Ber Borochov

“ But this very improvement has made us more sensitive: a reed of straw oppresses us more today than did the most savage torture rack in the past. The hostility of the environment, the restriction of civil rights, the pogroms, which in the past were facts of life we learned to live with, now strike us as horrible disasters. Our optimists fail to grasp this; for them progress has the brightness of the sun. ”

“ Increasing recognition of the freedom and rights of the individual proves that the nature of social relations in our time is making the exploitation of someone else’s toil by compulsion quite superfluous and even harmful. Society now requires only free workers, and these are available everywhere and in whatever quantity required, i.e. there is no longer need of the functions of the foreigner. Hence, if even today we witness the deliberate assimilation of a social group, it can only be fore the sake of its wealth. ”

“ The assimilation of foreigners is actually in itself a most unpleasant business, and hence also undesirable. New people mean new candidates for benefits from the accumulated public assets, new hands hungrily stretched out for a share of the common loaf of bread. In order for a nation to desire the assimilation of another social group, it must first see in it something so valuable and attractive as to make it worthwhile despite all the inconvenience of including new partners in the distribution of the assets. ”

“ It is hard to say which is the more amazing in our optimists: the naiveté of their enthusiasm or the dullness of their perception. They continue to sing hymns of praise to progress at a time when "cultured" England is cruelly grabbing from the Boers their last possessions–to the thunder of cannon and the applause of all classes of the English people; when "cultured" America is guilty of wanton despoliation of the Negroes; when Germany is threatening the entire world with its arrogant militarism; when the strong nations are prepared to trample one another for a piece of land in Turkey or China ”

“ But let us assume that it is true that all of mankind–including inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, the Fiji Islanders, the Japanese and the Kurds, and the anti-Semites of all varieties–will all be pacified and accept the peaceful reign of progress. But even you will not deny that such happiness cannot be attained without war and battled, you know that this war, which began some time ago, has cost and will cost mankind much blood and tears. What, then, is the price that we Jews will have to pay for it? ”

“ Prostitution has made its appearance among us. Poverty has reached unparalleled proportions. The slightest economic tremor ejects us by the thousands from our petty bourgeoisie position into the arms of the lumplenproletariat, into the desperate poverty of the sans-culottes. Furthermore, most of the Jews are concentrated in countries where capitalism did not develop organically and steadily, but suddenly swept the whole economy into its whirling vortex: Russia, Galicia, and Rumania were sucked into the process of industrial capitalism by the tempest of inevitability. ”

“ But the peoples who have never needed us and those who have ceased to need us will try–as we now see–to drive us away by means of restrictive laws or, if humane feelings rule out legal discrimination, will destroy us by a persistent boycott; at best, competition will put an end to the Jews. For even where the Jews are numerous, only a few can become big capitalists while the rest, the middle and lower middle classes, cannot withstand the competition of the local bourgeoisie, whose strength lies in its land and its blood-ties with the rest of the population. ”

“ Be that as it may, it is our deep conviction that in the Galut there is no salvation for the Jewish people. We do not rely on progress; we know that its overpious proponents inflate its achievements out of all proportion. Progress is an important factor in the rapid development of technology, science, perhaps even of the arts, but certainly in the development of neurosis, hysteria, and prostitution. Of the moral progress of nations, of the end of the national egoism that is destroying–it is too soon about these. Progress is a two-edged sword. ”

“ The direct assimilation of other peoples by swallowing up their possessions–their land and the culture that flourished there–is still the ambition of all peoples, even in our day. And it is not so long ago that nations also strove to assimilate the functions of weak groups by making slaves out of them, forcing them to serve without any hope of taking part in the division of the assets accumulated by the enslavers. For a contemporary example, it is enough to cite the minor fact that the enlightened Americans bar the gates of their land to immigrants who are ill or unable to work. ”

“ Our opposition to assimilation and the enthusiasm of the priests to make converts brought cruel persecution upon us. Our stiff-necked attitude aroused the stubbornness of our enemies, who longed to assimilate us within them. To convert Jews to Christianity was often regarded by priests as a sacred duty, to the point where they momentarily forgot what was best for themselves. Thus, in order to attract Jews to embrace Christianity they would grant apostates special privileges. ”

“ Formerly, religion and the ghetto constituted a wall that protected us against the enemy; but that protective wall has been undermined, and like all peoples of culture we have become sensitive to every affront to our rights, while externally our situation is much more difficult than theirs. ”

“ The basis of every society is the agricultural class. This truth is valid independently of the theory of the Physiocrats. Any social group that has no such basis is compelled to form strong ties with other groups who are based on the land, and from whom it can obtain agricultural products. The entire life and fate of the Jews in the Galut, long ago cut-off from the land and with no agricultural class, depend entirely on finding a society which, because it needs the services of the Jews, will give them in return agricultural products, cattle, or manufactured goods. ”

“ However much they may try to conceal it from themselves and from others, their attitude toward the foreigners in their land is always one of expediency: the guiding principle is the advantage to the dominant people and, by the same token, a disregard for the natural needs of the foreign people. Members of the progressive classes of society well understand that foreigners can perform valuable functions, but the foreigners’ personality is not their affair, and they treat them as animals. In order to exploit our talents they want to assimilate us and dissolve us among their masses. ”

“ If the assimilation of peoples who live on their own land and have accumulated certain cultural assets has already become unprofitable and is soon likely to become undesirable, the assimilation of a people that is soon likely to become undesirable, the assimilation of a people that lives of the land of strangers, that possesses no material or cultural assets of its own, can certainly not be of use to anyone. ”

“ So the threat implicit in the existence of the foreigner must be repelled. And it is not surprising that although the weak individual foreigner encounters only an attitude of curiosity mixed with suspicion and sometimes even sympathy for his plight–as proved by the ancient custom of showing hospitality to the stranger–the moment foreigners become a dangerous force–and they need not be very numerous to be regarded so–they gradually become the object of great suspicion and of the most burning hatred. The dominant group frightfully exaggerates their numbers and power. ”

“ Aside from this, human society, by virtue of the iron laws of historical development, is divided into tribes, nationalities and nations, and that has consequently prepared the ground for dividing man’s attitude toward others in a striking manner: with respect to "ours," the laws ensure equality of duties–I may not coerce, deceive, or cause unpleasantness to "mine"–while the respect to others there are no limitations, everything goes: the crudest infringement of rights, the most deceitful betrayal. ”

“ The gratifying hope at the time of assimilation is generally something like this: one day, when we succeed in getting the owners of the desired wealth to adapt themselves to such a degree that they no longer resist the policy of conquest, we shall be able to seize this wealth by force and stop bothering with this expensive business of assimilation. The trouble is that as the process of assimilation, which was at first only a means, turns into an end in itself–since opposition intensifies the ambition–the assimilators no longer think of the ultimate benefit. ”

“ In the latter case, the hatred that is engendered in the indigenous people when a foreign mass penetrates it invariably repels the foreigner and prevents him from assimilating even if he should desire to do so. So long as the foreigner joins only to benefit from the host’s unexpropriable assets, no one objects, and sometimes he is even being encouraged; as far as religion is concerned, it may even be forced upon him. But once there develops a threat of equalizing the foreigner’s rights with those of the dominant group, pressure against this dangerous tendency begins. ”

“ The possibility of making up the difference with income from the surrounding populace is diminishing, with the result that Jews who have not managed to acquire considerable property will suffer utter impoverishment.
We are foreigners, and nowhere in the world do we possess the social power that could make us masters of our fate. We are cut off from nature and have no agriculture. All this has left us hovering in the air. Our history in the Galut has never been shaped by our own powers; our fate has always depended on external ties. ”

“ Can progress in the Galut redeem us from this dependence and insecurity? So land as Jew-hatred exists, hatred of us as strangers, progress will only make our position more sensitive, more passive; the difficulty of our position, subjectively, will become intolerable. Jew-hatred could conceivably come to an end as a result of a thorough social revolution, or through gradual atrophy. Many of our optimists think that the roots of Jew-hatred lie in the economic forces of the times and that if there is a basic reform of the existing social order, Jew-hatred will disappear. ”

“ Moreover, the attitude of the population there toward the Jews is more hostile than in the Pale of Settlement. This is known to anyone who is familiar with the peasants’ attitude toward the Jews in the Pale; it is also known that they generally constitute the bulk of the pogrom mobs. If these peasants hate us in our Pale of Settlement, why should they hate us less in their own area of settlement? Even assuming that in Greater Russia we are left alone initially and treated humanely, will the proportion of the Jewish population change from what it is today? ”

“ We have acquired more culture; we have lost our earlier faith in the world to come, in redemption by the Messiah, in our divine election–by virtue of which we allowed ourselves to look down on other nations, ignore their humiliating attitude, and regard it as conduct of creatures greatly inferior to us; hence they were unable, even by their most barbarous deeds, to upset our composure. One does not despair or lose his self-confidence just because he has been bitten by a dog. Today it is no longer a dog but ourselves who bite us, and his insults injure our honor. ”

“ One fundamental and practically unique impulse in the life of society is egoism. If, with the respect to the individual, there are grounds for arguing that man is not the miserly egoist depicted in certain ethical theories, the egoism of this group cannot be denied. For the benefit of the group, its members eschew personal gain and individual pleasure, conferring on the group’s interest a supreme moral imprimatur. The individual sacrifices himself for the good of the group, and in so doing nourishes the group’s crude lack of consideration. ”

“ Society, all of whose functions are designed to expand its patterns of life, imbibes energy both from the nonsocial area and from other national groups, and is limited only by its ability to conquer and incorporate them within its own flesh and blood. These foreign people have no importance in themselves for the society that assimilates them. All it requires of them is their possessions and functions. ”

“ Certainly, let all the nations enjoy the fruits of progress, but we do not wish to be their scapegoat. Even if we lave the Galut mankind will pay in blood and tears for every upheaval that occurs in its history, except that Jewish blood is not taken into account–it only serves as amusement for the raging mob. There are thousands of Moslem and hundreds of thousands of Jews ”

“ Most important, however, is that no one has yet succeeded in proving that he is right in trusting in the saving power of progress and in its real value. The rhetoricians and the believers are naïve. It has not yet been proved that the historical process, the development of nations and society, is progress. Is it not improper, when no one has yet succeeded in convincing us that such a thing actually exists. ”

“ It follows that every group is ready and willing to assimilate outsiders so long as it does not thereby surrender anything of its own, but faced with sharing material possessions with outsiders, no social group has as yet proved itself capable of such generosity.
Let us examine the meaning of this ambition, so often encountered in history, on the part of some nations to assimilate others, and the national conflicts that result. Every living creature that wishes to live requires food to replace the energy lost in every motion. ”

“ We know, for instance, that American society rejects the Negroes, who in turn would give all they have for the chance of assimilating among the Whites, and dreams of ways of changing the color of their skin. We know that this was the attitude of the Spartans to the Helots and the Indians to the pariahs. If, for example, we see the English and French dwelling in peace in Canada, it is only because they are equal in numbers and are both equally rooted in the land. ”

“ Assimilation becomes a chimera that lives by its own special power, the supreme mission of the ruling groups, and gives rise to such tension and waste of energy that all the foreign wealth is not worth the effort. ”