ABSTRACT
This chapter explicates the social decisions made by Mapai in the nineteen fifties, which transformed it from a workers' party to a party of the middle class. It examines the relationship between Mapai's political action and political discourse throughout the 1950s and making a distinction between elements of the discourse which resulted in action and those which were used to camouflage that action. The chapter demonstrates the ways in which a political party is involved in the construction of class deployment, a deployment which, in turn, deeply influences politics. It distinguishes the question of Mapai's class location up to the beginning of the 1950s from other questions, such as how sincere its socialism was. The tensions inherent in Mapai's 1951 discourse were brought to the fore by the mass immigration. The most significant change in Mapai's discourse during the fifties was the shift from one-directional upward demarcation of the social "Us" to its demarcation in two directions.
