The Sonnet Bloom

Introduction

In 1895 Theodor Herzl, building on the work of Nathan Birnbaum and Leon Pinsker, published The Jewish State, a political pamphlet that delineated the ethos and objectives of the then nascent Zionist movement. In the face of rising European antisemitism and nationalism, he set out to solve the 1800-year-old Jewish Question: Namely, what was to be done with the Jewish peoples of Europe after generational discrimination and persecution had driven them all over the continent for hundreds of years.[1] In the pamphlet, Herzl sets out his bold proposal of the building of a Jewish State in a concrete territory with all the legal, financial and political structures of a modern state. This essay will argue that Herzl’s The Jewish State is utopian and revolutionary in its vision. After establishing a working definition of utopia, three recurring utopian dimensions will be outlined and explored in Herzl’s text. This will be followed by exploring the notion of revolution, establishing its definition and historical context and the way in which his vision can be said to be revolutionary.

Utopia

For the purposes of this essay, I define utopia as the fictional literary construct of a quasi-human community where the social and political institutions, norms and individual relationships are organised according to a more perfect vision then that of its authors.[2] This construct arises from the contrast of real societies and their alternative historical hypotheses.[3] Utopias are used not only to project the flaws of real communities, but also their ideal solutions. Elemental dimensions within them serve as vehicles through which these flaws and ideals are explored. This essay will limit these to the following:

Thomas More’s seminal work Utopia will be used inter-sparingly to contrast these ideas with those in Herzl’s work.

A Promised Land

In Herzl’s Zionist utopian conception, this spatial dimension takes the form of a ‘Promised Land’. At the time Herzl wrote The Jewish State he was ambivalent as to exactly where this Promised Land should be.[4] It was not until the First Zionist Congress in 1897 when he declared:

Zionism seeks for the Jewish people a publicly recognised legally secure homeland in Palestine.[5]

However, the need for a physical territory was more than just a political necessity or a prerequisite of statehood. In Jewish collective identity, the concept of land, and not just any land, but a Promised Land, is at the core of what it means to be a people. After all, Israel’s birth as the chosen people of God occurs under the premise that they would inherit a «good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk».[6] It could be said that a Jewish State without land would not be a state; more importantly, it would not be Jewish. Often in utopian literature, the territory at hand is characterised by isolation, such is the case of Utopia in More’s work.[7] For Herzl and the Zionist vision, the opposite is true. His vision is that Jews come from all corners of the world and providing them access to transportation is seen as crucial for its realisation. His vision is therefore one of access.

Technology

Though subtle, in More’s Utopia we see hints of technology used as something that furthers along social paradigm shifts.[8] Efficient agriculture, urban planning, travel and communication have all been developed as ideals that make society better and more equal. In Herzl’s Zionist vision, technology is a driving force for its development and future implementation. Herzl states:

Altneuland[9] tells the story of a Jew who visits Palestine in 1898 then returns in 1923 and finds the Promised Land developed under Jewish influence […] The dead land of 1898 is now thoroughly alive. Its real creators were the irrigation engineers. Technology had given new form to labor, a new social and economic system had been created which is described as mutualistic, a huge cooperative, a mediate form between individualism and collectivism.[10]

The Jewish State had already alluded to the role of technology in implementing this vision:

The word impossible has ceased to exist in the vocabulary of technical science. Were a man who lived in the last century to return to the earth, he would find the life of today full of incomprehensible magic. Wherever the moderns appear with our inventions, we transform the desert into a garden. One must only look at this transformation of the desert through irrigation technology in the years following the creation of the Israeli state to see how pivotal this has been for the implantation of the Zionist vision.[11]

For Herzl technology is not seen as something that will simply make life better, but rather, a leading force for the total change of social, political, and economic paradigms. 

Society

The societal vision of The Jewish State is one that achieves a «mediated state» between a capitalist and socialist society.[12] That is, there should be a state apparatus large enough to incentivise migration and the initial setup phase, but not large enough to drown out individual enterprise and competition.[13] In a section on the promotion of industries he goes on to say:

But individual enterprise must never be checked by the Company with its superior force. We shall only work collectively when the immense difficulties of the task demand action; we shall wherever possible, scrupulously respect the right of the individual. Private property, which is the economic basis of independence, shall be developed freely and respected by us.[14]

Herzl prioritises the family unit advocating for material and social mechanisms that would support its thriving. This includes the introduction of the 7-hour workday, financial incentives for individuals who married and for the offspring they produced, the provision of affordable comfortable housing as well as support for those families with members who suffer illness or incapacity. In contrast to More’s vision of the total abolishment of private property where everything would be centred around the communal good, Herzl’s vision attempts to marry the fiercely competing social structures of his time, namely collectivism vs. individualism.

Revolutionary

To answer whether Zionism was not just a utopian political program, but a revolutionary one at that, it is important to first provide its definition and historical context. Goldstone (2001) defines a revolution as ‘the concerted effort to transform the political institutions and the justifications for political authority in a society, accompanied by formal or informal mass mobilisation and noninstitutionalised actions that undermine existing authorities’.[15] Arendt (2006) further claims that this notion of revolution is purely a modern phenomenon, because although political revolts have occurred since the dawn time, none of these can be said to have wanted to change underlying social and political structures to the point that they could upend history itself.[16] In other words, Spartacus could dare rise up against the Roman Republic, but he would have never have seen himself as the emancipator of slavery in the process. The dawn of the modern period brought about tremendous changes such as the transition of a feudal society to a commercial and eventually an industrial one; the discovery of the New World, the invention of the printing press and the adoption of new scientific knowledge made the period effervescent with possibility.[17] In the political sphere, the greatest tectonic shift occurs around the separation of Christendom into Roman Catholic and Protestant spheres, and the loss of hegemonic power structures that were deeply anchored in the monolithic medieval system of Church and State. This gave way to upheaval and conflict, but also to a flourishing of thought. In short, man was no longer necessarily bound to the lot he was born into. He now had the means to change his destiny, and it is in this juncture that the idea of revolution as we know it takes hold.[18] The great scientific, industrial, and emancipatory movements of the 18^th and 19^th centuries were all revolutionary because they upended numerous systems, institutions and paradigms of knowledge. They placed man in control of his destiny. This is the context in which Zionism and The Jewish State appear, and this is why, given its considerations and proposals, it can be said to be truly revolutionary. Herzl saw an 1800-year-old problem, namely the Jewish Question, and saw the means and real possibility to solve it. It is also revolutionary because its vision is utopian, and to think in utopian terms as More did, was already daring to imagine that a different world was possible.

I must, in the first place, guard my scheme from being treated as Utopian by superficial critics who might commit this error of judgement if I did not warn them. I should obviously have done nothing to be ashamed of if I had described a Utopia on philanthropic lines; and I should also, in all probability, have obtained literary success more easily if I had set forth my plan in the irresponsible guise of a romantic tale. But this Utopia is far less attractive than any of those portrayed by Sir Thomas More and his numerous forerunners and successors […] The present scheme, on the other hand, includes the employment of an existent propelling force. In consideration of my own inadequacy, I shall content myself with indicating the cogs and wheels of the machine to be constructed, and I shall rely on more skilled mechanicians than myself to put them together.[19]

That he names Thomas More at the beginning of his exposé shows that not only was his vision utopian, but that it was permeated by the same spirit of possibility and vision that allowed the now canonised saint to herald the possibility of different world whose time would not come for another three centuries. The nation states and liberal democracies which have thrived despite all their shortcomings are now in full motion. Since 1948 among these also stands, despite all the complexities, contradictions and conflicts, the State of Israel.[20]

Conclusion

This essay has attempted to answer the question of whether Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State pamphlet and subsequent political movement can be characterised as utopian and revolutionary. It has been argued that not only is the answer in the affirmative, but that the notion of revolution follows naturally from the notion of utopia. It can be argued that Thomas More’s Utopia is revolutionary, as it dared reimagine what society could be in a time when the great modern cataclysms were beginning to unfold. Utopian elements of spatial, technology and societal dimensions were explored in Herzl’s writing. Finally the Zionist movement can be said to be revolutionary because it upended various paradigms and established itself, not without conflict, as the State of Israel in 1948. This is the final testament to its revolutionary nature.

Bibliography

Arendt, H. ‘On revolution’, Penguin Classics, London, 2006

Goldstone, J. A., 2001, Toward a fourth generation of Revolutionary theory in ‘Annual Review Political Science 4: pp.139-87

Herzl, T. ‘The Jewish state’, American Zionist Council, New York, 1946

More, T. ‘Utopia’. Translated by Paul Turner, Penguin Classics, Baltimore, 1965

Near, H., ‘Where community happens: The kibbutz and the philosophy of communalism’, Oxford, New York, 2011

Seidler, V. J. “Tikkun olam—Repairing the world: Embodying redemption and utopia” in Elena Namli, Jayne

Suvin, D., 1979, ‘Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the poetics and history of a literary genre’, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, p. 42

Svenungsson & Alana M. Vincent (eds), ‘Jewish Thought, Utopia, and Revolution’, Philosophy and Religion, Brill, Amsterdam, 2014, pp. 10-21

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition.  2001, Oxford University Press, New York

Websites

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/first-to-twelfth-zionist-congress-1897-1921   Accessed December 7, 2023

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[1] Herzl, T., 1946, ‘The Jewish State’, American Zionist Council, New York

[2] Suvin, D., 1979, ‘Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the poetics and history of a literary genre’, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, p. 42

[3] Ibid

[4] Herzl, T., 1946, p.33, though the obvious place was Palestine, he was open to other places such as Uganda and Argentina. 

[5] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/first-to-twelfth-zionist-congress-1897-1921   Accessed December 7, 2023

[6] Exodus 3:8 (New Revised Standard Version)

[7] More, T., 1965, ‘Utopia’. Translated by Paul Turner, Penguin Classics, Baltimore

[8] Ibid

[9] Herzl, T., 1946, p.52, Altneuland is a fictional novel he wrote on the theme of the Zionist project

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid

[12] Ibid

[13] Herzl, T., 1946, p.115

[14] Ibid

[15] Goldstone, J. A., 2001, Toward a fourth generation of Revolutionary theory in ‘Annual Review Political Science 4: pp.139-87

[16] Arendt, H.,2006, ‘On revolution’, Penguin Classics, London

[17] Ibid

[18] Ibid

[19] [19] Herzl, T., 1946, p.66

[20] Martinson, M., 2014, Adorno, Revolution, and Negative Utopia in Elena Namli, Jayne Svenungsson & Alana M. Vincent (eds), ‘Jewish Thought, Utopia, and Revolution’, Philosophy and Religion, Brill, Amsterdam, pp. 33–48