The deepening wave of antisemitism led Trotsky to reevaluate his views on the whole matter during the 1930s. He saw that the expected assimilation had not occurred and that the Jews had developed further the Jewish language and created a vibrant Yiddish press.
He decided that therefore the Jews could be called a nation and that they therefore had the right, if they chose to exercise it, of a homeland of their own. Nevertheless he continued to oppose both Zionist and the Bundist ideas.
He opposed colonisation of Palestine because "there is no such thing on our planet as the idea that one has more claim to land than another". He argued that the only way a Jewish nation could be brought into existence on the basis of mutual understanding would be under international socialism.
To those who argued that this was utopian Trotsky replied that the immediate task was to campaign for the right of asylum for all those Jews menaced by fascism. This call was taken up by a number of socialist groups under the slogan "open the gates". Suffice to say the western government chose to keep them closed.
For Trotsky the rise of antisemitism was a product of the crisis and decay of capitalism, further proof that it could no longer contribute to human progress - "anti-semitism is today one of the most malignant convulsions of capitalism's death agony".
In a prophetic statement of 1939 Trotsky predicted that the next stage in its development may result in the "physical extermination of the Jews".
These views are of particular importance because they combine a commitment to a homeland for the Jewish people with a total opposition to the Zionist colonisation of Palestine.
The choice between assimilation and Zionism is shown to be false. Neither complete denial of Jewish identity nor its affirmation on a racist colonialist basis is necessary. sentatives of the Jewish workers within the party, proposing to turn it into a federation of national groups. This was bitterly opposed by the majority and led to a split.
Exact opposite
It seems today that the assimilationists were wrong -the Nazi terror of the 1930s indicates the exact opposite of the process.
The crisis of capitalism, linked to the failures of the revolutionary wave that swept through Europe in the century's second decade, produced a new kind of anti-semitism: a product not of feudalism but of imperialism.