts to
impose one groups’ culture, language or beliefs on the rest of the
Jewish community and strive toward a pluralistic community of
communities. Only by broadening our perspectives and expanding on the
values of social justice, mutual aid and responsibility, direct
democracy and free discussion and debate inherent in Jewish culture,
can we evolve as a free people in every sense of the term.

IV. RELIGION AND CULTURE

Throughout the history of the Jewish
anarchist movement, we Jewish anarchists have been accused of trying
to destroy Judaism and promote assimilation, due to our outspoken
atheism and secular orientation. What we have consistently opposed
and continue to oppose in Judaism are not folk customs and traditions
but rather the theocratic conventions that uphold patriarchal sexism,
adherence to authority as well as the mystification and
simplification of life and the universe which is inherent in all
theologies.

We utterly reject the current debate
on “Who is a Jew,” particularly when it is utilized by the
Israeli government and religious authorities to determine government
policy on immigration, citizenship, etc. As we stated before, Jewish
identity is a matter of personal choice and affirmation. We oppose
any attempts by any authority outside that of a personal conscience
to dictate the meaning of Jewishness. Similarly, we are determined to
resist every incursion into our private lives by any and all
religious authorities, especially when they threaten the rights of
every individual to control their bodies as well as their life style.

We support the efforts of many Jews
today seeking to develop a creative Jewish lifestyle outside the
narrow framework of establishment Judaism. One encouraging example of
this is the Havurah movement. The Havurah or “fellowship” is a
small, autonomous circle of friends and neighbors that get together
to create their own approach to the study and practice of Judaism
based on their own beliefs and lifestyles. Aside from the Havurah
movement there are many other examples of emerging alternatives, such
as cooperatives and collectives of various sorts, as well as new
educational, cultural and media projects, all of which strive to
reclaim Jewish heritage and culture and instill positice[sic] social
consciousness in contemporary Jewish life. Despite the fact that this
progressive trend is still small and outside the mainstream of the
community, we hope that these efforts will come to capture the
imagination of the Jewish community as a whole and become the basis
of a new sense of Jewish existence and community.

V. ZIONISM

The Jewish anarchist movement has
consistently opposed political Zionism since the inception of that
movement in 1897. We reject the notion that Zionism is the liberation
movement of the Jewish people. Zionism, like all other nationalist
political movements has as its goal the establishment and
perpetuation of a nation-state. As we stated earlier, the
nation-state is, by the very nature of its hierarchic structure, the
primary instrument of class rule, militarism and imperialism. As we
shall show, the State of Israel is no exception to this rule.

Since the beginning of the 19^th
century modern political nationalism has been the major force that
has shaped the world political order. Its organization form, the
centralized nation-state, has become the mode of political
organization throughout the world. When oppressed peoples have
liberated themselves from the bonds of colonialism and foreign
domination they established a nation-state through which to exercise
their national sovereignty. Yet a close look at history and the
current world situation shows that “national liberation” through
the means of the nation-state is just a matter of replacing foreign
bosses with native ones, and that in the current era that national
sovereignty and self-determination are myths.

The new nation-states created by
triumphant nationalist movements have invariably wound up as the
product and property of the national bourgeoisie, who usually made up
the leadership of those movements anyway. Since the triumph of the
Bolshevik counter-revolution in Russia an increasingly common
phenomenon is the rise to power of a bureaucratic “new class”
composed of functionaries, technocrats and those intellectuals who
place themselves at the service of the new “people’s” state. In
either case the result has been the continuation of class rule and
the brutal repression of those who fought to create the new state
under the banner of “freedom” and found only continued slavery.

In most cases, the new nation-states
have based their rule on previously existing relations of power and
domination and which they quickly incorporate into the new social
structure. Even the so-called socialist revolutions of the 20^th
century have wound up with the “socialist” state taking up many
of the most hated aspects of the old regime. Israel is somewhat
different in this respect since its social structure is the result of
the Zionist effort to superimpose a Jewish nation-state with a Jewish
majority on a country where the overwhelming population was
Palestinian-Arab. In order to accomplish this the Zionist movement
had to create exclusively Jewish political, social and economic
structure based solely on the labor of the Jewish immigrants and not
the resident Arab workforce. Without going into detail on how this
was accomplished, the result was the transformation of the
Palestinian majority into a marginal minority in their own country,
excluded for the most part from the mainstream of Israeli social,
political and economic life.

But there is far more to the
emergence of Israel as a nation-state than the conflict between Jews
and Palestinians. For Israel, like any other nation-state in the
modern era, is merely a unit in the international pecking order of
competing nations, with superpowers on top. The end of World War II
left the world divided into two camps, East and West, with Russia and
the United States at the head of each.

At the same time a rising Third
World nationalism played a major role in the dissolution of the old
empires and in the establishment of new states. These new
nation-states followed the pattern we stated earlier, where a new
ruling class simply replaced the old imperialist regime. Israel was
no exception to the rule. In its case, the ruling elite was the
Ashkenazic Zionist establishment.

At the same time, the
self-determinationsought[sic] by the anti-colonialist movements
turned out to be a sham, as the newly independent nations, as well as
the already existing states, were drawn either into one camp or
another. Any who attempted to resist were crushed outright or sooner
or later co-opted. We can only look at the history of the Non-Aligned
Movement to see this process at work. Israel, having been born in
1948, was inevitably subject to this dynamic and soon drawn into the
Western camp. Today it has become a major vehicle for American
foreign policy in the Middle East. So much for the Zionist dream of
national independence for the Jews.

There are some who contend, as the
Zionist movement does, that no matter what Israel’s position in the
Western camp, it remains the primary means of Jewish liberation. Yet
Israel has been in existence since 1948 and only a small part of the
entire world Jewish population lives there. The situation of world
Jewry is still tenuous. Anti-semitism is on the rise and many
communities are threatened with repression, if not annihilation. Yet
what has Israel done to prevent this situation? It has sold arms to
regimes like Iran and Argentina which repress Jews, and has even
demanded, in the case of Soviet Jewry, that the U.S. bar its doors to
those Soviet Jews who refuse to emigrate to Israel.

When confronted with this, Zionists
offer the lame excuse that Israel is a small country and must worry
about its own survival first. This is exactly the point. Israel is
only a small country, racked with problems, both internal and
external. How then can its existence protect Jews in every corner of
the world? The best it can offer is refuge, and refuge is not
liberation.

The Zionist panacea for all the
problems that the modern Jew must confron[sic] today, whether it be
anti-semitism, assimilation or any other “tsores,” is Aliya, that
is, emigration to Israel. While there is a handful of Jews who feel
an idealistic affinity with “The Land” and who seek to fulfill
their ideals through Aliya, the majority of Jews are not so inclined.
The Israeli government seeks to compensate for this lack of idealism
with tax inducements and special privileges for new Olim
(immigrants), particularly those from the West. This policy has
caused a great deal of resentment in Israel, especially among the
“Oriental” Jews. These Jews, who make up the majority of the
Israeli population, came to Israel with nothing but dreams and
promises, only to find disappointment and discrimination.

Zionism, no different from any other
movement seeking political power had to gain political hegemony in
the Jewish community before it could achieve the establishment of a
nation-state. It did this by absorbing the Jewish establishment, and
supplanting indigenous Jewish cultures with its own Hebrew culture.

Once in the Jewish community, there
was a whole spectrum of political movements and beliefs, now there is
some official ideology, with little dissent tolerated. Dissenters
from Zionism are labeled “self-hating” Jews and are ostracized.
Efforts are turned toward promoting Hebrew culture as the
Jewish culture, while Yiddish, Ladino and every other Jewish culture
now at the verge of extinction, are left to their fates.

VI. THEIR ANTI-ZIONISM AND OURS

Our opposition to Zionism has
nothing to do with the current anti-Israel crusade being waged by the
Arab/Islamtic[sic] states and their allies. Their anti-Zionism stems
from opportunistic, political self-interest. Our opposition stems
from principled disagreement rooted in historical debate. Their
objective is a new political power base, ours is revolution.

Unlike most of the left, we do not
put down one form of nationalism in favor of another. From our
perspective, the P.L.O. is simply a nation-state without a permanent
territory of its own (though it can be argued that Lebanon is in fact
its territory). The P.L.O. has its own standing army, bureaus of
government, and means of enforcing its power (witness the
assassinations of Palestinians who stray from the P.L.O line). It is
not inconceivable that despite the fierce hatred that exists between
these two states, Israel and the P.L.O. can negotiate an official
peace. State are not guided by ideals and ideologies, but by
practical self-interest.

A P.L.O. state on the West Bank will
be no better or worse than any other regime in the area. It will
stifle its opposition and streamline its political program to secure
its power. Of course, since the West Bank has no real industries or
resources of its own, it will most certainly be dependent on the
richer Arab/Islamic states and/or either of the big superpowers. We
can also speculate that it will probably resume economic relations
with its most hated enemy, the Zionist State of Israel.

While we reject the P.L.O., we most
vehemently oppose the military occupation of the “administered
territories” by Israel. We totally support the right of the
Palestinian people to determine their own future, free from the
manipulations of all powers, whether it be Israel, the P.L.O., or
anyone else. Though we oppose the current political system in Israel,
we, nevertheless, equally support the right of the Israeli Jewish
community to determine its own destiny.

VII. OUR VISION

We support those forces in Israel,
the Mid-East, and the world in general, seeking to create real peace
and understanding among the peoples of the Middle-East. However, it
is not enough to bank on negotiated treaties between nation states.
States cannot and will not create real peace. All the can offer is an
armed truce. Real peace can only come about when the working and
oppressed peoples of the world transcend the facade of nationalism
and religious dogma and the systems which maintain their power and
privilege.

Our vision for the Middle-East and
the world in general is a decentralized, supra-national federation of
peoples based on free association and generalized self-management, in
which the earth’s resources are shared and accessible to all in an
atmosphere of freedom, equality, and peace. The Jewish people will
take its place in this new world order not as a centralized
nation-state, but as an autonomous community of communities, with
complete control over its own communal resources and its own future.

****

The Libertarian Workers
Group is a group of working people and unemployed in the N.Y.
metropolitan area. We include anarchists, libertarian-communist and
are concerned with those issues that affect us working people and
residents of this area/

We hope this document
will generate discussion and debate in the anarchist movement and
Jewish community. We welcome all comments, criticisms, etc.

Libertarian Workers
Group
Box 692 Old Chelsea Station
New York, NY 10113