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322 | The Question of Zionism 64 Jewish National Aspirations Are Not a Violation of Marxist Principles (1947) Albert Glotzer Born in Russia and raised in Chicago, Albert Glotzer (1908–1999) was a founder of the Fourth International, the league of revolutionary Marxist parties loyal to Leon Trotsky and opposed to the Moscow-based Third International. Glotzer broke with the Fourth International and its American affiliate, the Socialist Workers Party, in 1940 to help found the Workers’ Party, a Marxist organization hostile to the USSR. The following response to Ernest Mandel, who is referred to throughout as “Germain” (see document 63), appeared in the journal of the Workers’ Party. Glotzer’s critique did not represent the party’s official position, only that of members sympathetic to the creation of a Jewish homeland. The reaction of the official Fourth Internationalist organization to the Jewish question and the problem of Palestine in the new situation produced by Hitlerism and the war is a measure of their incapacity to free themselves from outlived theories and political positions. This results in a dreary reaffirmation of old ideas and programs accompanied by the repetitious explanation that “there is no reason to change our position” since “there is nothing new in the situation.” Thus it is the same with the Russian question, the national question and the Jewish question. For the most part, these organizations, most notably the Socialist Workers Party1 in the United States, have remained virtually silent on the Jewish question. The silence is not wholly accidental; it is a reflection of policy. [. . .] Germain’s essay, which marks one of the first efforts of the official Fourth International to speak somewhat concretely on the Jewish question, is distinguished by its utterly detached and abstract approach to the problem, but which is characteristic for its unquestionably correct interpretations of parts of an old Marxist position which has little to do with life today. [. . .] Jewish National Aspirations Are Not a Violation of Marxist Principles | 323 This article can be summarized briefly: The Jews of Europe have undergone almost unhuman suffering; this is due to the nature of capitalism. But the Jews are not alone in this suffering. Other peoples, other national minorities are faced with the same or similar prospects of extermination or nearextermination . This is a symbol of the decay of capitalism. There is no hope for these people except in the victory between now and the future, but . . . oops, sorry . . . that can’t be helped, you know. That’s capitalism for you. The Jews, despite this grim prospect, must not allow themselves to be emotionally worked up by the fact that six, seven or eight millions of them have been wiped out in Europe! [. . .] Germain characterizes the experiences of the Jews as a symbol of the fate of humanity in general and as the product of a sick society. And he adds: “The tragedy of the Jews is only the herald to other peoples of their coming fate.” The correctness of this generalization has a strange ring: the expression of sympathy for the Jews seems constantly to be apologized for and qualified by the observations that their sufferings are socially and historically conditioned, as if that in some way mitigates the condition of this people. Thus, after describing the unrelieved horrors of the Jews, Germain is under compulsion to write: “Alongside of five million murdered Jews are sixty million victims of imperialist war. The barbaric treatment of the Jews by Hitlerite imperialism is only an extreme expression of the barbarism of the general methods of imperialism in our period. As against the Jewish deportations we now find the deportation of millions of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia.” What is the point of these comparisons? To show the Jews that there is nothing unique in their position in European society today? But that is silly, for the conditions which the Jewish people face are unique. While it is true that Germans have been deported from Poland and Czechoslovakia, undergoing severe suffering in the process, the comparison ends at that point. For these Germans return to their own nation, however divided it may be under conditions of military occupation. They may return to friends and relatives. They do not remain in concentration camps where their families and friends had been exterminated by the hundreds of thousands and millions. They do not return to a hostile country which hates them. Chancing the charge that I do not have real feelings for the sixty million victims of the imperialist...

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