The term kibbutz (or kibbutzim in the plural) is inseparable from modern Israel. More than its economic and/or social importance in absolute terms – which must be analyzed in its proper measure –, there is no doubt about the symbolic dimension that these agricultural communities under a collectivist regime had both in the promotion and dissemination of Zionism. as in the construction of the structures of the future Jewish state in the first half of the 20th century. Although the estimated 270 that exist today no longer maintain their ideals in practice, their strength in the collective Israeli imagination still endures.
Thus, it can be said that they have had two key roles in the history of the young country, one of a mythical nature and the other, practical. On the one hand, they symbolized the new Jewish man, capable of building his identity through a life together and working the land with his own hands. And, on the other hand, they were very effective tools for the Hebrew colonization of the region of Palestine. Or, in other words, they began as a way out for many of the most idealistic Jews who fled from Europe and other regions of the world to settle in a territory that, in reality, they did not know, and soon became a paramilitary outpost in the years before independence and already military in the war that the newborn state of Israel won against the Arabs in 1948.
To understand the reason for the kibbutz movement, we must go back to the very origins of Zionism in Europe. In a context of growing social conflict, the birth of Jewish nationalism is deeply related to the expansion of communist ideas. Without going any further, one of the fathers of proto-Zionism, the German-Jewish writer and philosopher Moses Hess, was a collaborator of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and even initially defended the integration of the Jewish people into the universal socialist movement. However, given the rise of European anti-Semitism, he ended up embracing more nationalist ideas, without abandoning socialism. His book Rome and Jerusalem (1862) openly advocates the creation of a socialist Jewish home in Israel, thus founding one of the branches of Jewish nationalism, the so-called socialist or labor Zionism.
However, for these incipient ideas to have any practical translation, many years and events had to pass. It is now necessary to move to the first decade of the 20th century. With the impetus of Theodor Herzl, Zionism is already a consolidated movement and many Jews of Russian origin flee to Palestine after the tragic pogroms promoted by the tsar himself. It is the so-called second aliyah, that is, the second wave of migration of Jews to Eretz Israel, the promised land.
As in the first, which occurred a few decades before, it is a rather modest population movement. About 40,000 people, more or less. However, the new migrants are now much more idealistic than their predecessors. Younger people, of proletarian class and urban origins, are strongly influenced by socialist ideas—in fact, many are militants—and are clear that the construction of the future state must be done on communitarian bases. Thus, if the first agricultural settlements were promoted on the basis of the work of hired Arabs, in this second wave it would be the Jews themselves who would build their farms with collectivist and assembly structures.
With this idealistic spirit, the considered first kibbutz was born in 1909: Degania. It’s still standing. Founded by ten men and two women when Palestine was still a region of diffuse boundaries within the Ottoman Empire, it was located at the southern end of Lake Tiberias, or Galilee. As would happen with many kibbutzim later, the land was acquired by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), the financial branch of the Zionist movement, from a foreign landowner – in this case, Persian – and later transferred to the aforementioned group from Eastern Europe. From the beginning, these pioneers advocated self-management and effective equality for all their members.
The Degania farm and other farms that would follow were actually very incipient experiments. In fact, Degania was not even exactly a kibbutz, but rather a kvutza, that is, a much smaller community (no more than 200 members). However, it would lay some organizational foundations for the future. For example, he established Hebrew as the only language of common use, especially for the new generations, and even established that not even children – the first was born in 1910 – could be the private property of their parents, but rather that they should belong to the community. .
It is also worth noting the influence that these pioneers had on many Zionist intellectuals. The most paradigmatic case is that of Aaron David Gordon, a socialist theorist of Russian origin who participated in the second aliyah and who even lived with the inhabitants of Degania at an advanced age. Gordon was the main supporter of the kibbutz as a form of organization to build the future State: he advocated for a “new Jewish man” who would embrace the manual work of the land, abandon the “parasitic tasks” of the diaspora, such as finance or liberal professions, and thus earned his right to settle in Israel. His ideas had enormous influence on what was to come.
And before the First World War, only a handful of other kibbutzim had been created in the wake of Degania, all of them small in size and which, in total, sheltered, not without difficulties, between 400 and 500 people. Thus, we must wait for the so-called third and fourth aliyah, between the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, to consider it the broad and successful movement with which it is usually identified.
The third aliyah (1919-1923) is undoubtedly the most socialist of all. As in the previous one, it was a wave of idealistic young people, but this time much better prepared and with more solid organizations behind them. Palestine was already a British Mandate at that time and Zionism, after the Balfour declaration, was filled with hope of achieving its promised state in the medium term. Under the auspices of movements such as Gdud Haavoda or youth organizations such as Hashomer Haitzair, and again with money from the JNF for the purchase of land, the number of communities grew, covering more territory, they increased in number of inhabitants, diversified their crops – some even They opened up to the industry – and consolidated their forms of organization, with a much more radical collectivism.
Although the profile of the migrant in the fourth wave (1924-1931) will go from that of a young radicalized socialist to that of an entire middle-class family, the kibbutzim will not lose steam. On the contrary. By the end of the decade, there will be more than 4,000 members organized into two federations. Entering the new decade, they will gain in internal organization and mechanization, so many of them, initially supported by foreign funds, will finally achieve the desired self-sufficiency and fulfill their main function: providing food for the entire yishuv.
It is already in the middle of the 1930s, with the arrival of new waves of migration fleeing Nazi policies, and organized by scout-type youth movements, the phase that is considered the splendor of this model, and that would last until the birth of the State of Israel. . Not in vain, when the Second World War broke out, there were already some 24,000 people living in 79 kibbutzim distributed throughout the entire Palestinian territory. Furthermore, its contribution to the economy as a whole was already beginning to be highlighted.
It was at that time that their forms of organization were consolidated, more or less admired by the entire world left until the 60s and 70s. Broadly speaking, they were farm towns in which there were no private assets. At first, all clothing was shared, including underwear, although later its members were allowed to have some personal items. Most spaces were shared, including the dining room or leisure rooms, and although initially the homes were also shared, over time families were allowed to enjoy their own space. Perhaps one of the most radical ideas was that of the education of children: from a very young age, they were separated from their parents to be raised in the communal nursery and they only saw their families a few hours a day. To do this, the members of the kibbutz – especially the women – took turns taking care of the children.
Furthermore, each member of the community was the owner of the production assets, but, at the same time, had to offer their labor force according to their capabilities. To achieve this, no one could receive a salary higher than another, whether they had any type of responsibility or not. In fact, there was a lot of rotation in leadership positions to avoid the hierarchization of the kibbutz and, ultimately, all decisions were made democratically in an assembly. Now, they were communities exclusively for Jews, and, although the majority of their members were secular and proclaimed coexistence with their supposed equals, the Arabs, when push came to shove, the communities were closed and were spearheads of Zionism in its expansionist objectives.
And it is in that boom stage that the other great contribution of the kibbutz movement to Israel also begins: that of feeding terrorist and/or paramilitary organizations with a view to the construction and defense of a future State. In part, this transfer from agricultural communes to the use of violence is explained because the kibbutzim were the first to receive Arab hostility – despite the fact that there were also attempts at conciliation – and, very early on, the settlements had to form their own. self-defense structures.
In the 1920s, the Haganah (‘Defense’ in Hebrew) was developed, the name of the first clandestine Jewish civil militia under the protection of the socialist branch of Zionism. Well, many of its members were recruited from the kibbutzim, since they already had experience and also showed a much higher commitment than the salaried workers in the cities.
The progressive militarization of the kibbutz came in parallel with the deterioration of coexistence in British Palestine. In 1936, and with the increase in the Jewish population, the Great Arab Revolt broke out in the Mandate, a call by the Arab authorities for the end of economic relations with the Hebrew community with episodes of violence. One of the Zionist responses was to continue their expansion and colonization plans by taking new security measures, in this case using a new method, called “tower and stockade”, to build new settlements in increasingly hostile areas.
As the name says, it was about organizing an expedition that would be able to erect, usually at night and in record time, a wooden tower and a small fence around it and then organize the new farm with minimal protection. It is estimated that some 52 new kibbutzim were built using this method between 1936 and 1939. Although many were born on land that was already Jewish property, a large majority did not have authorization from the British, who, however, in part Due to the difficult climate of coexistence, they ended up turning a blind eye.
Already into the 1940s, coexistence in Palestine became increasingly impossible. In response to the so-called British White Paper, in 1939, which among other things prohibited Jewish immigration and the construction of new settlements and rejected a two-state project, new Jewish terrorist organizations were born in addition to the Haganah, which attacked Arab interests numerous times. and British. Many of the militants of these organizations also came from the kibbutzim, although their ideology, in this case, gradually shifted to the right.
The role of these militias in the development of the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, when Israel had already proclaimed its independence, was fundamental. Already merged and converted into the Israel Defense Forces, its senior commanders and many of its cadres had been trained in kibbutz. The most paradigmatic case is that of General Moshe Dayán, born in none other than Degania, future chief of the Israeli general staff and key figure in the Six Day War of 1967.
The war also helped elevate the kibbutz to the status of founding myth. The settlements marked the borders of the newborn state and, therefore, were a prime military objective. Numerous battles were fought around these settlements. The massacres of the Arabs in the kibbutz of Kfar Etzion or Nitzanim, preceded by heroic resistance – always according to the Israeli story – are already part of these myths that sustain any nation.
After the war, the kibbutz was consolidated as the structure of the new state. It is not that it had such a fundamental impact on the economy as has often been said, but it maintained its role in building identity and community. Pressured by the new waves of migration that arrived after the Holocaust, the communities had to accept, not without reluctance, the entry of salaried workers, with which they increased greatly in population and size, definitively opening up to industry. Although they preserved their basic forms of organization, the new generations began to lose the revolutionary enthusiasm of their predecessors and, starting in the 1960s, especially after the Six Day War, they began a progressive decline as a socialist and/or collectivist movement. Today, they exist and try to maintain the spirit of the golden years, but they operate as private companies that have nothing to do with the ideals of the pioneers.