http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d50b3c20-0a19-11df-8b23-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1The rise of the capitalist kibbutz
By Tobias Buck in Jerusalem
Published: January 26 2010 02:00 | Last updated: January 26 2010 02:00
Set amid rolling hills in central Israel, Kibbutz Nachshon is a cluster of simple houses shaded by pine trees and surrounded by gardens and fields. The midday calm is broken only occasionally, when a tractor rumbles towards the grain silo or children pass by on their way from the nursery.
To the casual visitor, Nachshon presents a facade of quiet, rural simplicity that conforms perfectly with the image of the kibbutzim, the collective farms unique to Israel.
In truth, however, Nachshon has spent the past four years in the grip of a social and economic revolution that swept away most of the socialist ideals and egalitarian practices that marked this experiment in communal life. The buildings and fields are still the same, the left-wing leanings are still there, as is a sense of solidarity. But in most practical terms, the lives of kibbutzniks like Jane Ozeri have changed beyond recognition.
The 55-year old arrived in Nachshon from her native Britain 30 years ago, attracted by the kibbutz movement's unique blend of socialism and Zionism. "I fell in love with this whole idea of everyone being the same, and everyone taking care of the other," she recalls.
At the time, she worked wherever the kibbutz needed her: in the communal kitchen, the fields, the chicken coop or the school. Kibbutzniks like her received no salary, only a meagre monthly allowance that was "a bit like pocket money". In return, the community provided free housing, food, education, clothes, healthcare, transport and even cigarettes. If Ms Ozeri wanted to go and visit her family in Britain, the kibbutz assembly would discuss the merits of her case - and then vote on whether to pay for the ticket or not.
Today, Ms Ozeri brandishes a business card that identifies her as the "global sales coordinator" of Aran Packaging, a company that produces liquids packaging for the food industry. Located on the kibbutz, and owned by its members, the business boasts sales of almost $40m (€28m, £25m) a year and ships its goods to 35 countries across the world. Ms Ozeri receives a salary which she is not only entitled to keep, but that is also considerably higher than the pay awarded to farmhands and workers on the assembly line. She says Aran's pay scale is broadly similar to other private sector companies.
Equality, once at the core of the kibbutz ideology, has been breached in other ways, too. Tasks that used to be performed by kibbutzniks regardless of their education and background - such as washing the dishes - are today largely the preserve of hired workers from outside the community.
Attitudes towards business have also changed radically. As recently as the 1980s, Nachshon members voted down a plan to open a petrol station on a nearby highway, because it would force the proud kibbutzniks to "serve" motorists.
Today, many kibbutzim not only have thriving businesses - including in the tourism industry - that operate exactly like other private enterprises, but some have even decided to embrace the capital market: 22 kibbutz companies are currently listed on stock exchanges in Tel Aviv, New York and London. With annual sales worth Shk37bn ($10bn, €7bn, £6bn), the kibbutz companies account for about 10 per cent of Israel's industrial production.
Farming is still important to most kibbutzim, though much less so than during the early years. Indeed, the shift to industry that started in the 1960s and 1970s was an important factor in persuading the kibbutzim to change their ways: they realised that a factory, unlike a farm, is hard to run along egalitarian lines. Someone, in short, had to manage, and someone had to stand at the assembly line.
But the transformation of the kibbutz from socialist bastion to capitalist co-operative is, above all, a reflection of a much broader shift in Israeli society. As the country began to prosper during the 1980s, Israelis increasingly turned away from the frugal socialist ethos that had dominated the state's early years.
It was a development that did not leave the kibbutz untouched. "The kibbutz was never isolated from society," says Shlomo Getz, the director of the Institute for Research of the Kibbutz at Haifa University. "There was a change in values in Israel, and a change in the standard of living. Many kibbutzniks now wanted to have the same things as their friends outside the kibbutz."
Ms Ozeri says: "People wanted more control over their own lives and economics. They wanted to make their own decisions, and have their own car and their own telephone. It is very difficult to live this strong communal life. It is very tiring."
Just as these social trends were gathering pace, the kibbutz movement was dealt a knock-out blow from a different direction. Keen to diversify away from farming, more and more kibbutzim had started dabbling in industry, setting up businesses that - often burdened by a lack of management expertise and capital - made hefty losses.
The result was a debt-crisis, a government bail-out in 1985 - and a wholesale re-examination of the kibbutz economic philosophy.
"Israeli society had always looked to the kibbutzniks as an elite group. But now they were regarded as a mere interest group that depended on money from the state," says Mr Getz.
The answer to this dilemma - and to the communities' financial woes - came in the form of privatisation - a process that started slowly in the 1990s and has gathered pace ever since.
Nachshon, for example, finally decided to abandon collectivism in 2006. In a so-called "privatised kibbutz", members are free to keep their salaries, but in return they have to pay for all the goods and services that the kibbutz used to provide for free.
More often than not, kibbutzniks found they would rather do their own cooking and washing and have their own car than use communal facilities. Even the dining hall - once the heart of every community, where members used to meet, eat and talk on a daily basis - became a victim of privatisation: in some kibbutzim, attendance dropped so sharply that communal dining was abandoned altogether.
Omer Moav, a former kibbutznik who now teaches economics at London's Royal Holloway University and advises the Israeli finance minister, argues that the kibbutz movement was always destined to fail. It worked, he says, only as long as kibbutzniks enjoyed a standard of living broadly comparable to, if not better than, the Israeli average. "People respond to incentives. We are happy to work hard for our own quality of life, we like our independence," he says. "It is all about human nature - and a socialist system like the kibbutz does not fit human nature."
Yet not all the old kibbutz ethos has disappeared. Houses, land and production facilities, for example, are still held collectively. All privatised kibbutzim operate a so-called "safety net", which draws on individual contributions to assure that members have a minimal - but no longer equal - standard of living. And though their number is dropping fast, of the 262 kibbutzim in Israel today, some 65 still operate in the traditional way, while 188 have been completely, and nine partially, privatised.
But few would disagree with Ms Ozeri's summary of the transformation. By and large, she says, "We are now just like everyone else."
Open to change
Unlike other socialist experiments, there is surprisingly little dogma or theory behind the Israeli kibbutz. According to some experts, this is a key reason for the communities' relative openness to change.
Before the wave of privatisations started in the 1990s, the kibbutzim had already sacrificed other principles - including the ban on hired labour from outside the community and the idea that kibbutz children should sleep in a separate house away from their parents. "There was never a programme for the kibbutz, it was created by people living. Every time they encountered a problem, they simply tried to find a solution," says Shlomo Getz, an expert on kibbutzim.
Exactly 100 years after the foundation of the first kibbutz on the banks of the Sea of Galilee, these solutions are taking on an increasingly capitalist tinge.
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