Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Glossary
- Part I Setting the scene
- Part II Appearances and reality
- 4 The political world of the founding fathers
- 5 The vicissitudes of hegemony
- 6 The revolutionary maximalists
- 7 The reluctant vanguard
- 8 The lost avant-garde
- 9 The Communists – in captivity
- Part III The fallacies of Realpolitik
- Part IV Sectarian interests and a façade of generality
- Part V God's dispositions
- Part VI The boundaries of the intelligentsia
- Notes
- Index
6 - The revolutionary maximalists
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Glossary
- Part I Setting the scene
- Part II Appearances and reality
- 4 The political world of the founding fathers
- 5 The vicissitudes of hegemony
- 6 The revolutionary maximalists
- 7 The reluctant vanguard
- 8 The lost avant-garde
- 9 The Communists – in captivity
- Part III The fallacies of Realpolitik
- Part IV Sectarian interests and a façade of generality
- Part V God's dispositions
- Part VI The boundaries of the intelligentsia
- Notes
- Index
Summary
To see the present, the actions of each and every moment, as the main thing.
Israel Bar-Yehudah.The Kibbutz Ha-Me'uhad was the spearhead of the pioneering enterprise that eventually led to the establishment of the Jewish state, but its political history is that of a faction. Its political views were inextricably bound up with the internal politics of the Labour Movement. Siya Bet, as it was called, underwent several mutations – part of Mapai until 1944, it merged with Left Po'alei Zion in 1946, and with Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza'ir in 1948 – but throughout it preserved its organisational integrity and independence.
Mibifnim (From Within), the name of the Kibbutz Ha-Me'uhad journal, was an accurate reflection of the faction's world-view – perceiving internal strength in all its aspects as the determinant of external power, expressing maximalist Zionism through the idea of territorial integrity, and advocating activism which represented the most complete synthesis of Jewish history and pioneering settlement as both strategic concept and political objective. Revolutionary socialism played a crucial educational role, but the pro-Soviet orientation which reached its height in the 1940s found no expression in the faction's politics after the establishment of the State.
The Kibbutz Ha-Me'uhad emerged as a political faction in the second half of the 1930s, with the emergence of the internal conflicts within Mapai and the principal political issue of the time – the 1937 Partition Plan. In the struggle against the ‘working agreement’ between Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky, the Kibbutz Ha-Me'uhad for the first time displayed a united political front. The faction criticised the party leadership for concentrating on external politics, rather than on internal affairs and the movement's values.
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- Information
- Zionism and the Foundations of Israeli Diplomacy , pp. 146 - 159Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998