The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions

189 Pages·2015·0.56 MB·English

by  Michael Walzer

The Henry L. Stimson Lectures Series
new haven & london
The
Paradox of
Liberation
Secular Revolutions and
Religious Counterrevolutions
Michael Walzer
The Henry L. Stimson Lectures at the Whitney and Betty
MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale.
Copyright © 2015 by Michael Walzer.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including
illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections
107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for
the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educa-
tional, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail
[email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office).
Set in Janson type by Integrated Publishing Solutions,
Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number 2014031910
ISBN 978-0-300-18780-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992
(Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To the memory of Clifford Geertz (1926–2006)
colleague and friend
who would have argued with me about this book
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface ix
one
The Paradox of National Liberation 1
two
The Paradox Illustrated: Zionism vs. Judaism 34
three
The Paradox Denied: Marxist Perspectives 68
four
The Future of National Liberation 104
Postscript 134
vii
Contents
Notes 147
Acknowledgments 163
Index 167
viii
Preface
My project in this book is to describe a recurrent and, to
my mind, disturbing pattern in the history of national lib-
eration. I will discuss a small set of cases: the creation of
three independent states in the years after World War II—
India and Israel in 1947–48 and Algeria in 1962—and I
will focus on the secular political movements that achieved
statehood and the religious movements that challenged the
achievement roughly a quarter century later. In the first
chapter, I will refer to all three liberation movements—
the Indian National Congress, Labor Zionism, and the Al-
gerian FLN (National Liberation Front), but chiefly to
the FLN. I will also refer, because I have written about it
and because it has been a general reference for Western
ix