UTOPIA & REVOLUTION

Introduction
In 1895 Theodor Herzl, building on the work by 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.

Utopian
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 author.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:

The spatial-temporal dimension

Utopias though fictional are always based on specific territory, normally an island
like structure where there is an element of isolation

Technological dimension
Utopias emphasise technology as a tool not just for human improvement, but as
a catalyst for wider social change

Social organisation dimension

An emphasis on controlling the way society is organised in elements such as the
family unit, work, economy, culture, and its political structure.

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

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Thomas More’s seminal work Utopia will be used intersparingly 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 Jewish 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 realization. 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 E^icient 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:

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

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Altneuland9 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

In The Jewish State he had already alluded to the role of technology in implementing his
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 di^iculties 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

He prioritises the family unit advocating for material and social mechanisms that would
support their thriving. This includes the introduction of the 7-hour workday, financial

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

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incentives for individuals who married and the o^spring they produced, the provision of
a^ordable comfortable housing as well as support for those families with members who
su^er 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, we could argue
that Herzl’s vision is one attempting 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 e^ort to transform the political institutions
and the justifications for political authority in a society, accompanied by formal or
informal mass mobilization and noninstitutionalized 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 from a feudal society to a
commercial and eventual industrial one; the discovery of the new world, the invention of
the printing press and the adoption of new scientific knowledge made the period
e^ervescent 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 18th and 19th 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

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

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utopian, and to think in utopian terms as More did, was already daring to imagine that a
di^erent 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 expose 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 di^erent 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 a^irmative, but that
the notion of revolution follows naturally from the notion of utopia. Thomas More’s Utopia
can be argued to be in itself a revolutionary work, as it dared reimagine what else society
could be in a time when the great modern cataclysms were beginning to unfold. The
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.

Herzl, T., 1946, p.66

19 19

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

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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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