The Bund was an organization of Jewish proletarians including eastern Europe and southern parts of Russia. The issue arose whether the Bund should fuse into the Russian party or whether it should federate with it or whether something in-between was possible.
The whole term “Bundism” is not a question of cardinal importance. The organizational question cannot precede the national question or the class question. How communists organize themselves derives from concrete reality.
Ironically, at the time of the struggle with Lenin, both the Bund and Lenin agreed that anti-Semitism would stem from the bourgeoisie. Right away we can see that R¢P=u$A is differing from Lenin, because R¢P=u$A is essentially denying that chauvinism in our conditions today stems from the Amerikan petty-bourgeoisie.
Lenin accused the Bund of saying that chauvinism extended into the Russian proletariat. He defended some committee work that said that anti-Semitism was “’not among the working-class sections of the population.’”(1) That was the disagreement. MIM’s principles are different: there is no white proletariat, so we are still mainly talking about chauvinism stemming from bourgeois interests. Any attempt to compare MIM with the Bund fails from the beginning, but there is more.
Lenin was indignant that for its case, the Bund had only “two facts: 1) workers’ participation in a pogrom in Czestochowa and 2) the behavior of 12 (twelve!) Christian workers in Zhitomir, who scabbed on the strikers and threatened to ‘kill off all the Yids.’”(2)
By attacking MIM with the charge of Bundism, R¢P=u$A is saying that we can only find only rare (two facts!) evidence of Amerikan chauvinism. Clearly this is the R¢P=u$A letting Amerikan chauvinism off the hook across-the-board.
Next is the national question. The Bund itself opposed Zionism at the onset. Hence, neither the Bund nor Lenin was originally arguing that Jews in Russia were a nation. Quite the contrary, the Bund was organizing Jews of varying languages. Yet, Lenin did believe that Blacks in the united $tates constitute a nation. So how dare Bob A. compare the MIM situation with Bundism!?
Here is what Lenin said about being careful on the national question and the question of “Bundism”: “Neither the ‘logical analysis’ of autonomy nor the appeals to history can provide even the shadow of a ‘principle’ justifying the isolation of the Bund. But the Bund’s third argument, which invokes the idea of a Jewish nation, is undoubtedly of the nature of a principle.”(3) Thus Lenin regarded nationhood as a serious factor behind organizational questions. It just so happens that he and Stalin at that time did not regard Jews as a nation.(4) Stalin only changed his line on that after World War II. How stupid the R¢P=u$A must be to raise “Bundism” charges against MIM when R¢P=u$A knows very well that MIM regards First Nations, Aztlan and the Black nation as nations in no way analogous to Jews in Russia and eastern Europe in the early 1900s!
Then we need to consider the language situation. Jews include French-speaking and German-speaking ones according to Lenin. Meanwhile, in Aztlan, we have a Spanish- speaking super-exploited section. It is completely bogus to compare that situation with the Jewish situation in Russia and eastern Europe. Aztlan has one language or maybe two at most! Hence, the Jews of the Bund fought for equal rights under the law for Jews and that is not surprising. It stems from the concrete realities—that the Bund did not consider Jews a nation, but more along the lines of a “racial” minority as we see it in the united $tates today.
All of labor aristocracy France just ran down the proletariat of Poland and Turkey by voting down increased European Union fusion. The MIM line is not based on a couple facts here and there of chauvinism by a few isolated bone-heads.
The example Lenin raises of how Russian proletarians should approach Jews is 180 degrees opposite of reality with the alleged Amerikan proletariat: “Have no fear, have no fear, this is not Kishinev [a pogrom against Jews—ed.] for you, what we want is something else, we have neither Jews nor Russians in our midst, we are all workers, life is equally hard for us all.”(5) The problem is that life is not equally hard for the oppressor nation petty-bourgeoisie occasionally masquerading as “workers” and even “proletarians.” So maybe the R¢P=u$A should go back and check what Lenin said about the Bund. He is talking about the commonalities of exploited workers against one state. R¢P=u$A is talking about using “minority” proletarians to boost middle-class living standards.
R¢P=u$A is unable to argue from the concrete conditions toward a political line. That is why it does not recognize that Lenin on the Bund fully exposes R¢P=u$A line as based in idealism, a lazy, analogy-laden kind of reasoning devoid of understanding of concrete conditions.
Notes:
1. “Does the Jewish Proletariat Need an Independent Political Party,” Vol. 6., Collected
Works, (Moscow: 1961), p. 333.
2. Ibid.
3. “Position of the Bund in the Party,” Vol. 7, Collected Works, (Moscow, 1961), p.
99.
4. Ibid.
5. “The Latest Word in Bundist Nationalism,” Vol. 6, Collected Works (Moscow, 1961),
p. 521.