A History of Zionism (53 page)

The kvutza

These sporadic and uncertain beginnings, the appearance of small working groups at Sejera and Kineret, at Degania and Merhavia, constitute the origin of the
kvutza
, the unique feature of the Jewish labour movement in Palestine and also the one which in years to come was to attract the greatest attention. The idea of communistic settlements was not of course entirely novel. It had figured prominently in the thoughts of the ‘Utopian Socialists’, and the settlements established on these lines by Robert Owen and his disciples in the United States had existed for a long time. But with the rise of ‘scientific Socialism’ such ventures had ceased to attract interest; only in Russia did the idea of the ‘commune’ still have a few advocates. The Russian pioneers occasionally used to live on communal lines before their emigration, sharing both their income and their expenses and of course their few belongings. But the idea of permanent settlements on the Communist pattern, dispensing with private property, was thought to be fantastic. When Manya Wilbushewitz, one of the early pioneers, talked about it to Max Nordau in Paris, she was told that she was suffering from feverish delusions and was advised to consult a psychiatrist colleague.

The first collective settlements came into being not according to any clear preconceived pattern but by trial and error. After Herzl’s death, during the era of ‘practical Zionism’, fresh emphasis was put on buying and colonising land outside the traditional areas of Jewish settlement. But who was to work the newly acquired land? There were no funds to support individual settlers, and since the farmers of Petah Tiqva and Rishon Lezion were neither able nor willing to help in the further development of Palestinian agriculture, it was decided that the land acquired by the National Fund, while remaining the property of the nation, should be rented to workers’ collectives. These were to be paid according to the group piecework system. At first managers were appointed by the Zionist organisation, but later the workers themselves assumed control. Ruppin and his supporters in the Zionist executive had been influenced by the ideas of the German-Jewish economist Franz Oppenheimer concerning the advantages of large-scale collective farming over individual enterprise in agriculture. But Oppenheimer had recommended that each member should be rewarded according to his effort and output, whereas the workers demanded equal pay for all.
*
Dr Ruppin’s willingness to support what seemed to most of his colleagues at best an interesting experiment, coincided with the desire of a growing number of Jewish agricultural workers to escape the stifling atmosphere of Petah Tiqva and the other colonies and to tackle some truly pioneering task. Their relations with the Jewish farmers had never been very happy; there had been strikes and even fighting. In Petah Tiqva the employers had on occasion decided to boycott Jewish labour altogether, their anger having been aroused by a workers’ meeting in memory of their comrades fallen during the pogroms in Russia. The fact that members of both sexes had participated was an aggravating circumstance.

In Sejera, in lower Galilee, newcomers such as Ben Gurion found a different atmosphere: less monotonous work, only Jewish workers, no small shopkeepers, agents or middlemen. Practically everyone was working in the fields. Sejera became the centre of farm workers in the area. But these idyllic conditions did not last. In Kineret the workers struck against an autocratic manager who had not permitted them to visit a comrade who was lying gravely ill in the Tiberias hospital. An urgent call went out to Dr Ruppin in Jaffa. His solomonic verdict was to dismiss both manager and workers, but it had dawned on him that the traditional system of overseers was not an ideal one for Jewish workers - they were far too independent to be ordered around. Perhaps those who claimed that they would be able to work the land more efficiently without constant interference and control should be given a chance. It was not an easy decision to take and the misgivings of Dr Ruppin and his colleagues were not without foundation. The new workers certainly lacked professional experience and there was reason to doubt whether they had the necessary self-discipline to make the venture a success.

The first such experiment in self-management took place in 1905, when five workers from Kineret signed a contract with the Palestine office in Jaffa to work the land of Um Juni on their own responsibility. In November 1910 ten men and two women settled permanently in what became Degania, the ‘mother of the kvutzot’. Much depended on the outcome. Failure at this stage might have had fatal consequences for the development of settlements of this kind. Two winters passed and two summers, and it appeared that despite the exceedingly difficult climate and other adverse conditions, the new-type settlement was going to be a success.
*
But the directors of the Jewish National Fund still had their doubts. Degania had exceeded its budget by 40 per cent, and they criticised the system of accountancy according to which the kvutza had been worked at a profit from the very beginning. But Ruppin kept his faith in the settlers even against an authority like Oppenheimer, who argued that a capitalist bank could not accept responsibility for the debts and obligations of an enterprise over whose management it had not the slightest influence. Already some of the more enterprising members of the collective were playing with the idea of moving to a new place, to start once again from the beginning, and to leave Degania to another, less experienced group, eager to work in a collective settlement. But the majority view was that they should stay on, and regard Degania as their permanent home, the first in a chain of settlements to be set up in its wake. At this stage full Communism was not yet practised in the kvutza. Every member received a monthly wage of fifty francs from the Palestine office. Some paid it all into the common cash box, while others kept some back for buying clothes and shoes and for other purposes. Shmuel Dayan’s suggestion that no one should marry during the first five years was forgotten after a few weeks and the birth of the first child was the occasion of a major ideological crisis: should the mother nurse and bring up her own child or should it be in someone else’s care? Should children live with their parents or in a separate hut? Should the female members of the collective work in all branches of agriculture, or was their place in the kitchen, the laundry, and the children’s house? Were the children - as Yosef Bussel put it - private property, or did they belong to the commune? The members of Degania opted for a compromise. More radical solutions and the abolition of private property in the collective settlements prevailed only after the end of the First World War with the arrival of a new generation of pioneers.

The story of the success of the first communal settlement spread quickly in Palestine and among Zionist-Socialist youth movements abroad, and the call went forth to establish more communes. There was, however, a tendency to stick too closely to the example of Degania. The fact that the first group of settlers had counted twelve members had been more or less accidental, but it almost became dogma, the pattern of Degania turning into an ideological imperative: it was generally assumed that this was the optimal, indeed the only possible pattern, and that a membership exceeding twelve or fifteen would be detrimental to the intimate atmosphere prevailing in the kvutza. This belief persisted until after 1919, when, with the arrival of many new immigrants, the idea of the large kvutza began to spread.

The first commune had been founded because a growing number of Jewish agricultural workers wanted to break away from the traditional system of managers, overseers and daily wages. As the years passed, a kvutza ideology developed: the commune was not just the way to reach a certain end but became an end in itself; it was an organic cell of the future society. With the breakdown of the family in modern society a new and more progressive pattern of human coexistence was needed, a large-scale family based not on co-sanguinity but on common spiritual attitudes and values. Not all supporters of the kvutza had such far-reaching ambitions. Some simply continued to regard it as the most rational and congenial form of agricultural settlement in Eretz Israel. But everyone agreed that the project was to be pursued on a wider scale. There was also a growing awareness that it was of relevance not only within the Palestinian context but constituted a specific Jewish Socialist contribution in the search for a new society.

While the leaders of the Socialist
groupuscules
in Palestine were talking about the mission of the masses of Jewish workers, the masses themselves were still concentrated in eastern Europe. Events in Sejera and Degania had no direct bearing on their life. Poale Zion was still overwhelmingly a Russian Jewish party, though branches had come into being in Austria (Galicia) in 1904, in the United States (1905), and in Britain (1906). The hostility of the Bund to Zionist initiatives has been mentioned; it did not mellow with time. The Zionist convictions of Poale Zion, on the other hand, were put to a severe test as it became more and more involved in Russian politics. In theory there was no dividing line between the Zionism and the Socialism of Poale Zion, but as the great majority of the members of the party remained outside Palestine, their involvement in local politics became almost inevitable after the revolutionary events and the pogroms of 1904-5. The attacks by critics such as Zhitlovsky probably played a certain part in the process of de-Zionisation. How could a party which put the rebirth of the nation on its banner display typical diaspora (
galut
) mentality and lack the courage to fight for the rights of Jews wherever they lived? But once Poale Zion decided to take a more active part in Russian politics, the Zionist idea was bound to lose its central place in its activities.

This was the time of the Uganda conflict, when the realisation of the Zionist dream seemed more remote than ever. There was considerable support for the policy of a new party, the Sejmists, who seceded in 1905 from the ranks of Zionism-Socialism.
*
For a while they continued to regard themselves as Zionists, and indeed the official name of the party was Zionist-Socialists. But since in their demands they put the emphasis on national political autonomy for Jews in their countries of residence, it was difficult to discover with the naked eye any fundamental difference between them and the Bund. The Sejmists still believed that in the last resort the Jewish question could not be solved in the diaspora. But since they, unlike the Zionists, could not point to a territory which would be a haven for the Jewish masses, the difference between them and the Bund seemed largely academic. For a number of years the territorialists exerted a considerable impact on Jewish Socialism. They had capable leaders such as Zhitlovsky and Nahman Syrkin (who later returned to Zionism). Borokhov’s ingenious ‘synthesis’ failed to persuade most Jewish left-wingers: granted that the Jews needed a land of their own, how could it be proved by Marxist analysis that this country should be none other than Palestine?

The Zeire Zion, a youth movement in Russia and Poland, which had come into being before the First World War, were less vulnerable ideologically, for their Zionism was not based on a scientific theory and they did not believe that the industrial proletariat would be the vanguard of the Jewish people - if only because of its numerical weakness. Yosef Witkin’s appeal (1905) to the youth to serve the Jewish people in Palestine, had made a profound impression on them and they called upon their members to undergo agricultural training to prepare themselves for the pioneering assignments awaiting them in Palestine. They felt that Zionism would not be built as the result of ‘objective forces’ but only if enough of them were willing to devote their life to the cause. Their ideology resembled that of Hapoel Hatzair inasmuch as it was less clearly defined than that of Poale Zion; they too were Socialists, but their Socialism was based largely on ethical considerations. Later on, it was given its theoretical foundation (‘Volkssozialismus’) in the writings of Chaim Arlosoroff when, at the end of the First World War, the Zeire Zion movement expanded all over eastern Europe and became one of the main reservoirs of
halutz
emigration to Palestine.

When the First World War broke out the number of Jewish agricultural workers in Palestine totalled twelve hundred, while the number of those employed in various trades and industries in the cities was not much higher. The war threatened whatever progress had been achieved during the preceding three decades. The poorer sections of the Jewish population were particularly hard hit. After Turkey entered the war, the citrus fruit and the wine of Rishon Lezion and Zikhron Ya’akov could no longer be exported, building funds ran out, the Zionist bank closed down, and the price of foodstuffs and other necessities rose while wages fell as the result of mass unemployment.
*
Beyond the political dangers facing the yishuv, arrests and persecution by the Turkish military authorities, economic ruin and acute hunger threatened the working class community and its institutions. Stagnation was not total, however: four new collective agricultural settlements were founded, including Kfar Giladi and Ayelet Hashahar.

To cope with the wartime emergency,
Hamashbir
was established, the workers’ central buying and selling cooperative which subsequently played such a vital role in the development of the trade union movement and the agricultural settlements. But the spirit of the halutzim was low, and many leaders of the workers’ organisations, including Ben Gurion and Ben Zvi, were expelled from the country by the Turkish authorities. The fact that the workers of Yehuda and Galilee were one big family (literally a ‘face to face community’), that everyone did in fact know everyone else, had been a source of strength and solidarity, and made it easier for them to endure the deprivations of the early years. But it now contributed to the spread of defeatism and despair. Those who had regarded themselves as the spearhead of the great cause of national and social revival now began to suffer from claustrophobia. They were eagerly looking forward to the day when at last there would be some new faces in their midst. But with the total cessation of immigration in 1914 these hopes faded. Never had it been so obvious that smallness could be a curse. The disadvantages manifested themselves on almost every level. Much had been written on the advantages of the family atmosphere and the intimacy in the kvutzot, yet - as so often - there was a wide divergence between theory and reality. The fact that the twelve or fifteen members were in each other’s company for most of the day, that there was hardly any privacy at all, did not enrich their personal life (as the theorists had predicted) but, on the contrary, caused spiritual impoverishment: the hypertrophy of the collective sphere did not necessarily bring out the best in the individual members of the commune. It induced not a few to turn their backs on what only a few years earlier they had considered the ideal way of life.
*
However promising the beginnings of the cooperative settlements, it is unlikely that they would have survived but for the arrival of new immigrants from Europe. The Russian revolution of March 1917 was the first ray of hope. Eight months later the Balfour Declaration was published, and after yet another month, in December 1917, the troops of General Allenby entered Jerusalem.