On anti-semitism and socialism

This collection of twelve essay deals with problems of historical research on anti-Semitism and on the international socialist movement. It also includes a chapter on German refugee historians who returned to East Germany after 1945. The volume attempts primarily to investigate aspects of the changing relations between workers’ emancipation and the struggle against anti-Semitism from the time of the Communist Manifesto to the fall of the Berlin Wall. This book, however, does not contribute to the tremendous number of contemporary writings that celebrate the ultimate defeat of socialism, a Zeitgeist literature which still dominates official culture and politics in the advanced Western countries. Eight of the essays were originally written in English, while four were translated by colleagues, and I am greatly indebted to Dr. Axel Fair-Schulz, Mr. Ed Kovacs, and Mr. David Schrag for their help. Special thanks are due to Mr. Marcus Aurin for correcting the whole English text. This collection represents my ongoing attempt to continue a political tradition that has been largely ignored by both orthodox communists and orthodox anti-communists: i. e., an independent radical democratic view based on moral integrity and a spontaneous internationalism as an antipode to both nationalism and anti-Semitism. The uncompromising radical spirit of such communist ‘heretic’ intellectuals as Leon Trotsky and Arthur Rosenberg, for example, took shape within the context of the political struggles of the workers’ movement. At the same time, the political errors committed by Trotsky and Rosenberg that contributed to the defeat of a more ‘libertarian’ variant of communism are also addressed in this volume. The defeat of alternative currents within the communist movement was followed by the concentration of power in the hands of a few privileged members of the party bureaucracy that became increasingly autonomous over time. This was accompanied by the expansion of a state security service that sought to replace voluntary submission with absolute obedience. Repressive measures were extended to those who represented the internationalist spirit of the past. The Soviet-initiated campaigns against ‘cosmopolitanism’ affected Jews as well as non-Jewish re-immigrants from the West to a much larger extent than other segments of the population or party membership. Current political problems may have pushed some of these questions into the background. It is nevertheless helpful to place contemporary events within a broader historical perspective. Sixty years after the organized annihilation of the Jews in Europe, anti-Semitism is on the rise again in many parts of the world; the political situation in the Middle East is unresolved; the number of refugees is greater than ever before; and viable socialist alternatives have yet to emerge. This collection of essays does not claim to offer a solution for these problems. Its aim, rather, is to point out that the search for answers should begin with reexamining the rich legacy of a workers’ movement that can finally be discussed on its own terms, rather than in the distorted form of a repressive state ideology.