This isn't new news, but it's a nice comprehensive discussion of the power of commercial forces:
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.
The full story is here.
One of the most interesting aspects of this is the disproportionate share of the industrial base accounted for by kibbutzim. Even as they’ve taken a rather Chinese approach to socialist doctrine (“Black cat, white cat, it is a good cat if it catches mice”) they’ve continued to place a prime emphasis on the dignity and centrality of manual labor. And, ironically, that’s even true where the kibbutzniks have become managers and they’re hiring others to perform their labor.
I find this fascinating, not least because it suggests that cultural preference can be a very strong force in regulating the relative size of various economic sectors.
Cynic,
You refer to the Deng Xiaoping approach to socialist doctrine, certainly not to the Mao approach. Post-Mao China has been searching for new hybrid models all around the world to reform their big state enterprises, but I don’t know how much progress they have made in the past 10 years. One of those models was Grupo Corporativo Mondragón, the largest and most successful coop in the world, with headquarters in the town of Arrasate-Mondragón, in the Basque Country. The history of Grupo Mondragón is similar to that of the kibbutz: it was founded in 1941, just after the Spanish Civil War, by a Catholic priest, José MarÃa Arizmendiarrieta, to create jobs for people that had been badly hurt by the War. Since Father Arizmendiarrieta didn’t have any money, he opted for some form of coop. Since then Grupo Mondragón has expanded and today it has factories in several countries, including China, and owns a few financial institutions in the Basque Country, with an annual revenue of over €16 billion. Indeed it doesn’t look like a coop anymore, even in Arrasate-Mondragón. I’d like to know about comparative studies of Grupo Mondragón and kibbutzim.
The American kitchen appliance firm Amana began as a 19th Century religious utopian commune in the Midwest. There are other examples of 19th Century communes changing into capitalist firms, and of 1960s communes making the same switch.
@E. Barandiaran:
The reason for the switch seems clear:
A basic human desire to respond to incentives. To be better than ones neighbor. Jobs have to be matched with talent and ambition. Need to recognize that all humans are not equal and unequal rewards and remuneration has to follow.
In a sense the same reasons that the USSR is now Russia.
@E. Barandiaran:
Interesting…. Thanks!
What’s the “tradeoff” you refer to?
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