Labor Zionism or
Socialist Zionism (,
translit. tsionut sotsialistit) can be described as the major stream of the
left wing of the
Zionist movement. It was, for many years, the most significant tendency among Zionists and Zionist organizational structure. It saw itself as the Zionist sector of the historic Jewish labor movements of Eastern and Central Europe, eventually developing local units in most countries with sizeable Jewish populations. Unlike the "
political Zionist" tendency founded by
Theodor Herzl and advocated by
Chaim Weizmann, Labor Zionists did not believe that a Jewish state would be created simply by appealing to the international community or to a powerful nation such as
Britain,
Germany or the
Ottoman Empire. Rather, Labor Zionists believed that a Jewish state could only be created through the efforts of the Jewish
working class settling in
Palestine and constructing a state through the creation of a progressive Jewish society with rural
kibbutzim and
moshavim and an urban Jewish proletariat.