TRANSFORMING KIBBUTZ RESEARCH

TRANSFORMING

KIBBUTZ RESEARCH TRUST AND MORAL LEADERSHIP IN

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF

DEMOCRATIC CULTURES

Foreword by Professor Emanuel Marx

New World Publishing

Cleveland, Ohio, 2008

Website: http://www.transformingkibbutz.com

Copyright 2008 The Author

It is declared hereby that all the material in this book is original, written by

the author who hold the copyright for it.

First Printing

ISBN: 0-9776818-1-5 PUBLISHE BY NEW WORLD PUBLISHING

Cleveland, Ohio net.silverquillpoetry.www

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

For Emanuel Marx,

a dedicated authentic student, teacher and tutor,

and

For my late father, Yaakov (Kubek) Shapira,

a public servant, transformational leader all his life

CONTENTS Foreword by Prof. Emanuel Marx i Acknowledgements v

1. Introduction: The Mistaken Paradigm of Customary

Kibbutz Research 1 Simultaneous Use of Three Strategies and their Contradictions 3 CKP Users Ignored the Context of FOs and Their Negative Practices 5 Researchers Did Not Study How Rotatzia Enhanced Oligarchy 7 Historical and Current Proof of Rotatzia Failures 9 The Conundrum of Trust and Leadership Morality in DWOs 13 Decline and Resurrection in Kibbutzim and Cooperatives 16 Kibbutz Success Secrets and the Required Cultural Perspective 18

2. Kibbutz Cultural Perspective 20

CKP Misses the Main Cultural Conflict of the Kibbutz Field 21 Cultural Uniqueness Three: Creativity 23 Cultural Uniqueness Four: Large Size, 3-4 Deck Federative Structure 25 Cultural Uniqueness Five: Egalitarian, Solidaristic Democracy 26 False Component: Economic Growth by Entrepreneurship 28 False Component: Rotatzia 29 A Non-Unique Component: Self-Work 31 A Non-Unique Component: High-Trust 34 Summary 38

3. CKP and the Lack of a Good Kibbutz Theory 40 Students Ignored Inventions, Inventors’ Struggles and Careers 40 Kibbutz Creativity Was Not a One-Generation Phenomenon 42 Recent Loss of Creativity and Viability 43 The Dependency Explanation: FOs’ Soft Budget Constraints 47 The 1950s-1960s Crisis did not Parallel the 1980s-1990s 48 FOs Counted on Unquestioned Support from Kibbutzim 49 Modeling Complacency: The Movements’ Delayed Downsizing 50 Dependency Ignored Extreme Differentiation of Kibbutzim 51 Ignorance of FO heads’ Irresponsibility 53 Other Explanations: The Grains of Truth are Lost in Omissions 54 Disastrous Separation of Sociology, History and Anthropology 55 Anthropologists Ignored the Effects of FOs and Societal Contexts 56

4. The Missing of Kibbutz Stratification 59 Supremacy Ignorance and the Confused Etiology of Stratification 61 Missing Classical Stratification Theorists in Kibbutz Literature 64 A Sociologist and Anthropologists Lay the Ground for the Miss 65 Surveys Missed Stratification but Were Scientifically Legitimized 66 Reviewers Missed Students’ Omissions and Sanctioned CKP 67 Kibbutz Member Researchers’ Vested Interests in the Omission 68 Critical Sociologists Found Stratification but Missed Pe’ilim 68

5. Additional Mistakes Due to FOs’ Evasion 71 Kibbutz Movement – A Part of Encompassing Social Movements 71 Ignoring Kibbutz Oligarchization Followed that of the Histadrut 72 Mid-Levelers Became Main Actors with Oligarchization 74 Neglecting the Uniqueness of Pe’ilim and Its Symbolization 75 Neglecting the Violation of Egalitarianism by Pe’ilim 77 Neglecting FOs Differentiation from Kibbutzim 78 Evasion of Violation of Egalitarianism by Outside Sources 79 Blindness to FOs Control of Kibbutzim 80 Overlooking FOs 81

6. FO Heads’ Supremacy: Circulation, ‘Parachutings,’ and

Pe’ilim’s Fragile Status 89 Continuous FO Heads Controlled Circulative Managerial Careers 90 FO Heads’ Iron Law Continuity versus Lower Echelons’ Rotatzia 93

Pe’ilim Supremacy Due to Continuity Vs. Kibbutz Rotatzia 94 Self-Aggrandizement and Bureaucratic Growth 95 Institutionalized Rotatzia Served FO Heads’ Control of Pe’ilim 97 Variability of Rotatzia and Power Accumulation by Senior Pe’ilim 98 Few Ex-Chief Officers Returned to Lower Offices with FOs Growth 100 ‘Parachutings’ of Complete Outsiders and Their Fragile Status 102 Voluntary Resignation of Pe’ilim and Their Fragile Status 104 Frustrating and Purging Effective, Trusted and Creative Pe’ilim 105 Detached Pe’ilim Reigned, FO Heads Prevented Internal Promotion 107 Sidetracking of Creative Radicals: The Catch 22 of Rotatzia 109 How Was a Belief in Egalitarianism Maintained Despite Circulation? 111 Disenchantment with Violation of Egalitarianism Enhanced Exits 113 Compliance Due to a Change from Moral Choice to Expediency 114

7. FO Heads’ Supremacy: Circulation, Patronage and

Cliques 116 Rotazia Encouraged Patronage and Rule of Cliques 117 Research Ignored FOs, Patronage Remained Incomprehensible 118 Continuous Versus Circulative Patrons 120 Patronage Due to Continuous Key Local Jobs 122 Patronage was Integral to Oligarchic Processes 123

8. Flawed Democratic Control of FOs and Fringe Benefits

of Pe’ilim 126 Changing Reg.Ents’ Company Car Norms 127 Stratified FO Cars Symbolized Status, Unlike Most Kibbutz Cars 128 FOs’ Sticking to Company Cars System Served Pe’ilim Interests 130

New Solutions Would Have Required Admitting Stratification 132 Creativity Might Have Elevate Radicals into Potential Successors 133 Admors’ Choice, Self-Serving Officers and Flawed Democracy 135 Secured Supremacy of Pe’ilim Over Kibbutz Representatives 136 Superfluous Growth, Image Creation, Justified Distrust of Pe’ilim 137 A Lack of Genuine Representation Enhanced Flawed Democracy 138 Flawed Democracy Ruined Trust But Could Be Repaired 140 A Lack of Independent Mass Media 141

9. Trust, Leaders’ Morality, and Performance 143 Charismatic or Transformational Leaders? 143 Trust and Organizational Performance 145 Leadership and Morality 146 Leading by Consent and High-Trust Relations is Problematic 148 The Cultural Context Perspective 151 Rotatzia’s Contrast with Highly Trusted Leadership 152

10. Transformational Leaders Became Self-Serving Conservatives, Autocratic Leftists 157

Early Era of High-Moral, Servant Radical Admors 158 Admors Ended Creativity and Turned to Sterile Leftism 160 In the Early Days Admors Contained Leftism 161 Admors’ Leftist Turn 1937-9, and Problematic Slide Explanation 162 Admors’ Growing Predicament Due to Political Inefficacy 164 Admors Dysfunction amid Fast Growth and Mounting Problems 166 Admors Enhanced Power by Leftist Changing of Cosmology 170

Abstention of Direct Involvement in Coping with Challenges 171 Some of the Costs of Leftism 173

11. Supremacy, Minimal Direct Involvement and Ineffective

Leadership 176 Minimal Involvement Defends ‘Parachuted’ Managers’ Authority 177 Hazan’s Uniqueness: Both Local and National Involvement 179 Tabenkin’s Protégé versus Yig’al Allon: Opposite Involvement Strategies 180 Suppressing Potential Successors Made Admors Indispensable 182 The Critical Failure in Absorption of Mass Immigration 186 Admors Prevented a Solution for Problematic Hevrot No’ar 187 Tabenkin’s Conservatism and KM’s Two Failed Attempts 189 Negative Outcomes of the Failure 190

12. Rama’s Lack of Highly Trusted Leadership 193 Field-Work Methods and the Kibbutzim Studied 193 Rama Reacts to Crisis: Self-Reinforcing Imitative Changes 194 Self-Serving Elite Members 196 Outside Work and Growing Inequity 196 Officers’ Ignorance of Unfairness 197 Was the Turn to the Outside Worthwhile? 198 Distrust, Dwindling Democracy and Failed Solutions 199 The Rise of Lesser Officers and Their Weakness 201 Distrust, Minimal Communication, Meager Promotion Prospects 201 Rama’s Self-Serving Power Elites 203 Veteran Pe’ilim Created a Tradition of Violating Egalitarianism 205 The Talented Followed Pe’ilim’s Violation of Egalitarianism 205 Weak Officers Surrendered to the Talented and the Economists 206

Rama’s Power Eclipse: Family Boarding, Private Construction 208 Low Morality of the Economic Elite 209 Low Morality of ‘the Slaves Who Turned Masters’ 209

13. FOs Enhanced Conservatism, Divisiveness, Distrust, and Destructive Conflicts 211

The Power and Weakness of the Economists 212 Low-Trust Culture and the Threat From Below 213 Alienated Talented, Non-Credible Power, Destructive Conflicts 215 Dependency of the Talented on Officers 217 The Old Guard Shaped Rama as a Conservative Kibbutz 218

Rama’s Culture was Largely Shaped by Oligarchic FO Heads 220 Rotatzia Deterred Talents from Offices 222 Outstanding Success of a Tenured Genuine Branch Leader 224 Self-Enhancing Process of Self-Serving Anarchic Conservatism 225 Distrust + Divisiveness + Defensiveness + Doubt = Decline 227

14. Patronage and Moral Decline of Circulative Leaders 228 Hired Labor Deepened Moral Decline of Continuous Patrons 229 Circulation Only Slowed Down Power Accumulation and Moral Decline 230 A Leader’s Power Self-Perpetuation by Barring Industrialization 231 Conservative Meshkism, Olim’s Rule and a ‘Branch Man’ Image 233 Conservative Meshkism Disintegrated the Founders’ Group 235 Abstention of Plant’s Foundation Enhanced Circulative Career 237 Mediocre Clients and ‘Riding’ on a Group Interests 237 Mati Led Patrons’ Obstruction of Democracy 238 Exit Left Zealots, Expediency Seekers and Mediocre Loyalists 239 Kibbutz Chen: Superiority Retention and Leaders’ Moral Decline 240 Communal Boarding and Members’ Complacency 243 Retention of a Tiny Minority, Largely of Complacent Members 244 Veteran Leaders’ Corruption Was to Blame 246 A Complacent Selective Constituency Helped Leaders’ Corruption 247 Additional Ideological Factor: Backward Looking to the 1920s 248

15. Carmelit: Self-Server Who Appropriated Others’

Creativity 251 How Was Barak’s Advance to Autocracy Misinterpreted? 254 Enhanced Power, Prestige and Privileges, Minimal Accountability 256 Industrialization Geared to Kibbutz Ethos Required Creativity 257 FOs’ Conservatism, Creativity Loss and Veterans’ Natural Rights 259

16. Kochav’s High-Moral Patrons Curbed Rotatzia’s

Contrast With Creativity 263 Rotatzia Furthered the Iceberg Phenomenon in Leadership 263 Kochav’s Success 265 Leaders Solved the Plant’s Conflict Concerning Major Norms 266 High-Moral Old Guard Backed Execution of Radicals’ Solutions 268 Democracy Nurtured by Authentic, Credible Leaders 269 A Lively and Critical Local Press 270 Highly Involved High-Moral Leaders were Ascetic and Obedient 271

High Morality Enhanced Trust and Creativity 273 Special Appeals Committee Enhanced Social Justice 273 Strong Officers’ Authority and Much Discretion Pulled Talented 274 Leaders’ High Morality Explains the Curbing of Rotatzia’s Perils 275 High-Trust Culture: Members’ Discretion Bred Creativity 277 Officers Innovated, High-Trust Democracy Kept Leaders’ Status 279 High-Trust Culture: Long-Range Rewards for Contributions 280 Decentralization Enhanced Members’ Ingenuity and Innovation 281 Trust Due to Cultural Creativity Enhancing Value Consensus 282 Care for Needs of the Talented = No Self-Serving Power Elite 284 Without Creativity Officers Failed to Care for Special Needs 284 Creative Egalitarianism in Consumption 285 A Creative Solution to Problematic Work Tasks 287 Trust, Branch Leaders Creativity and Free Flow of Know-How 288 Ex-Managers Who Became Expert Artisans Enhanced Creativity 289 Informal Artisan Leaders: Coaching New Generation Creators 290

17. Rotatzia, Scale and FOs’ Negative Impact Ruined Creativity 293

Consecutive Losses of Ran’s Transformational Leadership 294 Rotatzia Ruined Trust by Elevating Immature Chief Officers 296 Rotatzia Forestalled Trust Creation by Marring Problem-Solving 297 Rotatzia Derailed the Career of a Transformational Leader 298 Scale Problems and Unintended Consequences of Social Action 301 Cooperatives Tendency to Boost Failures Amplified Unknowns 303 Growth Detached Leaders from Problem-Solvers 304 Specialization Furthered Leaders’ Detachment 306 Partial Coping with Scale: Decentralized, Trust-Led, Small Units 307 Creative Solutions for Flexibility Loss: Giyusim and Shibutz 309 Plant Partnership Enabled Growth but Also Impaired Democracy 310 Scale Defeated Democracy Due to Decline of Trust and Creativity 311 Did Patrons and Pe’ilim Genuinely Care for Members Interests? 313 Patrons’ Dilemma: Trusted Headmen or Coercive Chiefs? 314 Price of Chieftainship: Missing Followers’ Beliefs, Aims, Hopes 315 Democracy Declined as Trust of Leaders and Creativity Declined 317 FOs’ Negative Impacts on Kochav’s Democracy 319 Low-Moral Oligarchic FOs Curbed Morality of Kochav’s Officers 320 No Vision: Personal Aims, Officer Shortages, Imitative Solutions 322 The FOs’ Role in the Continuation of Rotatzia-Driven Problems 325

18. Conclusions and Sustainable DWOs 328 Circulation and Other Rotatzia’s Perils Were Missed 330

Patronage Promoted Conservative Loyalists, Marred Creativity 331 Missing Unique Elite Careers and Their Grave Consequences 332 Without a Renewed Socialist Vision, Radicals’ Incoherent Efforts Failed 333 Servant Leaders and High-Trust, Solidaristic Democracy Were Rare 334

‘Parachutings’, Imitative Hired Labor and Leaders Detachment 336 Ignoring Stryjan, Scale, Creativity and Democracy Problems 337 The Plausibility of High-Trust, Democratic and Creative FOs 338 Sustainable DWOs: High-Trust Cultures, High-Moral Leaders 340 Inside Successors and Grass-Roots Democracy 342 Slow Promotion 345 Extant Iron Law Solutions, Their Defects and the New Solution 346 Constituency: Membership and Eligibility to Participate in Voting 348 No Bi-Partisan Politics, Parliament of Directly Chosen Delegates 349 Can the Proposed Solution Make DWOs Sustainable for Decades? 351

Bibliography 355

Name Index 384 Subject Index 392

FOREWORD

The Israeli communal settlements (kibbutz, pl. kibbutzim) were

established a hundred years ago. The first communal settlement in

Palestine, Kinneret, was founded in 1910 and is still a thriving community.

It was the prototype of the kibbutz, a spearhead of the Zionist movement’s

project to acquire land all over Palestine and to settle Jews on it. The

policymakers of those days directed the socialist fervor of penniless young

Jewish men and women emigrants toward a colonialist project. The

Zionist Organization bought the land and supplied the funds for

establishing the colonies, while the socialist pioneers provided the

necessary manpower. The settlers labored to set up just and egalitarian

communities for Jews, without much regard for the Arab peasants some of

whom they had displaced. They were inspired by the ideal of a combined

national and personal redemption, for which many of them were ready to

sacrifice their own and their comrades’ and neighbors’ lives. The socialist

ideology thus served to cover up both the injustice against exploited early

pioneers and against dispossessed Arab peasants.

During that century the kibbutz engendered a voluminous political,

ideological and scholarly literature. Now comes Dr. Reuven Shapira and

argues that most of these writings misunderstood essential aspects of the

kibbutz. In particular, they did not treat the essentially non-democratic and

unchanging higher echelons of kibbutz leaders and the numerous

extraterritorial organizations and enterprises controlled by this elite. Nor

did they fully grasp the fact that the kibbutz has never sought to set up a

utopian society. It has always been integrated in the wider society and

shared many of its norms and beliefs. In the early days the kibbutzim

depended on the Zionist Organization. Its successor, the State of Israel,

also supported the kibbutzim for extended periods. The total dependence

of the early kibbutzim on external funding was a fundamental fact that no

one disputed. But even after they had made considerable headway in the

1930s-1950s, they renewed treating the State of Israel as a milch cow. Yet

in many accounts of kibbutzim this dependence was scarcely mentioned; it

was overshadowed by the interest aroused by the egalitarian way of life.

The anthropologists who studied the kibbutz were profoundly affected by

the ideological statements of their interlocutors and, even more so, by the

manner in which the socialist work ethos was translated into practice.

Forword: Transforming Kibbutz Research ii

Melford Spiro, author of the classic study Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia

candidly admits that he succumbed to the ideological pressure of the

constantly reiterated emphasis on work (1963: 18). The national kibbutz

leaders who controlled and manipulated this ideology remained outside

the accounts, largely because they spent most of their time away from

their home kibbutz. They worked from office buildings in Tel Aviv that

were located in the vicinity of the government center. These were the men

who mediated the flow of state funds to the kibbutzim, negotiated state

land and loans for kibbutz organizations, obtained state contracts for

kibbutz industries and, no less important, committed quotas of kibbutz

members for serving the interests of the Israeli Labor party and other

national bodies.

In the above passage I use the word ‘men’ deliberately, for practically

all the kibbutz leaders were men. Women were from the outset relegated

to the ‘inferior’ services, as the income-creating jobs were reserved for the

males. While some women worked in backbreaking manual tasks, such as

road building and harvesting, most of them worked in the ‘unproductive’

kitchens, laundries, nurseries and schools. The impact of the external

world on this sexual division of labor was unmistakable, and should have

alerted the students of the kibbutz to its participation in the world. But it

was consistently ignored in the research literature. A glaring example was

Tiger and Shepher’s (1977) study of women in the kibbutz. They treated

the kibbutz as a social isolate, which subscribed to a strict equality of the

sexes. Yet they found that most women worked in the caring and

educational services. Therefore they interpreted this peculiar division of

labor simply as the outcome of biologically conditioned preferences of

women.

The consternated reader may well ask: How can it be that three

generations of kibbutz students missed the true nature of these

phenomena, and only one scholar got it right? I argue that this may well be

the case: It is not unusual, even in scholarly work, for totally misconceived

mental constructs to persist. Just think of the way the tribe has since the

days of Morgan (1877) been construed as the overarching and most

inclusive unit of simple societies, and kinship as their cornerstone. When

Fried suggested in 1966 that tribes were not found in simple society, but

were an element of state control (Fried 1968: 18), he set off a discussion

that eventually led nowhere. The same happened to Schneider’s 1971

Forword: Transforming Kibbutz Research iii

argument that “kinship… does not exist in any culture known to man”

(Schneider 1984: vii); it was considered an interesting and provocative

formulation that was discussed for a decade or more, and then consigned

to oblivion. While both Fried and Schneider presented their arguments in

convincing detail, they had in their lifetime little impact on

anthropological theory and certainly did not cause a ‘paradigm change’.

Indeed, any scholar who, like The author, tries to change long-established

academic conceptions must be prepared for a long uphill struggle that will

not necessarily succeed.

The author was born and bred in Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, has lived there

most of his life, and while he teaches in Western Galilee Academic

College in Acre, he and his family still reside in Gan Shmuel. He is also

deeply committed to the kibbutz way of life. Can such a person rise above

the deeply engrained self-evident beliefs embodied in daily praxis, and

critically examine his own community? The answer is not to be sought in

The author’s undoubted capacity to distance himself from his situation,

but rather in his burning desire to reform the kibbutz and make it again

viable. This has been the energy driving a research project that has

occupied his full attention for over thirty difficult years. His devotion to

the kibbutz has not blinded him to its failings. There is an obstinate spirit

in him that drives him to get to the root of matters, and the intellectual

honesty to face up to unpalatable realities. In his search for the truth The

author wrestles with the complex data and constantly revises and checks

his arguments, sometimes producing a dozen or more drafts, till he is

satisfied that he has got the right answers. Both the academic community

and the kibbutz members are deeply obliged to The author for having

written this erudite and profoundly practical study.

Dr. Emanuel Marx

Professor Emeritus

Tel Aviv University, Sociology and Anthropology Department

References

Fried, Morton H. “On the concept of ‘tribe’ and ‘tribal society’”. Pp. 3-20 in

Essays on the Problem of Tribe, June Helm (ed.). Proceedings of the 1967

Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society. Seattle:

American Ethnological Society, 1968. .

Forword: Transforming Kibbutz Research iv

Morgan, Lewis Henry. 1877. Ancient Society. New York: Holt.

Schneider, David M. 1984. A Critique of the Study of Kinship. Ann Arbor:

University of Michigan Press.

Spiro, Melford E. 1963[1955]. Kibbutz: Venture in Utopia. New York:

Schocken.

Tiger, Lionel, and Joseph Shepher. 1977. Women in the Kibbutz.

Harmondsworth: Penguin.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is the outcome of a very long intellectual journey commenced

48 years ago when I became a kibbutz member and, thus, involved in

coping with some of its main problems, with only minor success. An

initial intellectual thrust for this journey was provided by the ideas of

Ephraim Reiner, which led to my choice of Sociology studies.

Subsequently, Emanuel Marx taught me how the ethnographic study of

complex social phenomena could lead to a paradigmatic change which

would point to possible new solutions seemingly impossible within the

current paradigm, and he has been my teacher, reader and mentor for over

three decades. Don Handelman was an excellent critical reader, and the

late Dr. Israel Shepher introduced me to the rigorousness of doubting

questions and answers in the study of kibbutz, then supported my efforts at

understanding by careful reading of drafts of my book on the Regional

Enterprises of kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz), and helped me to cope with

colleagues’ misunderstanding of my radical conclusions. Gideon M.

Kressel helped me greatly by careful reading and criticism of many

papers, mostly unpublished, through which the ideas of the book were

gradually cemented into a coherent structure (at least in my mind). The

late Dafna N. Izraeli turned my attention to conflicting paradigms in

organizational literature and later read some drafts and gave candid

criticism that has helped me much, as have Dani Zamir and Amir Helman.

In clearing up my own misunderstandings, leading to the grasping of the

right paradigm, many others have provided me with crucial assistance by

commenting on drafts, papers and parts of the book. I thank Daniel De

Mal’ach, Moshe Shwartz, Victor Friedman, Ze’ev Shavit, Pinchas Shtern,

Dvora Kalekin-Fishman, Haim Shferber, Avi Kirschenbaum, Alex

Weingrod, Yossi Shavit, Esther Herzog, Efrat Noni-Weiss, Ofra Grinberg,

Avi Cordova, Gila Adar, Yuval Milo, Mira Baron, Yehuda Bien, Leora

Yaacobi, Zachary Shaeffer, Dan Bar-On, Michael Harrison, Baruch

Kanari, Moti Regev, and Daniel Breslau. I would especially like to thank

Nigel Rapport who commented on the first half of the manuscript, and

Itamar Rugovski and David Wesley whose comments on the whole book

were very helpful. Special thanks go to Martin Kett and Barbara Doron

whose questions while making my English readable have cleared up much

confusion, and to Rachel Kessel who exposed many unclear paragraphs

vi

while translating the book to Hebrew. However, any mistakes contained in

this book are my own.

I am also grateful for the financial help I received from the Golda Meir

Institute for Social Research and the Weizmann Zionism Research

Institute of Tel Aviv University, the Ben Gurion Fund of the Histadrut, the

Jewish National Fund Research Institute, Yad Tabenkin and Kibbutz Gan

Shmuel, which have helped in many other ways, as well.

Last but not least has been the support of my family, which barely

understood the prolongation of my journey and its unconventionality, but

has nevertheless made it possible.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Mistaken Paradigm of

Customary Kibbutz Research

Why kibbutz research requires transformation, a turnaround, a very

profound and extensive overhaul? Why is the kibbutz not comprehended

by both its students and other observers, including its members and many

ex-members? Is it not the most intensively studied of all small societies for

more than sixty years?

There is no question about it; the database of the Kibbutz Research

Institute at Haifa University includes more than 5000 publications.

However, almost all of this voluminous research has used a mistaken

paradigm that has led to major misunderstandings. The kibbutz was

grasped as a bounded entity defined by its territory, formal organization,

residents, economy and labor force. But already its first students Landshut

(2000[1944]) and Buber (1958[1945]) had pointed to the unique federative

organization of kibbutzim (plural of kibbutz), and I. Shepher (1980) had

disproved the simplistic bounded grasping by showing that a kibbutz

boundaries were demarcated differently by each defining factor. The

kibbutz was supposedly egalitarian and democratic, but although ever

since Landshut (2000[1944]) many students had exposed stratification and

continuous power holding by elites,1 some of its later students found no

stratification.2 However, I will show that even the former students had

missed most stratification of the kibbutz as they had ignored the upper

strata that dominated the kibbutz field by heading and managing inter-

kibbutz federative organizations (hereafter, FOs) or by representing them

in national leadership and executive offices. Although field theory was

introduced into social sciences by Kurt Lewin (1951) and advanced by

Bourdieu (1977) and Marx (1980), it was missed by kibbutz research. This

was a fatal oversight since the kibbutz became the most successful of all

communal societies by being a radical social movement, highly involved

1 Rosenfeld 1983[1951]; Spiro 1955; Kressel 1971; Fadida 1972; Shepher, I.

1983; Shapira 1987, 1990, 2005; Ben-Rafael 1986; Pavin 1996. 2 Talmon 1972; Shepher, Y. 1975; Blasi 1980; Shur 1987; Rosner 1991.

1. The Mistaken Paradigm of Customary Kibbutz Research 2

in its surroundings and by creating a large and complex organizational

field, which included hundreds of communal kibbutzim, as well as

hundreds of bureaucratic, hierarchic and autocratic FOs which

implemented this involvement. FO heads, executives and representatives

dominated the field and enjoyed power, prestige, privileges, intangible

capitals and job continuity far greater than officers of kibbutzim. Thus,

without studying FOs as an integral part of the field, kibbutz society was

incomprehensible.

No other communal society has been so profoundly shaped by its

involvement in national, social and political struggles, nor has any

communal society developed a large web of FOs. At most, communal

societies have had a common spiritual leadership, have maintained

informal ties, and have had some economic cooperation. These societies

have always been radical and egalitarian, having a glorious vision of a

new, better and more just society, leading to a belief in the millenarian

elimination of all social injustices. They have tried to embody their

exhilarating ideas by creating radical cultures, hoping that the surrounding

society would follow, but have always failed to achieve such emulation. A

major reason has been that, except for the kibbutz, all communes which

have succeeded in terms of a large and stable membership, long endurance

and economic success giving them leverage for societal change, have

channeled their main efforts inward. They have not taken part in national

efforts such as wars, and they have intensified communal networks,

insulating members from the rest of society. Their cultures have

blossomed at the price of social marginalization.3

The kibbutz was just the opposite: intensive societal involvement was

integral to its spearheading of a much larger social movement, Zionism,

aimed at creating a new, better society for a renewed Jewish nation in

Palestine (Landshut 2000[1944]). On the one hand, kibbutz was an

exceptional success, as this objective succeeded, while the kibbutz became

“…a highly successful enterprise by virtue of its longevity (compared to

almost every other utopian movement), as well as any other criterion by

which the success of social systems is judged” (Spiro 1983: 4). On the

other hand, despite the kibbutz taking on the hardest missions of Zionism

and obtaining the support of non-socialist leaders who gave it a large

3 Landshut 2000[1944]; Knaani 1960; Oved 1988; Pitzer 1997.


portion of World Zionist Organization (WZO) resources, it had only minor

influence on the structuring of the Jewish community in Palestine, and

then on Israeli society. Even among Zionist socialists it remained a small

minority, and after four decades of successful pioneering culminating in a

leading role in the winning of the 1948 War of Independence, the new

State of Israel opted for a capitalist course of development, contrary to

kibbutz socialist ideals. The two main kibbutz federations, which

consisted of some 80% of kibbutzim, remained outside the government,

and their members and supporters who commanded some half of the units

in this war, were marginalized and ousted from the army.4

Simultaneous Use of Three Strategies and their

Contradictions One plausible reaction to such a failure could have been isolationism,

similar to other communal societies. A second option was to fight back,

trying to change society through political and other means open to social

movements in a democracy, while a third was to adopt new societal aims,

while trading the efforts kibbutzim made at their promotion for

advantages. The kibbutz movement simultaneously used all three

strategies, succeeding with a remarkable list of achievements, and growing

far beyond any other communal society to 269 communes, 129,000

inhabitants, and hundreds of FOs with tens of thousands of employees at

its peak, in the mid-1980s (Chap. 5). Most FOs catered to kibbutz aims

and needs and performed a large variety of functions for which each

kibbutz was too small a unit.5 However, kibbutz discourse evaded FOs

although over 4000 kibbutz members headed and administered them, and

so did kibbutz researchers (Chap. 3). A member of veteran Kibbutz

Kochav (fictive name of a successful kibbutz; Chaps. 16-17) has said:

“The kibbutz is not, as we imagine, an isolated community. We very much

belong to the outside, but since members don’t want to sit and discuss our

relations with the entities [on the outside] to which we belong, we are not

coping with the problem. In order to explain the problem, we must

4 Near 1992-1997; Yaar et al. 1994; Tzachor 1997. 5 Barkai 1977; Spiro 1983; Stryjan 1989; Maron 1997. On FOs: Rosolio 1975,

1999; Cohen, A. 1978; Shapira 1978, 1978/9, 1986, 1987, 1995a, 1995b; Brum

1986; Niv & Bar-On 1992.


recognize it, and maybe we do not want to do that…”

The speaker was too young to know that this question had often been

discussed in Kochav’s early days, but then kibbutz leaders externalized

FOs, and kibbutz students followed suit and ignored them, avoiding

conflicts with leaders in order to gain their cooperation by adopting their

egalitarian image of kibbutz, which FO study would have disproved

(Shapira 2005). Thus, even elementary data, such as the number of

employees, the scope of operations and the financial status were

unavailable for most FOs. For example, the true number of employees of

FOs called the Regional Enterprises (Hereafter Reg.Ents. Shapira 1987),

was three times larger than the one quoted by kibbutz member authors

Gelb and Criden (1974: 276. Compare: Cohen, A. 1978: 109). The main

reason was that, although FOs were integral for the simultaneous use of

the three strategies, their cultures negated kibbutz ones. Quite early Buber

(1958[1945]: 141) had asserted that FOs must operate “...under the same

principle that operate in their [kibbutzim] internal structure”. However,

even the main FOs, called the Movements, which were headed by main

leaders and were egalitarian and democratic at first, with success became

oligarchic: Leaders continued for life and deputies for decades; they

accumulated power, prestige and other intangible capitals, centralized rule

and depressed democracy, promoting conservative loyalists and

suppressing critics and radicals (cf. Hirschman 1970). They enlarged their

own and loyalist privileges in accord with Michels’s (1959[1915]) “Iron

Law of Oligarchy”, while using political extremism to defend power

(Chaps. 10-11). Strong leadership fitted the second and third strategies,

but conservative autocracy negated kibbutz ethos and impaired essential

cultural components such as the creativity required to keep the kibbutz

egalitarian and democratic amid growth and success (Stryjan 1989;

Brumann 2000). Stryjan found that with success, growth and complexity,

self-managed organizations such as cooperatives introduced hired labor,

hierarchy, bureaucracy and autocracy that curbed democracy and

creativity. This then caused stagnation and either failure or crises leading

to transformation into capitalist firms. Only kibbutzim were exempted by

remaining relatively small, democratic and creative, eagerly shared

knowledge of successful innovations which were adopted by other


kibbutzim, while FOs performed functions that required economies of

scale.6 Brumman’s (2000) study of all known successful communal

societies corroborated this: Only communes with a federative structure

continued to succeed beyond the life span of their founders, since this

structure gave individual communes autonomy that prevented suppression

of local creativity by a leader of the whole communal society who had

become an autocratic ruler.

The sad fact was that despite critique of oligarchic and autocratic FOs

which emerged in the kibbutz press since the 1970s, kibbutz students

avoided FOs as did kibbutz members, ignoring the few FO studies that had

been done (Footnote 5). They accepted the FOs definition as non-kibbutz

entities by using the customary kibbutz paradigm (CKP for short) in which

a kibbutz was not a unit of a large, federatively organized social

movement led by privileged power elites whose main careers were made

in FOs or on their behalf in outside bureaucracies. They therefore treated

kibbutz as an isolated commune to be studied like other communal

societies, ignoring Landshut, Buber, Stryjan and others who had pointed to

the decisive role of kibbutz unique federative organizing.7

CKP Users Ignored the Context of FOs with Negative

Practices However, when Stryjan was published in 1989, reality had radically

changed and kibbutz success explained by him had vanished: Most FOs

and kibbutzim were in ruins, deep in a huge debt crisis which has required

two national rescue packages costing the government billions (in $US

terms).8 Many FOs had gone bankrupt; most of the rest were radically

downsized, while a wave of capitalist practices engulfed kibbutzim and

FOs.9 Stryjan had taken an important step toward eliminating the mistaken

6 See support in: Gherardi & Masiero 1990; Semler 1993; Russell 1995; Ingram

& Simons 2002. 7 Even Niv & Bar-On’s (1992) study of FOs role in kibbutz success ignored these

works. 8 On the crisis: Krol 1989; Talmi 1993; Ben-Rafael 1997; Leviatan et al. 1998.

On lack of improvement: Halperin 1999; Dloomi 2000; Bashan 2001; Lazar

2001. 9 Kressel 1992; Pavin 1994; Bien 1995; Rosner & Getz 1996; Ben-Rafael 1997;


CKP by which students externalized and ignored FOs, but he still missed

the mark since kibbutzim and FOs were together a complex organizational

field in which it was impossible to explain one hemisphere properly,

without studying the other. Moreover, it was essential to untangle the

impact of both hemispheres on its variety of units, their mutual

relationships and relations with the encompassing society.

Stryjan’s mistake was that, like CKP users, he ignored the impact of

contexts on kibbutzim, i.e., both FOs and capitalist society. For instance,

Simons and Ingram (1997) found that use of capital markets by kibbutzim

for financing industrialization, enhanced the capitalist practice of hired

labor. Ethnographers tend to miss impact of contexts, said Marx (1985:

147), and so did kibbutz ones who missed the impact of the context of

conformist, capitalist-like, low-trust FOs, on radical, high-trust kibbutz

cultures.10 FOs were aimed at defending kibbutzim from market pressures

and providing them with unique services, but became Trojan Horses of

capitalist society inside them. The FO functionaries called pe’ilim

(literally: activists. Singular: pa’il), who consisted of kibbutz elite

members, gained extra power, prestige, privileges and job continuity, or

maintained advantages by circulation among FO and kibbutz offices.

Many became autocratic oligarchs, diminished collectivism, democracy,

egalitarianism, solidarity, trust and creative innovation by which problems

caused by growth and success could be solved in accord with the radical

ethos. Stryjan did not allude to works which depicted FOs’ capitalist-like

cultures and their negation of kibbutz cultures,11 and so he missed the fact

that low-trust, hierarchic FOs managed by kibbutz elite members,

negatively impacted kibbutz high-trust, egalitarian cultures. As careers of

most elite members, and especially of the most powerful ones, advanced

primarily in FOs or on their behalf in national executives, their local status

and power in kibbutzim were elevated by high-level outside jobs (Cabinet

Ministers, Knesset [Parliament] Members, Jewish Agency executives, FO

Rosolio 1999.

10 On importance of context: Marx 1985; Bryman et al. 1996. On high- vs. low-

trust cultures: Dore 1973; Fox 1974; Ouchi 1981; Fukuyama 1995; Shapira

1987, 1995b. On kibbutz cultures: Next chapter. 11 Rosolio 1975; Cohen R. 1978; Ron 1978; Shapira 1978, 1978/9, 1986, 1987;

Brum 1986.


heads, etc.), with conspicuous symbols which procured local supremacy.

Anthropologist Rosenfeld (1983[1951]) had already found that the highest

status in Kvutzat Kiriat Anavim12 was held by senior pe’ilim, as was found

by other ethnographers who sought the connection between outside and

inside statuses and powers.13 However, they, too, missed the

oligarchization of the kibbutz field and low-moral, self-serving practices

of many senior pe’ilim (Chap. 4).

Researchers Did Not Study How Rotatzia Enhanced

Oligrachy Stryjan discussed the degeneration of democracy with growth and

economic success (1989: 86-91), but as was usual in organizational

democracy literature,14 he ignored the leadership factor, Michels’s Iron

Law, Jay’s (1969) critique of Machiavellianism and Hirschman’s (1970,

1982) decline theories due to leaders promoting only loyalists and shifting

to private ends. Following dominant kibbutz students, Stryjan supposed

that the rotatzia norm (meaning: rotation) aimed at preventing oligarchy

by replacing officers every few years, indeed prevented it.15 He missed

both the lack of rotatzia in the field’s highest echelons such as prime

leaders, Cabinet Ministers, Knesset Members and FO heads, as well as the

growing rareness of genuine rotatzia in mid- and low-management, i.e.,

officers returning to the ranks and workers taking their place.

With growth of FOs creating many new managerial jobs, most kibbutz

ex-chief officers became pe’ilim, and their prospects of coming back to the

ranks involuntarily became negligible; they either found a continuous

pe’ilut (being a pa’il), or circulated to other offices in the field, or got an

office outside it, or left.16 Few mid-level pe’ilim continued pe’ilut for life, 12 “Kvutza” was called early kibbutz which preferred smallness (Landshut 2000

[1944]). 13 Leshem 1969; Fadida 1972; Topel 1979; Rayman 1981; Shapira 1990, 1992;

Argaman 1997. 14 C.f. Whyte & Whyte 1988, Morrison 1991; Russell & Rus 1991; Lafferty &

Rosenshtein 1993; Heller et al. 1998; Darr & Lewin 2001; Cloke & Goldsmith

2002; Darr & Stern 2002; Sen 2003. 15 Their works: Leviatan 1978, 1993; Rosner 1964, 1982; Talmon 1972; Cohen &

Rosner 1988. 16 Ron 1978; Shapira 1978, 1987, 1990; Helman 1987. Leshem (1969) did not


while the majority circulated and sometimes returned to kibbutz chief

offices; only some lesser ones returned to the ranks. Many continuous

pe’ilim and circulators became conservative self-servers and suppressed

innovators who sought new solutions for pressing problems.17 The

seemingly egalitarian, high-moral rotatzia, which was hailed by students

as a main reason for kibbutz success, was, in fact, a negative practice. It

encouraged self-serving circulation of conservative officers among

privileged FO jobs as clients of FO heads or executives, while intermittent

returning to kibbutz chief offices enhanced their local dominance. Their

success in the circulation was due to FO heads’ patronage which promoted

conservatism, while patronage enhanced FO heads accumulation of power,

intangible capitals and privileges; thus rotatzia enhanced autocracy,

conservatism and Machiavellianism.

Rotatzia helps to explain why, despite democratic and egalitarian ethos,

prime leaders continued for half a century: It magnified the oligarchic

process by detaching power from responsibility; power was concentrated

at the continuous top, while responsibility rested on fast-changing mid-

and low-level officers.18 This invited conservative, hands-off management,

self-serving shirking of essential leadership tasks in which one could fail

and lose prestige and power which might lead to demotion. Yaakov

Hazan, one of the two prime leaders of the Kibbutz Artzi federation (KA

for short), declared at its convention (I was present): “Leadership is not

done rotationally”. Indeed, genuine leadership that solves major public

problems requires creativity which necessitates a long time horizon

(Jaques 1990), and high-trust relations among actors which require time

and motivation to create (Fox 1974; Axelrod 1984). However, continuous

FO heads and executives thrived on lower echelons’ rotatzia which caused

allude to this, but many of his cases support it. Masculine terminology is used

as continuity and/or circulation were true of most men, but very rare among

women who almost never became oligarchic leaders. 17 This accorded Michels (1959[1915]) and Hirschman (1970, 1982). See: Beilin

1984; Shapira 1987, 1990, 1992a, 1992b; Kynan 1989; Kafkafi 1988, 1992,

1998; Vilan 1993; Rosolio 1999; Aharoni 2000; Shure 2001. 18 For example, chief officers of younger Ichud Movement’s kibbutzim served

about 1.6 years, and veteran kibbutzim about 3.3 years (Meged & Sobol 1970:

27).


distrust and depressed creativity, as it marred careers of young officers

who promoted public aims by innovation: Their successes were a menace

to the authority of conservative patrons and their loyalists. Hence,

innovators received, at most, passing glory, but rarely office continuity

and promotion. They were mostly demoted and sidetracked although they

knew what would solve major problems, how to achieve it, and had

enough public trust to carry out their ideas. In contrast, mediocre

conservative officers who sought power, status and privileges, were

promoted to FOs due to loyalty to their heads (cf. Hirschman 1970), and

either continued in jobs or circulated among offices, obtaining power,

prestige and privileges which symbolized high status and enhanced power

(cf. Lenski 1966). Often such pe’ilim became local oligarchs as patrons of

younger mediocre officers, ruining trust, democracy, egalitarianism and

creativity (Chaps. 12-17).

Kibbutz students missed this: surveys never asked about it, and those

ethnographers who saw local oligarchs and patronage, did not expose the

fragile status of kibbutz officers and low-rank pe’ilim due to rotatzia,

missing findings which pointed to this fragility such as Leshem’s (1969).

Nor did they untangle how this fragility crippled problem-solving by

innovators and deterred many of them from assuming offices, causing

major leadership failures due to managerial brain-drain. While

problematic abstention of taking offices by competent members was a

well-known phenomenon, called ‘internal leaving’ (Am’ad & Palgi 1986),

as it was not connected to rotatzia’s perils, kibbutz students failed to

explain it.

Historical and Current Proof of Rotatzia Failures Kibbutz research ignored rotatzia literature which has shown that its

principle element, a fixed and short time in office, was tried and failed in

ancient Athens, 2400 years ago, in Imperial China from about 1300 to

1949, in Latin American presidential regimes, in the US army and in the

Israeli armed forces. Its recurring failures remained unrecognized without

integration of research findings of various disciplines (cf. Wallerstein

2004). Time in office was short in order to prevent power and capitals

accumulation by which officers could bar succession. In Athens, it was

one year, Imperial China’s district magistrates were given three years, and

Latin America’s one-term-only presidents have four to six years. In

Imperial China, power was also limited by ‘parachuting’, sending a


nominee to be a district officer and magistrate over 165 miles away from

home. The inevitable price was weak, inexperienced and ineffective

officers who soon learned that they could not promote public aims and

shifted to personal ends, resulting in rampant corruption, which, in some

eras, brought the majority of them to trial.19 Low morality was built-in:

Aristophanes, Athens’ famous playwright, depicted rotatzia as “the rule of

embezzlement and evil... leadership is the interest of complete

ignoramuses and the lowest of degenerates” (Fuks 1976: 56). In the Israeli

armed forces, Colonel (Reserve) Dr. Vald (1987: 158) found that “rotatzia

turned into a sacred ritual kept zealously because it served promotion

needs ...of unprofessional, inexpert and inexperienced officers”. Gabriel

and Savage (1981), Segal (1981) and other students explained US military

failure in Viet Nam by rotation of both soldiers and officers which marred

trust and solidarity both within and between hierarchic ranks. Henderson

(1990) found the US army “hollow”, without effective fighting units due

to a lack of trust and solidarity because of the rotation system. Guest

(1962), Gabarro (1987), myself (1987, 1995a, 1995b), and Oplatka (2002)

supported this: New outsider managers, as was common in the kibbutz

field and in other cases of rotatzia, needed years to build trust with

subordinates, to learn local problems thoroughly and to invent, test and

implement radical solutions. Rotatzia, however, marred trust building, left

little time for its use and made success at radical changes implausible;

hence it encouraged officers’ conservatism.

Though kibbutz research explained adaptability and innovation by

rotatzia, it never referred to this literature and rarely bothered to study

how it really functioned. Since the mid-1970s the kibbutz press criticized

extra continuity of pe’ilim, both continuous and circulative, but rotatzia

was studied only inside kibbutzim by survey researches, ignoring this

press and ethnographies untangling circulative continuity of pe’ilim and

the fact that circulators became local patrons much like continuous pe’ilim

(e.g. Topel 1979). Students missed the dark side, the non-democratic face

of rotatzia: both types of pe’ilim acted as local patrons who controlled

19 On Athens: Burn 1964; Bowra 1971; Fuks 1976. On China: Chang 1955;

Chow 1966; Folsom 1968; Watt 1972. On Latin America: Davis 1958; Sanders

1989; Linz 1990; Mainwaring 1990. On shifting to personal aims: Hirschman

1982.


clients’ circulation in managerial jobs and through them a kibbutz.20 Other

structural failures were also missed: With FOs growth creating many new

offices, an ex-pa’il taking a kibbutz office was often provisional, until his

next pe’ilut commenced; thus he evaded major problems or camouflaged

solutions (Chaps. 12-14). Often ex-pe’ilim took only lesser jobs as it was

easier to find a successor for these when a pe’ilut became available

(Fadida 1972: 89). Am’ad and Palgi (1986) missed this reason for ‘internal

leaving’, failing to notice that asking to be freed for pe’ilut from an office

before a term had ended and a successor had been found, was grasped as

“careerism” and led to gossip or even open criticism. However, members

might not dare to oppose it in the General Assembly by raising their

hands, as this could precipitate revenge by an injured protagonist, and

since in most cases, after a short time, he got approval for another

pe’ilut.21

Heidenheimer’s (1970: 184-8) critique of the corrupt US public service

supports the above: High turnover of officers due to political nominations

created a structure without adequate motivators to grasp public office as a

public trust; hence, relatively few officers were truly public servants,

dedicated to solving public problems when it required paying some

personal price. Among the hundreds of pe’ilim and ex-pe’ilim whom I

studied from 1975 to 1992, only a few were corrupt like US officials, but

not many more were truly public servants either. Rotatzia demoted many

of these, preventing office continuity by which trust gained by early truly

public service, enhanced solving harder problems later on. For instance,

Pericles brought Athens to its Golden Age, 444-429 B.C., since he had

become Strategos, the only office in which reelection was allowed, and

due to fourteen reelections he succeeded. Rotatzia is a Procrustean bed for

genuine leaders aimed at the public good; it legitimizes their replacements

without intrinsic reason, and deprives them of a clear mandate that defends

authority used positively. This deters talented radicals from offices and

enhances continuity of mediocre officers. They defend their fragile status

20 Critical publications concerning rotatzia will be detailed. Kibbutz rotatzia

studies: Meged & Sobol 1970; Leviatan 1978, 1993; Helman 1987; Einat 1991;

Shapira 1995a. 21 Vilan 1993: 247-8; Kafkafi 1998: 30. On the General Assembly voting:

Argaman 1997.


by low morality: evading coping with difficult problems, masking failures

or blaming them on others, taking credit for successes, even those which

one tried to abort, nurturing ties with patrons, not bothering about public

interest and concealing or camouflaging its evasion, just keeping the

image of caring for it.22 Kibbutz rotatzia often failed to replace such

officers who ignored informal pressures to resign, using patrons’ backing

and the lack of a formal succession timetable, no clear-cut procedures and

no open competition for offices. As Banfield (1958) has shown and others

supported (See Chap. 9), low morality ruins trust in an officer: commoners

who discern shirking of duties and seeking private ends as well as its

concealment, resist his decisions and orders. Then the officer uses

coercion that ruins trust: he centralizes control, threatens and then

punishes inconformity, monopolizes information, rewards and promotes

his loyalists, and sidetracks, demotes and pushes to exit critics who are

truly public servants.23

Many FO heads used such means from the early days to control both

hired employees and pe’ilim, but even if some coercion was legitimate for

the former, it was illegitimate for pe’ilim who, as kibbutz members, had to

be trusted as co-owners and part of democratic decision-making. As this

was rare in FOs, and as pe’ilim included a majority of kibbutz power

elites, it was clear that the true dynamics of kibbutz society were

inexplicable without untangling the malfunctioning of this

incommensurate control. Moreover, by ignoring this, kibbutz research

missed dealing with the leadership factor although ample evidence has

proved its decisive role in both large organizations and social

movements.24

22 Dalton 1959; Maccoby 1976; Shapira 1987; Jackall 1988; Scharfstein 1995;

Chaps. 12, 14, 15. 23 Michels 1959[1915]; Dalton 1959; Jay 1969; Hirschman 1970; Shapira 1987,

1995b. 24 Guest 1962; Downton 1973; Greenleaf 1977; Geneen 1984; Sieff 1988; DePree

1990; Graham 1991; Sergiovanni 1992; Kouzes & Posner 1993; Terry 1993;

Brumann 2000; Guiliani 2002.


The Conundrum of Trust and Leadership Morality in

DWOs Burns (1978) points to dependence of long-term viable democracy upon

transformational leaders who make radical changes, required to solve

major problems that impair the advance of public interests, aims and

wishes. Organizational theorists and practitioners have alluded to the high-

trust level required between transformational leaders and followers in

order to overcome the hurdles of radical changes, and have recognized that

high-trust required high-moral behavior by public servant leaders.25 While

it was clear that the kibbutz movement could not overcome the huge

obstacles it faced in the early era without such highly trusted leaders, the

ultra-long continuity of its prime leaders, their oligarchization and self-

serving behavior (to be described later), proved that their morality had

already started to decline in the late 1930s. This was four decades before

they vanished and the peak of success of the kibbutz system. So how was

this success possible in such a fast-changing environment and in a fast-

growing system, while leaders were oligarchic and conservative? Can the

explanation of this unique society reveal the secrets of the trust and

leadership conundrum in democratic work organizations (DWOs) which

will change basic ideas about the possibilities of making democratic

management viable for good? Can it pave the way to its replacement of

bureaucracy as a main control mode of large work organizations, as has

been proposed by some authors?26

“Democratic Work Organizations” is a better term than “Self-Managed

Organizations” used by Stryjan (1989), since it indicates their culture’s

main feature, a high-trust, solidaristic democracy that requires no market

forces to coerce people to take their jobs, and no hierarchic, autocratic

bureaucracy to control their work, since managers are chosen and replaced

by them, as has been in successful kibbutzim. In principle, an individual is

chosen manager since he is trusted by the majority, and is replaced when

trust vanishes. However, the growing interest in trust as a prime factor of

25 See sources in previous footnote and: Banfield 1958; Ouchi 1981; Shapira

1987, 1995b, 2001; Harvey-Jones 1988; Kets De Vries 1993; Hosmer 1995;

O’Toole 1999; Cloke & Goldsmith 2002. 26 Whyte & Whyte 1988; Morrison 1991; Semler 1993; Cloke & Goldsmith

2002; Sen 2003.


organizations and societies emphasizes the omission of this factor in

industrial democracy literature, making it barely relevant for the

advancement of DWOs theory and practice.27 The kibbutz experience

would point in the same direction: success was achieved by effective

democracy and high-trust cultures, led by competent, effective and high-

moral leaders committed to common aims. These leaders modeled hard

work and asceticism, and motivated members to achieve these aims by

seeking new solutions to problems, even when such solutions enhanced

members’ prestige and curbed their own.28 Stryjan’s (1989) finding that

democracy in cooperatives declined with success and growth, missed the

fact that concomitant oligarchization of leadership was a major reason for

it, for growing distrust of officers and for loss of work motivation curbing

efficiency, effectiveness and innovation required to compete in markets.

Without effective democracy, the ample power of a leader prevents

members’ distrust from bringing about his succession; hence, the DWO is

led to inevitable deterioration, since there is no one with supreme authority

to replace him, unlike many public firms. This is a prime reason for the

fact that, despite many successful DWOs, low-trust, coercive

bureaucracies, whose acute and insoluble ailments have been documented

by a vast literature, have remained hegemonic among large

organizations.29

This continued hegemony raises a troubling question for everyone who

believes in democracy: Why is democracy preferred in the control of

states and communities, but not in work organizations? Moreover, with

globalization and the large number of firms that are much larger, richer

and more powerful than many states, not to mention communities, can the

latter remain democratic while the former are autocratic? Feenberg (1995)

27 This literature: footnote 14. Trust in organizations: Hosmer 1995; Bigley &

Pearce 1998; Korczynski 2000; Adler 2001; Dierkes et al. 2001; Maister et al.

2001; Reed 2001; Shapira 2001; Noteboom 2002; Kramer & Cook 2004;

Preece 2004. Trust in societies: Gambetta 1988; Fukuyama 1995; Misztal

1996; Govier 1997; Seligman 1997; Putnam 2000; Cook 2001. 28 Dore (1973: Chap. 9) exposed this in a high-trust Japanese firm. 29 It is too vast to refer more than classics: Selznick 1949; Roy 1952; Gouldner

1954, 1955; Parkinson 1957; Dalton 1959; Crozier 1964; Presthus 1964; Jay

1969; Peter & Hull 1969.


has pointed to this drawback of Western democracies, explaining it by

modern technology’s tendency to lend itself to autocratic administration,

although “in a different social context it could just as well be operated

democratically” (p. 4). Creating such a context requires creativity, but

modern technology encourages scale that depresses creativity, as in

Stryjan’s theory of DWOs failing and becoming capitalist firms with

success and growth. Scale enhances a leader’s power that tends to

encourage self-perpetuation efforts by neutralizing democracy, another

reason for a DWO becoming an autocratic and oligarchic bureaucracy

without creativity. This decisive problem has never been solved by any

DWO, including the kibbutz.

This problem is decisive since power and intangible capitals

accumulation by leaders enhance themselves by additional means to those

cited by Michels and Hirschman. For instance, privileges that assure

loyalty of deputies and staff also add prestige and enhance power that

engenders more privileges, adding prestige and power in a cycle, until the

price of power increment exceeds profit (Lenski 1966; Harris 1990: 365-

85). However, while an oligarchic leader may hold power for half a

century, like prime kibbutz leaders did, his dysfunction phase in which he

becomes a self-serving conservative may commence after less than a

decade (Hambrick & Fukutomi 1991). To avert this, US corporations

encourage 87% of their heads to retire within 12 years by generous

endowments called “golden parachutes” (Vancil 1987: 79). Without any

replacement mechanism or with an ineffective one such as rotatzia, past

effective leaders tend to be dysfunctional for dozens of years. According

to Lord Acton they are corrupted, and according to Kets De Vries (1993)

extra continuity multiplies the negative metamorphic effects of power on

these leaders and their organizations. Worse still, when they vanish,

deterioration tends to deepen since the successor who has to cope with

problems left by decades of a leader’s dysfunction is usually a loyalist

who lacks critical thinking, and, due to this deficiency, he fails

(Hirschman 1970). Thus, without a solution for succeeding leaders just as

they enter the dysfunction phase and become self-serving conservatives,

successful DWOs’ effectiveness, efficiency, democracy, trust and

creativity are virtually doomed. Even if a successful DWO survives

decades of its leader’s self-serving conservatism, an uncritical loyalist

successor furthers the degeneration of the culture by which it succeeded.


Eventual collapse is prevented usually only if the inept successor is

replaced by a talented outsider who uses hierarchy and market controls

rather than trust and democracy, save the firm by cancelling the remnants

of the DWO culture.30

Decline and Resurrection in Kibbutzim and Cooperatives Neither DWO students, nor post-modernists and other critics of

modernism have given any positive answers to this troubling scenario, nor

have they offered new ways of democratic, timely succession of leaders

that would curb it. The alleged kibbutz solution, rotatzia, encouraged

oligarchy and the Hirschmanian purging of radical creative talents,

enhanced continuity of FO heads who became self-serving conservatives,

emasculated democracy and curbed solidarity, trust and creativity both in

FOs and in kibbutzim. Hence, something else or, perhaps, additional

factors, must explain how, despite these phenomena, most kibbutzim

succeeded for four additional decades and some even continue to succeed

up to the present, seven additional decades, while their main leaders were

dysfunctional and their loyalist successors did even worse.

In veteran Kibbutz Kochav (established in the 1920s), I found renewed

creativity from the mid-1950s, when a new generation of radicals entered

chief offices. Their creative solutions renewed trust, egalitarianism and

solidarity, revitalizing their kibbutz and other kibbutzim that imitated it.

This revitalization of local culture engendered a social context in which

modern technologies lent themselves to democratic management in accord

with Feenberg (1995), and the kibbutz flourished. However, rotatzia soon

demoted and sidetracked the radicals as they did not advance to

prestigious FO jobs after finishing short local terms, or were soon replaced

in FO jobs due to clashes with conservative superiors, so they returned to

local lesser jobs and/or left. Loyalists of the conservative old guard who

were promoted to FO jobs, subdued innovators, creativity vanished, and

with it adaptability and profitability (Shapira 1990). The dominant

scientific coalition of kibbutz students has ignored my findings, although

these could have explained both past kibbutz success, despite conservative

30 On outsider successors see: Gouldner 1954; Chung et al. 1987; Shapira 1987;

Cannella & Lubatkin 1993.


Movement leaders, and its more recent crisis and decline.31 Moreover,

kibbutz literature depicted leaders as charismatic, but I have found that

both these radicals and the old guard were transformational leaders who

trusted followers and encouraged use of their own faculties for creative

problem-solving, unlike charismatic leaders who urge the public to follow

their solutions without questioning their rationale which only they

understand.32 Furthermore, creative innovations by radicals were

successfully implemented due to the above tradition of trusting followers,

and because old guard leaders remained high-moral and democratic

locally, though their power and prestige largely stemmed from high-level

jobs in conservative FOs. Thus, they mostly opposed innovations, but they

remained democratic, and due to high morality, they never used power to

obstruct innovations, as patrons in other, more conservative kibbutzim had

done, as they became low-moral quite early and obstructed innovations by

various undemocratic means, aiming at preventing ascendance of new,

radical powers (Chaps. 12, 14, 15).

Interestingly, the bulk of large, veteran kibbutzim, to which the

majority of kibbutz population belonged resurrected in their fourth and

fifth decades (1960-1980). This occurrence is explicable by the high

morality of the old guard and the democratic tradition it created, together

with the rise of second generation radicals to chief kibbutz offices and

their following old guard morality but not its conservatism. This seemed to

resemble Staber’s (1989) Canadian cooperatives: resurrection emerged if

kibbutzim overcame the ‘mid-life crises’ of their second and third

decades.33 It seemed that, since the late 1930s, old guard leaders had

entered a dysfunction phase. Negative metamorphic effects of continuous

power encouraged the blocking of creativity in kibbutzim, causing the

‘mid-life crises’ of the 1950s,34 and then, a new generation radicals had

revitalized them. But how did they accomplish this, despite the growing

31 On such coalitions: Collins 1975: Chap. 9. On ignoring my findings see:

Shapira 2005. 32 Leaders were charismatic: Rayman 1981: 268; Argaman 1997: 216; Ben-

Rafael 1997: 45; Niv & Bar-On 1992: 221; Rosolio 1999: 23. Charismatic

versus transformational leaders: Barbuto 1997; Beyer 1999. 33 See some support by findings of French cooperatives by Estrin & Jones 1992. 34 Near 1997; Rosolio 1999; Shalem 2000.


imitative impact of powerful FOs? Does this impact explain the fact that

these cases were rare, and creativity soon vanished again, while

innovations prolonged organizational success for some decades but the re-

ascent of conservative, uncritical loyalists led to the current crisis? Why,

despite the dominance of FOs and conservative pe’ilim, did most

kibbutzim imitate these innovations in the resurrection period and even

adopt norms that reduced pe’ilim privileges, although conservative FO

heads and pe’ilim dominated the field? Can an explanation of this complex

development lead to a new paradigm that integrates FOs and kibbutzim,

corrects Stryjan’s omissions and provides a new model that points to

solutions which can turn “impossible” DWOs into an attractive

alternatives to bureaucracies?

Kibbutz Success Secrets and the Required Cultural

Perspective Both the dominant kibbutz scientific coalition and Stryjan missed secrets

of high-trust, democratic and creative cultures which made kibbutzim

effective, efficient and adaptable for so long: transformational, public

servant leaders (Greenleaf 1977; Graham 1991) who remained highly

moral locally, even after they had become conservative FO heads, and the

democratic tradition shaped by such servant leaders. The main reason for

these omissions was the lack of FO research and the use of mistaken

customary research paradigm that missed kibbutz uniqueness. Another

was the disregard of ethnographies that exposed local dominance of

kibbutzim by informal power structures consisting of patrons who were

pe’ilim and/or ex-pe’ilim, their clients and loyalists, or patrons and cliques

who managed large, mass hired-labor local plants while imitating pe’ilim

with Movement backing (Kressel 1971, 1974). A third reason was the

fluctuations of creativity due to cultural struggles between FOs and

kibbutzim, and within each type, especially when a high-moral second

generation of radicals emerged, and the fourth reason was confusing trust

and leadership literature (Chap. 9). The fifth reason was that industrial

democracy literature ignored leadership and oligarchy as did Stryjan,35 the

sixth reason was schisms among disciplines which prevented the use of

35 This literature: footnote 14; only Cloke & Goldsmith (2002: Ch. 11) deal with

leadership, and only normatively, ignore its ample complications.


one discipline’s findings for others’ benefit (Wallerstein 2004), and the

seventh was preference by dominant social researchers for promoting their

own careers over scientific progress (Shapira 2005).

Anthropologist Hammersley (1992) has pointed to the problematic

record of ethnographies in the development of new theories. However, I

will outline a kibbutz success and decline theory, in accordance with more

positive views of organizational anthropology,36 by using the multiple

ethnographies made during dozens of years in various parts of kibbutz

society. I will also utilize the fact that this society has been intensely

studied, using lessons of long experience in kibbutz executive jobs

(Shapira 2005) and the help of organizational anthropology classics and

moral leadership studies, which have been ignored by both kibbutz and

DWO students. I will point to a new kibbutz theory that leads to a trust

and moral leadership model which explores possible democratic solutions

for the Iron Law and Hirschman’s (1970, 1982) problems, without

stratification-enhancing solution such as “Golden Parachutes”. Its

cornerstone is the choice and succession of leaders in a way that

encourages solidaristic democracy, high-trust culture and creativity. This

may prevent the tendency of DWOs to imitate capitalist firms with success

and growth, and to fail more frequently than such firms during periods of

recession (Hirschman 1984). In this way, large, federatively organized

DWOs can become an attractive alternative to authoritarian bureaucracies.

The advancement of a new, better DWOs theory is greatly needed for

the creation of more just and effective alternatives to current coercive

bureaucracies. However, without a cultural perspective that exposes the

components of kibbutz cultures that brought success, the reasoning behind

this idea and its potential for giving rise to sustainable DWOs will remain

unclear. Bate (1997) pointed to the negative effects of four decades of

separation of organizational behaviorists and sociologists from

organizational ethnography. DWOs research followed the former; hence, it

lacked a cultural perspective. Thus, the next step towards comprehending

kibbutz and proposing a new model for sustainable DWOs, is introducing

this perspective.

36 Czarniawska-Joerges 1992; Martin 1992; Linstead et al. 1996; Bate 1997;

James et al. 1997.

CHAPTER 2

Kibbutz Cultural Perspective

The discussion of kibbutz cultural perspective first requires clarification of

the concept of culture. Although the study of cultures has become of

central interest for many disciplines, the definition of culture remained

varied. For Geertz (1973), cultures are meaning structures that control

human behavior, while for Harris (1990) and Vaughan (1996), they are

collections of practical solutions for existential problems. Bourdieu (1990:

86) has connected these views: Cultures are “symbolic systems [that] owe

their practical coherence – that is, on the one hand, their unity and

regularity, and on the other, their ‘fussiness’, their irregularities and even

incoherences, … being inscribed in the logic of their genesis and

functioning - to the fact that they are the product of practices that can

fulfill their practical functions only in so far as they implement...

principles that are not only coherent… and compatible with the objective

conditions – but also practical,… easy to master and use, because they

obey a ‘pure’ economic logic”. However, Perrow (1970) observed

organizational cultures and found that what is practical and logical for one

organization may be illogical for another with the same formal aims but

with different strategy, technology, market niche, tenure of employees,

their know-how and competences.1 In the same vein, Hawthorn (1991) has

pointed out that plausible alternatives with different logics to a solution

that has been chosen, have usually been forgotten with the latter’s success.

However, the plausibility of alternatives changes due to the creativity

of human action (Joas 1996): an alternative which is implausible with

existing knowledge, skills, tools and technologies, becomes plausible with

new ones, overcoming prior obstacles. Creativity is decisive for communal

societies as they have been interested in turning stirring, utopian ideas into

reality by creating unique cultures (Stryjan 1989). Such societies control

almost all aspects of their members’ lives much like total institutions, but

since, unlike such institutions, members are free to leave, they have to

attract and retain them by adding other rewards and special mechanisms

1 For quite a similar point, see Cappelli & Crocker-Hefter (1996).


that enhance solidarity and commitment.2 Since a culture is a system of

meanings that serves as a control mechanism of behavior, communal

societies tend toward isolationism as a defense mechanism for unique

meaning systems of radical cultures against the homogenizing pressures of

dominant cultures (DiMaggio & Powell 1983). Participants of a typical

successful social movement, however, need no such defense, as they find

that, what is meaningful in their own lives, intersects with societal

changes, both those they aspire to bring about, and those they have already

generated.

A successful social movement causes changes both within itself and in

the surrounding society (Turner 1983), while a successful communal

movement (except for the kibbutz) changes only itself and, at most, a

nearby region, rather than a whole society (Berger 1987). No wonder

social movements research and communal studies have been divorced

from one another; students of communes did not assess their effects on

society and rarely those of societal contexts on communes. For instance, in

the Amsterdam Conference of the International Communal Studies

Association in 1998, not even one lecture out of 115 was devoted to the

study of these effects.3 On the other hand, research of social movements

has, until recently, ignored a main concern of communal studies:

members’ community motives and commitment mechanisms.4

CKP Misses the Main Cultural Conflict of the Kibbutz

Field The divorce of communal studies from social movement research helped

kibbutz students to miss the field’s main cultural conflict and the

incoherences it created. If a culture mixes together “coherence, unity and

regularities” and “‘fussiness’, irregularities and even incoherences” as

Bourdieu asserted, then the cultures of the kibbutz field which included

2 Landshut 2000[1944]: Chap. 5; Knaani 1960; Kanter 1972; Shepher, I. &

Shapira 1992. 3 The same was true of earlier conferences, for instance in Israel 1985 (Gorni et

al. 1987). 4 In communal studies: Knaani 1960; Kanter 1972; Shepher, I. & Shapira 1992.

In social movement studies: Melucci 1989; Downton & Wehr 1991; Gamson

1991; Kendrick 1991.


both egalitarian communes and bureaucratic, stratified FOs, mixed

coherent with incoherent values, beliefs, norms and action modes. This

mix solved many existential problems, but harmed the creation of a

coherent alternative meaning structure to that of the undemocratic

organizations of encompassing society. Such a meaning structure is

essential for a radical social movement in order to keep members’ faith in

its cause, to attract new members and prevent departures, to engender

conformity and to motivate efforts at promoting its aims.5 Did kibbutz

creativity solve existential problems of growth which brought success, as

Stryjan (1989) asserted, but not solved the field’s main contradictions and

cultural incoherences resulting from leaders’ conservatism and

suppression of innovators which engendered cultural decline and failure?

The exceptional success of kibbutz was explained by its being

“adaptive and highly creative” (another study said it “mastered the art of

change”),6 but no study explained how this was possible with

conservative, oligarchic and autocratic leaders who remained in office for

half a century, truly a Michelian nightmare. The use of CKP excluded FOs

with quasi-capitalist cultures from kibbutz study, missing the main change

process, oligarchization, which negated creativity by breeding a large and

conspicuous conservative elite of pe’ilim whose upper strata violated

rotatzia, or violated its intention by circulating between managerial jobs,

accumulating power, intangible capitals and privileges on a different scale

than officers of kibbutzim (Chaps. 6-8).7 However, to what degree did the

creativity of kibbutzim overcome the cultural conflict FOs engendered,

and to what extent was an alternative meaning structure maintained with

oligarchic and bureaucratic FOs growing up to employing most kibbutz

elite members? Both exceptional past successes of kibbutz and its recent

decline were inexplicable when ignoring this cultural conflict and its

negative effect on the movement’s alternative meaning structure. This

conflict raises questions: How was so large a membership mobilized

5 Downton 1973; Downton & Wehr 1991; Gamson 1991; Kendrick 1991;

Swidler 1995. 6 See respectively: Spiro 1983: 4; Niv & Bar-On 1992: 215. Also: Stryjan 1989;

Brumann 2000. 7 On such capitals and privileges see: Bourdieu 1977, 1984, 1988, 1996a;

Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992; Harris 1990: 365-76.


despite the fact that FOs harmed the movement’s democratic and

egalitarian meaning structure? If Zionist enthusiasm explained this

mobilization, how did the kibbutz continue to grow for four decades after

1948 when this zest had subsided as the Israeli state took over Zionist

tasks which hitherto had been fulfilled by kibbutzim? To what extent was

members’ commitment for the movement’s cause harmed due to the

violation by oligarchic FOs of the kibbutz ethos? Hambrick and Mason

(1984) found that organizations tended to reflect their heads; hence, to

what extent did kibbutzim reflect the oligarchization of local heads and

how much that of FO heads? If creativity ended due to its suppression by

national leaders, why did not the fact that the most powerful leaders

vanished in 1970-1 enhanced creativity and why the resurrection period

did not continue after the 1970s? Why were all solutions used by

kibbutzim to cope with the 1980s debt crisis capitalistic rather than

renewing socialist cultures? A clue to the answers can only be found by

delving further into kibbutz cultures.

Cultural Uniqueness Three: Creativity Chapter One discussed two unique cultural components of kibbutz,

unknown in other successful communal societies: a federative structure

and much involvement in surrounding society. Creativity, the invention of

original solutions for problems, is the third unique component which

explains kibbutz exceptional success, but no one has studied its

distribution in the field and along its history. Stryjan has integrated

creativity theoretically with workplace democracy and federative

structure, and Brumann (2000) supported him by pointing to the decisive

role of federative structure in limiting dominance of successful,

continuous oligarchic leaders, a dominance leading to stagnation and

decline. Creativity was essential for maintaining other cultural

components in large and variegated kibbutzim: solidaristic democracy,

self-work and high-trust relations. Hutterites and other successful

communes retained uniqueness by seclusion and conservatism (after an

initial creativity period: Oved 1988; Brumman 2000), while involved

kibbutzim maintained their uniqueness against societal capitalist gravity

by both creatively solving problems caused by growth and success, and by

leading societal progress in many sectors, remaining competitive in

markets, and coping with surrounding society’s threats of a brain-drain by

offering the talented members career opportunities, material and non-


material rewards.8 However, even when innovation was studied, creative

solutions and the careers of radicals who invented and introduced them

were not. Hence, this part of kibbutz history remained unknown and its

etiology unexplored. Until Stryjan’s (1989) study, creativity was not

considered decisive for DWOs; even recent DWOs and kibbutz literature

have ignored it and Stryjan’s theory,9 but DWOs cannot maintain their

radical cultures and challenge surrounding cultures without creative

problem-solving. My study strongly support Stryjan’s thesis that creativity

is the decisive factor that maintains DWOs viability, adaptability and

competitiveness, essential for overcoming problems of scale,

specialization and diversity so that democracy and egalitarianism are

thriving despite scale problems escorting success.

Creativity negates the new institutional approach of organizational

sociologists which DWO student Russell used (1995: 5): “The

organizational models they [founders of organizations] choose are always

selected from among those that are made available to them by their society

and their era”. However, no society or era made the kibbutz model

available to its founders; it was their own creation by trial and error of

various organizational types: small kvutza, moshav, collective moshav,

large kvutza, ‘organic’ kibbutz and “work battalion”.10 The ‘Iron Cage’

hypothesis of this approach forecasts that only organizations which

conform to societal norms succeed in the long run,11 but the most

successful periods of kibbutz, 1930s-1940s and 1960s-1970s, were the

opposite, exhibiting creative non-conformity, in accord with Stryjan, while

during its crisis periods, 1950s-early-1960s and 1980s-onward,

conservatism reigned along with capitalist conformity. Furthermore, I will

demonstrate that in all five kibbutz case studies, the success of unique

kibbutz culture positively correlated with creativity, much like many other

communes, Mondragon cooperatives, Brazilian Semco, and other

8 On gravity of social fields: Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992. On rewards and

retention: Rosner 1964; Shapira 1979a, 1980; Shepher I. & Shapira 1992;

Chapters 13, 15-17. 9 Hence Stryjan 1989 is not referred to by any of their publications cited here. 10 Landshut 2000[1944]; Buber 1958[1945]); Willner 1969; Yaar et al. 1994;

Goldstein 2003: 120. 11 DiMaggio & Powell 1983; Powell & DiMaggio 1991.


organizations with unique cultures, including US nuclear submarines.12

Cultural Uniqueness Four: Large Size and 3-4 Deck

Structure Van den Berge and Peter (1988) see “nepotistic communism” as a prime

factor which explains the exceptional success of both Hutterites and

kibbutzim. However, how can nepotism be a main factor among the

thousands of officers who managed some 500 units, kibbutzim and FOs,

who emigrated from dozens of countries, who were mostly replaced every

few years, while only a negligible number of them were relatives?

Nepotism seemingly explained the success of a Hutterite commune

averaging 100 inhabitants of ten-twenty families, almost all of whom were

its offspring and their spouses, coming from similar communes, but not a

kibbutz, five to ten times larger, where most members came from outside

the field.13 Nepotism negates choosing officers in accordance with

competence, ingenuity and commitment to public aims; this suited

Hutterite conservatism with norms and practices four centuries old and

virtually no creativity, but rather adoption of societal innovation only in

the production sector.

Stryjan explained kibbutz success by economy of scale which did not

bar creativity due to a federative structure that kept units small, and

Brumann (2000) corroborated this view. As I will show, smallness was

achieved despite successful kibbutzim being large, by federating semi-

autonomous branches producing for different markets. Thus, the field has

a three-deck federative structure: FOs, kibbutzim and kibbutz branches.

Moreover, large branches such as kibbutz factories often federated semi-

autonomous production units; hence, it was a four-deck federative

structure which enhanced creativity (Shapira 1979a, 1980).

Quite a similar structure explained the success of Semler’s (1993)

democratic group of firms Semco, while one explanation for the 1974

crisis of Mondragon cooperatives was the lack of such structure in their

12 Burns & Stalker 1961; Whyte & Whyte 1988; DePree 1990; Morrison 1991;

Semler 1993; Bierly III & Spender 1995; Cappelli & Crocker-Hefter 1996;

Buckingham & Coffman 1999. 13 Kibbutzim: Maron 1988, 1992. Hutterites: Holzach 1982; Oved 1988; Baer-

Lambach 1992.


larger cooperative which numbered thousands, and such a structure was

subsequently created (Whyte & Whyte 1988: 91-102; 159-65). Autonomy

of branches brought diversification which enhanced economic growth,

while, due to mechanization and factory automation, many branches

gained considerable scale even without hired labor.14 Many conservative

younger kibbutzim suffered very high exit rates and brain-drain, remained

small, rarely gained such a scale and were unsuccessful (Chaps. 14-15),

while veteran kibbutzim such as Kochav, with 956 inhabitants in 1986,

better restricted Hirschman’s (1970) negative selection of radicals,

conserving brain-power and creativity. Even conservative veteran Rama

(fictive name; Chaps. 12-13) grew to some 700 inhabitants and kept

enough second generation talents by offering jobs and specializations so

that many of these talents became skilled, effective and esteemed workers

and artisans. Another example: the self-work plant of Carmelit offered its

some hundred employees about 35 specializations (Chap. 15). Even when

oligarchic conservatism and leftism caused crises and mass exit of the

disenchanted, large kibbutzim retained enough brain-power to remain

viable, while many smaller ones failed.

A successful kibbutz is large, often surpassing the most successful

Shaker and Amana communes of 450-600 inhabitants (Oved 1988;

Latimore 1991). This is supported by Brumann (2000), who found that

viable, long-lasting communes numbered 75-500 members, i.e., some 120-

800 inhabitants. A major reason for communes scale limit is that a leader

can personally know everyone and nurture high-trust relations in a

working unit of up to 500 people (Jay 1972: 106). As such relations are

essential for other components of kibbutz culture (See below), in accord

with this limit, successful kibbutzim whose creativity maintained cultural

uniqueness, numbered up to five hundred working members and, together

with children and disabled elderly, up to 800-900 inhabitants.

Cultural Uniqueness Five: Egalitarian, Solidaristic

Democracy The fifth unique component is democracy, which all students have cited.

Contrary to other successful communes in which democracy was informal

at best, Rosner (1993: 373-4) pointed out that kibbutz was a community

14 Drin-Drabkin 1961; Barkai 1977; Shapira 1980; Don 1988; Rosner 1992.


based on “solidarity …and mutual trust [that] is the condition for its

functioning,” “direct and participatory democracy, …negotiations, a two-

way flow of views and information… and voice…” (italics original).

Solidarity due to high mutual trust and common radical aims, points to the

non-adversarial nature of kibbutz democracy, contrary to capitalist

democracy. This is decisive for creativity amid growth, specialization and

sophistication, three factors that tend to suppress the trust and solidarity

which are essential for knowledge sharing and creativity.15 Though it is

obvious that solidarity and egalitarianism go hand in hand, the type of

egalitarianism is less clear. For Rosner and Getz (1996: 34-5), the kibbutz

“pivotal principle” is “from each according to his ability, to each

according to his needs”, but Rosner’s definition of kibbutz cited above did

not mention the principle’s first half at all, while its second half was

different (“…the distribution of all material rewards is equal, mostly

according to need”) and was not considered a main factor to be mention,

as was in Rosner’s (1991) definition of kibbutz. Moreover, need did not

explain the building and allocation of larger and better flats to more

tenured members, though this was and still is a major norm which has

provided greater rewards to those who have invested more efforts in their

kibbutz. This norm meant a principle of equity instead of equality in the

allocation of the largest material reward type. Another set of norms did not

accord needs, but rather a “mechanical” equality, furnishing goods by

either a time norm (“everyone is given a new shirt annually”), or a

quantity norm (“everyone is entitled to a pair of boots which are repaired

or replaced when damaged”).

It is clear that the “pivotal principle” is only one among several

egalitarian principles used by kibbutzim. It is better grasped as a part of

kibbutz ethos, and it is less pivotal than democracy which equalizes

members’ power which determines the realization of egalitarianism. Many

communes were non-democratic, such as religious ones, but, in kibbutz,

democracy was an integral part of egalitarianism, though some students

have missed this. Their failure to take note of this can be understood in

light of the oligarchization of the field which depressed democracy and

egalitarianism, and by democracy succeeding only when and where high-

15 Deutsch 1962; Guest 1962; Zand 1972, 1997; Dore 1973; Shapira 1987, 1995b;

Saxenian 1994; Powell et al. 1996; Adler 2001; Preece 2004.


moral kibbutz local leaders nullified the negative impact of FO heads’

low-moral conservatism and appropriation of privileges. This allowed

innovators to advance to kibbutz management and to introduce original

solutions that provided answers to ordinary members’ distresses and

encouraged participation in the democratic process, as during Carmelit’s

and Kochav’s periods of creativity (Chaps. 15-16).

False Component: Economic Growth by Entrepreneurship For Ben-Rafael (1997: 15-18) the “most outstanding feature” of kibbutz is

the “progress-entrepreneurship principle” which “justifies its very

existence”. This means priority to economic success and growth, but R.

Cohen’s (1978) seminal work proves that this priority negated kibbutz

ethos, and the history of the first four decades of pioneering, up to the

1950s, disproves Ben-Rafael’s claim, indicating that unprofitable aims

were supreme: The establishment of kibbutzim in desolate areas with little

prospects for economic viability, sending hundreds of the most talented

members to the Jewish Diaspora and to local urban centers to educate

youth for pioneering, conscripting thousands of members to smuggle

Jewish immigrants from Europe and to found, equip, train and sustain the

underground Palmach army, sending thousands of members to serve in the

Jewish Brigade during World War II, and sustaining national parties.

Economic success has gained priority only since the 1950s, after the

state took over Zionist tasks, and after oligarchization had commenced,

when the two prime leaders, Tabenkin and Yaari, shifted from pursuing

kibbutz cause by encouraging creativity, to conservative power self-

perpetuation. The two concentrated control, curtailed Movements’

democracy and moved to adoration of Stalin’s totalitarian, barbarous

regime which totally negated the humane and democratic kibbutz ethos,

but legitimized their office continuity, suppression of radicals, curtailing

of democracy, censorship of publications and self-admiration, similar to

Stalin’s (Chaps. 10-11). These moves enhanced the isolation of the two

movements and caused major crises, helping to suppress the talented who

tried to cope with problems creatively, barring their success and

ascendance to potential successors. Innovation was allowed only in the

economic sector, but much of it was imitative, used capitalist practices,

both in FOs and kibbutz industry. Ben-Rafael and most other students

have missed this decisive change which led to a brain-drain of creative

talent, turned the energy of most political activists to barren leftism, and


let conformists prioritize economic growth by capitalist practices. Whether

they succeeded or failed, kibbutz ethos always damaged and sooner or

later vanished, as in other similar communal cases.16

False Component: Rotatzia Rotatzia was also grasped as integral to kibbutz democracy and

egalitarianism, a solution for oligarchic tendencies and a measure against

conservatism, but as has been explained, it did the opposite. Rotatzia is not

integral since it negates democracy: it prevents the public from deciding

which officer is effective and is trusted to continue, and which officer is

not and thus replaced. Rotatzia encouraged anti-democratic rule by

unelected patrons and their clients whose managerial careers advanced

independent of their degree of success on the job and the amount of

members’ trust; it placed officers in a Procrustean bed that severely

shortened the incumbency of trusted, successful officers, to fit maximal

bearable longevity of incompetents and/or self-servers. Instead of

differentiating between the two and rewarding the former with continuity

for their successes in promoting public aims, rotazia cut their wings while

not preventing self-servers from using oligarchic means to continue,

including continuing by circulating among authority jobs thanks to

patronage.17 Rotatzia nullified effectiveness and efficiency as yardsticks

for deciding officers’ continuity, turned local chief offices into mere

springboards to lucrative FO jobs, and shortened actual terms of officers

as they hurried to take advantage of FO job openings. Mediocre officers

who did not find such openings, often continued beyond the norm, as they

were loyal clients of patrons who kept them in jobs even when they failed

(Chaps. 14-16).

Rotatzia is not integral since the rapid managerial turnover it

engenders, curbs trust, cooperation and long time-horizons, all essential

for both creativity and solidaristic democracy.18 Oplatka’s (2002) study of

school managers reveals the decisiveness of continuity for creativity:

16 Knaani 1960; Kressel 1974, 1983; Shapira 1979a, 1980; Oved 1988; Chaps.

12-17. 17 Dalton 1959; Shapira 1987; Luthans 1988; Chaps. 7, 14-15. 18 Dore 1973; Fox 1974; Ouchi 1981; Axelrod 1984; Shapira 1987, 1995b; Jaques

1990.


Experience as teachers, plus some years on the job, enhanced reflection of

one’s own competencies and office powers, realistic expectations of

partners and commitment to them which led to the creation of new

solutions:

“At first they adopted a managerial pattern, passive toward school aims…

only solved day-to-day problems… defined as success the achieving of

extant aims and conserving school [functioning]. With years on the job,

however, they adopted a leadership pattern… [in which] they actively tried

to shape aims… tried to pull the team after them and enhance its

motivation, cognizant that it is impossible to implement their vision

without its participation” (p. 191).

Had rotatzia prevailed in these cases, all major creativity would have

been prevented. Rotatzia was not integral historically, but rather,

institutionalized only in the 1950s, i.e., after oligarchization (Topel 1990;

Chap. 17). As it enhanced the power and continuity of FO heads, its

service to their interests explained institutionalization. Direct proof that it

was not integral is provided by religious kibbutzim which did not

institutionalized it, and unlike secular kibbutzim, did not become

devastated by huge debts. Fishman (1993) explained their success by

religiosity, but Knaani’s (1960: 45-54) historical analysis of religious

American communes negated this explanation, as did economists of the

Religious Kibbutz Movement who explained this success by the fact that

chief officers continued for long periods as they were rarely offered

promotion to FO high-level jobs which were monopolized by pe’ilim of

secular kibbutzim (Amudim 1990). Thus, success was explained by

continuity of effective local chief officers. However, without any

provision that barred leadership degeneration due to extra continuity, these

kibbutzim seemingly suffered from ultra-conservatism; signs were lack of

original solutions to major problems, imitation of innovations made by

secular kibbutzim and phenomena of ultra-conservatism (See Br”t 1998:

101, 110).

Another proof that rotatzia was not integral: Most officers’ terms

where rotatzia was assumed to prevail were non-normative. Only a

minority, 25%-33% of kibbutz branch managers, served normative terms,


while the majority served either longer or shorter terms.19 An even smaller

minority, only 15% of pe’ilim of regional FO Mishkay Hamerkaz served

normative terms stipulated by statutes.20 This was not incidental; as I will

show, rotatzia enhanced rule by unelected and unaccountable continuous

patrons and their clients, who subverted the authority of critically minded

officers, failed in many of their innovative problem-solving efforts and

encouraged officers to shift from public to private ends, in accord with

Hirschman’s (1982) theory. Thus, timing of succession was often decided

by officers’ career considerations that mostly did not accord normative

terms.

Freeman (1974) found that egalitarianism in social movements which

barred formal democratic leaders’ choice and replacement, was a

smokescreen that masked continuous power-holding by unelected leaders;

likewise rotatzia was a mask of egalitarianism that served dominance by

continuous, oligarchic FO heads, their loyalists and clients who impaired

efforts by others to promote public ends. As was explained, rotatzia has

never prevented oligarchy ever since ancient Athens days, though it has

been tried in various forms in organizations and states. I will show that a

solution is only a democratic one that prevents oligarchic continuity,

Hirschmanian processes and Machiavellianism by timely replacement of

officers distrusted by knowledgeable role-partners, and enhancing

continuity and promotion to the top for effective and highly trusted public

servant officers who become transformational leaders whenever it is

required, promote collaborative problem-solving and encourage creativity

(Chap. 18).

A Non-Unique Component: Self-Work Self-work is a factor known to be decisive in communal histories, and all

students have agreed that hired labor has impacted communalism

negatively (Knaani 1960; Oved 1988). However, like rotatzia, self-work

adherence differed from kibbutz to kibbutz; many industrialized kibbutzim

19 Deduced from Leviatan (1978) and Einat (1991) data. Norms were informal,

hence averages were taken as norms, and plus or minus a year was defined as

normative. 20 Name is fictive. Oficial norm was five years for managers and four for others.

Annual Report 1976.


violated it despite leaders’ preaching, and prospered for dozens of years.21

This seems to indicate that self-work was only an ideology, and other facts

support such an interpretation: A) It was not practiced by FOs. B) Hired

labor was disqualified by a Marxist argument which was part of leftist

ideology that negated democratic ethos (Chap. 10). However, I will show

that self-work is integral to DWOs, except for unique solitary work

settings, such as taxi driving (Darr & Lewin 2001); their democratic and

high-trust cultures require equal decision-making rights, negating the

differentiation between members and hired employees. Hired labor breeds

growth, bureaucracy, conservatism and oligarchy (Stryjan 1989),

diminishing and ruining solidaristic democracy, egalitarianism, trust and

creativity. The Marxist argument against hired labor, in fact legitimized it,

only required paying higher wages in order to prevent exploitation. This

masked the reality that many of the negative effects of hired labor were

independent of exploitation, while the economic success it brought about

was relatively short-lived, as proved by both the early economic collapse

of most of the kibbutzim which used mass hired labor in the 1980s debt

crisis, and by the many kibbutz plants which used it and failed.22

No communal culture has been sustained with mass hired labor for

more than two generations, and kibbutzim were no exception: all those

with mass hired labor up to the 1980s had already abandoned

communalism, and those which introduced it later seemed to follow suit,

unless solutions were found to make hired workers full partners in high-

trust, democratic cultures. Hutterites maintained self-work for centuries,

while two generations after abandoning it, Amana communes became

capitalistic, and Shaker communes almost vanished. In these communes,

self-work was a part of viewing manual labor as a holy service, and

leaders continued partial participation with the rank and file, even while

leading thousands of people.23 Kibbutz ethos sanctified manual labor, but

21 Daniel 1975; Zamir 1979; Rosner et al. 1980. 22 No one studied it, while it usually caused a factory closure. A partial list of

such closed factories: Ashalim, Askar, Arigay Matzuba, Deco, Deganit, Eitan,

Gal-On, Galax, Hanita, Habonim, Karmit, Kelet, Maspenat Kysaria, Mitzpe,

Matar, Na’aman, Netzer Sireni (2 plants), Noga, Noon, Oranim, Rimon,

Shemer, Silora, Sinus, Ta’al, Tafnukim. 23 Knaani 1960: 73-6; Oved 1988: Chap. 3, 4, 17.


soon after establishing the Movements in 1927-9, top leaders abandoned

it; in the 1940s hundreds of pe’ilim followed, and, in the 1960s, thousands.

Only in self-work kibbutzim such as Hatzerim and Geva, or those which

rid themselves of hired labor early, such as Kochav and Gan Shmuel, did I

meet pe’ilim and chief officers helping in shift-work on factory lines in the

1970s-1980s, as in Carmelit until the 1990s (Chap. 15).24 All five were

among the most successful kibbutzim, both economically and socially.

Integrality of self-work is also proved by early observations of

successful kibbutzim, such as that of Pearlman (1938: 102) who saw one

solution for self-work, offspring starting to work at the ages of eight-nine,

and sixteen year olds working four hours a day (p. 151). In the mid-1980s,

sixteen year olds worked three hours a day in self-work Kochav and Gan

Shmuel, but this decreased and almost vanished in Gan Shmuel after hired

labor was resumed in the 1990s. In kibbutz ethos, work is a moral service

to one’s commune, in the same way that family members work in their

households, while hired labor means expediency, making work a

commodity which people sell to gain their livelihood. This is antithetic to

kibbutz culture, and, like ‘progress-entrepreneurship’, has misled students

who have been blinded by the many kibbutzim which have used it for

dozens of years without obvious signs of decline. This is explicable by

their imitating creative, self-work kibbutzim whose solutions had curbed

the negative impact of hired labor (see below).

Kressel’s best ethnography of Netzer Sireni (1971, 1974, 1983; name is

real) and my ethnographies of kibbutz industry (1977, 1979a, 1980)

support self-work integrality. Mass hired labor has promoted rule by

oligarchic patrons and their cliques of loyalists, and encouraged other

capitalist practices. These practices have subverted democracy, enhanced

inequality and nepotism, the use of seduction, threats and coercion,

including Machiavellian divide et impera. They have ruined solidarity and

trust, culminating in fierce factional struggles and seizure of control by

court rulings. But instead of learning from Kressel’s study of how hired

labor ruined kibbutz culture, his findings have been denounced by authors

of the dominant scientific coalition,25 and then ignored by studying effects

24 Carmelit is fictive name, while Hatzerim, Geva and Gan Shmuel are real

names. 25 Ben-David 1975; Shepher, Y. 1975.


of hired labor only on factories as if these were not integral parts of

kibbutzim, missing the etiology our ethnographies have exposed.26

Moreover, the use of CKP encouraged evasion of the impact of hired

labor in FOs on use of hired labor by kibbutzim. For instance, Kibbutz

Rama’s (Fictive name) hired labor factory was initiated by an ex-pa’il as

he finished managing a hired labor regional plant (Chap. 12). Another fact

missed by CKP students: The negative effects of hired labor which we

exposed were moderated in many kibbutzim by imitating creative

kibbutzim, including the retention of self-work in agriculture,

consumption services and education. This imitation retained communal

culture outside industry and curbed the negative cultural impact of its

hired labor. For example, in 1962, Kochav pioneered egalitarian sharing

cars of pe’ilim by members on weekends. Rama which limited use of hired

labor, partially imitated car sharing, while Netzer Sireni without such

limitation did not imitate (Kressel 1983). Even Rama’s partial imitation

prevented the rampant inequality and wide distrust of Netzer Sireni’s self-

serving leaders which caused a mass exodus of kibbutz offspring (Kressel

1974). Thus, the imitation of creative kibbutzim countered capitalistic

gravity caused by hired labor, explaining the preservation of considerable

communalism, egalitarianism and trust.

A Non-Unique Component: High-Trust

The last, though not least, cultural component is high-trust due to high-

moral leaders. The concepts of trust and leadership are both problematic

and pivotal; hence trust is clarified here, while its connection to leadership

and its complications are discussed in Chapter 9. “The notion of ‘trust’ is a

bit slippery”, said Blalock (1989: 123), and both its definitions and uses

have differed considerably.27 Moreover, while both many students and

successful business leaders have recognized its decisiveness and have

pointed to basic differences between high- and low-trust organizational

cultures,28 due to the divorce between organizational ethnography and

26 Zamir 1979; Rosner et al. 1980; Shimony 1983. 27 See reviews by Hosmer (1995), Bigley & Pearce (1998) and Korczynski

(2000). 28 Banfield 1958; Deutsch 1958, 1962; Guest 1962; McGregor 1967; Jay 1972;

Zand 1972; Dore 1973; Fox 1974; Riker 1974; Rohlen 1974; Ouchi 1981;


organizational behaviorists and sociologists (Bate 1997), theories and

methods of the latter have remained inappropriate for the study of cultural

dynamics (Barely & Tolbert 1997), and these have been ignored by

behaviorists and sociologists. Even in the 1990s, when trust research

surged, high-trust cultures were rarely regarded since they negated US and

UK conventions where most research was done.29 For instance, Guest

found (1962: 42-4, 47-8) that a new manager’s unconventional behavior

created trust and caused success, but while the best managers among the

some 80,000 studied over the last 25 years by the Gallup Organization

have been violators of conventions who created trust with employees

(Buckingham & Coffman 1999: 16, 26, 38-9, 83, 171), this study did not

index trust, nor did it refer to works on trust.

Moreover, the meaning of trust and its usage in organization studies

have differed markedly from its sociological usage in the explanation of

societal orders,30 and organizational students have also differed: Bradach

and Eccles (1989) grasped hierarchy, market and trust as three control

mechanisms which are combined to create plural forms, but Gouldner

(1955: 160-2) had already pointed to market forces diminishing trust, and

accordingly the works cited below found that hierarchic control based on

coercion by market forces maintained low-trust cultures. High-trust

cultures emerge in egalitarian, communal or cooperative settings in which

hierarchy is minimal and labor markets are irrelevant (Rosner 1993;

Shapira 2001), in R&D sectors of innovative firms and in high-tech firms

where highly educated and specialized employees hold ample firm-

specific know-how which labor markets are unable to substitute. In these

cultures coercion is often minimal as it is ineffective for employees who

hold precious know-how (Rifkin & Harrar 1988: Chap. 10). Instead,

competent leaders aim at consensus concerning goals, means, division of

tasks, duties and rewards by open communication, sincerely admit

mistakes, promote collaborative problem-solving and juniors’ creativity,

and care for their interests. In return, employees contribute information

and know-how for cooperative problem-solving efforts, while superiors

Geneen 1984; Shapira 1987; Harvey-Jones 1988; Sieff 1988; Fukuyama 1995.

29 Dore 1973; Ouchi 1981; Webb & Cleary 1994; Stein 2001. 30 Gambetta 1988; Misztal 1996; Govier 1997; Seligman 1997; Putnam 2000;

Cook 2001.


allow them much discretion, enhancing mutual trust, performance and

innovation, as well as further learning, adaptability and creativity.31

Unfortunately, DWOs and kibbutz research have missed this literature,

mistakenly explaining kibbutz innovation by rotatzia.32 Stryjan explained

it by smallness and sharing of innovations among kibbutzim, although

such sharing negated the societal conventions of using secrecy and

patenting to guard innovations. Kibbutz sharing was due to solidarity and

high-trust among members of a social movement unified by a common

cause, conflicts with surrounding society and coping with harsh

environments. However, kibbutz plants which used capitalist practices

when established in the early 1940s, rarely shared innovations;

competition and secrecy were common. Sharing innovations characterized

self-work agricultural branches which did not compete in markets, as FOs

marketed their produce cooperatively. Cooperative marketing created

common interests, enhanced trust, minimized secrecy and streamlined the

flow of knowledge and innovations among kibbutzim. Streamlining was

aided by other cooperative institutions: cooperative studies at the Ruppin

Agricultural College, the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Agriculture, the

Ministry of Agriculture’s extension services, the Vulcani Research

Institute, Hazera seeds production FO, etc.33

In many other areas of kibbutz life, such as education, health,

consumption, personal services, administration and the arts, cooperation

through FOs created trust and enhanced creativity, but only if high-moral

pe’ilim strove for public aims and sought effectiveness and innovation.

This was rare among pe’ilim loyal to conservative FO heads who sought

power, privileges, career advancement and self-aggrandizement; they used

knowledge as a power resource, and did not build the trust required for

sharing of knowledge and innovations (Shapira 1987, 1995b). Rosner

(1993: 373-4) is right: “Solidarity …and mutual trust is the condition for

31 See footnote 28 and: Powell 1990; Ring & Van de Ven 1992; Semler 1993;

Webb & Cleary 1994; Shapira 1995b, 2001; Lewicki & Bunker 1996; Kramer

1996; Hart & Saunders 1997; Miller 2001; Altman 2002; McEvily et al. 2003. 32 Only Niv and Bar-On (1992) point to federative structure enhancing

innovation. 33 Near 1997: 98, 236-8, 308-12. For similar findings in innovative industry:

Dodgson 1993; Saxenian 1994; Powell et al. 1996.


[successful kibbutz] functioning”, but as a veteran privileged pa’il

himself, he missed seeing how oligarchic leaders and the stratified,

privileged stratum of pe’ilim curbed trust and solidarity. This caused

brain-drain and the Hirschmanian exit of disenchanted critical thinkers and

radical innovators, or their abstention from public office, known as

‘internal leaving’ (Am’ad & Palgi 1986), which left offices to low-moral,

mediocre officers who further ruined solidarity and trust.

The ruin of solidarity and trust was also missed because, for most

kibbutz leaders, hired labor was a socialist sin, to be eradicated, not a

solution to a problem which could only be prevented by creative solutions.

The dominant scientific coalition followed them, and though kibbutz

factories used hired labor from the 1940s, for three decades, up to the mid-

1970s, the dominant scientific coalition ignored it.34 Then, as was

explained, hired labor in a plant was studied as if the plant’s capitalist

practice did not impact kibbutz culture, supporting efforts by kibbutzim to

differentiate themselves from this "sin" while enjoying its fruits.35 Hired

labor diminishes trust since hiring an employee means s/he is less trusted

to care for organizational aims and interests than owners; hence, his/her

discretion is limited and short-range, s/he is given minimal information,

and is uninvolved in decision-making (Fox 1974: Chap. 2). Hiring

someone turns his/her work into a commodity; prices of commodities were

decided by markets, and market forces diminish trust (Gouldner 1955:

161-2; Shapira 1987). Market forces also cause turnover which engenders

distrust, as Axelrod (1984) found and Whyte (1992: 176) supported. This

was especially so in FOs: rotational pe’ilim were ‘parachuted’ to manage

FOs of which they were almost completely ignorant, engendering distrust

both among pe’ilim and with knowledgeable hired employees (Shapira

1987, 1995b; Chap. 6).

Hutterites kept enough trust by ultra-conservative consumption habits,

minimal turnover, self-work and isolationism, while, by remaining small,

social control was tight, discretion minimal and high-trust inessential.36

34 The dominant scientific coalition: Shapira 2005. Hired labor in the 1940s:

Daniel 1975. Studies in the 1970s: next footnote. 35 Leviatan 1975; Shapira 1979a, 1980; Zamir 1979; Rosner et al. 1980; Shimony

1983. 36 Hutterites: Holzach 1982; Baer-Lambach 1992. Smallness: Jay 1972; Harris


Early kvutzot Degania, Kinneret and others, however, aimed at high-trust

and solidarity by a family-like smallness: “The family is a place of trusting

and giving – as opposed to the market”, said Bourdieu (1996b: 20). With

growth, Degania split like Hutterite communes (Near 1992: 31-51; 80-1),

but, while the ideal of family-like smallness was abandoned later on, trust

was not, as Rosner (1993) has pointed out. However, as was usual in

organizational sociology until recently, he and his colleagues did not study

trust.

Summary

Successful kibbutz cultures which remained viable for long periods, well

beyond life span of founders, included seven major components:

1. Much societal involvement,

2. Federative structure: kibbutzim organized by a web of FOs,

3. Creativity,

4. Large collectivist communes with internal federative structures,

5. Egalitarian, solidaristic democracy,

6. Self-work,

7. High-trust relationships.

The creation and maintenance of these components, except for societal

involvement, became problematic as early as the 1940s with growth,

success, use of hired labor and oligarchization, since these components

were interrelated and supported each other: Smallness of work units due to

federative structures, both between and within kibbutzim, enhanced

creativity, solidaristic democracy and high-trust relations which motivated

both work efforts and taking on managerial jobs by most talented

members despite negative balance of rewards (Rosner 1964), while scale

of FOs gave kibbutzim societal leverage, explaining, for instance, kibbutz-

like culture in the underground Palmach army (Chap. 10). The outcome

was phenomenal growth and success, which was furthered by capitalist-

like industrialization in the 1940s. However, the establishment of the

Israeli state made societal involvement problematic, as, for instance, it

engendered pressure to use hired labor (Chap. 11). But coping with this

problem by combining strategies (seclusion, political struggle, quid pro

quo), and with other problems incurred by growth, required creative

1990: 344.


leadership. However, prime leaders had already become conservatives

who suppressed democracy and creativity aimed at advancing the kibbutz

cause. Their negative leadership enhanced abandonment of cultural

uniqueness in favor of capitalist practices even before major research

efforts commenced. This situation made it harder to discern the cultural

components of kibbutz success, and as researchers ignored FOs, did not

seek a field theory but used mistaken CKP along with other mistakes (to

be exposed later on), they missed these cultural components and the

cultural conflict in the field, which together with negative leadership

explained kibbutz decline. Thus, the efforts to explain kibbutz without

comprehending the cultures of its field and with no historical perspective

of their changes, have gone astray with odd ideas of “nepotistic

communism”, “pivotal principle”, and “progress-entrepreneurship”. Let us

seek further how they have failed to develop a good kibbutz theory.

CHAPTER 3

The Lack of a Good Kibbutz Theory

“In science there is nothing more practical than a good theory” to cite the

well-known psychologist Kurt Lewin. The type of theory that fits a

movement aimed at radical societal change is what the eminent sociologist

Whyte (1992) has called Social Theory for Action, that is, a theory that

explains how the movement has been acting to bring about a societal

change. Such a theory is clearly more relevant for the kibbutz movement

case than for other communal societies, since only the kibbutz has tried to

impact societal changes by collective political actions and much societal

involvement, unlike all other communal societies. Whyte has explained

the creation of such a theory as the outcome of the study of social

processes of innovation, and of intelligent dialogue between scientists,

inventors and implementers of changes. However, I have rarely witnessed

such a dialogue in the case of kibbutz social research; rarely have its

students taken an interest in the study of innovation processes and their

explanation by aims, fears, interests and careers of the actors, or by local

and societal contexts as well as other factors. Even those few who pointed

to creativity being a main reason for kibbutz success, did not study the

social processes that have enhanced or depressed it (e.g., Niv & Bar-On

1992). Only the diffusion of two innovations imported from the

surrounding society has been studied.1

Students Ignored Inventions, Inventors’ Struggles and

Careers Even when social scientists have studied kibbutz innovations, they have

ignored inventors, the obstacles they have faced in the creation and

implementation of original innovations, their coping and overcoming these

obstacles and the impact on their careers and further creativity. For

instance, the communal boarding of children in nurseries (lina

meshutefet): scientists were interested in its effects on child rearing and on

members’ participation in collective life, but ignored technical and

1 Gurevitch & Levi 1973; Bar-Gal 1976.

3. The Lack of a Good Kibbutz Theory 41

organizational innovations that made it feasible.2 One example is the

collective intercom through which night watchwomen could both locate

and connect with every child who had awakened in adjacent nurseries

(Bowes 1989: 18). Gorkin (1971: 89-100) depicted how this system

successfully coped with special problems of a warfare situation on a

border kibbutz. In my kibbutz, it enabled two night watchwomen to care

for some 50 babies and infants, aged six weeks to three years, in addition

to some 120 children, aged seven to twelve in thirteen scattered children’s

houses. The three kindergartens (ages three to seven) with 60-65 children,

were cared for by two additional solutions: 1) A parent on nightly duty

slept in each kindergarten and coped with children who awakened after

nightmares prevalent at these ages. 2) A change from single-age

kindergartens to mixed-aged ones, enabled older children to help younger

ones in overcoming some problems.

These solutions, however, could not succeed without competent, trusted

kindergarten teams. As a parent, I periodically slept in one kindergarten

where, often, no child awakened all night long. This kindergarten was

operated by a well-trained, experienced and continuous kibbutz member

team, led by a talented teacher who was highly trusted by both children

and parents. All this was absent in another kindergarten where children

awakened me, one after another, every night I slept there, and getting them

back to sleep was quite hard, and sometimes took an hour or more. In this

case, the team head was a young, short-tenured and inexperienced hired,

non-member teacher, who supposedly had authority over an oft-changing

staff, some of whom were also hired outsiders. Disagreements and

conflicts among team members abounded and inhibited trust among

parents and children. The renowned psychologist Erickson (1950) has

pointed to the decisiveness of trust between young children and their

caretakers for successful upbringing, but no one studied whether trust

differences between kindergartens explained the problem of awakening

and nightmares, nor was the question of how kibbutz officers’ behavior

impacted kindergarten teams explored: Did officers care for the essential

needs of these teams, trust them and allow them enough discretion, as Fox

(1974) explained high-trust authority relations? Did such relations

encourage job continuity, learning from experience and creative problem-

2 Rabin 1965; Bettelheim 1969. On its effects on participation: Shepher, Y. 1967.


solving? The vast literature cited above has pointed to high trust level

being a prime factor of creativity, but kibbutz studies ignored it, so the

impact of trust on creativity and its role in the etiology of the above

differences which I witnessed were not explored, nor was how failures

such as the second kindergarten case accelerated the painful and costly

abandonment of communal boarding in the 1970s-1980s.

Kibbutz Creativity Was Not a One-Generation

Phenomenon Kibbutz social scientists did not study creativity, although it was crucial.

Creativity was not a one-generation phenomenon explained by exceptional

circumstances which encouraged radical solutions. Kibbutzim have been

adaptive and creative long after the radicalism of the founders vanished or

they became marginal, and pragmatic younger joiners and kibbutz

offspring became a majority (Rosner et al. 1978), holding managerial jobs

and making most decisions. For instance, almost all officers were of

younger generations in the late 1950s when old crops were replaced due to

surpluses causing falling prices and other changes, leading to the

introduction of cotton, and then to mass building of reservoirs for winter

rain accumulation to irrigate the cotton (Shalem 2000). In most

agricultural sectors, kibbutzim led changes and innovation up to the early

1980s, and some even afterwards. Only recently, in more and more

sectors, have moshavim (semi-collective villages; Willner 1969) and

private farmers taken the lead.

Another major change largely executed by pragmatists was the move

from agriculture to industry, very successful by all accounts. Many

kibbutz factories were successful innovative leaders of their respective

industries,3 and, thus, lasted much longer than competitors. An example is

the citrus and tomato processing industry whose leader is Gan Shmuel

Foods (US$119 million sales in 2005): In the 1960s this sector included

some twenty plants, mostly private. Since then, some fifteen have closed,

while three of the five that survived are profitable kibbutz factories. In the

1950s-1960s, when many kibbutzim industrialized, innovation

characterized the plastics industry; thus, a large number of kibbutzim

3 Barkai 1977; Rosner 1982, 1992; Shimony 1983; Don 1988; Schwartz & Naor

2000: 57-9.


entered this sector and still hold some half of Israel’s plastics production.

The largest firm, Netafim, which pioneered drip irrigation, is a cooperative

of three kibbutzim with annual sales in 2003 of US$267 million in 80

countries; the 316 kibbutz factories employed 27,200, and sales amounted

to US$4.5 billion, of which US$2.2 billion were exports (Hakibbutz

2004).

Parallel industrial growth was carried out by commercial-industrial FOs

known as Mifalim Azoriim (meaning: Regional Enterprises; thereafter:

Reg.Ents). In contrast to a few small plants with a few dozen employees at

the end of the 1950s, in 1977, there were 155 plants and firms with over

10,000 employees.4 As the hundreds of kibbutz and FO factories required

thousands of qualified personnel, kibbutzim radically changed their

attitude to higher education. Up to the 1950s, a college education was

accorded almost only to prospective teachers, and in the 1950s, managerial

and professional courses for chief officers and branch managers were

added, but since the 1960s, higher education has proliferated and has

gradually become common to all, much of it in new regional colleges,

initiated and led by pe’ilim.5

Recent Loss of Creativity and Viability However, since the 1980s, kibbutzim have presented fewer and fewer

signs of creative innovation that once distinguished them. Without new

solutions for communal boarding problems, it was abandoned in favor of

family boarding and caused huge investments in the enlargement of

members’ flats, which was one of the main reasons for huge debts.

Kibbutz industry remained in traditional, mature sectors with falling

productivity, efficiency and profitability, at a time when much of Israel’s

industry turned to innovative, high-tech areas and flourished.6 Almost all

changes since the debt crisis began in 1986, have been imitations of

capitalist society. They were legitimized by the use of concepts such as 4 The name is in the plural as each Reg.Ents concern owns a number of plants;

some authors count a smaller number due to different definitions of

subsidiaries. See Rosolio 1975; Rayman 1981; Malchi 1978; Shapira 1978,

1978/9, 1987; Brum 1986. 5 Gamson 1977; Noy 1977; Leviatan et al. 1998: xi; Personal experience at these

colleges. 6 Leviatan et al. 1998: 160; Peleg 1999; Lifshitz 2001.


privatization, and the yardstick for decisions was mostly short-term

profitability. Kibbutz values were reinterpreted according to values of the

capitalist Israeli society. Instead of ‘from each according to his ability, to

each according to his needs’, in the early 1990s, a majority of members

preferred connecting a member’s consumption to his/her production.

Instead of aiming at a more just society, a better quality of life was

targeted, and, if hired labor was required, even the cheapest labor imported

from third-world countries was introduced to kibbutzim, as it was in the

outside society.7 New ways of making money not used in the past became

acceptable, such as real estate transactions, commerce and

commercialization of social, personal and educational services.8

More and more ‘conservative innovations’, i.e. conforming to capitalist

norms, have been preferred over creative solutions, as well as more

bureaucracy, hierarchy and centralism emerging in kibbutz management,

characteristics known in the literature as inimical to creative innovation.9

With dwindling agriculture and the debt crisis, many FOs were sold,

closed or radically downsized. Following conformist kibbutzim, Reg.Ents

furthered conformity by abandoning egalitarian salaries, and their high-

salaried heads became even more dominant than before.10 A massive

brain-drain ensued. I had already found this to be true in 1977 in kibbutz

plants with hired labor, as, for instance, in a metal engineering plant

(Chap. 6), but in the 1980s, it became a general problem, especially among

academics with technologically valued, marketable skills.11

A former radical movement became a conservative field lacking both

creativity and leadership. When top officials of the TKM (acronym of

Tnuaa Kibbutzit Meuchedet, i.e., United Kibbutz Movement) faced

serious dilemmas, they never reached decisions, letting individual

kibbutzim make “a continuous process of ‘small’ decisions which

accumulated into a major change” to adoption of most capitalist norms

7 Kressel 1992; Ravid 1992; Halevi 1994; Keene 1995; Rosner & Getz 1996. 8 Rosner & Getz 1996; Ben-Rafael 1997; Chaps. 12-15. 9 Ben-Rafael 1986; Adar et al. 1993. In the literature: Burns & Stalker 1961;

Guest 1962; Crozier 1964; Jay 1972; Dore 1973; Harvey-Jones 1988; Sieff

1988; Semler 1993. 10 Yahel 1991; Lifshitz 1992, 1997; Halevi 1997a. 11 Shapira 1980; Sheaffer & Helman 1994; Halevi 1997b.


(Avrahami 1993: 87). Lack of trusted leaders was widespread in

kibbutzim; kibbutz chief officers did not view themselves as leaders, but

rather, as managers in charge of extant practices, nor did most members

see them as leaders, often with good reason, as many of them shirked

accountability, lost credibility and did not cope with acute problems.12

Instead of coping with challenges by inventing solutions, they usually

called in consultants who often suggested solution packages used by

outside firms, without examining their suitability for kibbutzim (Dloomi

2000). Acceptance of these packages often furthered distrust between

officers and members, and paralyzed organized change (Pavin 1994; Bien

1995). Without proper solutions, anarchy tended to emerge as members

turned to individualistic solutions that violated communal norms, as the

case of Kibbutz Rama will show (Chaps. 12-13).

Kibbutz demography signaled loss of viability: While Israel’s

population increased in the 1990s by some 20%, kibbutz population

declined by some 10% from its peak of 129,300 in 1991. Israel’s

population aged during this decade by an average of 1.8 years, but that of

kibbutzim by 2.9 years, and a main reason for both this and declining

population was a massive exit of offspring, many of whom emigrated from

Israel.13 Another reason was the low birth rate: In the 170 kibbutzim of the

TKM, yearly births plummeted from 1,250 in 1990 to 578 in 1999.

Moreover, 25% of these births took place in ten kibbutzim; the other 160

kibbutzim had an average of only 2.7 births each; in almost all of them,

the number of deaths exceeded births (Binenfeld 2000). In order to

maintain a minimal, viable scale community, many small kibbutzim

initiated establishment of adjacent neighborhoods of non-kibbutz

inhabitants who would use their services (Bashan 2000c).

If this loss of viability had been properly understood by kibbutz

students, they might have used their theory and analyses to help overcome

the crisis and create solutions that would promote kibbutz uniqueness. In

recent decades they were mostly kibbutz members with a personal interest

in a turnaround of their ailing communes, but almost none of them was

among the scores of consultants who were called in to help kibbutzim with

their efforts at change, and none successfully renewed communal culture.

12 Kressel 1991; Leviatan 1992; Kerem 1994; Liberman 1997; Chaps. 12, 14. 13 Rosner & Getz 1996; Sabar 1996; Maron 1997; Statistical 1999.


Researchers and kibbutz officers were mostly at loggerheads: Researchers

often saw changes implemented by officers as the main causes of new

problems, with little or no improvement of previous ones, while officers

rejected criticism, pointing to the lack of proven better solutions on the

part of researchers.14 Yet it seems that the poignant critique of Chester I.

Barnard, an executive who became an academic, of the meager

contribution of social science to management practices, has held true in

this case:

“Always, it seems to me, the social scientists - from whatever side they

approached - just reached the edge of organization as I experienced it, and

retreated. Rarely did they seem to me to sense the processes of

coordination and decision that underlie a large part, at least, of the

phenomenon they described” (Barnard 1938: viii).

Kibbutz students did not study creativity and rarely sensed the

processes that underlie it; hence, they could not explain the relatively

sudden reversal, whereby even kibbutzim which had been creative for

decades, became conservative imitators of capitalist society, relinquishing

the creativity which had served them so well in the past. If the kibbutzim

had managed to escape the negative impact of FOs’ oligarchization for

almost four decades, why did they abruptly surrender? Why did their

internal democracy fail to produce leaders able and willing to cope with

the crisis by inventiveness, as had been the case up to the 1980s?

The domination of conservative, oligarchic movement leaders could not

explain this, as the most powerful of them, Tabenkin and Yaari, had

already vanished, and furthermore, they had become conservatives long

before, in the 1940s.15 Conservative deputies and heirs had much less

power and influence, as indicated by the inventiveness of the late 1950s-

1970s. Many facts point to the possibility that up to the 1980s even

conservative kibbutzim usually imitated creative ones, while when, at last,

creativity vanished even among creative kibbutzim, most kibbutzim turned

to imitating capitalist solutions. But if this is so, why did this occur in the

1980s and not before? Did creative kibbutzim maintain creativity for

decades despite FOs’ conservatism, as they were not dependent on FOs,

14 Leviatan 1992, 1994, 1998; Rosner & Getz 1996: 235; Liberman 1997. 15 See Chapter 10 and histories: Beilin 1984; Kynan 1989; Kafkafi 1992.


and therefore, largely ignored their conservatism? But why were only a

minority creative, although veteran, large and successful kibbutzim were

quite independent?

The Dependency Explanation: FOs’ Soft Budget

Constraints According to Ben-Rafael et al. (1994: 123) the kibbutzim served national

missions and FOs were the vehicle through which Israeli society rewarded

them, but as sweets harm the teeth, rewards harm the capability of

organizations to cope with problems: “These rewards advanced kibbutz

economy, but ...the possibility of gaining resources by political means did

not engender decision-making processes or action modes based on the

rationale of maximizing economic efficiency, and made kibbutzim more

dependent on allocation by political centers”. This is the essence of

Rosolio’s (1999) dependency explanation for the kibbutz debt crises, using

economist Kornai’s concept of ‘soft budget constraints’ which he had used

to explain the failure of the Soviet Bloc economy.

At first however, let us rid ourselves of the simplistic view of the

kibbutz crisis, according to which kibbutzim failed like the Soviet Bloc,

since both used wrong Marxist collectivist ideas. This view ignores the

huge difference between a totalitarian and dictatorial empire of some 400

million people, with coercive state means and an autonomous economy

that gained political sway over large part of the globe, and an open,

voluntary, relatively egalitarian and democratic innovative society without

such coercive means whose size was some 1/3000 of this empire, which

competed against outside firms in local and global markets, and competed

with other societies, including those abroad, for the attraction, retention

and commitment of members.16 It had succeeded when it had adhered to

an ethos and culture which was the antithesis of that of the Soviet Bloc,

and suffered a major setback when identifying with this bloc (Chap. 10).

Now to Rosolio’s (1999) dependency explanation which says:

Complacency was the negative effect of FOs’ help to kibbutzim, as

officers became used to working with ‘soft budget constraints’, i.e.,

budgets that were only partially constrained by the yield of kibbutz

economies. A large part of these budgets were a function of relations with

16 Landshut 2000[1944]; Kanter 1972; Shepher, I. & Shapira 1992.


FOs and financing enlisted from national sources. Thus, kibbutz officers

saw good relations with FOs as a key to prosperity, rather than seeking

efficient production, cost reduction and innovation. The dependency on

FO support ruined kibbutz capacity to compete in markets, and when

societal changes caused cuts in outside help, crises ensued, both in the

1950s-1960s and then, in the 1980s-1990s.

The 1950s-1960s Crisis did not Parallel the 1980s-1990s The first question mark for this explanation must be raised regarding the

paralleling of the 1950s with the 1980s. If creativity characterized

kibbutzim in the 1960s-1970s, how could conservative complacency

explain the first crisis? Indeed, Shalem’s (2000) study of the centralized

credit system which Avraham Brum initiated in the early 1960s (Chap. 5)

as the main vehicle for helping kibbutzim during this crisis, negates this

explanation. He found some signs of complacency, but “(i)t is impossible

to say unequivocally that the motivation for efficiency did not operate in

kibbutzim. After all, it is impossible to ignore achievements of kibbutz

agriculture in these years gained by improving production systems,

enlarging yields and turning to more profitable crops” (p. 146-7). Only a

small part of the debt which kibbutzim accumulated was due to

mismanagement and the rising standard of living; most of it was caused by

good investments in production whose success caused surpluses in

markets, and prices falling below costs. Kibbutzim soon turned to new,

export crops, such as cotton and avocado, and to industrialization (p. 43).

For these capital intensive ventures, however, they had no proper

financing due to meager revenues of extant crops and the unwillingness of

banks to finance their investments. They used expensive, short-term loans

from other sources to finance them, and this caused debt growth (p. 49).

Thus, the main mistake was too much initiative without enough

consideration of the financial straits which dysfunctioning Movement

heads had ignored, despite the fact that this was the prime problem of

kibbutz economy for years, rather than complacent conservatism as

Rosolio has asserted.17 Only Brum, a mid-level pa’il, with the help of his

like and Ministry of Agriculture officials solved the problem (Chaps. 5).

17 See Gelb’s (2001: 97-101) testimony how a kibbutz treasurer coped with these

straits. Leaders’ dysfunction: Chaps. 10-11.


FO Heads Counted on Unquestioned Support from

Kibbutzim The 1980s crisis was seemingly in accord with the dependency thesis:

Much outside financing of investments, mostly in kibbutz industry which

was then considered a success story, led to failures which exposed

complacency: uncritical and/or too conservative choice of technologies,

too optimistic projections of demand, as was usual in the Reg.Ents.18

However, according to Rosolio himself (1975, 1999), my work (1978/9,

1986, 1987, 1990) and the following chapters, FO heads dominated the

field and led complacency, while kibbutz managers just followed, inter

alia to prove loyalty and to advance to FO jobs. Indeed, Rosolio’s (1999)

own depiction, among others, supports refutation of the dependency thesis,

as were my 1978/9 findings: complacent FO heads behaved as if

subservient kibbutzim would pay for whatever excessive expenses the FOs

incurred. The 1977 Israeli political upheaval brought political opponents

of the kibbutzim to power and they never hid their intention to pressure

kibbutzim, termed by the Prime Minister as “prideful millionaires”.

Nevertheless, in 1982, TKM heads initiated a grandiose plan to set up 21

new kibbutzim without any outside financing, recruiting hundreds of new

pe’ilim and large sums of money from kibbutzim, while simultaneously

encouraging them to raise the standard of living, although many could not

afford to (Rosolio 1999: 61-8). TKM doubled the number of pe’ilim, from

668 in 1981 to 1336 in 1985, and added 100 cars to its 384 car fleet. At the

same time, TKM’s kibbutzim which ended the fiscal year of 1982 with a

total profit of some 40 million $US, ended the fiscal year of 1985 with

losses totaling 200 million $US.19

This was an era of very unstable economy: abrupt governmental

economic policy changes, every year or so a new finance minister,

inflation that doubled yearly to the hyperinflation of 435% in 1984, the

protracted war in Lebanon which devastated the economy, the bankruptcy

of the banking system, and the stock exchange collapse causing heavy

losses to investors, including kibbutzim (Lewin 1988). But heads of TKM

and other FOs, such as head of Milu’ot Reg.Ents’ Fridman found this the

18 Shapira 1978/9, 1987; Lifshitz 1986a; Abramovitz 1988. 19 Avrahami 1993: 44; Rosolio 1995: 66-70.


right time to pursue policies that were clearly megalomanic (Chap. 6). A

TKM ex-general secretary said (Avrahami 1993: 78):

“It was a euphoric era; there was a feeling of no limit to our power. Out of

this euphoria, there was a feeling that the Movement [TKM] could take

over governmental and Jewish Agency roles in colonization... At the Givat

Ha’im convention, it was decided that, each year, two-three kibbutzim

would be established. [People] did not read the map of the new reality; that

there was no one who could finance these new settlements...”.

Avrahami (1993) found the same sentiments in other discussions, and

Eli Zamir, one of TKM’s two heads, pointed out that megalomania led

both TKM and KA20 to speculative activity in financial and real estate

markets in order to finance whatever extant resources could not cover

(Avrahami 1993: 23-4). One outcome was the fiasco known as the Balas

affair: an FO-owned clearinghouse, Eshet-Ksafim, invested some $100

million with a swindler who promised an interest rate slightly higher than

the banks, and almost half of this money was lost (Rosolio 1995: 59). The

KA invested large sums of money in real estate transactions, some of

which caused heavy losses.21 FO losses during 1984-1988 caused a growth

of some half a billion dollars in the net debt of the kibbutz system in 1988

(Krol 1989). The megalomania during hard times, when financial

institutions were collapsing and caution was called for, was possible

because FO heads counted on the unquestioned support of kibbutzim in

cases of failure, as in the past (Chap. 6); hence, dependency was in the

opposite direction of Rosolio’s assertion.

Modeling Complacency: The Movements’ Delayed

Downsizing This is also proved by Movement complacency after the drastic economic

policy change of July 1985. As they were assured of kibbutz support, the

Movements heads delayed downsizing for seven years after this

megalomania proved disastrous, and the radical new economic policy of

July 1985 halted hyperinflation at once, causing real interest rates to soar

to Mafia interest heights, up to 230% annually. This new policy was

20 The KA was the other main kibbutz Movement with 78 kibbutzim. 21 Arieli 1987; Lifshitz 1987, 1993, 1999; Ben-Hilel 1988b; Peleg 1991;

Petersburg 1994; Chap. 14.


hostile to producers, such as kibbutzim, who were dependent on loans, and

clearly favored the banks almost all of which were nationalized in the

1983 collapse. It soon became clear that the kibbutz system had to take

drastic austerity measures in order to pay back expensive loans in order to

halt a snowball of uncontrolled debt growth. Sadly, instead of leading the

move by cutting inflated bureaucracy, sending pe’ilim back to work in

kibbutzim, selling cars and excess assets and urging all FOs to do the

same, TKM and KA heads resisted cuts and other FO heads followed suit.

Despite the fact that most kibbutzim and FOs were hit hard and even many

of the profitable ones started to lose money (e.g. Talmi 1993), and despite

the bankruptcies of some FOs, it took seven years of pressure by chief

kibbutz officers and a deepening crisis to downsize TKM to its 1981

level.22 TKM heads resisted, as they believed this hostile policy was a

passing pathology and a more favorable policy would soon emerge. They

were clearly conservative complacent (Rosolio 1999: 68). KA’s case was

quite similar; downsizing was delayed for years and took almost a decade.

It was continued later and, in 1997, the KA had only 175 pe’ilim, one fifth

of the number of 1985 (Lifshitz 1990; Gilboa 1991, 1997), while no sign

of this cut seemed to hamper the functioning of kibbutzim. It was clear

that Movement bureaucracy was inflated even before the 1980s, due to

excessive growth, because of the extreme power of FO heads, as will be

proved.

Dependency Ignored Extreme Differentiation of Kibbutzim An additional flaw of Rosolio’s thesis is the extreme differentiation among

kibbutzim which makes sweeping generalizations futile. Education

professor Moshe Kerem, a veteran of Kibbutz Gesher Haziv, put it

succinctly (1994: 242):

“Present-day kibbutzim… vary tremendously from one another. The

difference between a kibbutz that earns millions and one that owes them is

enormous, and one cannot refer to them in the same breath. For instance, a

member of [Kibbutz] Mizra can expect to have surgery in Houston, Texas,

within a few days, while a member of Gesher Haziv for a lack of finances

may, at best, have to wait several months. This means that we are no

longer talking about differences within a single organizational framework,

22 Leshem 1986; Yadlin 1989. For detailed analysis: Avrahami 1993: 35-44.


but about two entities that… cannot be talked about in the same breath”.

Like fellow sociologists, Rosolio ignored ethnographies which did not

find any dependency on FOs in large industrialized kibbutzim like Mizra,

Hanita, Hazorea, Carmlit, Kochav, Rama and dozens of other successful

kibbutzim which were the backbone of the system, consisting of the

majority of the population.23 During the 1950s-1960s crisis, some of these

kibbutzim required financial help, but for only a limited period, as they

were healthy socially and economically (Shalem 2000: 118). Many of

these veterans were creative, successfully industrialized and competed in

local and global markets. They had paid for excessive costs of FOs, served

as managerial training grounds for future pe’ilim and provided costly

academic education for them. They educated hundreds of hevrot no’ar24

and sent hundreds of pe’ilim to guide urban youth organizations, while

most of their thousands of graduates had been sent to failing younger

kibbutzim and soon left (Chaps. 14-15). Only during the current crisis

were many of these kibbutzim in trouble, after paying for the lion’s share

of FO megalomania and inefficiency, both in taxes and in unpaid work by

pe’ilim. However, authors who noted the mini-state character of TKM’s

behavior, ignored the crucial question of who paid for and who gained

from it.25 Even conservative veteran Kibbutz Rama, which was devastated

in the 1950s by the exit of a large group of young members, and which

industrialized only in 1968, needed special financial help only in the early

1960s, but then, not again until the late 1980s. Continuous dependency

upon Movements’ help characterized smaller, younger kibbutzim which

remained non-viable due to conservative autocracy, high exit rates and

brain-drain (Chaps. 14-15). Gesher Haziv seems to have been one of them.

The dependency thesis ignored extreme differences among kibbutzim;

hence, it did not explain the failure of the large and hitherto successful

ones.

23 Rayman 1981; Shatil 1977; Schwartz & Naor 2000; Maron 1988: Table 6;

Chaps. 12-13, 15-17. 24 Hevrot no’ar were groups of non-offspring youth educated for kibbutz life

(Chap. 11). 25 Kedem 1988b; Lanir 1990; Avrahami 1993; Rosolio 1993.


Ignorance of FO Heads’ Irresponsibility Unlike Rosolio, who differentiated kibbutzim from FOs, the explanation

by Ben-Rafael (1997) ignored the difference, viewing the kibbutz system

as a unified mass and clearing FO heads of responsibility for the failure of

the kibbutz system to cope with the hostile environment. He says (p. 201):

“The crisis hit the kibbutz federations [i.e., Movements] by surprise”, but

not explains how it surprised them after eight years during which

animosity toward the kibbutz movement was orchestrated by the Prime

Minister, after the changing and chaotic national economic policies proved

hostile to capital intensive, high-trust kibbutz cultures, based on rewards in

the long-run (cf. Dore 1973; Fox 1974; Ouchi 1981). He ignored FO

megalomania and other irresponsible acts, such as the Balas Affair, which

caused a large part of the debts; for him, the crisis “might be seen as

failure of managers and federations guiding bodies”; only “in the turmoil,

the kibbutz federation was the first to be accused of mismanagement” (p.

202). Ignoring my Reg.Ents study (1987) which revealed that such

irresponsible mismanagement was endemic for FOs, he ignores the way in

which FO heads dominated the field and kibbutz officers followed their

guidance.

If main leaders were not primarily responsible for the mistakes, who

was? For Ben-Rafael, it was the “conjunction between unpredicted

external circumstances and the shaking of the basis of kibbutzniks’ self-

legitimization. This crisis has primarily concerned the kibbutz’s very

identity…” (p. 202-3). Nonetheless, external circumstances were not truly

unpredicted, but complacent FO heads ignored them for years, aiming at

enhancing power, prestige and privileges by bureaucratic growth (cf.

Parkinson 1957). How could shaken self-legitimization explain financial

losses and debts? Were they not explained by FOs’ megalomania, failures

and the encouragement of a rising standard of living during hard times that

called for the opposite, enhancing complacency of kibbutz managers? An

identity crisis can hardly explain extra conservatism and declining

economic efficiency which bred losses, while it was the complacency of

conservative FO leaders that explained both these losses and FO failures,

outcomes that engendered identity crisis and shaken self-legitimization.


Other Explanations: The Grains of Truth are Lost in

Omissions Analyses by Leviatan et al. (1998) contain important grains of truth that

are lost among the many omissions resulting from the use of CKP, while

ignoring Stryjan, the trust and leadership conundrum, history and

ethnographies. The authors explain (p. 159) the crisis as caused by

kibbutzim having forsaken the “three main conditions” which they had

retained for many decades of success:

“(1) holding unchanged the basic principles and values that define kibbutz

distinctiveness, while constantly adapting their concrete expressions to

changing circumstances; (2) keeping a balance between the realization of

values of individualism and collectivism; and (3) having congruency

among domains of life and the domains’ principles of conduct”.

The first condition corresponds to my kibbutz cultural perspective, but

although FOs integrality to kibbutz is admitted (p. 148), the negation of

FO cultures to kibbutz values and principles is not, nor is their oligarchic

and conservative impact, neither the dominance of FO heads and pe’ilim

due to violating these principles and values. Without citing all these, and

evading the gradual forsaking of kibbutz values and principles by main

leaders and pe’ilim since the late 1930s (as will be shown), the analysis by

Leviatan et al. does not explain which principles and values were forsaken

in the early 1980s and how this caused the crisis.

The second condition is untrue, non-historical and ignores the

oligarchic change and its impact. Up to 1948, collectivism was clearly

preferred and was a main reason for success as it was congruent with

kibbutz movement goals and societal ends. Thereafter, however, there was

no genuine balancing, since personal whims of pe’ilim and other officers

were attended to much more than those of other members, as the formers

blocked or violated egalitarian solutions which would have enabled

members’ individualism by sharing their privileges (Chaps. 4, 8, 12-17).

The third condition, “congruency among domains of life and the

domains’ principles of conduct”, requires leadership. Who else could

bring such congruency except for leaders who impact all domains?

However, the book mentions leadership only once (p. 92), in contrast to

the mention of management some thirty times. The difference between the

two is commonly defined as “leaders care about doing the right things”,

while “managers care about doing things right”. Doing the right things


was decisive for congruency. For instance, the right thing that promoted

self-work in kibbutz factories was the creation of a shift-work sharing

system and personally modeling it, as did factory managers in Carmelit,

Kochav and other kibbutzim (Shapira 1977; Chaps. 15-16). Other

managers who suffered shift worker shortages but were tightly controlled

by conservative patrons (Chaps. 7, 15), used the available incongruent

solution of hired labor. As the book ignores the vanishing of creative

leaders who promoted kibbutz principles, and the ascendance to hegemony

of their opposites, it fails to explain the loss of congruency.26

The book rightly concludes (p. 162) “The kibbutz movement has

weathered major crises by being innovative and by its members being

committed to continue their form of life”, but the list of components of

this “form of life” (pp. 159-60) ignores egalitarianism, self-work, high-

trust and large scale, four major components of successful kibbutz

cultures. Thus, another reason for the book’s failure to explain the crisis is

the lack of a valid definition of kibbutz cultural uniqueness, as it ignores

ethnographies and other accounts of elite members’ uses of capitalist

practices which diminished cultural uniqueness.

Disastrous Separation of Sociology, History and

Anthropology Veteran student of organizations and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon

proposed (1992: 20) that organizational research should be seen as

analogous to biology, where an attempt has been made for some centuries

to understand plants and animals by a profound investigation of each of

their species:

“Now, I’m not suggesting that we should go out and describe... a million

firms; but we might at least get on with the task and see if we can describe

the first thousand. ...it is better to form an aggregate from empirical

knowledge of a thousand firms, or five, than from direct knowledge of

none”.

Voluminous kibbutz literature has never really formed an aggregate

picture of the kibbutz field using direct knowledge of some of its

26 Both types of officers are depicted by ethnographies which the book ignores:

Kressel 1971, 1974, 1983; Fadida 1972; Shapira 1978, 1978/9, 1980a, 1980b,

1987, 1990, 1995a, 1995b; Topel 1979.


‘species’, since it has both ignored one of its two types of ‘species’,

namely FOs, and their manifold influences on the other type, kibbutzim.

Moreover, the few late studies of FOs were differentiated: social scientists

studied the Reg.Ents.,27 while historians studied the Movements. “The

separation of sociology and history is a disastrous division, and one totally

devoid of epistemological justification...” said Bourdieu and Wacquant

(1992: 90. Likewise: Wallerstein 2004). This was especially disastrous in

the case of kibbutz research due to the unique structure of this society. The

task of historians is studying societal changes and their causes. However,

without sociological theories of large organizations, social movements and

power elites, they missed the most important historical change which had

occurred from the 1930s onward, the change from creative democracy

headed by transformational leaders, to conservative oligarchic leftist

autocracy (Chap. 11). They were blind to the impact of continuity of

Movement heads by oligarchic means on the development of a privileged,

powerful oligarchy of FO heads and senior pe’ilim and its negative impact

on kibbutzim and on their relations with Israeli society.

Anthropologists Ignored the Effects of FOs and Societal

Contexts Marx (1985: 141) pointed out that “there is irony in that the historian is

used to following processes, although the data flow he receives is usually

not abundant, while the anthropologist, who has rich data on changes, does

not always bother to describe them”. While historians, lacking details of

the change to oligarchic rule, have missed this historic change,

anthropologists, who have seen some of its signs, rarely bother to describe

them, and have not analyzed the impact on kibbutz cultures of power and

capitals gained in FOs by pe’ilim, missing their pervasive effects on

hegemony in the field.28 Goldschmidt (1990) has pointed out the decisive

importance of the study of careers even in the egalitarian cultures of

hunters and gatherers,29 but, without studying FOs where thousands of

27 Rosolio 1975; Cohen, A. 1978; Shapira 1978, 1978/9, 1987. 28 On hegemony see: Gramsci 1974; Bourdieu 1977, 1984, 1988; Comaroff &

Comaroff 1992. 29 On these cultures’ egalitarianism see also: Harris 1990; Bird-David 1990,

1992.


elite members developed their careers, CKP users, including

anthropologists, have missed major parts of elite careers and the pivotal

role of FOs in engendering oligarchy, brain-drain and the suppression of

radical officers, their demotion, sidetracking and exiting in accord with

Hirschman’s (1970) theory.

Theories and methods of organizational sociologists and behaviorists

are inappropriate for studying the dynamics of cultures (Barley & Tolbert

1997). Anthropologists were better equipped for this, and, indeed, some of

them described declining democracy, growing inequality, stratification

and diminishing trust in kibbutzim, and a few even discerned some impact

of FOs. Unfortunately, criticism of ‘innocent’, ‘realistic’, non-historical

ethnography30 was valid for them: Without a historical perspective of the

kibbutz movement, no reference to Landshut (2000[1944]) and Buber

(1958[1945]) who pointed to FOs integrality, and no study of FOs’ impact

on elite members’ careers, they missed how FOs’ growth, success and

leadership continuity bred conservatism and oligarchy which caused

mounting cultural conflicts between FOs and kibbutzim, as well as within

each category. For Buber (1958[1945]: 141) “…the truly structural task of

the new Village Communes [i.e., kibbutzim] begins with their federation,

that is their union under the same principle that operates in their internal

structure”, but anthropologists missed the evasion of this structural task by

kibbutz leaders, as both pe’ilim and non-pe’ilim informants ignored it,

each for different reasons, while FOs were beyond anthropologists’

horizon.

Anthropologists were aiming at “understanding at the expense of

seeing”, as Linstead et al. (1996: 7) put it; they tried to understand kibbutz

without seeing it in context. “The hardest part of a researcher’s

[anthropological] work is to discern the context of phenomena” said Marx

(1985: 147).31 Kibbutz anthropologists did not discern the profound

contextual effects of FOs and capitalist cultures, because they used CKP to

explain what they saw. CKP prevented their trying to grasp what was

meant by a member who said: “The kibbutz is not… an isolated

community. We very much belong to the outside,… members don’t want

to sit and discuss our relations with the entities to which we belong…”.

30 Comaroff & Comaroff 1992; Hammersley 1992; Van Maanen 1995. 31 See also: Pettigrew 1995: 95; Bryman et al. 1996.


They ignored such utterances, and the educated kibbutz members who

read their publications adopted CKP by which was ignored the thwarting

of kibbutz principles by FOs and pe’ilim. Ignorance by members, in turn,

helped later anthropologists ignore FOs, which, in turn, enhanced

ignorance on the part of sociologists and behaviorists. Without Bourdieu’s

(1977, 1984) concepts of field and intangible capitals which were rarely

used in American and Israeli academic circles, and with no reference to

DWOs literature on the role of federative structures,32 kibbutz was not

grasped as a small unit heavily involved in a large, complex and stratified

field.

An additional omission is captured by Freeman’s (1974) insight that

even in an egalitarian, formally unorganized grouping, leaders would soon

emerge, whether due to their traits and/or social ties and/or other

intangible and tangible capitals, and would use the egalitarian image as a

smoke screen for concealing dominance.33 Kibbutz students should have

been suspicious of the social ties pe’ilim created on FO jobs and other

capitals they accumulated there, largely shaping kibbutz power elites,

much more than local, fast-changing jobs. However, without considering

FO impacts, without recognizing emerging dominance in accord with

Freeman’s insight, and without research regarding the bearing of outside

careers on local status and power, it was impossible for researchers to

discern the reality of kibbutz stratification.

32 Whyte & Whyte 1988; Stryjan 1989; Gherardi & Masiero 1990; Brumann

2000. 33 This was corroborated by Sasson-Levy’s (1995) ethnography of an Israeli

radical social movement.

CHAPTER 4

The Missing of Kibbutz Stratification

“...[O]ne cannot be satisfied with an explanatory model incapable of

differentiating people whom ordinary intuition in the specific universe tells

us are quite different” (Bourdieu, in Wacqaunt 1989: 7-8).

In general, researchers have missed kibbutz stratification. The kibbutz is

supposedly egalitarian. Hence, what should logically be more studied and

understood than the extent of its egalitarianism and the shape of its

stratification, which have tangible expressions that enlighten their study?

How is it that after six decades of research, some scholars have found no

stratification,1 while others have found three or four strata?2 Similarly,

each researcher has found a different top stratum, consisting of either:

1. The main officers of each kibbutz (Landshut 2000[1944]),

2. A few members of a kibbutz who belonged to the kibbutz movement

leadership (Rosenfeld 1983[1951]),

3. A few members who rotated main local offices among themselves

(Spiro 1955; Rayman 1981),

4. A kibbutz’s chief economic officers (Schwartz 1955; Vallier 1962),

5. The three managers of a kibbutz’s two plants (Kressel 1971, 1983),

6. Four members who circulated between chief offices, positions as

emissaries abroad, and Movement jobs (Fadida 1972),

7. The three patrons whose clients managed a kibbutz (Topel 1979),

8. 20% of members with highest authority, prestige and influence (Ben-

Rafael 1986),

9. A ‘Mafia’ of veteran pioneers who managed the kibbutz (Bowes

1989: 71),

10. Chief officers, some ex-officers, main branch managers and

“members in continuous but less important roles” (Ben-Rafael &

Yaar 1992: 30),

11. Technocrats who often obtained Movement jobs (Ben-Rafael 1996:

1 Talmon 1972; Shepher, Y. 1975; Blasi 1980; Shur 1987; Rosner 1991. 2 Rosenfeld 1983[1951]; Kressel 1971; Fadida 1972; Ben-Rafael 1986; Shapira

1990; Pavin 1996.

4. The Missing of Kibbutz Stratification 60

62),

12. A local power oligarchy (Rosolio 1999: 29),

13. The head of the economic committee’s ruling clique (Schwartz &

Naor 2000).

Ordinary intuition, however, tells us that all of these are mistaken. High

above all those mentioned as top strata, were Itzhak Tabenkin, Me’ir Yaari

and Yaakov Hazan who, for a half century headed the main Movements,

Kibbutz Meuchad (hereafter KM) and Kibbutz Artzi (KA), with some

80% of kibbutz population up to 1952, and some 66% afterwards, as KM

lost members and kibbutzim to the Ichud Hakibbutzim Vehakvutzot

Movement (hereafter Ichud). Both historians and ex-pe’ilim unanimously

depicted the three as extremely powerful figures with national leadership

status.3 The three headed the two main Movements and their affiliated

political parties, were Knesset (parliament) Members for dozens of years

and members of its main committees. Like Admors in Hassidic courts

(acronym of “our lord, teacher and Rabbi”), they sent deputies to be

Cabinet Ministers, and executives of the Jewish Agency and the Histadrut,

the huge federation of all Socialist movements and trade unions (hence,

the term “Admors” is used thereafter); they chose pe’ilim for hundreds of

other FO jobs and members of Movements’ quasi-parliaments.4 Haim

Shure, a disciple of Yaari and Hazan and a pa’il who headed KA’s youth

movement, edited its daily, Al Hamishmar, and held a seat on its

Executive Committee (Vaad Po’el) for 45 years, depicted their guru-like

status thus (2001: 66):

“There were two who were called ‘The Historic Leadership’, i.e. the

permanent leaders, as opposed to all others who were under the rule of

rotatzia, i.e. they had to go back to the ranks every some years”. “The

permanent leaders were not elected as were all others. They were there

from the creation of the world, like Everest or other mountains, and no

human hand could remove them”.

Their supremacy was clearly symbolized by special privileges. I

3 Historians: Beilin 1984; Shavit 1985; Kafkafi 1992; Kynan 1989; Near 1992-

1997; Keshet 1995; Tzachor 1997; Porat 2000; Kanari 2003. Ex-pe’ilim:

Talmon 1990; Vilan 1993; Tzur 1996; Manor 1997; Shem-Tov 1997; Shure

1997, 2001; Aharoni 2000; Cohen M. 2000; Gilboa 2000. 4 Vilan 1993; Ben-Rafael 1997: 141; Near 1997; Armoni 2000; Gelb 2001; Gvirtz 2003.


remember their arrival in minister-style chauffeured fancy American cars

to lecture at Giv’at Haviva, KA’s seminar center, in 1956, surprising us,

KA’s twelfth-graders, gathered there for an ideological seminar on

Socialism. Their cars clearly negated their preaching and stood out in a

society where private cars were very rare, and almost everyone used either

public Egged buses or vans or pickup trucks belonging to KA, FOs, or

kibbutzim, while groups traveled by lorries in which provisional benches

were installed.

Supremacy Ignorance and the Confused Etiology of

Stratification Admors’ supremacy was known at the time not only to every kibbutz adult

but to most Israelis; only sociologists and anthropologists ignored it, even

after Beilin (1984), Shavit (1985), Kafkafi (1988, 1992) and Kynan (1989)

had described their autocratic rule. Students ignored both this autocracy

and other outside hierarchies of status, power, prestige and continuity in

jobs which enhanced status of pe’ilim and other members with outside

careers. This enhancement made many of them dominant in their kibbutz,

as, for instance, Hever Hakvutzot Movement leader Pinhas Lavon

dominated Kvutzat Hulda.5 Students could not agree on the etiology of

stratification, depicting it as a consequence of one of the following:

1. The power of chief kibbutz officers derived from their superior level

of information and knowledge (Landshut 2000[1944]).

2. Differential prestige due to both veteran pioneering and leadership

roles or other important roles in the kibbutz movement (Rosenfeld

1983[1951]).

3. Kibbutz economic officers were dominant because of control of

local economy (Schwartz 1955; Vallier 1962; Schwartz & Naor

2000).

4. Control of a kibbutz due to continuous management of its plants

(Kressel 1971, 1974, 1983).

5. Dominance derived from filling main kibbutz offices, serving as

emissaries abroad and as Movement functionaries, and acquiring

higher education (Fadida 1972).

6. Dominance through patronage of clients who held main local offices

5 Near 1992: 265; Kafkafi 1998. For other examples: Chap. 13-17.


(Topel 1979).

7. Differential member longevity leading to veterans’ control (Bowes

1989).

8. Differential authority, prestige and influence of roles (Ben-Rafael &

Yaar 1992).

9. Power differentiation due to the rise of technocracy (Ben-Rafael

1996).

10. Local power oligarchies created due to officers’ circulation

(Rosolio 1999: 132).

Such a wide range of explanations for stratification is comprehensible

only through blindness to the reality of stratification, largely created by

thousands of pe’ilim employed in the steep hierarchies of hundreds of FOs

(see list in Chap. 5), which were headed by powerful, prestigious and

continuous figures whose supremacy was symbolized by privileges rarely

found in kibbutz local offices. Students sought stratification only in the

flat organizational structures of kibbutzim with short-term officers of

lesser power and prestige, few or no privileges, who were mostly

relatively young with limited authority. They ignored FOs, while the great

variety of FOs and the variety of other outside jobs held by members made

stratification very complex. Most of this complexity remained unexplored,

as a major factor was missed: Most kibbutz elite members’ careers were

made as pe’ilim or as outside employees in stratified FOs and/or in other

outside bureaucracies, with power, prestige and privileges, as well as the

security of status due to continuity which was rare in kibbutz local offices.

At the zenith of kibbutz success, in the mid-1980s, 4500-5000 members

were pe’ilim, who were mostly recruited by a quota system: 5% of

members were pe’ilim of the Movements and 2% of the Reg.Ents, totaling

some 3600 pe’ilim.6 Their kibbutzim either got no salaries or received

uniform ones for their work, while FOs paid expenses and furnished about

half of them with cars that symbolized their status.7 Due to the rotatzia

6 Malchi 1978; Shapira 1978; Yadlin 1989; Lifshitz 1990; Gilboa 1991. Ben-

Rafael 1997: 21. 7 Adar 1975; Ilana and Avner 1977; Shapira 1979b, 1987; Tzur 1980; Ginat

1981; Rayman 1981: 176; Atar 1982; Gelb 2001: 112. In the 1970s, I was a

pa’il without a car, while some of my fellow kibbutz members, knowing me as

a pa’il, supposed I had a car and asked me for lifts.


norm, kibbutz chief officers served two-three years or even less,8 in

contrast to the Admors half century. Similar to the Admors were the heads

of Hever Hakvutzot Movement, Baratz, Luz, Eshkol and Lavon (In 1951

united with part of KM and became Ichud).9 These leaders and their

deputies, after decades in FO jobs prior to Israel’s statehood, became

Knesset Members and/or Cabinet Ministers for decades.10 Lavon was

Histadrut General Secretary in 1949-50 and 1956-61, and so was

Tabenkin’s deputy, Ben-Aharon in 1969-73 (Gvirtz 2003). Beneath them,

dozens of FO heads and hundreds senior pe’ilim held high offices for

decades, while thousands held consecutive authority jobs up to a

lifetime.11 Even junior pe’ilim were stratified by continuity: some

continued two-three terms, while others served a single 2-5 year term, and

as money is drawn to money, continuous pe’ilim gained more power and

better and more tangible and intangible privileges than one-term juniors.12

For instance, in 1951 Mapam was KA’s and KM’s political party, and

junior pa’il Yaakov Vilan (1993) of Kibbutz Negba was its campaigner in

Tel Aviv for Knesset elections. Although local campaign heads agreed,

Yaari did not permit him to have a month’s leave for a series of lectures in

the US on behalf of the United Jewish Appeal, a Jewish Agency

subsidiary, which had invited him personally. He then noticed inequality

among pe’ilim:

“Of course Yaari did not object to Barzilay and Bentov traveling [on

lecturing tours], as they were supposed to continue being Cabinet

Ministers. According to Me’ir [Yaari], they were not obliged to help with

8 Meged & Sobol 1970; Fadida 1972; Kressel 1974; Blasi 1980: 102; Einat 1991;

Leviatan 1993. 9 Near 1992: 265, 363; Near 1997: 180. Eshkol and Lavon left kibbutzim having

advanced to the summit of Israel’s leadership: Kafkafi 1998; Goldstein 2003. 10 In each of the first seven Knessets (1949-1973), there were between 14 and 26

kibbutz members (Yanai 1981: 104). For the 15 most continuous members see:

Kibbutz 1987. 11 Shepher, I. 1980; Harpazi 1982; Arieli 1986; Brum 1986; Lifshitz 1986a,

1986c; Raz 1986; Helman 1987; Ringel-Hofman 1988; Rosenhak 1988; Halevi

1990; Shapira 1990, 1992; Sack 1996; Vilan 1993; Tzimchi 1999; Gelb 2001;

Shure 2001. 12 On pe’ilim privileges see sources in footnote 7 above and Chap. 8.


the election campaign, even by speeches. Who must not go? Me. I had to

continue working when their seats in the Knesset were assured” (p. 273).

Missing Classical Stratification Theorists in Kibbutz

Literature While Vilan was a short-term pa’il, Barzilay and Bentov, as Admors’

deputies, continued for dozens of years. Differential continuity and power,

prestige and privilege accumulation by pe’ilim created stratification which

was hardly mentioned and never studied, although these are main

explanatory variables in classical models. These models will suffice to

expose the blindness. Weber (1946) saw three societal hierarchies: the

political was ranked by power, the social - ranked by prestige, and the

economic - ranked by income and property. He pointed out that in a stable

society, advancing in one hierarchy helped promotion in others. Lenski

(1966) described the self-enhancing tendency of power, prestige and

privileges, material and non-material, to accumulate in the hands of few at

the expense of the majority. Michels’ (1959[1915]) Iron Law of Oligarchy

explained perpetuation of power by this accumulation, and by privileging

and promoting loyalists, while critics either became loyalists, were

rewarded and promoted, or were sidetracked, demoted and left

(Hirschman 1970). A veteran oligarchic leader identifies the organization

with himself, stops distinguishing between his own good and

organizational good, and, de-facto, shifts its aims to serve himself

personally. Hirschman (1970) found that successors of such a leader were

usually loyal deputies promoted in the wake of a lack of critical thinking,

and due to this lack, they anachronistically continued these policies for a

longer period.

A simple and clear test of blindness to reality is the absence of Michels,

Lenski, Hirschman and other major stratification theorists such as Collins

(1975) and Bourdieu (1977, 1984), in reference lists of kibbutz literature.13

FOs were ignored; power, prestige and privileges accumulated in their

higher ranks were ignored, as well as promotion and privileging of loyal

pe’ilim by oligarchic heads. Hence, these theorists seemed superfluous.

Historians studied only the Movements but no other types of FOs, and

13 Only Michels was mentioned by two studies: Cohen & Rosner 1988; Rosolio

1999.


mostly missed the significance of oligarchic processes. A historian’s main

task is the elucidation of major historical changes, but without Michelian

and other sociological theories, historians missed the oligarchic change of

the late 1930s and 1940s (Chaps. 10-11).

A Sociologist and Anthropologists Lay the Ground for the

Miss However, sociologists and anthropologists came first, so let us detail their

primordial contributions to this blindness. The first was Landshut

(2000[1944]), an economist-sociologist who resided in a KM kibbutz in

1940-1. Specializing in macro-analysis, his study was, in the main, valid

and illuminating, but using a communal society paradigm and without any

micro-analysis, he designated local main officers as the supreme stratum

(p. 88). In 1949-51, three American ethnologists researched kibbutzim. In

accordance with Marx’s (1985) assertion that the hardest part of an

ethnographer’s job is discerning the context of phenomena, they missed

the impact on stratification of the contexts of FOs and societal

involvement, despite the fact that Buber (1958[1945]) had already noticed

FO importance. Only Eva Rosenfeld (1983[1951]: 160) saw that the

highest rank in a kibbutz was held by “an important personality… which,

on closer questioning, reveals one of the top leaders of the kibbutz

movement”, thus implying a crucial role for the Movement in the shaping

of local stratification, but without further studying it. When she noticed

the better clothes of pe’ilim (1957: 117), she did not recognize these as

status symbols and missed others, such as briefcases, cars or Movement

vans that commuted them to work in the cities. Bourdieu (1993: 23) said:

“The sociologist’s misfortune is that… the people who have the technical

means of appropriating what he says have no wish to appropriate it…

whereas those who would have an interest in appropriating it do not have

the instruments for appropriation”.

Rosenfeld’s colleagues could have made use of her findings and could

have revealed stratification by asking further questions about such

prominent members, but did not make use of her perceptions. Her better

known colleague, Spiro (1955), did not see this phenomenon in the

kibbutz he studied, Beit Alfa, although its most prominent members from

the early days were Benyamin Dror and Eliezer Hacohen who were high-

ranking pe’ilim for decades; top status was allegedly held by twelve-


fifteen members who kept rotating the main kibbutz offices among

themselves (p. 25). However, as there were only three-four such offices,

Spiro missed another major point: these rotators rarely returned to the

ranks, and kept managerial status by pe’ilut or other such jobs; thus

rotatzia, which was intended to ensure that managers would come back to

the ranks, mostly failed and became circulation without such coming back.

Another anthropologist who missed Rosenfeld’s perceptions was Schwartz

(1955: 427) who also missed Spiro’s continuous rotators, but, in addition

to the local officers, saw ten-fifteen ex-officers who held outside

“decision-making positions” (i.e., pe’ilut), though not their office

continuity or continuity by circulation among offices, and not their

superior status, power, privileges and office continuity.

The major privileges of pe’ilim and other outside employed members,

such as company cars, were common knowledge, but ethnographers

overlooked them until my 1978 work, Topel’s (1979) and I. Shepher’s

(1980). However, we were ignored by later authors, including kibbutz

members, may be since these members were privileged pe’ilim.14 Evens

(1995: 226-7), for instance, found eight status categories in Kibbutz

Merchavia, but not pe’ilim, though there were many, KA’s Admor Yaari,

Talmon (1990), Tzur (1996) and more. Even Israeli ethnographers were

blind: Schwartz and Naor (2000) saw the dominance of a veteran pa’il, but

not the advantages of pe’ilut by which he became kibbutz ruler (Chap. 15).

Surveys Missed Stratification but Were Scientifically

Legitimized From the mid-1950s, sociologists of the Hebrew University dominated

kibbutz studies for decades, headed by the renowned functionalist S. N.

Eisenstadt (Ram 1995). Their surveys enhanced blindness, being, as

Bourdieu said (1990: 294), “disengaged from any concrete situation,

...record responses induced by the abstract stimuli of the survey situation

as if they were authentic products of the habitus”. According to

Yankelovich (1991) and Soros (1998: 4-24), both respondents and

researchers are sensitive and reflexive to an unknown degree, to various

14 Blasi 1980; Ben-Rafael 1986; Shur 1987; Bowes 1989; Rosner 1991; Rosolio

1999. Rayman (1981) mentioned some privileges of pe’ilim, but did not

connect them to stratification.


survey wordings, and hence, outcome biases are unknown. These defects

can be neutralized by non-reactive measures, but devising them requires

fieldwork, which is the job of junior staff; senior researchers perform only

the final analysis and writing, which lead to fame (Platt 1976). In accord

with Bourdieu (1988: 3), these seniors lacked “the profound intuitions

gained from personal familiarity with the field”. Bourdieu and Wacquant

(1992) pointed to other malignant sociological tendencies: One was

“technological wizardry” (p. 33), complex statistical analyses by which

findings gained the image of objectivity, while, this was often just what

Whyte called (1992: 9) “tape spinning”, data processing without real

comprehension. A second defect was the division of sociologists into

empiricists and theoreticists: kibbutz surveyors were the former who knew

about FOs, met pe’ilim and their privileges, and could have discerned their

superiority as Rosenfeld did, but they left the question of the paradigm

used to theoreticians, and did not question CKP although it negated what

they saw in the field.

Reviewers Missed Students’ Omissions and Sanctioned

CKP The sociologists gained academic recognition and their works were

sanctioned by the scientific community. One may ask: Did reviewers not

suspect designation of humble chief local officers who were replaced

every 2-3 years as the top stratum, while renowned senior pe’ilim were

Cabinet Ministers, Knesset Members and headed national parties, large

national monopolies and other major FOs for decades? Moreover, how did

reviewers approve analyses of local units of a highly organized social

movement with so many large FOs, without references to large

organization classics and literature of social movements, political parties

and power elites?

Though a full answer to this question must await further study, its

contours are clear: Reviewers approved mistaken ethnographies and

surveys that ignored FO heads and other pe’ilim and outside careerists due

to their remoteness from the field. Lacking “the profound intuitions gained

from personal familiarity with the field” (Bourdieu 1988: 3), reviewers did

not suspect that the kibbutz was different from all other communal

societies. They did not reconsider CKP and missed the effects of the

contexts in which elites were involved, both FOs and other outside

organizations. Later reviewers who consulted early publications, learned


nothing of the context of stratified pe’ilim and other outside employed

members.

Kibbutz Member Researchers’ Vested Interests in the

Omission Since the 1960s, however, some researchers and reviewers have been

kibbutz members who were familiar with the field. How did they maintain

blindness to reality? According to Kuhn (1962), the continuity of

paradigms is a ubiquitous scientific problem. Collins pointed out (1975:

493-6) that a paradigm provides a discipline with an organization that is

basically social, unifying members around the common enterprise of

dominating a field of study. Bourdieu pointed out that “intellectuals have a

much greater than average capacity to transform their spontaneous

sociology, that is, their self-interested vision of the social world, into the

appearance of a scientific sociology” (Wacquant 1989: 4). Kibbutz

member researchers had an interest in envisioning the kibbutz as

egalitarian and democratic in order to justify their life choices. Through

the enhanced capacity mentioned by Bourdieu, they used mistaken CKP,

turning their spontaneous egalitarian view of the kibbutz into an

appearance of scientific sociology, and the dominant scientific coalition

rewarded them by publishing works which led to their promotion to

respected professorships. They enhanced the hegemony of the dominant

scientific coalition by rejecting and then ignoring critical Israeli

ethnographers who had furthered Rosenfeld’s work, including Israel

Shepher, Kressel, Fadida, Topel and myself, causing continuing blindness

to stratification up to the present.

Critical Sociologists Found Stratification but Missed Pe’ilim Worse still, Ben-Rafael and Yaar (1992) who were critical of functionalist

sociologists’ denial of stratification, also depicted kibbutz without

stratification engendered by pe’ilim and other outside careerists. In the

kibbutz they described, non-existent in point of fact, the upper strata

consisted of “chief local officers, heads of main branches, and others with

similar status due to past chief offices” (p. 30). However, neither

Tabenkin, nor Yaari had held any such offices in their respective

kibbutzim from the early 1930s, i.e., soon after they had founded the

Movements, while no one would doubt that each of them had top status.

The same was true of Lavon and Eshkol in Hever Hakvutzot Movement,


until they left their kvutzot when becoming national leaders (Kafkafi

1998; Goldstein 2003). The only exception was Hazan who held some of

Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’emek offices (as will be detailed). However, in Ben-

Rafael’s and Yaar’s list of roles which defined kibbutz member statuses

(1992: 83), there were no Cabinet Ministers, Knesset Members, Histadrut

leaders, Labor Party officials, FOs heads or any other senior pe’ilim,

although Ben-Rafael himself mentioned them elsewhere (1997: 141).

Worse still, no outside job is on their list, although biographies of

professionals, authors, editors, artists, army officers and other outside

careerists, reveal these careers as enhancing local statuses,15 and one of

Kibbutz Rama’s two power elites consisted of such careerists (Chaps. 12-

13).

Ben-Rafael and Yaar (1992: 30) erred even more seriously: Their

kibbutz upper stratum included 20% of the members, but according to

Argaman (1997) and Tzachor (1997), nobody in Mishmar Ha’emek came

close to Admor Hazan’s status. Thus, its upper stratum consisted of only

0.2% of some 500 members. The second stratum consisted of only two

(0.4%): Baruch (Boria) Lin, who for decades represented KA in the

Histadrut Executive Committee and held the Health and Welfare portfolio,

responsible for the Health Fund (Kupat Cholim), pension funds and other

organizations with tens of thousands of employees and millions of clients;

and Mordechai Bentov, editor of the daily newspaper of KA, Knesset

Member and Cabinet Minister. The three had not held chief kibbutz

offices from time immemorial, but when they intervened in kibbutz

deliberations, their influence was usually decisive, signaling their top

status (Argaman 1997: 115-23). In addition, in important debates, Hazan

was usually the last speaker, summing up positions and suggesting how to

vote, thus holding extra power (Tzachor 1997: 180). Hazan’s superiority

over all pe’ilim was symbolized from the early 1950s by a KA chauffeured

fancy American car. Its appearance astonished members, as it did later to

my schoolmates and myself at Giv’at Haviva, and a heated debate erupted

which concluded that it was a KA car and not Hazan’s own, so it did not

15 Due to my own blindness, Emanuel Marx had to remind me of these. See:

Kressel 1974: 37-40; Shepher, I. 1980; Rosenhak 1988; Dagan & Yakir 1995;

Dvorkind 1996; Tzur 1996; Tzimchi 1999; Aharoni 2000; Cohen, M. 2000;

Gelb 2001; Gvirtz 2003; Chaps. 12-15.


violate egalitarianism. However, its “capitalist flavor” had to be

eliminated by repainting it to a “proletarian color” (ibid).

Additional explanations of the blindness to kibbutz stratification can be

found elsewhere (Shapira 2005). The stratification will be fully exposed

by kibbutz ethnographies which will appear only after the chapters dealing

with FOs, since the latter mainly shaped stratification, and no

understanding of this stratification is possible without exposing how

pe’ilim gained statuses, promoted careers and accumulated power and

intangible capitals which enhanced status continuity and promotion. In

accord with most stratification theories, these factors were dependent on

office continuity and on the power and prestige of one’s job, as well as on

FO’s rank in the kibbutz field depending on its scale, centrality and

importance (Frank 1985). A study of kibbutz stratification would have to

resemble the above cited works by Bourdieu and his team on French

society, but this is impossible here due to a lack of FO research and my

limitations as a lone researcher. However, by combining ethnographies of

both FOs and kibbutzim, the complex ways by which social and other

intangible capitals were accumulated in the kibbutz field will be revealed.

I am also cognizant of the fact that the concept of social capital is

somewhat problematic as “it now assumes a wide variety of meanings and

has been cited in a rapidly increasing number of social, political and

economic studies”.16 I hope to prevent misconceptions by further

description of major mistakes by CKP users due to ignoring FO, detailing

more of the excluded sector of the field where most of its power, capitals

and privileges were accumulated.

16 Woolcock 1998: 155. For recent works see: Putnam 2000; Kostova & Roth

2003; Huysman & Wulf 2004.

CHAPTER 5

Additional Major Mistakes Due to FOs’ Evasion

Kibbutz Movement – A Part of Encompassing Social

Movements Mishmar Ha’emek members’ decision to paint Hazan’s car a “proletarian

color”, symbolized their Marxist approach. Kibbutzim were pioneering

settlements which conquered the most difficult and dangerous places in

Palestine for the Jewish people, and whose members were radical

socialists who aimed at shaping a better society. The Kibbutz movement

was part of a much larger socialist movement organized by the Histadrut,

as a sector of the Zionist movement.1 The Histadrut included kibbutzim,

moshavim (cooperative agricultural settlements), urban cooperatives, labor

unions and other organizations: the Solel-Boneh construction and

industrial concern, Hasne insurance, Bank Hapo’alim, Kupat Cholim

(Health Fund), which provided health care for most Jews in Palestine,

pension funds, and many others.2 In contrast to some communes which

formed informal networks (Hutterite, Shakers, Amana, Bruderhof),

kibbutzim were formally organized by FOs, the Histadrut and the World

Zionist Organization (WZO). In addition to kibbutz members Lavon and

Ben-Aharon who headed the Histadrut, Yaakov After of Degania founded

and headed the Mashbir Merkazi, the Histadrut wholesaler since 1916, and

kibbutzim and moshavim together owned Tnuva marketing since 1925,

headed first by a moshav member and then by a pa’il; both FOs had

thousands of employees in branches all over the country; they

monopolized some markets and were major players in others. The Mashbir

disappeared during the 1980s crisis, while Tnuva remained prosperous

with some 4000 employees and a sales volume approaching US$ 2

billion.3 In March 2007 half of it was sold to a private fund in exchange

for US$ 1,025 Billion.

1 Landshut 2000[1944]; Goldenberg 1965; Gorkin 1971; Rayman 1981. 2 Willner 1969; Grinberg 1993; Vilan 1993: 289-366; Russell 1995; Gvirtz 2003. 3 Tidhar 1947, Vol. 2: 891-2, 1950, Vol. 4: 1710-1; Rev’on Lekalkala 1983;

Halevi 1990; Near 1992: 178; Arad 1995; Rosolio 1998.

5. Additional Major Mistakes Due to FOs’ Evasion 72

The Histadrut was dominated by Mapay to which Hever Hakvutzot and

the KM were affiliated, but, in 1942, the KM split and joined the

opposition with the KA. Mapay, however, curbed KM and KA opposition

by furnishing them with resources and Histadrut jobs (Shapira 1993: 46-

8). For Rosner, a kibbutz is “...a commune belonging to a Movement

which is part of the Histadrut and the Israeli labor movement” (1991: 1),

and for Rosolio the kibbutz “is misunderstood outside this context” (1993:

10). However, among Rosner’s innumerable kibbutz studies, not even one

has been devoted to the Movements and their Histadrut involvement.

Every kibbutz offspring living in Los Angeles who was interviewed by

Sabar (1996) mentioned his/her Movement affiliation, but the thick book

(620 pp.) by Rosner et al. (1978) did not analyze differential Movement

affiliation effects on kibbutz offspring.

Ignoring Kibbutz Oligarchization Followed that of the

Histadrut Due to students’ ignoring FOs, they missed the fact that kibbutz

oligarchization largely followed that of the larger movements: Ben-Gurion

continued heading dominant parties Ahdut Ha’avoda and Mapay from

1919 to 1963, headed the Histadrut from 1920 to 1935, the Jewish Agency

to 1946, the WZO to 1948, and the Government of Israel until 1963.4

Likewise, Mashbir Merkazi’s After, and Tnuva’s head, Verlinski,

remained in their positions for dozens of years, as did other heads of

Histadrut organizations.5 Kibbutz social scientists have ignored the

oligarchic context and its impact on Movements’ oligarchization, although

historians uncovered clear oligarchic signs. Berger (1966: Chap. 2) points

out that formal facades mask social reality and that it is the task of the

social scientist to penetrate them. Behind the facade of being kibbutz

servants, Admors and many FO heads became self-server oligarchs, but

most historians missed the change.

Let us mention a few clear oligarchic signs. Centralizing decision-

making: At first Movement decisions were made by quasi-parliaments of

4 In 1930 Hapo’el Hatzair joined Ahdut Ha’avoda to found Mapay; his position

as Prime Minister was interrupted for a year and a half in 1954-5: Teveth 1980;

Shapira, Y. 1984, 1993. 5 Tidhar 1947, Vol. 2: 891-2, 1950, Vol. 4: 1710-1; Grinberg 1993.


kibbutz elected representatives, but in 1933-5 these were replaced by

governing councils made up of Admors’ nominees and Movement staff; in

the KM it was called the Extended Secretariat and then the Council, while

in the KA it was called the Executive Committee (Vaad Po’el).6 In accord

with Iron Law, Admors identified themselves with the Movements and

directed them to power self-perpetuation, while radicals and critical

thinkers perceived as potential competitors were suppressed and mostly

left.7 In 1951, KA’s Yaari even publicly declared himself the

personification of the Movement and its affiliated party: “I, Me’ir, am

Mapam. I am Hashomer Hatza’ir. I am the expression of Hashomer

Hatza’ir’s historical way”.8 Yaari and Hazan enhanced power by

promoting loyalists while equalizing their power: for each KA post given

to a Yaari loyalist, one was given to a Hazan supporter. Rotatzia enhanced

their rule: A pa’il who dared to criticize them was soon sent back to

his/her kibbutz as if this was normal rotatzia, unless s/he had a unique,

much-needed competence.9

Kynan (1989) and Kafkafi (1992) demonstrated that Admors’

conservatism obstructed almost all new solutions proposed by kibbutz

officers and pe’ilim in order to cope with Israel’s main task since 1949, the

absorption of a million immigrants. Tzachor (1997) described one out of

many Admor privileges, Hazan’s fancy car, but did not mention the cars

which he and some other pe’ilim got in the 1940s, nor did he discern that

Hazan’s car emphasized the indifference of pe’ilim to member car needs

by not sharing their cars with them even on weekends, a good reason for

members to vent their local power by painting Hazan’s car a “proletarian”

6 KA: Secretariat minutes, KA archive file No. 5�20.2]1 [ ; KM: Tzur 1981: 10;

Kafkafi 1992: 35. 7 Beilin 1984; Dagan & Yakir 1995; Cohen, M. 2000: 201-2; Kanari 2003: 389-

91; Aharoni 2000. 8 Kynan 1989: 190. Mapam was KA’s and KM’s political party and Yaari was its

General Secretary. Hashomer Hatza’ir is the KA youth movement and second

name (Dror L. 1956-1964). 9 Beilin 1984; Shavit 1985; Dagan & Yakir 1995; Shem-Tov 1997; Tzachor

1997: 223-5. A Hazan critic who became pa’il due to his rare competence:

Aharoni 2000.


color.10 Students did not mention many other privileges FO heads

appropriated and conferred on pe’ilim with oligarchization, in accord with

Iron Law (Chap. 8).

Mid-Levelers Became Main Actors with Oligarchization Due to over-attachment by students to perspectives of Movements’

leaders, the study of mid-level pe’ilim and kibbutz officers who became

main actors in the field was missed. Anyone who wants to know who

made kibbutzim successful in the 1960s-1970s will be disappointed when

seeking answers in historical works: no one was interested in the actions

and careers of radical, creative mid-levelers who became the main actors,

shaping kibbutz movement’s achievements when its leaders did not

function and abused their moral duty of promoting its cause. It is a

historical irony that solutions formulated by the radicals helped maintain

trust in Admors, who turned to barren leftism instead of solving major

problems, and suppressed radicals’ creativity and status elevation (Chaps.

10-11).

Neglect of FOs led to the failure to recognize vital contributions by

mid-level pe’ilim which partially offset the negative effects of

dysfunctioning Admors. Only careers of some political pe’ilim were

discussed by historians, as those had bearing on histories of Admors.11

However, the protagonist of an autobiography was depicted thus: “It was

Avraham Brum who formulated the policy which freed agricultural

settlements from the intolerable burden of loan interest...” (Brum 1986:

back cover). As a Deputy General Manager of the Ministry of Agriculture,

Brum set up and headed the Centralized Credit Department, conceived of

and successfully implemented a controversial new policy which, from

1963, relieved many kibbutzim of large debts they had accumulated,

mainly due to lack of proper financing for growth and rapid changes, as

Chapter 3 has explained.

Earlier, Brum had been a pa’il of the Agricultural Center (Merkaz

Hakla’ii), an FO which was in charge of planning and directing the

establishment of kibbutzim and moshavim, and representing them in

10 Pe’ilim cars in 1940s: Kochav and Gan Shmuel informants. On similar

reactions to signs of low morality of commune leaders: Knaani 1960: 79. 11 See: Beilin 1984; Kafkafi 1988, 1992; Kanari 1989, 2003; Tzachor 1997.


negotiations with the Jewish Agency and the government. Then he

advanced to a deputy to the General Manager of The Ministry of

Agriculture (Brum 1986). In this position, he became cognizant of the lack

of proper credit as a main obstacle for growth and change of kibbutz

economy to industry and new, export crops, as high yields of old crops

had caused gluts and falling prices. He devised and implemented a radical

financing policy: Originally, a kibbutz treasurer had to search for many

sources of credit, and when reluctant banks did not meet his needs, he took

loans from expensive private sources which tended to cause a snowball of

debt growth.12 Brum’s solution attached each kibbutz to one bank from

which credit was granted according to a development plan agreed upon

each year by kibbutz officers, the bank, the Movement Fund and Ministry

of Agriculture experts. Brum gained power as he successfully coped with

a major problem, in accord with Hickson et al. (1971). Shalem’s study

found (2000: VII) a positive impact of his solution:

“…economic assistance, control and planning…, were supporting factors

of democratic collective organizations in view of their special consumption

and investment structure”.

Two things are obvious: 1) Brum had creatively solved a major

problem which had devastated most kibbutzim for a decade while Admors

and their deputies as Cabinet Ministers and Knesset Members had not. The

head of KM’s Fund, Sack (1996: 94), three levels beneath Tabenkin, was

Brum’s partner in devising this solution. 2) Brum solved the problem

without heading any of the large organizations that had dominated kibbutz

financing, an inexplicable success if one ignores the power and capitals he

accumulated as a pa’il, and his governmental office which was relatively

independent of Tabenkin’s conservative control. These issues were never

studied by CKP users.

Neglecting the Uniqueness of Pe’ilim and Its Symbolization Due to ignoring FOs, CKP users missed the fact that most kibbutz

movement leaders advanced to prominence either in FO jobs or on their

behalf, in national bodies. As careers of pe’ilim were ignored, students

missed the advantages they acquired and the power and capitals they

accumulated on the outside, which brought successes such as Brum’s. 12 Wording is masculine as all were males.


These advantages symbolized pe’ilim’s high statuses and enhanced power

(Lenski 1966), not only better clothes they had received from communal

storerooms (Rosenfeld 1957: 127), but also FOs’ company cars and other

advantages:

1. Senior pe’ilim traveled abroad and, on returning, reported to their

kibbutz (Tzachor 1997: 164; Gvirtz 2003: 201).

2. Their names appeared frequently in the Movement dailies, weeklies

and quarterlies as major actors, speakers and writers.

3. They mostly represented their kibbutzim at Movement

conventions.13

4. They were main speakers in ideological and other major debates

(Argaman 1997).

5. They often remained members of major committees in their local

kibbutz while in pe’ilut. Sessions were held on weekends, when they

came home, as were general assemblies.

6. They were rarely asked by the work organizer to do urgent manual

tasks, as others were. Some of them were known as ‘weekend

kibbutzniks’.14

By ignoring pe’ilim as a unique type of elite not found in any other

communal society, users of CKP missed kibbutz uniqueness and could not

properly explain its elites. Not only status symbols but also tangible

rewards were acquired in FO jobs. In 1990, I heard from a veteran

member of Kibbutz Beit Alfa, David Kahana, that in 1930 he had been a

pa’il of the Agricultural Center and was able to put aside money for a

private radio from the weekly expense allowance given for five-day

accommodations in Tel Aviv, while all the other hundred members were

served by a large radio located in the dining hall.15 Veterans of Kibbutz

Kochav remembered that in the early 1930s, before the kibbutz bought a

16 millimeters movie projector, some pe’ilim reported to the general

assembly not only on political and other public affairs in which they were

involved, but also on movies they had seen when staying in Tel Aviv, paid

for with money saved from their expense allowances. Another example:

13 Dror 1956-1964; Tzur 1981; Kafkafi 1992; Near 1992-1997. 14 Near 1997: 180; Goldstein 2003: 105; Gvirtz 2003: 91, 201. 15 Such a radio served Gan Shmuel members up to the late 1940s; see also Br”t

1998: 33.


Tzachor (1997: 171) depicted Hazan, while in the city, as sometimes

enjoying “good wine and a dainty meal, so rare at the kibbutz”.

Neglecting the Violation of Egalitarianism by Pe’ilim By ignoring FOs, CKP users missed how violations of egalitarianism

became integral to the roles of pe’ilim as brokers between kibbutzim and

non-egalitarian outside society. All FOs imitated, at least partially, outside

norms, while mostly advancing the kibbutz cause by coping with

contingencies which no kibbutz could cope with on its own. This,

however, created a problem: If and to what extent pe’ilim were entitled to

compensation for the extra efforts they made and inconveniences they

suffered as administrators of FOs? In simple egalitarian village societies,

extra hardships of a headman were considered duly compensated by the

extra prestige he gained (Harris 1990: 343-51). Was this true also of

kibbutz in the early days, while, after oligarchic change pe’ilim were

privileged beyond due compensation for extra hardships? Proof of a

positive answer will be given below, while it is obvious that ignoring FOs

hid pe’ilim privileges.

In fact, the unique requirements of FOs violated egalitarianism in ways

other than pe’ilim privileges. FOs competed with and/or struggled against

other organizations, and this prompted violation of egalitarianism. For

example, Kibbutz Ein Harod’s author Maletz (1983[1945]) depicted the

early days through the eyes of an ordinary member called Menachemke.

After a decade of hard work, Menachemke, his wife and their small child

received a small flat. However, after a while, a prominent member,

depicted as a Movement ‘ideologist’, convinced the housing committee

that it must evict them from this flat since it was a little larger than his

own and better fitted his intellectual work, i.e., writing his addresses and

articles (pp. 179-81). His job was not mentioned, but he was clearly at

least a part-time pa’il, and his writing was integral to the Movement’s

political struggle.16 Performing this task required a flat where a writing

niche could be arranged, which was not needed by Menachemke. The

committee decision became explicable only when Ein Harod was analyzed

as a unit of a social movement whose societal struggles impacted local

egalitarianism.

16 See memories of such a pa’il: Gelb 2001.


Neglecting FO Differentiation from Kibbutzim The national struggles of the Movements also influenced the location of

headquarters which were, at first, in Admors’ kibbutzim, KM’s in Ein

Harod and KA’s in Merhavia, in Mishmar Ha’emek and then back to

Merhavia, in accordance with leadership rotation of the two Admors.17

National politics were resolved in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, so, with

growing political involvement in the 1930s, both Movements’

headquarters moved to Tel Aviv, although without some subsidiaries. For

instance, the KA publishing house, Sifriat Po’alim, and its printing press,

remained in Merhavia up to the 1960s. Pe’ilim of FOs situated in

kibbutzim were not distinguished from other members, as they had no

privileges. Moving to Tel Aviv enhanced differentiation, though only

gradually. For instance, KA’s pe’ilim at first humbly ate and lodged in a

small pension, but later, like David Kahana, they were given allowances

which enabled perks, received rented apartments and then also cars.18

The Reg.Ents developed in a similar fashion. For instance, in the 1940s,

Mishkay Hamerkaz was a small purchasing organization with an office in

Tel Aviv, which set up a cold storage house for potatoes in one of its

kibbutzim. Work and management were carried out by kibbutz members

of both the hosting kibbutz and adjacent kibbutzim as a part of the tasks of

the vegetable branches. Hence, no social differentiation emerged. In the

1960s, a much larger cold storage facility was built at the new Mishkay

Hamerkaz industrial park, as a part of a vegetable and fruit sorting and

packing compound. Pe’ilim administered it, all manual work was done by

hired workers, and stratification emerged among pe’ilim, as well: the

manager had a car, while other pe’ilim commuted collectively by pickups.

Even FOs which remained inside kibbutzim, were differentiated as

they developed and grew, and became more hierarchic and stratified. An

example is the regional high school founded in the late 1940s by few

kibbutzim alongside Kibbutz Rama. At first, it resembled a kibbutz: a staff

of members only, authority functions divided between an administrator

and a senior teacher, and no high status symbolization. The only weak sign

was a pickup which the administrator drove more than others, and which

17 Kanari 1989: 37; Tzachor 1997: 144. See the same in Hever Hakvutzot: Near

1992: 262-6. 18 See Chap. 8; Personal knowledge: My father was a KA pa’il in 1949-51.


he used more than others on weekends for private ends. Finances were

managed by Rama’s treasurer, and building and upkeep of facilities by its

functionaries. As it grew and as Rama introduced capitalist practices

(Chap. 12), the school became stratified, hierarchic and bureaucratic, with

some hired staff and a privileged autocratic manager. Ignoring FOs has

prevented students from seeing cultural change that came with growth and

spatial separation from kibbutzim by new localities. Only the underground

army Palmach, a quasi-FO initiated by the KM in 1942, retained kibbutz

culture despite its size, some 2500 people, largely due to situating small

units in many kibbutzim, living and dressing much like kibbutz members,

while commanders had neither status symbols nor privileges (Chap. 10).

Evasion of Violation of Egalitarianism by Outside Sources In a detached commune of Hutterites in the 1970s, even owning a radio

was allowed only to a hired English teacher as a temporary resident (Baer-

Lambach 1992: 25), but in kibbutzim pe’ilim routinely violated

egalitarianism from the early days. In the 1950s, a Kibbutz Rama pa’il

even brought home a private piano upon returning from an emissary

position abroad. Only powerless joiners to established kibbutzim handed

over precious personal items to the kibbutz storeroom, including, for

instance, a handmade present, a nice dress which her grandmother had

knitted for Hana Wolf when finishing high school; this dress was used

every other day by another Mishmar Ha’emek woman when traveling to

Haifa, where Hana’s mother met them and identified their kibbutz origin

by this dress (Katzir 1999: 76). A refrigerator and a dishwasher, however,

were not useable this way. In Kibbutz Sa’ad, in the 1980s, when most flats

were furnished with only small refrigerators, a larger, American one and a

dishwasher belonging to a family joining the kibbutz were taken to a

storeroom for some months and then handed back to the family (Br”t

1998: 89).

Sa’ad’s secretary tried to maintain egalitarian culture in this amusing

way in an attempt to deal with an unsolved normative conflict caused by

societal involvement. If no other member of Sa’ad had possessed similar

goods, he could sell the large refrigerator, the money could be put into

Sa’ad’s cash fund, and joiners would have been given only a humble

refrigerator. This was morally impossible, however, since everyone knew

that pe’ilim and other members did not hand over such goods, or even

more expensive assets held privately on the outside, usually due to


inheritance: flats, cars, bank accounts, etc. Such secrets were partially

penetrated by only one student, Kressel (1974: 174-81), but even he

missed the fact that egalitarianism was violated to a greater extent by

pe’ilim and members employed outside, who used outside-owned assets

such as company cars free of charge, rather than by members’ use of

private assets, which was limited by kibbutzim. For instance, up to the late

1980s, members with private money could not buy a car or even a

motorbike and use them in their kibbutz. In the 1970s, Kibbutz Rama

officers even reprimanded a youngster for buying a used motorbike, but it

was not confiscated as it was masked as sports equipment. Kibbutz

students ignored how violations of egalitarianism by pe’ilim legitimized

violations by other members (Chap. 8, 12).

Blindness to FOs Control of Kibbutzim Development of kibbutzim required solutions which the FOs furnished

while gaining power over them (cf. Blau 1964). For instance, soon after

the Movements were founded by a few kibbutzim, all others joined. The

main reason was Movement control of a critical resource: youth who were

socialized for pioneering by Movement-affiliated ‘youth movements’ in

Europe, and later, in other countries. Another proof of this critical need:

Hever Hakvutzot lacked an affiliated youth movement at the time of its

foundation, so it adopted Gordonia, an independent youth movement.19

Youth filled the ranks emptied by members who left, and aged and

disabled members (a common problem of commune survival), and enabled

growth.20 On the eve of World War II, in Poland alone, 70,000 youngsters

were organized by kibbutz ‘youth movements’, and it seems that even

more were organized elsewhere (Near 1997: 33). Organizers were kibbutz

emissaries: KA had 33 emissaries in Europe, and KM had more than

double this number.21 An exceptional case, which supports this

explanation, was a kibbutz called Chen by Fadida (1972): Founded in

1954 by graduates of an independent Zionist youth movement abroad, it

did not join any Movement at first, as it had enough joiners. After six

19 Kanari 1989: 55. Kafakfi 1998: 44. Note that Spiro (1955) called the KA “The

federation”, and its youth movement “The Movement”. 20 Knaani 1960: 90; Oved 1988: Chap. 3; Kynan 1989; Kinkade 1994: 165-73. 21 Kanari 1989; Near 1992: 297-8; Tzur 1996: 57; Tzachor 1997: 161.


years, it joined the Ichud, due to mounting economic problems which only

Ichud brokerage in the government and the Jewish Agency could solve.

Economic FOs became more important in a later era, when most

veteran kibbutzim no longer needed youth movement graduates, as

kibbutz offspring routinely joined them; only younger kibbutzim which

suffered very high exit rates remained dependent on these graduates

(Chaps. 14-15). Admors’ leftist politics and conservatism (Chaps. 10-11),

left room for only economic initiatives, such as the essential industrialized

processing of raw agricultural products. This service was soon provided

by Reg.Ents established by veteran Regional Purchasing FOs, or by firms

owned by Regional Councils headed by kibbutz members. Within two

decades, 155 regional plants and service facilities were set up.22

Reg.Ents heads became very powerful as kibbutzim were dependent on

their services: the only alternative a kibbutz could find for the services of a

Reg.Ents plant was usually a Reg.Ents plant of another region, but

Reg.Ents heads retained close contacts to prevent kibbutzim from breaking

dependency. Formally, Reg.Ents were democratically controlled by

kibbutzim and any wronged kibbutz could bring its grievances to the

board of directors of the plant in which, formally, the majority were

kibbutz representatives, while pe’ilim were only a minority. As the next

chapters will demonstrate, however, decision-making was firmly in the

hands of pe’ilim, and as Lenski (1966) found, this caused a self-enhancing

spiral of power and privilege enlargement which enraged kibbutz

members. However, they never managed to stop it, mainly because chief

kibbutz officers who were supposed to represent kibbutzim in FOs’

governing bodies, were mostly co-opted by pe’ilim as they had been

expecting a pe’ilut after a short local term.

Overlooking FOs It is clear that only a paradigm of kibbutz which includes FOs as an

integral part of analysis can enable this society to be comprehended.

Although a systematic study of FOs has yet to be done, it is helpful to

portray them with information which can be gathered without expensive

investigation. The inconclusiveness of the list below, should not disturb

the reader since our interest is in the effects of FOs on misunderstood

22 Cohen, A. 1978; Malchi 1978; Brum 1986; Niv & Bar-On 1992.


kibbutz cultures and leadership processes which will be revealed through

an examination of both.

Rosolio (1998) mentioned four types of FOs, while I mentioned six

types:

1. The Mashbir Merkazi FO, Israel’s largest importer and wholesaler,

with many branches and some 1500 employees up to the mid-1980s

(Rev’on Lekalkala 1983). It then declined, was partitioned and sold.

2. Tnuva, an FO for processing and marketing agricultural products,

Israel’s largest industrial-commercial conglomerate with some 4000

employees, owned up until recently by all kibbutzim and moshavim.

3. Three, and later four Kibbutz Movements, which again became three

in 1980 by the unification of KM and Ichud into TKM, with some

2300 pe’ilim in 1985 (Recently, the TKM and KA have merged). As

they established many subsidiaries (Sack 1996 mentioned more than

fifty KM subsidiaries), only the more autonomous ones will be

mentioned below.

4. Movement-affiliated ‘youth movements’ which organized tens of

thousands of youngsters by hundreds of pe’ilim in Israel and abroad.

5. KM- and KA-affiliated Mapam party which split in 1954 into two

parties, each with 8-9 Knesset seats, usually two Cabinet Ministers,

dozens of branches, many pe’ilim and daily and weekly newspapers

up to 1968. Then, the KM party united with Mapay to found the

Labor Party, while KA’s party declined and two decades later

merged with another left-wing party.23

6. Eleven Reg.Ents concerns with some 110 plants and facilities, some

1200 pe’ilim, 7000-8000 permanent employees and 1000-2000

seasonal workers.

In addition to these six types of FOs, there were another thirty types,

each including between one and forty-six FOs, some with a few pe’ilim

and hundreds of hired workers, while others had dozens of pe’ilim and few

hired employees. However, all were hierarchic and bureaucratic with

pe’ilim managing them, which indicated a common feature: imitation of

low-trust, capitalist cultures with a counter-gravity to kibbutz communal

ethos and culture. Many sources have been used to construct the list; as it

23 Beilin 1984; Vilan 1993; Near 1997; Shem-Tov 1997; Tzachor 1997; Shure

2001.


is a priori inconclusive and aimed at presenting a general picture, I will

refer to only some of these sources.

7. Histadrut-affiliated Union of Farm Workers and its Agricultural

Center were managed by pe’ilim from kibbutzim and moshavim. It

owned the Ruppin Agricultural College, headed and staffed by

dozens of pe’ilim and many hired employees, with hundreds of

kibbutz and moshav students.24 Recently, it went bankrupt and was

sold to private owners.

8. In Zionist organs such as the Jewish Agency, involvement of

kibbutzim was smaller, and dwindled earlier than in the Histadrut,

but Hazan, for instance, was a Director of the Jewish National Fund.

Up to now, however, dozens of pe’ilim and their families are still

Zionist emissaries to the Jewish Diaspora.25

9. Most of the eighteen national professional associations of farmers,

each related to an agricultural sector, were founded, headed and

administered by pe’ilim. In 1974, for example, these associations

employed 87 pe’ilim, each with a company car, and 140 hired

employees without cars.26

10. For each agricultural sector, a governmental Production and

Marketing Council, mostly initiated by kibbutz members, was

established to regulate markets. Many of their executives and

professional staff were pe’ilim.27

11. Tnuva Export marketed kibbutz and moshav citrus fruit using 29

packing plants, each managed by a pa’il or moshav member, and

operated by a few permanent employees and 120-150 seasonal hired

workers. It owned a box factory, and in 1978/9, for example, it

processed 660,000 tons and exported 22 million boxes.28 It went

bankrupt in 1989 and was sold.

24 Interview with David Kahana; Vilan 1993; I both studied and lectured at the

Ruppin College. 25 Tzachor 1997: 224. In 1991, there were 60 emissaries to the former USSR

alone (Bashan 1993). 26 Shteinberg 1974. As part of Chimavir study (see below), I interviewed some of

these pe’ilim. 27 Tzur 1996; Tzimchi 1999. 28 Rev’on Lekalkala 1979; Maroz 1991; my father was Tnuva Export’s director.


12. Agrexco, a state-owned agricultural export company which

exported all other farm products, employed a few pe’ilim and was

sometimes headed by a pa’il and sometimes by a moshav member

(Tzimchi 1999: 235-49).

13. Until it collapsed in 1982 due to mismanagement, Chimavir

sprayed fields with pesticides and herbicides, as well as making

special flights by its fleet of 40 airplanes and 6 helicopters.

Dominating this sector in Israel, it was headed by a few pe’ilim and

employed up to 200 hired employees in high season, working in a

large central garage in Herzliya, 8 major runways, and 20 auxiliary

ones around the country.29

14. The seed producing FO, Hazera, was founded in 1940 and managed

by several pe’ilim. It almost monopolized this sector of agriculture,

with its five farms and hundreds of hired workers.30 Recently, it was

privatized and sold.

15. Dozens of kibbutzim with poultry branches specializing in the

production of chicks, founded the Association of Poultry Farms for

Breeding, which dominated this business in Israel until recently. It

also engaged in the export of eggs and chicks by air transport to

adjacent countries.31

16. Most of the incoming and outgoing heavy cargo of kibbutzim,

Reg.Ents, other FOs and rural clients, are transported by eight

regional kibbutz transport cooperatives, each with many dozens or

over hundred of heavy lorries, a garage which also serves many non-

kibbutz clients, and many pe’ilim and hired employees (Niv & Bar-

On 1992: 64-7).

17. Each Movement founded its own financial organ in the 1930s,

known as The Fund (Hakeren), which was initially aimed at mutual

help for kibbutzim, but expanded into a major financial power,

backing Movement initiatives. The KM Fund financed many FOs in

addition to those listed here, such as a shipping company, its

commercial agency, a petroleum firm, a school supply firm, a plant

29 Arnon 1982; my own unpublished study. 30 Interview with Tzeshek Rosental, Hazera co-founder and executive for

decades. 31 Interviews with Miki Yadlin and Hanan Tzur, past heads of the Association.


nursery, an investment firm, etc. (Sack 1996).

18. The Movements founded their own Purchasing Organizations in the

1950s, catering to kibbutz needs not provided by other FOs. They

obtained cheaper prices and credit for various durable goods such as

furniture, industrial machinery, electrical appliances, cars, etc. (Niv

& Bar-On 1992: 65).

19. Until recently, both KA and TKM owned large planning and

architectural firms, each employing dozens of professionals, some

pe’ilim and others hired. One of them survived the crisis, while the

other did not.32

20. Until quite recently, both KA and KM owned construction firms.

They built most of kibbutz and Reg.Ents buildings, with hundreds of

hired workers managed by a few pe’ilim (Peleg 1991).

21. Both KM and KA founded their own publishing houses in the

1930s, Hakibbutz Hameuchad and Sifriat Poalim (respectively),

which became among the largest in Israel, employed both pe’ilim

and hired employees. The two merged recently.33

22. Both KA and KM founded large seminar centers, each with a

campus and accommodation facilities for hundreds of students,

auditoriums, libraries and archives, staffed and operated by both

pe’ilim and hired employees.34

23. Both KA and KM founded social research institutes. The KA

institute was joined by the Ichud, affiliated to Haifa University and

moved to its campus. The institutes employ some full pe’ilim and

many part-timers and free-lancers. Both have published

extensively.35

24. Both KA and KM established Holocaust memorial archives and

research institutes, quite similar to the above social research

institutes.

32 As a manager in my kibbutz plant, I was a client of KA’s planning firm. 33 Both declined to publish my 1987 ethnography of a Reg.Ents. conglomerate, as

well as the Hebrew translation of the present book. 34 I have lectured there many times and used their libraries and archives

extensively. 35 See reference list. I was a pa’il of the latter, and conducted a case study for the

former.


25. Mapam intellectuals headed by the poet Avraham Shlonski,

founded the Tzavta Cultural Club in Tel Aviv in the early 1950s. It

became a prime center of left-wing cultural production and is still

flourishing.36

26. The Movements associated in 1963 to found Brit Hatnu’aa

Hakibbutzit (Alliance of Kibbutz Movements) for services such as

dental clinic guidance, archive guidance, etc., as well as artistic FOs:

the Kibbutz Dance Company, the Kibbutz Choir, the Kibbutz

Symphony Orchestra, the Kibbutz Theatre, the Kibbutz Gallery, etc.

These FOs were staffed by some pe’ilim and many part-time kibbutz

members (Brum 1986: 72-4).

27. The Movements established Kibbutz Child and Family Clinics, an

FO which employs dozens of psychologists and other professionals,

both pe’ilim and hired, who operate its eight branches all over the

country.37

28. The Movements founded the Kibbutz Industry Association which

has attended to common functions and interests of the some 360

kibbutz factories and hotels.38

29. The Movements founded Heshev economic consulting firm, which

also provided computerization service. Later on Reg.Ents took over

this service and Heshev remained a consulting firm (Rosolio 1975).

30. The Comptroller Alliance of Cooperatives is an FO which monitors

the bookkeeping of kibbutzim and moshavim. Recently, it went

bankrupt and was operated by an official receiver who fired half its

staff of 160, mostly hired accountants (Lifshitz 2000a).

31. Bitu’ach Chaklai Insurance FO insures most kibbutz and FO assets.

Recently, it was worth more than $US50 million (Lifshitz 2000b).

32. Some 12-15 rural municipal authorities called Regional Councils,39

in regions where kibbutzim represented a majority of the

settlements, were headed and administered by pe’ilim. Where

36 Shapira 1974; Rosental 1997; Lifshitz 1999. 37 Three of my relatives were professionals of these clinics, and I was a client of

one clinic. 38 The research for both Shapira 1979a and 1980 were financed by this

Association. 39 The number changed over the years for various reasons.


Reg.Ents did not cater to kibbutz needs, these municipalities

established firms which catered for them and were administered by

pe’ilim.40

33. Some kibbutz- and moshav-dominated Regional Councils

established six regional colleges, while the three secular Movements

jointly founded two kibbutz teachers’ seminars. They all became

academic, in addition to offering non-academic courses. Each serves

thousands of students. Hundreds of kibbutz members manage and

teach in these colleges, a few as pe’ilim and others as salaried

employees.41

34. Kibbutzim in the past have had their own schools; elementary were

local, and some high schools were either local, or regional or

Movement ones. Later on all high schools amalgamated into larger

regional schools, some together with non-kibbutz settlements, and

then the same process occurred with elementary schools (Niv & Bar-

On 1992: 93-109). In the 46 regional schools, administrators and

teachers are mostly kibbutz members, while some teachers and all

service staff are hired.

35. Kibbutzim and moshavim of the north and the south owned two

FOs for artificial impregnation of cattle, with some 80 employees

and two ranches of some 200 bulls. Recently they were merged

(Bashan 2000b).

36. Harish organized kibbutzim which owned bulldozers and other

heavy earth-moving equipment, contracting public works all over

the country.42

FOs were known to kibbutz students, whether as employees, free-

lancers, contractors, clients or from myriad publications. Kibbutz member

researchers also knew some FOs through personal acquaintance with

pe’ilim of their respective kibbutzim. Up until the 1960s, pe’ilim usually

reported periodically to their kibbutz’s general assembly and local

40 Niv & Bar-On 1992: 66-7. Rosolio 1998: 154; Gelb 2001: Chap. 12. 41 Brum 1986: 107-8. I lectured and was executive of one college, and now I

lecture in another. 42 Gan Shmuel’s Shlomo Bronshtein was a pa’il of Harish in the 1940s. In the

1950s, Gan Shmuel participated with Caterpillar D7 and D8 bulldozers. Gelb

(2001: 105) drove Kfar Blum’s D8.


bulletin, and their continuity was reviewed by the secretariat and approved

by the general assembly.43 These norms vanished with the rise of

economic FOs like the Reg.Ents which conscripted lesser status pe’ilim

for their bureaucracy, who had little to report and whose job continuity

seemed natural, though not their privileges. Many believed this was a

blessing: kibbutzim sent incompetent members to these jobs, but no one

has confirmed this as CKP users have ignored FOs, while my Reg.Ents

ethnographies tend to disprove it (Shapira 1978, 1987). I did not continue

investigating it, since as a part of the effort to ignore FOs the Kibbutz

Research Institute, in which I was a pa’il for four years, decided to deny

support for my Reg.Ents study, on the grounds that Reg.Ents were not

kibbutzim.

Ignoring FOs prevented CKP users from exploring and understanding

unique kibbutz managerial career ladders. Thus, they missed how rotatzia

was integral to these ladders, enhancing the supremacy of FO heads and

encouraging oligarchy rather than curbing it.

43 Shapira 1995a; Argaman 1997; Gvirtz 2003: 203.

CHAPTER 6

FO Heads’ Supremacy: Circulation, ‘Parachutings’

and Pe’ilim’s Fragile Status

There is little question now that power and capitals were mostly

accumulated in the field by advancing from local offices to FO jobs or

other outside jobs. Less common was power accumulation by continuous

heading a local factory and enlarging it with hired Labor to become a main

provider of kibbutz sustenance (Kressel 1971). E. Cohen (1983: 101)

found a shortage of “managerial resources” in kibbutzim, but he ignored

prime reason for this shortage, rotatzia which unduly replaced successful

officers and caused ‘internal leaving’, brain-drain and unique career

ladders in which kibbutz offices with negative balances of rewards led to

well-rewarded FO jobs. Moreover, outside jobs gave better chances for

promotion to higher echelons, giving pe’ilim authority over larger

organizations, furnishing them with more power, prestige and privileges

for longer periods, controlling the vital resources of kibbutzim and

brokering their interests on the outside. In addition, in hierarchic FOs

pe’ilim ruled over hired workers, while a self-work kibbutz usually

consisted of only three authority levels:

1. Responsibility for a function or sector of a branch, heading a minor

committee.

2. Heading a branch or a mid-level committee, a main committee

membership.

3. Chief office, including heading the plant which was usually the

largest branch, heading a main committee and membership in others.

From a kibbutz chief office, usually the next career step was pe’ilut;

almost all pe’ilim came from among local kibbutz elites.1 However,

advancement to chief offices and pe’ilut varied greatly: leaders of

founding groups of kibbutzim were chief officers from inception; a few

others of the group might have succeeded them shortly if the leaders

1 Shepher, Y. 1964: 46; Shapira 1978; Rayman 1981: 230; Helman 1987; Vilan

1993; Gelb 2001.

6. FO Heads’ Power: Circulation, ‘Parachutings’, Pe’ilim Fragile Status 90

became pe’ilim rather early, at the age of 24-27 or even less, as was

common in some younger kibbutzim due to the fast growth of FOs in the

1960s-1970s (Chaps. 14-15). However, leaders of joiner groups (called

Hashlama, meaning: completion) might have waited for decades for such

a promotion or completely missed one, since due to rotatzia, after some

years, founding leaders who were pe’ilim often returned to chief offices,

while their successors became pe’ilim, so that a close group circulated

between chief offices and pe’ilut, and it was rare for anyone new to enter

it (Spiro 1955). This occurred when members left the group by continuing

a pe’ilut, or by going from one pe’ilut to another, or by demotion and

kibbutz exit. For instance, a Kochav veteran was a kibbutz secretary seven

times and seven times a pa’il up to Knesset (parliament) Membership.

Hashlama leaders often abandoned hope for advance and turned to other

careers, so that, when at last a veteran circulator found continuous pe’ilut,

a younger, second generation member entered the circulators group. This

group usually numbered more than twice the number of chief offices, due

to both pe’ilut terms being longer than local ones (see below), and to the

fact that some members took charge of longer tasks, such as the founding

of a new plant or a new FO.2

Continuous FO Heads Controlled Circulative Managerial

Careers Circulation of pe’ilim was controlled by FO heads who decided on their

nomination and continuity, and whose power, capitals and continuity far

exceeded that of newly appointed local kibbutz officers. Take, for

example, the case of Kibbutz Hachof (fictitious name, as are names

below), a large and successful kibbutz founded in the 1930s, which in the

mid-1970s numbered some 500 members and 900 inhabitants, and had a

profitable economy with a turnover of more than $US20 million.

However, its four chief officers, aged 32-45, were juniors compared with

one of the kibbutz founders, Zelikovich, aged 57. For eight years he

headed Mishkay Hamerkaz, a Reg.Ents conglomerate of Hachof and more

than thirty other kibbutzim, with six plants, some 650 hired employees,

230 pe’ilim, almost 200 company cars, and an annual turnover of some

2 Spiro 1955; Meged & Sobol 1970; Fadida 1972: Chap. 2; Argaman 1997; Gelb

2001: Chap. 11.


$US350 million. Zelikovich not only had power and intangible capitals on

a different scale than that of Hachof chief officers, but he had already

attained their status three decades before, and ever since, had advanced

through FO jobs of growing power and prestige to head this large FO and

to be a senior partner in the powerful group of Reg.Ents heads (see

below). Moreover, a pe’ilut at Mishkay Hamerkaz, which he controlled,

was a major career advance alternative of the chief officers of dozens of

kibbutzim. Heading 230 pe’ilim, he held a key position in the kibbutz

field, controlling the promotion and continuation in management of a large

portion of the region’s circulative officers.

However, the rotatzia norm was strong in Mishkay Hamerkaz, and

heads were replaced every seven-nine years: Formally their terms were

five years, but without a formal timetable and no open, competitive

elections, negotiating replacements took some years.3 In accord with the

Iron Law, Zelikovich’s power and status was beneath that of Ushi

Fridman, a veteran leader of Kibbutz Gaaton (a kibbutz of middle age and

size), who from 1959 to 1988 headed Milu’ot (all real names, as are other

names below), a Reg.Ents concern of 26 Western Galilee kibbutzim and

three moshavim. At Milu’ot’s peak, in the mid-1980s, Fridman headed 14

plants, some 200 pe’ilim and some 1500 hired employees. This was true in

spite of the smaller number of Milu’ot settlements which were mostly

younger and smaller than Mishkay Hamerkaz’s large veteran kibbutzim.

Due to smallness, the Western Galilee kibbutzim gave fewer pe’ilim to the

Movements and, hence, pe’ilut in Milu’ot was more important as a

promotion outlet for an ex-kibbutz chief officer. As kibbutz chief officers’

terms lasted only 2-3 years, the careers of ten to twelve generations of ex-

chief officers in these kibbutzim were impacted by Fridman’s nomination

decisions. This enhanced his power, and together with other power

sources, he gained the status of a prominent national economic leader,

quite similar to Itzhak Landesman of Ayelet Hashachar who headed Tnuva

from 1970 to 1995 and likewise enlarged it quite successfully.4

In order to pinpoint Fridman’s status on the kibbutz managerial career

ladder, one must consider the fact that, already in 1969, he had proven to

3 See, for example, Arieli 1986 on such negotiations in another Reg.Ents concern. 4 Ginat 1979a, 1979b; Barkai 1982; Chizik 1982, 1983; Harpazi 1982, 1983;

Lifshitz 1983, 1985, 1986c; Ben-Hilel 1988a; Arad 1995; Halevi 1990, 1995.


be more powerful than three General Secretaries of the Movements:

Despite their efforts, Milu’ot’s subsidiary took over computerization

service of its kibbutzim from national FO Heshev (Rosolio 1975). Later

on, in 1979, his supremacy was proven once again: A product of Milu’ot’s

fodder mill contaminated by botulinum microbes, caused the deaths of

some 1600 milking cows, ruining some of the best milking herds in Israel

at Merhavia, Beit Alfa, Yas’ur and other kibbutzim, causing damage

worth millions of $US, as the yearly milk production of each of these

cows amounted to some 10,000 liters. After years of negotiation which

was kept secret in order to prevent a public outcry against the fodder

mill’s managers, Fridman forced a settlement on the General Secretaries

of the Movements who acted on behalf of the injured kibbutzim, in which

Milu’ot paid only a very small part of the damage.5

Additional cases also proved Fridman’s supremacy.6 This, and his

seniority among the eleven heads of Reg.Ents concerns, made him their

informal leader, which was another reason for the capitulation of the

General Secretaries. A clear sign of this status was his election, after his

1988 demotion due to the bankruptcy of Milu’ot, to head the Reg.Ents

national desk which represented all Reg.Ents in national arenas. He held

this post until his death a decade later. As the office of Movement

secretary was the main step that led to Knesset membership, Fridman’s

supremacy over them meant that his power somewhat equaled that of a

Knesset Member.7 This meant that, while Admors and Ichud heads were at

the top of kibbutz career ladders, and their deputies as cabinet ministers

stood on its second step, Fridman and Landesman of Tnuva were on its

third step, while Zelikovich only occupied its fourth rung, since due to his

shorter incumbency he had less power; his deputies were situated on its

fifth and chief officers of kibbutzim on its sixth or seventh. Thus, it is

clearer how great a mistake was the depiction of chief kibbutz officers as

highest stratum (Chap. 4).

5 Both the Movements and Milu’ot tried to conceal it. See: Ginat 1979a, 1979b. 6 Chizik 1982, 1983; Lifshitz 1983, 1986c. 7 In a caricature of TKM’s weekly of 3.8.1988, when Ben-Shachar’s report

exposed Milu’ot’s failure, Fridman is heading a board meeting with pacifiers in

all the other directors’ mouths.


FO Heads’ Iron Law Continuity versus Lower Echelons’

Rotatzia In order to fully understand the consequences of Iron Law continuity in

the kibbutz field, one must grasp the effects of the rotatzia norm which

supposedly enhanced egalitarianism. The decisive impact was the

opposite, i.e., larger power and longer continuity gaps than in usual

organizations whose middle managerial and expert echelons accumulated

considerable power due to continuity.8 Large corporations restricted

leaders’ continuity by the use of ‘golden parachutes’ which caused 87% of

them to retire within 12 years (Vancil 1987: 89). In contrast, when

delegates at the KA convention called in the late 1960s for rotatzia to

apply to Yaari and Hazan after forty years of leadership, Hazan excused

continuity thus: “Leadership is not done rotationally”, meaning that only

officers could be rotated, but not leaders whose tasks required continuity.

Continuity at the top and frequent succession in low- and mid-echelons

created continuity gaps larger than in customary organizations and

furthered oligarchization rather than curbing it.

Continuity difference was considerable even at the top: While Admors

continued for 48-53 years, the Mashbir Merkazi’s head, After, continued

for 44 years, Tnuva’s Verlinski for 35 years, Milu’ot’s Fridman for 29

years, KM Fund’s Sack for 28 years, and Tnuva’s Landesman for 26

years. The differences can be explained by the extra power of the Admors,

their commencing offices earlier, and Machiavellian use of leftism for

keeping power by Tabenkin and Yaari (Chaps. 10-11). In 1920, the two

were among Histadrut founders who were chosen as executives and

committee members, and, from 1925, they traveled bi-annually on its

behalf to WZO Congresses, the pre-state parliament of Zionism, in

Europe.9 As early as 1935, Tabenkin led the rejection by a Histadrut

referendum of Ben-Gurion’s pact with right-wing leader Jabotinski, KM

and KA took part in Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine before

statehood) elections; Admors were members of its executive, as were

heads of Hever Hakvutzot, while the Mashbir Merkazi’s After was a

8 Gouldner 1954; Crozier 1964; Mechanic 1964; Burawoy 1979. 9 Minutes of WZO Congresses, no. 14-17, 1925-1931. Hazan traveled for the first

time in 1931.


powerful Histadrut figure.10

Admors’ continuity legitimized continuity of other senior pe’ilim, such

as other Knesset Members, twelve of whom continued for more than two

decades after 10-20 previous years of pe’ilut up to 1948,11 and the similar

continuity of Fridman, Landesman and other FO heads: 21 years for

Mishkay Emek Izrael’s Bar-Haim, 19 years for Mishkay Emek

Hayarden’s Laish (who has been reinstated again in the nineties), and 27

years for Cotton Marketing Council’s Noymark.12 This Council was small,

a few dozen employees, but controlled marketing worth hundreds of

millions of $US and the lion’s share of kibbutz agricultural profits in the

1970s, conferring great power on Noymark. Similarly, for three decades,

Yaakov Sack (1996) headed KM’s Fund with a dozen employees, but, as

head of the main financial organ of a large Movement, he held the power

to decide organizational life-or-death matters for many kibbutzim and

FOs.

However, even when FO heads abided by rotatzia, as in the case of

Mishkay Hamerkaz where seven heads reigned during its 67 year-history,

their average term in office of 9.5 years was still three to five times longer

than the average terms of kibbutz chief officers: Meged and Sobol (1970)

found that in Ichud kibbutzim, these averages were 1.5-2 years in younger

kibbutzim and 2-3.5 years in older ones, while others found that the

longest continuing type of kibbutz chief officers, plant managers,

continued to serve on the average of 3.5-3.8 years.13 Mishkay Hamerkaz

heads continued 2.7-5 times longer than kibbutz chief officers, but fifteen

of their deputies, plant managers and top experts continued even longer,

up to 20 years or more, that is 6-10 times longer, and in Milu’ot, under the

continuous rule of Fridman, 38 pe’ilim continued likewise.14

Pe’ilim Supremacy Due to Continuity Vs. Kibbutz Rotatzia These continuity gaps enhanced the supremacy of FO heads in the kibbutz

10 Ben-Avram 1976; Kanari 1989: 187; Near 1992; Grinberg 1993; Kafkafi 1998. 11 Kibbutz 1987; Gvirtz 2003: 186. 12 Arieli 1986; Lifshitz 1986a; Yahel 1991; Halevi 1995; Bashan 2000a. 13 Leviatan 1978; Blasi 1980: 102; Einat 1991. Gelb (2001: 98) was a treasurer

for only one year. 14 Annual Report of Mishkey Hamerkaz Manpower Dept. 1976; Raz 1986.


field beyond that obtained in usual organizations also because longer

continuity of pe’ilim in comparison to kibbutz officers turned the formal

control of FOs by kibbutzim into a reality of FOs hegemony. A case in

point was Mishkay Hamerkaz in which leaders were rotated to a greater

extent than in most other FOs; hence it was assumed to be relatively

democratic. Until the 1980s, every three-four years a convention was held

allegedly to decide its main policies. Each kibbutz was represented by its

economic manager, treasurer and secretary. Due to rotatzia, at each

convention, almost all these delegates were new at their jobs, in contrast to

only 30-40% of Mishkay Hamerkaz pe’ilim. While most kibbutz

representatives did not know each other, pe’ilim were enmeshed in close-

knit networks which met daily in committees, management sessions and

the concern’s dining hall; thus, they were much more united.15 Moreover,

as all senior pe’ilim were ex-kibbutz chief officers, they were acquainted

with the kibbutz side of the questions discussed to the same or even to a

greater extent than representatives, who were mostly younger and less

experienced. The latter knew very little of Mishkay Hamerkaz reality

beyond what was reported by pe’ilim. For instance, they were largely

ignorant of the plants’ major failures.16 No wonder pe’ilim easily defeated

motions initiated by kibbutz delegates.

Oligarchic continuity of FO heads created a self-enhancing supremacy

cycle which enabled the growth of Reg.Ents concerns far beyond the

requirements of kibbutzim, making their growth quite independent of

kibbutz agricultural growth, even though they were supposed to be its

servants (See Chap. 8). It was no coincidence that Milu’ot grew to more

than double the size of Mishkay Hamerkaz in terms of plants and

employees, although the latter served some 50% more kibbutzim which

were mostly larger than Milu’ot’s kibbutzim. Extra growth was a clear

outcome of the extra power of Milu’ot’s long serving Fridman.

Self-Aggrandizement and Bureaucratic Growth Fridman’s supremacy promoted aims which served himself and other

15 This resembled Western corporate elites: Galbraith 1971; Maccoby 1976;

Kanter 1977; Davis 1994. 16 Shapira 1987. The same in Milu’ot: Ginat 1979a, 1979b; Lifshitz 1986c;

Abramovitz 1988.


pe’ilim, mainly self-aggrandizement by growth and technological

virtuosity, as depicted by Galbraith (1971). My ethnography (1978/9,

1987) of Mishkay Hamerkaz’s major enlargements concluded that

superfluous growth was explicable using this theory: Personal interests of

pe’ilim in the accumulation of power and capitals were best served by

using plant profits for growth and for the introduction of new technologies

(sometimes not better ones, due to pe’ilim’s ignorance; see below), which

necessitated frequent travel to experts in the cities, as well as travel abroad

to study and to buy equipment. In accord with Parkinson (1957), this

legitimized the addition of staff under their control, offices and amenities,

such as company cars, which enhanced prestige and, in accord with Lenski

(1966), led to self-enhancing power, prestige and privilege spirals.

Lenski (1966) and Galbraith (1971) were ignored by kibbutz students,

as were classics of bureaucracy critics mentioned above. Thus, they

missed how bureaucratic growth served the unique interests of officers in

a culture formally sanctioning rotatzia, namely, self-aggrandizement in

order to prevent rotatzia in their jobs. Growth enhanced power and

capitals of Reg.Ents’ pe’ilim, and their use enhanced office continuity.

The same etiology explains similar continuity of managers of kibbutz

plants with mass hired labor, as Kressel (1974) depicted, and I (1980) and

Rayman (1981: 138) corroborated.

This situation might have been prevented had FO norms allowed

continuity for only effective, public-servant pe’ilim who were trusted by

role-partners, while replacing those who were mediocre and ineffective,

and those who had reached dysfunction oligarchic phases. Why should

effective public servants have been under the threat of rotatzia? Did they

not do all they were asked to? If they had been allowed to continue, and

only self-serving, ineffective ones had been succeeded, they would have

needed no self-aggrandizement to defend status, fewer mediocre self-

servers would have advanced to high offices and kibbutz aims would have

been much better served. The kibbutz movement could have used

democracy way to differentiate the two types of officers, the re-election

ballot with a necessary improvement: Since Michels (1959[1915]) showed

that the ballot became an ineffective succession tool after incumbency of

10-12 years, just as most leaders become ineffective (Hambrick &

Fukutomi 1991), continuity beyond this period might have been allowed

for only those who gained a higher majority (See Chap. 18). Alas, instead


of improving on a democratic solution, ‘automatic’ rotatzia was adopted,

seemingly to enhance egalitarianism, while enhancing self-serving

continuity of FO heads and their loyalists. Fortunately, up to the 1950s,

rotatzia was rarely institutionalized, so many effective local leaders

continued and brought successes.

Institutionalized Rotatzia Served FO Heads’ Control of

Pe’ilim This raises the question: Why was rotatzia institutionalized? Topel (1990)

has explained it by promotion pressures from below, by members of

hashlama groups and kibbutz offspring who, after years of branch

management, demanded rotatzia in chief offices in order to advance. He

has dated it to the 1950s, and this provides a clue to the answer: This was

the oligarchic era, in which dysfunctioning Movement leaders used

privileges to control pe’ilim who were given either no salaries or uniform

ones (Chap. 8). Nor was there any exhilarating socialist vision to motivate

them after the USSR vision had proved to be a bluff (Chap. 10). Thus,

additional controls seemed required and rotatzia fitted in, made the status

of pe’ilim more dependent on FO heads’ whims, and legitimized their

frequent replacement. In some problematic kibbutz offices such as work

organizer (sadran avoda) rotatzia had already been institutionalized.

Hence, the demand to emulate it in chief offices and pe’ilut, as well,

seemed legitimate. However, in accord with Hazan’s statement that

“leadership is not done rotationally”, the outcome was that, instead of

chief officers being kibbutz leaders, these offices became mere

springboards to the privileged stratum of pe’ilim, while a pe’ilut became

mainly a service to a patron, an FO head who mandated it, instead of a

public service.

Members supported the demand for rotatzia which seemed egalitarian,

as some chief officers who vacated jobs after a term, returned to humbler

jobs. These returnees helped to maintain the norm, much like US

Presidents Washington and Jefferson who refused a third term in office in

1797 and 1809 respectively (Sobel 1975). The rotatzia norm made

continuous pe’ilut in a non-leadership FO job a violation of egalitarianism

which lowered members esteem for the violators. For that reason, as the

ethnographies will show, smart leaders of younger kibbutzim who came

late to the FO managerial market and found only such jobs, kept local

supremacy by circulating between pe’ilut and local chief offices, as well


as by nurturing ties with senior pe’ilim and patronage of cliques of clients

who were promoted to local chief offices.17 Both officers who believed in

egalitarianism, and circulators who used rotatzia to keep local supremacy,

vacated offices in accord with rotatzia and helped its institutionalization.

However, as they did not control the field, institutionalization was an

outcome of the interests of major power-holders, Admors, FO heads and

other senior pe’ilim who became senior patrons. This is clear from the

facts that:

1. Rotatzia enhanced patrons’ power in contrast to short-term clients,

making clients dependent on patrons for managerial status continuity

and advance.

2. Rotatzia eased replacement of non-loyal pe’ilim by patrons who then

installed loyal clients instead, while patrons’ accumulated power

prevented their own rotatzia.

3. Rotatzia enhanced the kibbutz egalitarian image, while masking its

control by oligarchic leaders who evaded the requirements of

genuine democratic leadership.

The latter point is of prime importance. In accord with Hawthorn

(1991), the historic choice of a social solution must be explained against a

background of plausible known alternatives. If, up until recently, kibbutz

students believed in rotatzia’s positive effect,18 certainly in the 1950s no

kibbutz member knew that it had already failed many times before, as

Chapter 1 has depicted. Thus, it seemed a plausible egalitarian solution at

a time when members were negativistic concerning pe’ilim privileges, as

in the case of Hazan’s car painting. With rotatzia, these privileges were

presented as provisional, except for the cases of a few leaders, and

violation of egalitarianism seemed minimal. Up to 1978, no one, including

researchers, had pointed to hundreds of continuous pe’ilim and thousands

of circulators continuing among privileged jobs for decades, thus the bluff

of provisionality was not exposed (Next chapters).

Variability of Rotatzia and Power Accumulation by Senior

Pe’ilim The differential adherence to rotatzia as revealed by the differential job

17 On such ties: Vilan 1993: 264. On patronage see Chap. 8. 18 For instance: Stryjan 1989; Leviatan 1993, 1999.


continuity of FO heads and pe’ilim of Mishkay Hamerkaz and Milu’ot,

was another proof that rotatzia was a late solution, not integral to kibbutz

culture, while continuity differences engendered differential power and

capitals accumulation. However, the use of accumulated power and

capitals for job continuation varied: Some left jobs as they failed in them

due to being ‘pure parachutists’ (see below), and/or lost power and/or

patron’s protection, while others left due to a belief in rotatzia’s positive

impact, and still others sought promotion: A pa’il with a powerful patron

might be less influential in his short-term jobs, but by rapid advancing to

higher offices s/he could gain more extensive formal authority, higher

status and more power. On the other hand, such authority might be more

volatile due to political changes and his patron demotion (Shapira 1995a).

However, due to accumulated power and capitals patrons maintained high

status even after failure and demotion: Milu’ot’s Fridman became head of

the Reg.Ents’ national desk, and Tnuva’s Landesman remained head of the

board of directors of some Tnuva subsidiaries.19

Case studies of industrialized kibbutzim also proved rotatzia in one’s

job could be averted by accumulation of power and capitals. Kressel

(1974, 1983) detailed how the managers of Netzer Sereni’s two plants

became irreplaceable by using hired labor and outside financial aid for

rapid growth that turned the plants into main income providers of the

kibbutz, and how they enhanced prestige by privileges and became

powerful patrons by nominating loyalists from among ex-kibbutz officers

to plant administrative jobs. In a metal engineering plant of a veteran

kibbutz, I found (1980: 35-6) a manager who had continued in his post for

over three decades. Employing some 35 hired employees and 30 members,

he behaved like Yaari’s “I, Me’ir, am Mapam, I am Hashomer Hatzair…”.

I contacted him to arrange interviews with academic educated employees,

but instead of naming them, when I asked about the chief engineer, he

answered: “I am the chief engineer”. I asked who the chief accountant was

and was told: “I am the chief accountant”, and so on. His power was

obtained, at first, by nurturing a few loyal hired engineers and mechanics

who, besides him, held all critical know-how and expertise. When his

continuity engendered autocracy, they left, and new ones were hired, and

even though some kibbutz offspring also had become engineers, the

19 Abramovitz 1988; Ringle-Hofman 1988; Halevi 1995


factory in 1977 was still a one-man-show. Such ‘shows’ tended to fail, but

this one succeeded due to know-how bought from abroad and heavy

customs duties on imported competing products. When these were

lowered in the 1980s, the plant became unprofitable and soon it was

closed. A similar autocracy due to continuity I saw in other hired-labor

plants which were barely controlled by short-term kibbutz chief officers.

However, the dominant coalition of kibbutz researchers ignored this

phenomenon, as proved by the vehement denunciation of Kressel’s

excellent ethnography by Ben-David (1975) and Y. Shepher (1975).

Few Ex-Chief Officers Returned to Lower Offices with FOs

Growth CKP users missed the fact that rotatzia failed in its mission of preventing

oligarchy since it enhanced continuity gaps between short-term officers

and circulators on the one hand, and FO heads and other managers who

avoided rotatzia in their jobs by various means. Every sociologist should

know that status loss is problematic and arouses strong opposition. Few

people in any known society, even most egalitarian hunters and gatherers,

accept status loss willingly unless it is provisional or/and during a

revolutionary period (Goldschmidt 1990). CKP users ignored this and did

not probe how kibbutz chief officers, mostly under forty, solved status

problems due to rotatzia by using circulation to the thousands of FO jobs

which granted power, prestige, privileges and continuity. This was the

principal cause of their readiness to conclude service after a few years, and

to view rotatzia positively (Lanir 1990: 272). Though kibbutz members

mostly externalized FOs, as did Kochav’s member cited in Chapter 1,

everyone knew of the many ex-chief officers who became pe’ilim and

circulated between managerial jobs until retirement age. Most researchers

ignored this and the few who did not, remained unpublished or published

only in Hebrew, as this phenomenon negated the kibbutz egalitarian image

held by the dominant scientific coalition which controlled publication

outlets.20 This was clear from the abovementioned vehement assault by

two of its members on Kressel’s (1974) ethnography.

Rotatzia served FO heads power by making other pe’ilim and kibbutz

20 On such coalitions: Collins 1975: Chap. 9. On that of Israeli sociology: Ram

1995.


chief officers dependent on them for keeping managerial status, while the

latter did not oppose this as they almost always kept managerial status (see

below). Although sometimes the new job was of a lesser status, for

instance a senior ex-pa’il becoming a chief officer again, this was grasped

as provisional, until another, perhaps better pe’ilut had been found.

Researchers did not address the negative effect of provisional incumbency

on officers’ coping with major local problems, missing a main reason for

mismanaged kibbutzim (Chaps. 12-15), while returnees helped creating an

egalitarian image which marred members’ critique of pe’ilim continuity

and privileges, as well as masking stratification from researchers. As a

part of missing stratification, no sociologist investigated whether kibbutz

officers and pe’ilim who abided by rotatzia really lost status by coming

back to the ranks or to lower offices. Economist Helman (1987) found

that, during the decade of 1970-1980, 80% of ex-kibbutz economic

managers and 77% of ex-kibbutz treasurers circulated to other managerial

jobs, while only 54% of ex-kibbutz secretaries did so. In contrast to many

ex-secretaries who returned to minor offices, in accord with the

dominance of economic FOs in this era (Cohen, R. 1978), almost none of

the economic managers and treasurers did so; the 20-23% who did not

circulate either furthered their education, turned to outside, non-kibbutz

jobs, or became powers-behind-the-scenes as comptroller-accountants,

dominating economic decisions due to weakness of rotational chief

officers.21

Even before Helman, Fadida (1972) had shown that circulation to

pe’ilut was an integral part of the careers of kibbutz prime elite members

who, from kibbutz inception returned to the ranks only for brief periods, if

at all, and exchanged pe’ilut in Israel and emissary service abroad for

chief kibbutz offices, while acquiring higher education during pe’ilut,

furthering outside mobility prospects.22 I found (1978) that Reg.Ents

pe’ilim mostly obtained their jobs through ties created in previous jobs,

either as chief kibbutz officers or as pe’ilim, and they wasted much time

seeking ties and job opportunities at the expense of official duties, as was

21 On dominance of economic FOs: Cohen, R. 1978; On comptroller-accountants’

power: Kressel 1974: 148; Chap. 17. A typical circulative economist’s career:

Tzimchi 1999. 22 See a similar case in Kibbutz Hamadia in Tzimchi 1999: 132.


common among US managers with precarious jobs.23 They did not lose

jobs despite inevitable failures, due to a notorious “cost plus” pricing

system which assured that client kibbutzim would pay for their

negligence. In one such case which I witnessed, the tort amounted to

US$150,000-200,000 without any formal negative sanction against

responsible pe’ilim; only a year later they were replaced, seemingly as a

normal rotatzia (Shapira 1987).

‘Parachutings’ of Complete Outsiders and Their Fragile

Status However, kibbutz officers’ efforts to maintain status by circulation

enhanced the practice called ‘parachuting’: an officer who had finished a

short term without failing, was considered a legitimate candidate for a

wide range of managerial jobs for which s/he was a complete outsider, that

is, lacking almost all intangible assets required to function in it. This lack

enhanced the fragility of managerial status and encouraged its defense by

auspices of a patron. This practice was facilitated by the growth,

especially in the 1960s, of the kibbutz managerial job market with the

establishment of Reg.Ents, other economic FOs and kibbutz plants.

Reg.Ents and Regional Council subsidiaries grew from a few small plants

into some 150 larger plants and service facilities, with some 1300 pe’ilim

and almost 10,000 hired employees, while kibbutz industry expanded from

a hundred plants with some 4,800 employees, to 300 employing some

11,500.24 This large managerial market was open to kibbutz members

only, and thousands of ex-kibbutz chief officers were ‘parachuted’ to these

new managerial jobs. ‘Parachuting’ in English refers only to bringing in an

outsider as an executive, while in Israel the range of the term is wider.

Since the armed forces use rotatzia, officers’ promotion is rapid (one

might be a colonel before the age of thirty); they retire early and are

‘parachuted’ into all types of authority positions.25 Hence, many managers

in Israel were complete outsider ‘parachutists’ who like paratroopers tried

to control an alien place, an unknown organization, with little relevant

23 Downs 1966; Maccoby 1976; Granovetter 1983; Luthans 1988. 24 Shtanger 1971; Malchi 1978; Banay 1979; Bar-On & Shelhav 1984; Brum

1986. 25 Vald 1987; Maman 1989; Shapira 1992, 2001.


experience and knowledge for its decision-making, no acquaintance with

its employees, suppliers and clients, no knowledge of its markets,

specialized know-how, technologies and other intangible assets which a

manager advancing from within the plant or the industry brings with

him/her (Gabarro 1987). In the organizational literature there is no answer

as to how complete outsiders gain these assets, while in the Reg.Ents I

found (1987, 1995a, 1995b) that only a few pe’ilim who had some relevant

intangible assets for the job had gained full knowledge from local experts

by exposing their own ignorance which made them vulnerable and gained

their trust (Zand 1972), while most other pe’ilim were ‘pure parachutists’

with little relevant knowledge, who preferred not to take such a risk to

their authority, remained ‘half-baked managers’ (Dore 1973: 54) without

knowledge for sound decision-making, impaired plants functioning, but

survived in jobs by coercive and even corrupt means, like those depicted

by classic organizational ethnography.26

Circulation and ‘parachutings’ proliferated in the field with FOs growth

and the institutionalization of rotatzia in the 1950s. FOs adopted these

practices as they served the power of their heads, making the status of

pe’ilim more vulnerable as their continuity almost totally depended on the

will of FO heads. Kibbutz literature ignored ‘parachutings’ and their

effects on officers’ functioning, as part of ignoring real rotatzia practices.

It only properly explained the rotatzia of kibbutz branch managers who,

like foremen, were promoted from among ordinary workers, and much of

the time did manual labor. Lacking any status symbols and formal

remuneration, with a heavy workload and responsibility that required extra

working hours, with work planning and guidance mostly performed after

working hours, a negative balance of high costs but few rewards propelled

their rotatzia (Rosner 1964). As Gelb (2001: 97-101) has noted, such a

balance caused the early succession of the treasurer of a financially

struggling kibbutz, but this could not explain Reg.Ents pe’ilim such as

plant managers voluntarily resigning at the end of their terms in higher

status jobs with a positive balance of rewards. Though formally

responsibility was heavy, ‘cost plus’ pricing system eased responsibility

considerably since losses due to mismanagement were passed on to

26 Gouldner 1954, 1955; Banfield 1958, 1961; Hughes 1958; Dalton 1959;

Levenson 1961; Jay 1969.


kibbutzim, while power, prestige and privileges abounded, as well as

social ties for finding future managerial jobs. In addition, workloads were

lighter and working hours were shorter and more flexible than those of

kibbutz officers; a major reason was that Reg.Ents plants usually did not

compete in markets, as this was done by marketing FOs. So why resign at

the end of a term when so many pe’ilim in parallel jobs violated rotatzia,

and why resign before finding new managerial job?

Voluntary Resignation of Pe’ilim and Their Fragile Status The prime reason for voluntary resignation of pe’ilim was failures in their

jobs by ‘pure parachutists’. Although the kibbutzim usually paid the price,

managers lost prestige and left before more failures, hoping for future

success by ‘parachuting’ elsewhere, while gaining a bonus, the image of

rotatzia abiders. This was appreciated by kibbutz members who had to

approve their next pe’ilut.27 But there were additional reasons to leave

(Shapira 1995a): First, members expected pe’ilim who did not lead an FO

to abide by rotatzia, and violators were tagged with a negative image of

‘careerists’. However, kibbutzim rarely cancelled the pe’ilut of rotatzia

violators, and only sometimes refused direct exchange of one pe’ilut for

another due to such violations. Secondly, a violator who quit was rarely

demoted to the ranks for long, and was usually asked to fill a local office

and then allowed another pe’ilut. Thus, rotatzia lost much of its egalitarian

meaning, did not symbolize status equalization, but rather conformity,

barely a tool for enhancing egalitarianism. For this reason when FO heads

asked a kibbutz to allow their client pe’ilim to continue, their requests

seemed legitimate in view of their high status, and were usually approved,

while pe’ilim without patrons asking for their continuation, were pressed

to leave pe’ilut on time and tended to conform in order to keep their

kibbutz good-will for the next pe’ilut. Another major reason was that

pe’ilim were pushed to leave by a new FO head, seemingly as a normal

rotatzia, though, in fact, to install his own clients in their place in order to

assure loyalty beneath him (masculine language as all known patrons were

males). This is supported by the fact that where an FO head continued,

like Milu’ot’s Fridman, many subordinate pe’ilim did likewise, pointing to

the major reason for the voluntary resignation of most pe’ilim: their fragile

27 Shapira 1987; Vilan 1993: 271-2.


status and extra dependence on FO head patronage due to rotatzia and

‘parachutings’.

These two features enhanced FO heads’ power as against lower

echelons. In a usual bureaucracy, managerial continuity is normative and

even a ‘pure parachuted’ officer has good reason to risk authority by direct

involvement in coping with major problems: although s/he exposes his

ignorance to subordinates and makes her/his authority vulnerable, s/he

obtains local knowledge and learns to solve problems, gains workers’ trust

and becomes an effective leader (Shapira 1995b). Thus, after a while, the

chance of arbitrary firing is unlikely. A superior’s power to arbitrarily fire

or demote competent, effective highly esteemed veteran officers, is

limited. Without clear proof of violating major orders and directions, s/he

may not dismiss them, as this disrupts working relations with their many

friends and loyalists, and may cause a critical loss of precious expertise if

the latter left after their leaders; hence, superiors usually seek other ways

to handle such problems.28

Questions of this type rarely bothered FO heads whose pe’ilim were

constantly under the Damocles sword of rotatzia, and could be sent back

to their home kibbutz within a year or two, ostensibly as a normative

event. No matter how a pa’il excelled in her/his job, it was legitimate for

an FO head to replace her/him after a few years. Thus, the status of pe’ilim

was very fragile, FO heads could replace them by their own clients.

Moreover, most FOs gave pe’ilim either no salary or a uniform one;

therefore, FO heads used fringe benefits as major controls in addition to

the threat of rotatzia. Unlike a salary cut or lack of promotion which could

be hidden outside the workplace, the loss of pa’il status and FO car could

not be concealed from fellow kibbutz members. It was a painful event, and

pe’ilim avoided it by rarely criticizing mistaken decisions of superiors, a

major reason for inefficiency and ineffectiveness (Shapira 1987).

Frustrating and Purging Effective, Trusted and Creative

Pe’ilim From the point of view of FO heads, the drawback of fringe benefits as

major controls was that some pe’ilim were not sensitive to possible cuts,

28 Dalton 1959: Chap. 3; Martin & Strauss 1959; Levenson 1961; Mechanic

1964.


as they were ‘jumpers’ in Downs (1966) terms: one’s FO job served to

further a kibbutz career in a specialization. Such an ‘impure parachutist’

tended to be greatly involved in coping with challenges, exposing his/her

ignorance and gaining others trust, learning from them, succeeding and

gaining power and prestige; thus, his/her status was less dependent on

fringe benefit symbolization. An example was the technical manager of

the high-capacity, automated Hamerkaz cotton gin plant, a practical

engineer whom I called Thomas. He was not disturbed much about the old

station wagon he was given as a company car in contrast to the new,

family cars of other pe’ilim. “Most decisive for me” he said, “is that I can

load everything I must repair in an outside shop, so that I can shorten the

gin’s downtime”. Downtime was the plant’s total stoppage in high season

when it was operated around the clock seven days a week; an hour

downtime meant the costly storing of 25 tons of raw cotton in the fields.

Educated for two and a half years at the Ruppin College, his prior

experience had been twenty years as a mechanic of agricultural

machinery, starting at the age of fourteen (kibbutz youth worked 3-4 hours

daily in kibbutz branches as life education for work; see Pearlman 1938:

151), and as a tank mechanic in the army. He was an exception among

pe’ilim, gaining the full trust of hired technicians and foremen since he

never masked ignorance, always asking, trying to help to cope with

technical problems and learning from direct experience. In the three month

high season, he worked 15-18 hours a day. His dedication to work left no

subordinate indifferent, and positive reactions to his efforts by almost all

of them created ascending trust spirals (Fox 1974), which opened all of the

secrets of the trade for him; within a short period, he became a well-

known expert among Israel’s cotton gin plants, as effectiveness soared,

much like in Guest’s (1962) classic.29

This was exactly what frightened his superior, whom I called Shavit, a

younger ‘pure parachutist’ whose prior knowledge and experience had

been largely irrelevant for coping with major problems. He and his like

mostly minimized involvement in such problems, defending authority by

keeping what Edgerton (1967) called “The Cloak of Competence”, that is,

29 On trust, openness, and effectiveness see: Deutsch 1962; Zand 1972; Fox 1974;

Geneen 1984; Shapira 1987; Harvey-Jones 1988; Sieff 1988; Semler 1993;

O’Toole 1999; Cloke & Goldsmith 2002.


he retained an image of competence by detachment that prevented

exposure of incompetence and ignorance. Unfortunately, the detachment

which defended his authority, caused distrust of both pe’ilim and hired

employees, who kept him ignorant of the plant’s secrets. In his fourth year

of office, he still did not know some of these secrets which I learned as an

operator within my first week of work there. He kept his cards close to his

chest, but subordinates did the same, so he could barely differentiate

experts who successfully solved problems, from fools and/or impostors

who failed.30 He abandoned efforts to understand the plant and chose

conservatism, as did most ‘pure parachuted’ pe’ilim who used coercive

means for subordinate control. With only filtered information, they made

gross mistakes, evaded essential tasks, but often advanced managerial

careers more successfully than ‘impure parachutists’ like Thomas who

promoted effectiveness but rarely advanced careers, as the power they

gained from successes menaced that of ignorant superiors who marred

their promotion. The negative correlation between managerial

effectiveness and career success resembled that of US managers whose

tenures were also quite shaky.31 Jobs of uninvolved, ‘pure parachuted’

pe’ilim were precarious and they were prone to failure because of

inevitable mistakes, with all that this implied for their images and further

careers; hence, they sought intensive ties in other FOs for their next jobs.

If they bothered to innovate, it was usually for image building only,

preferring well-worn alternatives that could be presented as innovative.

This minimized both the danger of failure and power-diminishing

dependency on local experts.32

Detached Pe’ilim Reigned, FO Heads Prevented Internal

Promotion Many detached pe’ilim were successful careerists due to uncritical loyalty

to FO heads, who, in turn, backed their shaky authority and helped their

promotion. However, they clashed with dedicated pe’ilim: Thomas was

30 See the same in Gouldner (1954). See also: Dalton 1959; Jay 1969; Kets de

Vries 1993. 31 Dalton 1959; Maccoby 1976; Luthans 1988; Kramer & Tyler 1996: 226, 266,

339-48. 32 See: Crozier 1964; Shapira 1987; Thomas 1994.


both indifferent to fringe benefit cuts, and very interested in an innovation

he had proposed, which Shavit feared, as a possible failure would damage

his image, while a possible success would enhance Thomas’ power and

status. But rejecting it outright might cause him to lose his best expert. For

three years, Shavit and his patron, Mishkay Hamerkaz head Zelikovich,

used a variety of subterfuges in order to obstruct Thomas’ proposal.

Eventually it was successfully introduced, but heartbroken Thomas had

resigned and returned to his kibbutz garage, and Shavit suffered a major

setback: Thomas’s successor, a ‘pure parachutist’ who preferred

detachment, did not cope with a major operational problem and caused

heavy losses, amounting to US$150,000-200,000 within a single season,

so that he and Shavit had to resign. Thanks to Zelikovich’s backing, the

resignation was postponed for almost a year, and then it was presented as

normal rotatzia. Without public exposure of the fiasco, the two soon found

other managerial jobs and advanced in managerial careers (Shapira 1987).

The fragile status of circulative ‘pure parachuted’ pe’ilim enhanced

dependency on patrons, as ‘parachutists’ often faced employees’

objections to their amateurish solutions for complex problems which they

did not comprehend. As they seemingly represented the kibbutzim which

owned FOs, they tended to coerce hired employees and caused destructive

conflicts which led to failures, in accord with Deutsch’s (1969)

explanation. Similar to the defense of managerial authority as described by

Hughes (1958) and Dalton (1959), Reg.Ents pe’ilim camouflaged or

concealed failures, or blamed them on others. They defended jobs by

clique building and patronage, and were self-aggrandized by plant

enlargement and technological virtuosity (Galbraith 1971).

This negated both the ethos and interests of kibbutzim, but served FO

heads’ power. Though an effective deputy was often the best choice to

succeed a plant manager who left, usually a ‘pure’ client of the FO head

was ‘parachuted’ in, as it better served the boss’s interests. For example,

prior to Shavit’s nomination, there had been a deputy plant manager whom

I called Yaakov, who was talented, experienced, committed to the job and

highly trusted by both employees and cotton growers since he behaved

like Thomas and was very effective. Zelikovich, himself, defined him as

“the natural candidate for managing the plant”. So why was ignorant

Shavit nominated? The logical explanation was that Shavit was

Zelkovich’s client and dependent on him, while Yaakov was quite


independent thanks to his intangible assets. Zelikovich has been depicted

above as a big boss, but as a ‘pure parachutist’ himself, he lacked

knowledge and loyalists among Mishkay Hamerkaz executives. In order to

maintain control without much involvement, he built a clique of clients by

‘parachuting’ loyalists to head plants or staff departments and including

them on his Board of Directors. Yaakov did not suit this clique due to the

independence he had gained by involvement, trust of subordinates and

competent problem-solving.33 Shavit had helped Zelikovich previously,

when he had represented his kibbutz in the Regional Council headed by

Zelikovich. This help brought success and Zelikovich had been promoted

to head Mishkay Hamerkaz;34 thus, he owed Shavit a debt for his help. In

order to nominate him for the job, Zelikovich used a dirty trick against

Yaakov, causing him to lose status, to come into conflict with cotton

growers, and eventually, to resign (Shapira 1987: 132-6).

Shavit, however, rightly understood that further promotion was

dependent more on a positive image and close ties with Zelikovich than on

genuine success. Like most US managers, he adopted an upward-looking

posture, and cared about his superior’s approval rather than coping with

tasks at hand.35 His looking upward and seeking personal aims were not a

result of prior kibbutz managerial socialization, nor of circulation and

‘parachuting’ per se, but rather due to operating in a field dominated by

autocratic, self-serving Admors and FO heads who did not promote

critical thinkers like Brum, Thomas and Yaakov, and suppressed radicals

(cf. Hirschman 1970; Chap. 11). Forsaking public aims in favor of

personal ones is common in fields with rotatzia and ‘parachutings’, as

seen in Imperial China with its oligarchic emperors and ‘parachuted’,

short-term District Magistrates.36

Sidetracking of Creative Radicals: The Catch 22 of Rotatzia Circulation and ‘parachuting’ made the status and power of pe’ilim fragile;

the forced succession of dysfunctioning Admors and FO heads by critical

33 See quite similar cases in Gouldner 1954; Dalton 1959. 34 It was a promotion since the Regional Council was a much smaller

organization. 35 Prethus 1964; Maccoby 1976; Kanter 1977; Luthans 1988. 36 Chang 1955; Chow 1966; Folsom 1968; Watt 1972.


thinkers and radicals seeking democracy and egalitarianism was next to

impossible. In addition, to do this, there would have had to be a change in

the belief that rotatzia was egalitarian and democratic. That was not easy,

as this belief was common outside kibbutzim, as well, especially in the

army, in which all young kibbutz members served and some of them

advanced by circulation, and in the academy, including all kibbutz

students. It took me twenty years of kibbutz life as an adult and seven

years of ethnographies of both Reg.Ents and kibbutz plants to overcome

this belief, which is still prevalent among Israeli social scientists. Unless

young radicals, themselves, concluded and persuaded kibbutz members

that rotatzia negated democracy and egalitarianism, and that a new, true

measure for oligarchy prevention was required, they could not remain in

office long enough to both introduce the new measure and assure its

success. They were in a ‘Catch 22’ situation: without violating rotatzia

they could not eliminate it as they could not accumulate enough power and

capitals, while its violation made them suspect of seeking self-serving

continuity.

A second major belief they had to overcome in order to replace rotatzia

by a democratic succession system, was that of the indispensability of

Admors. Exposing their dysfunctioning as an inevitable and irreversible

result of their extra continuity and pe’ilim circulation, could have

persuaded elites that only a new system of succession could solve this

problem and could save democracy and egalitarianism. However, this, too,

was next to impossible to achieve, since Admors seemingly had overcome

the crises of the 1950s, and they became charismatic saviors (cf. Tucker

1970), so that many of the minority of members who had not left

kibbutzim in this era, tended to believe that their exceptional gifts had

rescued the movement. Kibbutz studies enhanced belief in Admors’

charisma by ignoring oligarchization, stratification and the decaying

processes of kibbutz cultures which their dysfunction engendered. Kibbutz

students deserve two considerations for their mistakes:

1. No leadership student defined in which situations and for how long

gifted leaders like Admors might continue functioning beyond the

eleven years which Hambrick and Fukutomi (1991: 723) viewed as

the usual limit of effectiveness of large organization heads.

2. As Barbuto (1997) has pointed out, literature of charismatic

leadership is quite confusing and barely helped in coping with the


belief in the exceptional gifts of Admors (Also: Beyer 1999).

Thus, it was not easy to eliminate a third important belief, that is, in the

public-service motivation of Admors and their deputies, their

unselfishness and their devotion to the kibbutz cause. Exposing Admors’

failures was not enough; their very aims had to be placed in doubt and the

1948-54 crises had to be grasped largely as their fault, and as resulting

from the self-serving, self-perpetuating leftist admiration of the USSR and

evasion of major problems (Chaps. 10-11). Even critical historians, not to

mention other students, have not suspected that leftism was a power

perpetuation strategy, nor have students exposed this evasion. Without

doubting their motivation, young radicals could not use all political means

at their disposal against Admors’ rule. Admors managed to retain their

facades of asceticism and public commitment almost intact, except for

their cars (Chap. 8), and few, if any, members suspected their self-

perpetuation strategies. It would have been very difficult to convince

members that there was no chance to rescue kibbutz culture without

replacing Admors. Moreover, challengers would have had to identify their

own Achilles heel: their fragile status as kibbutz officers or pe’ilim under

rotatzia. Criticizing rotatzia was not enough; they would have had to

propose an alternative that would stabilize their own status by allowing

job continuity subject to periodic democratic decisions, in a way that

would prevent oligarchic continuity and any suspicion of a self-

perpetuation motivation on their own parts, as was the refusal by US

Presidents Washington and Jefferson of third terms.

How Was a Belief in Egalitarianism Maintained Despite

Circulation? Pe’ilim circulation raises a fundamental question: What happened to the

egalitarian ethos and kibbutz members who believed in it? They could

ignore the extraordinary continuity of Admors, deputies and major FO

heads as an inevitable leadership necessity, but privileged continuous

pe’ilim and circulators numbered thousands, including too many to be

ignored by believers in egalitarianism, some 7-8% of members. In the

large Kibbutz Givat Brenner, with some 800 members, Levy (1991) found

some fifty circulators. In Fadida’s (1972) small Kibbutz Chen, repeated

discussions of freeing circulators for pe’ilut were considered a nuisance

for assembly participants, and Argaman (1997) pointed to similar findings

in five veteran kibbutzim. It was impossible for most members to miss the


contradiction between a privileged circulating stratum and an egalitarian

ethos. Until hegemony of FO heads is fully explained in the following

chapters, I have only partial answers as to how belief in this ethos was

maintained.

One answer was the belief in the need to preserve rare managerial talent

without allowing for oligarchic continuity. Bourdieu (1990) pointed to

cultures’ gravity to practical solutions. Circulation seemed a practical and

easy-to-use solution for manning thousands of managerial jobs without

creating oligarchic rule. At the same time, it appeared that circulation

solved the problem of dependence on a continuous ruler; thus, injustice

caused by one officer, might be redressed by a successor. Secondly,

members might have ignored inequality which circulation engendered,

since pe’ilut often reimbursed an ex-chief kibbutz officer for the negative

balance of rewards of his/her previous job, especially in offices which up

to the 1970s were part-time and were combined with manual work, such

as kibbutz secretaries.37 A third answer was that many ex-chief officers,

especially of unsuccessful kibbutzim like Bowes’s (1989) Goshen, or early

days Carmelit (Chap. 15), rarely circulated and often left kibbutzim, since

they lacked auspices of a patron, as most patrons belonged to veteran

and/or successful kibbutzim and had their own loyal clients from these

kibbutzim.

The crucial answer, however, was the evasion, masking and/or

concealment of the true nature of rotatzia by power monger FO heads,

pe’ilim whose careers advanced by circulation and the dominant scientific

coalition whose members advanced academic careers by ignoring it

(Shapira 2005). Due to the use of CKP this concealment never ceased as

circulation’s negative effects, revealed by some kibbutz ethnographies,

were never connected to FO growth and their heads’ self-enhancing cycle

of power and privilege accumulation. While the continued growth of

Reg.Ents beyond the needs of kibbutzim was questioned by the kibbutz

media from 1977, critics missed seeing how it served the job continuity

needs of pe’ilim by self-aggrandizement.38 Thus, members have rarely if

ever encountered a critical exposure of rotatzia’s true nature and the fact

that its very existence was largely due to kibbutz officers’ circulation that

37 I met them on factory lines when studying kibbutz industry; Bowes 1989: 51. 38 Pe’eri 1977; Atar 1982; Harpazi 1982; Lifshitz 1983, 1986c.


prevented status loss.

The lack of criticism of circulation is explained, as well, by the fact that

those capable of voicing effective criticism were mostly either pe’ilim who

benefited from it, or kibbutz managers who expected to benefit in the near

future, as well as the dominant scientific coalition which accumulated

academic capital by ignoring stratification and circulation (Shapira 2005).

A critic of circulation faced a powerful stratum, backed by FO heads and

loyal academics. S/he was usually in too low a position to be publicly

heard, and remained so until s/he gave up and exited without harming the

latter’s power. This resembles Hirschman’s (1995) analysis of the collapse

of the German Democratic Republic: Up to 1988, its leaders could ignore

disenchantment since it did not cause an exodus massive enough to

endanger survival; a public uproar toppled them in 1989 when mass exit

endangered survival. In most younger kibbutzim, mass exits did not

endanger survival, as the Movements helped them by loans and hashlamot

(groups of joiners), while ignoring inequality and autocratic, conservative

rule by patrons who repeatedly caused waves of exits of innovative talents

and critical thinkers, in accord with Hirschman’s (1970) theory, as

Chapters 14-15 will disclose.

Disenchantment with Violation of Egalitarianism Enhanced

Exits A sixth answer, however, was that the disenchantment of the violation of

egalitarianism by circulation joined other failures of kibbutz ethos

implementation that caused exits, but no one studied circulation’s impact

apart from the impact of these failures. As mentioned, for each member

who stayed in kibbutzim, there were four-five others who departed, i.e.,

240,000-300,000 adults (Leviatan et al. 1998: 163), but CKP users were

blind to stratification and ignored oligarchy and Hirschmanian exit

process. Hence, no one studied exit caused by suppression of voices raised

against oligarchic circulation of pe’ilim. Kressel’s (1974, 1983)

ethnography which exposed oligarchization causing mass exit by kibbutz

youth whose voices failed to curb it, was rejected by the dominant

scientific coalition as unrepresentative, while its academics ignored the

question.

A corroboration of Kressel’s findings can be found by a careful reading

of Ben-Horin’s (1984) study of the disintegration of kibbutzim. It exposes

at least eight cases in which mass exit followed non-egalitarian practices


by local leaders and suppression of members’ criticism.39 Sabar’s (1996)

study of kibbutz offspring living in Los Angeles has also indicated exit

due to disenchantment caused by violation of egalitarianism. In most of

the interviews, exit followed a feeling of inequality. I heard similar

sentiments in interviews with 57 former members of three kibbutzim.

However, in the two younger ones, exit rates were very high, reaching 75-

80%, and criticism of inequality was harsher among their ex-members

than among Kibbutz Kochav’s ex-members. Kochav was much more

egalitarian, democratic, high-trust, creative and stable than these

kibbutzim; unlike these kibbutzim, its pe’ilim shared cars with other

members since 1962, and their privileges were largely viewed by members

as balanced by their greater sacrifices, something which was rare in

interviews with ex-members of younger kibbutzim. The case of younger

Kibbutz Carmelit corroborated this (Chap. 15): At first inequality caused

so high exit rate that the kibbutz collapsed; in the renewed kibbutz

egalitarianism was promoted and exit rates sharply dropped.

Compliance Due to a Change from Moral Choice to

Expediency Compliance with circulation can also be explained as Fox (1985: 33-43)

explained compliance of British workers with managers’ rules and orders

as a part of their acceptance of the extant societal structure, principles and

conventions due to socialization, awareness of power superiority of the

elite and mass media support for the current order, which made any

thought of changing it futile. Such an explanation for kibbutz members

can be objected to by asserting that, unlike British workers’ expediency

considerations, members joined for ideological reasons, and moral

considerations prevailed. However, Kressel (1974) shows that when

Netzer Sireni became oligarchic and prosperous, with hired labor and

lavishly privileged managers, May Day celebrations and raising red flags

were abolished, symbolizing an end to socialist ideology. Expediency

became the recognized motive for members staying and complying with

leaders’ deeds, similar to the case of the British workers. In the oligarchic

39 The cases: Kfar Hachoresh, Revivim, Avuka, Gezer, Gvulot, Kedma, Alumot,

Har’el. Most kibbutzim were renewed by new groups of settlers, only Avuka

and Kedma vanished.


and prosperous kibbutz field of the 1960s-1970s, as well, while most

seekers of egalitarianism and democracy either left or became mute, only a

few managed to promote these values. Morality was largely replaced with

expediency as a major motive, and Fox’s (1985) explanation was valid for

reconciling with circulation (Chap. 17).

Responses I received to my critique of pe’ilim circulation and

‘parachuting’ in both the kibbutz press and in management courses at

Ruppin College supported this explanation: My critics ignored moral

considerations, using only expediency arguments, such as the need to

preserve rare managerial talent and preventing stagnation, while

questioning the validity of findings which pointed to the opposite. It was a

reasonable reaction for students who were junior managers aimed at

advancing their own careers mainly through circulation. Fox (1985)

pointed to media support for the current order, and this was also true of the

kibbutz field: Up until the mid-1970s, members faced complete media

support for rotatzia and ‘parachuting’, as most kibbutz media were

controlled by Admors and both social scientists and the national media

supported this system which reigned in the armed forces, and ex-army

officer ‘parachutists’ held most top authority offices in Israel. Only Vald

(1987) dared to criticize rotatzia in the armed forces after the failures of

the 1982 Lebanon war, and sometimes a journalist exposed the failure of a

‘parachutist’, and explained it by his ‘parachuting’ to an alien job.40

Kibbutz journalists’ critique commenced only after Tabenkin’s death and

Yaari’s neutralization by illnesses.41 Even then, kibbutz students did not

question rotatzia and ‘parachuting’. For instance, Sheaffer and Helman

(1994) exposed brain-drain in kibbutzim, but did not refer to my works’

explanations as to how rotatzia and ‘parachutings’ encouraged it.

Success of circulators’ careers could not be explained without

considering their loyalty to powerful FO heads and executives who were

the patrons who provided them with managerial jobs each time one was

required, due to rotatzia or apparent rotatzia. CKP users missed how

circulation enhanced yet another troubling phenomenon for democracy

and egalitarianism, that is, patronage and cliques.

40 For instance: Shavit 1980; Avneri 1983. 41 For instance: Adar 1975; Bakibbutz 1977; Pe’eri 1977; Ilana and Avner 1977.

CHAPTER 7

FO Heads’ Supremacy: Circulation, Patronage and

Cliques

Cliques of male officers who compete for the control of large

organizations have been known in sociology since Burns (1955) and

Dalton (1959). Decision-making is largely dominated by power struggles

between cliques composed of officers aiming at decisions that promote

policies beneficial to their interests and views. Clique members provide

mutual aid in managerial promotion competition, and compete with other

cliques for power, rewards and self-aggrandizement. Most important are

vertical cliques, each headed by a senior patron who helps clients’

promotion. Usually one of them succeeds him when he is promoted, while

others are nominated deputies. They help his struggles against and/or

competition with rival patrons and cliques by supplying information and

other intangible resources, support his decisions and policies, cover up

mistakes and failures of clique members, and blame officers of rival

cliques when cover-ups fail. Dalton (1959) found that, without a clique, an

officer is largely powerless, has few chances of promotion to the top, and,

if, by rare circumstances, he has gotten there, he has little chance of

causing major changes, which are promoted almost only by patrons and

their cliques.1

Ever since Mosca, Michels and Pareto developed the elitist approach in

political sociology a century ago, power elites organized by patron/clients

relationships are well-known factor which limit public control of

democracies. Power elites in kibbutzim have been exposed by many

ethnographers, as I have in my study of the Reg.Ents, but the kibbutz

dominant scientific coalition has ignored them,2 as it ignored Freeman’s

1 Wording is masculine as all were males. See also: Banfield 1961; Chow 1966;

Jay 1969, 1972; Davis 1994. For an example of a failed lone executive: Gvirtz

2003: 192-204. 2 Fadida 1972; Kressel 1974; Topel 1979; Rayman 1981; Shapira 1987, 1990,

1992; Bowes 1989; Levy 1991; Dangoor 1994; Rosolio 1999; Schwartz &

Naor 2000.

7. FO Heads’ Supremacy: Circulation, Patronage, Cliques 117

(1974: 203) pointing to the inevitability of undemocratic power elite rule

in egalitarian groupings which do not institutionalize election of leaders,

because

“…there is no such a thing as a structureless group. Any group of people

of whatever nature, …will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The

structure… will be formed regardless of the… intentions of the people

involved. …the idea [of no leader] becomes a smoke screen for the strong

or the lucky to established unquestioned hegemony over others” (Also:

Sasson-Levy 1995).

Kibbutz rotatzia masked the hegemony of continuous power elites. For

instance, Schwartz and Naor (2000) sought to study a democratic change

of a kibbutz in crisis, but careful reading of their ethnography reveals that

what they acclaimed was only seeming democracy that masked autocratic

rule that pushed out opposing informal leaders by a patron and his clique

of loyalists who used their control of the kibbutz economy, helped by FOs

and other outside powers, to introduce capitalist elements that elevated the

status and power of the patron and his clique (Chap. 15. Likewise: Kressel

1974). The use of CKP masked the role of FOs, which dominated the

field, in the formation of local power structures of kibbutzim. This role

can be exposed by ethnographies which make clear that, due to continuity,

or continuous circulation, FO heads and senior pe’ilim have largely shaped

kibbutz local power structures. However, the federative structure which

gave autonomy to kibbutzim, enhanced the variability of local power

structures which helped mask patronage and cliques’ role in their creation.

Rotazia Encouraged Patronage and Rule of Cliques Political scientist Lanir (1990) analyzed the kibbutz system as a mini-

state, but due to CKP, he missed both kibbutz power elites and how they

were shaped by patronage and cliques, even though the three concepts

loom large in his science. However, they loom even larger in the kibbutz

field due to rotatzia. The explanation is simple: The rotatzia norm pushed

for circulation to defend managers’ status, and circulators needed a patron,

an FO head or executive, or someone who had held such jobs until

recently and who could obtain a managerial job every few years by direct

or indirect control or influence on filling such jobs, in the manner of the

political bosses in Chicago studied by Banfield (1961). The main social

capital an FO head or another senior pa’il accumulated were ties with his


compeers who controlled FO jobs and could obtain jobs for loyal clients

whenever their terms had expired. Ties were decisive for another reason:

FOs did not use any tender system; jobs were filled largely through old-

boy networks of senior pe’ilim, and a patron enmeshed in such a network

was crucial for obtaining a new pe’ilut whenever a current office had

expired (Shapira 1978, 1987).

Patronage and cliques among pe’ilim often continued from the time

clients had been chief kibbutz officers. For instance, Shavit, the cotton gin

plant manager, was originally kibbutz chief economic officer who helped

Zelikovich, then head of the Regional Council, to succeed. When

Zelikovich was promoted to head Mishkay Hamerkaz largely due to this

success, he wanted to nominate Shavit as manager of the small alfalfa

drying plant, since alfalfa was Shavit’s kibbutz branch before having

become chief kibbutz officer. Shavit, however, wanted the office of cotton

gin plant manager, since it was much more powerful as it controlled the

lion share of profits which kibbutzim made from agriculture, while its

veteran manager was beyond retirement age and had served twice the

official tenure. As Shavit was quite talented and Zelikovich owed him a

lot, Shavit waited for a year at a junior job in his kibbutz until

Zelikovich’s pressure caused the resignation of the veteran manager and

pushed his deputy out, as well. Shavit was then nominated. In other cases,

patronage was formed either on the job or in earlier FO jobs, whether

within an FO or between FOs, and ties continued while the actors changed

jobs and exchanged other favors among themselves, as in the cases Dalton

(1959) studied.3

Research Ignored FOs, Patronage Remained

Incomprehensible Without integrating FOs into analyses, kibbutz patronage was

incomprehensible. Topel (1992) found that patronage was integral for

kibbutz organization, but ignoring FO jobs which were decisive for

circulation and defending managerial status, he missed the fact that

circulation made essential auspices of a patron who obtained a client new

authority job every few years; hence a patron’s ties with other pe’ilim

were his prime capital by which he controlled clients (masculine language,

3 For a quite similar case in the KA: Levanon-Morduch 2000.


as all known patrons were males). Topel mentions lifts to the city a patron

gave to clients in his FO car, and services he provided for them in the city

where he worked, such as buying goods unavailable in the kibbutz,

mentioning that both resources were dependent on his urban job (p. 52).

This analysis misses patrons’ prime power leverage: involvement in the

manning of FO jobs and ties with nominators which assured clients’

dependency, since, without their auspices, few succeeded in finding

managerial pe’ilut or circulating to another managerial pe’ilut when one

had expired. Using CKP, Topel did not perceive that patronage was

largely shaped by circulation. Missing the field’s real stratification, he also

missed the fact that his younger kibbutz’s circulative patrons were clients

of supreme veteran patrons, continuous heads of the Movement and other

FOs who promoted them to pe’ilut and helped in their circulation.

Supreme patrons were Admors whose succession was unimaginable

(Shure 2001: 66), and likewise continuous heads of Hever Hakvutzot and

then the Ichud, Baratz, Luz, Eshkol and Lavon, who gained high Mapay

posts and then Knesset (Parliament) and cabinet offices.4 Quite similar

were Admors’ deputies who held top jobs in the Jewish Agency, the

Histadrut and the Israeli government, and the heads of large FOs: Mashbir

Merkazi’s After, Tnuva’s Verlinski and then Landesman, and Milu’ot’s

Fridman. Zelikovich was not supreme, as he circulated, though only every

eight-ten years, in contrast to lesser patrons who did so more frequently.

The latter were usually from younger kibbutzim as they joined the

managerial job market only in the 1950s-1960s as clients of supreme

patrons, for instance, Mati of Kibbutz Olim (Chap. 14). However, when

they became pe’ilim at quite a young age, their patrons had already been

very conservative. In accord with Hirschman (1970), they were a select

group of uncritical thinkers who further lost criticality during decades of

what Presthus (1964) called ‘the upward looking posture’, trying to

determine patrons’ intentions and proving loyalty. This helps to explain

their complacency and their failures as FO heads in the 1980s, as, for

instance, in the Balas affair and similar failures (Chaps. 3, 14). Talented

critical thinkers and competing leaders who proposed creative solutions to

basic problems, did not succeed in circulation, were sidetracked and

mostly left. Without uncovering this sad history, which included his own

4 Ben-Avram 1976: 72; Near 1992: 197; Kafkafi 1998: 29, 35, 43.


kibbutz, and missing the impact of FOs and circulation, Topel discovered

patronage but not its conservative nature and its ruinous cultural effects.

Continuous Versus Circulative Patrons Let us look more closely at the various types of patrons. Main

differentiations were continuous versus circulative pe’ilim, and circulative

pe’ilim versus kibbutz continuous managers who became patrons.

Continuous patrons in both FOs and kibbutzim accumulated power,

privileges and intangible capitals by heading organizational growth,

success and technological virtuosity (Galbraith 1971), while circulative

patrons mainly accumulated these assets by creating networks of social

ties with powerful FO heads while serving in various local and FO jobs,

and building strong local cliques of loyal clients in their own kibbutzim.

Israel, Moshe and Bilski (fictive names), were veteran continuous

pe’ilim who, as patrons, dominated successful Kibbutz Kochav (founded

in the 1920s) for decades. Israel established a major FO which he headed

for many decades. Moshe was, at first, an intermittent pa’il who

periodically filled local chief offices until advancing in the early 1940s to

head an FO from which he advanced to the Knesset and later to the

Cabinet. Bilski accumulated paramount power by being kibbutz chief

economic officer for twenty years, and then became an executive of the

Jewish Agency for decades. The three promoted loyalists, helped in their

circulation, and dominated most of Kochav’s decision-making until the

1970s. From 1953, however, young radicals who excelled as branch

managers advanced to chief offices without patrons’ support and

innovatively solved acute problems against patrons’ will. Decisive reasons

for their success were differences of opinion among patrons concerning

some of these innovations, and patrons’ high morality, maintaining

democratic rules without the Machiavellian maneuvers used by patrons in

other kibbutzim (Chaps. 14-15). However, none of these radicals advanced

to pe’ilut for more than one term, while patrons’ clients successfully

circulated, advancing to head FOs, and one even became Knesset

Member. He was a pa’il seven times, after each term returned to a chief

kibbutz office, until permanently promoted to the Knesset.

Kochav’s circulation emerged at a relatively late stage, during its third

decade, with the growth of the FO managerial job market. As noted,

rotatzia had yet to be institutionalized; hence successful, creative and

critically minded officers continued for a decade or more before advancing


to pe’ilut; thus, their outlook was innovative and they supported

innovations even when in pe’ilut. For instance, although Israel helped

Moshe’s promotion in FO jobs, Moshe supported industrialization despite

Israel’s opposition, and similar phenomena emerged even later. In

contrast, in Topel’s (1979) Olim (founded in 1949), and Fadida’s (1972)

Chen (founded in 1954), all would-be patrons became circulative pe’ilim a

few years after foundation, in their mid-twenties. Ethnographies of

younger kibbutzim indicate that early pe’ilut made patronage regime

stronger, lower-moral and more conservative (Chap. 14-15), explaining

why Topel (1979) was the first to discern it. However, clients of supreme

patrons advanced to higher level jobs and continued in them longer than

clients of circulative patrons. Hence, more of the latter faced the menace

of status descent, and many exited kibbutzim.

For a patron in a younger kibbutz, rotatzia was an institutionalized

norm; he learned from inception that promotion to pe’ilut and success in

circulation required loyalty to an FO head, and building a clique of clients

by promoting loyalists to kibbutz chief offices when he was promoted to

pe’ilut, and later, by caring for their circulation. If, at the end of a term, a

supreme patron did not offer the client patron a new pe’ilut, a client of the

latter patron vacated a chief office for him, while the circulative patron

found a pe’ilut for the client, usually of a lesser status. Another outcome

of circulative patrons returning to chief kibbutz offices, something never

done by supreme patrons, was to enhance local dominance by shaping

major decisions and promoting loyalists to major offices, something barely

important for supreme patrons whose statuses were decided by FO jobs.

Spiro (1955) saw such return in Beit Alfa, but did not differentiate patrons

from clients. Fadida (1972: 83), on the other hand, pointed to ties patrons

created in FOs for finding their next job, but did not see the use of these

ties for patronage. A major reason was that patronage in Chen emerged a

bit late as it had joined FOs only six years after inception. Fadida had

observed Chen when it was fifteen years old, and patronage was then just

emerging. I found clear patronage there by fieldwork twenty years later

(Chap. 14).

Another difference was that patronage by veterans emerged in the

1940s, when kibbutz prestige was at its peak and growth was rapid; thus

many new FO jobs emerged, while patronage by circulators emerged in

the 1950s, when growth was slower. In the new kibbutzim that were


established in this period, coming back to manage one’s kibbutz was a

main alternative for preserving managerial status. In that era, some

officers who had finished a term turned to careers outside the kibbutz field

rather than seeking a pe’ilut. As will be seen, this was especially true of

talented radicals, since circulation under the auspices of a conservative

patron did not suit them, severely limited creativity and prevented career

success.

Patronage Due to Continuous Key Local Jobs Patronage without FO jobs was found by Kressel (1971, 1974) in Netzer

Sireni. Its two plants almost quadrupled within a few years, hiring

hundreds of workers, and almost becoming sole income providers. Their

three managers became patrons who continued for dozens of years, while,

in other main offices, rotatzia continued, except for the treasurer who was

the patrons’ neighbor and confidant. Cliques of clients were built from

among ex-kibbutz officers who were nominated to plant managerial jobs.

Domination was also achieved by patrons and clients being members and

main speakers in the economic committee and in the general assembly, as

in Carmelit (Chap. 15). Continuity of patrons while kibbutz officers

rotated, widened power gaps and assured patrons rule. One may ask why

able members assumed powerless, short-term kibbutz offices with a

negative balance of rewards, and did not demand equality of continuity,

but such a demand was futile and bound to failure as rotatzia throughout

the field was differential, did not prevent continuity of higher-ups, and

accordingly continuous Ichud heads backed Netzer Sireni’s patrons.

Sometimes rotational offices remained unmanned, as in conservative

kibbutzim (Am’ad & Palgi 1986) and Carmelit during its crisis period in

the early 1990s (Chap. 15), but mostly candidates were found to fill them,

since this usually led to convenient managerial jobs due to patronage.

I witnessed another variant in a metal engineering plant: For many

years the autocratic manager used a clique of hired engineers as his main

power base, but as autocracy deters loyalty of engineers whose expert

views are frequently ignored, patronage was weak and his clique dissolved

(Chap. 6). Moreover, continuous autocratic plant managers were a

minority: Leviatan (1978) found only some 10%, and I found (1979a,


1980) about 20%.5 But, to this type of plant managers, one must add

another type of locally based patronage: an ex-pa’il or an ex-plant

manager who had permanently settled in a key office in which rotatzia

was not considered applicable due to required specialization. Such a

position enabled supremacy as the power behind-the-throne, orchestrating

the chief officers’ deeds and succession. Leshem (1969:144-58) saw such

highly locally influential ex-pe’ilim, but did not see patronage, while in

two kibbutzim, both Dangoor (1994) and I witnessed local patronage by

plant export managers who had earlier managed these plants, which grew

up due to export preference. In both cases, rotatzia in plant management

enhanced the patron’s power; he held a pivotal position in plant decision-

making due to its export orientation, and plant size enabled the patron to

build a clique that dominated the economic committee, the kibbutz

economy and decision-making, similar to Netzer Sireni and Carmelit

(Chap. 15). In Dangoor’s case, patronage was especially strong: almost

only clients became plant managers and chief kibbutz officers, while the

patron helped their later circulation to outside managerial jobs which he

obtained by outside ties in FOs and other firms. In my case, patronage was

weaker, as some non-clients became chief kibbutz officers and opposing

clique was formed.

Patronage was Integral to Oligarchic Processes Common to all patronage types, however, was rule by barely accountable

continuous leaders. As they were self-chosen, democracy did not limit

their continuity, nor did it limit support by cliques of circulative clients

who gained status and power in return. CKP users’ efforts to explain

kibbutz leadership by formal studies went astray, as they missed the real

foci of power, as patrons’ power and capitals became largely independent

of any specific job (Topel 1979), having been accumulated in continuous

managerial careers in which control of a clique of loyal clients was only

one of their power sources. The others were old-boys networks of FO

heads and senior and junior pe’ilim, knowledge of and relations with many

FO heads and other outside organization officials which made them

successful brokers of their kibbutz interests on the outside, and prestige

and other intangible capitals they had accumulated which helped their

5 The difference was explicable by different ways of sampling plants.


dominance. Locally-based patronage often resembled FO-based patronage,

with patrons’ rule over quite similar imitative, capitalist-like cultures with

vast hired Labor and use of market forces instead of democracy and high-

trust. Kressel (1974: 42) found that the two types collaborated: Ichud

pe’ilim declared that they hoped Netzer Sireni would stick to self-work

principle, but supported massive enlargement of plants which had violated

the principle for many years. Thus, they deliberately furthered hired Labor

and patrons’ dominance, supporting self-aggrandizement by plant growth.

A decade and half later, as the prime patron anticipated rainy days for his

plant, he left to become TKM’s high-ranking pa’il; some years later the

plant became unprofitable and collapsed (Kressel 1991; The Kibbutz

1997).

Oligarchic FOs and rotatzia were prime reasons for patronage and the

rule of undemocratic cliques, deterring leaders and then other pe’ilim from

participation in manual work, unlike leaders of Huterrites, Shakers and

Amana. Had genuine democracy reigned in the field without rotatzia and

with periodical re-election of trusted, effective, public servant officers

who would have become local leaders, as well as true measures that would

have prevented oligarchic continuity of self-servers, executives who had

entered dysfunction phases would have been replaced and returned to

minor jobs. This would have depressed conservative patronage, while the

nurturing of creative radicals by veteran high-moral leaders committed to

the kibbutz cause would have been enhanced, as will be shown in

Chapters 15-16. This would have been especially likely if leaders had

continued partial manual work, shoulder to shoulder with ordinary

members, personally experiencing unsolved problems. As they would

have been aiming primarily at keeping members’ trust in order to be re-

elected, especially if the measure against the emergence of autocracy had

been a higher majority required for each additional term in office as I will

propose in Chapter 18, enough of them would have supported some of the

new solutions and the promotion of creative radicals to chief offices and

then to pe’ilut. This would have led to FOs with transformational leaders

who would have replaced conservative heads, and would have transformed

FOs in accord with kibbutz ethos and Buber’s (1945[1958]) assertion, as

had existed in the Palmach (Chap. 10).

In fact, such promotions were quite common in early days, in

kibbutzim such as Kochav and Gan Shmuel whose creativity largely


shaped kibbutz cultures. Some of their innovators advanced to FOs or

established new FOs, and solved major problems of kibbutz agriculture.

Unfortunately, kibbutzim failed to control FOs democratically, barely

limited fringe benefits of pe’ilim and rarely tried to equalize their working

conditions to other members, enhancing the ascendance of self-server

conformists, and the suppression and exit of high-moral creative radicals.

This flawed democracy and hegemony of self-servers, enhanced incessant

growth by FOs and defeated kibbutz cultures.

CHAPTER 8

Flawed Democratic Control of FOs and Fringe

Benefits of Pe’ilim

Formally, FOs were aimed at serving kibbutzim which owned and

allegedly controlled them. Pe’ilim of Mishkay Hamerkaz used to say:

“The Reg.Ents are the extended arm of the kibbutz”. This arm, however,

was stronger than the body it purported to serve, as the weakness of

kibbutz local formal leaderships caused the “body” to turn into the servant.

The major reasons for this have already been presented, but not the flawed

democracy by which kibbutzim failed to control FOs and limit privileges

of pe’ilim, which enhanced their power.

The fringe benefits received by pe’ilim were allegedly rewards for extra

efforts, longer working hours and heavy responsibility. This was true in

many cases, especially in the early era up to the 1950s, but a deeper look

further explains FO heads’ dominance. Veblen (1931) called privileges

which symbolized high status “conspicuous consumption”, and Harris

(1990: 369-80) found that rulers’ conspicuous consumption promoted

submissiveness among the masses who produced the surplus collected as

taxes for its financing. Lenski (1966) found that it was decisive in the self-

enhancing process of stratification: Rulers used power to add privileges,

privileges enhanced prestige and power which they used to extract more

privileges, and so on, until diminishing returns for extracting efforts

stopped them. Bourdieu (1984, 1996a), Bourdieu and Passeron (1990) and

Harris (1990) show that a variety of expensive and rare goods enhanced

upper strata prestige, while their accumulation as cultural capital ranked

these strata above others lacking these goods, and helped to reproduce

superiority by their offspring.

The study of hunter and gatherer bands proved, however, that, in

genuinely egalitarian cultures, prestige is gained by the opposite behavior,

by giving away objects in one’s possession and maximal modesty (Bird-

David 1990, 1992). When a hunter returns with a big kill, he minimizes

his success and the band echoes this by deprecating its value (Harris 1990:

345-6). Those who lead collective band activities have to work harder than

others, have no authority beyond the specific activity in which they are

8. FOs’ Flawed Control, Pe’ilim’s Fringe Benefits

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considered experts, and are not privileged in any way for doing this job.1

The criticism by Mishmar Ha’emek members of Hazan’s fancy American

car which led them to paint it, was a similar effort to deprecate its value

and prevent it from symbolizing status superiority. However, it also

indicated that this car symbolized capitalist culture, contrary to kibbutz

culture. So how could the Admors’ decision to use these fancy cars be

explained?

Changing Reg.Ents’ Company Car Norms In my interviews with Reg.Ents pe’ilim, they always raised the topic of

cars; they believed that cars were prime rewards which motivated kibbutz

members to take Reg.Ents’ jobs, more than any other job characteristic,

while a pa’il leaving a job was usually explained by his failure to obtain

the reward of a car. At first, this explanation seemed reasonable: a car was

a major reward, enabling mobility which other kibbutz members lacked;

most kibbutzim during that period owned a few cars which, except for

Saturdays, were almost always in use by officers or others for public

purposes, while kibbutzim were visited by Egged public busses only a few

times a day, sometimes only twice. Closer scrutiny, however, revealed that

there were pe’ilim like Thomas and Yaakov, for whom a car was mainly a

working tool, not so much a reward; they and their like used it for private

purposes infrequently; thus the main reason for leaving among these

pe’ilim who did not get a car was not because a loss of hope for a reward,

but rather because it interfered with job functioning and signaled a lack of

power and status. Those interviewees who cited pe’ilim exit due to not

getting a car, did not see that the main reason for exit was a lost hope for a

status and power symbol and a working tool. Such signaling was less

common concerning kibbutz owned cars, as a car’s users changed

frequently and it rarely signaled anyone status. Only some cars with sole

users signaled status: a jeep parked outside a member’s flat at night

usually signaled his field branch manager status (Schwartz & Naor 2000:

55), and a private new car parked likewise, signaled a powerful, autocratic

factory manager in a kibbutz with mass hired Labor (Kressel 1983: 127).

Historically, cars were first given in the Reg.Ents only to executives, as

in capitalist firms, but they proliferated like Parkinson’s (1957)

1 Goldschmidt 1990; Harris 1990: 344-51.


128

bureaucratic growth: just as a clerk elevates status by asking for and

getting an aide beneath him when work is mounting, a pa’il without a car

just beneath the rank of pe’ilim with cars, who became essential, hinted

that he would quit his job unless provided with a car. After he got it,

another one on the same level asked for a car in the name of equality, and

so cars were provided to lower and lower pe’ilim until every pa’il with a

driving license got a car, including young, unskilled, seasonal female

office aides. This occurred in Mishkay Hamerkaz only in the early 1980s,

while, in some economic FOs, it had occurred at least a decade earlier

(Shteinberg 1974), while in the Movements, even in 1990 only a minority

of pe’ilim had cars (Yadlin 1989; Lifshitz 1990). A clear sign of cars

functioning mainly as status symbols was their fine grading, in accord

with rank in FO hierarchies and power. The higher a pa’il’s rank and the

more powerful he was, the better, larger and newer his car was. Power

stemmed inter alia from a powerful patron. Thomas had to make do with

his old station wagon due to a lack of patronage. Likewise, only a few

hired employees got cars, and then, only if they were considered

absolutely essential in jobs for which workers in similar positions on the

outside received cars.

Stratified FO Cars Symbolized Status, Unlike Most Kibbutz

Cars Why were cars the main status symbol of pe’ilim? Why did many consider

the head of the tiny transportation department of Mishkay Hamerkaz

second in power only to Zelikovich? The simple answer was that, except

for cars pe’ilim were usually not publicly differentiated according to rank

and, in some respects, even resembled lower-status hired employees. For

example, they ate fine breakfasts and lunches free of charge at the nice air-

conditioned dining hall just as hired workers did, and many of them wore

dirty working clothes like hired workers. Pe’ilim were differentiated from

hired workers by not clocking in when arriving at work and when leaving,

and by the pocket money they were given on the pretext that it was needed

for refreshments on their way to work or back, even though the drive was

usually only 10-30 minutes, but these were inconspicuous signs, while the

salaries paid to kibbutzim for pe’ilim’s work were uniform. High-level

pe’ilim had two exclusive privileges: telephones at home, which were rare

in kibbutzim in the 1970s, and study tours abroad which actually were

only marginally so (Topel 1979: 70; Blasi 1980: 77). However, both


129

privileges were outside the areas of the Reg.Ents, so their value as status

symbols was limited, as opposed to cars which showed the status of

pe’ilim wherever they went, testifying to the rank of their job and to the

status of their FO relative to other FOs, kibbutzim and outside firms.

No different in respect to cars were some industrialized kibbutzim with

mass hired labor, as was found by Kressel (1983): Netzer Sireni’s best

cars were allotted for the sole use of plant managers and symbolized their

supremacy. A disenchanted member of Bror Ha’il, another kibbutz with

mass hired labor, wrote: “Kibbutz members are zoologically differentiated

into wheel-owners and feet-owners”.2 Many such sarcastic phrases could

be found in Movement weeklies and kibbutz internal bulletins in the

1970s, when Admors censorship relaxed and the number of FO cars grew

rapidly in contrast to the few kibbutz cars which were rarely available for

ordinary members’ private uses.3

In contrast to these views, which proved that members were cognizant

of and frequently discussed advantages FO cars gave pe’ilim, in only a

few of the twenty kibbutz plants which I studied in 1977-8 did I meet with

intense interest in cars, although some plants, in addition to the few cars

for managers, owned a fleet of distribution and service cars. The few

kibbutzim in which there was such interest, resembled Netzer Sireny: the

cars allotted to plant managers were not shared by members after working

hours and weekends, and were barely controlled by a car organizer

(sadran rechev; Kressel 1983: 98-138). Unlike other kibbutz cars which

members shared, these were “attached cars” (mechoniot tzamudot, i.e.

company cars), each one assigned to a specific user for his sole use,

similar to the outside organizations’ norm; hence, car size, age and model

symbolized his status; this was significant, and interested members.

Egalitarian sharing of cars emerged in a few kibbutzim in 1962, when

some groups of young radicals in a few veteran kibbutzim such as Kochav

and Ein Hamifratz (real name), forced pe’ilim and plant managers to share

their cars with other members on weekends (later on, this norm was

expanded to weekdays, after working hours). Soon radical leader Ephraim

2 Unnamed writer cited in Igeret No. 1181, September 5, 1978, from Kibbutz

Bror Chail weekly. 3 Adar 1975; Bakibbutz 1977; Ilana & Avner 1977; Shapira 1978, 1979b; Topel

1979: 67-70; Tzur 1980; Ginat 1981; Atar 1982.


130

Reiner created an innovative norm for allocating use of cars in Gan

Shmuel which accorded this innovation: In addition to car uses authorized

by managers and committee heads, members used idle cars as they

pleased, receiving keys from a car organizer according to prior written

requests, having to pay only for fuel and a few other expenses incurred by

their use. However, while both innovations enhanced egalitarian car

sharing and spread to most kibbutzim within a few years, many, and later

on most pe’ilim did not abide by the car sharing norm, as most FOs

opposed it, while initiators of sharing were suppressed, sidetracked and/or

exited, as did Reiner (Chap. 11, 16).

FOs’ Sticking to Company Cars System Served Pe’ilim

Interests While kibbutz cars lost much of their status symbolization role with the

introduction of car sharing, FOs made efforts to curb car sharing. At first,

each car was limited to few “registered” drivers, and after this

arrangement was abandoned as cumbersome, other limitations were used:

inexperienced drivers were excluded, the price kibbutzim paid for using

FO cars was raised, and sharing was limited to weekends only. Thus,

status symbolization was conserved: a car was almost always driven by

the pa’il to whom it was ‘attached’.4 One may ask: Why did kibbutzim not

assume the task of furnishing pe’ilim with cars for work and then having

kibbutz members share them after work? Instead of FOs buying and

maintaining fleets of cars, why did FOs not help kibbutzim add cars to

their fleets for pe’ilim by giving kibbutzim loans for this aim and saving

expenses on transportation departments and fleet maintenance?

One reason was historical: Since early days FOs had set up

transportation services which used pickups and later vans, while senior

pe’ilim shared private cars. Thus, pe’ilim mobility was institutionalized as

an FO function, rather than as a kibbutz responsibility. Likewise, the KA

attended to pe’ilim accommodations in Tel Aviv by partial rental of the

Cherniawski hostel; later on, this was replaced by apartment rental, each

apartment used by three-four ordinary pe’ilim, while seniors were given

4 See the same in a kibbutz where plant cultures resembled FOs: Kressel 1983:

103-38.


131

smaller but private ones.5

Economic FOs, especially those owned together with moshavim, did

not use collective solutions. As mentioned, Kahana, as a pa’il of the

Merkaz Chaklai in 1930, was given a board and lodging allowance for his

five-day weekly stay in Tel Aviv, and saved money for a private radio.

Zionist emissaries to the Diaspora saved much more: In 1951, Yaakov

Vilan (1993: 247-58) of Kibbutz Negba was such an emissary and saved

money for a three week tour of Europe with his wife afterward. This was

the weak spot of collective solutions: no money could be saved for private

use; thus, they gradually vanished and pe’ilim saved money from

allowances and bought electric kettles, heating stoves and other items

which most members could not afford. FO cars further raised living

standards of pe’ilim and their families in contrast to the rank and file. Until

the 1950s, this rise was mostly balanced by the extra hardships most

pe’ilim incurred: long travel, long working days, separation from family

for up to five days a week, etc.6 Ordinary members rarely saw them as a

privileged stratum for another reason: in this era circulation was less

common as there were relatively few FO jobs, and, after a term, many

pe’ilim returned to the ranks and had to take on unwanted kibbutz jobs,

such as serving in the dining hall.7

When most difficulties vanished, while privileges were enlarged and

diffused to lower echelons, criticism of pe’ilim not sharing their cars

increased, leading to a revolt of younger members of Kochav and Ein

Hamifratz in the early 1960s, and to the sharing of their cars.

Unfortunately, no kibbutz tried to go further and press for the above

proposal of furnishing pe’ilim with cars owned by the kibbutz. This radical

change would have required creative leadership committed to

egalitarianism, viewing FOs as integral to kibbutz, and this might have led

to seeing the bluffs of rotatzia and FO democracy, and to concluding that

FOs should adopt kibbutz principles, as Buber (1958[1945]: 141) asserted

and as had been the Palmach.

5 Tzachor 1997: 171. My father as a pa’il shared such an apartment in 1949-1951.

Some senior pe’ilim of my kibbutz have continued enjoying apartments until

recently. 6 Vilan 1993: 86-87. 7 Fadida 1972: 69; Shapira 1987: 44; Vilan 1993: 269.


132

New Solutions Would Have Required Admitting

Stratification A radical new view of fringe benefits was required: no more

inconsequential phenomena that could be ignored using various

rationalizations, such as privileges balanced by extra hardships pe’ilim

suffered, but rather a major problem of egalitarianism, a superfluous price

of FOs which had to be eradicated in order to bolster the hegemony of

kibbutz ethos in the kibbutz field. Veteran KA ex-pa’il Avishay Grosman

confessed this only in 1991, while Barak (1992) calculated that fringe

benefits of a Movement pa’il serving for thirty years amounted to $US

216,000. This would not have been a prohibitive expense had it

encouraged innovative pe’ilim like Thomas and Yaakov whose

contributions were far greater would they continued, but it enhanced the

dominance of their opposites, self-servers who suppressed such servant

leaders and served the rule of autocratic FO heads. Eradication of FO

privileges would have required viewing them as imitations of capitalist

culture which engendered stratification, an anathema to kibbutz culture. A

pa’il who felt this way was Baruch (Boria) Lin of Mishmar Ha’emek, a

Histadrut executive who used a taxicab that took him to Tel Aviv and back

two times a week rather than an ‘attached car’ which symbolized status

continuously.

No doubt that what Lin grasped was grasped by Yaari and Hazan as

well, that their fancy cars contradicted the kibbutz image of hardworking

socialists committed to egalitarianism. One explanation was that they were

already in their conservative phase and reconciled with the ruinous effect

on this image (Chaps. 10-11), while another could be shifting

involvement: as they could not promote public aims, they promoted

private ones instead (Hirschman 1982). Lord Acton would say that they

were corrupted by absolute power, but these answers are, at best partial

truths, since beside better cars and a few minor material privileges, they

resembled other pe’ilim without any excesses. Thus, a major explanation

was the lack of a plausible known solution (Hawthorn 1991): Lin’s taxicab

solution was clearly unsuitable; their tasks required a car at their disposal

to travel to Movement headquarters and other major organizations in Tel

Aviv, to the Knesset and to Zionist headquarters in Jerusalem, 160-170

kilometers away from their kibbutzim, to visit kibbutzim from Dan on the

northern border to Gvulot in the southern desert (some 130 and 200


133

kilometers away respectively), and to dozens of party branches all over the

country. For these purposes, an FO car was well suited. Another advantage

of Admor large cars was more mobility and freedom from driving

enabling them to visit more places, gain more information, be involved in

more deliberations and read and have discussions with deputies while

traveling. In addition, as heads of national parties, they resembled their

peers who were cabinet ministers and rode similar cars.

However, a much more important part of the answer was Admors’ need

to cope with the predicament of losing power due to abandoning efforts to

solve major problems which caused loss of trust, as against talented

radicals and critical thinkers who solved problems creatively in some

kibbutzim by car sharing, by getting rid of factories’ hired Labor, by

egalitarian higher education, and more (Chap. 15, 16). The latter were

motivated by kibbutz ethos and were not moved by privileges, like

Thomas, preferring solving major problems, while privileges pulled self-

serving careerists to pe’ilut, enhanced their control and buttressed

Admors’ dwindling power.8 But in order to add privileges to lower

echelons and keep differential rewards in accord with hierarchy, they had

to elevate the standard of their own cars, as indeed they done in the early

1950s. In Mishkay Hamerkaz in the 1960s a similar situation emerged and

senior pe’ilim used it for their own advantage: they convinced its head

that, due to his advanced age, over sixty, he deserved a more convenient

car, i.e., larger and better; soon after this car was bought, they elevated the

standards of their own cars. The elevation of the standard of Admor cars

served the aim of adding cars for lesser pe’ilim of the growing KA

bureaucracy, but it can safely be presumed that it also served deputy

interests in better cars.

Creativity Might Have Elevate Radicals into Potential

Successors However, all of the above explanations were less decisive than the

prevention of elevating potential successors to Admors from among young

radical leaders (Chaps. 10-11). Had Admors remained high-moral servant

leaders as in early days, they would have created a new solution instead of

8 It seemed that my father’s preference for leading Gan Shmuel’s plant to self-

work over the pe’ilut he was offered in 1954, was explicable by this reasoning.


134

the company car system of capitalist society, despite it being practical and

helping to enlist and control pe’ilim. This was not a simple matter; such a

change might have cost them the support of loyalists who were used to the

car privilege. But even this was a secondary reason, since they could have

used convincing reasons: both promoting egalitarianism and the need for

asceticism in ascetic Israel of that era. Thus, the main reason for not

creating and not encouraging others to create a new solution, was retaining

supremacy. Creative young radicals such as Ephraim Reiner, could have

certainly devised a new, egalitarian solution as he did with kibbutz owned

cars, but its success would have elevated a new contender for power, and

this seemed to be the prime reason for rejecting such a possibility. This

resembled Shavit’s suppression of Thomas’s efforts to invent radical

solutions, and the same etiology will be exposed within conservative

kibbutzim (Chaps. 12, 14, 15).

Without a new solution, Admors continued the existing one. Still

another reason for continuing was the privileges given to pe’ilim in

oligarchic Histadrut, the Mashbir Merkazi, Tnuva, Agricultural Center and

other organizations which Admors did not control. Admors could ignore

their extra privileges up to 1948, as the Movements enlisted enough

talented pe’ilim who were drawn by Zionist enthusiasm and the challenges

their jobs offered. After 1948, these motivations diminished. Not allowing

innovators to cope with new challenges such as dealing with immigrant

absorption by creating new solutions that accorded kibbutz uniqueness

(Chap. 11), the Movements had to compete with fast-growing economic

FOs for the enlistment of managerial talent by enlarging privileges which

required elevation of Admor car standards.

Without egalitarian solutions, Admors and other FO heads were

trapped into using a solution that added cars independent of growth; much

as Parkinsonian bureaucracy grew, cars were provided to lower and lower

pe’ilim. As mentioned, this process was completed in some economic FOs

in the 1970s, in Mishkay Hamerkaz in the early 1980s, while in the

Movements there were many pe’ilim who remained without cars even in

1989: TKM’s 1,477 pe’ilim had 484 cars, and KA’s 850 pe’ilim had 402

cars.9

9 Yadlin 1989; Lifshitz 1990.


135

Admors’ Choice, Self-Serving Officers and Flawed

Democracy Due to Admors’ choice to continue with ‘attached’ cars, FO cars stratified

most pe’ilim above ordinary kibbutz members and enhanced market and

hierarchy controls in a field supposedly controlled by trust and democracy.

These controls required clearly differentiated ranks. Yaari’s and Hazan’s

change to fancy American cars in the early 1950s, signaled not only

oligarchy, but also a steeper hierarchy, more gradations of cars in accord

with additional ranks in the growing KA. This was also true at the other

end of the hierarchy: When cars proliferated in Mishkay Hamerkaz to

lesser pe’ilim, a humbler model was added, a two-door mini Autobianchi

A112 with 900 cc engines. This was possible since these pe’ilim enjoyed

other privileges: a nice air-conditioned dining hall, high-standard meals

and pocket money for refreshments on their short way to work or back.

This generosity led to many complaints by kibbutz representatives at

Mishkay Hamerkaz three-yearly conventions. They proposed lowering the

standard of meals and a cut in pocket money. However, these

representatives, kibbutz treasurers and chief economic officers, never

complained about, nor did they propose cuts in cars which cost many

times more and far exceeded outside firm norms, or any other of the

already mentioned managerial privileges, such as the spacious, air-

conditioned offices, ample telephones, “study tours” abroad which

actually were only marginally such, etc.10 Representatives explained their

proposals by the ethos of equality, i.e. that members in kibbutzim lacked

these perks. However, judging from the many grievances in kibbutz

weeklies, kibbutz members needed much more car sharing which pe’ilim

mostly refused, but no representative complained about these refusals, nor

proposed any car system change toward egalitarianism.

The differential complaints exposed the true interests of representatives

as would-be pe’ilim: they stuck to the ‘attached cars’ system and objected

to my proposal of kibbutzim providing cars to pe’ilim, not because of the

reasons they gave, but since they were short-term chief officers who hoped

to benefit from FO cars within a few years. They tried to project an image

10 See Minutes of Mishkay Hamerkaz conventions. On “study tours”: Topel

1979: 70.


136

of caring for kibbutz member interests by criticizing privileges

inconsequential for their own future as prospective pe’ilim, avoiding those

which would affect their lives for a much longer period (at least so they

hoped). Thus they acted in their own interests rather than in public ones.

Their hypocrisy concealed self-serving, ignoring public they supposedly

represented, a well-known problem of democracies, as Bobbio (2002) has

pointed out. However, Admors and FO heads were to blame; they shaped

the system. When one representative explained to me in private that

privileges were essential for Reg.Ents functioning, he exposed their

corruptive nature as well:

“The norms of Reg.Ents are not kibbutz ones; members here behave like

capitalist owners, not caring for workers or for the job, but only for their

own privileges. They have come here either because they failed at their

kibbutz jobs, or due to privileges; without cars and other privileges no

member would want to be a pa’il here, but since we need Reg.Ents

services, we have no choice but to provide them with privileges”.

In 1977, a chief kibbutz officer like the speaker, born in the late 1930s

or 1940s, could not imagine egalitarian and democratic FOs like the

Palmach. Nor it seemed did he imagine that those who came for

privileges, power, status and career, defeated others who cared for kibbutz

interests like Thomas and Yaakov, causing their exits and marring

Reg.Ents’ effectiveness and efficiency.

Secured Supremacy of Pe’ilim Over Kibbutz

Representatives However, there was another major explanation for the fact that no

representative proposed car cuts: a belief, due to flawed democracy, in the

supremacy of Reg.Ents pe’ilim. The main reason for this was the

dependency of kibbutz officers’ careers on FO heads, due to the structure

of the field’s managerial career ladders with rotatzia’s pushing officers to

circulate in order to retain managerial status. This could be seen in the

composition of conventions: As pointed out earlier, kibbutz

representatives were mostly younger, inexperienced, newer in jobs and

participating in conventions for the first time, while most pe’ilim were

older, experienced executives, almost all of them ex-chief kibbutz officers

(often more than once) who circulated in managerial jobs and continued in

each one of them much longer than in kibbutz offices. Representatives


137

lacked prestige and other intangible capitals held by pe’ilim, and headed

kibbutzim which were dependent on Reg.Ents services: if a kibbutz was

not satisfied with the ginning of its cotton by Mishkay Hamerkaz’s plant,

seeking another plant to do it meant another Reg. Ents plant; there was no

alternative. As Reg.Ents heads met regularly, they were coordinated and

no kibbutz could benefit from competition among them; each kibbutz had

to use the services of its region’s Reg.Ents, though sometimes this was

evaded by various excuses, or a plant agreed to allow ‘defection’ due to

insufficient production capacity.

Even a chief kibbutz officer who did not care about future promotion to

Reg.Ent jobs rarely dared to publicly criticize their managers; usually he

sought good relations as a way to prevent harm to his kibbutz interests.

Democracy was a formality; pe’ilim controlled decisions, as proved by

frequent enlargements of Mishkay Hamerkaz plants which were barely

related to kibbutz farming needs. Most of the added capacity was aimed at

non-kibbutz clients, while kibbutzim had to provide more pe’ilim, and to

finance excessive investments. Kibbutz officers often learned about this

after pe’ilim had made irreversible moves. No wonder distrust prevailed

between pe’ilim and kibbutz officers. Privately, most of the latter with

whom I spoke opposed expansions, and the few who did speak in favor of

expansions publicly, generally had only modest ones in mind. Pe’ilim used

their alleged expertise to deny the feasibility of modest enlargements,

exaggerated arguments in support of excesses, and asserted that kibbutzim

would benefit from economies of scale, although such benefits rarely

materialized.

Superfluous Growth, Image Creation, Justified Distrust of

Pe’ilim A good example is the Mishkay Hamerkaz fodder mix mill which began

production in 1961, was expanded in 1966-7, and in 1969 it was decided

to add a second, computerized larger mill whose planned capacity was

50% more than the older mill. However, its cost turned out to be 250% of

the planned cost, some US$20 million instead of US$8 million, while even

the planned cost left only a small profit margin, since full use of its

capacity was projected in 1980, five years after the projected start of

production. Pe’ilim asserted that the government would finance most of

the project, but when the real cost of the project was revealed, the owner

kibbutzim were asked to finance almost all the extra investment, meaning


138

that they had to finance 80% of the project rather than the original plan of

their financing only 40%. In short, although kibbutz representatives on the

plant’s board of directors rebelled and forced a project stoppage and

reassessment, they later ratified a solution which meant surrender to

pe’ilim (Shapira 1987: 114-7). Why did they do so?

The main reason was their dependency on the Reg.Ents for future jobs;

it was clear that representatives who would have prevented the project,

would not be promoted to Reg.Ents jobs. An auxiliary reason was that the

solution spared them the need to ask the kibbutzim for ratification of extra

financing for the project by using a price rise in fodder mixes instead, a

usual occurrence in Israel’s inflationary economy. This prevented opening

a Pandora box of objections in kibbutz assemblies which would have

required that they lie in order to retain chances of adoption, or confess the

truth and lose the vote.

After the project was completed, its extra large size proved wrong,

causing many problems; an unusable part of it was discarded, and for

almost a decade the mill was under-utilized. Quite similar were other

expansions; their new technologies were presented as state-of-the-art,

although mostly the more conventional and less effective alternatives were

chosen, like in Thomas’s (1994) cases. Kibbutz officers rightfully

distrusted pe’ilim as self-servers or servers of particularistic Reg.Ents

interests, mostly at the expense of kibbutzim. No wonder that when crises

of the new economic policy of 1985 ensued (Chap. 3), kibbutzim cared

little about FOs and many collapsed: the Mashbir Merkazi, Tnuva Export,

Milu’ot, Hazera, KA’s Al Hamishmar daily, KM’s and KA’s planning and

architectural firms, their construction firms, Alliance of Comptrollers, and

more.11

A Lack of Genuine Representation Enhanced Flawed

Democracy Rotatzia meant that most chief kibbutz offices were filled by novices or

ex-pe’ilim for whom the office was an interlude in their circulation. They

had to represent kibbutzim in FO governing bodies, but even when they

tried, they rarely succeeded due to the above reasons and others depicted

11 Abramovitz 1988; Kedem 1988a, 1988b; Yadlin 1988; Maroz 1991; Petersburg

1994; Lazar 2001.


139

hereafter. Let us look at the records of fifteen years of board of directors

sessions of Mishkay Hamerkaz’s cotton gin plant: Formally the board

included a majority of ‘kibbutz representatives’, but, in actuality, these

were almost always a minority. The simple reason was that they soon

learned they were a ‘rubber stamp’ for pe’ilim actions and stopped

attending; this made pe’ilim a majority at most sessions. I asked Moav, the

veteran plant manager if this was genuine democracy, and he retorted:

“It really mattered very little whether these representatives came and drank

some cups of tea or not”.

His deputy gave a more vivid picture of board of directors’ functioning:

“In any case, they [kibbutz representatives] did not understand much about

most subjects on the agenda, and Moav and a pa’il of another plant who

represented the management of Mishkay Hamerkaz on the plant’s board

were quite similar. The only two who really knew what was going on and

coped with almost all major problems, thus also shaping most decisions,

were Moav’s other deputy and myself”.

The same was true in Shavit’s days when he, Zelikovich and a few

loyalist ‘kibbutz representatives’ dominated, while his deputy and Thomas

were the only ones who knew and understood what was really going on,

and objected to many decisions but were overruled. ‘Kibbutz

representatives’ were formally elected at the yearly assembly of some

forty owner kibbutzim consisting of chief economic officers and cotton

branch managers, but kibbutz delegates did not elect these

‘representatives’; as Tabenkin chose KM’s Council members and Yaari

and Hazan chose KA’s Acting Committee members, while conventions

ratified their choices (Chap. 5), owner assemblies ratified en-block

proposals for a board chosen by plant managers that included 7-10 kibbutz

‘representatives’ and 4-5 pe’ilim. ‘Representatives’ were allegedly

successful branch managers, but many were, in fact, managers’ loyalists or

prospective ones aiming at future promotion to pe’ilut, and few, if any,

were critical thinkers who learned the plant’s problems and their solutions

in order to make wise decisions. Mostly this learning proved futile; at

most, their criticism and suggestions prolonged sessions and the few

attending loyalists together with pe’ilim almost always defeated them.

Only when critical ‘representatives’ were joined by knowledgeable pe’ilim

and some loyalists they sometimes win over ignorant pe’ilim and other


140

loyalists.

The so-called ‘kibbutz representatives’ neither represented kibbutzim,

nor contributed much to plant management. They were not chosen by a

relevant constituency of cotton growers, but were nominated by the

managers whom they were purported to control. None of them was

rewarded by continuity for doing a good job; the opposite was true: critics

kept seats only for a year, while loyalists continued. Those who stopped

attending were replaced only at the next annual assembly, while, up to that

date, their names as board members projected an image of democracy.

Flawed Democracy Ruined Trust But Could Be Repaired Flawed democracy enabled Reg.Ents heads almost total control of

decision-making, caring little for kibbutz interests, caring mainly for the

image of caring. No wonder mistrust prevailed between pe’ilim and

kibbutz officers, and the fact that many kibbutz officers were ex-pe’ilim

who knew how easily truth could be masked, enhanced mistrust. The only

case of kibbutzim coercing FOs to prefer members’ interests over those of

pe’ilim, as far as I know, was the car sharing norm which was adopted late

and implemented only partially at a high price for kibbutzim. Kibbutzim

lacked genuine democratic representation in the governing of FOs; they

did not elect, nor did they replace managers and board members in accord

with their functioning, following the Movements’ undemocratic tradition

which commenced in the 1930s (Chap. 5).

FOs imitated capitalist culture, but not its democratic solutions, such as

regional choice of delegates. Consider the case of Mishkay Hamerkaz: If

each kibbutz had had a delegate on the Board of Directors, it would have

had over forty members (including some pe’ilim). Such a large body could

not be effective; an effective board may include 11-15 members. If 4-6 of

them had been pe’ilim, 7-9 kibbutz representatives could have been

chosen by dividing the kibbutzim into 7-9 ballot districts of 4-5 adjacent

kibbutzim, each choosing a representative. In addition, effective

representation required a reasonable term, not one year but three-four

years with the possibility of consecutive terms, preferably under the

provision of the proposed exponential growing trust test (Chap. 18). The

proper constituency, for instance, in the case of the cotton gin plant, would

have included each kibbutz’s cotton branch workers, the chief economic

officer and the treasurer, while, in the case of the board of Mishkay

Hamerkaz, the constituency should have included each kibbutz’s


141

economic committee members and managers of agricultural branches. In

this way, a genuine democracy could have been created. Similarly genuine

representation could have been obtained in all FO boards of directors.

Genuine representatives with prospects of continuity by possibly

consecutive terms, would have had good reasons to be more than just ‘tea

drinkers’, to seek knowledge, to be actively involved in deliberations and

to defend kibbutz interests, thus assuring trust between FO owners and

pe’ilim.

A Lack of Independent Mass Media An additional reason for lack of kibbutzim control of FOs was the lack of

independent mass media. Genuine democracy of some 60,000 members in

270 kibbutzim, or even 10,000 Mishkay Hamerkaz kibbutz members,

required independent journalism. But editors and writers of the

Movements’ publications were chosen up to the 1970s on the basis of

loyalty to Admors and Ichud heads. When Admors allowed the critique of

the Reiner group in the 1950s (Chap. 11), this gave leeway to KA’s

journal for young members, Bachativa, edited by Betzalel Lev, a member

of this group. However, the attempt at independent journalism was futile

since Lev and his aides were pe’ilim, constantly under Yaari’s scrutiny.

He could have rotated them if their critique had endangered his power.12

There were no independent media until the mid-1970s, years after

Tabenkin had passed away and an ailing Yaari had lost KA control. Even

then, and up to the late 1980s, kibbutz quarterly journals and publishing

houses banned radical criticism.13 Only then, after Hazan had retired, after

Tabenkin’s loyalist successors had also passed away or retired, and crisis

had prompted criticism, did the media become largely independent of the

control by Movement heads.

In conclusion, Admors presided over expanding conservative

bureaucracy with differential fringe benefits that rewarded and symbolized

status of stratified pe’ilim, fewer of whom were conscripted due to

exciting challenges. To defend power, Admors suppressed critical thinkers

12 Beilin 1984: 171. Lev was a Gan Shmuel member and I published articles in

Bachativa. 13 Thus, journals banned my articles, and publishing houses banned my 1987

book.


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and radicals who tried to create new egalitarian solutions which would

have advanced the kibbutz cause and members’ trust, as they could have

become potential successors. Yaari’s and Hazan’s American cars were

integral to FOs’ growing oligarchic conformism which encouraged self-

serving motivation, autocracy, self-aggrandizement, secrecy and

hypocrisy, disrupting democracy and effectiveness of both kibbutzim and

FOs, and making relationships of FO heads, senior pe’ilim and patrons

with other members low-trust and coercive, as ethnographies will show.

However, before further analysis of oligarchization, I will clarify the

problematic concept of leadership, its interrelationships with trust, and

how highly trusted transformational leaders bring successes, such as

kibbutz movement’s.

CHAPTER 9

Trust, Leaders’ Morality and Performance

Charismatic or Transformational Leaders? Most kibbutz students ignore the leadership factor, while the rest view

kibbutz leaders as charismatic,1 but this is a cardinal mistake which stems

from confusion between charismatic and transformational leaders, a

distinction pointed out by Barbuto (1997) and Beyer (1999). Weber’s

(1947) charismatic leader emerges in a crisis situation as a savior with

assumed exceptional skills and talents, a ‘magical gift’, by which he offers

a radical solution to the seemingly insoluble plight of followers. He asks

followers to identify with him, to believe in his solution and obey his

orders without questioning their logic, which only he fully understands.2

In contrast, Burns’ (1978) transformational leader is viewed by followers

as being very talented, but not magically gifted. He motivates them

rationally to achieve higher moral aims, enhancing awareness of the

importance of the outcomes of radical solutions he proposes, which will

better serve common aims, needs and wishes. Followers are inspired to

make extra efforts by envisioning noble common goals which will bring

lofty achievements, by a leader who explicates new ways for their

fulfillment and models high commitment to required tasks. The leader also

encourages followers to follow suit and use their own faculties for

innovative problem solving that will promote these aims.3

In addition to confusing leadership literature, another reason for

kibbutz students’ mistake was the ubiquitous change of transformational

leaders into conservative rulers with organizational success and growth.

However, when self-serving conservatism causes failures and crises,

leaders may become charismatic saviors, inter alia since their most

talented and successful competitors has already left or turned to other

1 Argaman 1997: 216; Ben-Rafael 1997: 45; Rosolio 1999: 23; Izhar 2005. 2 Tucker 1970; Barbuto 1997. 3 Guest 1962; Bennis & Nanus 1985; Sieff 1988; DePree 1990; Graham 1991;

Sergiovanni 1992; Barbuto 1997; Bass & Steidlmeier 1999; O’Toole 1999;

Giuliani 2002; Goleman et al. 2002.

9. Trust, Leaders’ Morality and Performance

144

careers. This was true on both the national level with Admors’ turn to

leftist admiration of Stalin’s USSR in late 1930s (next chapter), and on

local level. For instance, Yehuda Levitov was a leader in the establishment

of Kvutzat Kiryat Anavim in 1920 near Jerusalem. He was soon elevated

in status by pe’ilut in the Hapo’el Hatzair party, representing it in Zionist

organizations and congresses, while the kvutza was suffering a crisis. He

was overthrown as he did not solve problems as anticipated, seemingly

due to pe’ilut, only to be quickly called back to the rescue when others did

even worse. He became an autocratic and charismatic leader, but since

autocracy conflicted with members’ democratic ideals and wishes and

brought only minor success, major conflicts erupted. As a result he

resigned, but was called again to the rescue, continuing until he left the

kvutza in 1937 to a Histadrut job.4

A third reason was the disregard of the shift toward autocracy in

Admors leadership. As the next chapter will show, up to mid-1930s,

Admors were transformational leaders, using radical solutions and

encouraging followers to do likewise, educating them rather than coercing

by political means. Being very critical of party politics, they did not erect

national parties and modeled ascetic, hard-working, public-servant

leadership so that in decision-making, Movement missions pre-empted

personal ones. Hever Hakvutzot leaders, on the other hand, became early

officials of the dominant Mapay party, rarely modeled such high-moral

leadership. Their kvutzot became conservative, trailed behind creative KM

and KA kibbutzim, and, despite affiliation to dominant Mapay, the Hever

remained small.5 Admors’ behavior embodied authenticity, credibility and

trustworthiness that encouraged high-trust in them and support of their

policies, but since the late 1930s they gradually entered dysfunction phase

(Hambrick & Fukutomi 1991). Their radical coping with problems

vanished as a result of success, growth and societal changes, and a new

power perpetuation strategy was adopted, which was a sterile leftist

admiration of the USSR, first by Tabenkin, and then Yaari. It took a

decade until all deputy leaders except one surrendered, a clear sign that the

two leaders were not as yet charismatic. This leftism subsequently led to

4 Based on Bar-El & Ben-Yehuda 1989; Ofaz 2001. 5 Ben-Avram 1976; Near 1997: 180; Kafkafi 1998: 29, 33-5, 44, 49; Goldstein

2003.


145

crises, and then Admors became charismatic saviors, as Iron Law means

(centralization, censoring publications, suppression of innovators and

democracy, promoting and privileging loyalists, shifting Movement goals

to serve their rule) prevented succession. Historians missed this decisive

change which sidetracked and pushed radical creative officers to exit or to

non-political careers, while Admors’ loyalists and barren leftists who

lacked critical thinking and creativity were promoted to dominance.

Members’ belief in their own powers and faculties was discouraged, and

the combining of the three strategies, pointed out in Chapter One, was

fatally harmed. However, a full explanation of this major change, its far

reaching effects, and its disregard by kibbutz students, requires explicating

the concept of leadership and its relation to trust and performance.

Trust and Organizational Performance Barbuto (1997: 691) points out that transformational leaders create

feelings of trust, loyalty and respect in followers. However, what was the

causal connection between leaders’ ascetic, high-moral dedication to

public goals and the success of trust- and democracy-based, egalitarian

kibbutzim? Can a servant leader’s high morality, through mutual high-

trust created with followers, explain the creation, continuity, renewal and

success of unique kibbutz cultures? Did high-trust relations explain the

exceptional output performance of early era kibbutzim which led to their

flourishing in a backward, desolate, harsh land ruled by a colonial power

whose policies were mostly unhelpful?

Trust has recently become a major concern of social scientists, but its

causal connection to organizational performance has remained unclear.

Hosmer (1995: 400) has concluded:

“If researchers can show empirically that there is a connection - through

trust - between the moral duty of officers and the output performance of

organizations, there would be an obvious impact upon philosophical ethics

and - I would like to think - upon organizational theory as well”.

Unfortunately, the above quote, like most of the literature, ignores low-

moral autocratic leaders who diminish both trust and performance with

growth and success: A large organization head becomes conservative,

promotes loyalists rather than critical thinkers and innovators who propose

solutions to problems, and diverts the organization’s real aims to those

which serve him personally rather than performance (Hirschman 1970,


146

1982). This tends to occur after a period of 6-11 years in office in large

firms (Hambrick & Fukutomi 1991), but the power of the leader prevents

replacement and this situation may continue for decades and even worsen,

as heirs are usually loyalists who lack critical thinking and therefore

continue his policies, but implement them poorly (Hirschman 1970).

Moreover, distrust emerges when power accumulation leads to leaders’

corruption. According to Scharfstein (1995), amorality is integral to

authority wielded in large entities, but even researchers who alluded to the

negative effects of oligarchic process, usually missed the amorality of

leaders, the distrust it caused and deteriorating performance, despite ample

literature revealing positive effects of high-trust relations on performance,

adaptability and innovation.6 High-trust relations have usually emerged

within distinctive organizational forms: Anglo-Saxon firms tend to be

low-trust and coercive, as opposed to higher trust, less coercive European

and Japanese firms, among others,7 but the theory of leading by high-trust

relations has remained obscure since the concept of leadership is unclear.

Leadership and Morality

For some authors, such as Grint (2000: 4), leadership is a collection of arts

not accessible to scientific approaches: “There are so many potentially

significant variables in establishing what counts as successful leadership

that it is practically impossible to construct an effective experiment that

might generate conclusive evidence…”. McGill and Slocum (1998) assert

that all those who add answers to today’s ‘leadership crisis’ help little in

resolving it, as they are not asking the right questions. For Sergiovanni

(1992: 2) “the topic of leadership represents one of social science’s

greatest disappointments”, while Barker (1997) asked: “How Can We

Train Leaders if We Do Not Know What Leadership Is?” Gini (1997)

cited authorities in the field who found that most leadership studies lack

clarity and consensus regarding the very meaning of the term, since

6 See Footnote No. 3 and: Deutsch 1962; Zand 1972; Rohlen 1974; Ouchi 1981;

Geneen 1984; Shapira 1987, 1995b; Harvey-Jones 1988; Ring & Van de Ven

1992; Sako 1992; Saxenian 1994; Wagner 1995; Lane & Bachmann 1996;

Lewicki & Bunker 1996; Kramer 1996; Mishra 1996. 7 Jay 1972; Dore 1973; Sieff 1988; Powell 1990; Rosner 1993; Semler 1993;

Saxenian 1994; Fukuyama 1995; Shapira 2001.


147

“Leadership is never tidy. Any attempt to describe a social process as

complex as leadership inevitably makes it seen more orderly than it is” (p.

323).

Summing up his moral leadership overview, Gini concluded:

“...leadership is a delicate combination of the process, the techniques of

leadership, the person, the specific talents and traits of a/the leader, and

the general requirement of the job itself” (italics original; p. 329). For

Barker (1997: 352) leadership is mainly “a process of change where the

ethics of individuals are integrated into the mores of a community”. Both

authors agree, however, that a future view of leadership is one in which

leaders’ ethics and morality are crucial components of a value-laden

process. This view follows Banfield (1958), Greenleaf (1977) and others

who see trust as the connecting link between organizational theory and

leaders’ ethics.8 For Hosmer (1995) trust is based on one’s expectation of

ethically justifiable behavior on the part of the other person(s); such

behavior consists of morally correct decisions and actions, in which the

interests of society take the degree of precedence that is right, just, and fair

over the interests of individuals (p. 399).

Hosmer hypothesized that trust-based leadership results in greater

cooperation and improved performance, but he did not explicate the exact

etiology. One reason is that defining organizational and societal interests

as well as what is right, just and fair depends on subjective views, which

mainly depend upon one’s position in these orders. Those at the top

usually hold very different views of their fair share in the wealth of the

firm than those at the bottom. Adam Smith saw the danger of capitalists

taking too much for themselves. Muller (1993: 7-8) found that in The

Theory of Moral Sentiments (1790), Smith sought to develop “the

propensity to orient one’s actions to the needs of others”. This propensity

is rarer when a capitalist owner coerces ignorant workers doing simple,

routine jobs that require little know-how and information processing,

while many unemployed are waiting ready to take their places. This

contrasts a situation in which markets cannot obtain true substitutes for

highly specialized operators, technicians and engineers who hold unique

8 Shapira 1987; Sieff 1988; Badaracco & Ellesworth 1989; DePree 1990; Graham

1991; Sergiovanni 1992; Kouzes & Posner 1993; Solomon 1993; Terry 1993;

Hosmer 1995; O’Toole 1999; Kane 2001; Jackson 2004.


148

specific knowledge and expertise, and require discretion to perform

successfully. In this case coercion is largely ineffective, managers tend to

control by consent and trust, or, at least, their image, and subordinates’

share of revenues is accordingly much larger.9

Barker (1997) proposed that modern leadership integrate the ethics of

individuals with the mores of an organization or community, but this

raises the question of whose interests these mores best serve. Is this

integration coercive or trustful due to much consensus on values, beliefs

and aims which enables a constructive, problem-solving attitude (Deutsch

1969), for overcoming different views concerning allocation of ends,

means and rewards? High trust level is hard to create when followers

come from a very different culture than leaders and hold different values,

beliefs, concepts and mores, so that even small differences concerning

aims, rights and duties may provoke destructive conflicts in which each

side tries to coerce the other.10 Karl Marx revealed the coercive nature of

lower strata cooperation in stratified societies: mores and norms favor the

interests of elites who shaped them. High-trust culture requires high-moral

leaders who overcome the tendency to prefer their own interests, who

shape mores and norms that are viewed as serving the interests of all justly

and fairly, due to authentic care for follower interests.11 The moral factor

has been best explicated recently by ex-New York Mayor Giuliani (2002),

but it was missed by Golemen et al. (2002), even though the details of

their analysis support the above views.

Leading by Consent and High-Trust Relations is

Problematic Fox (1974, 1985) pointed out that one can lead by either coercion, or by

consent and high-trust relations. The latter require wide consensus

concerning the legitimate interests of all involved, while legitimacy is

largely dependent on conformity to societal mores and values (Westphal et

al. 1997); thus, such relations are culturally-dependent. On the other hand,

9 Fox 1974, 1985; Burawoy 1985; Shapira 1987; Drucker 1992; Webb & Cleary

1994. 10 Deutsch 1969; DiMaggio & Powell 1983; Granovetter 1985; Jones et al. 1988;

Linstead et al. 1996; Kramer & Tyler 1996. 11 Sergiovanni 1992; Terry 1993; Brockner et al. 1997.


149

such relations are created between specific actors, like friendship. So they

are also personal and local, depending on specific behaviors of partners

which prove each other’s care for both common aims and partner’s

interests.12 Scientists who seek social order explanations in ‘post-

industrial’ societies use a very different concept of trust.13

Leading by consent and trust depends on both leaders’ and followers’

actions being grasped by the other side as indicating trust, since trust tends

to mutuality. For instance, secrecy of information signals distrust, as it

may be used by Ego to control Other, who then usually retaliates by

‘purifying’ information disclosed to Ego; without trust and consent,

suspicions and coercion govern, says Fox (1974). Managers who minimize

discretion of subordinates cause descending trust spirals: each side aims at

defending interests grasped as threatened by the other; Ego tries to curtail

Other’s discretion, this signals distrust, Other retaliates, ad infinitum. Most

decisive for trust is exposure of sensitive knowledge and information held

by leaders, which proves their trust of subordinates as it makes them

vulnerable to criticism. Such exposure may elicit reciprocation, provided

that the leader is grasped as competent, credible and authentic. In addition,

his/her use of managerial authority is not arbitrary and/or self-serving, but

rational and aimed at the common good; reciprocity inaugurates an

ascending trust spiral.14

Large hierarchic organizations, however, tend to elicit conflicting

views concerning ends, means, legitimate interests and share of rewards.

Social psychologist Kipnis (1976) found that a new superior tends to

negatively interpret behavior by unacquainted subordinates and to find

hints that they will not follow orders. He tends to use coercive means,

which elicit resistance that proves his suspicions; he further coerces and a

descending trust spiral emerges. Even sheer turnover affects trust

negatively by causing a lack of time for judging newcomers’

trustworthiness.15 I have discerned this in relations between short-term

12 Suttles 1970; Fox 1974; Gabarro 1987: 103-23; Shapira 1995b; Kramer et al.

1996. 13 Gambetta 1988; Misztal 1996; Govier 1997; Seligman 1997; Putnam 2000. 14 Deutsch 1958, 1962; Zand 1972; Fox 1974; Gabarro 1987: Chap. 5; Shapira

1987; Kouzes & Posner 1993; Terry 1993; Kramer & Tyler 1996: 170-5. 15 Axelrod 1984; Gabarro 1987; Whyte 1992; Lewicki & Bunker 1996.


150

pe’ilim and hired employees. As has been explained, most pe’ilim were

‘parachutists’ without local knowledge, information and expertise held by

workers and foremen. The latter waited to see the intentions of new

pe’ilim before supplying knowledge, while suspicions arose of pe’ilim

who preferred detachment from problematic tasks, prevented exposure of

their own ignorance in order to maintain authority by keeping “the cloak

of competence” (Edgerton 1967). But by detachment, these pe’ilim

preserved ignorance since their behavior raised the suspicions of

subordinates. Hence, they supplied only ‘refined’ information and

knowledge, while detachment prevented learning from self-experience, as

well. Inevitable wrong decisions caused failures that furthered distrust and

led to blaming others for one’s own mistakes.16 Moreover, superiors

postponed the firing of failing client pe’ilim until it could be presented as

normative rotatzia, defending common interest in masking failures and

advancing careers.17

Some ethnographers have untangled other self-serving behaviors by

managers, which ruined trust, such as complex transactions promoting

personal interests disguised as aiming at organizational interests, while

others have depicted managers who created trust by promoting common

aims.18 Ethnography is a problematic method when it comes to building a

theory; it tends to be limited by the perspective chosen and the specifics of

the organization studied.19 Ethnographers’ explanations also usually fail to

account for the effect of contexts on choices (Marx 1985: 145). For

instance, the managerial career advance strategy called ‘jumping’ by

Downs (1966), i.e. advance by changing firms, tends to elicit camouflages,

the masking of mistakes and failures, as well as blaming others for any

failures exposed, since maintaining a positive image is decisive for

successful ‘jumping’ rather than trust of role-partners.20 However, an

16 See Gouldner (1954: 85-7), Gabarro (1987: 109-11), and Shapira (1987,

1995b) for distrust due to incompetence, and Hughes (1958) for superiors

blaming subordinates for their own mistakes. 17 See quite similar cases in Kramer & Tyler 1996: 210-26, 339-50. 18 The former: Dalton 1959; Shapira 1987; Jackall 1988; Sitkin & Stickel 1996.

For the latter see sources cited in Footnotes 3 and 8. 19 Hammersley 1992; Martin 1992; Van Maanen 1995. 20 Hughes 1958; Dalton 1959; Lynn & Jay 1986; Shapira 1987; Jackall 1988.


151

ethnographer who finds such low-morality in a low-trust culture which

encourages ‘jumping’ by insecure employment, may explain it by citing

the specific personalities and circumstances involved. The cultural

etiology may be uncovered by comparing this context with one of secured

employment, high-trust relations and no ‘parachutings’, where such

behaviors are very rare, as Dore illustrated (1973) by comparing British

and Japanese firms.

The Cultural Context Perspective

‘Jumping’ is common in US low-trust firms.21 Prime bases for trust, such

as loyalty to others, openness, friendliness, honesty and sincerity are

usually discouraged in these settings, and success in career terms is mostly

achieved by the less effective managers, the better ‘jumpers’ and maskers

of mistakes and failures.22 Low-trust cultures have profound effects on

leadership, but sociologists have missed them due to ignoring

organizational anthropology and by the use of an institutional approach

which was too static and did not explain the creation, reproduction and

change of cultures.23 This explains how they have missed the decisiveness

of trust, although in Gouldner’s (1954, 1955) classic, coercive efforts of a

‘parachutist’ ruined trust and led to bitter conflicts and a long ‘wildcat’

strike, while Guest’s (1962) classic explained an outsider’s successful

turnaround of a ailing plant by the creation of high-trust climate.

Ethnographers Dore (1973), Rohlen (1974) and Ouchi (1981),

subsequently described how high-trust cultures explained Japan’s

industrial success, and many authors described Western firm successes

due to high-trust organizational cultures (footnotes 6 & 8).

The cultural perspective is crucial for the explanation of trust-based

leadership due to the impact of cultural context, while ethnographies are

essential due to the personal and local nature of trust, its dependency on

consensus about ends, means and allocation of duties and rewards. In

order to be trusted, a leader must be grasped as caring not only for the

legitimate interests of each individual follower and his category, but he

21 See also Martin & Strauss 1959; Levenson 1961; Gabarro 1987; Campbell et

al. 1995. 22 Hughes 1958; Dalton 1959; Maccoby 1976; Luthans 1988; Fukuyama 1995. 23 Stern & Barley 1996; Barley & Tolbert 1997; Bate 1997.


152

also has to be viewed as generally highly moral, as one in whose

“decisions and actions… interests of society take the degree of precedence

that is right, just and fair” over his own interests, as Hosmer (1995: 339)

has put it. On the one hand, it is the specific situation that determines what

is right, just and fair to anticipate from a leader and whether he fulfills

those moral duties, but, on the other, it depends upon the context, and

within this context, on what Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) call the

gravity of the field of which an organization is a part.

The gravity of low-trust capitalist fields limits leaders’ moral duties and

subordinates’ moral involvement. FOs were embedded in both low-trust

Israeli culture, and the high-trust culture of kibbutzim; thus, many pe’ilim

legitimately limited their moral involvement and care for subordinates’

interests, causing distrust which was enhanced by both detachment of

‘pure parachutists’, and oligarchization due to continuity in jobs. Using

what Presthus (1964) called “an upward looking posture”, many

dysfunctioning pe’ilim changed loyalties in time and managed to stay

despite rotatzia of superiors, while Admors and many FO heads also

continued despite dysfunctioning, a good reason for mistrust. Their

negative extra continuity was rarely criticized publicly, only a few

questioned its morality: In the 1960s young KA radicals called for

Admors’ rotatzia, and in the 1980s continuity of Milu’ot’s Fridman was

criticized.24

Rotatzia’s Contrast with Highly Trusted Leadership

High-trust cultures require consensus on both moral principles and their

translation into norms, sanctions, and rewards that care for the legitimate

interests, aims and wishes of both leaders and followers. Inevitable

conflicts of interests may be overcome by such consensus, but trusted

leader efforts are required to maintain consensus due to a culture’s

‘fussiness’, irregularities and incoherences, as cultures “are the product of

practices that can fulfill their practical functions only in so far as they

implement... principles that are not only coherent... and compatible with

the objective conditions - but also practical,... easy to master and use”.25 In

24 In the 1960s, I heard these calls at KA conferences; In the 1980s: Chisik 1982,

1983; Harpazi 1982; Lifshitz 1983, 1986c. 25 Bourdieu 1990: 86. Swidler (2001) support this assertion.


153

a democratic culture, an incoherent but practical norm such as rotatzia

tended to ruin trust and motivation, cause injustices, unnecessary turnover

and brain-drain; if it was at all coherent with high-trust, democratic

culture, it was only at the level of foremen in charge of routine jobs which

required little specialization and could be allocated to almost anyone. For

instance, dining hall work where the routines were simple and widely

known, so that a foreman’s role required few qualifications and rotatzia

did little harm. However, even in early days of agriculture, rotatzia no

longer fitted branch management, as shown in Ein Harod’s orchard branch

of the 1920s-1930s, as depicted by Maletz (1983[1945]): Complex

decisions required agronomic knowledge held mainly by its head. As the

branch grew, another member took on the task of organizing work of 12-

15 permanent members and many seasonal workers, and dealing with the

kibbutz work organizer (sadran avoda). Others were uninvolved in

decision-making, did not learn lessons of either professional or

organizational experience, and could not succeed the two without great

loss of proficiency. Only deliberate efforts by the two to involve others in

deliberations could coach some to be proper successors whom workers

would trust. Rotatzia even less suited succession in mechanized,

sophisticated and innovative production branches of later eras, nor did it

fit succession in the management of a large kibbutz of these eras, a

position requiring much specialization and expertise in order to find just,

fair, efficient and effective solutions. Oplatka (2002) found that capability

for creative innovation in managing a primary school of 500-700 pupils

and 30-40 teachers required both considerable prior teaching experience

and eight to ten years on the job, while a four-generational community of

600-900 inhabitants, with advanced industry and agriculture, was much

more complex than that. This explained why rotatzia was adopted quite

late by successful kibbutzim, in the 1950s, and some of the most complex

jobs, such as heading their large factories, were mostly exempted.26

However, rotatzia’s main defect is ruining trust. Trust creation requires

time and motivation to cooperate, but rotatzia diminishes both (Axelrod

1984). It makes officers formally responsible, but most power is held

behind and/or before the scenes by irreplaceable patrons and power elites;

thus, authority is differentiated from responsibility. The power-holders

26 Topel 1990; also Chap. 6, 12, 15 and 16.


154

specialize in managing and leading, gain life-long power continuity, and

patronize short-term officers whose jobs are degraded into stepping stones

to power elite jobs. I will show that power continuity, including by the use

of circulation, turned high-moral, public-servant radical leaders, into low-

moral, self-serving conservative oligarchs who could barely be trusted to

care for the common good.

As mentioned, wherever rotatzia was used, high-moral, highly trusted

leaders who brought successes rarely appeared.27 The exception that

supports this assertion is that of Pericles (444-429 B.C.) who brought

Athens its Golden Era: he was a strategos (army commander), the only

type of officer allowed consecutive yearly terms due to required

proficiency, was re-elected fourteen times until his death, and continuity

thanks to high-trust, made his exceptional achievements possible.28 The

US presidential norm is semi-rotatzia, two four-year terms. It encourages

high-moral, servant leaders to a greater extent than rotatzia, since a second

term asks for voters’ trust. However, trust was only one of the reasons for

a re-election of a president; others were power and intangible capitals

gained in office, which were even more decisive in the incoherent practice

of oligarchic continuity of senators, congressmen and top-level officials,

such as FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, who largely controlled decisions by

short-term presidents (Drury 1959). This defect was even more

conspicuous in the rotatzia of Latin America’s presidents who were

allowed only one term, while veteran tenured congressmen and other

politicians largely ruled polities behind the scenes.29

Self-serving, low-moral oligarchic power elites who rule behind the

scenes ruin trust, as they are irreplaceable in spite of their breaching

confidence by obstructing problem-solving efforts by radical servant

officers, who are then replaced. This has been illustrated in the vein of

comic satire by Lynn and Jay in their BBC television series “Yes,

Minister”, and then “Yes, Prime Minister” (1986). However, since the

1940s, the kibbutz field, has resembled low-trust Imperial China led by

autocratic Emperors, with lowest imperial officials, district magistrates,

27 In addition to next footnotes see: Shapira 1978/9, 1987, 1995a; Gabriel &

Savage 1981; Segal 1981; Vald 1987; Henderson 1990; Mainwaring 1990. 28 Burn 1964; Bowara 1971; Fuks 1976. 29 Davis 1958; Sanders 1989; Linz 1990; Mainwaring 1990; Tzur 1992.


155

controlled by rotatzia (three years) and deliberately ‘parachuted’ far away

from home villages. These magistrates were largely at the mercy of local

power elites, mostly led by ex-magistrates who used illegal fortunes made

in past offices in illegal ways, to control their home regions.30 Even high-

moral leaders of Kibbutz Kochav who had engendered trust and creativity

that brought success (Chap. 16-17), often curbed members trust as they

were non-elected patrons whose conservative dominance in many cases

hindered public aims. Trust created during their radical past had blinded

many members to their negative roles later on, and their vast power and

intangible capitals due to FO jobs were major obstacles for replacing

rotatzia by a democratic leadership succession system.

Leading by trust is especially problematic in a large organization where

participants rarely meet the leader personally and may scarcely judge

whose aims he is serving. Trust in him is mediated through a long chain of

command manned by loyalists who help mask self-serving deeds.31 Even

if some critically minded officers rebel and expose these deeds, this will

cause their dismissal or demotion and exit, but only rarely the fall of an

autocratic leader. A rare case of such a fall was Tnuva’s Landesman,

whose public denial of illicit use of silicon in milk processing, was

exposed a bluff by a dairy security officer when fired, holding non-

reputable tape cassettes of the deed.32 Kibbutz movement leaders were

supposedly subject locally to members’ social control, but the heading of

large FOs shielded them by hierarchies of loyal pe’ilim, by FO

headquarters located away from kibbutzim, and thus, most of their actions

were shielded, as well. This enabled masking of the change to self-serving

accumulation of power and capitals which sanctioned forsaking leadership

by trust and consent in favor of coercive strategies and tactics, maintaining

an image of success that legitimized continuity despite abandonment of

main missions. The three organizational levels, kibbutz, FOs and national

organizations, each with a variety of cultures, different gravity, and many

factors involved, made the field so complex and intertwined that both

30 Chang 1955; Chow 1966; Folsom 1968; Watt 1972. 31 Hughes 1958; Dalton 1959. 32 Jackall 1988: 146. On the fall of Tnuva’s Landesman: Halevi 1995; even his

fall was partial: he remained an executive in charge of Tnuva’s real estate:

Manor 1998.


156

members and researchers failed to grasp the far-reaching consequences of

its oligarchization and how it led the kibbutz movement astray.

CHAPTER 10

Transformational Leaders Became Self-Serving

Conservatives, Autocratic Leftists

In a social movement aimed at the promotion of socialism by its own

communes as models of democratic and egalitarian ethos, it is not simple

to explain the ruination of this ethos by its prime leaders who were, at

first, highly committed, zealous pioneers who paid heavy personal prices

to succeed in the mission of turning their lofty moral ideals into social

reality. Within CKP the incongruity of the early high-moral,

transformational leaders with their later self-serving conservatism, was not

problematized and was overlooked by ignoring FOs. Even if low-moral

deeds of pe’ilim were exposed, they were not suspected to be the outcome

of a cultural change caused by the decay of past radical, high-moral

leadership. Even the few critical ethnographers who exposed the decay of

kibbutz cultures due to low morality of local leaders, missed the context of

their behavior, namely the Admors who had become low-moral, self-

serving conservatives from the 1940s, and their numerous loyal clients

who followed them.1

Turner (1983) has suggested that, over time, a large and influential

social movement changes itself by the societal changes it causes. Kibbutz

leaders led the cutting edge of the powers who changed Jewish fate. Their

movement grew enormously due to success in the promotion of major

societal aims and this changed the movement completely. The Admors

who had commenced with a few poor communes and several hundred

people, after twelve years at the helm headed two large federations, each

with dozens of prosperous communes, populated by many thousands of

people, organized by other FOs, educating tens of thousands of youth in

hundreds of branches throughout Europe for communal pioneering, and

had representation in all executives of Yishuv’s organs. Explaining the

effects of this radical change requires, in addition to theories of social

1 See ethnographies: Kressel 1971, 1974, 1983; Fadida 1972; Topel 1979; Bowes

1989.

10. The Metamorphosis of Transformational Leaders

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movements, large organizations and power elites, leadership theory, as

well. For instance, Kets de Vries’ (1993) theory of power’s negative

metamorphic effects is required to explain Yaari’s hubris, stating: “I,

Me’ir, am Mapam. I am Hashomer Hatzair...”.

Another reason for missing the oligarchic change was the growing

differentiation within FOs and kibbutzim. In each category, some units

mainly imitated low-trust capitalist firms, some were conservatives with

norms of the early days, and many vacillated between the two or adopted

innovations of creative kibbutzim. Thus, a kibbutz might emulate the

innovations of others for some problems, might use capitalist practices for

others, and might continue old solutions for still others. FOs also mixed

kibbutz and capitalist practices; thus, it was quite hard to discern the

decisiveness of the oligarchic change and connect it etiologically to the

emergence of capitalist practices.

Early Era of High-Moral, Servant Radical Admors The first period, up to mid-1930s, was dominated by high-moral, public

servant Admors who enhanced trust and solidarity, the opposite of self-

serving officers depicted by Banfield (1958). Take, for example, Hazan’s

marriage to Berta, a young widow with a young daughter who came to

Palestine after working as a kindergarten teacher in Vienna. At first, she

failed to adapt to the harsh life of Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’emek and to

Hazan’s total devotion to the KA’s cause, and returned to Europe. It took

six years of intermittent relations until she agreed that his roles as a

kibbutz member and KA leader would receive priority over any personal

interest in her and in family life. This was made especially clear in early

1932: He abruptly left both her and his academic studies in Vienna within

six months, although these studies had been planned for a full year, and he

was very happy with both. He left when Yaari called for his help in

solving a crisis in the KA. He returned home, was chosen KA general

secretary and worked 16-18 hours a day. His headquarters was a one-room

hut in Mishmar Ha’emek, with one aide. He did much of the office work

himself, trying to turn a loose association of poor kibbutzim into an

organized movement. After a day’s work in the office, he usually traveled

by public transportation to visit a kibbutz, participated in its secretariat

meeting and later lectured for hours to its members, retired at midnight


159

and early in the morning traveled back to Mishmar Ha’emek, to repeat this

schedule. No less intensive was his work while on trips to Europe.2

During this era, he and other leaders backed many radical, original

innovators which served kibbutz aims. For instance, the ‘Stockade and

Tower’ system was invented by Shlomo Gur in 1937, during the second

year of the rebellion by Palestinian Arabs against the Jewish settlement

project. Gur was a member of KA’s group of youngsters situated in

Kibbutz Beit Alfa and who were planning to found their own kibbutz in a

dangerous nearby location, where the Jewish National Fund had bought a

piece of land surrounded by Arab villages. Gur’s system enabled the

renewal of the Jewish settlement project through the establishment of a

fortified settlement within one day. Fifty-five years later, Gur clearly

remembered the support of Hazan and Hagana leaders for developing his

idea into a workable system.3 Three dozen kibbutzim, as well as 15

moshavim, were subsequently established this way.

Another example can be found in a different sector: The radical poet

Avraham Shlonski and his Tel Aviv-based literary group opposed the

literary establishment headed by H.N. Bialik in the 1930s. They were

radical liberals, quite critical of Marxism and the Soviet regime, who

needed literary jobs and help in publishing their works. Although KA

leaders viewed themselves as Marxists, in 1939 they established an

alliance with this radical group, gave them jobs in their newly established

weekly newspaper and publishing house, and published their works.

Despite the ideological gap, and Shlonski’s abstention from joining KA’s

Socialist League and then Hashomer Hatzair party, the alliance continued

for decades and greatly benefited the KA and its national party (Shapira

1974).

In 1942, Tabenkin and the KM’s leadership created the working army,

Palmach (acronym of commando companies), which turned a small,

under-trained and under-equipped militia numbering a few hundred, into

an army of some 2500 troops and a similar reserve of ex-soldiers by

military training combined with work in kibbutzim. The Palmach won

2 Tzachor 1997: 137-45; Likewise was KM’s Ben-Aharon (Gvirtz 2003). 3 Hagana was Yishuv’s clandestine defense organization under Jewish Agency

control. On these problems in adjacent Beit Alfa from 1922 to 1948, see

Goldenberg 1965.


160

almost all of the victories in the first stage of Israel’s War of Independence

and was the backbone of many of the later ones.4 Tabenkin proposed this

innovative solution when he realized that, without such an army, Jewish

independence could not be attained, but no solution for financing an armed

force was found by the Hagana. The proposal was adopted by KM pe’ilim,

not only those who had led the armed struggle with the Arabs from 1936,

but also those in charge of economic decisions and finances. These pe’ilim

joined forces in the effort to convince dozens of chief officers of

kibbutzim to finance this army with what little money they had. Thus, an

abstemious, egalitarian army was created, whose culture imitated that of

the kibbutzim in which it based its makeshift camps, hidden arms caches

and underground arms production plants.5

Another KM innovation was the Mosad Le’alia Bet (Literally: “The

Institute for Ascent B”. Ascent meant Jewish coming to Palestine, while B

meant illegal), aimed at overcoming British restrictions on inserting Jews

fleeing from Hitler’s Germany and its neighbors. The Mosad was

pioneered in 1934 by KM emissaries in the Hachalutz youth movement in

Europe. A number of Mapay leaders supported it, and, after further

limitation of immigration by the British in 1939, the Jewish Agency

adopted it as a wing of Hagana. However, like the Palmach, it remained

largely a KM pe’ilim-led organization, financed by a variety of fund-

raising efforts of both Hagana and Movements’ emissaries abroad.6

Admors Ended Creativity and Turned to Sterile Leftism No such creativity as previously described could be discerned after 1942,

when Tabenkin had been at the helm for 19 years and Yaari for 15. Signs

of growing autocracy were centralization of KM and KA control (Chap.

5), office continuity of Admors’ deputies and other senior pe’ilim, and a

few privileges. Involvement in national politics was enhanced by

establishing affiliated parties in 1944 and 1946 respectively, which united

in January 1948 into Mapam which aligned itself with Stalin’s USSR,

ignoring the horrors of his dictatorship, adopting radical Marxism which

4 Kanari 1989: 365-9; Tzachor 1997: 188. 5 Kanari 1989: Chap. 3. The KA joined the effort only a half year later (Carmel

1986). 6 Avneri 1985; Kanari 1989: 239; Ofer 1990; Near 1992: 333.


161

legitimized it known as leftism, and evading, denying and concealing its

contradiction to kibbutz ethos and culture (Kafkafi 1992). This soon

caused the kibbutz movement major crises, but when crises overcame due

to others’ efforts, Admors became charismatic saviors and continued as

seemingly indispensable leaders.

Revolutionary ideology is a major tool of social movements against

hegemonic cultures (Gramsci 1971; Jasper 1997), but leftist reverence of

the USSR was irrational for kibbutz aims and did not include any new

element that advanced its cause. On the other hand, it discouraged political

support by most Jews who rejected Communism and feared the USSR in

light of decades of anti-Zionism and repression of Jewry by Stalin’s

totalitarian, brutal rule.7 Leftism posed a professed radical solution, a far-

away mysterious idol whose true nature was veiled by secrecy and

disinformation. The Admors were conscious of this, knowing well that

nothing had changed for the better since the showcase trials and bloody

purges of the 1930s, which only Tabenkin had not criticized when

embracing leftism in 1937 (see below).8 This idol was supposed to bring

the final victory of socialism in an unknown future, but this ‘socialism’

was repressive with a ‘justice’ that cost the lives of millions and a cult of

personal adoration of a dictatorial leader, which was anathema to kibbutz

ethos. Yaari himself criticized the USSR as “Machiavellian” in 1940.9

Though he and Tabenkin did not know the whole truth regarding Stalin’s

murderous regime, unlike ordinary members, they had credible

information concerning it from many sources, including their own

disciples who came from the USSR in 1942, and in 1945 from ex-partisan

leaders who had experienced years of brutal Soviet rule in the forests of

eastern Europe.10

In the Early Days Admors Contained Leftism

The KM and KA had used Marxist revolutionary ideas since early days,

but Near (1997: 69) found their attitude to the USSR up to 1943 to be

“independent and critical”. He and others have found that Admors Marxist

7 Kafakfi 1992: Chap. 8-10; Near 1992: 365, 1997: 329; Tzachor 1997: 188-204. 8 Kafkafi 1992: Chap. 2; Near 1997: 69; Kanari 2003: 471-5. 9 Zait 1993: 121; Kanari 2003: 478. 10 Zait 1993: 203-8; Near 1997: 70; Porat 2000: 171-234.


162

rhetoric was very calculated at first, aimed at defending the political

independence of KM and KA against Mapay efforts to unify the kibbutz

movement under its leadership to bolster its own dominance. However, in

this way, they caused dualism which was hard to maintain, using

revolutionary rhetoric but participating in a democratic Zionist project.11

Until 1933, Admors had been struggling against internal leftist factions

which revered the USSR and criticized Zionism. Tabenkin and other

would-be KM leaders fought against the leftism of some of Gdud

Havoda’s leaders headed by Elkind, until the latter left in 1927 and

returned to the USSR (Near 1992: 140-3). The Warsaw branch of

Hashomer Hatzair in 1925 expelled a group of leftist graduates who

admired the USSR (Zertal 1980: 168-73), and, in 1932-3, a few younger

KA kibbutzim were leftist, objecting to the Histdarut’s struggle for the

introduction of Jewish Labor into Jewish-owned citrus orchards in place of

Arab laborers, arguing that it violated worker solidarity. Hazan criticized

leftist leaders of these kibbutzim, especially Oren and Riftin, and accused

them of involving the KA in excessive political troubles (Tzachor 1997:

153-8). Only after a long struggle and the departure of many leftists, did

this conflict subside.12 However, leftist leaders stayed and promoted to

pe’ilut under Yaari’s auspices, using them against Hazan’s seemingly

rightist protégés.

Admors’ Leftist Turn 1937-9, and Problematic Slide

Explanation

Both Tabenkin and Yaari, each in his Movement, used leftists for power

enhancement against rival leaders who leaned towards Mapay’s prime

leader Ben-Gurion, but until 1937 the two remained quite critical of the

USSR. However, Tabenkin began to support leftism in 1937 by organizing

a Leninist-type cadre seminar in which USSR’s showcase trails were

vindicated (Kafkafi 1992: 29-31). In 1939, most KM and KA leaders

criticized the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the cynical move by which Stalin

turned the German war machine westward, but Tabenkin and his disciple

Ben-Aharon supported it, as did Yaari and KA leftists. Hazan led critics,

11 Kanari 1989: Chap. 5; Kafkafi 1992: Chap. 5, 8. Near 1997: 65-74, 329;

Tzachor 1997: 155-63. 12 Kafkafi 1992: 11; Near 1992: 142-3; Zait 1993: 23.


163

but after a long debate Yaari prevailed. However, in order to keep Hazan

and other critics on his side, the next year, when the USSR attacked

Finland, Yaari criticized it as Machiavellian.13

Both Tabenkin and Yaari needed a decade of efforts and a radical

change of USSR policy to convince other leaders who were critical of

Stalin’s regime. Only after the USSR had supported the UN resolution

calling for the establishment of Jewish and Arab states in Palestine in

1947, did KM and KA stop the careful distinction between the USSR’s

Communism and kibbutz’s, ignored the former’s totalitarian nature, and

denied the imperialist nature of its control of Eastern Europe states. They

established Mapam which aligned itself with the Soviet Bloc’s struggle

against “reactionary capitalist-imperialist powers”, and leftist leaders,

hitherto restrained, became Mapam’s main speakers and then its

negotiators with Ben-Gurion for the formation of a government coalition

(see below). The negotiations failed and Mapam became the opposition

for six years.14

The leftist shift seemingly accorded a slide explanation: At first was

introduced revolutionary rhetoric that resembled the USSR’s and served

critique of Mapay; then a positive attitude emerged due to USSR’s

victories over Hitler, then were found KM’s and KA’s political parties

(1944, 1946) which used leftist arguments against Mapay, and, finally,

leftism was formally adopted after the USSR had shifted to support

Zionist aims. But the slide explanation has a major drawback: it cannot

explain what had happened to the faculties of such experienced and

talented leaders who had suppressed USSR’s admirers and had managed

their policies away from the trap of revolutionary rhetoric leading to

admiration of a dictatorial regime, contrary to kibbutz ethos and culture.

Indeed, the dualism was not easily maintained and the use of ideas and

practices taken from the USSR’s arsenal created the grounds for the shift,

but the fact was that, up to 1948, cooperation in the Zionist project was not

harmed. As experienced leaders, Admors knew well how to differentiate

rhetoric from deeds and remained tightly aligned to the democratic Zionist

movement, for instance, suppressing Palmach commanders who tried

disobey some decisions by the Yishuv political leaders (Kafkafi 1992: 82).

13 Zait 1993: 121; Tzachor 1997: 157-64. 14 Kafkafi 1992: 91-3; Zait 1993: Chap. 12; Tzachor 1997: 157-64, 188-96.


164

Slide cannot explain why Admors aligned themselves to Stalin’s USSR,

knowing it would isolate their Movements in Jewish society and enhance a

negative attitude to the kibbutzim, as indeed it did. There must be a deeper

reason for such a shift by such able leaders. The slide explanation does not

point to any motive or interest for the change. In contrast, it is explicable

as a power perpetuation strategy, in accord with the Michels’s

(1959[1915]) Iron Law, in view of their growing predicament due to

political inefficacy both in the national arena and in the internal

Movement leadership arena.

Admors’ Growing Predicament Due to Political Inefficacy

While kibbutz pioneering succeeded in the 1930, Admors were troubled

by a loss of political power in contrast to dominant Mapay. They had no

political success after 1935, when KM and KA led the defeat of Ben-

Gurion’s pact with Jabotinski in a Histadrut referendum.15 Ben-Gurion,

however, soon enhanced his power, was chosen head of the Jewish

Agency, while Ben-Gurion’s main partner Berl Katzenelson began a

campaign to unify the kibbutz Movements. The wide support this gained

among ordinary KM members caused Tabenkin apprehension: The only

possibility was a unification with Hever Hakvutzot, given KA’s opposition

to the idea, and this would turn his supporters into a minority against Ben-

Gurion and Berl supporters, and might curtail his power.16 In the 1936 KM

conference in Kibbutz Yagur, the secretariat, consisting of Tabenkin

loyalists, failed to prevent discussion of the unification proposal and was

astonished that almost one-third of the delegates supported it (Near 1992:

349). After the conference, opposition to KM’s secretariat grew, and

Kafkafi (1992: 40) has explained Tabenkin’s turn to leftism as an effort to

suppress opposition by legitimizing centralization of KM control and

making unification with the Hever, the most decentralized Movement,

impossible.17

Tabenkin’s leadership was also attacked by two major leaders, Gershon

15 Near 1997: 329; On Mapay’s dominance: Shapira, Y. 1993. 16 Zait 1993: 44-51; Kanari 2003: Chap. 21. Everyone called Berl Katzenlson by

his first name. 17 Landshut 2000[1944]: 80-2; Near 1992: 348; Baruch Kanari, personal

communication.


165

Ostrovski and Eliezer Livenshtein who successfully led KM emissaries in

Poland and Germany respectively. They accused him of authoritarian rule,

of violating egalitarianism by KM functionaries remaining in jobs for long

and never coming back to the ranks, and of sparing his son manual work

by pressing Ein Harod to make him a teacher (Kanari 2003: 389-91).

Kanari explained Ostrovski’s critique as frustration: on returning from

Poland he had “failed to find his place in [Kibbutz] Ein Harod” (p. 389).

In reality, Ostrovski was demoted: in Poland he had led the success of the

huge pioneering movement, Hachalutz, which was the prime factor in

KM’s doubling its size within two years (p. 395). With this record, he

could have expected another high office, as was usual in the KM, but

instead he was sent to the ranks since his critique joined Livenshtein’s and

damaged Tabenkin’s power by exposing non-democratic and non-

egalitarian rule.

In 1937, Tabenkin widened the rift with Ben-Gurion and Berl by

opposing their support for the British plan of Palestine’s partition into

Jewish and Arab states, which even his staunch loyalist Ben-Aharon

concluded was the only feasible political solution.18 In 1939, he and Ben-

Aharon furthered leftism by supporting the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,

opposed by all other KM leaders (Kafkafi 1992: 38-9). The row with Ben-

Gurion and Berl led to the Mapay split in 1942. The KM established its

own Le’ahdut Ha’avoda party, and its youth movement became leftist and

split, as well.19 In 1945 Tabenkin furthered leftism, using a Leninist-type

cadre seminar whose motto was a non-rational view: Belief in the future of

radical socialism was more important than truth. The attitude towards

Stalin’s inhumane, dictatorial regime was uncritical, and the tacit message

was that Tabenkin’s rule deserved the same attitude, another sign of his

predicament (Kafakfi 1992: 66-75).

Yaari’s predicament was double, on the outside and inside. On the

outside, KA Admors were marginal in top level Yishuv deliberations, and

the Arab uprising of 1936-9 made their preaching cooperation with Arabs

irrelevant.20 On the inside, he was menaced by both his inability to solve

major problems facing kibbutzim (see below), and by Hazan’s

18 Gvirtz 2003: 181; Kanari 2003: 532. 19 Kafakfi 1992: 61-75; Near 1992: 353-6; Izhar 2005. 20 Zait 1993: 102-8. Tzachor 1997: 156-7.


166

ascendance. Hazan as General Secretary of the KA since 1932 proved

himself as an excellent organizer and propagandist of KA ideas (Tzachor

1997). In 1936, Yaari defeated Hazan’s objection to aligning the KA with

its urban supporters, who established ‘The Socialist League’. But soon

afterwards Hazan almost equalized status with Yaari, as he supported a

harder line toward Arab terror, and supported the use of the ‘Stockade and

Tower’ settlement strategy which successfully coped with it. In addition

he led KA opposition to Mapay using the idea of a bi-national state in

Palestine, proposed by Mishamr Ha’emek member Bentov.21 Yaari took

back the lead in the struggle against Mapay by supporting the Molotov-

Ribbentrop Pact which Mapay had denounced, and proved his supremacy

by defeating the critique of the Pact by Hazan and others (Zait 1993: 120-

1).

In 1940, Yaari tactically retreated (“USSR was Machiavellian”),

appeasing Hazan and other opponents, but in 1942, Hazan failed to

prevent adoption of Yaari’s proposal to establish a party (Zait 1993: 79).

Moreover, Yaari wrote a leftist ideological book which impelled Hazan to

quickly write a competing, non-leftist book, which failed (Tzahor 1997:

167-8; Zait 1993: 122). Only then, after the Stalingrad victory, did Hazan

join USSR reverence. However, the main reason for this was the repeated

failures to oppose Yaari: in 1936 (the ‘league’), in 1939 (Molotov-

Ribbentrop), in 1942 (a party), and in 1943 (the book). Yaari proved

unbeatable and Hazan surrendered; further conflict with Yaari would have

endangered his status as Yaari’s co-leader.

Admors Dysfunction amid Fast Growth and Mounting

Problems Both Tabenkin and Yaari used leftism to bolster power and subdue

competing leaders. Their weakness, however, was not only an outcome of

political inefficacy, but an even more significant dysfunctioning as kibbutz

leaders who evaded mounting problems.

One main reason for many problems was the enormous growth and its

ramifications in the kibbutz system during the 1930s. During the previous

two decades, growth had been very slow; in 1927, when the KM and KA

were founded, there were only 17 kibbutzim with 1453 members, but half

21 Interview with Shlomo Gur, Tel Aviv, 1992; Tzachor 1997: 157-64.


167

of the members were in the three largest ones; most others were small,

poor and economically struggling. In 1926, a team of agricultural experts

was brought from the US by the Zionist management to study whether

further financing of kibbutzim was worthwhile; they found that all

kibbutzim except for three were not viable, and recommended minimizing

help for them.22 The main reasons for lack of viability were backward

technologies, mostly imitating local Arabs, and low production: a local

cow yielded only 25-30% of the production of a Dutch cow, and wheat

produce was 30-40% of European standard. Second-hand machinery, lack

of spare parts, and inexpert mechanics hampered mechanization, while

economic recession and the policy of dumping of imported agricultural

products without any duty, curbed profitability.23

In contrast, during the 1930s, all veteran kibbutzim became profitable

as a result of both production improvements and Yishuv prosperity; real

disposable income grew by 12% annually, 54 new kibbutzim were

established, population reached 24,100, and the growth rate was three

times that of the Yishuv. KA pe’ilim growth was exceptional: in contrast

to two in 1932, there were 59 in 1939; KA had 33 emissaries abroad, and

26 pe’ilim in other FOs and national organs.24 KM’s youth movement in

Europe, Hachalutz, grew to 50,000 members in 720 branches and 220

training farms in 1933 (Kanari 1989: 64). Fast growth and development

characterized other FOs, though the exact extent is unknown as a result of

their evasion by researchers. The Mashbir Merkazi, Tnuva and

Agricultural Center grew in accord with the growth of kibbutzim and

moshavim, and new FOs were founded, including Movement Funds, KA’s

regional boarding high school, KM’s and KA’s publishing houses, weekly

newspapers, quarterly journals and others. Successes also enabled the

kibbutzim to mobilize 13% of their members for the war effort, in contrast

to 5% of the rest of the Yishuv.25

FO growth required new solutions if pe’ilim as kibbutz elite had to

model kibbutz ethos and culture and curb the oligarchic and conservative

22 Landshut 2000[1944]: 61; Ben-Avram 1976: 28-9. 23 Near 1992: Chap. 4; Goldstein 2003: 118; various sources used in my Shenhabi

life story study. 24 Barkai 1977: 146; Near 1992: 336-45; Tzachor 1997: 161. 25 Shapira 1974; Kanari 1989, 2003; Sack 1996; Near 1997: 21.


168

influence of Histadrut and other outside bureaucracies, but no such

solutions were created. At first, Movement headquarters were situated in

Admors’ kibbutzim together with auxiliary FOs, such as publishing

houses, printing presses, KM’s seminar center, and Fund.26 Growth of

both KM and KA to dozens of pe’ilim required new solutions which

would adapt FOs to kibbutz ethos and culture, as accomplished with

Palmach platoons a few years later. Alas, instead, headquarters were

moved to Tel Aviv, new FOs were based in urban centers, largely

adopting their cultures, with additional problems caused by circulation and

‘parachutings’, and became capitalist Trojan Horses inside the kibbutz

field, as depicted.

A major problem was the decline of democracy in large kibbutzim.

According to Argaman (1997), General Assembly functioning in four

veteran kibbutzim which included Yaari’s Merhavia and Tabenkin’s Ein

Harod, was in a process of decline as early as the 1930s. Only in Hazan’s

Mishmar Ha’emek was this not true. Neither Tabenkin, nor Yaari coped

with this decline. Worse still, Admors’ power enhancement efforts, such

as centralization of Movement control (Chap. 5), contributed much to this

decline, as ethnographies below will corroborate. Sociologist Uri Merri of

Kibbutz Maagan Michael depicted this decline: “As the kibbutz expands,

its members lose confidence in their ability to control their own destinies,

…the size of the kibbutz contributes to members’ sense of impotence”

(Niv & Bar-On 1992: 52).

As Chapter 8 made clear, and ethnographies of kibbutzim will further

show, a third major problem was growing material inequality as FOs

furnished pe’ilim with amenities which enhanced their standard of living.

Moreover, outside sources did the same for some other members, such as

the salaries of the thousands who served in the British army, and young

urban middle-class joiners with personal possessions above the kibbutz

level, as Katzir’s (1999: 76) case exampled. Another example: In Kvutzat

Avuka some members lacked basic necessities such as coats and blankets,

while others had more than one but did not share them. One reason for

failed egalitarianism was failed democracy: as officers violated general

assembly decisions without any sanction, members could not expect the

assembly to alleviate their plight (Ben-Horin 1984: 78-82).

26 Kafkafi 1992: 10, 27; Near 1992: 262-72; Sack 1996: 50. Tzachor 1997: 150.


169

A fourth problem was capitalist-like industry: From 1940, many

kibbutzim established workshops and plants with capitalist practices: hired

Labor, autocratic management, privileges to managers, etc. (Daniel 1975).

The leaders denounced hired Labor, but not other capitalist practices; nor

was creativity encouraged to instill kibbutz ethos. Later on, the plausibility

of instilling kibbutz ethos in industry was proven by the successes of

creative local leaders who were never supported by the prime leaders.27

A fifth problem was the division of many new kibbutzim into two: one

section, consisting mainly of women and children, who remained at a

provisional camp adjacent to a town in the center of the country, while the

other half, almost only men, settled in a distant desolated area. Growing

differences between the sections caused conflicts and even dissolution in

some cases. Ben-Horin (1984) explained these cases by lack of effective

leadership, but he ignored the impact of oligarchic FOs on the suppression

of creative local leaders who might have solved these problems.

These problems, as well as others depicted above in FOs and those to

be depicted below in kibbutzim, leave little doubt that, in 1937-9, when

Tabenkin and Yaari commenced the leftist turn after fourteen and twelve

years at the helm respectively, they both approached dysfunction phases in

accord with Hambrick and Fukutomi (1991). Any assertion that solutions

should have been created by local kibbutz leaders, must prove that

Admors encouraged this, while in fact, they did the opposite, suppressing

radicals and critical thinkers and promoting conservative loyalists and

barren leftists who, in accord with Hirschman (1970), enhanced their

power and obstructed creative problem-solving in both kibbutzim and

FOs. As with company cars, Admors prevented innovations which could

have elevated competing leaders whom they suppressed, like Ostrovski,

Shenhabi and others (see below and next chapter). Concurrently,

unification efforts by Berl menaced Tabenkin’s leadership, and Hazan’s

ascendance menaced Yaari’s primacy. Thus, leftism was a power

enhancement strategy, as were other power concentration efforts (Chap.

5): Instead of KM and KA councils of kibbutz-chosen delegates, in 1933

the KM erected Extended Secretariat which later was named Council, and

in 1935 the KA erected Executive Committee. Admors-headed

27 Shapira 1977, 1979a, 1980, 1990, 2001; Rosner 1992.


170

committees composed these bodies, named their members en-bloc to

Movement conventions, which ratified them; kibbutzim chose delegates

only to conventions whose intervals were stretched to 3-7 years, and hence

became almost powerless.28

Admors Enhanced Power by Leftist Changing of

Cosmology For Admors whose power and standing were threatened, leftism was a

radical solution to their plight: It bolstered power by legitimizing

centralization of Movement decision-making, de-facto cancelling

democracy. It also curbed free writing by censorship of publications;

critics were not published and others were publicized only after major

revisions in accordance with Admors’ leftist views.29 For instance, in 1946

Yaari and Hazan censored the chapters on the brutal anti-Semitism and

chauvinism of Stalin’s emissaries out of books written by partisan

survivors of forests of Eastern Europe, which the KA had published (Porat

2000: 178-82, 294). Leftism masked dysfunction as it was sterile

concerning problems; it required only revolutionary rhetoric, a skill the

Admors had honed for many years, it legitimized office continuity like

Stalin’s, and instruction of pe’ilim by leaders in Leninist-type cadre

seminars.

In fact, leftism bolstered Admors’ power far more than could be

deduced from the use of these measures, as it changed a democratic

ideology into an undemocratic one that legitimized Admors’ autocratic

rule. Wolf who studied the links of power to ideology in three extreme

cultures found (1999: 283-4) that

“(i)t is better to deal with such foundational ideas in terms of their

functions in society. They can be shown to legitimate and justify forms of

rulership”. “At the same time, these functions anchor rulership in a cultural

structure of imagining, which… postulates cosmologies; cosmologies in

turn, articulate with ideologies that assign the wielders of power the role of

mediators or executors on behalf of the larger cosmic forces and grant

28 KA Scretariate Minutes, KA archive, File No. 5-2.20[1]; Tzur 1981; Kafkafi

1992: 35; Near 1997: 65; Tzahor 1997: 224; personal participation in

nomination process, 1963. 29 Keshet 1995; Tzachor 1997: 228-31; Aharoni 2000; Shure 2001.


171

them ‘natural’ rights to dominate society as delegates of the cosmic order”.

Leftism meant a new cosmological order in which Stalin became “The

Sun of the Nations” and the USSR was hallowed as the culmination of

socialism, against which the kibbutz was to be measured. USSR ideology

became the justification of kibbutz ideology. No longer did its unique

ethos and its pioneering of Jewish national aims justify kibbutz culture.

The USSR’s imagined regime in which Stalin was not a brutal dictator,

but only headed a “guided democracy”, assigned Admors a similar role of

guides who knew the limit of Movement democracy so that it would not

run wild and disregard socialism. Thus, they were irreplaceable. With

leftism, their power emanated less from successful leadership of the

Movements, than from “the role of mediators or executors on behalf of the

larger cosmic forces” which the USSR represented and supposedly guided

their leadership. This role granted them the “natural right to rule”,

justifying power concentration and other undemocratic means. Kibbutz

members knew very little about USSR practices which negated kibbutz

ethos and culture, and had little grounds for criticizing its adoration.

Revolutionary discourse camouflaged oligarchic conservatism and

created a radical image that masked evasion of major kibbutz problems. It

helped in conscripting thousands of youth to fill the place of the thousands

of disenchanted who left. However, it was only a partial remedy: from

1955 to 1970, leaving members exceeded those who were admitted by

16,150; only a high birthrate prevented downsizing of kibbutzim (Shepher,

Y. & Fogel-Bijaoui 1992: 39). Worse still, as the ethnographies will show,

exits were selective: while many radicals and critical thinkers left,

mediocre conservatives and naive zealots stayed, with grave consequences

for democracy, creativity, egalitarianism and effectiveness.

Abstention of Direct Involvement in Coping with

Challenges Even rulers who mediate cosmic orders, face challenges which threaten

their authority by possible failure. The breakdown of cooperation with

Mapay in 1949 exposes how a strategy of minimal direct involvement in

coping with challenges helped to maintain Admors supremacy while

harming their movements. In the January 1949 elections, out of 120

Knesset seats, KM’s and KA’s Mapam gained 19 seats and Mapay 46;

together, the two socialist parties had a majority. Segev (1984: 255) has


172

explained Mapam’s remaining in the opposition by its excessive sympathy

for the USSR, while Mapay preferred the West, but this is a partial picture.

Kibbutz historians have depicted the widening rift between Mapay, and

KM and KA from the 1930s, parallel to growing leftism, which

culminated in 1948 with the firing of KM’s Galili from heading the

National Headquarters, dismantling of the Palmach, marginalization of its

commanders, and accusing them and Admors of a secret plan to turn Israel

into a Communist state.30

For Tzachor (1997: 191), the rift widened into a break during the 1949

coalition negotiations, with a loss of control by negotiators who failed to

harness confrontational dynamics, but this explanation ignores prior years

of the widening rift due to leftism. He, himself, has pointed out that even

Hazan, the closest Admor to Mapay, already distrusted Ben-Gurion’s

intentions in January 1948 (p. 184). Worse still, the Admors choice of

deputies, Ben-Aharon and Riftin, as negotiators was bound to enhance the

rift, and Admors surely knew this after such long experience with these

deputies. KA’s Riftin was chosen although, dating from the early 1930s,

he repeatedly denounced Mapay and called it “treacherous” (p. 153).

KM’s Ben-Aharon was known for his uncompromising criticism of

Mapay leaders, and he alone, among all KM secretariat members, sided

with Tabenkin’s leftism ever since 1939 (Kafkafi 1992: 39; Gvirtz 2003).

The two deputies were sent to negotiate since Admors forecasted

failure in advance and preferred that their aides lose prestige, a strategy

that Hughes (1958) has explained. They had used this strategy already in

May 1948, when a provisional cabinet was set up to lead the new state in

the crucial war with the Arab states; it included all major party leaders

except for the Admors who sent deputies. Tzachor (1997: 223) explained

this as continuing a Yishuv tradition, but this was untrue of dominant

Mapay, all of whose leaders were Yishuv executives and coped with

challenges personally. The Admors’ unspoken message in this choice of

negotiators was: “This is not as crucial as it seems, hence deputies will

deal with it”. They believed that Ben-Gurion’s government was doomed

without Mapam and that he would eventually ask Mapam to join on its

30 Kafkafi 1992; Zait 1993; Yaar et al. 1994; Near 1997; Tzachor 1997: 171-90;

Kanari 2003.


173

own terms.31 Another reason for this choice: they chose those who

distrusted Ben-Gurion most in order to neutralize opposition to any future

agreement. Thus, either one or the other explanation, it was a move to

defend authority which was fragile after prior political failures.

Some of the Costs of Leftism Leftism was a great success for Admors; they ruled until biology

intervened. Tabenkin’s protégé Galili became KM’s informal head in the

1960s, but Tabenkin remained supreme until his death in 1971,

suppressing the more critically minded and proven leader, ex-Palmach

commander Yig’al Allon (see next chapter). Yaari continued until his

health deteriorated in early 1970s, and Hazan up to 1984, and he, too,

chose successors (Tzachor 1997: 267). This ultra-continuity had ruinous

effects on kibbutz cultures, as described above and as cited below; here I

mention only a few direct effects of leftism.

Ineffective loyalists and leftists who preached well but did not solve

any major kibbutz problem were elevated to power. They derogated

radicals who solved problems creatively as rightist and non-socialist,

marginalizing them and/or causing their exit. The kibbutz movement was

marginalized politically and socially; its influence on Israeli society in its

formative years was curbed and this helped Ben-Gurion’s efforts to

eradicate the Palmach tradition of a democratic army in favor of a British-

type autocratic one, which, in turn, enhanced oligarchic society due to the

army’s importance for Israel’s survival.32 Leftism led to political crises

and painful partitions: In 1951-2 dozens of KM kibbutzim were

partitioned and devastated socially and economically,33 and, in 1953-4,

Mapam’s leftist urban leader Sneh, and KA’s Riftin led hundreds of young

KA leftists to departure or expulsion by supporting Stalin’s anti-Zionist

showcase trials in Prague, in which their leftist comrade Oren was

victimized. Many of the exiting leftists were talented and became national

personae, while their departure devastated many kibbutzim. One example

is of Riftin’s Ein Shemer which lost some forty members, while shrewd

31 Tzur 2000; Gvirtz 2003: 219; Kanari 2003: 615. 32 Shapira 1984; Etzioni-Halevi 1993; Yaar et al. 1994. 33 Liblich 1984; Kafkafi 1992: Chap. 8; Near 1997: Chap. 7; Tzachor 1997: 205-

21.


174

Riftin stayed and continued his Knesset membership under Yaari’s

auspices as he served his power (next chapter).34

These crises had ruinous effects on KM and KA leadership, such as

deep distrust among leaders. For example, Shem-Tov (1997: 33) disclosed

that prior to formal ratification, he and other candidates for Knesset

membership, had to deposit a signed letter of resignation from the Knesset

which Yaari could use against them if they renegade. Shure (2001), a

member of KA’s Executive Committee for four decades and editor of its

daily ‘Al Hamishmar’, exposed in his book autocratic rule, distrust among

leaders, corrupt financing and groundless politics. For him, Admors

personally persecuted opponents and castrated his generation’s leaders, as

Beilin (1984), too, has found and as the Reiner case will further reveal

(next chapter). Beit Alfa’s leftist intellectual Arie Aharoni (2000: 124)

was persecuted by Hazan as he dared criticize Admors. This caused him to

forsake politics, turning to a literary translation career.

The most precious price the kibbutz movement paid for leftism,

however, was the loss of servant, transformational leadership on local,

regional and national levels, by the suppressing, sidetracking and/or loss

of creative radicals who could have furthered the kibbutz cause using

creative solutions to enhance self-work, solidaristic democracy, trust and

egalitarianism. Without them, even the Admors’ main concern, the

struggle with Mapay, was doomed to failure. For instance, Vilan depicted

(1993: 271-2) such a failure in the 1950s when a fellow pa’il imitated

Mapay’s indirect buying of voters by nominating local dignitaries as

“evening secretaries” who, in exchange for humble salaries, would keep a

local party office open some evenings and bring their large extended

families and friends to vote for the party. But despite large sums of money

expended, Mapam gained no votes in this manner.

Leftism was a very successful bluff which fooled researchers as

completely as it did kibbutz members. After the 1956 exposure of Stalin’s

brutal regime, Admors did not admit their mistakes, leading loyalists to

believe that some of Stalin’s horrors were the inevitable price of progress.

Maintaining the bluff helped their continuity and provided an ideological

means for the suppression of radical critics (see next chapter). However,

34 Anonymous 1967: 50; Kafkafi 1988; Ben Horin 1984: 159; Tzachor 1997:

205-13.


175

trust was ruined both due to a lack of authenticity, credibility and high

morality anticipated of a radical movement leaders, and due to

conservative dysfunctioning. Researchers, on their part, were fooled into

believing that democracy and egalitarianism did not suffer from leftism or

they feared to expose the truth, defending the academic capital gained by

cooperation with Admors and their loyalists (Shapira 2005).

Any reader of works on high-moral, servant leadership cited above can

see that Admors failed to lead by trust and consent ever since leftism

commenced. In Hosmer’s (1995: 399) terms, they were distrusted, as

societal interests were not given “a degree of precedence that is right, just

and fair” over their own interests. Admors’ decisions and actions aimed at

self-perpetuation rather than at the advance of the kibbutz cause will

further be described, but even here, a reader doubtful of the above

explanation of leftism, might ask himself: How could an anathema like

Tabenkin’s “belief is more important than truth” be otherwise explained in

a secular movement based on trust and democracy? Could a high-trust,

democratic community be sustained for long by evading truth? Only a

desperate leader who has lost much influence, who has stuck to past

solutions and has suppressed radicals who seek new solutions in order to

perpetuate his power, could lie to himself and his followers, concealing

the true nature of the Stalinist dictatorship and maintaining that it could

lead to genuine socialism.

Admors’ leftism exemplified shirking the task of coping with the

cardinal problems their movements faced and legitimized similar neglect

by their loyalists, local patrons and power elites who also maintained

supremacy by minimal direct involvement. Let us delve into this strategy.

CHAPTER 11

Supremacy, Minimal Direct Involvement and

Ineffective Leadership

Admors sent deputies to cope with major political challenges, although

Ben-Gurion’s successive political successes signaled that this indirect rule

did not suit involvement in the new state. Direct involvement by prime

leaders in top-level politics was rational for the kibbutz movement, but not

for the dysfunctioning Admors. Such involvement in coping with

problems of a poor and struggling state might threaten their supremacy,

and challenge their leadership capacity under the scrutinizing eyes of

competing parties, the media and non-kibbutz Mapam members. Another

major reason for sending Ben-Aharon and Riftin to negotiate with Ben-

Gurion, was that, whatever agreement they might have reached, the

Admors were assured of its ratification by Mapam’s Central Committee,

as the two were major critics of Mapay in the KM and KA (respectively).1

Avoidance of direct involvement spared Admors from tasks which

required real coping and finding concrete solutions, rather than just

rhetoric. In such tasks, they might fail and lose prestige and power which

might lead to succession. This was not a hypothetical danger: Tabenkin’s

supremacy in KM had already been threatened in 1936 and 1939, while, in

the 1950s, Yaari and Hazan surrendered to leftists in some of the debates

in the KA secretariat and Executive Committee.2 This danger, as well as

the devastation many kibbutzim suffered due to the crises of the early

1950s, urged them to join the Mapay-led government in 1955 although its

policies negated kibbutz ethos and culture. Tzachor (1997: 189) explained

this as disillusionment from a revolutionary dream, but Admors did not

dream of any revolution ever since the early 1940s, as proved their

conservatism, but rather used leftism to defend and bolster power and

standing. Unfortunately, as leftism proved an unpredictable monster that

led to crises that menaced their power base, the kibbutzim, Admors

1 Zait 1993: 259-61; Tzachor 1997; Kanari 2003: 615-7 2 Kafakfi 1988; Tzachor 1997: 155.

11. Supremacy, Detachment, Ineffective Leadership

177

resumed cooperation with Mapay on its own terms. However, they shirked

from coping with challenges, and sent deputies to take charge of

Ministries, so let us first explain the dilemma of direct involvement in

solving problems under one’s jurisdiction, and then differentiate the prime

Admors who chose detachment, Tabenkin and Yaari, from Hazan who

wanted involvement but surrendered to Yaari’s opposition in order to

maintain their alliance.

Minimal Involvement Defends ‘Parachuted’ Managers’

Authority Following Hughes (1958), I found (1987, 1995b) avoidance of

involvement in coping with challenges under an officer’s jurisdiction,

which required competency and risk of failure, to be a major strategy that

protected the power and standing of many ‘parachuted’ Reg.Ents pe’ilim.

These pe’ilim faced the decisive problem of defending authority as they

usually came without local information and know-how required for sound

managerial decision-making. They mostly defended authority by

concealing incompetence, detaching themselves from problematic tasks

and situations that might expose ignorance, as did the retarded youth

studied by Edgerton (1967) who donned “the cloak of competence”.

Without penetrating secrets essential for solving major problems, these

pe’ilim remained ‘half-baked managers’ in Dore’s (1973: 54) terminology,

like Shavit and Zelikovich.3 The Admors’ avoidance of cabinet positions and sending deputies to

negotiate political deals was using the same strategy. Urban Mapam

activist and Cabinet Minister Victor Shem-Tov (1997: 33-4) compared

Mapam in the 1960s to the USSR’s Communist Party. Indeed, in both

cases indirect rule safeguarded power of conservative dysfunctioning

leaders by minimal direct involvement. In the USSR, cabinet ministers

who coped with concrete problems were relatively powerless and, hence,

rarely tried new solutions, while detached party officials were considered

leaders although they led nowhere, but only conserved supremacy and

privileges while controlling means of influence and coercion (Gur-

Gurevitch 1995). The Admors’ power of coercion was much more limited

as they headed a voluntary movement, but the rest was similar: Yaari and

3 Shapira 1987: Chap. 4-5. See also: Deutsch 1958, 1962; Zand 1972.


178

Hazan controlled all nominations of any importance as well as all major

decisions, censoring publications and agreeing among themselves on

policy decisions which were then adopted by KA’s and Mapam’s

seemingly democratic bodies. Discipline was strict and trust low, as

proven by the pre-signed letters of resignation which Knesset Members

gave to Yaari, who could use them if the signers violated party line.4

Less strict was the rule of KM by Tabenkin, due to a tradition of

political pluralism. But in the early 1950s he alone chose KM’s General

Secretary not from among the most successful leaders, such as ex-Palmach

commander Yig’al Allon who was ready to assume office, but rather an

unknown kibbutz secretary whom he could better control.5 KA Admors

similarly defended supremacy by preferring junior loyalists for important

positions, rather than seniors of whom control was less assured.6 No one

has studied how detrimental the Admors’ indirect rule actually was. It is

plausible that, by assuming ministerial jobs in May 1948, they could have

prevented Ben-Gurion’s complete eradication of the Palmach, its

traditions and its successful commanders from the army, almost all of

whom were Mapam members or supporters. However, since Mapam

aligned itself to the Soviet Block from its inception in January 1948 and

its leftists had become main speakers, some of them viewed the Palmach

as possible political leverage for replacing Ben Gurion as Minister of

Defense. This placed the trustworthiness and loyalty of the Palmach in

doubt and encouraged its dismantling. As many opposed it, a cabinet

committee headed by Interior Minister Gruenbaum proposed a

compromise, but Ben Gurion rejected it (Near 1997: 163-4). He had good

reason: Had Mapam accepted compromise without Admors as Cabinet

Ministers committed to it, working out its details and observing its

execution, who could assure him of fair implementation? Would they not

try to evade some difficult parts of the agreement under mounting leftist

pressures? A sensitive political deal concerning a major part of the army

required the highest level of confidence which only Admors’ direct

involvement could have obtained. Only they could restrain leftists and

obtain full obedience by Palmach commanders for whatever agreement

4 Beilin 1984: 128; Shavit 1985; Shem-Tov 1997: 33; Shure 2001. 5 Cohen 2000: 201-2. See also: Kafkafi 1992; Near 1997. 6 Shem-Tov 1996: 32; Tzachor 1997: 247.


179

reached, as they had done in the past when commanders violated Yishuv

leadership decisions (Kafakafi 1992: 82-3).

Admors’ detachment was detrimental in the realm of elections, as well:

Had they become Cabinet Ministers in May 1948 and had their names

appeared daily in the news, they could have led much better Mapam’s

campaign in 1949 from ministerial offices, and could have had the

publicity that certainly would have pulled more people to meetings,

especially among the many new immigrants (see below). They could have

gained more votes and Knesset seats, and they might have negotiated with

Ben Gurion from a better position. As party heads, their abstaining from

Cabinet offices shirked their responsibility for their public duty. Hazan’s

opposition to this abstention (Tzachor 1997: 223-6) accentuates how

critical this shirking was.

Hazan’s Uniqueness: Both Local and National Involvement Hazan wanted a ministerial office and direct involvement in top-level

decision-making, in accord with him being the only one among the three

who remained highly involved in his kibbutz decision-making after

becoming a national leader.7 He did not hold any chief kibbutz office, but

was very active in the General Assembly, was a member of the secretariat

and economic committee, and headed both a ‘social secretariat’ in charge

of sensitive personal issues and the Building and Planning Committee. All

these committees convened on weekends when he was back in Mishmar

Ha’emek (Tzachor 1997: 179). Unlike the other two, he sacrificed almost

all of his weekends for internal deliberations and was updated in details of

decision-making. Accordingly, he wanted to be a Cabinet Minister, but

yielded to Yaari’s objections in order to keep the partnership by which

they ruled KA. Likewise, only Hazan dared direct involvement in the most

problematic task of the election campaign of 1949: He went to the

ma’barot, the makeshift camps in which poor new immigrants lived in

inhumane conditions, and met Mapam activists among them, while

Tabenkin and Yaari discontinued these visits after making a few, and

agreed only to appear in the large cities before veteran crowds. Hazan

continued, despite the fact that frequently only a few activists came and

usually did not let him discuss politics, taking over the meetings with

7 Argaman 1997; Tzachor 1997: 252-3; Kanari 2003.


180

various grievances, demands and requests for personal help (Tzachor

1997: 195).

Unlike Yaari’s total rejection of new solutions for immigrant

absorption in kibbutzim, Hazan agreed that new solutions were required.

However, he did not support proposals of such ones, seemingly to prevent

conflict with Yaari (see below). Hazan’s involvement in his kibbutz, by

which he learned the true problems of communism, seemed to explain his

disbelief in the USSR’s ‘achievements’ and its status as “the world of the

future”. Hence, he objected to Yaari’s leniency toward leftists in the 1930s

and then Yaari’s own leftism, until surrendering in 1943. However, his

continued kibbutz involvement could explain his support of Reiner and

other innovative KA new generation leaders in the 1950s, until ultimately

surrendering to Yaari and helping him to suppress them (see below).

Tabenkin’s Protégé versus Yig’al Allon: Opposite

Involvement Strategies In Tabenkin’s case, support for the hypothesis of minimal involvement

strategy is found both in his minimal involvement in Kibbutz Ein Harod

affairs dating from the early 1930s,8 and by looking at his protégé who

became his quasi-successor, Israel Galili of Kibbutz Na’an.9 From the time

KM’s party joined the government in 1955, Galili never took charge of a

ministry, although as Tabenkin’s deputy, he clearly could have received a

ministerial position if he had wanted one. He postponed joining the

government until 1966, when he joined the cabinet without a portfolio. He

continued in this post up to 1974, in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Golda

Me’ir. As Me’ir’s closest adviser, free from ministerial tasks, he led a

hawkish policy which barred compromise with Egypt’s Sadat and brought

Israel its worst calamity, the 1973 war in which almost 2600 Israeli

soldiers were killed, some 10,000 wounded, Israel’s economy was

devastated for years, and kibbutzim lost hundreds of their best young and

middle-aged members, many of them officers and pilots.10 When Me’ir

resigned, Galili did not, remaining in the Knesset until 1977, when a

solution for barring oligarchic continuity of Knesset members, introduced

8 Argaman 1997: 179-206; Kanari 2003: 322. 9 Tzur 1981; Near 1997: 123. Shapira 2004: 479. 10 Israel 1986: 333; Vald 1987.


181

by the Labor Party, forced his retirement (see Chap. 18).

The opposite choice of direct involvement was exemplified by ex-

Palmach commander Yig’al Allon of Kibbutz Ginnosar, who took charge

of problematic Cabinet portfolios, such as Labor and Welfare, Absorption

and Education, and was Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister.11 He

was a critical thinker and a prime military leader of the 1948 war, and was

revered by thousands of KM members who had fought in this war. He was

never leftist, and openly criticized Tabenkin’s idolization for the USSR in

1949. Therefore, he was not nominated as KM’s General Secretary in the

1950s as his supporters had wished; they tried to persuade him to declare

his candidacy for the position even without Tabenkin’s support, but he

refused.12 Nor did he succeed Tabenkin as the main KM leader in the

1960s, both because he could not be controlled behind the scenes, and he

viewed Tabenkin’s idea of not giving Palestinian Arabs any part of

Palestine as unrealistic (Shapira 2004), unlike hawkish Galili. His critical

thinking benefited from his two intensive years of study at Oxford

University in the early 1950s, excelling there, even though he had not

completed high school due to early conscription to Hagana forces in 1936.

Allon, like Hazan, remained directly involved in his kibbutz through the

years in various ways in accord with outside duties, and solved its major

conflicts both within and without.13

Further support for the minimal direct involvement thesis will come,

while the strategy is clear: Prime Admors Tabenkin and Yaari kept power

by avoiding offices requiring concrete solutions to public problems, rather

than just preaching and politics. Galili continued this strategy, while Allon

did the opposite. Hazan wanted direct involvement, but sacrificed it in

favor of his alliance with Yaari. Detachment enhanced Admors’ continuity

by preventing exposure of their dysfunction. Instead of coping with

problems, prime Admors turned to barren leftism, preached self-work

without being models for it, and adopted counterfeit solutions that

enhanced power, such as rotatzia. Trust was curbed and mass exit by the

disenchanted, critical thinkers and radicals enhanced conservative rule by

patrons, as ethnographies will show. Admors’ public appearances

11 Dror 1999; Cohen 2000. 12 Cohen 2000: 201-6; Shapira 2004: 457, 479. 13 Yahel 1995; Shapira 2004: 102-29, 162.


182

maintained their fame and reputation as being indispensable, even after the

leftist bluff had been exposed, while their tight control of the Movements

and their rule behind the scenes discouraged radical, trusted potential

transformational leaders so desperately needed for advancing the kibbutz

cause.

Suppressing Potential Successors Made Admors

Indispensable Detachment protected prime Admors’ cloak of competence, but it provides

only part of the explanation of their extraordinary continuity, beyond any

Michelian nightmare. Another part was decisions by potential successors

to avoid challenging them: i.e. Allon’s failure to challenge Tabenkin for

the office of KM General Secretary, and Hazan’s surrender to Yaari’s

detachment. However, such challenges could hardly have succeeded

without renewal of Movement democracy which the prime Admors had

already castrated in the 1930s. Thus, Allon’s and Hazan’s main mistake

was missing the need for such a renewal, which Reiner and other critical

young KA leaders tried to achieve in the 1950s (see below).

Ansell and Fish (1999) have pointed out that it is not necessary for a

leader to be charismatic in order to become indispensable; it is enough if

he becomes a symbol of a party or a social movement and his authority

seems essential for its survival and success. In both the KM and KA,

leftism promoted leftist pe’ilim which bolstered Tabenkin’s and Yaari’s

power by putting them in the middle, between the leftists and the seeming

rightists, many of whom were true servants of the kibbutz cause who

sought new solutions and defied Admors conservatism, such as Allon and

the three innovative KA leaders depicted below. Both leftists and

“rightists” seemed to be trying to divert KM and KA from the right course,

and this image made Admors indispensable at the helm. Tzachor (1997:

155) asserted that KA Admors failed to suppress leftists Riftin and Oren,

but both Beilin (1984) and Kafkafi (1988) found these two and other

leftists served Yaari’s power against Hazan’s nurtured “rightists”. Hazan

could not get rid of Yaari’s leftists protégés, but he balanced power: Each

nomination of a Yaari protégé was followed by a nomination of Hazan’s.

The two decided on nominations and then appeared united and gained

approval by KA or Mapam formal organs (Tzachor 1997: 224). This

undemocratic rule, as Siamese twins, explains the success of Riftin and

Oren, as well as the failure by Reiner and other young leaders to get rid of


183

leftism after the 1956 exposure of Stalin’s horrors, to democratize the KA

and cope with its main problems (see below).

Admors have been viewed as charismatic by students, but this view

was valid only when crises caused by leftism overcame by others’

inventions and haloed them as saviors. These crises include the

dismantling of the Palmach, the failure in the 1949 elections, sterile

Knesset opposition, failure in immigrant absorption and the resulting

growth of hired Labor (see below), KM partition, KA mass expulsion of

leftists, and Mapam’s 1954 partition. Admors became indispensable

saviors in the eyes of most of those who stayed, and especially among

loyalist pe’ilim. Moreover, they retained indispensability by suppressing

critical radical younger leaders. Tabenkin marred Allon’s advance, while

in the KA, such one’s career was doomed after losing a patron, either

Yaari or Hazan. Such patronage resembled Shavit’s control of Thomas,

giving pe’ilim only as much independence as did not threaten Admors

supremacy; any critical thinker who was a potential transformational

leader who might succeed them, was allowed only mid-level KA jobs.

Hazan repeatedly surrendered to Yaari whims whenever his protégés

seemed to challenge Yaari’s rule.

Mordehay Shenhabi was a brilliant, charming, exceptionally talented

and creative founding member of Beit Alfa and, then, of Mishmar

Ha’emek. His most important life accomplishment was Yad Vashem, the

national memorial for Holocaust victims in Jerusalem, which remains a

must for every high-ranking persona visiting from abroad and every Israeli

youth. He started planning and promoting this project in May 1942, on the

eve of the industrialized extermination of Jews in Europe. Prior to this,

from 1920, he had pioneered many innovations while serving in various

kibbutz and KA offices, including chief economic officer of both

kibbutzim, emissary missions abroad at which he excelled, and leadership

of a number of major KA projects, such as founding its first boarding high

school in Mishmar Ha’emek and the first large factories in kibbutzim.14

In 1942, he clashed with his patron Hazan over the founding of a

second boarding high school in Beit Alfa which he intended to direct. It

seemed that, like Reiner’s group case below, Yaari was behind this clash,

14 My unfinished study of Shenhabi’s life history, based on archival material and

dozens of interviews with his partners in various projects, 1991; Zait 2005.


184

aimed at preventing another major success by Shenhabi. Shenhabi knew

that without Hazan’s patronage his career was doomed because he had

been having conflicts with Yaari since 1921 when Yaari triumphed over

him in heading the first Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz. However, since the

KA did not offer him any challenge, Shenhabi brilliantly forecasted the

dimensions of the Holocaust and founded Yad Vashem under the auspices

of Zionist organizations in which he had many ties dating from earlier

projects. Had real democracy prevailed in the KA, Shenhabi would have

surely been a prominent member of its quasi-parliament without Hazan’s

patronage. He might not have advanced to head KA, but if Hazan or

another critically thinking, innovative leader had succeeded Yaari in the

1940s, thanks to norms which would have barred oligarchic continuity

proposed in Chapter 18, gifted Shenhabi surely would have been a great

help by inventing radical solutions to kibbutz problems.

Another potential transformational leader was Shim’on Avidan Givaati,

his third name being that of the huge brigade, numbering 9,000, which he

commanded and which defeated the Egyptian invasion in 1948. Dagan and

Yakir (1995) explained the success of the Givaati brigade, by Avidan’s

use of Palmach democratic culture: minimal hierarchic distance, many

initiatives from below and officers providing personal examples of leading

the charge under enemy fire. His career as a commander had commenced

in KM Kibbutz Ayelet Hashachar in 1936, where his creative tactics in the

war against Arab terror gangs gained the upper hand for the small Hagana

force. He advanced, as did his peers Yig’al Allon and Moshe Dayan, in the

Field Companies, and then in the Palmach. He left Ayelet Hashachar,

criticizing its political passivity, and joined a KA kibbutz. KA

membership slowed his advance, as KM pe’ilim dominated the Palmach.

Due to his German origin, he commanded the Palmach’s German platoon,

aimed at camouflaged fighting behind enemy lines. In 1942, he criticized

KA Admors for not joining KM’s efforts to nurture and finance the

Palmach (Carmel 1986). In 1949, his Palmach leanings and KA

membership prevented his promotion to the rank of general in the army,

despite Givati’s clear success. He left the army, but did not advance

greatly in KA hierarchy due to his criticism. For instance, in 1953, he

criticized Yaari’s disregard of the threat to many kibbutzim by clandestine

activity on the part of Sneh’s and Riftin’s leftist faction (Dagan & Yakir

1995: 174-7). In his kibbutz, he was Secretary for short periods, and then


185

his career remained stalled in intermittent, mid-level KA jobs, while his

Palmach peers, Dayan and Allon, became Cabinet Ministers from the late

1950s and early 1960s, respectively, although only Allon had proved to be

a better military leader than Avidan.15

Beilin (1984: Chap. 5) depicted the case of Efraim Reiner of Mishmar

Haemek, and then, Gan Shmuel. He was a brilliant analyst, lecturer and

writer who led KA Palmach younger generation officers (Avidan was a

brigadier versus Reiner’s status as a captain). He unofficially led a group

of eleven KA young leaders who sought new solutions to major kibbutz

problems in the 1950s, while rejecting USSR ‘achievements’ as irrelevant

and criticizing Admors’ non-democratic rule and acceptance of FOs’

capitalist practices. The group members received minor KA jobs, but were

promoted no higher as they were targeted by Yaari. Their critique

resonated well among many KA members; such a resonance was

identified by both Snow and Benford (1988) and Goleman et al. (2002:

Chap. 2) as a major leadership tool that motivated followers’ action, thus

the growing support of critical KA youth for the group’s views became a

serious threat to Yaari’s dominance in 1956, with exposure of Stalinist

horrors, the USSR’s brutal repression of Hungarian democracy, and its

mass armament of Egypt. Then, a Machiavellian tactic was used: In the

name of democracy, Yaari accused the group of seclusion, of not opening

its meetings to other young leaders. Hazan, the patron of most of them,

surrendered to Yaari’s pressures in 1959 and persuaded them to admit four

Yaari loyalists. The latter soon diverted debates to USSR ‘socialism

questions’, and the group’s previous majority view of these questions as

irrelevant, crumbled. It also might have been that a few of them shifted

loyalty to Yaari in order to advance in the KA. The group unity was lost

and its influence declined, as well, as it stopped coping with concrete

kibbutz problems. It soon dissolved, and even Reiner’s success as leader

of the KA younger generation in the election campaign of 1961 did not

help: Yaari’s leftist clients barred Reiner’s advance. Then, Gan Shmuel

benefited from his creativity, for instance the creative solution for car

allocation, until he left in 1969 for a top Histadrut job.16

15 Dayan was promoted under Ben Gurion’s auspices; see Shapira 2004. 16 Personal knowledge as a Gan Shmuel member. See also: Reiner 2005.


186

The Critical Failure in Absorption of Mass Immigration To pinpoint the conservative absence of creativity in coping with

challenges due to Admors’ rule, the gravest of the kibbutz failures must be

exposed: its failure to cope with the national absorption effort of mass

immigration in the 1950s. This should have been a major opportunity for

both pioneering a societal mission and solving manpower shortages in

kibbutzim which had caused proliferation of hired Labor. But Admors

largely sidestepped this challenge, only preached against hired Labor,

while suppressing most proposals of new absorption methods and adapting

kibbutzim to help the national goal. Hence, this failure was critical from

both strategic angles of pioneering societal missions and defending

communal cultures.

In 1948-1958 almost a million Jews came, half of them from non-

European countries, more than doubling Israel’s population while the new

state was just emerging from a devastating war. Most immigrants had no

means of support and often no skills useable in the new society. For many

years, they remained mostly unemployed, and lacked proper housing and

basic necessities, but relatively few of them joined kibbutzim, and then,

almost only the Europeans. Kibbutz economy was booming due to a

shortage of agricultural and industrial products and ample arable land left

by Arabs who had fled or who were deported. The Holocaust had wiped

out the main source of kibbutz growth in the past, European youth

movements (Near 1997: 168-76). A clear sign of the manpower shortage

was the growth of hired Labor. The main employers were factories of

Ichud kibbutzim and a few other large plants, but hired Labor was used in

seasonal agricultural work, as well, and already in 1949, some half of

KA’s veteran kibbutzim were using it; from 1,400 hired workers in 1951,

numbers soared to 7,500 in 1958 and almost 10,000 in 1965, about 19% of

the total Labor force.17

Hired Labor is anathema to kibbutz ethos and culture (Chap. 2). In

major American communes it signaled a final blossoming before decline

(Knaani 1960: 76-7). Its drawbacks were market and hierarchy controls

instead of trust and democracy, and the fact that, when members stopped

17 Anonymous 1967: 50; Daniel 1975; Kynan 1989: 177; Hacohen 1994; Near

1997: 245.


187

working themselves, creativity was curbed.18 In the kibbutzim, various

new solutions were proposed in order to introduce more immigrants to the

kibbutz way of life so that they would join. Some solutions, such as Ulpan

Le’ivrit (Hebrew schools) and Merkaz Klita (Absorption Centers), were

introduced successfully later on, but not when they were urgently needed.

Kynan (1989) found that the prime reason for this failure in the case of

KA was the Admors’ rejection of all new ideas proposed by kibbutz

officers. New methods of absorption were required since, contrary to

youth movement graduates who had learned both Hebrew and kibbutz

ideas in Europe, immigrants knew no Hebrew and next to nothing of

Israel’s problems, not to mention kibbutz socialism. Kynan (1989: 188)

summarizes: “Me’ir Yaari was... against any innovation... every new idea

of a new, unconventional way of absorbing [new members]... was rejected

a priori”. As mentioned, he and other KA and KM leaders believed that

without their movements’ support, Mapay government would fail. Hazan

claimed the need for new solutions, but opposed all concrete proposals and

ignored Knesset Member Bentov’s proposal for the establishment of

agricultural training camps adjacent to kibbutzim, although Bentov was

his loyalist (p. 45).

Admors Prevented a Solution for Problematic Hevrot No’ar

KA Admors only supported the old solution of Hevrot No’ar: groups of

immigrant youth aged 14-17 who studied half a day and worked half a day

in the kibbutzim. From the 1930s, they were brought from the Diaspora by

a branch of the Jewish Agency, Aliyat Hano’ar (literally “youth ascent”,

i.e., youth immigration to Israel), which partially supported their

maintenance. The rest was paid for by their work. Over 7,000 of them

were accommodated, educated and worked in the kibbutzim during 1948-

52. In KA kibbutzim they consisted of up to 17% of a kibbutz’s population

(Kynan 1989: 65, 193).

In an egalitarian society, this was a problematic solution: kibbutz

offspring of the same age received better education, better living

conditions and worked fewer hours. This caused much tension and even

open conflicts, as Amir (1984) depicted in his book describing his

experiences in Mishmar Ha’emek’s Hevrat No’ar where KA’s largest

18 Zamir 1979; Rosner et al. 1980; Shapira 1980, 2001; Stryjan 1989.


188

boarding high school was located. He described how these youths felt like

second-class citizens compared to their privileged peers, while many

kibbutz members were frustrated as they made sacrifices to accommodate

these youths, while their own standard of living was not much better.

Concluded Kynan (1989: 192):

“The outcomes of this encounter [with hosting kibbutzim] were often

traumatic. The various problems that accompanied it often left a negative

impression on the souls of these youths. Especially conspicuous was the

gap between the educational system of kibbutz offspring and… Aliyat

Hano’ar. This gap… left deep [negative] sediments in the hearts of the

latter. There were kibbutz members who forecasted this negative influence.

They said… the gap… would cause a negative attitude to kibbutz

members. A society whose emblem is collectivism and equality but does

not implement it, only enhances frustration, anger and alienation”.

New solutions were clearly required, but only one kibbutz, Gan

Shmuel, dared disobey Admors conservatism and equalized the living

conditions of the two categories of youth. The immigrants were also

included in the local Hashomer Hatzair branch, which did not differentiate

between the two categories as did other kibbutzim. Kynan found that the

cooperative atmosphere could enhance absorption of graduates in Gan

Shmuel, but the KA sent most of the graduates, largely against their will,

to younger kibbutzim who suffered high exit rates (Ben-Horin 1984;

Chap. 14-15). These youngsters did not view themselves as KA soldiers

rescuing its mismanaged kibbutzim, and they mostly left. Thus, statistics

of retention rates cannot ascertain the positive effect of Gan Shmuel’s

solution on graduate absorption to which the qualitative data points, while

the Admors’ negative attitude prevented other kibbutzim from following

Gan Shmuel.19

However, an additional major problem caused low retention rate of

graduates: the severe situation of most parents of these youths in the

ma’abarot, makeshift camps which were maintained for up to a decade

due to sluggish building of public housing and slow economic

development. Many parents were unemployed or employed at very low

wages, requiring help from their adult offspring whose age, education and

knowledge of Hebrew enabled them to earn more. This income could get 19 Kynan 1989: 81, 96-101, 118.


189

the family out of a ma’abara, renting a private apartment in a town or city

where parents could earn a decent wage or open a small workshop. Those

graduates who joined kibbutzim could not provide such help; kibbutzim

either did not agree or could not afford more than a small monthly

allowance for needy parents. In addition, the parents rarely favored the

solution which some kibbutzim proposed, joining them in the special

status of member’s parents. Many graduates took a few months leave to

earn larger sums for their parents, and this often led to their exit, since, at

the end of such a period, many did not want to return, or their parents

asked them not to leave a good job.20 The total effect of this problem is

unknown due to a lack of research, but, for instance, Ben-Horin found

(1984: 153) that this was a major cause for deserting Kibbutz Har’el by

hevrot no’ar graduates, since extreme inequality emerged between those

with needy parents, as against Hashomer Hatzair graduates of urban

middle-class descent whose parents gave them considerable financial help

and weekend refuge from the harsh conditions of the impoverished young

kibbutz. KA’s pe’ilim, on their part, were indifferent to this inequality, and

did not encourage the search for new solutions until the kibbutz was

dissolved.

Tabenkin’s Conservatism and KM’s Two Failed Attempts The KM was not very different. Though there is no comparable study to

that of Kynan, ample evidence shows that Tabenkin and other leaders

largely ignored the challenge, much as they ignored other major problems

bothering kibbutzim. At the KM convention in late 1949, they urged

utopian and contradictory proposals: The kibbutz should be turned into “a

school for work, for trade unionism, etc.” for immigrants, no matter that

they were mostly unemployed. Concomitantly, kibbutzim must raise living

standards so that “those of the lower classes whose standard of living is far

worse than that of the kibbutz would flow into it” (Kafkafi 1992: 125,

131). These proposals were impractical as they had to be financed from

the same purse that, in many kibbutzim, barely provided existing members

with proper housing and basic necessities, hence they were ignored as the

prior impractical proposals of Tabenkin had been ignored (Kanari 2003:

593, 604-5, 635-52). In addition, Tabenkin barred any new proposal for

20 Ben-Horin 1984: 99, 153; Bar-Sinay 1997: 116; Kedem-Hadad 1998.


190

solutions of major problems which could help absorb North African and

Oriental immigrants; for instance, some kibbutzim liberalized

consumption practices which could help absorb people with very different

tastes and preferences from those of current European populations, but

under Tabenkin’s pressure the KM convention banned this change

(Kafakafi 1992: 125-7).

The KM tried two solutions for the absorption of immigrants, both of

which failed. One was Shacharia, a training camp for kibbutz life which

was founded in the semi-arid south. Unlike Bentov’s proposed training

camps adjacent to kibbutzim, or Merkazai Klita inside them so that

kibbutz life could be learned through practice, no such practice was

instituted in Shacharia, so that learning remained theoretical and did not

lead to joining.21 The experiment of havurot (meaning: groups) failed as it

enraged members of gar’inim, groups of youth movement graduates who

enjoyed no better housing and other amenities than havurot members, but

were not paid for nine months of work if at the end of such a period they

did not join a kibbutz as were havurot members. Moreover, in order to

attract more candidates to havurot, a monthly allowance was added which

gar’inim did have not; this further angered gar’inim and terminated the

experiment.

Negative Outcomes of the Failure

Admors’ conservatism, which negatively affected immigrant absorption,

encouraged hired Labor which was ruinous to kibbutz cultures. Worse

still, hiring immigrants from ‘developing towns’ and backward urban

neighborhoods as workers of kibbutzim and Reg.Ents, ruined the kibbutz

image and status of a serving elite who cared for societal interests more

than its own. These ‘developing towns’ and neighborhoods were backward

for many reasons, but the major one cause was unemployment, which

lowered wages.22 The government supported the establishment and

enlargement of plants in adjacent kibbutzim and Reg.Ents by cheap loans

and grants in order to curb unemployment (Yaar et al. 1994: 77). This

social aim legitimized hired Labor in the eyes of many kibbutz members

who perceived themselves as helping poor unemployed immigrants, and

21 See Hakohen 1984 on both experiments. 22 Spilerman & Habib 1976; Semyonov & Kraus 1982; Yaar et al. 1994.


191

economic officers saw this as help in industrialization and in the

industrialized processing of agriculture produce. Immigrants, however,

viewed kibbutzim as the villains who profited from their towns’ plight,

and who were interested in perpetuating it. This was a prime reason for the

negative attitude toward kibbutzim that brought massive support for right-

wing parties, which helped to bring about the fall of the Labor-led

government in 1977 and which has prevented support for the Labor party

in these towns ever since.23

Though the underdeveloped nature of these towns was largely

independent of kibbutz influence, as indicated by similar backward towns

in regions with few kibbutzim and no Reg.Ents, this mattered little for

immigrants. Although kibbutz and FO employment helped them, they

rarely advanced to supervisory jobs with higher wages since these were

kept for pe’ilim. Pe’ilim as managers often behaved like capitalist owners,

and worse still, the success of a capitalist plant opened possibilities for

promotion, but senior pe’ilim ‘parachuted’ loyalists and other ex-kibbutz

officers to supervisory jobs.24 A capitalist owner has an interest in a

plant’s success, so he rewards committed and competent workers, but the

main interest of most Reg.Ent pe’ilim was the image of success to further

circulation; they sought collaborators in this image creation rather than

effective workers and foremen. Moreover, even if a pa’il rewarded

effective subordinates, soon another pa’il would come to whom they

would have to prove themselves afresh, and since the new pa’il usually

chose detachment and stayed ignorant of local know-how, he barely

distinguished them from incompetent, self-serving impostors. The

impostors helped his image building efforts, and were duly rewarded to

the frustration of the competent and committed workers (Shapira 1987).

There were many other negative outcomes for immigrants hired by

kibbutzim or Reg.Ents’ plants: Though workers were usually better

remunerated than their equivalents in the private sector, they were

annoyed by the gap between prospering kibbutzim with high quality

services organized by FOs, in contrast to their own backward towns.25 The

23 Bijaoui 1988; Pavin 1991; Yaar et al. 1994. 24 Rosolio 1975; Shapira 1987, 1995a, 1995b. 25 Yaar et al. 1994: 80-1. For a pa’il who ignored this problem see: Gelb 2001:

Chap. 12.


192

gap furthered the social rift and the political animosity between the two,

especially since it paralleled Israel’s stratification: Kibbutzim resembled

higher strata veteran Europeans and their offspring, living in developed

areas, while Oriental immigrant workers were low-status as were their

mates elsewhere. Thus, kibbutz members were grasped as indifferent to

the plight of immigrants like all veteran Israelis (Yaar et al. 1994: 76-8).

Moreover, as a result of FO conservatism, Reg.Ents imitated backward

capitalist firms: no profit sharing, nor any employee participation in

decision-making such as Quality Circles, nor democratic trade unions. A

kibbutz job usually meant a better salary than a capitalist one, but little

mutual trust with superiors, little solidarity among peers which could help

guarantee one’s job, no promotion and no any other positive effect

emanating from socialist ethos.26

The Admors’ conservatism which barred creativity in immigrant

absorption, turned tens of thousands of them or even more27 into kibbutz

hired employees in low-trust, stratified, autocratic bureaucracies, in which

officers’ circulation and ‘parachutings’ ruined trust even more than in

many capitalist plants, purging both involved and effective servant pe’ilim

like Thomas and Yaakov, and effective hired employees. Kibbutzim and

individual members made many philanthropic efforts to help poor

immigrants,28 but these efforts were futile when contrasted with

possibilities of helping them by new ways of absorption and by

encouraging the establishment of high-trust, cooperative factories like

those of Mondragon or others, instead of capitalist-like FOs and kibbutz

plants.29 But this would have required creativity, which Admors and their

loyalists suppressed.

I have examined FOs with help of direct empirical knowledge of some

of them, and now I will probe kibbutzim in the same manner.

26 Shapira 1987; Pavin 1991; Yaar et al. 1994: 80-83. 27 The exact number is unknown due to a lack of research; I extrapolate this

number from Reg. Ents observations which exposed high turnover, especially

of low-wage seasonal workers. 28 Kynan 1989: 160-66; Yaar et al. 1994: 82. 29 On these cooperatives: Whyte & Whyte 1988; Gherardi & Masiero 1990;

Morrison 1991. On others: Semler 1993.

CHAPTER 12

Rama’s Lack of Highly Trusted Leadership

The next chapters will use ethnographies of five kibbutzim: a conservative

veteran Rama, younger conservatives Chen and Olim, a younger creative,

Carmelit, studied by Schwartz and Naor (2000), and a veteran creative

Kochav (all names are fictive, as are members names below). Rama is

first, representing the rare case of a ‘liberal’ kibbutz in which many

talented members, including ex-pe’ilim whose managerial careers had

stumbled, advanced in outside careers such as army officers, professionals,

professors, authors, editors and experts, among others. I have called them

the Talented; they both foiled egalitarian norms which interfered with their

privileges and accumulation of power and intangible capitals, and

challenged the dominance of the circulative elite of pe’ilim and ex-pe’ilim,

mostly economic ones, as well as the authority of kibbutz officers. This

foiling and other reasons deterred talented members from taking public

offices, and, without talented officers, anarchy ruined communal culture.

At first glance, this process was largely independent of the impact of FOs,

but detailed analysis has exposed that the oligarchization of FOs was the

prime culprit; without it, Rama’s anarchy and relative backwardness are

inexplicable.

Field-Work Methods and the Kibbutzim Studied The time is fit to present ethnographic work I personally conducted in four

kibbutzim. My work commenced in 1986, in Kochav, which was founded

in the 1920s, and distinguished itself by creativity, becoming large and

successful. It was studied for fifteen months, two days a week. In addition

to observations and study of its archival records, open interviews were

conducted with 123 people, mostly present and past officers, of all ranks

and generations, as well as many who had left, some of whom had become

nationally prominent. Interviews lasted between thirty minutes and several

hours, and some people were interviewed several times. Subsequently, two

younger and smaller kibbutzim were studied: Olim, founded in 1949, with

some 450 inhabitants in 1990, and Chen, founded in 1954, with some 300

inhabitants in 1991. Field-work lasted only three months in each, as

previous ethnographies of both kibbutzim were used, and was done in the

12. Rama’s Lack of Highly Trusted Leadership

194

same manner; only Chen’s archival records were not studied.1 Interviews

consisted of 35 and 29 people respectively, and included ex-members. The

last to be studied was medium-sized, veteran Rama (some 650 inhabitants,

founded in the 1920s) in which field-work took six months. Methods were

quite similar except that no ex-members were among the 51 interviewees,

and my own previous ethnography of its plant was used. In addition to

interviews with chief officers and branch managers of the crisis period

(1986-1991), many other elite members were interviewed. Some

interviewees read the research report and expressed no reservations,

further strengthening the validity of findings.

Rama Reacts to Crisis: Self-Reinforcing Imitative Changes

Rama is situated in central Israel, and its some 400 members and 250

children live in a scenic, green, suburban-like community interspersed

with trees and lawns.2 A casual visitor who sees many renovated houses

would barely discern crisis, but between 1990 and 1992 its membership

decreased by some thirty people, and the total population decreased by

some fifty people. While less committed youngsters had left, families

stayed, twelve new ones were absorbed, and others applied for

membership. Rama is encumbered by an average sized debt due to late

and conservative industrialization with few investments in innovation.

Until the crisis, it depended largely on agriculture, which had become less

profitable, and a plastics plant which employed some sixty, mostly hired

workers, and sells mature products in shrinking markets. More profitable

are a small chemical plant with fifteen member employees, several

workshops (three-four workers each), and a new food plant with twenty-

five employees. It is based on imported know-how and a brand name, and

also uses hired Labor.

In the past, kibbutzim abstained from commerce, but now (2008)

Rama’s commercial park, adjacent to a main road, hosts private businesses

on a rental basis: various road services, restaurants, shops and a

supermarket. Some members are part-time employees of these businesses,

earning some extra private money after their day’s work in Rama. The

1 Fadida 1972; Topel 1979; Bloomfield-Ramagem 1993. 2 As usual in ethnographies, unless explicitly stated otherwise, present is the time

of observations.


195

change in this direction commenced in 1986, as Rama started coping with

dire economic straits. At first, internal services turned to outside

customers. Though this seemed to be a rational reaction that made better

use of kibbutz assets, it was a process with far-reaching consequences and

self-reinforcing change to a quasi-capitalist society which, at least up to

now, has had little success, although it may have averted collapse. Be that

as it may, parallel to introducing outsiders, hired Labor increased and

many members took outside jobs. This was legitimized by setting a

minimal condition: that members working outside were to be paid at least

the national average wage. However, due to mandatory employer

payments, having a member work on the outside and an outsider hired to

replace him was worthwhile only if the outsider was paid much less than

the member. Often this was not the case, and worse still, as the chief work

officer (rakaz avoda) confessed, “The kibbutz ability to assign members to

jobs became negligible”. This was because outside job markets impacted

members considerations concerning local jobs, since outside work had

become a legitimate alternative.3

In the past, however, it was unheard of for a member who wanted

outside work to propose a hired worker to succeed him. Until

industrialization in 1968, hired Labor was limited to a few seasonal tasks

and manual construction jobs. In the plastics plant, it was, at first, limited

to arduous work in a department working on shifts, but later diffused to

other tasks. As kibbutz industry research found, hired Labor encouraged

boring, Labor-intensive techniques that deterred members, especially

women, from taking industrial jobs, caused brain-drain and conflicts

among members, which also deterred taking industrial jobs and furthered

dependency on hired Labor.4 This explained members seeking other jobs,

and indeed, mass hired Labor in Netzer Sireni’s factories was escorted by

much outside work (Kressel 1974). In Rama’s case, another factor

encouraged taking outside jobs: the influx of higher status clients which

accentuated the disadvantages of Rama’s jobs; many of the jobs were in

unprofitable branches and seemed non-secure, were given no fringe

3 Likewise in Carmelit although Schwartz and Naor (2000) ignored it. I deduce it

from the manning of jobs known as problematic in kibbutzim, by hired labour

(pp. 128-30). 4 Shapira 1979a, 1980; Zamir 1979; Rosner et al. 1980; Satt & Ginzburg 1992.


196

benefits, were assured no pension, etc. The chief work officer said:

“Generally, today, there is no identification with the kibbutz. People care only for their own private needs, working where it is convenient, easy and fashionable, where one can associate with peers and see prospects of promotion soon. The tendency is towards ignoring the system’s needs

when deciding where to work”.

Self-Serving Elite Members According to Swidler (2001), culture shapes human action by repertoires

and codes it provides for actors. In accord with the maxim that low

morality begins at the top (in Hebrew we say “The fish stinks from the

head”; e.g., Kets De Vries 1993), elite members introduced self-serving

capitalist repertoires and codes: the plastics plant manager and its chief

engineer “jumped” to outside high-level jobs in spite of plant needs.5 Their

move seemed to resemble turning to pe’ilut, but it was different: Their

know-how and expertise were sold for large salaries which they gave to

Rama and, thus, enjoyed a new kind of prestige unknown in pe’ilut.

Sharing their company cars with members as some pe’ilim did, was out of

the question, and soon their status was symbolized also by enlarging

apartments with money they had saved from expense accounts, using

another outside norm, private construction which Talented elite members

had introduced (see below).

Yet the kibbutz lost: without them, major plant changes were thwarted

which would have generated revenues far greater than the salaries they

brought to Rama. Worse still, the same happened at lower echelons with

the chief mechanic, a plant department manager, a senior cook, etc. This

was common in kibbutzim from the late 1980s; their unique values lost

meaning as economic survival legitimized imitation of outside society, and

thus, personal motives guided members’ behavior, without consideration

of community needs.6

Outside Work and Growing Inequity

Outside work magnified problems of equity which were not solved by

managers in a just and fair way, causing wide distrust, in accord with

Hosmer (1995). Many held company cars, and conceding to pressure by

5 On “jumping” see Downs 1966. For more details: Shapira 2001: 19. 6 Leviatan 1995; For a similar point: March & Olsen 1989: 131.


197

others who lacked cars and who cited three Rama cars given to outside-

working professionals long ago, it was decided to provide a car for anyone

who earned a salary of over $3000 a month.7 This was arbitrary and unfair

to any male member who earned more than $1800 and less than $3000:

even if he had received a car costing $300-$400 a month, he would still

bring in more than the minimum to which he was obliged, the national

average of $1400. A woman had to earn only $1,000 (the national

average); thus, the bylaw unjustly punished women even more: all those

who brought in more than $1400 and less than $3000. Alas, the senior

cook mentioned above was allowed outside work even though her

employer deducted $250 for a car, essential for her work, from her $1000

salary. This was a clear violation of both bylaws without a convincing

explanation. In contrast, a professional woman working as a freelancer and

who was well-paid by the hour, did not receive a car, as her monthly

earnings were sometimes below $3000. This hampered her work until she

stopped, bitterly critical of officers’ injustice.

Officers’ Ignorance of Unfairness In many other cases, unfair norms were introduced or unfairly executed by

officers, who did not abide by their own rules, as with the above cook.

Kibbutz ethos required just and fair solutions, but short-term,

inexperienced and/or incompetent officers lacked the motivation to create

them or were too weak to introduce them, using simplistic rules that could

answer needs of ‘normal’ cases. This marginalized other seemingly

‘abnormal’ cases, as in the case of the above professional woman, who

remained at the officers’ mercy. Extended officers’ discretion rewarded

them with feelings of power and competence (Kets De Vries 1993),

encouraging them to continue in jobs despite bitter criticism by injured

members. This continuity was important, as often they were the only

members who agreed to the job (see below).

The turn to the outside brought in norms of a culture incommensurate

with kibbutz ethos. In kibbutz ethos, work is a social obligation to the

community, not a market commodity; part-time work is not differentiated

from full-time, nor men’s work from women’s. The differentiation of

those above the $3000 line from those below it was neither a kibbutz

7 I translated Israeli New Shekels to $US due to inflationary economy.


198

norm, nor a capitalist one, but the officers’ hybrid of the Movement policy

of giving cars only to pe’ilim above mid-rank; hence officers decided that

a $3000 salary represented such a rank and seemingly followed the

Movement. Unfortunately, in many cases, other FOs and outside

employers gave cars to much lower echelons; for instance, the Reg.Ents

gave cars even to low-status provisional young female clerks; thus, the

officers’ solution was spurious. Worse still, outside markets rated work of

women thirty-forty per cent less than men (Alexander 1997); hence, if a

man had the right to a car with a salary above $3000, then a woman should

have had this right if she earned above $1800-2100. Alas, Rama’s women

were weak; the two power elites were both male, and chief officers

included only one female in the weaker job of co-secretary, together with

a male secretary;8 thus the inequality women suffered by the by-law was

ignored.

The above and other decisions mentioned below, made clear that

personal aims guided officers more than public aims, and this curbed trust

in them, as in Banfield’s (1958) backward Italian village. They sought

solutions acceptable by power elites and some members, even though

many others were injured. It encouraged violation by powerful members,

such as the above cook, who was well-networked to elite members, and

three veteran Talented professionals (see below).

Was the Turn to the Outside Worthwhile?

Turning to the outside was presented as a necessity in a dire situation that

required any kind of instant solution, but, while selling services to outside

customers instantly added revenues, due processes caused a financial

balance sheet which was no better. In addition to the aforementioned

disadvantages, outsiders’ work required more control than that of

members’ and more bookkeeping, adding costly bureaucracy. Instead of

qualified personnel taking outside jobs, only less qualified substitutes who

caused failures were found. Worse still, markets might provide, at a price,

qualified cooks and mechanics, but not trusted leaders. For instance, even

if a qualified manager was found and appointed plant head, no market

could assure that he would choose direct involvement in the problem-

solving required to gain subordinates’ trust, learn local secrets, and lead a

8 See Chapter 17 on the creation of the norm of parallel two kibbutz secretaries.


199

cooperative search for best solutions that would bring success like

Thomas. Like many ‘parachutists’, such a one might choose detachment

and coercion, breeding destructive conflicts, resignations, brain-drain and

plant failure, as Chapters 6-7 explained.

This explains why mediocre insiders in the plant replaced those who

“jumped” to the outside: Cooperation with them was good and little

coercion was used; alas, they abandoned major changes for which

predecessors had worked so hard in favor of efficiency efforts which

brought only modest results. The lack of better inside candidates for top

jobs was explicable by the fact that the plant was partially open to market

forces from inception due to hired labor. Hired labor deterred young

talented members from joining as line workers; they gained academic

educations and were ‘parachuted’ to jobs with similar negative effects as

Reg.Ents’ ‘parachutings’ (Shapira 1987). Moreover, tradition of

conservatism commenced by the plant’s founder and his successor, both

ex-pe’ilim of the Reg.Ents, also caused brain-drain. Thus, lack of

competent insiders was not incidental, but was caused by the low-trust

culture which used market and hierarchy controls, rather than trust and

democracy. Worse still, this was self-perpetuating: both detached

‘parachutists’ and mediocre insiders suppressed talented innovators,

enhancing Hirschman’s (1970) negative selection of radicals and critical

thinkers, as in many kibbutz plants with hired labor (Shapira 1980).

Rama’s power elites bothered little about these problems, and were

mainly interested in easing restrictions on adding perks for themselves

(see below). Rama’s officers, on their part, wanted easy-to-put-into-

practice solutions which would prove their functioning, enhancing control

and promising promotion. In accord with Hosmer (1995), trust was

curbed, or even ruined, as public interests were not given just and fair

precedence over elite interests. Injured members who pointed to injustices

were suppressed, and unfair execution proved that officers aimed at

maintaining rule, not at genuine solutions for public problems.

Distrust, Dwindling Democracy and Failed Solutions

A proper preference for public interest over one’s own, however, is not

enough to evoke full trust in a leader; in addition to good intentions,

positive results are required. Failure of genuine efforts by incompetent


200

officers, also ruined trust.9 This was the case with efforts by former

secretaries to stem the deteriorating authority of the General Assembly:

Only a handful of members regularly attended, while most did so only

when interested in topics on the agenda or as combatants, a well-known

problem of kibbutz assemblies.10 In accord with Parkinson (1957), crucial

topics were often dealt with in a brief debate involving few members, and

interested parties often appealed a decision and reversed it by mobilizing

supporters.11 Decisions lost the legitimacy of what Yankelovich (1991)

called “public judgment”, they seemed to be the casual preference of an

accidental composition of the few who gathered, or worse still, of these

few being almost only those with a particular interest in a decision.

Distrust of the public-serving motives of participants encouraged appeals

by opponents; debates repeated themselves and became a nuisance, and

many decisions were violated outright without sanctions against violators,

or ineffective sanctions whose ineffectiveness was known in advance.12

While some large kibbutzim try to solve these problems by instituting

representative democracy, i.e., a quasi-parliament of a few dozen members

who would decide on most matters and leave the General Assembly to

decide only on principle issues (Cohen & Rosner 1988: 261), Rama’s two

former male secretaries tried to cope with these issues by a ballot box

approach for decision-making, whereby not only those in General

Assembly attendance could vote. However, in order to prevent opposition

of power elites to this new practice that empowered ordinary members, it

was limited to the relatively marginal question of acceptance of new

members, ignoring more acute and decisive problems, such as work

allocation, car use and the planning, budgeting, and construction of

apartments (see below). When the two secretaries had completed their

terms, unsolved problems and the deepening economic crisis caused

growing demands for a change which officers did not deliver.

9 Shapira 1987, 1995b; Kramer & Tyler 1996. 10 Shatil 1977: 40; Rayman 1981: 225; Kressel 1983: 154; Argaman 1997: 85, 88,

93, 97, 155. 11 See Argaman 1997 for this phenomenon in kibbutz assemblies. 12 Cohen and Rosner (1988) and Topel (1992) ignored these problems which

Kressel (1983: 154-84) exposed vividly, and Argaman (1997) corroborated.


201

The Rise of Lesser Officers and Their Weakness

The outcome was that two advocates of wholesale privatization, a man and

a woman, were elected as Secretaries, not so much because of their views

or managerial prowess, but since there were no other volunteers, as is

common in conservative kibbutzim (Am’ad & Palgi 1986), and because

they were devoted foreman and forewoman, respected veterans (over fifty

years old), with decent families and many friends and relatives. The two,

however, failed to promote solutions to major problems, as is usually the

case with short-term officers. Short-term office in a new area of

responsibility prevents introduction of major changes, especially if one is

inexperienced, coming up from the ranks, with little chance of advance,

while continuous power elites dominate, as in this case.13 The two power

elites of the Talented, outside careerists, and economic pe’ilim and ex-

pe’ilim, largely neutralized the Secretaries, who were perceived by many

as impostors who cultivated an image of coping without doing much. One

of their predecessors, Ilan, said:

“There were so many discussions in the Secretariat on changes, with so

many outside experts consulted [naming four consultants], that, when

nothing happened, even supporters of these changes stopped participating

in despair”.

Weakness drove the Secretaries to solutions which proved to be unjust,

such as the provisions for cars which were instantly violated. They also

circumvented the authority of other officers: A decision to construct 16

cheaper flats of lower quality, financed by the Ministry for Immigrant

Absorption, was handled by them without consulting the Planning

Committee, whose chairman tended to oppose it. Another subterfuge was

the elimination of committees, using difficulties in manning them as an

excuse for usurping their authority. This caused faulty decision-making

due to a lack of proper prior study of problems and alternative solutions.

Distrust, Minimal Communication, Meager Promotion

Prospects In their isolation and weakness, the Secretaries monopolized information,

13 See rotatzia literature cited in Chap. 1 and 6, and: Kochan 1986; Shapira 1990,

1992, 2001; Pettigrew et al. 1992: 278, 298; Friedman 1995.


202

rarely reporting to the General Assembly and the local bulletin. Rama’s

social worker, herself a member of an adjacent kibbutz, compared Ilan’s

functioning to that of his successor:

“Ori is not communicative. In his predecessor’s days, there were always

people around, coming to discuss various personal and public problems.

Now it is quiet, no one comes, he is afraid to talk with them, he fails to

build relationships with people. You see his desk [pointing at it] is almost

empty. Before, it was always piled this high [indicating some five inches].

(I suggest that Ori has no answers to Rama’s complex problems, and she

retorts:) I am not sure of that, but I am sure he is not communicative. There

is much confusion and anxiety among members, but he leaves them in

their plight”.

Ilan’s partner as secretary depicted the difference as follows:

“In our time, we tried to bring maximum information to the members,

including things which some members said must not be publicized, since

we wanted to create interest. And members came to the [General]

Assembly since everything was on the table, openly discussed… Now

there is a lack of information and no interest in the Assembly which, as a

result, convenes only every other week [instead of weekly], and fewer

people come”.

This has characterized low-trust situations, which Zamir (1996) found

in kibbutzim where the debt crisis was acute. Sociologists Cohen and

Rosner (1988: 241), however, have presupposed that kibbutz democracy

assures high-trust and reliable information flow for proper decision-

making, though it may not reach all members when officers are

incompetent, and “there is a possibility of hiding or even distorting

information in the belief that it is in the public interest”. Self-serving

manipulation of information by officers is out of the question for these

naive veteran kibbutz members.

Members’ trust diminished since outcomes were disappointing, major

problems were bypassed or efforts to solve them failed. The new

Secretaries preferred detachment, as proven by their empty desks and

minimal communication, a major reason for distrust, like uninvolved

‘parachuted’ pe’ilim in the Reg.Ents (Shapira 1995b). In fact, after a short

time, their few changes brought further anarchy. For instance, more

outside workers tried to emulate the cook’s car arrangement without

authorization. The Secretaries gave up coping with problems, and only


203

intervened when they saw prospects for “quick fixes” that could mask

dysfunction. The members’ trust in them, which was not high to begin

with, vanished as they lost credibility, and they began to be seen by many

members as inauthentic leaders or even impostors.14

A major reason for their abandoning efforts to cope with problems, was

the fact that their prospects for promotion were slight. Even at the peak of

FO success, in the 1970s, when Helman (1987) did his study of

managerial circulation, only half of the ex-kibbutz secretaries had

advanced to pe’ilut. In the 1990s, very few advanced, as Movements were

drastically downsized (Chap. 3). Besides, they had no patrons and had few

qualifications for pe’ilut, while the branch teams from which they had

come and with whom they had close ties, wanted them to return. Thus,

both chief officers who genuinely sought new solutions in accord with

kibbutz ethos, and those who wanted to solve problems by dispensing with

the ethos, failed. Leaders are trusted if they solve problems, but

identifying them, seeking new solutions, campaigning for them and, after

gaining approval, attending to their implementation, required longevity

which officers lacked.15 The Secretaries failed, although at first glance

they seemed bound to succeed, as they strove for increased capitalist

conformity which was desired by both power elites. Their failure can be

largely explained by major debilitating conflicts being, in fact, supremacy

competitions between the two self-serving power elites and the officers.

Rama’s Self-Serving Power Elites Ever since the kibbutz field became oligarchic in 1930s-1940s, FO heads,

senior pe’ilim and others who continued in high outside offices or

continued circulating between them, have been top local power-holders

and patrons, using power and capitals to build loyalist cliques which

enhanced power. Within kibbutzim patrons usually headed cliques of

clients who held local main offices or were pe’ilim, in what Topel (1979:

119) called “fortified power structures”. Patrons were also main speakers

at the General Assembly, members of major committees and of Movement

Council/Executive Committee, delegates to conventions, and brokers of

14 Badaracco & Ellsworth 1989; Kets De Vries 1993; Kouses & Posner 1993;

Terry 1993. 15 Ample support for this kind of etiology is found in Giuliani 2002.


204

kibbutz interests in FOs and other outside organizations where they were

usually well-networked.16 They mostly led the group who had established

the kibbutz and were its first chief officers, while, when they advanced to

pe’ilut, loyalists succeeded them. They then helped loyalists advance to

FO jobs and became their patrons. This was true of all kibbutzim depicted

below except Carmelit during Tomer’s era (Chap. 15), while in Kressel’s

(1974) Netzer Sireni, the founders competed for dominance with a large

group of veteran ex-KM’s Givat Brenner members who had left it in the

1951 partition and joined Netzer Sireni. After a decade, the founders

headed by the treasurer carried out a coup d’etat, replaced the veterans in

the management of the kibbutz’s two plants, and reigned for good by plant

enlargements with hired labor, patronage and privileges which clearly

symbolized supremacy, like FO heads and pe’ilim.

In Rama, however, old guard patronage seemed to be weak due to

mediocre success as pe’ilim; none had headed any FO. They were

conservative loyalists of FO heads and suppressed local creative officers.

This, plus the fact that they had established careers in the Movement’s

political and cultural sectors, encouraged a competing elite of younger

circulative economic pe’ilim. Old guard rule declined in the 1950s after

the Movement’s political crisis caused the exit of forty members which

devastated Rama (Anonymous 1967: 50). Economists introduced hired

labor in seasonal agricultural work, but no industry, as yet. It was only in

the 1960s, with the growing power of economic FOs, that the economists

became dominant, one of them heading a large FO and another a smaller

one. When the latter finished pe’ilut, he founded the plastics plant by

buying and removing to Rama the older production line of an adjacent

plant and operating it with the same hired staff, adding new lines staffed

by members. The FO head retired in the early 1970s, and no member has

since advanced to FO headship or senior pe’ilut. Thus, no strong

patronage emerged and a competing power elite of the Talented evolved

out of successful outside careerists who accumulated power and intangible

capitals, equalizing that of the Economic elite, and preventing it from

limiting their discretion, while foiling egalitarian decisions which curbed

their power and privileges, such as car sharing. However, earlier violations

of egalitarianism by veteran pe’ilim had legitimized this foiling.

16 Kressel 1974, 1983; Shapira 1978, 1990, 2001.


205

Veteran Pe’ilim Created a Tradition of Violating

Egalitarianism Rama’s old guard leaders were continuous pe’ilim from the late 1930s; a

few more became pe’ilim later on, and all violated egalitarianism with

their privileges. In some cases, their violations far exceeded that of pe’ilim

like Beit Alfa’s David Kahana, who bought himself a private radio. For

instance, a member who had been Israel’s ambassador, returned home

with assortment of electric appliances which were unknown in any other

flat. This was exceptional, but violations by pe’ilim legitimated similar

ones by members who obtained presents due to various social ties with

outsiders. When Kochav and other kibbutzim introduced sharing of

pe’ilim cars in the early 1960s, Rama’s pe’ilim prevented it, and when this

norm was adopted many years later, many of them violated it.

The continuous pe’ilut of the old guard legitimized continuity in

outside jobs by three professionals who did not have company cars. As FO

cars proliferated, the three pressed Rama to furnish them with cars and,

after a long struggle, the kibbutz surrendered. This enhanced their career

success and they became models of a career alternative to pe’ilut. Since

Rama lacked FO heads whose auspices assured advance of ex-officers to

pe’ilut and circulation, instead of exiting when faced with status loss at a

term end, some ex-officers followed the professionals and turned to

outside careers. Later on, younger talents chose such careers from the

beginning. Thus, a large elite group of talented outside careerists was

created whose interests were promoted by non-egalitarian practices, which

were legitimized by following pe’ilim practices.

The Talented Followed Pe’ilim’s Violations of

Egalitarianism Most of the Talented got company cars from employers in various

arrangements which were often at Rama’s expense, as in the case of the

cook, but unlike her, they brought in higher salaries. However, they could

not prevent egalitarian changes which imitated creative kibbutzim and

curbed privileges; when Rama adopted car-sharing a decade and a half

after Kochav had innovated it and some pe’ilim violated it, the Talented,

including the three professionals using Rama’s own cars, followed suit.


206

They suffered no sanction, like violator pe’ilim and pe’ilim of other

kibbutzim.17 I know of just one kibbutz, Hatzor (true name), which fully

enforced car sharing by stopping pe’ilut of violators. This was explicable

both by Hatzor’s unique location which made car use more essential than

in most kibbutzim, and by the strong egalitarianism of its leaders.18

At the time of observation, Rama’s few outworn cars were shared by

hundreds of members, while newer and better cars were held by dozens of

pe’ilim and Talented who rarely shared them. Asked about this inequality,

Ilan, the former secretary, explained:

“They [the three professionals] attained powerful positions and determined

norms their fellow members no longer had the strength to cope with. All

those who violate norms have tall trees to lean on. For instance, G. [a

professional with his own office in town] does whatever he wants, as if it

were his own car. He buys a new one every two years and has not put it at

the disposal of other members, despite its being formally owned by the

kibbutz”.

Weak Officers Surrendered to the Talented and the

Economists Rama’s short-term officers were clearly weak and unable to tackle major

problems. G.’s car was kibbutz-owned; without chief officers’

authorization, he could not sell it and buy a new one. Since other cars were

much older and in much worse condition, officers consented to the deal,

not because he was right, but due to his might which stemmed from

accumulation of power and intangible capitals, helped by privileges

symbolizing superiority. However, G. and his two mates could point to

both pe’ilim who violated car sharing, and to many members who had

violated egalitarian decisions by holding various profitable assets, such as

urban apartments for rent inherited from parents or other relatives,

financial assets which formally should have been handed over to Rama’s

treasurer but never were, etc. Thus, officers could not blame G. and his

mates as the only ones who advanced personal interests at public expense

17 Adar 1975; Ilana & Avner 1977; Shapira 1979b; Ginat 1981; Atar 1982;

Kressel 1983. 18 My wife is Hatzor offspring; I lived and worked there in 1973-4, and ever

since, have visited it regularly.


207

by violating egalitarianism.

An especially problematic violation of egalitarianism, about which no

one agreed to talk, were outside incomes, not defined formally as salary.

These included expense accounts, accommodation allowances, severance

payments, pensions, etc. There were quite expensive and uncommon

durable goods that I saw in flats of some of the Talented which were a

clear indication of wealth, in addition to private enlargements of flats. The

possible magnitude of wealth obtained by top level outside jobs, could be

grasped when Kibbutz Ayelet Hashachar sued its ex-member, Itzchak

Landesman, who had been Tnuva’s head for 26 years, to retrieve almost a

million $US he secretly retained from his income, instead of handing it

over to the kibbutz (Lifshitz 1998). Landesman headed Tnuva which

imitated capitalist firms in both salaries and fringe benefits; thus, it

pointed to possibilities which some of the Talented also had.

Officers could not enforce egalitarianism on power elites without a

clear mandate and stable trust by members and Movement leaders support.

As we know, the latter enhanced privileges, while the two local power

elites defeated officers on many occasions (below), since the crippled

General Assembly rarely gave clear mandates, while most members did

not trust them without successes as leaders. Such a mandate and trust were

decisive when enforcement proved problematic and caused a bitter

conflict. For instance, in the past Rama’s secretaries had tried to enforce

car sharing on a young pa’il, a financial expert of the Movement Fund. He

had resisted, pointing to other, more veteran violators, and when they

insisted on his sharing, he relinquished his formal membership in Rama;

the Fund agreed to his continuing as a hired employee instead of pa’il, and

he remained a resident of Rama due to his wife’s membership.

Membership is personal, and his wife and children were valued enough by

members to prevent expulsion. Officers could do little if they were not

perceived as just and fair public servants; even those who censored his

deed as unfair use of family connections, said it was unfair that veteran

violators of car sharing had not been reprimanded like him. No sanction

was used against him; his payments for the services his family got from

Rama left him better off, and soon, six others followed suit and the

powerful clique of seven non-member residents caused major norm

changes.


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Rama’s Power Eclipse: Family Boarding, Private

Construction The power of the seven was proven soon after the norm of boarding

children in nurseries with their peers was changed, in 1987, to family

boarding. The change was affected after many years during which a

growing number of parents violated the norm of communal boarding until

anarchy became intolerable. Each evening it was unknown how many

children would come to board at a specific nursery, and if too few came,

they would have to return to their family flats. Concomitantly, communal

boarding arrangements dwindled: Night watchwomen sometimes did not

appear or came very late since they were taking care of their own children

boarding in their flats, or since some had arranged to be replaced and the

replacement had forgotten her promise; the old collective intercom that

enabled night watchwomen to hear what was going in each house

frequently failed, among other such defects.

Although it had been quite clear for some years before the change that

communal boarding was in a terminal state unless something drastic was

done, no officer did anything and no one planned the change to family

boarding. It was well-known that this change would require huge

investment in flat enlargements, since this change had already occurred in

other kibbutzim. When Rama decided to forego communal boarding, the

economic crisis was already acute; money for flat enlargement was almost

unavailable and families had to accommodate their children in the modest

living room of their tiny, 38-48 square-meter, one-and-a-half room flats,

with no prospect of a better solution in the foreseeable future. Soon after,

the norm of collective construction of flats collapsed: The father of the

first family to add a room to his flat on his own initiative was the non-

member resident financial expert. The Secretaries tried to convince him to

stop, but to no avail. They brought the matter to the General Assembly

which decided he must demolish the half-finished addition. However, with

support of other residents and some member friends and relatives, he

completed construction. Subsequently, other residents followed him, then

a few members, and soon after, private construction was authorized

without any limitations, although all flats were in two- or four-flat

buildings and the neighbors’ interests should have been defended by

setting some limits. Alas, nothing of the sort was decided; everything was

left to individual whim.


209

Low Morality of the Economic Elite Most members could not afford construction from the small monthly

allowances they were given by Rama, while the first to enlarge flats

included economic elite members, pe’ilim, ex-pe’ilim and outside

employed managers aged over forty-five, who had money saved from

fringe benefits, expense accounts, etc. Almost none of them needed space

for boarding small children as theirs were already grown up and the

youngest of them boarded at the regional high school dormitory. However,

as members of the Economic Committee, they found no money to enlarge

members’ flats, although $120,000 was found for building new offices for

the food factory, an expenditure the factory manager deemed inessential.

Like low-moral officers of capitalist firms, they ignored the plight of about

half the kibbutz members, preferring a marginal interest in their own

sector.19

When added to the fact that some of them did not share their cars, that

the careers of some of them ignored Rama’s needs, and that they rarely

participated in shift-work sharing in the plastics plant, a norm which

imitated self-work kibbutzim like Kochav, their low morality clearly

resembled that of Talented elite members.20 Both elites could not be

trusted to care for Rama’s member needs in a way conducive to

democratic egalitarianism, resembling the selfish elite of the backward

Italian village studied by Banfield (1958). Indeed, in interviews, members

expressed feelings of helplessness, distrust and suspicion about officers’

and other elite members’ morality, much like the Italians in Banfield’s

study.

Low Morality of ‘the Slaves Who Turned Masters’ Rama members had good reasons for such feelings: power elites were

indifferent to their plight, and incompetent officers evaded problems or

introduced faulty solutions. Worse still, the latter evaded public problems,

but private ones came to their desks due to the collective structure and

low-moral use of authority causing injustices. The pages of kibbutz

weeklies since the 1990s have been full of stories of such cases, but

19 See similar low morality in: Banfield 1958; Dalton 1959; Maccoby 1976;

Jackall 1988. 20 On shift work sharing see Shapira 1977 and Chaps. 15-16.


210

Dvorkind’s (1996) autobiographical book, called ‘A Slave Turned a

Master’, has better exposed how authority given to mediocre, short-term,

self-serving officers caused mounting injustices. It details a row which

continued for years between Kibbutz Hamaapil’s officers and a veteran

member who was an FO comptroller and member of the Board of Israel

Comptrollers Association. The gist of the matter was his desire to help his

poor son and young wife who had left her kibbutz, penniless, to buy a

small apartment with some of a lump sum of money which he had

received in place of the pension he was to receive upon retirement. He felt

that he was entitled to this sum since he had brought Hamaapil a great deal

of money over the previous fourteen years by working some 7000 extra

hours. He said he had worked so hard in order to overcome long neglect of

improper payments, due to deficient procedures, corrupt ‘cost plus’

pricing and mismanagement by FO heads and pe’ilim, all of which were

common phenomena in Reg.Ents and other FOs (Shapira 1987; Shure

2001).

Formally, he was entitled to nothing, and should have turned this

money over to the kibbutz account, but since he had already turned over

much more money than he was required, and since the same was true of

the lump sum, using some of it to help his son was quite fair. This was

especially so in view of the many members who did not turn over

inherited money and other assets to the kibbutz. However, neither one

secretary nor his two successors solved the problem and the conflict

turned into an undeclared war between him and all chief officers who

insisted on turning the money over without an agreed solution. After two

and a half years, KA pe’ilim intervened and their arbitration led to a

compromise which was ratified by the General Assembly. Alas, in the

process of execution, the secretaries disavowed much of the agreement,

until he left the kibbutz.

While his testimony is, by nature, subjective, one point seems clear: no

supreme power, local or federal, stopped mediocre officers from using

their powers to torment a member for years. Their use of power seemed

ill-intended and cruel, or, at best, incompetent and aimed at concealing

this fact, proving members could not trust them to care for their interests,

as with Rama’s officers and power elites whose self-serving, conservative

shirking of leadership duties engendered anarchy, divisiveness, distrust

and destructive conflicts, as next chapter will expose.

CHAPTER 13

FOs Enhanced Conservatism, Divisiveness, Distrust

and Destructive Conflicts

Anarchy is associated with innovation by Peters and Austin (1986), but

this did not occur in Rama. Anarchy explains conservatism, as it

encourages destructive conflicts. At the height of the Viet Nam war, social

psychologist Deutsch pointed out (1969) that conflicts lead to creative

solutions if they become constructive due to trust created between parties,

while they are destructive if communication fails due to the lack of

common language and concepts because of cultural differences, without

prior positive relationships which will ensure the minimal trust so that

there is no double-talk, and that promises and agreements will be honored.

This will rarely happen if a conflict is grasped as a zero-sum competition

and if one party sees itself as more powerful and/or more morally just than

the other. Rama’s power elite conflicts were a zero-sum competition, and

each saw itself as more just morally: the Economists (i.e., the economic

elite) in communal terms, and the Talented in liberal terms. Both were

largely self-serving and foiled the few efforts made by officers to solve

problems constructively, engendering a process that furthered destructive

conflicts and distrust with growing use of market forces and hierarchic

coercion by all three elite groups.

Let us define Rama’s power-holders more accurately: Beneath the two

powerful, continuous and antagonistic elites, was a third, weaker officers’

elite. Formal authority over various functions gave them only limited

positive control, mainly only what Israel Shepher (1983) called “deterrent

power”. For example, until the children’s boarding change led to the flat

enlargement crisis, a building manager’s objection was enough to deter

private construction. However, power elites also held deterrent power: The

Talented deterred Rama administrators from interfering with their outside

careers and privileges beyond bringing in salaries, and the Economists

deterred the secretaries from interfering in budgeting. Both elites also had

positive power: the Talented introduced private construction and the

Economists introduced outside customers and developed the food plant

and the commercial park. Both elites were more influential in the General

13. FOs Enhanced Conservatism, Distrust, Conflicts

212

Assembly and main committees than were officers, and, through ties with

high-level pe’ilim and other outside officers, they influenced career

advance of ex-officers on the outside. Last though not least, power elite

members were mostly older, senior and more experienced than officers;

some had been chief officers in the past, and, as pe’ilim or ex-pe’ilim, they

instructed chief officers of other kibbutzim.

The Power and Weakness of the Economists This, however, was not a guarantee of continuous power and high

standing. Until the debt crisis, Economists largely dominated Rama as was

in most of the kibbutz field since the late 1950s (Cohen, R. 1978).

Admors’ conservatism and continued leftism marred involvement in

Israeli society beyond election campaigns; thus, only relatively few

pe’ilim were involved in politics, while Admors’ conservatism prevented

any socialist, democratic changes in FOs. Only economic activity was left

open to change and became prime avenue for innovators’ careers. The

power of the Movements dwindled as leftism became outmoded with the

exposures of the USSR bluff, but as has been exposed, Admors suppressed

radicals who tried to shape new, relevant discourses. Those who did not

exit, turned to economic activity, which enlisted most younger talents;

thus, the Movements were left with lesser ones.1 One clear sign: most of

their General Secretaries in the 1970s-1980s came from economic careers,

rather than from social or political ones as was hitherto the case. Another

sign: Milu’ot’s Fridman defeated the Movements’ General Secretaries in

1969 and 1979, as was mentioned. Reuven Cohen (1978) summarized:

“The kibbutz today is a multi-aim organization, while the economic aim,

which is based on its economic values and laws, rules over all other

sectors… organizational-institutional patterns… have elevated the

economic area at the expense of other areas...”. (p. 47).

However, rotatzia, for instance, did not conform to “economic values

and laws”, but to FO heads’ interest in an egalitarian image that

camouflaged their own continuity and enhanced rule over lesser pe’ilim

whose circulation weakened them. This was the Achilles’ heel of the

power and status of Rama Economists; they had to find new jobs every

1 Thus my talented, radical father preferred managing Gan Shmuel’s plant over

pe’ilut.


213

three-four years without any local patron helping them. Rama lacked

patrons due to its mediocre economy which incurred little prestige, similar

to Chen and Carmelit in the early days, while due to Carmelit’s later

success two of its officers became heads of large FOs (Chaps. 14-15).

Rama’s Economists feared the Talented because the three powerful

veteran professionals and many others enjoyed higher prestige due to

successful careers, free from rotatzia. They exhibited power by defying

egalitarian decisions which were mostly shaped by Economists, while they

turned extra means into extra prestige and power using status symbols.

Moreover, though I did not measure intellectual capacity by tests, both

interviews and written material, such as the local bulletin and General

Assembly protocols indicated that, in this area, Economists trailed behind

the Talented. This was consistent with FO findings: Economists were

mostly loyalists advanced due to a lack of critical thinking and

conservatism, while the Talented tended to be radicals or critical thinkers;

they were not promoted to pe’ilut or left it early due to conflicts with

conservative FO heads, as did Carmelit’s leader Tomer (Chap. 15).

One advantage of Economists over the Talented was more unity,

socially and ideologically due to more similar habituses (Bourdieu 1977),

and due to long periods of collaboration in both local and FO managerial

jobs as partners and/or colleagues. Among the Talented there was little

consensus as to how Rama’s problems should be tackled, while

Economists were unified about the capitalist course. However, the pace

and specifics of this course were controversial, since, as we have seen

above, FO and capitalist norms could not simply be applied to a collective

ownership system, if fair and just solutions were sought.

Low-Trust Culture and the Threat From Below In addition to these weaknesses, the Economists were threatened from

below by bright young radicals, innovative branch managers and chief

officers. The threat to supremacy of seniors from bright young radicals

who excel in their jobs and are rapidly advanced so that they can

ultimately turn into their seniors’ bosses, is a known but unstudied

phenomenon.2 Dore (1973: Chap. 9) explained Japanese firms’

innovativeness by slow and internal-only promotion which prevented this

2 Iacocca 1984: 166; Stryjan 1989: 90.


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threat, and thus, encouraged seniors to nurture bright young officers. The

Economists feared these young officers: rotatzia and the FO advance

system of ‘parachutings’, enhanced ‘high fliers’, ‘fast trackers’, as

organizational literature called careerists like Shavit (e.g. Dalton 1959)

who might surpass the Economists’ status and power; hence, they were

suppressed.

For instance, a young consumption sector manager proposed budgeting

electricity, which had been provided free of charge, causing much waste.

This had been done in many kibbutzim, leading to savings of up to 25%,

in addition to infrastructure savings. The idea had already been proposed

by his predecessor five years before, and, in order to decide how to budget

various flats, flats were equipped with electricity meters; thus

consumption records would have made it quite simple to allocate an

adequate quota to each type of flat in accord with its demographic

composition and other variables, and then reward or charge each family

according to actual use. Alas, the Economists blocked his move, contrary

to their own policy of privatization. His move would have required no

expense; thus, obstruction could not be explained by lack of money, nor

could any other explanation be found. Not allowing even a trial of the

proposal had its Hirschmanian price, brain-drain due to the exit of

radicals, unsolved problems and distrust: Members were astonished to see

that, after the initiator had resigned and left, his successor urged the same

solution and it was soon approved and implemented. Economists’

behavior was clearly questionable and led to the conclusion that the idea

was aborted at first to retain their supremacy which seemed threatened by

a talented junior. Avoidance of such deeds by leaders is the supreme test

of genuine democracy where leaders can be trusted to prefer the public

good over their own. This case signaled dirty politics, and inauthentic

behavior by discredited power-holders who could not be trusted.

Slightly different, but essentially the same, was the case of two

women, aged thirty and thirty-three who were chosen officers of pre-

school education; one was an experienced school teacher and the other a

kindergarten teacher. In accord with the Economists’ policy of introducing

outside clients, they accepted outside toddlers and infants for a fee. They

had persuaded the nursery teams to make the necessary extra efforts by

their own personal example, and they were much involved in decision-

making and implementation of solutions to the new problems it caused.


215

However, the economic committee refused to allocate any of the

handsome profits their initiative engendered to a renewal of old buildings

and a modest purchase of toys, causing their frustration, despair and early

resignation.3 Since the two did exactly what Economists preached, and

since the sums requested were minimal, this could only be explained by

apprehension of Economists of further successes by the two.

The way their resignation was presented was also illuminating: it was

presented as normal rotatzia, without the two publicizing any sign of the

very negative feelings they had expressed in interviews toward

Economists. This can be explained by their aiming at future public offices,

an area controlled by Economists. Indeed, the more talented, tall,

handsome and better speaker of the two, was nominated soon after to head

the Members Committee, a committee of relative importance. This

resembled Admors’ control of pe’ilim by rotatzia: Her contributions to

Rama’s management were sought after, but only until they gained her

power which might threaten the supremacy of Economists. After she was

tamed and resigned from one office, her contributions were sought in

another, but if a major success had been in the offing, one which might

have boosted her prestige too much, her term would have again been

terminated and her career contained, unless a patron helped her. However,

the Economists just imitated the Admors and other patrons, backing

innovation only by those who could be tamed to insure own supremacy.

Although derailing the careers of the three innovators may not be

discerned by many members as a self-serving deed of a low-moral elite, it

could not fool all of the members all of the time, especially since the two

latter victims stayed, and what they told me was certainly heard by other

members, as well. In time, members discerned Economists’ preference for

less talented loyalist officers, and this surely curbed trust in them.

Alienated Talented, Non-Credible Power, Destructive

Conflicts Most Economists had neither high enough status, nor jobs which

continued long enough to secure standing and power. They barely

controlled the Talented, whose successful outside careers mustered

3 See much the same in Carmelit, but Schwartz and Naor (2000: 127-34) missed

it.


216

resources by which they resisted or violated egalitarian decisions which

negated their interests. Their successes weakened Economists, as they

provided models of alternative successful careers to pe’ilim circulation.

Their status, power and privileges were more secure, but investing most of

their time and efforts in careers, left most decision making to officers and

Economists. I heard interesting ideas for solutions of Rama’s problems

from some of them, but, with no prospects of their execution, they

abstained from Rama’s offices, and participated infrequently in the

General Assembly.

Interviewees, especially Economists and officers, criticized the

Talented as selfish and uncaring for public interests. This was the Achilles

heel of the Talented, which largely neutralized their superior intellectual

capacities and intangible capitals: Their arguments were more valid than

those of the Economists on many occasions but were defeated. Voting by

members was only partially influenced by validity; trusting them to care

for public interests was also a major factor, and their behavior indicated

the opposite, as has been depicted. Another example: The chief work

officer complained that

“the whole issue of outside workers is disorganized, many of them work

five days a week. I don’t know what they do on Fridays. In principle, many

have agreed that they should work on Fridays [in the kibbutz, like other

members], but, in fact, this never materializes”.

The Talented were aware of the expectation from them to work on

Fridays, but they ignored this for at least four reasons: 1. It interfered with

their career advance. 2. It required them doing manual work which

signaled low status. 3. Their five days of work involved longer hours than

members’ six days. 4. Rama’s anarchic democracy alienated them. A

university professor, a Rama offspring who had been a young chief

economic officer as early as the 1960s, stated:

“I have not attended the General Assembly for fifteen years. Why was I

alienated? Because during my [personal] development I went through an

undemocratic process resulting from a decision-making system which is

too democratic, and approaches anarchy. When I calculate where it is

preferable to invest my time, I would invest [it in Rama] if I could lead

some process [of change]. They [nomination committee members] came

here and asked me to be a Secretary. I said: ‘Well, if they [kibbutz

members] do as I say’. They retorted: ‘That is not democratic!’ I saw that


217

it would be a waste of time and refused. My destiny is not determined by

Rama’s decisions; it is preferable that those whose destiny is determined

by them make [decisions]”.

This raises the question: Why is he a kibbutz member at all if he is so

alienated? One explanation the Talented gave was Rama’s ‘liberalism’,

but this was not an authentic answer since they knew that the term did not

mean anarchy, while this, in fact, was what they had led. Thus,

Economists view themselves as more just and prime contributors to

Rama’s subsistence, and as defenders of collectivism against selfish

Talented. Economists’ behavior, however, proved that they, too, were

selfish, contrary to their altruistic posture. Thus, both elites’ postures were

inauthentic and their assertions non-credible, depriving them of

trustworthiness, which ex-New York Mayor Giuliani defined (2002: Chap.

10) as “the indispensable virtue” of leadership, in accord with Chapter 9

discussion.

Inauthentic, non-credible assertions pushed conflicts to destructive

courses, since trust, the prime condition for the constructive search for true

solutions, was minimal. Without it, the success of a proposed solution by

one side threatened the standing and power of the other. Career tracks

were also a differentiating factor: Economists mostly advanced by

circulation and ‘parachutings’, while the Talented succeeded by

continuity. Finding common ground was problematic, as well, since each

power elite formally sought a different goal: one aimed at Rama’s

economic success, while, for the other, this success was secondary, and

only a basis for the prime goal of one’s career success, its rewards and,

sometimes, self-actualization.

Dependency of the Talented on Officers A fertile ground for conflicts was the special requirements essential for the

functioning of the Talented in their jobs, such as work rooms, computers,

cars, work expenses, travel abroad, etc. Rama was pressed to supply these

needs in many cases, unlike pe’ilim whose work needs were cared for by

FOs. Supplying them without harming egalitarianism, required creativity

and consideration, but the many officers whose main motive was an image

of success and approval by conservative pe’ilim and ex-pe’ilim so that

they help their advance to FOs, did not seek fair and just solutions, and

without them, conflicts became zero-sum games. The professor

remembered the gifted educator and writer whose vital interest was


218

ignored by officers, and when he fended for himself, they faked

egalitarianism to suppress him; he left and became nationally renowned

professor:

“In the 1950s, veteran members’ 38-square-meter flats had no door

between the living quarters and the bedroom. The writer used to work in

the corner of his living quarters until late at night, but his noisy typewriter

was an unbearable nuisance for his wife, so he asked for a door to the

bedroom. He was refused in the name of equality, and then privately

bought a door from a carpenter in the town. The matter was brought to the

General Assembly by officers [as a violation of equality], and it was

decided that he must remove the door. He did so, but then left Rama”.

Officers might have been afraid of other members asking for doors too;

this might have been a problem which could have explained their refusal,

but why not ignore the writer’s deed? By that time, privileged pe’ilim had

already violated egalitarianism to a much greater extent without any public

critique and negative sanctions. Thus, officers could have ignored the

deed. Alas, they were exposed as petty, and since their authority was very

fragile, they bolstered it by using faked egalitarianism. Had their authority

been more secure, they would have ignored the deed, and had they been

more experienced, critically minded and innovative, they would have

bolstered authority by offering true solutions to growing inequality, as did

Avraham and Sagi in Carmelit and Ran in Kochav (Chap. 15-16).

Basically, nothing changed from the 1950s: weak officers still tried to

camouflage lack of genuine care for member’s legitimate interests, and

sought an image of care rather than solutions. The Talented used this

situation to push liberal changes, while Economists supported only

capitalist changes which enhanced their power, that is, only their own

proposals and those of loyal mediocre officers. Until the crisis began,

conservative officers backed by Economists usually won conflicts, but

afterwards, the Talented usually won as communal values have lost

meaning, the economy was in ruins, members wanted changes, and the

early turn to outside careers by the Talented had been hailed by members

as wise.

The Old Guard Shaped Rama as a Conservative Kibbutz All of the above raises the question: Can Rama’s old guard conservatism

explain anarchy, and if yes, to what extent?

All signs indicate that it is indeed the prime explanation. From


219

inception, Rama imitated other kibbutzim rather than creating solutions

itself. There were some objective reasons for this guarded behavior: The

group of founders was relatively small, its settlement location was not

authorized by Merkaz Hakla’ii experts, and its financing by the Jewish

Agency was minimal. This led to extra care with investments. However,

conservatism reigned in all matters. For instance, years elapsed before

Rama followed adjacent successful citrus growers. Another example is

that while in the mid-1920s Shenhabi’s Beit Alfa and a number of other

kibbutzim raised mixed breed Hollandish bulls and Damascus cows,

almost tripling milk yield, Rama introduced this only in the 1930s. Even

more conservative was industrialization in which Rama trailed almost

three decades behind pioneers. Likewise, it trailed with cultural

production, and did not create any new style or content in holiday

celebrations. Other kibbutzim created new, secular versions of Jewish

holidays, renewed the agricultural content of holidays and their connection

with nature, used Biblical texts in songs, music and dances.4 Nothing of

that sort was created in Rama’s early days. Rama’s 40th Anniversary

Book (Anonymous 1967) depicted these days as follows:

“However, our holidays were painfully empty. ‘We forsook the traditional

content of holidays, without finding new content’, wrote members, ‘until

our children grew up and our yields increased. The children and the fields

accorded new content to our holidays’” (p. 34).

The prime reason for this was leaders’ suppression of young radicals,

like the Economists a half century later; they defended superiority rather

than allowing young radicals to succeed by creating the new content

which members were waiting for. In 1932-3 they repressed a large

hashlama (joiners) group of educated, radical youth. Many hashlama

members proved more proficient in their respective trades than veteran

managers, criticized their ineptitude, tried new solutions, and were radical

in both cultural events and political debates. Rama’s leaders raised

groundless political accusations against hashlama leaders and sought their

expulsion. This unified the group around its innocent leaders, until it left

Rama and joined another kibbutz and led to its success. A clear sign of the

veterans’ sorrow and shame for this act was the complete absence of any

4 Near 1992: 253-60, 371-8; Chapter 16.


220

mention of the event in the above book that, contrastingly, did mention the

exit of another hashlama later on. There were other signs that I could not

expose for ethical reasons, while the conclusion is clear: Rama’s old guard

preserved superiority at the expense of public interest in the creativity of

young talented radicals, like the Economists half a century later.

The etiology of Rama’s anarchy is clear since the old guard’s self-

serving conservatism preceded anarchic violations of egalitarian norms by

two decades, appearing in the 1930s while anarchy commenced only in the

1950s; the Economists just continued the low-moral tradition. The case of

Carmelit (Chap. 15) will prove such continuity is not inevitable if

transformational leaders emerge, but it will also expose the eventual

victory of a low-moral conservative leader due to power and capitals

gained in pe’ilut and patronage of officers. However, in accord with

previous chapters, the low-moral, low-trust, conservative Rama culture

continued for generations largely due to FO heads supremacy.

Rama’s Culture was Largely Shaped by Oligarchic FO

Heads The above further proved that rotatzia enhanced conservatism by

enlarging FO heads’ power. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power

corrupts absolutely” stated Lord Acton, and recent major frauds by heads

of Enron, WorldCom, Parmalat and others have provided new evidence.

However, why does power corrupt? Or better, examining the matter more

sociologically along with Hosmer (1995): Why does more power lower

morality, i.e., engender unjust and unfair decisions for private aims? For

Hirschman (1982), officers shift involvement to private aims following

their inability to promote public ones, but more power comes with

accumulated experience, knowledge and capitals, it enables a leader to

promote aims which were impossible before, so why not turn to such

aims?

Psychologist Kets De Vries (1993) answers the above question citing

the negative metamorphic effect of power: its use makes power-holders

narcissistic and stimulates other negative syndromes that cause leaders to

forego public aims. Sociologically, however, power lessens a leader’s

vulnerability to negative sanctions when foregoing public needs, while the

very use of power, apart from outcomes, subordinating others to his will,

is rewarding, elevating status and self-worth (since all leaders were males,

masculine language is used). Organizational success adds loyalist deputies


221

who please a leader by telling him he is right, and camouflage his self-

serving deeds as public service, while critics who expose the harsh reality

of unsolved problems or those aggravated by him, are marginalized,

deprived of rewards, demoted, and mostly leave.5 Hughes (1958) pointed

out that a lawyer can tell the court her/his hands are clean, since aides and

hired hands do the dirty work required to win a case. The latter are blamed

if camouflage fails and wrong deeds are exposed, while her/his high status

and the rewards s/he gives or promises them assure secrecy and no

defiance in case of exposure.

A lawyer uses just one or two levels below him/her, while, below

Admors and other FO heads, there were many levels and ample room for

such tactics. Admors evaded major challenges, preferring promotion of

conservative loyalists, and sidetracked critical thinkers like Ostrovski and

Livenshtein, and radicals like Shenhabi, Allon, Avidan and Reiner who

could have coped with them. Any critique of their continuity and that of

their deputies, of pe’ilim privileges and other non-democratic, non-

egalitarian policies, was derogated as grumbling. Radicalism of the youth

was diverted to barren leftism, and when the leftists’ idol was exposed as a

bluff, Admors masked root causes, faked Movement democracy and

masked oligarchic rule. They feigned the image of inspirational and

ideological leaders who were above mundane affairs, but actually shaped

all major decisions. Tabenkin’s and Yaari’s detachment from Ein Harod

and Merchavia deliberations (respectively), spared them failures and

mistakes which might have toppled them, but also deprived them of

knowledge for decision-making,6 while their privileged deputies often

ignored members’ plights. Hazan’s involvement in Mishmar Ha’emek

made a difference for this kibbutz, but little for the KA, as he usually

surrendered to Yaari, and, after he had succeeded him, he was too used to

dysfunctioning, to a “world of ruined dreams” as Tzachor (1997: 222)

cited him. Exit by the disenchanted was not massive enough to topple

them as German Democratic Republic leaders were toppled (Hirschman

1995), since enough young people joined kibbutzim, as the Israeli context

was also oligarchic.

As explained in Chapter 1, rotatzia magnified the above effects by

5 Michels 1959[1915]; Dalton 1959; Jay 1969; Hirschman 1970. 6 On detachment depriving knowledge: Shapira 1987, 1995b.


222

detaching power from responsibility: Power was concentrated at the top,

while responsibility rested on changing mid- and low-level officers. This

invited conservative, hands-off management which became self-serving in

accord with Hirschman (1982). Leadership requires creativity which needs

a long-time horizon (Jaques 1990) and high-trust relations which require

time and motivation to create (Axelrod 1984). However, oligarchic

continuity of Admors and other FO heads thrived on subordinates’

circulation and rotatzia, which was the prime cause of the destructive

conflicts of Rama’s elites and failures to solve problems by radical and

critical thinkers.

Rotatzia Deterred Talents from Offices

Rotatzia and power elites’ conservatism marred careers of Rama’s young

officers who promoted public aims by creative solutions; they received, at

most, passing glory, but rarely a promotion. Viewed as risks by

conservative power-holders, they were replaced when it seemed possible

to manage without them by failing them with the help of rotatzia. They

exited or turned to outside careers, and mediocre loyalists who became

officers ignored many member needs, encouraged egoism which led to

incommensurate solutions such as non-member residency. However,

neither officers nor Economists could be blamed for rotatzia’s perils. A

new solution for oligarchic tendency instead of rotatzia required critical

thinking and ingenuity, while their absence brought Economists power and

standing, and short tenures and status dependency on patronage deterred

coping with such a major change. Creating a new solution for the 2500

years old problem was the responsibility of Admors, as Washington,

Madison and Jefferson created US democratic norms. Alas, even Hazan’s

confession that rotatzia barred genuine leadership, did not cause him to

seek an alternative after he succeeded Yaari.

Kibbutz students missed it: surveys never asked about it, and

ethnographers who saw patronage and stratification, did not expose the

fragile status of officers due to rotatzia. Rama’s Economists allegedly

cared for public interest, but, as they shirked the moral duty of coping with

major problems, very few officers, as weak figures, were willing to risk

grappling with challenges. Moreover, these few either failed or had to

compromise, as did the two former secretaries. Rama’s conservative

anarchy is fully explained only within the context of two elites,

Economists and officers, castrated by rotatzia, circulation and the


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conservatism of FO heads and senior pe’ilim, as well as by the opposition

of detached continuous Talented who obstructed changes which harmed

their interests. In accord with Aristophanes who wrote “Leadership is the

interest of complete ignoramuses and the lowest of degenerates” (Chap.

1), talented members abstained from offices, causing the ‘internal leaving’

problem which plagued conservative kibbutzim (Am’ad & Palgi 1986).

However, these authors missed the mark by ignoring impacts of rotatzia,

officers’ weakness and FO heads’ oligarchic conservatism.

The professor’s interview supported the above explanation: He would

have agreed to be a Secretary in order to change things that bothered him,

but refused, since he saw no chance for success. He also had another,

unexpressed reason: For a young committee head or branch manager, a

nomination to a chief kibbutz office was a promotion and a springboard

for pe’ilut, but not for him, as a veteran ex-chief officer who had

abandoned circulation decades ago. Only prospective success in solving

acute major public problems could reward him enough for the trouble,

granting fame, self-actualization and perhaps advance to Movement

leadership which would justify forsaking an academic career. This was

impossible in the short term while power elites reigned, and repelled him

and his like who were better equipped than officers to cope creatively with

problems. In the past, rotatzia had demoted them from offices just as they

had understood what had to be changed, how to do it, and sometimes had

the public trust required for success. Afterwards they were denied pe’ilut

or ousted of it soon, as only loyalists and seekers of power, privileges and

status were promoted, becoming powerful and conservative. This wrong

could not be remedied by a ‘parachuted’ brilliant academician without

powerful supporters and a clear vision of the required basic changes such

as a democratic solution for oligarchy instead of rotatzia, both of which

the professor lacked.

Heidenheimer’s (1970: 184-8) critique of the corrupt US public service,

supports the above. It points to high turnover of officers being linked to a

political structure without adequate motivators to give proper meaning to

the conception of a public office as a public trust. Hence, few officers are

truly public servants. While Rama officers were rarely corrupt like some

American officials, only a few were truly public servants. They hardly

could be, because rotatzia denied those in office of the continuity which

was vital for using trust gained by early successful public service to solve


224

harder problems later on, as did Pericles in Athens’ Golden Age, 444-429

B.C. According to literature cited, rotatzia was a Procrustean bed for

genuine leaders; it explains the premature resignations of the plant

manager and the pre-school officers who defended status by seeking new

jobs. They were unsure of continuity since rotatzia legitimized

replacement without any intrinsic reason and encouraged Shavit-like

behavior: Forego coping with major problems, mask failures or blame

them on others, take credit for successes, even those which you tried to

abort, nurture ties with patrons, and do not bother about public interest;

camouflage its evasion, just create an image of caring.7

As proved, rotatzia did not prevent continuity of mediocre officers who

did not fail publicly and ignored efforts to rotate them from office, using

the lack of a formal succession timetable, clear-cut procedures and open

competition for offices. Without all these, incumbents lacked a clear

public mandate that defended authority, an additional reason to deter the

radical and talented from offices and enhance continuity of mediocre

officers which bred corruption as they shifted to private ends (Hirschman

1982), and then incompetent leadership: The veteran manager of the

avocado orchards was caught embezzling money. He promised to return it

all and left Rama, while no proper successor was found. Two member

workers were too young and inexperienced, and a veteran hired worker

was viewed as incompetent, in addition to the norm of reserving offices

for members. There were some veterans of the branch in other jobs,

including an ex-manager, but none of them agreed to leave his current job

to head a small, unprofitable, non-prestigious branch in a culture

dominated by private interests. At last, public servant Ilan agreed, under

pressure from officers and friends, when he had finished his term as

Secretary, even though, for many years, he had specialized in raising

poultry. He followed Thomas’s model of great involvement, but he lacked

basic expertise, as did his team, and after years in office, had still failed to

cope with major problems, as he admitted to me.

Outstanding Success of a Tenured Genuine Branch Leader Other agricultural branches were quite similar. An exception was the large

7 Dalton 1959; Jay 1969; Maccoby 1976; Shapira 1987; Jackall 1988; Scharfstein

1995.


225

cow barn, almost 500 milking cows and some 300 calves. One reason for

its consistent profitability was the regulation of the milk industry by a

national FO (see Chap. 5, No. 10 in FOs list) with government backing.

This was in contrast to other, unregulated agricultural sectors which, even

if efficient, mostly incurred losses, lost prestige, suffered managerial

turnover, brain-drain and were pushed to use cheap foreign hired laborers

in order to survive. The cow barn had a proficient manager, aged thirty-

three, who had been promoted from the ranks where he had begun at the

age of twenty-two, and held office for some six years. With Rama’s

forsaking kibbutz norms, he felt quite secure in his job, and had no fear

that the rotatzia sword would be raised against him. Success was on his

side: The branch excelled on a national scale; hundreds of kibbutz and

moshav cow barns trailed behind its professional results which were

quantitatively measured, unlike results of toddlers education, and in

contrast to the poor results of the plastic plant. The reasons were

managerial proficiency and genuine, trusted, creative servant leadership.

He was a model of commitment, worked harder than others, trusted team

members to create new solutions which were carefully tried and

implemented. Talents were kept by offering them challenges, and team

solidarity was built by praising members’ achievements at various

gatherings; he initiated celebrating birthdays, babies born, etc., as well as

preventing criticism of failures from hurting the status of committed

workers who erred. One or two younger team members were plausible

heirs which he did not fear to nurture, due to high-trust relations which

made it implausible that they would seek his succession against his will, as

long as he continued to lead successfully.

Self-Enhancing Process of Self-Serving Anarchic

Conservatism This exceptional case further proves the rule: Conservatism and anarchy

reigned due to power elites’ suppression of talented, radical juniors who

were perceived as threats by seniors and were either sidetracked and left,

or ‘left inside’; thus, proficiency suffered. These juniors were pushed to

non-rotatzia jobs and/or outside careers that bred the alienated Talented

who violated decisions, although sometimes because bylaws did not

protect them and weak mediocre officers did not care for their needs as

FOs cared for those of pe’ilim. Economists failed to tame the Talented

since they were weaker as a result of circulation and self-serving behavior


226

which deprived them of members’ trust and helped legitimize behavior of

the Talented. Such anarchy was quite unusual among kibbutzim that have

mostly restricted outside work, while Rama failed because restrictions lost

legitimacy when the old guard imitated societal norms, continuing

privileged pe’ilut, and because chief officers were too weak for reasons

explained above. In addition, as explained and as was in Kressel’s (1974)

Netzer Sireni, hired labor encouraged members turning to outside work.

Conflicts between elites were destructive due to distrust and due to

their zero-sum nature and the use of values and norms of contradicting

cultures, kibbutz versus capitalist. Anarchy ‘dried up’ the general

assemblies whose decisions were easily overturned and/or violated;

officers feared to cope with major problems, while the paralysis of

problem-solving bred further violations and anarchy.8 In Rama, any

change was risky, as it was anyone’s guess what the final decision after

repeated appeals would be, who would violate that decision, and who

would follow suit; nor was it clear whether the authority of any decision

would be upheld at all. The feeling of ‘might is right’ encouraged

disobedience. The General Assembly was viewed as either ‘a rubber

stamp’ for the Economists’ demands, or as an arena of recurring conflicts

among elites, much like plant managers’ dominance in Netzer Sireni, and

the recurrent conflicts of its two factions (Kressel 1974, 1983). The

Assembly lost the authority of a supreme democratic body whose

decisions represent public judgment in Yankelovich’s (1991) terms.

Rotatzia discouraged officers’ risk-taking, honesty, sincerity, trust and

loyalty to members, like fast-changing officers in US public

organizations.9 Prospects for advance and circulation in the privileged

stratum of pe’ilim motivated them to play safe and to refrain from

grappling with problems. Rama’s anarchic conservatism fed on itself,

strongly supported by oligarchic FOs.

Comparable anarchic conservatism could be found in Kinkade’s (1994)

Twin Oaks commune, and Sasson-Levy’s (1995) ‘The 21st Year’, an

Israeli peace movement. In both, ideology was egalitarian and

participative, seeking consensual decisions without voting, while the

8 On ‘drying’: Kressel 1983: 154-84. On voting abstention: Argaman 1997: 56,

85, 149. 9 Maccoby 1976; Segal 1981: 52; Kanter 1985: 84; Shortell et al. 1990: 237.


227

outcome was that a non-chosen few held power, and implementation of

democratic decisions was problematic. Twin Oaks was conservative,

suffered brain-drain and high turnover; only a small minority continued

for more than a decade while it was 25 years old, the second generation

rarely joined like Rama’s, and, as it was impoverished and its economy

largely depended on one laggard product, its future seemed bleak. ‘The

21st Year’ movement was undemocratic and ineffective, dominated by

two high-status male academics, while most members were females who

did the hard work and suffered most hardships, but whose voices were not

heard. Sasson-Levy found that “only a few knew how decisions were

really made, while all the rest were in a fog” (p. 49). The fog hid the true

rules of the political game and prevented genuine participation by ordinary

members who could not direct influence efforts at true power-holders.

Protected from succession like Admors and Rama’s power elites, they

ignored members’ opposition to many decisions, the movement remained

small, ineffective and soon vanished.

Distrust + Divisiveness + Defensiveness + Doubt = Decline Webb and Cleary (1994) summarized their ethnography of a problematic

high-tech firm which failed in the innovation race as follows: Distrust +

Divisiveness + Defensiveness + Doubt = Disaster. If ‘Disaster’ is replaced

by ‘Decline’, all the rest fitted Rama quite neatly: The destructive conflicts

of the firm’s managers and experts due to distrust resembled power elites’

and officers’ conflicts in Rama. In both cases the major sources of doubt

and uncertainty were changes and innovations that caused these conflicts,

and many of them were blocked as power-holders aimed at limiting or

detracting each other’s status and power, while gaining or defending

supremacy by various manipulations that caused distrust, divisions,

defensiveness and more doubts concerning the actions and intentions of

others. The four Ds caused Rama’s decline: they turned the economic

crisis into a social one, as well, causing the exodus of offspring and the

decline of communal activity, such as members stopping to eat supper in

the kibbutz dining hall and spending time in the kibbutz’s beautiful

clubhouse, the past creation of some of the Talented, where weeds were

already growing in the courtyard, signaling its long closure.

Let us see how in other cases self-serving conservative power-holders

who succeeded as Pe’ilim and patrons ruined kibbutz cultures without

causing anarchy.

CHAPTER 14

Patronage and Moral Decline of Circulative Leaders

None of Rama’s pe’ilim advanced to head a large FO or to any other

senior FO office after 1972, and none became powerful patrons. However,

in the three younger kibbutzim analyzed below, a few circulative pe’ilim

became local patrons without heading FOs because of their loyalty to

supreme patrons, Movement heads or other veteran FO heads, as Chapter

7 has explained. These patrons could have been high-moral leaders inside

their kibbutzim, as were Kochav’s prime leaders (Chaps. 16-17), but they

were low-moral, like Rama’s elites. Why? Were they low-moral from the

start, or did low morality emerge with accumulation of power and

intangible capitals like oligrachic continuous leaders?

As we have seen, the moral decline of leaders accompanies growth,

material and political success, oligarchization and power enhancement by

nurturing clients. These clients insulate patrons from the public, defend

them from negative consequences of self-serving behavior, and mask or

camouflage it, while promoting their own interests (Dalton 1959). In

contrast to Dalton’s US firms, kibbutz field processes were more complex

since pe’ilim as kibbutz elites were supposed to lead by much trust,

enhancement of consciousness of the kibbutz cause, and encouragement of

normative conformity.1 While pe’ilim usually failed to meet some or all

these expectations subsequent to the field’s oligarchization, there were

extreme differences both due to their own moral choices and to FO

normative differences.

For instance, Tnuva and the Mashbir Merkazi imitated capitalist firms

earlier and more profoundly than kibbutz-owned Reg.Ents, and their heads

were more continuous. It seems that this difference limited the moral

decline of Reg.Ents heads: None of them was known to be of such low

morality as Tnuva’s Landesman, taking a huge sum of money, perhaps a

million $US, for himself, instead of handing it over to his kibbutz. This

fact, however, did not prevent low morality of pe’ilim as kibbutz local

leaders. A prime reason was that advancing circulative careers conflicted

1 Shepher, I. 1983; Shepher, I. & Shapira 1992; Topel 1992.

14. Patronage and Moral Decline of Circulative Leaders

229

with caring for members’ needs and expectations, and for local kibbutz

interests.

Hired Labor Deepened Moral Decline of Continuous

Patrons One proof that most pe’ilim cared for these needs up to the oligarchic

change, was the exceptional success of kibbutzim, as has been depicted.

This change however, enhanced imitative industrialization in the 1940s,

but as noted, in the 1950s-1960s some plant managers created solutions

for self-work problems, others imitated them, and only a minority of

kibbutzim, some 15%, mostly of the Ichud Movement, used mass hired

labor like Netzer Sireni.2 Likewise, continuous plant managers became de-

facto kibbutz rulers, with concurrent stratification and moral decline worse

than in Rama. Sociologists missed this lesson of Kressel’s (1974, 1983)

work by rejecting the best kibbutz ethnography ever written, which

showed that where hired labor was used in the 1950s, already in the late

1960s, as plant managers became kibbutz rulers, high-moral officers had

vanished. In Rama, in contrast, which restricted hired labor up until the

late 1980s, some officers were still genuine public servants in 1991.

Moral decline in Netzer Sireni paralleled plant growth, which was

rapid, thanks to generous governmental loans obtained with the support of

Ichud pe’ilim. One plant doubled its sales and employees from 1966 to

1969, and another increased sales five-fold during this period while the

number of employees rose two and half times, with members remaining

only 18%. Concurrently, in 1966, violation of egalitarianism was minor,

such as limiting ordinary members’ use of the two cars which served

seven chief officers; in fact, they were rarely free anyway. In 1969,

however, these officers had six cars; each of the three plant managers had

a car for almost exclusive use, and if he gave it to a deputy, he was entitled

to use one of the cars of the four kibbutz chief officers although they were

not entitled to use his car, even if it stood idle. Kibbutz officers

surrendered to plant managers’ violations of egalitarianism in other

2 Zamir 1979. Leviatan (1975: 14) found these 15% employed 79% of all hired

workers in kibbutz industry. Since then almost all of them have gone bankrupt

like Netzer Sireni’s plants, another proof of hired labor nagation of communal

culture.


230

matters as well: Managers took family members on business trips abroad,

phones in their flats were used privately at kibbutz expense while ordinary

members had no phones and paid for using public phones, etc. As these

managers became kibbutz rulers, they and their accomplices became self-

servers.

Kressel, like other CKP users, ignored the kibbutz field’s

oligarchization that preceded by decades Netzer Sireni’s and legitimized

plant manager acts, for instance, exclusive car use like pe’ilim. As in FOs,

power accumulation used patronage with rotatzia’s help: kibbutz chief

officers who proved loyalists of the managers, after their short terms, were

‘parachuted’ into continuous plant managerial jobs and joined patrons’

cliques of clients. The kibbutz treasurer who was the friend of the prime

patron, was exempted from rotatzia and furnished with a new car. With

the reign of quasi-capitalist culture, socialist symbols vanished: red flags

and May Day celebrations disappeared, and self-serving deeds were no

longer masked. For instance, managers’ privileged use of cars was

explained, at first, by their superior driving proficiency, but later this

explanation was dropped; this mask was superfluous in a stratified culture

(Kressel 1983: 107, 127).

Circulation Only Slowed Down Power Accumulation and

Moral Decline The above case fits Lenski (1966): power and prestige differentiation

instigated stratification; then privileges were appropriated, enhancing

prestige and power which were used to add privileges, and so on. The

sociologists who criticized Kressel were right in one point: that were few

similar kibbutzim. However, they did not study and could not tell whether

moral decline characterized the heads of some forty other kibbutz plants

which used mass hired labor, as they did not seek to determine how

kibbutz cultures were protected from the capitalist influence of such

plants. Shimony (1983: 282) notes that in such cases, kibbutzim separated

themselves from plants to curb their negative influence. Kibbutz Afikim

also used rotatzia: after the retirement of the Iron Law continuous head

who established its plywood plant, Kelet (over 400 hired workers), every

two or four years both the plant manager and the chief R&D engineer

were replaced.

Rotatzia, however, did not prevent power and capitals accumulation,

only slowed it down by making status and power of circulative elite


231

members more vulnerable. Since many ‘parachutings’ of circulators failed

and they were soon replaced, this complicated the task of patronage and

building cliques. In Kibbutz Olim, strong patronage of circulators was

found by Topel (1979) 26 years after the kibbutz was established, while in

Kibbutz Chen, Fadida (1972) did not discern patronage when the kibbutz

was 15 years old, while, in 1990, when it was 26 years old I found signs

that a patron had reigned ever since it was 18-20 years old. Carmelit’s

patron reigned from the time the kibbutz was 30 years old (details to

come). Thus, circulators became powerful patrons after longer periods

than Netzer Sireni’s Iron Law plant managers. The Carmelit case also

indicates the threat to circulators’ rule by setting up a plant if it was led by

a competing astute leader who successfully enlarged it to dominate a

kibbutz’s economy. This was likely in both Olim and Chen as they were

affiliated to the Ichud Movement whose pe’ilim encouraged hired labor

which enhanced such growth, as testified dozens of its kibbutzim with

such dominant plants. For this reason, in both kibbutzim, prime leaders

defended supremacy by obstructing industrialization.

A Leader’s Power Self-Perpetuation by Barring

Industrialization Contrary to Rosolio’s (1999) dependency thesis, Olim’s failure at

industrialization was not explicable by leader complacency. Olim’s main

patron and first chief economic officer, whom I called Mati, favored

industrialization at first, in 1952, three years after inception. Then he

changed his mind and prevented it, despite a general assembly decision in

1963 to establish a plant. The change of mind was unknown in Olim, since

Mati had shared the industrialization idea with its only other protagonist,

an engineer and one of Olim’s founders, who was Mati’s friend. This

engineer left in the 1960s due to this obstruction and subsequently

advanced to head the large outside plant, employing 1,500 employees, in

which he had been working since 1952. He took the job at this plant as it

was informally agreed between him and Mati, then chief economic officer,

that he would acquire expertise, look for plausible projects for a new plant,

and then establish and manage it in Olim. He later offered Mati four

plausible proposals for a plant, but Mati rejected them all, and, without his

support, they had no chance of success. Therefore, the engineer did not

publicly propose them.

I did not evaluate his proposals, but both his record as a very successful


232

industrialist and Mati’s later obstruction of industrialization decisions,

after his exit, supported his explanation of these rejections as outcomes of

local politics. Mati advanced in 1952 to a mid-level job in the Ministry of

Agriculture, returned to serve as chief economic officer in 1956, then

again became a pa’il, and so on for thirty years. To the engineer, he

explained his rejections as preference for agricultural development, but, in

reality, he was defending his supremacy: had the engineer established a

successful plant with mass hired labor, he would soon have become a

prime patron, as in Netzer Sireni. A plant was a real threat to Mati’s

dominance unless he headed it, which had other drawbacks (see below).

This is further proved by contextualizing his deeds. In contrast to other

kibbutzim who sought industrial projects with considerable potential,3

Mati sought non-agricultural projects of a limited scope. He traveled to

Latin America on behalf of Olim to collect investment money from

wealthy parents of members, who, in return, were given shares in Olim’s

public works firm which he founded and managed. The firm operated

earth-moving equipment and competed with Harish FO (Chap. 5, No. 36).

In 1967, Mati agreed to another non-agricultural business venture: On the

eve of the Six Day War, Olim’s carpentry workshop was urgently

requested by the army to produce coffins. After the war, with the army

build-up, tables and benches were needed so the workshop supplied them.

He agreed to the two businesses since their simple technologies and

limited markets promised that they would not develop into large and

independent plants, and this is exactly what happened. The first business

survived some fifteen years and the second only a decade.

An additional reason for the carpentry business was to prove his good

will concerning the General Assembly’s decision in 1963 to set up a plant.

He blocked the implementation of this decision by nominating his ‘ever

failing loyalist’ (see below), to head the team entrusted with finding a

plant, rather than the engineer who was much more qualified for this

mission. The carpentry business barely changed Olim’s dependency on

agriculture, which meant dependency on his brokerage of its interests in

the Ministry of Agriculture and in economic FOs, a result of his past jobs

and ties there. In 1991 Olim was deep in debt, with little prospect of

recovering as agriculture provided sixty-two per cent of its income

3 Bar-Gal 1976; Don 1988; Chaps. 15-16.


233

(Bloomfield-Ramagem 1993: 96). Members interviewed, however,

blamed another patron, Shimon, who founded a plant in 1976 and after six

years left in despair together with the chief engineer. Observations and

interviews in Olim as well as with Shimon and the plant’s ex-chief

engineer, made it clear that the plant had failed primarily due to a shortage

of skilled managers and experts, resulting from a brain-drain which had

already commenced in the 1950s. In addition, the negative attitude of

Mati, and a third patron, Yehuda, whose clients managed Olim, deterred

competent members from joining the plant. After Shimon and the chief

engineer gave up and left, the plant remained unprofitable although both

Mati and Yehuda tried to rescue it, each assuming management for a term.

The plant’s failure was not connected by members to Mati’s behavior.

Though his objection to industrialization was common knowledge, many

believed that he had truly sought agricultural development. Only ex-

members noticed that he had obstructed both the 1963 assembly decision

and Shimon’s efforts, using his clients and in many other ways, but even

they did not notice the brain-drain it caused. In addition to Mati’s

successful camouflage (see below), members did not perceive his

responsibility for the failed industrialization as those who remained were a

selected tiny minority of zealots, expediency seekers and those who lacked

critical thinking, after almost all critical thinkers, radicals and innovative

leaders had exited, as occurred in many other kibbutzim, and in accord

with Hirschman (1970). Before proving this, however, let us see how Mati

created the image of a servant leader which maintained much trust in him

of those who did not leave.

Conservative Meshkism, Olim’s Rule and a ‘Branch Man’

Image The engineer depicted Mati’s leadership thus:

“Why did he come back from pe’ilut to work in the cow barn? Because it

was the most problematic branch, always lacking workers! I asked him:

‘Couldn’t you contribute much more in other places?’ and he retorted: ‘I

have to be back home (i.e., finish a pe’ilut), and back means ordinary

work, first of all’. He was a really conscientious person. In discussions,

however, he listened to all speakers, but always from above, creating the

feeling that we were all just children whose conversation was permitted

since, in the end, he would be the one to decide. He was somehow a snob

who never allowed anyone else in Olim grow and flourish”.


234

Mati was a few years older than the speaker and the other founders. He

did not come from a kibbutz-affiliated youth movement like them, but

from a club of Zionist students. The son of a wealthy family, he graduated

as an accountant from a respected university, and, with his newly-married

wife, joined the gar’in (a group of youth movement graduates aiming at

establishing a kibbutz) at a veteran KM kibbutz. Soon he became one of

the gar’in leaders. He became chief economic officer when Olim was

established in 1949, and from 1952 circulated, was chief economic officer

four times, secretary for one term, and advanced in Movement jobs. Once

every seven-ten years he returned for a year to work in the cow barn. It

helped to preserve the egalitarian ethos and high status of manual work,

and was a humble price for dominating Olim and climbing FOs

managerial ladder which almost brought him to the Knesset.4 Topel (1979:

63) wrote:

“[Mati,] even though he was chief economic officer for some ten years,

and served once as a secretary, succeeded in the short breaks between

offices in being connected to a branch, presenting himself as a ‘working

man’ and ‘branch man’”.

In Olim, this was the highest praise a male member could receive, since

it was dominated by economists called meshkists (meshek means a

kibbutz’s economy). Talmon’s (1972) use of this designation, however,

missed the essential differences among meshkist types: Olim meshkists

were conservatives who preserved self-work by abstaining from

industrialization, did not allow members to take outside jobs (except the

engineer), and detested intellectuals who were not ‘working men’,

ideologists, educators, editors, authors, etc.; their views were ignored and

they were pushed to exit. In contrast, Netzer Sireni’s meshkism imitated

capitalism, used hired labor and allowed outside work, as in Rama.5 The

opposite type of both conservative and imitator meshkists, were economic

leaders, also called meshkists, who creatively innovated self-work,

egalitarianism and democracy, nurtured talented young radicals and built

successful plants which are still thriving in Carmelit, Kochav, Geva,

4 See Bowes 1989: 51. It seemed that only his premature death prevented this

promotion. 5 Kressel 1974: 37-40.


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Hatzerim, Gan Shmuel, Maagan Michael and many other kibbutzim. Their

continuing success was a result of creativity and innovation, unlike

imitative plants which mostly closed, sold out or resembled Rama’s plastic

plant.6 As in other matters, kibbutz students ignored Stryjan (1989) and

missed the decisiveness of creativity for solving the problems of growth

by industrialization with solutions consistent with kibbutz ethos and

culture.

Conservative Meshkism Disintegrated the Founders’ Group Conservative meshkism diminished democracy and disintegrated the

founding gar’in. As against Kochav’s founders, some 80% of whom

stayed for a lifetime, in Olim only some 18% remained. Within a dozen

years, most founders exited, following the exit of their youth movement

leaders, to become professors, diplomats, businessmen, executives, etc.

Same disintegration and brain-drain also characterized groups of joiners,

as happened in other mediocre kibbutzim which remained small as in the

two cases detailed below and in Bowes’s (1989: 36) case, or even

completely disintegrated, as in Ben-Horin’s (1984) cases. Interviewees,

both members and those who exited, mentioned one of Mati’s closest

allies, Sami, as the best ‘branch man’. He explained intellectuals’ mass

exit to me:

“They did not find the right environment here; they felt bad here. Olim

was a very meshkist settlement; work mattered above all”.

The success of meshkist kibbutzim where work also “mattered above

all” such as Geva, Gan Shmuel and many others, disproved Sami’s

simplistic explanation. The prime leader of youth movement days and ex-

ambassador of Israel to Latin American countries pointed out that all the

youth movement elite, including himself, left Olim, while Mati and Sami,

who joined the gar’in quite late, only in Israel, stayed. Mati and Sami,

together with would-be patrons, Shimon and Yehuda, amplified

pioneering hardships by ‘a Marxist approach of iron discipline’ as the ex-

ambassador called it, not caring for members’ minimal existential needs.

Two of the many examples I heard were bread that did not arrive for some

6 I studied Geva and Hatzerim plants in 1977. Recent change by such plants to

hired labor is irrelevant for explanation of their past successes (See Carmelit

case, next chapter).


236

days or working shoes that did not fit, but no one attended to their

replacement. Such lack of officers’ care for basic needs of members was

rare in the early eras of successful kibbutzim.7 This approach had little to

do with Marx, but much to do with Tabenkin’s USSR adoration which

legitimized ignorance of basic needs and repressed liberal consumption

norms.8 Mati and Sami, as late joiners knew little about kibbutz culture

which had been learned in the youth movement, and in the veteran KM

kibbutz where the gar’in had been originally situated, they saw ‘iron

discipline’ as integral to it; signs of this ‘discipline’ I still found when

studying this kibbutz plant in 1977. The ex-ambassador said:

“I preached that officers should behave differently, but Mati, Shimon and

Sami did not listen. I said people must be given hope after coming to this

desert from a large, lively city like [a major Latin American city]. Officers

should not further cut members’ wings, which had already been broken

from so drastic a change”.

He left after eight years not only because officers had ignored his

preaching, but since they pressed him to cut short an ‘inessential’ pe’ilut

as deputy editor of Ichud’s quarterly journal after only two years, even

though, concurrently, Mati continued as an economic pa’il for four years.

For him, and three others like him whom I interviewed, the departure was

a combined result of lack of influence on decisions, no chance of gaining

‘branch man’ prestige, few career prospects as a pa’il in a non-economic

FO due to meshkist leaders’ antagonism, and no career prospects as an

outside employee since this was not allowed by meshkist leaders.

Many Reg.Ents pe’ilim used Mati’s strategy, for instance Shavit by

working for a year in the dining hall while waiting for Zelikovich to clear

the throne of the cotton gin plant for him, he thus modeled a ‘working

man’. The successful careers of Shavit, Mati and their like proved the

effectiveness of image maintenance efforts. Both were allowed one pe’ilut

after another, and were never stuck for long periods in local offices. Such

efforts to limit local commitments in order to advance on the outside were

an important reason for the shortages of competent officers, as Fadida

(1972: 89) exposed, but both E. Cohen (1983: 101) and Am’ad and Palgi

7 Pearlman 1938; Shatil 1977; Br’t 1998; Interviews with Kochav veterans. 8 Landshut 2000[1944]: 97-9; Kafkafi 1992: 125-7.


237

(1986) missed this reason.

Abstention of Plant’s Foundation Enhanced Circulative

Career The threat to one’s career advance by being stuck in a local job helps to

explain why Mati did not use another way to maintain supremacy, by

setting up a plant himself. This was a challenging task that might have

failed, but worse still, it required much more continuity than two-three

year terms of kibbutz chief offices after which Mati was free to promote

his career on the outside. Finding, planning, establishing and overcoming

initial problems of a new plant up to the point of clear success, required

that Mati invest at least five-six years, and then he would have to find and

coach a proper loyal successor who would be smart enough to run the

plant, but not too smart to overshadow his mentor. The engineer was

clearly too smart; if Mati headed the plant’s successful establishment and

the engineer helped as its prime expert, then if he replaced Mati who

turned to pe’ilut, he would become manager for good by enlarging it with

hired labor, and, then, he would become Olim’s prime leader (e.g. Kressel

1974), overshadowing Mati.

Preventing a plant was better for Mati’s power and status. To further

his career, he was well-networked in the Ichud Movement, the Labor Party

and the Ministry of Agriculture with a range of high-level jobs to choose

from. Likewise, the other two patrons abstained from the challenge of

setting up a plant until the mid-1970. Mati’s close friend, the successful

businessman explained:

“At the top [of Olim], people seek political careers... Shimon always…

sought personal success wherever he was a manager and said ‘I did, I

built...’. Yehuda had political ambitions, and so did Mati, even though, as a

person, he was more restrained… returned every three, four years to the

job of chief economic officer in order to smooth over internal conflicts and

get things back on track”.

Mediocre Clients and ‘Riding’ on a Group Interests Putting “things back on track” meant, for instance, the nomination of

Mati’s loyal clients to jobs through which he controlled Olim. One of

them was depicted by interviewees as Olim’s ‘ever failing officer’; he

failed more than once as a branch manager, twice as treasurer and once as

a plant finder. When the successful businessman mentioned this, I asked if


238

Mati thought he was qualified to find a plant, and the answer was a hearty

laugh, after which he explained the nomination by citing Mati’s wish to

bar the plant establishment. Twenty years later, in the 1980s, Mati

nominated this loyalist to head a new branch founded together with an

adjacent kibbutz. To all accounts, the branch collapsed due to his

mismanagement and was sold to a private owner who has since profited

from it. Such a ‘successful’ career thanks to unquestioned loyalty by a

repeatedly failing officer, leaves little doubt concerning Mati’s self-

serving preferences.

However, circulative careers were vulnerable, and this explains another

power and status enhancement strategy used by Olim’s patrons. Mati

sought more power by a strategy called by Topel (1979: 87) ‘riding on’ a

category of members: gaining their loyalty by promoting decisions that

served their special interests, nominating them to offices and supporting

their claims for kibbutz resources. Mati ‘rode on’ the most influential

category of veterans, Shimon ‘rode on’ the hashlama (joiners) group, and

Yehuda on kibbutz offspring, younger than the hashlama. Due to Mati’s

special attention to veterans’ interests, they revered him as their interviews

proved, and this helps explain their ignorance of his thwarting major

changes for decades, changes which they mostly would have wanted.

Mati Led Patrons’ Obstruction of Democracy In addition to industrialization, from the late 1950s most members wanted

to change from communal boarding of children to family boarding, as did

a number of Ichud kibbutzim. In 1959 a referendum was held to decide

whether to change the boarding system, and supporters gained a sixty-two

per cent majority among voters despite unified leaders, led by Mati,

objecting to the change. However, the real majority was much larger but

remained unseen, as many members who wanted the change did not vote,

hesitating as they faced objection by all leaders. Only half of the members

cast their votes, and the leaders used this fact to ‘bury’ the subject in

committee red tape, until the main supporters of change had left, and

others gave up for two decades.

Olim leaders followed Ichud heads, and since they were all pe’ilim or

ex-pe’ilim who anticipated their next pe’ilut, their opposition is largely

explained by dependency on or expedient loyalty to these heads. However,

they had a problem: the majority would have to be addressed somehow

without alienating members. The red tape was presented as an effort to


239

help the undecided half who did not vote to deepen understanding of the

ramifications of the change and to reach a consensus on details among the

various versions used by kibbutzim, and, then to vote for a second time.

This vote was never taken and Mati was held responsible for thwarting the

will of the majority for two decades, after most Ichud kibbutzim had made

the change.9 Members did not see his behavior as undemocratic: he played

by the rules of the game. Ex-members, however, criticized it furiously as

an undemocratic act which had pushed them out. The widow of the fourth

main leader of the 1950s who was kibbutz secretary and then chief

economic officer, and who like Mati, Shimon and Yehuda objected to

family boarding, disclosed that, soon after the vote, her husband had

changed his mind. However, he learned that Mati and the other two were

lying to members to initiate red tape and did not intend to repeat the vote.

This low morality was totally unacceptable to him, and, as he realized he

could not change it, he left and succeeded in the academia.

Exits Left Zealots, Expediency Seekers and Mediocre

Loyalists Topel (1979) did not expose Mati’s low morality, seemingly due to using

CKP and a lack of perspective which could have been provided by

interviews with ex-members as I did, while veteran member interviewees,

as Mati’s loyalists, did not see it either. Nor did Topel grasp that, in accord

with Hirschman’s (1995) explanation of East Germany’s collapse, Mati’s

hegemony would have been impossible if no FO had refilled Olim’s

constantly emptying ranks: like the founders, 70-80% of hashlamot

(joiner) members also left.10 Mati’s mask of high-morality retained the

minimal trust of a sufficient number of members for Olim to survive with

constant refilling, but his conservative autocracy engendered Hirschman’s

(1970) selection, retained naive zealots, expediency seekers and loyalists

without critical thinking; loyalists filled chief offices as patrons’ clients,

suppressed innovators and led to failures and continuing brain-drain,

which furthered failures.

Olim’s three patrons headed “fortified power structures” said Topel

9 Schwartz & Naor 2000: 54. 10 As in Chen and Carmelit up to 1965 (next chapter), and in Bowes’s (1989: 36)

Goshen.


240

(1979: 119), but he missed these structures were based on FO heads’

support of patrons’ non-democratic rule, promoting them and their

loyalists to pe’ilut, granting them power, status, intangible capitals and

privileges. Loyalty to FO heads and rotatzia both augmented

Hirschmanian selection and were decisive for these structures, explaining

much of patrons’ readiness to violate democracy in order to suppress

innovators. This readiness was strengthened by Ichud pe’ilim’s support for

capitalist-like industrialization that engendered leaders’ efforts to defend

status by low-moral seeking of power and capitals. Mediocre clients

whom they elevated to main offices were dependent on them, as Topel

(1979: 92-8) vividly depicted, and one could safely assume that, like

Rama, Netzer Sireni and Hamaapil, many of Olim chief officers followed

patrons’ low morality. Hence patrons’ ultra-conservatism was combined

with lack of care for elementary necessities and evasion of major

problems, and thus selective mass exit was fully explained.

Had FO cultures resembled kibbutzim like Palmach, according to

Buber’s (1958[1945]: 141) assertion that FOs must adopt kibbutz

principles, without privileges, stratified bureaucracy, lucrative continuous

jobs and without pe’ilim exempted from commoners’ hardships, Olim

leaders would have been less conservative. For instance, in the 1960s

Shimon, after he had lost hope of a political career, led Olim’s poultry

branch to become a state-of-the-art large compound, producing eggs for

breeding and selling day-old chicks to farmers. This success would have

been impossible without continuity in this job for a decade. If, instead of

undemocratic rotatzia, a genuine solution for the Iron Law had been

devised, it would have enhanced trustworthy leaders who could have

solved problems in accord with kibbutz ethos, answering members’ needs

and wishes, as in Carmelit and Kochav (Chaps. 15-17).

Kibbutz Chen: Superiority Retention and Leaders’ Moral

Decline The case of Olim raises the question: Did the selective retention of a

minority of conservatives lacking critical thinking, expediency seekers and

naive zealots give patrons too much leeway for self-serving to the point

that they lost their last moral inhibitions against corruption?

The case of Chen would indicate a positive answer. Chen was founded

in 1954 and differed somewhat from Olim. While Mati’s hegemony

achieved within a decade, Chen’s group of five leaders which was


241

structured in gar’in days, remained stable for two decades, and lost only

one member, the only woman, whom I have called Michal, who as a

young mother, fought for family boarding of children, lost the battle and

left with her family. The internal differentiation of leadership which made

Shaul more powerful than the others, emerged only in the late 1970s when

Shaul advanced to be a TKM’s financier during the days of the Balas

affair (Chap. 3), and became locally powerful, similar to Mati. This led to

low morality: He advised Chen’s young treasurer to direct Chen’s money

into a small bank where it was lost due to bankruptcy caused by

managerial fraud. The managers of the bank who were convicted of

embezzling clients’ money and returned only a small part of it, had been

Shaul’s close friends. Though it is unknown how much he profited from

directing Chen’s money into their bank, there was no doubt among

interviewees that he had made significant profit. But let us first see his

personal gains from Chen’s industrialization failure.

From inception, the state of Chen’s agriculture was critical: There was

insufficient water for irrigation and poor lands, some of which were

shallow and had never been cultivated before. Population, however, grew

quickly thanks to an independent youth movement in Latin America which

sent graduates to Chen.11 In the era of slumping agricultural prices,

although Chen suffered from members’ underemployment, and although

almost all kibbutzim without industry established plants, Chen leaders

evaded it up to 1966, using ideological reasoning (see below), but actually

motivated by personal interest. This was exposed after the 1966 decision

to set up a plant; no leader took the challenge upon himself, they all

preferred circulation between chief offices and pe’ilut during which they

gained higher education, and positions as emissaries abroad.

In 1968, a young member, a student of practical mechanical

engineering, agreed to try to seek a plant and was formally authorized.

However, when he asked to extend his studies to industrial engineering, as

well, as his task clearly required, he was turned down. He decided to study

on his own, received double diplomas, but no factory emerged from his

efforts. From descriptions of the many problems he and his colleagues

faced, it was clear that they failed for the same reason that extended

studies were denied: Chen’s leaders wanted a plant but feared its

11 See Fadida 1972 for details.


242

manager’s success.

Leaders soon found a solution which better served their dominance: a

partnership in the successful plant of a veteran neighboring kibbutz

(fifteen kilometers away) which would employ 20 members. There were

clear drawbacks: Chen members would replace hired workers, work shifts

on production lines with little room for acquiring expertise and

promotion.12 Chen would pay for its share in the plant’s assets, 20% from

its share of profits, so there would be no profits in the near future, and the

plant could not accommodate other Chen needs, such as intermittent work

for women with toddlers, partial work for high-school youth, etc. In order

to solve the latter problem, it was agreed to transfer to Chen, within a

certain period, a department that was not integral to the main lines, as did

Kochav with its adjacent partner (Chap. 17).

Ichud pe’ilim supported the partnership, asserting that Chen would fail

to establish a viable plant. The practical engineer, however, pointed out

that they were just echoing Chen’s leaders with whom they had close ties

from earlier pe’ilut. Their previous refusal to take on the challenge of

plant establishment and their undermining his own efforts supported his

assertion. A partnership promised them comfortable administrative jobs

due to their managerial record, and no elevation of a competing young

leader. Indeed, Shaul became the plant’s economic analyst, while some

twenty, and later on thirty, Chen members worked on the lines, mostly on

shifts, and were treated much like the hired workers they supplanted,

rather than true partners whose voices were heard, as was usual in such

plants.13 No department was transferred, and when the plant suffered a

serious setback in the early 1980s, Chen resumed its own efforts to set up

a plant. Alas, the two attempts in which years of effort, in addition to the

approximately US$1,500,000 which was invested, resulted in a small

service workshop with nine employees that barely recovered investments.

While the negative economic environment of this era partially explains

these failures, indications were that, prior brain-drain and minimal support

by principal leaders were decisive in both failures.

12 Rosner et al. 1980; Shapira 1980; Shimony 1983. 13 See the same in Kressel 1974; Rosner et al. 1980; Shimony 1983.


243

Communal Boarding and Members’ Complacency Leaders’ power considerations also explain Chen’s late and costly change

to family boarding of children. Chen’s communal boarding disappointed

parents from inception, as turnover of metaplot (nurses, caretaker women.

singular: metapelet; see Near 1992: 51) was staggering, and there were

many other unsolved educational problems. However, all prime leaders

except one opposed the change, and after Michal and her family had left in

1957, the issue was not raised again, both for ideological reasons and the

fact that it served to further the dominance by conservative leaders, as in

Olim.

However, a decade later, Chen was entitled to a large sum of money

from the Jewish Agency as final funding for its basic building plan, and,

as many of the Ichud kibbutzim had either made or planned the change to

family boarding, had Chen followed their lead, family flats could have

been enlarged instead of building more children houses. Many members

wanted this, but prime leaders objected, seemingly due to loyalty to Ichud

heads who made them pe’ilim. They used their power to prevent public

discussion of the matter, and led building of children houses. Soon after

building was completed, it was decided to change to family boarding, but

then, enlarging family flats was done at Chen’s expense and created heavy

debts, a major reason for its deep financial crisis in 1987-8 in which half

of the members left, including all chief officers.

At first glance, Chen’s leaders were complacent due to dependency on

the Jewish Agency which provided the money, as Rosolio (1999) asserted.

Closer inspection, however, raises questions which the dependency thesis

cannot answer: Chen’s leaders knew that many kibbutzim had changed to

family boarding in spite of the opposition of Ichud heads and a study by a

kibbutz member, sociologist Y. Shepher (1967), which supported

communal boarding. They were experienced enough to know their actions

could be a major mistake, and that there would be immense financial

difficulty if this change were made after final funding had been used for

children houses. They knew that many members preferred the change. So

why did they not ask member opinion for such a decisive decision? The

most plausible answer was that they did not believe complacent members

would dare to support the change against their unified objection, while

members’ complacency could be explained by the same Hirschmanian

selective exit of radicals, innovators and critical thinkers as in Olim.


244

Retention of a Tiny Minority, Largely of Complacent

Members Both kibbutzim suffered low member retention rate: According to Topel

(1979: 7) Olim grew from 59 founders in 1949 to 197 members in 1975,

but only 43% of both founders and joiners remained. However, this figure

underestimates the exit rate since it includes only those who became

members, but not the many, maybe a similar number, who exited after a

year or two in Olim before formal membership. Chen was considered

more stable and its members proudly told Fadida (1972: 10): “Chen is not

a train station”. A ‘train station’ was Carmelit (next chapter) which

received 22 hashlamot numbering 25-40 members each, but only 120

members remained from these 500-800 people, i.e., 12-25%.14 Olim was

more stable, as proved by its growth, and so was Chen: its yearly exit rate

was 6.6%, in comparison to the average annual exit rate of 8.8% in the

Ichud’s younger kibbutzim. However, even so, out of 202 hashlamot

members who joined Chen up to 1969, 126 (65%) left up to that year, and

together with those who left before formal membership, the exit rate

reached 80% (Fadida 1972: 9-10).

Many exits followed group leader exits. A few leaders left as their ideas

of kibbutz life differed radically from what they found when joining, and

there were those who failed to cope with communal hardships. These exits

were not followed by others, as shown by the case of Michal, who insisted

on family boarding. Although she was a main leader in the youth

movement (one interviewee said: “She was like Hazan in the KA”), and

her husband was Chen’s first treasurer, almost all members opposed

family boarding in the 1950s, and the couple’s exit apparently caused little

following.15

Completely different outcomes followed departures by hashlamot

leaders who had become successful branch managers, advanced to chief

offices, tried to innovate to answer members’ interests, wishes and beliefs,

but felt that they were failed by the old guard. Their despair and exit was

usually followed by most of their mates, and the few who stayed were

14 Schwartz & Naor 2000: 57.

15 See similar stabilization after an initial exit period in Hazorea: Shatil 1977:

110-4.


245

either loyalists of this guard, expediency seekers, naive zealots or

careerists whose success had little prospect of repeating itself on the

outside, especially mediocre ones who had advanced to jobs vacated by

exiting leaders. This was the case with the mass exit by hashlama

members who had joined Chen in 1972-3: Until the 1987 crisis, they

mostly followed their leaders and stayed; then, almost all of them left

following the exit of their leaders who had held all Chen’s chief offices

and most branch manager jobs.16 Most of the few who remained inherited

the vacated offices.17 Almost all interviewees, except the heirs, referred to

these hashlama leaders with great respect. They left in spite of their

success in jobs due to disillusionment: the knowledge that it would be

impossible to achieve kibbutz ideals with the low-moral old guard holding

the ropes. Miri, the wife of one of the leaving leaders, explained:

“When I joined Chen, the first impression was wonderful; people tried to

help us in various ways, relationships were warm and after a year of work

in the dining hall, I was allocated the work I wanted and knew, sewing.

After I gave birth to a boy and a girl, I became branch manager, succeeded

and was satisfied, but then it all exploded in my face… From the age of

ten, I had been educated in the youth movement according to values of

kibbutz, equality and Zionism, and then, in one moment, I felt that all of

this grand ideology on which I had been educated disintegrated; all of it

collapsed, was shaky, standing on one leg. There was no more ideological

reason to stay while our group disintegrated… [We left] though we knew

we would not be paid the severance payments owed us by the kibbutz, not

only due to its bad financial situation, but also due to animosity to my

husband by his heir and his partners”.

Most true leaders, like those of the above hashlama, had left their birth

place, middle class families and promises of affluence and career advance

in order to join kibbutzim, mainly for ideological reasons. What “exploded

in” Miri’s “face” and ended the couple’s belief in kibbutz life, leading to

their exit, was the financial scandal caused by Shaul’s advice, mentioned

above and further described below. Her testimony points to the domino

effect of the exit of influential leaders: first, one of the hashlama leaders

who was the treasurer when almost all Chen’s money was lost in the bank

16 On such leaving en masse in a quite similar young kibbutz: Bowes 1989: 37. 17 See the same in Carmelit: Schwartz & Naor 2000: 44.


246

embezzlement resigned and left, then two other leaders left, Miri’s

husband and Chen’s secretary, and then, most hashlama members. The

ideological explanation for the leaders’ exit is supported by the fact their

success in jobs promised their advance to pe’ilut had they remained, in

comparison to the loss of status and sharp drop in standard of living

caused by exiting to unfavorable job market with nine per cent

unemployment, and without severance payments (see below). When

interviewed in 1991, after four years outside Chen, they were all still

worse off and were fighting Chen’s lawyers regarding severance

payments.

Veteran Leaders’ Corruption Was to Blame Miri’s husband, Moti, was Chen’s chief economic officer for three years

before leaving. In the two years previous to that position he had been

kibbutz secretary, and earlier, he had managed the cow barn. He and his

hashlama friend, who was the treasurer, had not imagined that Shaul could

lead them to such an immense financial failure which had cost Chen

millions of $US (the exact sum is unknown due to the secrecy of Chen’s

officers and records). He could not believe that Shaul would put Chen at

such great risk due to his friendly relations with the swindlers while he

had been a pa’il of the TKM Fund, and the desire to obtain a slightly

higher interest rate than that of solid banking. This resembled Balas affair,

thus pointing that also due to uncritical thinking Shaul induced the

greenhorn treasurer to deposit all of Chen’s money in the small bank, and

when it went bankrupt due to managerial fraud, Chen was left almost

penniless. Up to bankruptcy, Moti and Miri knew that Shaul was an

influential figure in Chen, but they then learned from their friend, the

treasurer, how Shaul had led him to the gross mistake while Shaul,

himself, stayed clear of the scandal in members’ eyes. Moti found clear

signs that Shaul had privately received money from the swindlers, and

then found that another prime leader, a successful careerist, who was an

executive of a large arms manufacturer, was turning in only a modest

salary while earning much more in secret deals abroad. Moti tried to force

the two to deposit these monies into Chen’s empty bank account, but

failed.

Testimony by other interviewees leaves little doubt that both these

leaders could not be trusted when they denied taking any money; signs

were that they had been corrupted by continuous rule. No better was the


247

third of Chen’s prime leaders for the first two decades, who became a

lawyer and left the kibbutz in 1974: He was found guilty of embezzlement

of customers’ money and lost his lawyer’s certificate for five years. As a

close friend, neighbor and colleague of both Shaul and the arms firm

executive, it is plausible that his corruption had also influenced the two.

Moti and Miri rightly concluded that hashlama leaders were just pawns on

the chess board of these self-serving power-holders. Chen veterans did not

uncover this as they were complacent, and had become reconciled with

low-moral, autocratic leadership long ago. They stayed either due to

loyalty to these leaders, expediency or due to the naiveté of zealots.

However, the last straw, which pushed Moti and Miri out was the

election of Chaya, one of the lesser members of their group, as kibbutz

secretary since this exposed the decline of leadership when genuine

leaders exit. They characterized her as “a narrow, closed-minded woman”,

and I also found her non-socialist, cynical and secretive. Her advantage

seemed to be forecasting the resignation and departure of chief officers,

and as she said: “Whenever someone threw down the keys (i.e., resigned),

I lifted them” (i.e., took the job; see the same with Yosef in the next

chapter). It seemed that Shaul was behind Chaya’s nomination: When he

returned from pe’ilut in 1990, Chaya proposed his nomination as treasurer,

presenting him as a great financier and Chen’s savior, ignoring his

involvement in the scandal and the huge losses incurred.18 No one wanted

the job, and he was chosen. As a savior, he soon led to wholesale

privatization that, within a few years, left little egalitarianism and

communalism, and seemingly assured the supremacy of the two for good

(Chaya advanced to a TKM job some years later).

A Complacent Selective Constituency Helped Leaders’

Corruption Such corruption of leaders is inexplicable without Chen’s conservatism

filtering out all critically minded members and radicals except for

powerless newcomers, loyalists, naive zealots and complacent others

whose opinions counted very little in leaders’ eyes as they rarely dared to

criticize leaders’ low morality or publicly oppose their policies. As in

Rama, Olim and Carmelit below, leaders’ rule was largely informal by

18 For similar choosing of failing officers in other kibbutzim see: Kressel 1991.


248

heading ‘fortified power structures’ of loyal client officers; members

could not replace them, like the Admors. Even more serious, their role in

shaping and implementing decisions was largely unknown, like in Sasson-

Levy’s (1995) case of ‘The 21th Year’, even unknown to chief officers

who were not their clients, as was in Chen case. However, leaders’ power

and prestige were known and apprehended; thus, few dared to criticize

them, so they were out of members’ democratic control. This

undemocratic rule plus breach of trust by leaders, disintegrated Chen’s

group of founders which had still included 39 members in 1969. In 1991,

however, only 8 remained. The remaining few were viewed by leaders as

incompetents, unable to fend for themselves on the outside, and their

views were ignored.

Hirschmanian selective retention of loyalists and complacent members

encouraged leaders’ corruption. This is especially decisive in democracies

(or supposed democracies) which are susceptible to mass departure, as

Hirschman (1995) explained the demise of East Germany’s communist

regime. Much the same was true of the three younger kibbutzim analyzed

here: Kibbutz societal involvement expanded possibilities for conscripting

hashlamot, but hashlamot enhanced the tendency to cycles of mass exit,

brain-drain and retention of only complacent members due to the old

guard’s suppression of innovators, while complacency of those who

stayed, enhanced its corruption.

Additional Ideological Factor: Backward Looking to the

1920s In Chen’s case, there was additional reason for complacent members:

naiveté due to looking backward to solutions which had already been

abandoned as impractical. Once again, this contradicted Rosolio’s (1999)

dependency thesis, and was explained by an ideological-conceptual trap.

Chen founders had been a gar’in in veteran and conservative Kvutzat

Kinneret.19 This choice of training place was deliberate. Explained

Michal:

“We already knew in the youth movement abroad that some kibbutzim

used communa alef and some communa bet, and we even knew at which

19 It was called kvutza (group) as founders sought family-like smallness

(Landshut 2000[1944]).


249

kibbutz we wanted to stay as a gar’in - in a kibbutz which was not very

political and one that was an example of the best of kibbutzim”.

Communa Alef (communa for communism, alef meant A) was

conceived in 1921 by Kibbutz Alef of Hashomer Hatza’ir headed by

Yaari, aiming at total equality: clothes became communal, as after each

weekly washing by the laundry they were all distributed anew.20 In

Communa Bet (i.e. B), everyone had his own marked clothes and minor

differentiation emerged, even though new clothes were bought collectively

and distributed equally. Communa Alef vanished in the 1940s as

impractical; Communa Bet became the norm, including Kinneret. Nor was

there a “not very political” kibbutz: each Movement was affiliated to a

political party. This gar’in wanted a kibbutz that had vanished, and were

amazed and even disappointed when first seeing Kinneret’s nice dining

hall. Michal said:

“At first I thought ‘maybe there was no more need for pioneering’ [if

kibbutzim were so wealthy].”

Another surprise was the lack of rotatzia in many offices, contrary to

their beliefs. They viewed this as a flagrant violation of principle, and in

Chen’s first years all officers and committees were chosen each year

anew, like in ancient Athens. They also tried Communa Alef for some

years. “We were very idealistic” she said, “and made many mistakes, not

learning enough from the experience of veteran kibbutzim since we

wanted to try everything anew by ourselves”, the opposite of Rosolio’s

(1999) complacency thesis.

Chen paid dearly for looking backward, by remaining a small, poor,

isolated, agricultural kibbutz for years, suffering from an adjacent hostile

border,21 and dependent on others’ help. Facing failure, the leaders joined

the Ichud which sent them guides, veteran kibbutz members who brought

conflicting ideas concerning what a good kibbutz was. Some Ichud

kibbutzim were Kinneret-like, espousing self-work, smallness,

conservatism and agriculturalism, while others were industrialized, large

and imitative like Netzer Sireni and Afikim. However, only a few were

creative in the 1960s-1970s, for instance, industrialized by self-work (see

20 Bloch 1984[1921]: 32. 21 See Gorkin 1971 about a hostile border’s influence on kibbutz life.


250

Carmelit below; similar were Geva, Magal and Hatzerim). Thus, looking

backward by Chen’s leaders suited conservative Ichud heads who

resembled Admors, and they were rewarded by pe’ilut which enabled the

acquisition of higher education for the furthering of outside careers.

Fadida (1972: 77-92) depicted bitter conflicts as many members in 1969

wanted higher education, but privileged leaders did not seek any

egalitarian creative solution like the one which rescued Carmelit (Next

chapter). This was another reason for the founder group’s disintegration.

No less than Rama and Olim, low-moral leadership decided Chen’s

fate, as it did in Carmelit from 1986, after prior two decades of success

due to high-moral, creative leadership, that had rescued it from the

previous decade and a half of failures, since its inception in 1951.

CHAPTER 15

Carmelit: A Self-Server Who Appropriated Others’

Creativity

The case of Carmelit indicates both the decisiveness of creative, trusted

leadership for kibbutz culture, and the vulnerability of this culture in a

crisis era when no larger movement supports it and many kibbutzim

forsake it. A veteran, self-serving and astute politician called Barak by

ethnographers Schwartz and Naor (2000), who advanced by circulation

between pe’ilut and local chief offices, patiently pulled the strings in his

favor after he became plant manager and controlled the main income

source of Carmelit. In contrast, another prime leader who had headed a

large FO, resigned and left the kibbutz in despair, realizing that he had no

chance of overcoming the conservatism of the heads of other economic

FOs and the megalomanic TKM heads. Barak built a power clique of

loyalists in the economic committee by which he reigned while circulating

to pe’ilut and back to plant management. Using the high tide in the Israeli

capital market, he turned the plant into a capitalist firm, and with help

from capitalist-leaning professionals, as has recently become common, he

ruined the communal culture.1 For Schwartz and Naor this was a

democratic change, but careful reading of their book, along with

knowledge from other sources and a few interviews with key figures has

exposed autocracy like previous cases.

The ethnography is entitled “Without Breaking the Tools: The Story of

a Planned Change in One Kibbutz”, but it exposed a decade of series of

‘change teams’ failing one after another in a crisis atmosphere of officer

resignations, main elite member exits and ex-officers and other talented

members abstention from offices. This proved that the change was far

from planned and that the main tools of past success had been broken:

Self-work and leaders modeling shift-work on the line vanished,

egalitarianism and democracy became meaningless, as the plant, which

1 Shapira 1992; Pavin 1994; Bein 1995; See similar impact in the US: Darr &

Stern 2002.

15. Carmelit: Self-Server Appropriated Others’ Creativity

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brought in 85% of kibbutz income became rich and separated into a

capitalist, bureaucratic firm dominated by one man who privileged himself

and his aides at the expense of the kibbutz. The kibbutz itself became poor

and dependent as it took the plant’s debts upon itself, while this man and

his loyalists also directly controlled kibbutz economy by economic

committee membership. Members thereby lost control of the main asset

which they had built twenty years for the kibbutz sustenance and lost trust

in their future as they were forsaken by almost all of the elite which had

led them to success. First Tomer, who had been the plant’s founder and

manager for a decade, left, and afterwards, twenty others who had been

designated ‘the pillars of Carmelit’ also exited (p. 114).

Carmelit is presented as a successful democracy, but the facts expose

an autocracy of a patron and his clique: The change led to “the

enhancement of economic-managerial elite rule” (p. 195), which included

six-seven members who were more powerful than is usual in kibbutzim (p.

90). They were mostly pe’ilim and a “de-facto board of directors [of

Carmelit] with two differences [that enhanced power]: On the one hand, it

was impossible to sue them for their mistakes… and, on the other, the

power they accumulated was greater than that of the usual board of

directors” (p. 146). Among this clique, “after Tomer left and so did

another plant manager, Hagay, the primacy of Barak was unchallenged”

(p. 90). Thus, Barak ruled through the clique which decided all financial

issues; he headed the plant’s board of directors which controlled kibbutz

sustenance, while also acting as the Chief Executive Officer of a large

national monopoly that made his salary, prestige, privileges and future

pension independent of the kibbutz. He was remunerated many times more

than members for an unlimited tenure. This was autocracy and it was not a

genuine democratic choice by members which brought it about.

The authors explained the change by

“[t]he memory of massive improvements after new beginnings, a

disposition to take seriously the ideas and the demands of the elite, a good

social and economic situation, and the dominance of an industrial plant run

according to managerial-capitalist rules” (p. XV).

While this memory might have helped the change, the rest is

questionable: Anthropologist Warhurst (1996, 1998) found the plant in

1988 socialistic, without hired labor; thus the “managerial-capitalist rules”

constituted a radical change, while “a good social and economic situation”


253

tended to enhance the culture that brought it about, rather than its

abandonment by radical changes. Secondly, the elite was clearly divided

about ideas of change: The minority, patron Barak and his clique of 7-8

members pushed for capitalist changes, while most other elite members

opposed them, as testify the leaving of the twelve families who were “the

pillars of Carmelit” (p. 114) after Barak proved unbeatable (see below). In

addition two veteran leaders who stayed, Avraham and Sagi, objected to

the changes for years (pp. 115, 157). Moreover, if the elite supported it,

why did its members who stayed decline chief offices for years,

engendering a crisis? Was it democratic that Barak’s loyalist, Yosef, took

all chief offices upon himself for a year and a half (p. 114)? Furthermore,

if members were disposed to take seriously the ideas of elite, why did it

take almost a decade and many crises to implement them? All facts prove

that, contrary to the authors’ assertion, members had to decide with which

elite group they sided, as one group objected to the change that the other

pushed for.

In fact, the change was an unplanned victory for Barak’s autocracy

which ruined solidaristic democracy, led to the exit of most of the

opposing leaders, and the rest, two elders, surrendered after prolonged

objection and stood aside as kibbutz culture was ruined. How did Barak do

it? Barak followed the maxim “If you can’t beat them, join them”.

Carmelit was founded in 1951, but until Tomer succeeded with the plant

in the 1970s, it was the poorest and smallest of the kibbutzim in the region

with staggering exit rates of 80-88%. The plant succeeded despite

obstruction efforts by conservative chief economic officer Barak, since

young Tomer was highly trusted thanks to servant, transformational

leadership which created an egalitarian culture, although with some

autocratic elements, and because he was backed by veteran social leaders

Avraham and Sagi (p. 58-9). After his 1974 failure to obstruct Tomer’s

efforts, Barak turned to pe’ilut, while, in local politics he reversed his

position and supported Tomer, and when, after a decade of plant success,

Tomer advanced to head the Reg.Ents concern, Barak succeeded him. I

interviewed Tomer and he explained that he had terminated pe’ilut early

and left Carmelit at the height of the debt crisis in 1986, disappointed by

the conservatism and passivity of TKM’s heads and other senior economic

pe’ilim (Chap. 3). Barak, on the other hand, sided with TKM pe’ilim, as

indicated by his 1988 advance to high-level economic pe’ilut. He was


254

replaced by loyalist Hagay (whom I interviewed), and then commenced

the capitalistic drive. As this caused a major crisis, but no formal change,

he used a more Machiavellian way: Carmelit’s share of repayment of FO

debts was quite large, and together with its own debts, its financial

situation was not very favorable, making some budget cuts necessary (p.

92-4). However, the plant was profitable and there was no objective

reason for a radical change (p. 105), but he and his clique amplified

worries among the members by pointing to negative economic indicators

(p. 93-4), and as controllers of the economy, they turned the plant into a

public firm and issued it on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 1993, while

transferring its debts to the kibbutz. They deliberately made Carmelit poor

and dependent on the plant (p. 105-7), while “the results of the change

through which the plant and the kibbutz had gone, were not clear at all to

members” (p. 108).

This was clearly undemocratic; in reality it was a deception which

suited Barak’s interests but not those of the members. Barak elevated his

status to Head of the Board of Directors, thus detaching himself from

managerial challenges and minimizing danger of failures which might

cause succession (p. 111), while the introduction of capitalist norms

abolished rotatzia and assured his unlimited tenure. He furnished himself

with a fancy new car, no longer shared by members, signaling his higher

status (p. 195). Self-work was abandoned by introducing hired labor,

making the plant independent of members’ will to work in it (p. 138).

Moreover, due to his FO ties while he was free of day-to-day managerial

decision-making, he got a higher outside job that furthered his power,

prestige and privileges, making him independent of members’ control.

Impoverished Carmelit was pressed to take austerity measures, another

crisis ensued and further changes seemed required (p. 107). Then came

even more crises (pp. 133, 139, 190), each one helping to bring about

further capitalist changes which enhanced Barak’s control (p. 195).

How Was Barak’s Advance to Autocracy Misinterpreted? Without referring to Michels, Mosca, Pareto, Dalton, Jay and other

oligarchy classics, the authors missed leaders’ Machiavellian presentation

of deeds aimed at enhancing their own interests as serving public ones.

Carmelit was no exception; it did not need the radical change which

served the patron and his clique of dependent clients:

“Barak was the principal member of this elite; he has great influence on


255

the image of the rest of its members, including the ability to decide who is

admitted to this elite, who continues in it, and who does not” (p. 82-3).

Barak used this ability to “drive away all those who did not accept his

authority” (p. 90), and suppressed young talented officers much like Rama

economists: he “finds weak spots” in a chief economic officer’s plan “and

in a moment he invalidates it…, he ruins the officer’s confidence, and

pulls the carpet from under his feet. He enjoys it. This is what they

[Barak’s clique members] did to chief economic officers to belittle them”

(p. 85). Tomer described to me Barak’s authoritarianism in 1973-4, when

Tomer led the plant’s establishment and Barak was chief economic

officer:

“When he came to a meeting he always tried to force his views on others,

but since a coalition was stronger than a lone fighter, we prevailed. I

always did my homework, finding out in advance what his intention was

and preparing my fellow officers for it; thus, he failed [to bar plant

establishment] and soon left [the chief economic office] for pe’ilut”.

Barak learned his lesson: he joined the winner in the economic

committee and waited a decade to succeed him while keeping managerial

status by pe’ilut, building a clique of loyal clients, and centralizing

control: “Barak was a ‘landlord’; every major decision went through him”

(p. 85). As in earlier cases, short-term chief officers were weak

apprentices of local politics and subject to patron Barak’s power. Only

those who proved loyal clients and were grasped as augmenting his power

were elevated to its hub, the clique of loyalists who continued economic

committee membership. As an astute politician, Barak was careful not to

lose power by direct involvement in battles he was not sure of winning. He

stayed away from difficult problems, sent clients to cope with them,

withheld support if they faced failure, and reimbursed them later on, as,

for instance, occurred with the nomination for plant manager in 1993, after

his promotion to head the Board of Directors. Although it was his

responsibility as head of the Board to propose a successor, Barak shirked

this duty, let two candidates compete, and when his protégé Yosef failed,

he soon found him another chief office, proving that loyalty was duly

rewarded. As was explained in Chapter 11, abstention from direct

involvement preserved his prestige and power. Thus, when Gadi, who

headed a ‘change team’, proposed the changes that Barak wanted but

which led to mass resistance and were bound to fail, Barak’s clique caused


256

his resignation, while later on it supported the same proposals, when it saw

good prospects for winning (p. 94-103).

Enhanced Power, Prestige and Privileges, Minimal

Accountability Ethnographers exposed Barak’s power, but not how he orchestrated

changes. They chose Carmelit to study a successful kibbutz democracy,

and so convinced were they in their choice that they missed de-facto

disappearance of democracy years earlier with the plant’s capitalistic

change and making the kibbutz poor and dependent on it. This change

enhanced Barak’s rule and destroyed any chance of opposition considering

the extra power it had given him; hence, most opposing leaders, “the

pillars of Carmelit”, left. The authors exposed tricky enrichment of the

plant at the expense of the kibbutz without members understanding, but

ignored the ruined trust which is essential for solidaristic democracy. Even

though the kibbutz was rich in qualified economists, an outside treasurer

was hired for the plant, but the authors missed its significance: 1. The new

treasurer replaced the kibbutz treasurer who had managed the plant’s

finances hitherto (p. 108), thus plausible divide et impera of the two

treasurers enhanced Barak’s rule. 2. As a ‘parachuted’ outsider, the new

treasurer was more dependent on Barak than any insider, like Shavit

dependency on Zelikovich.2

The authors missed how members were convinced to support the final

blow to kibbutz culture by Barak and his clique, market rate salaries, that

is high rewards for themselves and low rewards for others (p. 121). This

had to be done without creating a self-serving image in order to gain

public support; hence, it was the task of those aspiring to join the clique,

heads of successive ‘change teams’. As it was hard to create the image that

‘everyone would win’ for members to believe this bluff and support it, a

series of crises were required to bring it about: First, “the pillars of

Carmelit” left, including an ex-secretary and the plant manager. Then

democratic organs stopped functioning as no able candidates were found

for chief offices, hence, Barak’s loyalist, Yosef, assumed all chief offices,

like Chen’s Haya in a similar situation. Soon births dropped sharply amid

2 See it in Parkinson (1957). On the use of hired aides to enhance managerial

control of kibbutz plants: Kressel 1974: 33-7; Shapira 1980: 35.


257

an “atmosphere of depression”. After a year and a half, veteran leader

Avraham (see below) decided that capitalist changes were inevitable and

agreed to be secretary once more (p. 115); outside consultants were

brought in to convince members; another ‘change team’ tried hard to

introduce changes, was ‘burned’ in the process and resigned after the

clique had withheld support (p. 167). Only a third team succeeded when

the last opposing veteran leaders who had not left, Sagi and his wife (see

below), surrendered (p. 157). Soon after, Barak increased his rule by

introducing more changes (p. 195).

One question remains: When Barak went to pe’ilut in 1988, did he not

fear the success of his successor in plant management, like Mati’s

apprehension of the engineer that prevented industrialization? This was a

risk, but not a great one. I interviewed the successor and found him to be a

supporter of Barak’s capitalist drive. Thus, even if he had stayed, Barak’s

higher status, seniority and hegemony of the economic committee through

his clique of clients, assured his becoming head of the plant’s board of

directors after it had become a capitalist firm.

Industrialization Geared to Kibbutz Ethos Required

Creativity How did Barak succeed even though his outside career was not a success

at first, and although he was defeated internally, failing to obstruct the

plant?

Once again, creativity and FOs were keys to understanding. As

explained, due to Admors’ dysfunctioning, early kibbutz plants imitated

capitalist plants. Carmelit’s first founding group dissolved within a few

years. One reason was the imitation of capitalist firms. Like Chen, it

lacked water and fertile land, so a workshop for roof tiles was founded

which used a capitalist practice for motivating workers, a daily quota, and

this caused its failure as it prompted stark inequality: while all other

kibbutz members worked all day long, most workshop workers finished

their day’s work before noon, completing the daily quota of 250 tiles. This

quota was used by non-kibbutz tile workshops, and was introduced since,

at first, without it, there was low productivity and no profits (p. 43). The

conflict between those opposing the workshop and ‘innovators’ who

supported its imitation, helped the disintegration of the poor, unsuccessful

kibbutz.

The deserted kibbutz in which only Avraham remained of the first


258

settlers, was renewed in 1957 by a new gar’in. Until 1965, Carmelit was

in a worse state than Olim and Chen: a failing economy like Chen’s, and a

‘train station’. This caused an important difference: No powerful leaders

emerged, because ex-chief officers did not advance to pe’ilut, as their

failing kibbutz gave them little prestige, and/or they found no patrons.

They exited at the end of their terms and members followed suit (pp. 50-

5). In 1964, a fifty member hashlama group arrived at a time when veteran

kibbutz membership totaled 38. The hashlama members were upper-

middle class, coming from affluent neighborhoods in large cities and like

their urban peers expected to receive higher education (p. 54). Creativity

by two leaders who understood the problem of higher education for all,

which kibbutz norms did not offer at that time, rescued them from the fate

of previous hashlama groups, early disintegration and exit: Avraham, a

Palmach veteran who served as secretary “maybe 16 times” (p. 56), and

Sagi, who coached this hashlama, introduced a radical solution. Seeking

to stop exits, the two found that the main reason was the desire for higher

education. Together with hashlama leaders, they devised by-laws by

which the kibbutz would fulfill this wish, including priority to women so

that they could study before having children, and they convinced the

kibbutz to adopt these by-laws. Hashlama members stayed even though

some waited a decade for their turn at higher education. Their willingness

to wait so long, explicable by the innovation of higher education for all

and the new hope it gave for success of the kibbutz.3

In early 1970s when a large number of educated members desired

careers for their enhanced competencies, Sagi and hashlama leaders

initiated the establishment of a plant, and Avraham joined them to defeat

opposition by chief economic officer Barak who tried to obstruct the plant

even during its building and assembly of equipment (p. 58-60). Avraham’s

and Sagi’s support was decisive for success, as Barak was a veteran

economic decision-maker, while Tomer, a hashlama member, was still a

student in 1973 when persuaded by Sagi to stop his studies and head the

plant, as the previous founding manager had resigned and left (p. 59),

apparently due to Barak’s obstruction efforts.

Tomer’s creative leadership promoted a culture tuned to kibbutz ethos:

he was much involved on the shop floor and modeled high commitment by

3 See next chapters and Gamson 1977; Noy 1977; Shur 1977.


259

working shifts on the line when needed, while all senior plant staff, as well

as administrative and maintenance staff, were obliged to work a weekly

evening or night shift on the line, a norm favored by Avraham and Sagi.

Their guidance and support led to Tomer’s success in ensuring self-work,

although it increased plant dependency on kibbutz officers’ good will,

while the senior chief kibbutz officer, Barak, was hostile. It seemed that

the two had neutralized Barak’s opposition, and members eagerly joined

the plant which enhanced their participation in its norm shaping. For

instance, experienced workers were among those sent abroad to learn

about innovations. As in the Rama’s cow barn, great effort was invested in

creating team-work and solidarity; hence, educated members remained as

operators of automated lines and enhanced creativity and efficiency.4 The

plant’s finances were managed together with Carmelit’s by one treasurer

in one bank account, so few suspicions emerged among kibbutz officers

concerning its transactions. Success was also due to Tomer’s adapting jobs

to competencies of members; the sophisticated plant offered no less than

35 specialties to choose from (p. 62).

Tomer, however, was inconsistent and partially imitated the outside

firm whose head had brought the plant proposal to Carmelit (p. 61-3). This

partial imitation helped Barak’s efforts in the 1990s: many members did

not view the change to a capitalist firm as a major one and saw little

reason to resist it (p. 108).

FOs’ Conservatism, Creativity Loss and Veterans’ Natural

Rights Schwartz’s and Naor’s main omission, as usual in kibbutz ethnographies,

was the oligarchic context of Carmelit, capitalist-like FOs in which ex-

chief kibbutz officers retained managerial status and advanced careers.

Barak could not have won without repeated FO jobs since his 1974 failure.

Using CKP, the authors missed the fact that pe’ilut kept his managerial

status, helped him to succeed Tomer in 1983, and then to achieve higher

offices, while economic FOs were decisive for the building of his clique.

Its economists advanced through FO jobs (p. 146) which required

patronage, very likely by veteran pa’il and ex-pa’il Barak. Barak’s past

pe’ilut also seemed decisive for his 1988 promotion to head a major

4 Shapira 1977, 1979a, 1980; Warhurst 1996, 1998.


260

national economic FO and for his further promotion in 1993. Conservative

FOs helped Barak by encouraging Tomer’s departure; although he could

have come back to Carmelit after leaving the heading of the Reg.Ents in

despair in 1986, and he could certainly have been reinstated as plant

manager when Barak left for pe’ilut in 1988, but it was a status descent for

which he would have had to believe in a kibbutz future. In the interview,

however, he reiterated more than once that this belief had been lost in

years of witnessing FO mismanagement and backward-looking TKM

heads ignoring the impending crisis and objecting to any cut of inflated

bureaucracies. Tomer’s exit freed Barak of his main competitor for

Carmelit’s leadership. He could go on to pe’ilut in 1988, quite sure of his

own dominance. The pe’ilut enhanced his prestige, networked him to

professionals required for issuing the plant on the stock exchange, and to

national figures which very likely helped his advance to head the large

national monopoly.

The authors did not refer to Stryjan (1989) although they saw the

decisive effect of Avraham’s and Sagi’s creative solution for Carmelit

success, but without Stryjan’s theory they missed how this creativity and

Tomer’s creativity supported each other, and how vanishing creativity

after his exit paved the way for Barak’s victory. Parallel to this vanishing

creativity, Avraham, Sagi and those other “pillars of Carmelit” who had

opposed the capitalist change were silenced, since the media, all the

consultants, most FO heads and many other TKM kibbutzim supported

Barak’s capitalist drive. After the first prolonged crisis his drive

engendered, and without the support of “the pillars of Carmelit” as they

already left, old Avraham surrendered, and after two more crises, Sagi and

his wife did likewise. Members subsequently followed them, lacking any

opposition leader, as Fox (1985) has explained British workers compliance

(Chap. 6).

The authors celebrate the case as a democracy, but forget minority

rights: Barak’s clique ignored the natural rights of veterans who had built

the plant by many years of hard work. When it became a capitalist firm,

naturally, these veterans should have held much more of its stock and

voting power than other members who had invested fewer years. Alas, all

held equal voting rights as members of the kibbutz, which held eighty per

cent of the plant’s stock after its issue on the Stock Exchange. This was an

illegitimate appropriation of veterans’ efforts by newcomers. Had veterans


261

held their due part of the plant’s stock and voting power, they could have

decided on dividends for stock owners. By adding dividends to their low

pay as ordinary workers, technicians and foremen, they would have

enlarged their overall earnings beyond that of young workers, thereby duly

rewarding themselves for the dozens of years they had invested in

promoting the plant to its present status. Alas, this was against the interests

of Barak and the other managers as it would have diminished their

supremacy. They easily ignored the veterans, as securing their rights

would have required the devising of new bylaws, like those which Amana

communes devised in a similar situation in 1932, while inept TKM leaders

also shirked their duty to devise them.5

In conclusion, for over half of its fifty years, from 1951 to 1965, and

from 1986 to 2000, Carmelit resembled previous cases: conservatives and

imitators impaired creativity required for a successful kibbutz culture,

helped by conservative, imitative FO heads. Only when creative servant

leaders introduced higher education for all and developed industry which

was geared to the kibbutz ethos and the productive use of the acquired

educational resources, was success achieved. However, creativity vanished

when FOs both elevated the status and power of a self-serving

conservative patron and his clique, and frustrated a creative rival servant

leader who then left, leaving the prestige and power emanating from his

successful creativity to the patron, who, presumably helped by

connections to high-ranking pe’ilim, furthered his FO status and power.

Without creativity and with no transformational leaders who seek it, with

the field in crisis and drifting to further capitalist imitation, the veteran

patron and his clique used cynical, Machiavellian amplification of

members’ anxiety that their kibbutz would fail like others due to FO debts.

Masking the lack of any objective reason for apprehension, they

successfully promoted imitative changes that enhanced their rule without

members’ understanding, caused the departure of other rival leaders, while

a series of crises led to the surrender of the last opposing leaders and

eliminated kibbutz culture. Veterans were dispossessed of their natural

rights, and the rule by the patron had been permanently established.

With the detailed knowledge of three cases of communal cultures with

5 On Amana: Oved 1988: Chap. 4. Recently Mishmar Ha’emek and Gan Shmuel

devised such bylaws for such a future possible eventuality.


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mediocre success, and one successful case which turned capitalistic like

many successful DWOs (Stryjan 1989), let us examine high-moral

leadership, trust and creativity in a kibbutz where the original ethos and

culture largely survived up to the present.

CHAPTER 16

Kochav’s High-Moral Patrons Curbed Rotatzia’s

Contrast with Creativity

“There is no reason to assume that a stable society can operate on the

principle of continuous exchange of personnel of authority positions”

(Dahrendorf 1959: 220-1).

Since the distinguished sociologist wrote the above concerning kibbutz

rotatzia, kibbutz society has thrived for decades without eliminating

rotatzia, while my analyses have proven that rotatzia did cause instability

in lower echelons, but the opposite in upper ones. Dahrendorf’s mistake

was missing the role of rotatzia in shaping complex leadership processes.

Ever since the Hawthorn studies of the 1930s, through all classics of large

organization ethnography, leaders’ and followers’ behaviors have time and

again proven inexplicable without unearthing informal action, hidden

deals, masked political efforts and other parts of the hidden iceberg of

power.1 This iceberg limits impact by short-term officers; continuous

others hold power and conserve or change a field’s culture and hegemonic

discourse, shape strategies and action modes, allocate vital resources,

define norms and enact major sanctions, while short-term officers do

routine tasks and solve technical problems, usually without lasting effects.

Rotatzia Furthered the Iceberg Phenomenon in Leadership One of the most stable and successful societies of our time was managed

up to the 1990s by governments whose heads were rotated every two

years. Vogel (1979) depicted Japan as Number One and others perceived

it as extremely successful,2 but even if they exaggerated as later years

proved, Japan’s stability amid rapid economic growth and rotatzia of

Prime Ministers cannot be denied.3 Similarly, ancient Athens was quite

1 In addition to these classics, political scientists: Banfield 1961; Bobbio 2002:

Chap. 4. 2 Dore 1973; Rohlen 1974; Ouchi 1981; Sako 1992; Fukuyama 1995. 3 For ethnographic explantions of Japan success and stability see: Kamata 1981;

Mehri 2005; Van Wolferen 1989.

16. Kochav’s High-Moral Patrons Assured Creativity

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stable with yearly rotatzia of almost all of its administrators.4

Rotatzia breeds continuous power-holders, patrons and others who hold

the ropes mostly behind the scenes. In Latin America, until recently,

presidents were rotated and could not be re-elected; they were

constitutionally allowed only one four, five or six year term. Hence, the

main power was held by continuous senators, congressmen and other

senior oligarchic politicians.5 One of them, Don Fidel Velasquez, even

surpassed Admors continuity: in 1992 he was re-elected for the eighth

time, after 51 years in office, to continue to head Mexico’s trade union

federation, one of three sections of the PRI, the party that ruled from 1919

to 2000. Another powerful figure in Mexican politics was La Quina who

headed Mexico’s oil workers union for at least 37 years.6

Similarly, Japan’s bi-yearly replacement of prime ministers was

controlled in the 1970s and early 1980s by former Prime Minister Kaku’ai

Tanaka, and then until 1992, by Shin Kanemru, when the corruption that

enabled this control was exposed.7 Rotatzia prevented Prime Ministers

from accumulating enough power and capitals to prevail over the corrupt

political machines of the two. In addition to rotatzia, Tanaka’s and

Kanemru’s rule was supported by and, in turn, enhanced low-trust,

coercive and autocratic public officials. Japan lacked genuine civil rights,

a truly independent judiciary and free mass media which could help

servant leaders’ coping with these problems.8

Rotatzia furthered this iceberg phenomenon of leadership by

dissevering formal authority from power, while preventing comprehension

of leadership by formal studies. If, in a usual bureaucracy, formal study

exposes only the tip of the iceberg of the leadership process, in a rotatzia

organization, almost nothing is exposed by such a study. The kibbutz

dominant scientific coalition which stuck to formal methods, missed the

fact that rotational officers were just pawns on the chessboard of patrons,

as Moti and his mates in Chen discovered after years in chief offices.

4 Bowra 1971; Fuks 1976. See the same in Perkins & Poole (1996). 5 Davis 1958; Smith 1986; Sanders 1989; Linz 1990; Mainwaring 1990. 6 Sanders 1989: xii; Tzur 1992. 7 Van Wolferen 1989: Chap. 5; Kovner 1993; Newsweek 1993. 8 Van Wolferen 1989. See also ethnographies of autocracy in Japan’s largest car

maker and its involvement in politics: Kamata 1981; Mehri 2005.


265

Formal methods did not expose the patrons and their interests, nor did they

discover the complex maneuvers by which patrons masked power and

capitals accumulation, and the efforts that turned others into their servants.

This masking was so successful that even in Kochav’s high-trust culture,

where information was shared more widely than in most kibbutzim,

rotatzia kept leadership processes largely hidden from members.

Kochav’s Success In previous cases, low-moral dominance by continuous patrons and power

elites was largely explained by FO oligarchic hegemony and imitation of

low-trust capitalist cultures. Kochav is a veteran kibbutz initially similar to

Rama, which had to cope with much the same hardships by quite similar

measures. The case of Kochav will further prove that morality of leaders is

the principal causal factor by showing that oligarchic holding of top FO

jobs did not prevent high morality within Kochav, so that rotatzia’s clash

with creativity was curbed, leading to Kochav success. However,

Hirschmanian negative selection of radicals in the promotion of kibbutz

officers to pe’ilut was true of Kochav’s leaders, like all other FO heads

and senior pe’ilim, and after the radicals were sidetracked or left in the

1970s, conservative circulators succeeded the old guard as main power-

holders and depressed creativity much as in previous cases.

In contrast to Rama’s 650 people, Kochav numbered 956 people in

1986, 550 of whom were members and candidates for membership.

Members and observers alike considered it very successful socially. In one

publication it is termed “a splendid kibbutz”, in another it is “the best

kibbutz of the region”, and a third called it “the flagship [of the

Movement]”.9 It resembled successful Kibbutz Makom studied by Liblich

(1984), but, at the time of observation, its economy resembled Rama’s,

suffering heavily from Israel’s unstable, inflationary economy. In 1985

alone, losses amounted to some $US 3,500,000 and exits soared from an

average of five members per year in 1981-5 to twenty annually in 1986-90

with a population decrease by more than a hundred. In the 1990s, it again

became profitable, many offspring who had exited came back, and, at

present, (2008) its situation is better than almost all other kibbutzim. For

9 In order to preserve anonymity I do not denote the sources of citations. Dates of

publications were: 8.11.1985; 18.2.1992; 11.9.1997.


266

example, for the fifth consecutive year, members have received large

monetary bonuses due to a profitable plant with over $US 100 million in

sales, while the standard of living was already one of the highest among

kibbutzim. With economic success, all flats of families with children aged

fourteen years or less, were enlarged within a few years after deciding to

switch to family boarding in the early 1990s. Unlike Rama, economic

officers gave this project high priority, seeing it as their own

responsibility.

Leaders Solved the Plant’s Conflict Concerning Major

Norms A major reason for success was the relatively early industrialization. In

1949 a workshop was set up to employ aging members who, after three

decades of hard work, needed easier tasks. In the mid-1950s, it was

enlarged into a plant as a result of the new economic policy of hashlama

leaders who became chief officers after proving successful as branch

managers. They discerned a disparity between Kochav’s growing

population with mounting needs, and the relatively stagnant economy that

trailed kibbutzim which had industrialized earlier. They initiated major

workshop enlargement and entered new markets with fresh products made

by new equipment and technologies. They also modernized agriculture

while changing to more profitable crops. For growth and modernization,

they used expensive private loans, since banks denied financing, and

dysfunctioning Admors did not cope with this critical problem, as Chapter

3 has explained.

Growth using expensive financing necessitated a high utility rate of

equipment, i.e., shift-work which increased hired labor, as was usual at the

time due to Admors suppression of innovators who would suggest

solutions (Chap. 11). This caused bitter criticism by members, including

the three veteran oligarchic leaders. Criticism mounted as the plant

manager also violated rotatzia, continuing almost a decade. In 1963, under

pressure from critical younger, kibbutz-born chief officers and hashlama

ex-chief officers, the veteran factory manager resigned, his two deputies

turned the position down, and the son of one of the prime leaders, a retired

army major (rav-seren) who had finished a successful term as sadran

avoda (work organizer), was ‘parachuted’ into the job. However, in

protest against chief officers’ interference in plant affairs, the two deputies

resigned, and all three refused to impart their information and knowledge


267

to their successors.

These resignations and non-cooperation by ex-managers caused a

serious disruption that brought the plant almost to a halt. Major strife

ensued, creating two nearly warring camps of supporters of the two sides,

since both deputies were members of large extended families. In the past,

both prime leader, Israel, and one of the secondary leaders, Bilski, had

opposed industrialization; only the third, Moshe, had supported it.

However, perceiving the dangerous situation and supporting rotatzia and

self-work principles which chief officers tried instilling in the plant, all

three sought a solution for the crisis. In fact, their past behavior

engendered the crisis: As continuous top FO officials they did not model

these principles, never took part in urgent work tasks, and did not

encourage solutions to the problems which the two principles had created.

The manager and his deputies followed what they had practiced rather

than what they had preached, and this was another explanation for the vast

support the ex-managers found among members.

The leaders solved the conflict as they were highly trusted due to

Kochav success, their authority had been well-entrenched for decades, and

they had ample resources. They convinced most members that chief

officers acted in accord with kibbutz ethos that the resigning managers had

neglected, insisting that a new manager was needed to rid the plant of

hired labor.10 Israel found a pe’ilut for the ex-plant manager through his

ample FO ties and achieved the ex-manager’s cooperation, while lesser

managerial jobs were found for the deputies although only one of them

cooperated. The strife also subsided since the new manager behaved like

Thomas, Yaakov and Tomer, acting as a servant transformational leader.

He was soon trusted by the plant’s informal leaders as he involved himself

in coping with the problems of furthering automation in order to eliminate

hired labor. The plant was geared to the competencies of educated kibbutz

offspring, and many of them replaced uneducated hired workers and

helped experts to solve problems of new technologies, new products and

automation. Even more decisive was the invention of a shift-work sharing

system in which the manager and all technical and administrative staff

members gave a weekly night or evening shift on the line, preceding

10 Likewise in Gan Shmuel a new plant manager (my father) led ridding of hired

labor in the late 1950s.


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Tomer by a decade and curbing turnover among educated line workers

(Shapira 1977). However, as far as I knew no one proposed a new solution

for the problem of plant manager succession, although it was quite clear

that rotatzia was incommensurate with competent management of the

specialized and complex plant, which required considerable intangible

assets. As a result, some ex-plant managers returned for a second and third

time to head it, but no one raised the question of whether it would be

better for successful managers to continue instead of this circulation.

High-Moral Old Guard Backed Execution of Radicals’

Solutions Kochav’s shift-work solution was radical: While in Carmelit only plant

employees shared shift-work, in Kochav shared work soon included

kibbutz officers and some pe’ilim who worked on Thursday nights, when

coming back from the city. Shift-work sharing which elite members

modeled, giving up rest or sleep for the public good, solved the problem of

manning automated lines by educated members. It made the capitalist

solution of Carmelit in the 1990s unnecessary: conscription of members to

such jobs by extending fringe benefits; this solution was required because,

with Barak’s capitalist changes, Tomer’s past egalitarian solutions became

less effective.11

Carmelit and Kochav successes had two main common denominators:

First, egalitarianism due to creativity by high-moral leaders who promoted

high-trust, democratic and egalitarian culture. Second, continuous

creativity due to influential veterans’ backing execution of young radical

officers’ solutions. In both cases, without this backing, radicals would

have failed, as they had failed in the other cases. In order to stymie

industrialization, Kochav’s old guard would not have had to try hard:

without its support for implementation of General Assembly decisions,

conservative loyalists would have obstructed radicals’ efforts to introduce

new solutions. Thus, a key explanation for creativity was the high morality

of veteran leaders who backed implementation of decisions which they

opposed. In both cases, the old guard, in different ways due to status

differences, was highly trusted thanks to its competent efforts and personal

11 Schwartz & Naor 2000: 79-80, 138-40. In 1988 Warhurst (1996, 1998) saw no

fringe benefits, just other intangible motivators which Tomer used.


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involvement in solving major kibbutz problems. In Carmelit Avraham and

Sagi were personally involved in the introduction of higher education and

industrialization, while in Kochav case prime leaders were personally

involved in solving both the above conflict and other problems which

escorted creativity and depicted below.

In many other characteristics, the two kibbutzim were different. This

explains why, despite dwindling creativity dating from the 1970s, even

during the prosperity of the 1990s, Kochav employed only a few hired

workers, and has refrained from any other capitalist solutions. In a

nutshell, the difference could be seen in plant managers’ personal

behavior. Tomer used some capitalist practices which signaled status

superiority. In contrast, Kochav’s plant manager could not be

distinguished from other members by such practices when interviewed in

1977; his office was neither larger nor better than others, nor was it closed

to non-managers during management sessions as Tomer’s was. Though in

the new office building of 1986, differentiation between offices emerged,

this seemed to be functional: the plant was much larger and so was its

managerial team; hence, more space was required in the manager’s office.

The manager’s clothes were also now (1986) discernible from those of

workers, but this also seemed functional: in 1977, he worked in the plant

most of the time; hence, he wore work clothes, while now he mostly

traveled to the cities and abroad for business meetings, so he wore more

formal clothes.

Democracy Nurtured by Authentic, Credible Leaders Though Kochav was not as egalitarian and democratic as its founders had

intended, in accord with literature cited in Chapter 9, its authentic,

trustworthy and credible leaders brought it closer to a genuine democracy

with maximal member participation than most kibbutzim. In the early

days, one weekly general assembly allocated members to jobs; in a second

assembly, pe’ilim usually reported on national and Movement politics in

which they were involved, and these issues were discussed. A third, and

sometimes a fourth assembly, were devoted to other local affairs. This

continued into the 1940s, however, it dropped to two assemblies in the

early 1950s and then to one a few years later. Assembly attendance was a

must for most members up the 1960s, and even in the 1980s, assemblies

with 150-200 members were common. This success of democracy

contrasted other successful veteran kibbutzim where attendance fell in the


270

1930s, and in the 1940s had dropped sometimes to a few dozen, that is,

only 10-15%, as in Rama; and in Kibbutz Makom of the late 1970s, low

attendance put the very survival of the assembly in doubt.12

A major reason for high attendance was the reports of leaders

concerning hot topics on the national agenda in which they were involved.

They brought members information they could not find elsewhere, since,

until the 1980s Israeli mass media has been censored or self-censored,

allegedly for security reasons, but often serving governmental interests,

and The Movement daily which members read, did not tell the whole

truth, as leaders exposed in assemblies.13 An additional reason for

assembly attendance which diminished reversal of decisions, was leaders’

took an active part in debates, and therefore appeals were rare.14 Thus,

members were not bored by repeated discussions of an issue, as was

common in Rama and other kibbutzim.

A Lively and Critical Local Press An integral part of this democratic tradition was the local press which

criticized public neglect by officers. It was initiated in the 1920s, soon

after the kibbutz was organized, by a member who had written it

independently. In the 1930s, it became a weekly, written and edited by

talented intellectuals, would-be journalists, authors and editors. In 1934-5,

it was edited by Moshe, a university graduate and a would-be Movement

major leader. Besides depicting achievements and failures (“1000 pound

profit for this year versus 1200 pound losses last year”. 13.10.1934), it

exposed small areas of neglect which were a great nuisance for members

at the time:

“At last we have a modern W.C. with running water and all that one needs.

So far, so good. However, it is impossible to avoid a ‘but’: Why it is full of

flies? Since builders forgot that its windows require screens” (5.6.1934).

Then, under the headline “Who Attends to Paved Tracks in the Yard?”

the weekly complained that the new W.C. had no pavement and users had

12 On veteran kibbutzim: Argaman 1997: 85, 149, 190. On Makom: Liblich 1984:

16. 13 Caspi & Limor 1992: Chap. 4-6. 14 Hazorea coped with the problem by restricting the right to appeal (Shatil 1977:

108).


271

to go down a muddy path (24.11.1934). Each paper contained five-six

pages with twenty-thirty news items which were usually written by

Moshe, and some analyses by him and by others. Later, a humorous page

was added. Students of humor found that this was a way to criticize

without hurting its victim(s) too much.15 Kochav’s humorist criticized

institutions, not specific culprits, but in this small community his targets

and the audience alike knew quite well who the barb was meant for. For

instance, in 1936, he targeted the economists who forecasted a deficit:

“The kibbutz wanted to cover [the deficit], but did not know how. … In

the assembly it was said that we must be more productive and so I was…

This did not affect the treasury; it is steadfast in its determination that there

will be a deficit… Then came wise people and said that there were many

nights and Saturdays which could be used productively. Oh God! They

were right! For years we have been blind, look at how much we have

lost…”

In 1941, the target was the leaders’ solution of drawing lots to choose

who would join the British army. In 1954, FO organization of every aspect

of kibbutz life by seminars was criticized by proposing to organize a

‘seminar for grandfathering’. In 1956, the long speeches leaders gave at

festivities were targeted, and in 1970, the higher education revolution

(Gamson 1977; Noy 1977):

“The author will start studying ‘applied psychology for mutual attraction’”

since soon “no one will talk to me as I lack a Ph.D”. Thus “everyone who

wants to will learn”. “And who will work? asked my wife. I answered:

‘Science will solve the problem. Automation! Buttons! Just push a button

and a problem is solved… The doctors will push the buttons. …Then we

can solve all pressing social problems…’ ‘How?’ asked my wife. When I

am a doctor, I will tell you. If I knew now, why would I have to learn?”

Highly Involved High-Moral Leaders were Ascetic and Obedient

Another part of the lively democracy was the existence of committees in

which leaders were actively involved, each participating in two or three

committees. The only exception was Moshe after he had become a Cabinet

15 Emerson 1969; Handelman & Kapferer 1972.


272

Minister. These committees mostly convened on Fridays and Saturdays.

Israel excelled, with membership in the secretariat, the economic

committee, the planning committee and a special appeals committee which

he set up and headed to deal with cases in which a member or a committee

felt that a general assembly decision was very deficient or completely

flawed and required reconsideration (see below). This minimized the

overturning of assembly decisions by interested parties mobilizing

supporters which so troubled Rama’s general assembly.

Even highly involved servant leaders, who genuinely seek wider

possible participation of followers in discussions may create animosity to

some of their policies, which are suspected by followers as being self-

serving. Thus, one of the clearest indications of preferring public interests

over their own is asceticism (Harris 1990: 350). Until FOs turned

oligarchic and Kochav’s leaders became continuous privileged pe’ilim,

they modeled clear asceticism that inspired egalitarianism. They worked

harder than most members, were separated from families for years when

serving as emissaries abroad, and for most of the week as pe’ilim. On

weekends much of their time was spent on committees and general

assembly sessions. Their fringe benefits were quite meager until the early

1940s, and even when Israel was granted a car and then also Moshe, Bilski

managed without a car, proving that asceticism was a prime principle for

him.

Later on, as continuous FO heads or national officials, their loyalists

were promoted to pe’ilut, but, unlike previous cases, they never

emasculated innovations aimed at egalitarianism. Great involvement in

deliberations made them sensitive to members’ feelings, so that even when

their views were rejected and their privileges restricted, they supported

implementation of decisions. As for car sharing, cars used by Israel and

Moshe were not shared, but this caused no grievances as their top level

jobs required them to be available even on weekends, while Bilski had no

car. Not one case of patrons unilaterally subverting a decision was known,

in sharp contrast to previous cases. Nor did any of the 123 interviewees

suspect them of hidden political deals on the inside or with outsiders, for

personal benefit. None of the few who criticized them, including ex-

members, viewed their conservatism as aimed at self interest and power

self-perpetuation. Nor did anyone suspect them of objecting to any

innovation for a personal reason, in sharp contrast with previous cases


273

(except Carmelit’s Avraham, Sagi and Tomer). Only in some successful

kibbutzim could prime leaders be discerned whose high morality seemed

to resemble Kochav’s.16

High Morality Enhanced Trust and Creativity This high-moral, democratic tradition engendered a high-trust culture

which enhanced creativity. Kochav’s radical young officers of the 1950s-

1960s were innovative despite patrons’ opposition. This does not mean

that patrons helped radicals’ careers. As seen in previous cases and in

accord with Hirschman (1970), when they became conservative senior

pe’ilim, they did not help promotion of radicals to FO jobs, nor did they

support their re-election for kibbutz chief offices. Radicals soon returned

to minor jobs and many of them left or ‘left inward’, i.e., abstained from

offices. Unlike previous cases, however, due to the patrons’ high morality,

conservative loyalists who were promoted to chief offices usually aimed at

public good, rarely used offices for personal gain and preserved

credibility.

Loyalists and radicals alike followed in the steps of patrons’

overarching commitment to the kibbutz cause and devoted a large part of

their free time to committee sessions and the general assembly. This also

enhanced participation by the rank and file in democratic processes;

assembly decisions represented Yankelovich’s (1991) ‘public judgment’,

which unlike momentarily public opinion of previous cases were rarely

overturned, and hence, disobedience was negligible. Patrons’ conservatism

frustrated radical officers, but when well-attended assemblies approved

their innovations and patrons backed implementation, assured authority

encouraged their continued innovation. Patrons backing is explicable by

both efforts to maintain trust in them, and by their own secure highest

status which prevented their losing standing to brilliant juniors, as Dore

(1973: Chap. 9) explained regarding Hitachi.

Special Appeals Committee Enhanced Social Justice

Patrons also helped prevent the problematic status of non-members,

16 One of them was Gan Shmuel, while others were Geva, Hatzerim, Hazorea

(Shatil 1977), Beit Hashita (Liblich 1984), and Be’eri (Raz 1996; Bar-Sinay

1997).


274

husbands of women members, such as the seven mentioned in Rama. Such

problems were solved through the special appeals committee. Its members

were chosen on a personal basis for three year terms, and in many cases,

their terms were prolonged for over a decade (An additional proof that

high-trust culture requires continuity). Its meetings were confidential and

the general assembly could either approve its proposals or reject them, in

which case the problem was referred back to the committee which sought

a new solution. This process was aimed primarily at doing justice for

members who were victimized by public opinion and who felt that the

secretariat and general assembly had approved unjust victimization. In a

few cases, the secretariat also appealed an assembly decision perceived as

causing injustice to a member or a category of members, and in some

cases the committee supported the appeal and proposed a new solution.

The process mostly produced solutions considered as fair and just by

interviewees, and in a few cases I studied, in all but one (see next chapter),

members were more satisfied with the committee’s solution than with the

decision appealed. Thus, the committee helped to enforce problematic

decisions and enhanced trust in kibbutz leadership.

Strong Officers’ Authority and Much Discretion Pulled

Talented

Kochav’s high-trust, democratic culture enhanced creativity, since

officers’ rotatzia less hampered innovation than in other cases, as chief

officers had stronger authority. The best talents were pulled to these jobs

thanks to the discretion they were given by prime leaders which enabled

coping with problems. Their authority was secured as prime leaders

backed decision implementation and the most talented members manned

offices and faithfully served the public. Unlike Rama and Gelbard’s

(1993) kibbutz, in which talented members mostly sought outside jobs,

and unlike Dvorkind’s (1996) Hamaapil where ‘slaves became masters’,

Mati’s ever-failing protégé, Chen’s Chaya and Carmelit’s Yosef,

Kochav’s chief officers were mostly competent members who had proved

successful in minor offices, coped reasonably well with challenges,

faithfully attended to members’ interests, rarely needed camouflages, and

hence were fully trusted, in accord with literature cited in Chapter 9.

Their strong authority cannot be explained by a different demographic

composition, since officers resembled those of other kibbutzim


275

demographically. They were usually middle-aged, thirty-five to fifty,

mostly male except for one of the secretaries who was female since the

mid-1960s, and they had much the same educational level. Managerial

socialization began in minor offices, such as branch managers or as heads

of secondary committees. There, grass-roots democracy taught them that

devotion to goals adopted by a branch team or by committee members

would be rewarded and dedicated work and efforts would lead to success

and promotion to chief offices. Unlike other cases, however, promotion in

Kochav was more closely associated with achievements in junior offices,

since patrons rarely pushed loyalists to chief offices. Thus, nomination

committees were trusted to find the best candidates. Only the repeated

nomination of Israel’s client as secretary after each pe’ilut, seemed to

signal patron interference, but I could not confirm this, while this client’s

talent and great esteem by members might explain his repeated

nominations with little or no such interference.

Due to minimal interference of conservative patrons in officer

nominations, many radical creatives became chief officers. Though many

of them failed to overcome patrons’ conservatism, some succeeded. These

successes encouraged others to take public offices, minimizing ‘inward

leavings’. Am’ad and Palgi (1986) found the manning of offices was less

problematic in innovative kibbutzim, and indeed, Argaman (1997) found

in most of the KM and KA kibbutzim he studied, that as early as the late

1930s, parallel to Admors growing conservatism, filling offices became a

prime issue which bothered the general assembly almost weekly for most

of the year. In contrast, in the more innovative Kochav this issue was

unproblematic up to the 1950s, offices were decided on within the first

few weeks of a new year. Hence, the assembly discussed major kibbutz

problems and their proposed solutions more thoroughly. This was another

reason for high attendance and for the belief that its decisions represented

best public judgment.

Leaders’ High Morality Explains the Curbing of Rotatzia’s

Perils Patronage and rotatzia had a conservative effect as in previous cases:

Promotion to pe’ilut and then circulation required the auspices of patrons

who became conservative while serving in continuous top FO jobs.

However, unlike previous cases, Kochav was creative from 1953 up to

mid-1970s since patrons’ opposition was restricted to democratic means.


276

Their self-restriction of the uses of power accorded a solidaristic

democratic spirit beyond any formalities and proved that they could be

trusted for just, right and fair preference of public good, and this was

decisive for overcoming rotatzia’s perils. It assured officers that, even in

case of problematic, controversial decisions, there would be no use of

patrons’ power behind the scenes to obstruct implementation.

Kibbutz trust- and democracy-based culture requires secure officers’

authority and enough power to assure compliance to rules and

implementation of decisions. In usual organizations without rotatzia,

power and authority are not greatly differentiated; officers accumulate

power which protects authority. They reward conformers, punish

violators, fire them if they continue, and with the help of loyalists, they

can implement radical changes which directors have approved, even

despite much resistance, including resistance of managerial and expert

staff. Authority of rotatzia officers is shaky and depends on the backing of

patrons and power elites. These patrons tend to prefer self-serving

supremacy over radical changes and officers follow suit, opposing such

changes even when facing acute problems if they require risky and

unpopular decisions. They camouflage inaction using excuses which most

of the public knows are fabricated, as in previous cases. Members can do

little beyond critique, waiting for rotatzia and mostly getting similar

successors, since talented experienced radicals who have proven effective

leadership, prefer ‘inward leavings’ or leave the kibbutz after perceiving

little chance for successes due to patrons dominance.

This explains how Kochav remained high-trust, adaptive and creative

after prime leaders became conservative due to FO oligarchization: the

leaders’ high-morality and commitment to the kibbutz ethos and cause

encouraged the same among chief officers. Even conservative officers

faithfully tried to solve problems within extant norms, while the critically

minded and the radicals created new ones, sometimes won democratic

adoption of their proposals, and coped more or less successfully with

implementation obstacles. The behavior of all groups, however, enhanced

members’ trust: members almost always could be confident that officers

were committed public servants, using their faculties and knowledge to

solve problems in accord with the common ethos. Rarely if ever was

anyone ‘a slave turned master’, since chief officers were chosen from

among branch managers and committee heads who had proved committed


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public servants. Lively democracy and a free press assured that members

were able to bring problems to officers’ attention, and whenever their

solutions proved mistaken or seemed to require correction, democracy

ensured that members were able to stop, mend or reverse these solutions.

Thus, rarely did a member have to resort to coercive means to defend a

vital interest which had been impeded by mistaken or even self-serving

action by officers, unlike previous cases.

High-Trust Culture: Members’ Discretion Bred Creativity In accord with Stryjan (1989), without creative solutions for decisive

problems, Kochav could not have succeeded. Creativity flourishes in high-

trust cultures created by high-moral leaders. On the one hand, trust is

personal and local: a leader is trusted when perceived as caring for the

interests of followers and viewed as high-moral, a person in whose

“decisions and actions… interests of society take the degree of precedence

that is right, just and fair” over his own interests, as Hosmer (1995: 339)

put it. Public interests which s/he has to serve are defined locally by

her/his constituency, but on the other hand, ends are legitimized by

cultural contexts, by what Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) call the gravity

of the field. Kochav’s leadership actions served members’ needs and

wishes, but were legitimized by community requirements and kibbutz

movement ends. In Kochav’s high-trust culture, various components

combined to care for both private and public needs, while the latter

included both local and societal ends.

Caring rightly, justly and fairly for all of these ends was not a simple

task and it led to specialization, which bred differentiation, requiring

coordination of conflicting views and interests. This end was achieved by

committees, by the General Assembly and by dense informal networks of

a relatively small community with ample meetings, more than in Bott’s

(1957) cases, as members ate together, used common showers (up to the

late 1950s), met in provisional work assignments (next chapter), in the

Assembly and on other occasions. An additional factor was the

decentralized economy, divided into autonomous, democratic branches,

each serving a different market. This hard-to-manage structure was not

specific to Kochav, but only a high level of mutual trust between and

within its dozens of components and hundreds of actors made it work

effectively and efficiently for the common good. In a high-trust culture,

Fox pointed out (1974: 30-5), much discretion is given to actors who are


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morally involved in the promotion of organizational goals and do not just

do specific tasks. Mistakes and failures are assumed to be bona fide and

efforts to control workers by foremen are minimal. Involvement of the

individual in discussions about work before decisions are made, as well as

those concerning others’ related work, meant that most coordination is

achieved without fiats of superiors, who interfere only if mutual

adaptations among co-workers and consultations among equals or adjacent

hierarchical levels have failed. Lower echelons are mostly entrusted with

finding wise solutions to problems without the help of higher-ups since

knowledge, information, ideas and proposals flow freely and sincerely.

Inevitable conflicts are mostly solved constructively, as common goals

and values enhance the search for fair and just solutions, as explained in

Chapter 9.

Simon (1957: 230) has pointed out that this is the way organizations

cope with complex, non-routine tasks, and Burns and Stalker (1961) have

found that this characterizes innovative firms. However, they missed the

fact that high-trust was the ultimate proviso for both successful coping

with non-routine tasks and innovation, as detailed organizational trust

studies cited and my previous works (1987, 1995b). Only when high-trust

climate prevails, an actor supplies others with extensive, relevant, accurate

and timely information and know-how for their problem-solving efforts, as

s/he is sure that exposure that makes him vulnerable, will not be used

against him.17 A superior can gain such a supply of information only if he

has signaled trust in subordinates by direct involvement in coping with the

hardest problems they face, exposing competencies as well as weakness

and ignorance, and proving to be good learner and helpful with tasks

(Shapira 1987).

Kochav’s much involved leaders coped with the hardest tasks, such as

the 1960s strife and special appeal committee problems. They supplied

members with a great deal of information and knowledge gained during

pe’ilut, reported on major pe’ilut events in which they were involved, and

rarely tried to limit officers’ discretion, signaling trust in them. However,

they posed a problem to democracy which Landshut (2000[1944]) has

already pointed out: Their superior knowledge and information along with

17

Roy 1952; Deutsch 1958, 1962; Guest 1962; Zand 1972; Dore 1973; Ouchi

1981.


279

great involvement made them more dominant than if they had been less

involved. How did creativity not vanish after they became conservative

patrons and had continued dominance for decades?

Officers Innovated, High-Trust Democracy Kept Leaders’

Status On the one hand, they indeed curbed creativity and foiled many radicals’

new solutions (see below); but on the other, the high morality they

modeled created a high-trust culture and entrenched a democratic tradition

whose essence has continued up to the present. Their high-moral

preference of public interests over their own encouraged the same

preference among officers, including creative radicals and critical thinkers

who sometimes succeeded thanks to this preference. Patronage resembled

previous cases: radical officers were rarely promoted to pe’ilut, and the

few who were promoted soon terminated it, finding FOs’ conservatism

insurmountable. They returned to minor offices or left like Tomer and the

innovative young Kochav’s plant manager who returned it to self-work.

Moreover, after the 1960s strife, strict rotatzia was maintained; even plant

managers were replaced every three years. This exacerbated a

Hirschmanian negative effect on radical careers and innovation as they

soon returned to minor jobs, were sidetracked and/or left.

Unlike other cases, however, this negative effect was minor until the

1960s strife, since, in many offices no rotatzia predominated and many

successful officers continued like Rama’s cow barn manager. Secondly,

both Israel and Moshe remained creative relative to other FO officials.18

They became leftist only late, and even then did not try to suppress

Kochav non-leftisst radicals. This encouraged hashlama chief officers in

1953 to depart from Bilski’s conservative policy and opposition to

industrialization, but they accorded him respect and consulted him on

specific matters. As prime leaders were trusted to prefer public interest

over their own, arguing with them was mostly constructive, as it was

known that their arguments were genuine and were not raised just to

defeat opponents but relevant and could help improve solutions, they were

carefully listened to. They were educated, knew foreign languages, read

18 The details of their creativity cannot be described without exposing their

identity.


280

foreign journals and books,19 and had much knowledge from FO jobs,

from traveling abroad, from Movement discussions and from working in

large cities where they participated in major political and cultural events.

They understood the kibbutz field phenomena and national and

international politics better than most members, so their views were worth

listening to. This also explains the high attendance at the general assembly

and the respect innovators gave them.20

High-Trust Culture: Long-Range Rewards for

Contributions According to Fox (1974: 78-9) rewards for commitment to public goals in

a high-trust culture are mainly in the long run, with clear prospects for

career advance and positive care for one’s vital interests. Kochav leaders

proved to be locally committed despite their heavy responsibility in

Movement, FOs and national offices. Their contributions to Kochav’s

decision-making were a real help to members’ efforts and brought success,

so they were rewarded by members’ long-term respect, deference and

careful attention to their status even when other leaders’ views and actions

were preferred. This meant keeping their seats in the secretariat and in the

economic committee as a matter of course, and allowing them to talk more

than once at the assembly’s major debates, while Israel was usually the

last speaker who summed up positions and proposed how to vote.

As already mentioned, unlike all other patrons, Kochav’s prime leaders

rarely interfered in officer nominations despite interest in the promotion of

loyalists, another reason for respecting them. Such interference would

have been a breach of trust in the nomination committee, curtailing some

of its discretion. Hence, they avoided interference and the committee

promoted radicals who succeeded as branch managers or committee heads

to chief offices without their unconventional views preventing their

appointment, hoping that they would repeat previous successes in chief

offices. Concurrently, such promotions rewarded innovators for their

19 The same was true of Gan Shmuel leaders; my father excelled: he was fluent in

five languages, and he understood and could read two others. 20 See likewise in Hazorea, but Shatil (1977), himself highly educated, missed it;

this explains how an impoverished kibbutz allowed psychoanalytic treatment

for so many members (p. 111-3).


281

efforts. Refusal of this reward to a hard-working, successful branch

manager or a committee head was a negative signal for others who were

asked to fill these negatively rewarded jobs, and would deter talented

members. Rosner (1964) exposed this negative balance of rewards, but

alluded only to balance in the present, missing the fact that the promise for

future reward by promotion was integral to high-trust cultures.

Decentralization Enhanced Members’ Ingenuity and

Innovation A high-trust culture that discouraged interference by leaders in internal

promotion assured the discretion of committees and branches, which, in

accord with Chap. 9, encouraged officers’ transformational, non-

charismatic leadership, and members’ use of their own faculties to solve

problems. Due to decentralization, radicals who became chief officers

could concentrate their efforts on non-routine, long-range solutions that

required creativity, leaving most of the more routine tasks to branch

managers and committee heads, thus innovating despite short terms.

Oplatka’s (2002) creative school managers turned from management to

leadership only years after nomination, since in previous teaching jobs

they had learned little about problems managers faced, for in low-trust

bureaucracies, information and knowledge flow is restricted as these

intangible assets are used as means of control.21 Kochav chief officers, on

the other hand, even if only 32-35 years old, were quite knowledgeable

about problems facing them since they had participated in committees that

had aired these problems from their early twenties, and in the general

assembly ever since they were seventeen years old. Thus, they could

initiate radical changes soon afterward. Since they usually advanced due

to members’ trust rather than to leaders’ patronage, this trust was a

primary credit which gave them considerable leeway to promote changes.

The discretion granted to branch managers encouraged them to propose

innovations which chief officers reviewed against general Kochav

interests, and if the latter adopted an innovation, an established democratic

spirit assured the chief officers that conservatives’ opposition to it in the

economic committee and the assembly would remain democratic, making

an effort to convince others that the innovation was wrong, without any

21 Roy 1952; Dalton 1959; Blau 1963; Crozier 1964; Shapira 1987.


282

use of power resources to obstruct it.

Trust Due to Cultural Creativity Enhancing Value

Consensus Kochav’s leadership system enhanced creativity for another reason:

advancing value consensus by cultural creativity. Deutsch (1969) has

pointed out that conflicts took a constructive course only if there is

minimal consensus over values, beliefs and mores. However, in the 1950-

70s, radical idealism of founders contrasted with the pragmatism of

second generation members who managed the kibbutz (Rosner et al.

1978). Moreover, Adam Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments alluded

to the problem which Fox (1985) later dealt with: stratification causing a

moral gap between higher strata believing in high morality, while

commoners tend to adopt expediency as they see unconcern for their

interests on the part of higher-ups. How did Kochav cope with the moral

gap when prime leaders became privileged FO oligarchs and belief in

equality subsided, with many members turning to expediency?

Chapter 2 has asserted that all cultural components of kibbutz

uniqueness supported each other. Up to now, we have met with creativity

as a component which enabled kibbutzim to solve existential problems

without capitalist solutions which negated their uniqueness. For instance,

sharing the extra burden of shift-work made hired labor superfluous,

sharing of pe’ilim cars reduced inequality, etc. The case of Kochav adds

another major sector in which creativity is essential: that of cultural

production which provides aesthetic satisfaction and amusement, while

enhancing common values, beliefs and mores across strata. This enhanced

trust by creating common expectations of ethically justifiable behaviors of

both leaders and followers, in accord with Hosmer (1995). By itself, this

creativity did not assure communal success, as Knaani (1960: 45-54)

found by analyzing the relative success of religious communes, and the

Chapter 2 analysis of religious kibbutzim supported this. However,

common values, beliefs and mores tend to direct conflicts to a constructive

course, and thus, cultural creativity enhances viability of kibbutz culture.

Kochav was most creative culturally, even excelling Rama of the later

period with its authors, editors, professionals and professors. However,

contrary to Rama’s alienated Talented, Kochav’s creatives were mostly

involved members. For example, one of its artists initiated the workshop

in 1949 from which the plant emerged. One yardstick of creativity was the


283

number of members who wrote books, plays, treatises or symphonic

music. They numbered some three dozen, and their almost two hundred

works were neatly collected in a special cabinet of Kochav’s archive,

together with dozens of others written by ex-members and offspring who

had left.22 Another yardstick was the several dozen members who were

continuously involved in all other types of cultural production, such as

painters, sculptors, theatre directors, actors, artists, musicians, dancers, etc.

More important still, it was not sheer coincidence of a gathering of

many talents in one place. Cultural creation was encouraged from the early

days, when the founders were still in a makeshift camp on the margin of a

small town and worked as manual laborers or were unemployed. They set

up a theatre group and produced several classic plays. In 1930, the

member who had directed the plays traveled to London to study theatre

with partial kibbutz support. Members developed various artistic skills

with kibbutz support in accordance with available means: minimal support

at first, much more in later years. In 1928, Moshe’s parents paid his tuition

fees at the Hebrew University, 10 Pounds Sterling per year, and Kochav

financed humble accommodations in Jerusalem even though it breached

egalitarianism, was not available to other members. Such a breach seemed

just for the noble aim of higher education for a gifted intellectual.

Contrary to the early days of Rama when there was minimal cultural

creativity and members longed for substitutes for the abandoned

traditional Jewish holidays, Kochav expended much effort on the creation

of alternative holidays suited to Zionist ideas of the renewal of Judaism.

Holiday programs, decorations and other requisites were locally made and

the programs were performed by members, by a local choir with a local

conductor, a local theatre group and a local music band.23 In addition, a

large annual Purim masquerade carnival was an opportunity for creative

amateurs, while the above-mentioned director and other local talents

produced epic dramas of Jewish history in which many members

participated. At later periods, two younger members who proved to be

talented directors were also sent abroad to study. Thus, a continuous

nurturing policy of cultural talent was maintained.

22 Numbers are inexact since the two kinds were mixed . 23 See the same in Hazorea, though Shatil (1977: 111) mentions this only very

briefly.


284

Care for Needs of the Talented = No Self-Serving Power

Elite Kochav nurtured dozens of creators, but, unlike Rama, though many of

them had outside careers, they never formed a power elite that violated

egalitarianism. The main reason was that, while kibbutz officers cared for

their special needs, efforts were made to limit the freedom given to them

to develop careers that would entail advantages unavailable to other

members, allowing essential requirements for outside jobs and cultural

creativity with as few as possible inessential private benefits.

One means used was pressuring them to find jobs within the field, such

as in FOs or finding jobs on their behalf via patrons’ help. For instance,

the director who studied in New York was also a partial emissary to the

branch of the youth movement there. These jobs lessened problems of

control of their expenses and privileges. Many talented agreed with this

solution although it required some sacrifice on their part, since contrary to

Rama, where mediocre officers ignored creators’ unique needs or even

suppressed them, talented Kochav officers, some of whom were

themselves creators, cared for their needs sympathetically, so these

officers deserved reciprocation. Sympathy by officers is also explained by

the positive attitude of both leaders and commoners to the contributions

which creators made to their non-material needs and to Kochav’s prestige.

Without Creativity Officers Failed to Care for Special

Needs

Not always was this care by officers successful, since, in many cases,

creativity was required to find just and fair solutions. Some officers were

indifferent or even opposed such solutions, especially some economists

who thought that support for creators was a waste of money, and a number

of inexperienced chief officers who made mistakes by misunderstanding

the unique needs of creators. Moreover, as was seen in Rama, in an

egalitarian culture, every answer for a member’s need, raises the question

of caring equally for others. Buying a car for a creator who had an outside

career posed the question of whether it would serve other members when

he came back home. Until 1962 when Ran had introduced the car sharing

system (see below), chief officers opposed such a purchase, since a car

meant a major privilege.

One of the first members who faced this problem was John, an


285

educated young English Jew who joined Kochav in 1949 and became a

member in 1950 after he married a kibbutz offspring. He tried some of

Kochav branches but none suited him, so he found an editing job at an

English publishing house. Although it was only 70 kilometers away, using

buses meant more than two hours of travel each direction, so he asked for

a car which his sizable salary justified. Officers were opposed as it would

privilege him, but did not propose any solution, apparently fearing to

touch the sensitive issue of pe’ilim cars. With family help, John bought a

second hand car, but felt uncomfortable as the only member with a private

car. He knew members envied him and gossiped, so that when new

officers took over, he asked anew for a solution, but they too evaded the

problem. He quit his job and went abroad with his wife and three children.

After a year, the family returned except for John. In 1962, when Ran’s car

sharing system was adopted, Kochav bought a car for an inspector at the

Ministry of Education and members shared it after working hours and on

weekends. Then John returned, as his old job was vacant and buying a car

for him was no longer a problem. His return was applauded in the local

newsletter, but the reason, the legitimization of a car, was not mentioned,

unlike the inspector’s car which had been mentioned. The affair clearly

caused dissonance in Kochav, since there was no objective reason why car

sharing had not been adopted in the 1940s.

In addition to encouraging creators, outside cultural creators who

shared its values were frequently invited to Kochav, such as Histadrut’s

Ohel theatre, other kibbutz choirs, artists, painters, musicians, orchestras,

etc. A public library was established quite early, and then, also, a well-

equipped music room for music lovers, and an additional phonograph was

bought which was lent to members to listen to in their own dwellings. A

reason for the great intellectual and cultural activity was the adjacent

regional boarding high school with its many educated teachers. Some of

them were non-member residents of the kibbutz who were greatly

involved in its cultural production, participated in its choir and its music

band, and lectured and hosted academic lecturers on a variety of topics.

Creative Egalitarianism in Consumption Values, however, are shaped much more by deeds than words, writing or


286

singing.24 In its early days, Kochav was only a little more egalitarian in

consumption than previous cases. Then, in the 1950s, due to economic

success, a few officers promoted equality by creative solutions which both

caused a more egalitarian sharing of assets and allowed members to

choose among a larger variety of demands and tastes with the rising

standard of living. Conservative leaders objected, but thanks to a few

innovators, Kochav pioneered buying all members electric kettles, radios

and room heaters, equalizing them to pe’ilim. For decades, furniture was

humble and standard, and locally produced, but after some pe’ilim and

members with wealthy relatives or inheritances bought higher quality

furniture, a system was created which allowed members to choose

between locally produced furniture or purchase of more expensive, nicer

furniture, and this solution was adopted despite leaders’ objections.

In 1962, Kochav pioneered sharing of pe’ilim cars by all members on

weekends, which was later expanded to weekdays after working hours.

This eliminated some inequality, but much remained: a pa’il could use his

car for private purposes much more often than other members, and while

members had to pay for the fuel for every mile they drove, the pa’il

usually did not pay at all, or paid only partially. The instigators of the

process which resulted in car sharing, were two young members who, in

1961, decided that it was unjust on the part of the treasurer not to let

members use ‘his’ car after working hours and on some weekends. Ran,

then aged 29, was the young secretary called to solve the conflict:

“One Friday afternoon, the treasurer found his car standing on four

[wooden] boxes without wheels. Immediately we knew it was Roxy and

Missu who had more than once complained about him, but they denied it

and we did not find the wheels. I talked with them for hours, and, at last,

promised that the issue would be solved soon by new bylaws which would

oblige all car ‘owners’ to share their cars when they stood idle, and they

confessed and revealed that the wheels were in the cold storage room

under a heap of potato sacks”.

Ran initiated a discussion in the secretariat but, at first most veterans

and almost all pe’ilim resisted, saying that they could not work if they

were unsure that their car would be back on time or unharmed by

24 Geneen 1984: 148; Sieff 1988: 62; Giuliani 2002; Simons 2002.


287

inexperienced or careless drivers.25 Then Gabi, a veteran pa’il, decided to

give it to other members on weekends because he felt discomfort about his

car privilege. One Friday night, the air was let out of the car wheels of

pe’ilim (except Gabi), apparently by young members who supported Ran’s

proposal, with messages left under their windshield wipers saying that

they could not use cars on weekends unless all members could. The

secretariat condemned the deed, but then Ran renewed his proposal. After

many debates, proper bylaws were ratified. Ran then negotiated with the

Movement and other FOs regarding the price Kochav would pay for car

use, found a car manager, and arranged a system of queuing members’ car

orders with due priority for specific urgent needs.26 Prime leaders did not

like sharing, but they had no personal reason to interfere: Israel and Moshe

were exempted as they needed cars constantly at their disposal, while

Bilski had no car. Car sharing was soon adopted by most kibbutzim,

including the norm initiated in Gan Shmuel by Ephraim Reiner of

members paying for fuel and a few other driving expenses.

A Creative Solution to Problematic Work Tasks Some years later, Ran also led Kochav to pioneer self-service in the dining

hall. This was an important innovation as a major unsolved problem since

early days had been assigning workers to the dining hall. The simple,

laborious work that included evening shifts and uneasy coping with

members’ desires for unique food preferences, many of which could not

be fulfilled, turned dining room work into a detested job manned by forced

terms of service by members and gar’in members or other short-timers.27

Self-service largely solved this problem, minimized dependency of

members on the goodwill of waiters for unique food preferences by

offering a wider range of salads and dishes which members served

themselves. An automatic industrial dishwasher was installed, and the

number of dining hall workers was cut by half. These innovations

proliferated to all kibbutzim, and later to most of Israel’s institutional

restaurants and cafeterias, while Kibbutz Ein Harod’s plant produced the

required equipment.

25 See the same objections in Kressel’s (1983: 127-8) Netzer Sireni. 26 See Kressel (1983: 125-7) on the importance of such care for members. 27 See the same problems in an American commune: Kinkade 1994: 32-3.


288

Trust, Branch Leaders Creativity and Free Flow of Know-

How Ran’s creativity promoted egalitarianism and was a major factor in

members’ trust of leaders, while Ran’s career was sidetracked, as patrons

preferred loyalists. In Kochav branches, however, the opposite was true up

to the 1970s; managers were mostly chosen by branch teams considering

competence, initiative and dedication, and successful ones continued

without rotatzia, like some other kibbutzim (Ben-Rafael 1983). Success

was achieved as in Rama’s cow barn, while branches informally competed

for profitability.28 Managers encouraged innovation by team members,

since high-trust cultures enhanced the power and status of managers

whose branches led progress, and solutions and innovations flowed freely

among kibbutzim (Stryjan 1989). The founder of the vegetable branch

explained:

“You ask how we succeeded in agriculture? Since there were no secrets

[among kibbutzim]. I could go to whatever vegetable branch [of any

kibbutz] I heard had succeeded with a new technique, and get all his know-

how; every detail, all his records were open to me, as mine were to him. I

visited Gan Shmuel and saw that their Skinners [irrigation devices] were

lowered by half a meter without any negative effect on equality of water

dispersion while saving costs and making work much easier. I informed

my team and we immediately introduced the change”.

There were no secrets thanks to trust, as these branches did not compete

with each other for markets; all marketed cooperatively through Tnuva,

while the kibbutz movement’s common cause enhanced solidarity. Much

the same was found in Silicon Valley and German and Italian industrial

districts: high-trust was created in informal R&D networks of managers

and experts who were coping with the same obstacles, and this enhanced

information flow and innovation.29 Branch managers were motivated by a

tacit or open inter-kibbutz competition for the prestige of being the most

productive branch. This was jocularly depicted by a hit song, “Twelve

Tons”, sung by the Nachal troupe:30 a yield of twelve tons per dunam (1/4

28 See the same in successful Kibbutz Hazorea: Shatil 1977: 87. 29 Dodgson 1993; Jay 1972; Sako 1992; Saxenian 1994. 30 The Nachal was an army division of youth movement graduates, who along


289

acre, 1/10 hectare) of land of whatever crop was “the dream of every

meshek and peak vision”. Kochav’s successful branch managers were

promoted to chief offices, and in this high-trust culture when a manager

advanced, he tended to promote the most talented deputy to succeed him,

since his high status in the branch team was usually retained as a prime

expert artisan (see below. All were males, except female second secretary;

see next chapter).

This was even truer when veteran branch managers established and

managed new FOs which catered to branch requirements. The above

speaker founded the Vegetable Growers Association, and two more

associations were established by other Kochav members. These FOs

enhanced the flow of knowledge and creative solutions among kibbutzim,

sent study teams abroad to bring new technologies, enhanced agricultural

research, and encouraged innovation in other ways.

Ex-Managers Who Became Expert Artisans Enhanced

Creativity Another factor of branch success was turning ex-branch managers into

creative expert artisans. Burns and Stalker (1961) found that in an

innovative high-trust culture (which they called ‘organic’), one’s status

only partially depends on hierarchic position; no less decisive are known

contributions to the advance of common goals by the problems he has

solved due to unique expertise. In Kochav, young branch managers

usually made short-range decisions, while a veteran ex-branch manager

became an expert artisan and creatively used exclusive competencies

acquired by long experience to cope with more complicated tasks, such as

R&D activity and long-range changes.31 Much like Japanese artisans

which Kondo (1990) depicted, secure and prestigious status was achieved

by long and laborious specialization in branch skills and knowledge, so

that they were honed and matured until they became invaluable due to a

short supply of these qualities. While professionalism was a major career

ladder for many Jews in the Diaspora, when they came to Palestine and

learned of its agricultural backwardness, many kibbutz pioneers chose to

with army training, settled, guarded and initiated agriculture in new, remote

places as precursors for the establishment of kibbutzim. 31 Maletz (1983[1945]: 30, 133-8); Cohen 1983: 100.


290

specialize in agriculture and became experts without formal degrees. For

example, Tzeshek Rosental of Gan Shmuel got German books from

relatives in Europe, learned fertilization and, in 1929, doubled the yield of

wheat from 75 kilogram per dunam to 150 kilogram. This was also true of

a number of Kochav artisans.32

Japanese artisans worked during high season from half past two in the

morning until late in the evening, and Thomas, during his first season in

the cotton gin plant, often worked from six in the morning until midnight.

Almost similar intensity was common in Kochav in its early days, but

even in 1986 some branch managers continued this tradition together with

other members that after long working days, they met with team members

in the evenings to discuss urgent managerial decisions and allocate the

next day’s work, as well as deciding on some other managerial chores.

Informal Artisan Leaders: Coaching New Generation

Creators Kochav veteran branch managers who became expert artisans, remained

informally a part of a branch, came to its help in the high season,

participated in deliberations and coached following generations, even after

advance to a grower association pe’ilut or an agricultural extension job.

Coaching usually commenced in high school, when the youth worked

three hours a day after school, and six hours a day during most of the

summer holidays. Hence, when one of them became branch manager in

his late twenties, he had already experienced branch functioning for over a

decade, from the age of fourteen-fifteen.33

Ran was nurtured by Gabi, Kochav’s first mechanic, whose successes

led him to become a mechanics instructor in the agricultural extension

services. This was a major reason why Gabi was the first pa’il to share his

car after Ran raised the issue in the secretariat. Ran did not advance to

pe’ilut in the Movement after his success as a secretary due to lack of

patronage, and returned to the garage. When the regional transport FO

garage manager searched for a deputy manager, Kochav’s truck drivers

32 Others studied agronomy in Europe but embarked to Palestine before

graduation, as did my father Yaakov (Kubek) Shapira who became an expert

leader of the citrus industry. 33 Two and half years were usually devoted to army service.


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informed him of Ran’s achievements, and Ran became a pa’il in this FO

with lavish fringe benefits. Gabi, however, convinced him to return to

Kochav’s garage after a few years, since in his pe’ilut he had stopped

developing professionally. This was because truck technology was

conservative, while, in Kochav challenging state-of-the-art agricultural

machinery awaited him, as well as R&D projects with the national

Institute for Agricultural Machinery. For Ran, the return to Kochav’s small garage with three workers

instead of the dozens in the regional FO, was not a status degradation. His

expert artisan status brought him daily rewards in the form of appreciation

from agricultural branch teams for whom he solved major problems with

his innovations, and rarer, but more prestigious successes in the

development of world class machinery with the Institute. As will be seen,

this no longer satisfied him after a decade or so, and he made a radical

switch, becoming an emissary abroad. However, his case shows the

opposite of Hirschman’s (1970) effect: in a high-trust, innovative culture,

a senior veteran may seek coaching of young radicals who further

creativity, although their successes might overshadow the veteran’s

achievements. This is explicable by one remaining high-moral while

advancing professionally without being corrupted by too much power, as

was in Gabi’s case. Due to such coaching, in some radicals’ career

decisions, the seductions of privileged jobs and high managerial status

were given up for interest in the professional challenges of innovation.

Hirschman’s (1970) loyalist successors of Iron Law leaders were more

conservative than predecessors and failed due to a lack of critical thinking,

while in Kochav’s high-trust culture, coaching by high-moral expert

artisans who modeled commitment for its cause, caused radical successors

like Ran to excel. Goleman et al.’s (2002: Chap. 4, 8) findings supported

this, but although their cases indicate high morality of coaches, they did

not allude to its decisiveness.

High-trust cultures encourage radicalism as that of Ran and his like, but

in the case of Kochav, such culture suffered considerable setbacks in the

1940s-1950s, due to Admors conservative dysfunction, oligarchization,

leftism, the rise of circulative ‘parachutists’ and growing privileges of

pe’ilim. However, from 1953 with the ‘Hashlama revolution’ (see next

chapter) up to the mid-1970s, the old guard’s high morality still enabled

creativity by which high-trust was maintained despite these factors. Soon


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after, creativity subsided without high-moral prime leaders, no renewal of

socialist ideas after exposure of the USSR’s bluff, decline of democracy,

and Hirschmanian negative selection of innovators.

CHAPTER 17

Rotatzia, Scale and FOs’ Negative Impact Ruined

Creativity

“…every action theory that takes pragmatist ideas as its points of departure

must assume that creatively found solutions to the action problem will be

absorbed into new ‘beliefs’, or, more precisely, into altered routines” (Joas

1996: 197).

Democracy, better than any other leadership system, fits the creative

nature of human action which Joas (1996) highlights, but like many

sociologists, he ignores the leadership factor and the integrality of trusted

leadership for the creative democracy he prefers. In accord with the above

citation, creative leadership processes are complex since each new

solution to a problem creates new problems as a result of the beliefs and

routines it alters.

Kochav nurtured cultural creativity and officers cared for the needs of

creators, but this care was not exactly egalitarian and was, in many cases,

a function of outside support, as with Moshe’s studies due to parents’

funding. Up to the 1960s, like all kibbutzim, Kochav fully financed only

“functional studies” of would-be teachers, branch managers and experts,

chief officers, chemists and engineers, among others,1 while ‘non-

functional’ studies of history, sociology, philosophy, art, etc., were

dependent on partial outside funding and/or partial studies alongside

continued work. In 1965, when Avraham and Sagi introduced higher

education for all in Carmelit, Kochav allowed only a few middle-aged

members ‘non-functional’ studies, such as highly esteemed ex-chief

officers. The Movement financed such studies for two ex-pe’ilim, before

higher education for all was introduced gradually in the 1970s-1980s. As

Kochav’s economic development preceded Carmelit’s by decades, it was

clear that this problem of egalitarianism could have been solved dozens of

years earlier.

1 Gamson 1977; Noy 1977; Shur 1977.

17. Rotatzia, Scale and FOs’ Impact Ruined Creativity

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Consecutive Losses of Ran’s Transformational Leadership Even more problematic was the rotatzia which Kochav never solved. In

addition to above mentioned reasons for sticking to rotatzia, a major

reason was that kibbutz researchers praised rotazia as a success. Radicals

like Ran read their articles, choosing not leave Kochav although rotatzia

derailed their careers, but even if they suspected students praising and

suspected rotatzia failed their careers, they never seek solutions for its

major outcome, enhancing oligarchic conservatism whose foci was not in

Kochav but in top FO offices.

Ran, one of the most talented of Kochav’s second generation, was a

clear case of lost potential for transformational leadership due to rotatzia.

He managed the garage very successfully for a decade, and some of his

innovative machines were still used fifteen years later. They helped in the

success of agricultural branches, but Ran did not advance to the pe’ilut he

wanted, as Gabi’s successor after Gabi passed away, very likely due to a

lack of patronage. On a part-time basis throughout this decade, he led the

successful introduction of self-service in the dining hall, headed some

mid-importance committees for one-two years each, including

nominations, members’ welfare and others, and was repeatedly chosen to

the special appeals committee, signaling how much he was trusted. As he

felt that his career was faltering, he sought a change and found an

emissary position in Canada on behalf of the Jewish Agency. After some

years there, which he and his family enjoyed very much, he returned and

found a successor in his job under whom he did not want to work. The

plant manager suggested that he join a small and ailing department in

order to learn its problems and help change its failing position. Ran saw

this as a challenge and agreed. He soon proved competence and creative

leadership once again. Personally involved like Thomas, he quickly

learned the technology and the department’s problems, became its

foreman, and using original solutions which required minimal investments

and maximal use of extant equipment, production soared and with it,

profits.

He then proposed producing an important product of another

department at a much faster rate and at a lower cost using automatic

equipment of the kind his department used, instead of the semi-automatic

machines of the other department. This required considerable investment,

but it was not the main reason for its rejection, since return of investment


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promised to be rapid, marketing was assured, and the new equipment was

versatile, useable for other products as well, as indeed occurred a decade

later. It was rejected at the time because the young (aged thirty) and

novice factory manager, a practical engineer by profession who liked the

idea very much, did not support it. As a short-timer, it was more important

for him to return to his expert job after finishing his term, and this might

be threatened by a major conflict with prestigious veteran experts of the

department that would have lost a main product and much prestige if

Ran’s proposal had been adopted. He preferred to yield to pressure from

these experts against Ran’s proposal.

This was not the end of the story. As the rotatzia norm prevailed, Ran

hesitated: might it be worthwhile to wait a year or so for the manager’s

succession and try his proposal again with the next one? However, if a

similar manager took the helm, the situation might repeat itself, so why

wait? Then a prospective plant manager emerged: Horev, Kochav’s chief

economic officer and ex-orchard branch manager opted for ‘parachuting’

to the office. He was known as a ‘pusher’, ‘a bulldozer’ whose

development projects had overcome much opposition and many members

working in the stagnating plant as well as some economic committee

members hoped Horev would revitalize it. Horev heard about Ran’s

intention to resign and asked him to wait until he took over, promising

implementation of the proposal. Ran, however, was not enthusiastic about

this possibility, resigned and returned to the garage. He explained why:

“I knew he was keen and would push through the project I wanted so

much, but I also knew his aggressive style, and too much involvement in

everything under his jurisdiction would not allow me enough autonomy,

and I would not have been able to develop the department in my own way,

with the help of its people, as I had hitherto done and as I had done

previously in the garage and with the introduction of self-service [in the

dining hall]. Have you visited the plant and seen his megalomaniac project

which is still not profitable after four years? I did not want to be part of

such management”.

As Thomas left the cotton gin plant despite implementation of his

invention, because he sought a trusted leader above him and enough

discretion to carry out his innovations; so did Ran. He saw no chance for

discretion, correctly predicting the coercive pushing by ‘pure parachutist’

Horev, due to over-involvement without full understanding of the plant’s


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problems, ignoring the need to listen carefully to experts and managers, to

learn basics of the technology, to consider complex problems thoroughly,

and to work out solutions cooperatively with them, as did Thomas and

Guest’s (1962) new manager. Ran’s experience taught him the

decisiveness of trust and enough discretion for the success of innovative

projects. He saw little prospect for that with Horev, rightly predicted

undermined trust and cooperation, and even if his own project had

succeeded, success of further innovation would have been jeopardized.

Horev’s domineering, which resembled Gouldner’s (1954)

‘parachutist’, was no better than his predecessor’s withdrawal; both tried

to succeed in a short-term job and further their careers, and both impaired

trust and creativity without enough experience, enough knowledge of the

plant and the industry, not enough loyalists to support formal authority,

and without long time horizons for creativity and patient finding solutions

for conflicting interests and views (Jaques 1990). Rotatzia caused Ran’s

departure, and this was much more than a loss for the specific department:

Ran’s long and varied experience in many managerial jobs and proven

creative leadership made him the best prospective plant leader, only

requiring additional business education and knowledge of plant problems

which he surely would have acquired if he had not departed.

Rotatzia Ruined Trust by Elevating Immature Chief

Officers In order to fully grasp how detrimental the loss of Ran’s creative

leadership was and why there were many similar losses before and after,

one must seek the reasons why Horev was ‘parachuted’, considering that

his prior experience included leading a volleyball team, organizing

carnivals, managing the orchard branch, a pe’ilut in the Association of

Fruit Growers, and kibbutz economic management. This is related to a

prior question: Why was his predecessor nominated while so

inexperienced, just three years after finishing his practical engineering

studies and after functioning as a not-very-successful department manager,

with only a three-month course in business administration?

The reason was rotatzia, replacing officers just as they were becoming

effective, created a continual demand of new nominees. Competent

experienced talents with all qualifications, specialized knowledge and

expertise were in short supply even in Kochav, although it suffered much

less of a brain-drain than most previous cases. In theory, the demand could


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have been filled by reinstating ex-managers once again, as, for instance,

Israel’s protégé returned six times to kibbutz secretary office, after each

pe’ilut. This was a successful career for a conservative loyalist who, by

intermittent pe’ilut and secretary jobs, advanced to the Knesset. However,

a talented officer who had successfully coped with job challenges would

rather seek career advance than return to the same job. Israel’s protégé

returned to local chief office like Mati in Olim, since this later promised

career advance on the outside. Seeking no creativity, his jobs needed no

long time horizons, in accord with Jaques (1990). Successful, innovative

leadership of both the complex plant and Kochav could not be achieved

intermittently, but required continuity to prove trustworthiness and build a

minimal consensus over aims, to shape a credible vision with sound

strategies and tactics, to muster varied contributions for creating solutions

and their implementation, to solve major problems and to allocate fairly

duties, rights, rewards and punishments.2 This was implausible without

long time horizon and job continuity. Goleman et al. (2002: Chap. 4) point

to a leader’s need to master six leadership styles and use each one at the

right time and place; this is also implausible within the short terms of

rotatzia.

Rotatzia Forestalled Trust Creation by Marring Problem-

Solving Three years were needed for an ‘impure parachuted’ manager, who had

previously been a deputy in a parallel plant of the same division of a car

maker, to cause a turnaround in Geust’s (1962) case. Though he knew a

lot more about the job waiting for him than Horev or the young practical

engineer knew about Kochav’s plant when they took charge, he still

needed years to create enough trust to cause a turnaround. Time in office

is crucial for trust, as there is a time lag until a new superior’s competence,

trustworthiness and intentions are appreciated. If he behaves like Thomas

did, making himself vulnerable by involvement in coping with main

problems together with others, they tend to react by opening their cards, he

uses their expertise to solve problems, and success enhances mutual trust.3

In an internal promotion, time may be shorter if trust on the part of

2 Geneen 1984; Bennis & Nannus 1985; Shapira 1987; Sieff 1988; Guiliani 2002. 3 Shapira 1987: Chap. 4-5; Whyte 1992: 176; Tyler & Degoey 1996: 345.


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colleagues and subordinates has been gained in former jobs where one has

already proven himself a successful effective leader, and has acquired

local knowledge that can only be obtained through life, work and coping

with problems.4 Even in this case, advance to the top gives extra power

that may corrupt a leader, thus, trustworthiness has to be proved afresh.

Moreover, he must prove competent, constructive use of this power; for

instance, giving discretion to subordinates to innovate without losing

coordination ability.

By causing advance of young talents too quickly to Kochav’s chief

offices, instead of nurturing these talents much longer in lesser offices

before giving them vast authority but little power, rotatzia drained most of

the potential trusted, creative leaders in addition to enhancing Hirschman’s

(1970) negative selection of radicals. It promoted inexperienced officers or

reinstated conservative ex-pe’ilim who did not fail much as they did not

try to cope with challenges creatively. In addition, such ones promoted

‘parachutists’ who either remained aloof like Shavit or were ‘bulldozers’

like Horev. Without legitimization to continue due to success in office,

and no power, prestige and other intangible capitals due to high-level

pe’ilut, creative radicals like Ran did not become prime leaders after the

old guard vanished, despite their successes in problem-solving. As they

were talented, they soon found other, more continuous careers to succeed

in, as did Rama’s professor, Ran in the garage and emissary abroad, and

Pinye as economic analyst (below), unlike Israel’s circulative protégé

alternating between pe’ilut and Kochav secretary. The repeated secretary

terms of the latter were encouraged by failures of greenhorn secretaries

that enhanced belief in the advantages of a talented veteran. However, the

principal reason for both conservative veterans’ and inexperienced

officers’ nominations, was the fact that trusted transformational leaders

like Ran were not allowed continuity. Scarcity of such leaders caused

anarchy in Rama, and both considerable conservatism and a mess

involving ex-transformational leader Pinye in Kochav.

Rotatzia Derailed the Career of a Transformational Leader The background for Pinye’s sad case was growing specialization due to

the success of agriculture and industry, growth of FOs and failures by

4 Geertz 1983, 1995; McCall et.al 1988; Shapira 1995b.


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‘parachuted’ pe’ilim. Many of them returned early and some became

experts in jobs which they were the ‘powers-behind-the-scenes’. Pinye

was a hashlama member who became chief economic officer in 1953, and

together with his peers in other chief offices, all in their mid-thirties, he

led the radical change known in Kochav as the ‘Hashlama Revolution’.

This was fast economic growth by turning the workshop into a plant and

making agricultural branches dynamic with heavy capital investments.

This change was essential to support Kochav’s rapid population growth at

a pace of 7-9% yearly. As a result of his success, Pinye advanced to

pe’ilut, but like Shavit and other ‘pure parachutists’, he failed on the job,

and without a patron to help mask this failure, he returned to Kochav and

filled an empty niche: cost accountant-comptroller. Due to talent,

expertise, continuity and control of vital information, he became the prime

local economic authority. However, after eighteen years on the job, he was

offered the position of head of the Regional Council by the retiring

incumbent. Apparently he wanted the job, but he brought the matter to the

secretariat, saying: “You may decide as you please”.

Pinye did not admit that he wanted the job since he had constantly

reiterated how complex his current job was, how much experience it

required, and how decisive it was for Kochav economy. These past

assertions helped the young, newcomer chief officers to object to his

release from office, and so did the secretariat and subsequently the special

appeals committee, after many discussions of the matter for almost a year.

Pinye’s 18 years in job made him quite narcissistic like continuous leaders

(Kets De Vries 1993), but without a clique of loyalists and with power

restricted to economic matters, he was wrong concerning his ability to win

over officers without publicly admitting his wish.

Pinye reacted by very conspicuous ‘internal leaving’: he stopped

participating in any of the committees of which he was a member, and

refrained from attending the General Assembly and other meetings. His

analyses became essentially worthless, as he did not check validity and

reliability of the data officers gave him, nor the estimated effects on

profitability which discussions indicated, etc. Some of Kochav’s great

losses in the mid-1980s seemed to be outcomes of mistakes made due to

his dysfunction, while markets and government policies changed rapidly,

inflation soared, banks went bankrupt and the Stock Exchange collapsed.

The chief officers who had opposed his release could not seek his


300

replacement, and their successors hesitated. Only the third generation of

chief officers nurtured a replacement and his introduction to the job also

took time. This was clearly a case of frustrated opportunity for promotion

which bred a ‘dead branch’, as it was called by organizational career

students.5

However, from the point of view of Kochav’s leadership, all of the

above was only one of the negative outcomes of a much greater loss: the

loss of a trusted, transformational leader who proved capable of

democratically promoting major and critically needed change despite

much resistance. Instead of continuing the ‘revolution’ and solving

problems which had been created, such as hired labor and oligarchic

continuity of plant managers, Pinye became an economic analyzer, while

officers’ rotatzia made him powerful: he could choose to be seen as being

involved only in the successes, thus gaining prestige and power. As power

was largely disengaged from responsibility which rested on short-term

officers, he became conservative, like continuous leaders.

Kochav’s chief officers needed a good economic analyst at their side.

This, however, should not have been a past leader who had become a

power-behind-the-scenes. The case turned into a Kafkaesque bureaucratic

maze due to the pitfalls of rotatzia: Novice officers were dependent on

Pinye and enhanced his power, but his career advance was left in the

hands of novices who were the age of his offspring, misunderstood his

intentions or understood but used his silence concerning them for their

aims, seemingly since they could not anticipate the outcome of barring a

rare promotion opportunity for a member close to retirement age. For him

it was hard to admit that he wanted to leave a post whose importance he

had stressed in the past, as he was rightly unsure novice officers could be

trusted to care for his interests. In the case of admitting it but denied

promotion, he was worse off: both contradicting his own previously

expressed opinions, and remaining in a job which he himself had

depreciated by his will to leave without proper heir.

As in Ran’s case, diminishing trust due to the disappearance of the old

guard propelled the case: Its successors, such as ‘bulldozer’ Horev and

Israel’s Knesset member protégé, could not be trusted to care for Pinye’s

5 On the impact of opportunities: Kanter 1977, Chap. 6; On ‘dead branches:’

Martin & Strauss 1959: 94-5.


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vital interests as they lacked critical thinking due to Hirschman’s (1970)

selection which aided their promotion. The Knesset member was a most

influential member of the special appeals committee that proved inept in

Pinye’s case, despite Pinye’s friends exposure of his true wishes in their

appeal. Horev was distrusted by many members who came in contact with

his coercive means. Diminishing trust also explains why Pinye did not

nurture a successor: he could not rely on novices not to dethrone him if he

had nurtured a younger, more educated heir. Moreover, Pinye’s mask of

indifference to the job offer misled officers since information flow had

dwindled with diminishing trust.

Scale Problems and Unintended Consequences of Social

Action An additional explanation for the failure to solve Pinye’s problem

creatively, was Kochav’s diminishing creativity due to growth. In the

1960s, Kochav was clearly creative with shift-work sharing, car sharing,

self-service and other innovations, while in the 1970s no similar

innovation was introduced, Ran’s innovative proposal failed and so did

others. In fact, conservatism had already obstructed major problem solving

much earlier; one such problem was egalitarian higher education and

another was egalitarian hosting of hevrot no’ar, which had been

innovatively solved in Gan Shmuel (Chap. 11). Admors’ negativism

toward Gan Shmuel’s solution only partially explains Kochav’s failure to

imitate it. In other matters, Kochav had disobeyed Admors and Movement

officials, as in the use of hired labor in the 1950s. So why was Gan

Shmuel’s solution not imitated, unlike instant adoption of Gan Shmuel’s

Skinner irrigation innovation twenty years earlier?

The answer lies in the negative impact of scale on creativity, and the

difference between technical changes and economic transactions, for

which outcomes are relatively immediate, measurable and involve few

people, and social action which is the opposite of obtaining quick and

measurable changes by a few people, especially when leadership processes

and politics are involved, as was with the large scale of kibbutzim and

FOs. Growth and diversification amplified the ubiquitous problem of the

unintended consequences of social action, a problem noted over two


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centuries ago by Adam Smith and, later on, by sociologists.6 Adopting

Skinner devices had a known price and relatively assured revenues of

sparing work and materials with no unknown and unintended outcomes.

Equalizing the status of hevrot no’ar to that of kibbutz offspring involved

the whole economy of Kochav, requiring additional expenses to equalize

living and educational standards, as well as investments in buildings to

replace the wooden bungalows which had accommodated hevrot no’ar

hitherto and loss of income due to less work on their part.7 This also

would have involved other kibbutzim which were partners in the regional

boarding high school and whose consent would have been required for

introducing hevrot no’ar to this school, a change that threatened academic

achievement due to poor prior education of hevrot no’ar youth. Moreover,

as the other kibbutzim also hosted hevrot no’ar, Kochav’s change would

have pressured them to follow suit, and if they did not, it might have

caused their hevrot no’ar youth to feel even more like second class

citizens than they already felt.

Even more questionable were future outcomes that would have justified

the costly change. While immediate lessening of bad feelings among

hevrot no’ar youth was assured, would this effect have remained after they

intermingled with kibbutz offspring and grasped how much better

educated kibbutz youth were and what other advantages resulted from

their different upbringing? Could the change achieve a genuine equality?

Would it not enhance perceived differences, as in efforts at social

integration through joint schooling of very different populations?8 And

even if it had succeeded in the high school, what would be the long-term

outcomes? Would these young graduates join the kibbutz? Bettering

education would enhance mobility prospects of graduates and might

enhance exit. Had they exited to become the educated elites of

impoverished ma’abarot and ‘development towns’ who would lead these

communities to economic and social progress, the project would have

been worthwhile. Unfortunately, much more probable would have been

the migration of graduates to higher strata communities, as was usual

6 Merton 1957; Muller 1993; Joas 1996. 7 Gan Shmuel deferred these investments by moving its own offspring to the

wooden bungalows. 8 For instance: Ayalon 1992.


303

among mobile immigrants, and this would not have alleviated the plight of

their native communities.9 Hence, it was not worth all the trouble involved

from a socialist perspective.

Cooperatives Tendency to Boost Failures Amplified

Unknowns More could be added to the unknowns described above, while a kibbutz as

a type of cooperative had a special Achilles heel, its tendency to turn

setbacks into failures. Hirschman (1984) found that when a cooperative

succeeds, members’ involvement in decision-making which is grasped as

successful, amplifies the positive effects of success on their motivation.

This rouses them and furthers the positive effects of retaining skilled

members whose accumulated experience help find or devise better

solutions to problems. This results in enhanced competitive prowess,

while their investments in the cooperative venture enhance solidarity and

commitment. When, however, success ends due to internal and/or external

changes, frustration turns into despair more easily than in usual

organizations as a result of the amplification effect of participation, and a

crisis becomes probable. In a capitalist firm, participant motivation is less

dependent on the firm’s degree of success and more on its salaries. In a

crisis situation, the firm’s survival and continued payment of salaries to

some participants is usually achieved by others losing their jobs. The

motivation of those remaining is only slightly hampered by the despair of

the others. Cooperatives cannot fire members, and, as a minority type

organization, members have to believe in their future success and not just

in their ability to make a living. Without faith in a brighter future, a prime

motivator is lost which may be detrimental: talented leaders like Reiner

and Tomer exit, other talents follow, and those who stay stop public

contributions, rarely seek new solutions to problems and abstain from

democratic deliberations managed by mediocre or inept officers, as

occurred in Rama and much more seriously in Ben-Horin’s (1984) cases

and Chen of the 1990s, a total collapse of communal culture.

This helps to explain why Kochav did not use Gan Shmuel’s solution

for hevrot no’ar. Positive outcomes would be seen only in the long run,

perhaps 5-8 years ahead. Keeping members’ faith in the solution during

9 Spilerman & Habib 1976; Semyonov & Kraus 1982.


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this period, while paying the extra costs, would have required highly

trusted leadership with long time horizons, a vision and firm belief in the

prospects of positive outcomes, and who would have pointed to the costs

of inequality for kibbutz culture. One man with such a vision was Gan

Shmuel’s veteran educator Benyamin (Benyo) Grinbaum. He urged the

change to egalitarian hosting and convinced other local leaders. Helping

him were three factors: 1) Earlier successful absorption of hevrot no’ar

graduates, before Gan Shmuel had it own high-school and thus, there was

no problem of inequality.10 2) Gan Shmuel had servant leaders who like

Ran, Sagi and Avraham returned from chief offices and pe’ilut to manage

branches, and they worked with hevrot no’ar youth and knew about their

bad feelings first hand. This was rare in Kochav since old guard auspices

and its prestige enabled pe’ilim to avoid returning. 3) Later, Gan Shmuel

had its own high-school, hence no other kibbutzim were involved. Without

these factors, with conservative leaders and with the many unknowns

involved, Kochav’s failure to adopt this solution was understandable.

Growth Detached Leaders from Problem-Solvers In addition, Kochav’s hashlama leaders’ main concern was economic

growth to sustain the growing population. They not only advanced to

pe’ilut and circulated, but they also rarely met hevrot no’ar youth as co-

workers. Thus, social issues did not bother them or, at least, not enough to

struggle with conservative old guard. A fuller explanation was that

Kochav’s growth enhanced hashlama leaders’ detachment from its youth

both directly due to specialization, and through enhancing FO growth

which made them circulators.

Other acute problems that were prevalent in large Kochav, for instance,

the inequality of higher education, also did not bother the prime leaders

personally. As they were little involved in ordinary members’ work and

lives, they ignored many of the perils of extant solutions. Size engendered

economies of scale, specialization and learning, but deprived leaders of

both sensitivity to the plight of ordinary members and knowing which of

them exhibited ingenuity in solving problems. Joas (1996: 81, 84) cited

eighteenth century anthropologist Johann Herder who pointed to the

10 In that period, the few Gan Shmuel offspring studied in Mishmar Ha’emek

high-school.


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prevalence of creativity beyond the confines of what he called “the

reading room”, i.e. deliberations of educated elites:

“Every man of noble and vivacious sentiments is a genius in his work, to

his destiny, and truly the best geniuses are to be found outside the reading

room”. “Whatever human nature has brought forth in genius manner, be it

science or art, an institution or action, is the work of the genius, and any

ability to awaken human gifts and encourage them to fulfill their purpose

is precisely genius” (Italics original).

In the 1920s-1930s prime leaders worked “outside the reading room”

with other members and knew about their ingenuity in problem-solving.

While Hutterite and Shaker leaders, in addition to their leadership

functions, continued partial manual work all their lives, Kochav’s leaders

became tenured pe’ilim from the early 1940s, they did periodic weekly

waiter service in the dining hall and semi-annual night guarding for a

week, but no other special work tasks (see below), nor did they return to

ordinary branch work. Like uninvolved Shavit who remained ‘half-baked

manager’, incapable of differentiating genuine experts and true problem-

solvers from fools and impostors, detached Kochav’s leaders and

circulative pe’ilim lost most of the ability to appraise members’ ingenuity

in solving problems with growth and technological sophistication of both

agriculture and industry, except for a few who were their close friends and

co-workers from the early days, and co-workers in a few periodic duties.

While leaders did not meet rank-and-file members as problem-solvers

in their work, they met them in committees and assembly discussions

where verbal abilities were most prominent. Alas, this was a ‘reading

room’ situation, hardly related to members’ many gifts and talents used

outside this ‘room’. With growth, what was said above about nomination

committee members knowing better than detached leaders who of the

branch and committee heads was worthy of promotion due to prospective

contributions, must be qualified:

1. With growth, fewer nomination committee members ever co-worked

with a candidate or were directly involved with him in other

activities that revealed his ingenuity.

2. Leaders and circulators as committee members were less capable of

appreciating a candidate’s capabilities, but more influential due to

their power and intangible capitals.

Likewise, these problems impacted deliberations by other committees


306

negatively. Thus, decentralization by setting up many committees was

only a partial solution to the problem of leaders’ and circulators’

detachment.

Specialization Furthered Leaders’ Detachment The lack of personal involvement in workers’ problem-solving efforts by

leaders, was problemtic even within large agricultural branches, as work

became specialized and branch managers were no longer co-workers of

some other workers. Branch managers often failed to appreciate efforts at

solving work problems as they specialized in leadership functions, while

most members were uninvolved in branch decision-making if its leader did

not care to create proper opportunities for involvement. This has been

exposed by Kibbutz Ein Harod’s Maletz in his excellent novel Maaglot

(1983[1945]) which KM’s publishing house refused to publish, as it

negated Tabenkin’s advocacy of an ever-growing kibbutz.11 As early as

the 1930s, the technological and organizational complexity of a large

agricultural branch with ten-fifteen permanent members, many different

crops, lands and specializations, as well as tens of provisional workers

during high seasons, was enough to divide leadership between a work

organizer who specialized in mobilizing resources for branch operation,

and an expert in its agronomy who read foreign professional literature,

consulted other kibbutzim and outside experts, and shaped professional

decisions.12 Specialization and scale erected high barriers against both

meaningful involvement of workers in branch decision-making and

leaders’ proper appreciation of workers’ ingenuity. The novel’s

protagonist was isolated, working at a solitary job in a remote plot; hence,

branch heads rarely met him working and could not appreciate his

ingenuity at work. As he came from low-status earlier jobs which

stigmatized him, no one tried to involve him in branch decision-making

either.

The problem of scale as I expose, has been ignored by kibbutz research,

and even the scale of a whole kibbutz was grasped as unproblematic.

Cohen and Rosner concluded (1988: 135) that the question of “unit size

11 It was published by Histadrut’s Am Oved which was controlled by Mapay

leaders. 12 Maletz 1983[1945]: 132-42; Shepher, I. 1983; previous chapter.


307

and the ability to maintain direct democracy” is “only slightly relevant for

kibbutz and only for special aspects, since the size of kibbutzim is below

the critical limit beyond which the maintenance of direct democracy has

ever been seriously doubted”. As CKP users, they ignored FO impact and

missed the fact that all ethnographies, except for early days Kochav,

indicate crippled democracies.13 Niv and Bar-On (1992) grasped FOs as

the right solution for the scale problem, equating them to capitalist firm

solutions by network-type, high-trust, decentralized organizing which

enhanced innovation, asserting that FOs were just such a solution. They,

however, ignored the ample evidence cited above which proved the

opposite was largely true.

Blind to stratification and oligarchization of the field which depressed

creativity, kibbutz research also missed the impact of growth and

specialization of kibbutzim on oligarchic leaders’ growing detachment

from members’ ingenuity and problem-solving efforts. Due to scale

barriers and age differences, as early as the 1950s, Kochav’s leaders

barely knew about the ingenuity of many hashlama and kibbutz offspring,

did not trust many of their problem-solving efforts, and only partially

cared about their participation in decision-making. The superior

knowledge and information among leaders and their loyal circulators of

FOs and Kochav problems, enhanced their dominance over other members

who only partially understood them. Partial understanding impaired or

prevented the other members’ meaningful participation in decision-

making, as in other kibbutzim,14 a reason for the dwindling participation at

the General Assembly (see below), and for members’ believing in rotatzia,

missing that Ran, Pinye and their like have to continue in offices as long

as they achieved successes, rather than becoming unsuccessful circulators.

Partial Coping with Scale: Decentralized, Trust-Led, Small

Units In order to properly appraise Kochav’s coping with the problem of scale, I

allude to Harris who depicts (1990: 344-51) headmen in villages of

hunters and simple agriculturalists as highly trusted leaders, as models of

13 Fadida 1972; Kressel 1974; Topel 1979; Rayman 1981: 225; Bowes 1989;

Shapira 1990, 1992; Argaman 1997. 14 Landshut 2000[1944]: 86; Kressel 1974: 148; Ben-Horin 1984; Argaman 1997.


308

hard work, asceticism and dedication to the public good. The only rewards

they control are words of praise, while punishment is only censure of

those who shirk their work and cutting ties with these shirkers up to the

point of ostracism.15 Jay (1972: 106) concluded that leading through trust

required the unit size of a small tribe, that is, less than 500 people, who

were known by the leader personally. From the early 1940s onwards,

Kochav leaders were far away from the kibbutz on weekdays; therefore,

they could barely be models of hard work, their privileges negated

asceticism, and Bilski’s avoidance of a car reiterated this. The kibbutz was

already larger than a ‘tribe’ in the early 1950s, and kept growing to twice

this size by 1986, while coping with size problems was only partial.

For example, as early as the 1940s, some general assembly decisions

were made by only a few voters, 10-20 out of the 150-200 members

present. Appeals which overturned such decisions led to the ruling that

after an appeal was debated, a simple majority supporting it was not

enough; only a larger number of votes than those which supported a

decision in the first debate would overturn it. On the other hand, members

participated much more often than most kibbutzim in major political

debates. Up to one hundred members spoke when proposals for the

Movement convention were discussed in the early 1940s, and up to two

hundred voted on proposals. All that changed with the success of leftism,

and more so after 1956, when the old guard refused to confess erroneous

support of leftism, evaded FO oligarchization and their own continuous

privileged pe’ilut, thus enhancing members’ deliberate evasion of FOs, as

cited in Chapter 1.

Members, however, continued local participation which remained

decentralized: Dozens of committees dealt with every aspect of life, with

some half of the members participating, and those who were not included

in any committee during one year were usually asked to join one during

the next year. However, there was clear power differentiation among the

few main committees, such as the secretariat, the economic committee,

and the special appeals committee in which prime leaders participated, and

other committees, many of whose decisions were overturned by major

committees before adoption or during implementation. For this reason, a

more important decentralization was the division of work organization

15 See also Goldschmidt 1990.


309

into many relatively small branches, both production and services, with

larger ones divided into teams of no more than five-ten people each, so

that many members were involved in the management of their workplaces

as heads of such teams. The plant’s 120 employees were divided into

sixteen departments: seven of production, five of services, and four of

office workers. Much the same was the case in the largest service

branches, the kitchen-dining-hall and the laundry-clothing store

(communa).

This decentralization was enabled by modern, mechanized agriculture

and an automated plant which dropped products requiring large numbers

of manual workers. For instance, until the late 1960s, almond harvesting

required dozens of workers. After it was mechanized due to Ran’s and

others’ ingenuity, a small team of six was enough. A second reason was

that members sought autonomy in their work by job continuity,

specialization and division of labor. However, this created coordination

problems, curbed flexibility and prevented a more rational allocation of

workers, as Israel Shepher’s (1983) ethnography has depicted.

Creative Solutions for Flexibility Loss: Giyusim and Shibutz In the smaller Kochav up to the 1940s, it was quite easy to stop less urgent

tasks and divert members to urgent ones, but with the emergence of many

small, specialized teams and individuals doing specialized jobs without

ready substitutes, such diversion became difficult. One way of coping was

the use of giyusim (plural of giyus, literally: conscription): in kibbutz

terminology it means a person who chooses to perform an extra service or

work task for the general good. For example members volunteered to do

urgent mass work, such as weeding cotton fields, early in the morning

until breakfast, after which they returned to permanent jobs for the rest of

the day, or members gathered after the usual working day to pick fruit in

the orchard for 2.5-3 hours. Giyusim, however, did not solve manning

problems of more specialized manual work which required both a full

day’s work and continuity of more than a few times during a crop’s high

season. The plant’s shift-work sharing system solved the problem by non-

shift workers coming to an evening or night shift once a week, repeating

the same work on the same machine or line, and retaining proficiency

without too much interference with their permanent jobs.

In addition, during the same period of introducing shift-work sharing,

the problem of work on Saturdays was also solved by a system of


310

shibutzim (plural of shibutz, literally to inlay, to post someone to a work

task). Shibutz meant that each member below retirement age worked in

one of the essential services which operated on Shabat (Saturday), the rest

weekday, once every four weeks, and periodically on holidays. The

shibutz was initiated instead of the earlier solution of manning these

services by the sadran avoda’s use of various types of queues, a solution

which caused many arguments and conflicts since this work often clashed

with a member’s personal and family plans for their only free day. With

shibutz, each member was assigned to a specific job and team in either A,

B, C or D group, and consecutive Saturdays and holidays were designated

A, B, C, D, A, B…etc., and manned by these groups. As everyone knew in

advance when his turn of duty was, if s/he wanted to be free from work on

a specific Saturday in which s/he was obliged to work, s/he could find

another member assigned to the same job on another Saturday and

exchange turns with him/her. The sadran avoda had to find replacements

only for those who fell ill, who were called for army reserve duty, etc. The

system soon proliferated to all kibbutzim.

Plant Partnership Enabled Growth but Also Impaired

Democracy An additional problem for democracy resulting from scale led to another

solution for the manning of the successful plant, a partnership with a

nearby younger kibbutz which I have called Yok. This partnership was

established in 1969, similar to that of Chen and others.16 It was non-

egalitarian from a democratic point of view: a large kibbutz with an

established plant, where formal and informal power positions were

manned by its members, added a junior partner, a younger, smaller kibbutz

which lacked experts and experienced managers. Although the younger

kibbutz gained seats in the management forums proportional to its share,

as well as a few jobs of authority such as Chen’s Shaul, it rarely received

parity in member status. As far as I know, out of some thirty partnerships

only two approached parity. However, in this case, Kochav’s plant

managers made great effort to promote Yok’s talented members from line

work to technical and administrative positions; hence, Yok’s educated

members became engineers, chemists and managers. This helped generate

16 Amir et al. 1983; Niv & Bar-On 1992: 102.


311

another major difference from Chen and most cases: after a decade a

production department was moved to Yok and used additional manpower

unable to work outside Yok, such as mothers of breast-fed babies, part-

time high-school youth, etc.17

The branch workers assembly was an effective democratic organ in

smaller branches if managers cared to encourage member participation. In

Kochav’s plant, even before the merger, it was less effective as a

democratic organ due to its size of 70-80 eligible members. However, it

disseminated information, elevated workers’ grievances to the surface, and

sometimes tapped ideas for innovations. With the establishment of Yok’s

department, this assembly declined, as Yok’s employees rarely came to

assemblies in Kochav, and without their participation, the assembly lost its

image as the highest decision-making body, ‘dried up’, and was ultimately

abandoned in the 1980s. Instead, departmental meetings became

important, but by 1986 many members did not participate in them either,

since they felt that the meetings had betrayed democracy, as formal

decisions were rarely made there. On the other hand, members who did

participate complained that there were too few meetings. Unfortunately,

both attitudes signaled the marginality of these meetings in plant decision-

making.

Finally, there was the influence of Kochav’s non-plant members on the

large plant. Many felt that they had lost control over it, although all major

decisions regarding the plant were discussed and ratified by the economic

committees of the two kibbutzim and a few prime decisions were made in

their general assemblies. However, Horev’s large project, which caused

financial distress for all members, was an example given by some as to

how they had lost control over the plant. Amir et. al (1983) found such

feelings in all five kibbutz industrial partnerships they studied. It seems to

be one of the reasons for the recent dissolution of many of these

partnerships.

Scale Defeated Democracy Due to Decline of Trust and

Creativity A simplistic conclusion may be that scale defeated democracy in every

case, but with our knowledge it is clear that the scale problem, like any

17 Shapira 1979b; Amir et al. 1983.


312

problem of human organization, demanded creativity to solve it.

Creativity, however, had declined and almost vanished for previously

explained reasons and others explained below. Unfortunately, without

creativity one unsolved problem such as rotatzia, amplified many others,

amplification impaired their solution, and the many unsolved problems

amplified still others.

Boda, the 41-year-old Kochav offspring who was the secretary when I

discovered how much effort officers had invested in Pinye’s case to no

avail, commented: “A larger kibbutz means much bigger problems”. He

was pointing to the fact that not only was Kochav physically large, but, in

addition to size preventing officers from knowing and understanding

everyone’s interests, hopes and wishes, age gaps as well inhibited their

acquisition of this knowledge. The founders were about sixty-six years

older than youngest members and their spouses, who were either third or

fourth generation. Twenty-five years earlier, veterans had already proved

indifferent to younger members’ interests in car sharing. When Roxy and

Missu used coercion to obtain car sharing, elder secretariat members

impaired Ran’s efforts to introduce it, and only more coercion by younger

members enabled Ran to lead the change. Kochav’s veterans cared for

some interests of its youth only when coerced to do so, proving that even

in 1961 Kochav suffered insufficient trustworthiness across generations.

However, what was a problem then, became even more so as Kochav

became older, larger and more conservative in the 1980s, when an

additional generation differentiated the oldest members from the youngest.

In 1986 some branch managers were third generation, and, in 1988, the

first grandchild became a chief officer. While, in the 1960s, most offspring

remained kibbutz members, in 1986 almost half of them left. Boda said,

clearly satisfied, that “only 30% of our offspring were leaving”, since this

was lower than the Movement average exit rate (He ignored those who

had left for other kibbutzim, as Kochav attracted a similar number from

other kibbutzim).18 However, the fact remains that it was fifty per cent

higher than the 1970 rate of 20%. Moreover, after the interview, the exit

rate continued to grow up to the early 1990s when it reversed, indicating

that expediency, rather than a belief in kibbutz cause, was a major

motivation for a large portion of offspring: they exited when profitability

18 Rosner et al. 1978: 550.


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was lost and returned when it regained.

Did Patrons and Pe’ilim Genuinely Care for Members

Interests? Exit due to expediency signaled diminishing solidarity and commitment.

At the end of their work on commitment mechanisms, I. Shepher and

Shapira (1992: 55) confessed that “…a large variety of kinds and types of

members and kibbutzim created much more complicated links of members

to kibbutzim than those discussed”. Like all CKP users, however, they

ignored FOs impact and distrust of oligarchic leaders which diminished

commitment and solidarity. A Kochav member might ignore FOs

conservatism and other oligarchic negative outcomes, but not the lack of

care for his needs by pe’ilim. For instance, pe’ilim mostly conformed to

car sharing, but sometimes a pa’il said his car was needed for work on the

weekend, while, in fact, it stood idle from Friday morning to Saturday

evening when the pa’il used it; this resulted in decreased solidarity.

Another case in which some pe’ilim proved their lack of care for

ordinary members’ interests was their abstention from participation in

plant shift-work sharing. Sharing of shift-work was a vital solution for the

conscription and retention of educated members for jobs with extra

hardships and without extra rewards. Sharing both lightened the burden of

shift-work on permanent line workers who would work only one evening

shift and one night shift every week, and expressed other members’

solidarity with them. Many pe’ilim did not share this duty, and a few of

the explanations given seemed justified and not just excuses, such as

working longer than the eight hours of line workers, plus additional time

for commuting to work and back. Some also cited heavier responsibility

and a great deal of work taken home. However, they failed to mention that

they were free on Fridays, and that, in many cases, their workload was

quite light, done in pleasant clean air-conditioned offices. They also

neglected to mention being given fringe benefits and informal rewards

which were non-existent in the hard, tedious work on plant lines.

Moreover, those pe’ilim who shared shift-work seemed no less burdened

by their jobs than others who did not share the work, making it quite clear

that many of the latter did not truly care for fellow members’ hardships.

In fact, such lack of care was not new. In accord with the maxim that

low morality begins at the top (In Hebrew: “The fish stinks from the

head;” e.g., Kets De Vries 1993), even the high-moral Kochav old guard


314

had not always been a model of such care and solidarity in the past. Prime

leaders allotted most of their weekends to committee sessions and the

General Assembly; hence, they were excused from periodic Saturday work

and special branch duties on holidays. But they also avoided giyusim,

which was less excusable when they were at home on Fridays. Another

significant fact: interviewees who mentioned shibutz, explained its

introduction by citing the shirking of Saturday work by prime leaders,

although they did not really shirk it, but rather were mostly busy at

meetings or did homework of their FO jobs. The image of shirkers was

explicable as an extension of their shirking giyusim and night guarding

duties, which was the third type of inconvenient duty that prime leaders

avoided from the late 1940s. All able males guarded for a week once every

half a year or so, while women guarded the children’s houses. When plant

shift-work sharing was introduced in 1964, veteran members were too old

to participate. Thus, a just and fair solution would have been having the

veterans relieve the younger members who helped plant shift-work from

giyusim and night guarding, because the younger members did dozens of

inconvenient shifts every year, three-four times the amount of work

members did in giyusim and night guarding taken together. This meant

that other members would have done more giyusim and night guarding. No

one proposed it, apparently because officers were unsure about whether it

would not enhance defections by pe’ilim who would follow prime leaders,

and then other members would follow; thus, the managers decided that

they could manage without this solution. Unfortunately, without

continuous egalitarian efforts, shirking these duties spread and, in 1986,

only a minority participated in giyusim and shift-work sharing.

Patrons’ Dilemma: Trusted Headmen or Coercive Chiefs? Clear memories held by members of those of the elite who had fulfilled

inconvenient duties and those who had not decades ago prove that

members were very cognizant of violations of egalitarianism. Did patrons

not grasp that such violations curbed members’ trust in them? It seems that

they did realize this, especially in the early days when they alone were

guilty of such violations, and this was quite conspicuous. Their dilemma,

however, was that they had only 24 hours each day which was not enough

to retain the trust of members by doing all duties, participating in all

important deliberations and meetings, and succeeding in their FO jobs and

in national political struggles. They led a large movement of which


315

Kochav was only one part among hundreds. It is no wonder that they

decided that Kochav members would have to manage without them doing

manual work, and, as is usual in social action, there was no clear price tag

for this choice. They could only hope that members who saw how busy

they were would understand that they did not have enough time to do

these manual duties.

A clear sign that Kochav’s veterans agreed with this decision was that

none of them alluded to it, and only kibbutz offspring questioned it. Fox

(1974) pointed to an inevitable choice: when there is no trust, coercion is

inevitable. People either trust a leader and follow his orders, decisions and

policies, as they are convinced he is right in principle, even when it is

unclear why exactly he decides specifically as he does, or they follow his

orders due to his might. This was cited by Harris (1990: 349) when

portraying high-trust leadership by a headman of hunters and simple

agriculturalists. Within the kibbutz ethos, Kochav’s leaders should have

used trust rather than coercion. However, as heads of a much larger

movement, they more closely resembled Harris’s tribal chiefs or even

heads of mini-states (1990: 377-96) whose powers and capitals enabled

them to inflict painful penalties on nonconformists and political rivals. An

example was the expulsion from the KA of hundreds of leftists in 1954,

some of them after ten or even fifteen years of membership, leaving them

with only minimal severance payments. Similarly powerful were

Kochav’s prime leaders, as has been depicted. With much power but little

free time, knowing that they were highly trusted by veterans and many

other members as they had led Kochav to success, at first they abstained

from some orderly duties, and later on abstained from all.

Price of Chieftainship: Missing Followers’ Beliefs, Aims,

Hopes Heading a hierarchic organization causes a leader to forego personal

contact with commoners, as this becomes the role of deputies. As

Kochav’s prime leaders abstained from inconvenient duties, they rarely

met ordinary members outside the ‘reading room’, and most information

about their attitudes, needs and wants came from loyalists, some of whom

also abstained of these duties. This was in stark contrast to leaders of

Hutterite and Shaker communes who continued manual work and

remained directly in contact with commoners in an egalitarian work

setting. Thus, they could understand their vital interests, aims and wishes


316

and cared for them, as well as they could conscript their ingenuity to solve

major problems. Kochav’s involved leaders who participated in all major

deliberations knew more than pe’ilim of other kibbutzim about ordinary

members’ needs and wishes, and they could rightly assert that they were

too busy to care for them, since this was the task of officers and

committees. This was true only formally; their lack of support or even

objection prevented or impaired many new solutions which officers

proposed, and deterred others from proposing such ones. Dissociated from

ordinary members, they lacked vital information, and thus, for instance, in

the 1950s, they did nothing about John’s car problem, and in 1961 the

coercive actions of young members aimed at car sharing surprised them.

Moreover, for success in leading a social movement, decisive

knowledge for shaping its long-range efforts is beliefs, hopes, motivations

and commitments of members, all of which they lost by dissociation. This,

for example, could explain why they did not contest Movement leaders

continued leaning to the USSR’s “Socialism” after 1956, although they

were not leftists and supported leftism only during its high tide, seemingly

due to expediency. If they had been in contact with ordinary members, and

especially with younger ones, they would have known that few believed

this bluff, and that by discarding it would have greatly enhanced their own

credibility. Alas, they not only failed to appreciate how decisive this was,

but also failed to estimate how a new socialist vision could renew

commitment to Movement cause. Thus, they missed a major reason for

apathy and falling General Assembly attendance by many who sharply

criticized the bluff in interviews, as well as how the lack of a new socialist

vision enhanced liberal ideology (see below).

Furthermore, in the large and prosperous Kochav of the 1960s, and

even more so in the 1970s, it was not easy to channel motivations and

commitments of members from private ends to public ones, or even to

mobilize energies for the promotion of kibbutz cause. In 1960, David

Knaani of Kibbutz Merhavia published his seminal book on communal

societies which proved that, without a social mission, communal culture is

doomed in the long run. Kochav’s leaders who certainly read it, could

have sought to promote kibbutz ethos in FO cultures, for instance,

establishing democratic and egalitarian norms in the new Reg.Ents in

which Kochav was involved (Reiner’s group of KA young leaders had

proposed such norms). A new, socialist model of democratic and


317

egalitarian plants could have been created (or imitated, for instance, from

Mondragon19), partially correcting the mass immigrant absorption failure.

In addition, a Reg.Ent plant could have been set up in Yok when it sought

a factory, instead of making Yok Kochav’s junior partner. In short, a new

vision of promoting kibbutz ethos and culture could have mobilized

members’ energies and enhanced commitment and solidarity. Alas,

dissociated prime leaders remained inept, like Admors.

Lack of effort to promote kibbutz values within the field, only fighting

for them in national politics while sticking to the Soviet bluff, encouraged

exit by offspring, as Sabar (1996) found in a study of kibbutz offspring

living in Los Angeles. For them

“[Kibbutz] special values such as egalitarianism and pioneering began to

be perceived as routine declarations. …much is said about high morality,

but it is not applied. High-moral education is preached in words rather than

practiced in deeds. …the failure, …to implement such basic values raises

doubts about the uniqueness of kibbutz and its virtues” (p. 119).

Democracy Declined as Trust of Leaders and Creativity

Declined Cultural changes are often slow but profound. As previously explained,

while prime leaders shirked their duty to lead creative problem-solving in

order to promote kibbutz values from the 1940s, fewer and fewer members

participated in the General Assembly which dwindled in importance. In

1954 there was a feeling of a crisis, as one member wrote in the local

newsletter:

“In the past [members] related to this institution, the highest among

kibbutz institutions, with awe… In recent years, things have changed

completely. The number of assemblies has fallen to one each week. Due to

this [relative] rareness, the decrease in number should ensure that

Assemblies are more concentrated, but the opposite has occurred: tension

is dwindling, restlessness is growing, members’ opinions often remain

unexpressed, and the subjects are frequently uninteresting”.

Later that year, a complaint by another member helped to explain what

had changed:

19 Whyte & Whyte 1988; Morrison 1991.


318

“When in the Assembly, any principle problem, ideological or social, is

raised, it is clear to us in advance that the speaker will see the danger very

early and suffocate discussion in its infancy… in the assemblies we

continue to thrash out nominations and procedural questions”.

As early as the 1950s, Kochav’s Assembly began suffering, though in

minor ways, from the problems found in Rama, Netzer Sireni (Kressel

1983) and many other kibbutzim (Argaman 1997). In contrast to few

nomination debates, which were completed within a few weeks in the

1930s-1940s, in 1960 no less than eighteen assemblies, one third,

discussed nominations and most others were procedural. Israel and Moshe

who spoke at almost every assembly in the 1940s, rarely spoke in the

1960s, and only Bilski continued active participation, as did a few of

Israel’s veteran loyalists. However, as has been mentioned by the above

citations, chief officers and the speaker made efforts to prevent problems

of principle raised by specific cases from being aired. Israel’s veteran

loyalist preferred this policy: “[For debating] subjects of principle we must

convene separately after thorough preparation of debates”. In reality, if

there was no concrete question to which a principle was related, questions

of principle were not aired, and if a special ‘debate on principle’ was

scheduled, participation was minimal since experience taught members

that it was a waste of time and energy to discuss principles without

concrete decisions translating them into norms. The chief officers mostly

reported to the assembly without letting it discuss the obstacles and

problems they faced, and only rarely did a concrete question lead to a

debate that aired questions of principle and led to a new norm.

For example, in the 1950s Michael started working outside the kibbutz

as an interior decorator and needed a car. His salary was high, so

providing the car was economical, but, as in John’s case, without car

sharing norms such a provision caused much opposition as it would have

given him an unjustified privilege. In addition, many members opposed

outside work. After two long debates, Bilski proposed that Michael

become a pa’il in the Movement’s planning FO which would give him a

car. His proposal was adopted and thus two problems of principle which

bothered members were evaded: egalitarian use of cars and outside work

damaging the self-work principle. Extensive debate left these problems

unsolved and they soon emerged again with others whose competencies

fitted specialized outside jobs. Only the introduction of car sharing in 1962


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ended such barren debates.

Moreover, in this new solution, a car manager controlled all cars; thus,

their use at work gave users no advantage after work. If an outside worker

wanted a car for non-work purposes, s/he had to put in a request like

others. This reduced the inducement for outside work on the part of

privilege seekers, so it defended the self-work principle, while it spared

the Assembly superfluous debates concerning outside work by

professionals and experts. Ran’s creative solution spared the Assembly

many pointless debates, while many more creative solutions which were

foiled by patrons and/or their loyalists resulted in additional superfluous

debates, again causing dwindling Assembly participation.

FOs’ Negative Impacts on Kochav’s Democracy However, many more meaningless discussions which debilitated the

Assembly were caused by the Movement’s and FOs’ oligarchic

conservatism and power concentration, depriving the assembly of a major

power, the election of delegates to their governing bodies to represent

kibbutz members’ views. From 1956, heated political debates in the

assembly also subsided, as it became clear that they were largely futile,

and would not influence Movement policies which stuck to partial leftism,

no admission of the Soviet bluff, and no creative new socialist vision,

while it joined Mapay governments whose policies negated kibbutz

values. Interest in leaders’ reports on political issues lessened

considerably, so Israel and Moshe rarely spoke in the assembly. This

helped make the assembly boring, losing the aura of a body where all

national secrets were exposed and decisions that affected Movement

policy and national politics were taken.

Other negative impacts of FOs on democracy have been amply

discussed above, and I add only one: FOs’ enhanced stratification reduced

the solidaristic nature of kibbutz democracy which aimed at maximal

consensus, and majority decisions used only when no consensus was

achieved, contrary to the adversarial nature of societal politics. In the

1920s-1930s, whenever Kochav leaders saw a chance for reaching

consensus by more discussion, voting was postponed. For that reason,

major problems were discussed by consecutive assemblies, and, as has

been mentioned, in one major political debate in the 1940s, more than one

hundred members spoke at a series of meetings. With FOs oligarchization

and status symbolization of continuous pe’ilim by privileges, solidaristic


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democracy declined; pe’ilim’s views in the assembly held greater weight

than those of other members who lacked status symbols and prestigious

high FO offices. Larger gaps between conservative leaders and radical

members bred fruitless debates which officers preferred to shorten, thus

gaining an image of efficiency which would enhance prospects of

promotion to pe’ilut. In addition, their inexperience and sometimes lack of

critical talent that caused major failures, as in Pinye’s case, also hindered

consensus and bred such debates.

As in previous cases, FOs negatively impacted democracy by enabling

the rise to power of conservative circulators who impaired creativity and

democracy. The negative impact of circulation and ‘parachuting’ was

amplified in Kochav by strictly enforced rotatzia, every two-three years,

dating from the 1963 plant’s succession crisis. The reign of FO heads

diminished the status and power of local officers and deterred talents who

‘left inward’ instead of taking offices. Although unlike previous cases,

radicals and talents still became officers, the conservative impact of both

FOs and internal processes made filling offices problematic; some

mediocre members took charge and many assemblies discussed the

problem. Only in rare cases did refusals of able members for an office lead

to the airing of its problems which deterred them, usually to no avail. In

1960, for example, cultural activity was reviewed by three assemblies after

no member older than twenty-five agreed to serve on the culture

committee. Most members ignored the discussion without any concrete

proposal for bettering committee functioning, even though a change was

required, since new FOs such as the Kibbutz Orchestra, the Kibbutz

Theatre and the Kibbutz Choir impacted considerably local cultural

activity.

Low-Moral Oligarchic FOs Curbed Morality of Kochav’s

Officers All the above, however, only partially explains the mounting problems

facing Kochav’s chief officers due to the impact of FOs. A major factor

was the negative moral impact of FOs on officers’ morality, and through

them, on members. In contrast to Boda’s weekly participation in plant

shift-work, many other elite members abstained from it and shirked

giyusim. Declining assembly effectiveness deterred some elite members

from active participation, impaired the quality of discussions and furthered

ineffectiveness. Though FO impact on the morality of Kochav’s elite was


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less than in other cases, it was still decisive. FOs elevated low-moral

loyalist circulators of the old guard, other circulators and continuous

pe’ilim into Kochav’s main power-holders after the old guard vanished.

Trust dwindled, as Pinye’s case made clear, and creativity declined as

many radicals exited, were sidetracked, like Ran, or turned to outside

careers. Only a few younger officers were radical, as preferred role models

were either loyalist pe’ilim or outside careerists, both types which boosted

self-interest considerations in officer actions. Officers’ morality did not

plummet as low as Shaul’s, Mati’s and Barak’s, apparently due to the old

guard’s high-moral tradition, but when I probed inexplicable events, self-

serving behavior was exposed.

For instance, in 1986, a Reg.Ents plant of which Kochav had been a

partner in the past, collapsed financially. Reg.Ents managers decided that

owner kibbutzim and moshavim would rescue it by giving guaranties for

bank loans. To Kochav officers’ surprise, Kochav was included in the

owners’ list although it had stopped growing the crop processed by this

plant and had cancelled ownership years ago; a formal letter had been sent

and Kochav’s officers had stopped participating in plant Board meetings

and yearly Owners’ Assemblies. The Reg.Ents managers pointed to a

bylaw requiring ratification by an Owners’ Assembly for cancelling a

partner ownership in order to finalize it. Kochav’s ex-chief economic

officer who had sent the letter of cancellation asserted that he had not

finalized the cancellation since another bylaw stipulated that a leaving

partner would remain for two additional years responsible for possible

plant losses, so he did not hurry, but he did not explain why he had not

finalized it later on. This seemed strange: He himself had initiated

Kochav’s cancellation, suspecting the plant’s financial stability. As an

experienced economist, he well knew that this might lead to collapse and

rescue efforts, so why not finalize cancellation? The only reason I could

find was possible future pe’ilut in the Reg.Ents which he might lose by

doing this, as the cancellation meant no confidence of the Reg.Ents

managers. As he had joined Kochav only a few years earlier and had few

ties in FOs, it seemed that his deed kept good relations with these

managers for a future pe’ilut.

Likewise, I found other officers behavior which seemed to maintain

public interest only until it clashed with personal interest. Within

Kochav’s egalitarian culture, personal interest in career advance was


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rarely confessed to by elite members. A rare confession was given by a

female ex-secretary who stated that twenty seven years earlier, her

husband had been chief economic officer and had left the job after only

two years, although the normative period was three, since he had sought

an educational career and received a scholarship for advanced studies.

Another economist finished this job after only a year and a half, as he

found a pe’ilut, and so too did one treasurer and one committee head.

These cases seemed parallel from a moral point of view to officers’

shortening assemblies by avoiding airing aspects of principle in the cases

discussed, another deed which served personal interests: it spared officers’

time, while creating an image of managerial efficiency which was good

for promotion to an FO’s managerial job.

Other officers extended terms beyond the prescribed period. No one

confessed that this was caused by lack of a promotion outlet or at least

another managerial job. Some asserted that they had continued despite

promotion offers due to the lack of a successor. This seemed credible as

problems in manning offices abounded, but it is also clear that many

continued due to personal interest, while viewing extended terms as

normative since some predecessors had also served longer ones. As

Chapter 2 shows, only 25-33% of officers served prescribed periods, as

most officers served either less or more time than the norm. This meant

blurring the norm: Without formal succession timetable and clear

procedure, an officer could believe that s/he continued only because no

successor had been found, while others could suspect that despite

declaring a succession intention, s/he willingly continued as his/her

behavior signaled no true wish to resign at the term end. The result was

that the nomination committee channeled its efforts to other, more

pressing manning problems of offices and let him/her continue despite

succession declaration and even questionable functioning.

No Vision: Personal Aims, Officer Shortages, Imitative

Solutions In the case of Kochav, a lack of talented successors could hardly be

explained by brain-drain. Up to the 1970s, it barely suffered from it, and

even in 1986 it had many talents in addition to those mentioned. However,

as exposed, office manning became problematic from the 1950s. One

deterrent was old guard conservatism, in accord with Am’ad and Palgi

(1986) and previous cases, while another was that talented and radicals


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who did not leave, also did not hurry to take on an office after being

rotated from another one. After they had expended vast energies in solving

problems of one office, instead of rewards and even promotion, they were

demoted and then called upon to take another; thus like Ran, many

preferred other careers over management. Moreover, rotatzia and

circulation due to FO growth enhanced expectations for fast advancement

which diminished public service motivations. Hashlama leaders advanced

to FOs and circulated as pe’ilim, not much bothered by the introduction of

hired labor due to their ‘revolution’. In contrast, the young radical who re-

instilled self-work by the innovation of shift-work sharing served three

years, and then found only a minor FO job; after only two years in it he

left and became an innovative moshav member, apparently for the same

reason as Tomer, the self-serving conservatism of FO heads.

To attract talented radicals and critical thinkers to local offices by

public service motivation, rotatzia had to be replaced by a true solution for

Iron Law that allowed successful officers to continue until trust in them

vanished, enhanced adoption of creative solutions, and a new socialist

vision was necessary to replace the USSR bluff. A visionary leadership

task consists of translating exhilarating ideas into concrete aims with

which members will identify and for which they will strive.20 However,

neither Kochav leaders, nor Movement heads admitted their mistaken

leftism, barring publications which exposed Stalin’s brutal regime, and

proposing no new socialist vision. Jewish sages of old said: “Without a

vision, a nation runs wild”. Without a new vision, with the Movement’s

continued coalition with Mapay despite anti-democratic and non-socialist

policies, manning a negatively rewarded local office could hardly be seen

by a radical/critical thinker as a contribution to a radical movement

struggle, as a humble price for promoting noble aims, and a reason to

postpone one’s personal interest in a hobby, in study, or in a leisure

activity. Many talented members, potential chief officers and committee

heads, turned down nominations committee requests to fill such offices,

saying that they had already contributed their due in such jobs.

Without a new socialist vision, liberal, individualistic outside ideas

proliferated. For instance, the female ex-secretary mentioned above whose

20 Bennis & Nanus 1985; DePree 1990; Graham 1991; O’Toole 1999; Oplatka

2002.


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parents joined Kochav in the 1930s after some years in Tel Aviv,

explained her view:

“I am not a leadership type, and I cannot say that I led the kibbutz to a new

era. However, I am a liberal person, very influenced by Western culture.

My parents are from Warsaw and Lodz, and, as an infant, I was raised in

Tel Aviv, and when I was in [Kochav] high school I also spent summer

holidays in Tel Aviv. Personal self-actualization and achieving [the best

of] one’s capabilities in order to achieve individual satisfaction was… [a

main concern for me]. Our population is such that if we do not find

solutions [for these concerns], the kibbutz will simply not exist”.

In an extended interview with this ex-secretary who served in 1977-

1979, she did not mention any social mission beyond the confines of

Kochav. Almost all problems which bothered her were personal problems

of members, except for two public ones. First, the excessively fast rotatzia

which she defined as “lunatic” and wanted to slow down. Second, the deaf

ear the General Assembly had turned to her opposition to take on the job

of secretary, since she believed it might ruin the high school biology

laboratory she had nurtured for many years. Indeed, according to her “it

was almost ruined” without a proper replacement from among kibbutz

teachers, while hiring one was out of question due to the self-work

principle. She, however, did not know that the self-work principle had

been violated more than once in the past when a specific expertise was

required. For instance, from the late 1920s, an expert neighboring falah

(Arab farmer) had been hired for some months every summer to sift the

best wheat grains for seeds, until a sorting machine had been bought. A

continuous, highly trusted leadership could maintain a principle, even

though forsaking it for a while, by encouraging creativity which restored it

by using new solutions. But when conservatism dominated and there was

no such leadership and meager creativity, a minor infringement of a

principle by one short-term officer could lead to additional ones by

successors until the principle collapsed. Thus, norms were kept to the

letter, both self-work and ‘lunatic’ rotatzia.

In addition to such nominations which almost ruined the life project of

a talented member, Kochav paid another high price for ‘lunatic’ rotatzia:

mounting problems of filling managerial jobs. Had competent Ran

continued in office, for instance, subject to a periodic test of trust in

accord with an anti-Iron Law norm proposed in the next chapter, he might


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have continued twelve years, sparing Kochav many frustrated officers like

the above secretary. There were many like her from the early 1950s, since

two members filled the job together. However, one person might have

solved problems even better if s/he had been sufficiently educated,

experienced, talented and committed while continuing due to public trust

which would gave him/her considerable discretion. This was prevented by

instituting rotatzia and adding a younger member to a veteran who filled

the job in order to overcome the generation gap. Unfortunately, the true

gap was between the conservatism of patrons and their loyalists, and the

younger members’ anticipation for new solutions. Nominating a young

member to be a second secretary was better than leaving all authority to a

conservative veteran loyalist, as Ran’s case proved, but it caused

ineptness. After the era of veterans, middle-aged women took their place,

together with men, in order to close the gender gap, since hitherto, despite

egalitarian discourse, no woman had been chosen as chief officer.

Unfortunately, two parallel secretaries and rotatzia every two years meant

that each decade some ten secretaries had to be found instead of one, if

leaders like Ran and Pinye had been re-elected like Athens’ Pericles. In

addition to secretaries each year another chief officer had to be replaced,

and many other junior officers as well, causing the nominations committee

to hold dozens of sessions, and some twenty assemblies discussed

nominations, much as in Argaman’s (1997) cases. Additional major

problem was filling the specialized jobs left vacant by talented nominees,

like the finding of a biology lab manager.

The FOs’ Role in the Continuation of Rotatzia-Driven

Problems Although many agreed that rotatzia was a problematic system, it

continued as no one sought a new solution. Rotatzia served FO head

supremacy well, and neither kibbutz students, nor successful circulators

such as Mati, Shaul and Barak, or any kibbutz thinker (except for me),

alluded to its perils. Senior kibbutz member academics did not suffer from

rotatzia, while many profited from it: they lectured each year to the

hundreds of new nominees in Movement seminars and in the Ruppin

College courses which trained the inexperienced to be minimally qualified

kibbutz officers.

Why did Kochav decision-makers fail to grasp that rotatzia was

‘lunatic’? Here again the impact of FOs was the answer: Successful


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pe’ilim, both continuous ones like the three leaders and a few others, as

well as circulators, had no reason to criticize it, while the relatively strong

authority of Kochav’s officers, made its democracy a relative success,

especially at first, when its would-be patrons were still creative, trusted

leaders. When FO oligarchization made them conservative patrons, trust

dwindled only slightly due to their high morality and involvement which

prevented some costly mistakes, and power to overcame major conflicts,

boost officers’ authority, and assure members that the hidden power

structure they headed would overcome troubles and obstacles. Kochav’s

success blinded both leaders and laymen to the unreasonableness of this

structure, to its conservative nature which delayed or blocked the

possibilities of creative coping with major challenges, and to the fact that

patrons only came to the rescue when a row erupted. However, patrons

avoided radical solutions that would have prevented the row in the first

place, such as a democratic succession system which would have allowed

successful managers continuity and replaced them only when entering

dysfunction phase and loosing trust of role-partners (see next chapter).

Rotatzia did not suit managing complex Kochav, but kibbutz students

praised it as a success, FO heads and their loyalists supported it for

obvious reasons, as did many local conservative officers who sought

advance to pe’ilut, while the few officers who saw it as ‘lunatic’ like the

above secretary, had too little power and time in office for the creation and

introduction of a new major solution.

Without a new vision and not enough office continuity, Kochav’s chief

officers since the 1970s rarely tried to create radical solutions which

promoted kibbutz ethos. As Sabar (1996: 119) said:

“The failure, in the opinion of kibbutz offspring, to implement basic values

raises doubts concerning [kibbutz] uniqueness and its virtues”.

The above secretary echoed this failure, which was explicable by both

‘internal leaving’ and Hirschmanian exit of radicals and critical thinkers

who could have created, introduced and implemented new practices which

would have advanced kibbutz values. Kochav became short of capable

officers who, like Ran, dared ingenuity against conservatives’ hegemony.

A major reason was that as part of a field in which socialism stopped at

FO gates due to the personal interests of their heads and their loyalists,

Kochav’s vision, ideology and social mission had become vague from the

time leftism had taken hold sixty years ago. Without clearing and updating


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them, innovators’ efforts were incoherent and inconsistent, and thus,

usually failed. In order to rescue kibbutz ethos and culture, both Kochav

and FOs required a new socialist vision and creative solutions for major

problems, but this required highly trusted transformational leadership

which neither Kochav nor FOs elevated.

CHAPTER 18

Conclusions and Sustainable DWOs

“The hardest part of ethnographer’s work is to discern the context of

phenomena” (Marx 1985: 147).

Landshut (2000[1944]) and Buber (1958[1945]) pointed to the

decisiveness of FOs and kibbutz societal involvement, but the dominant

scientific coalition ignored them and used conventions of communal

studies, although the kibbutz was incomprehensible without the contexts

of FOs and the Socialist Zionist movement which it spearheaded. Contrary

to other communal societies, its culture flourished due to societal

involvement and FOs mediating societal relations. Customary kibbutz

paradigm was a fatal mistake, missing how FOs became Trojan horses of

capitalist society that encouraged low morality by their autocratic, low-

trust, market- and hierarchy-controlled cultures which associated authority

with private gain.1 The proper paradigm for the study of kibbutz resembles

Bourdieu’s (1977, 1984) paradigm of a complex stratified field, one in

which kibbutzim and FOs struggled for cultural hegemony and the latter

won after many decades. At first the federative structure, high-trust

cultures and high-moral leaders enhanced innovation and technological

advance with capital intensity that led to specialization and other

inequalities, which were curbed by creative solutions with exceptional

success. Success enhanced growth, oligarchization, conservatism and

moral decline of FO heads and staff which harmed and then ruined kibbutz

essential cultural components: creativity, egalitarianism, self-work,

solidaristic democracy and high trust relations. Alas, students evaded FOs

for non-scientific reasons (Shapira 2005; Chap. 3), leading to gross

misunderstanding.

Though Admors were among the most continuous leaders of any

known democracy, kibbutz students ignored oligarchic processes. Due to

FOs evasion, they also missed the lessons of large organization

ethnography and studies of power elites, social movements, democracy

and leadership which were decisive for exposing negative effects of

1 Triandis 1989; Chatman & Barsade 1995.

18. Conclusions and Sustainable DWOs

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oligarchization. Critical historians exposed some of these, but not their

etiology, ignoring findings of critical anthropologists and sociological

theories, while the dominant scientific coalition of sociologists and

behaviorists, in addition to FOs evasion, used only formal quantitative

methods and ignored findings of other disciplines. Critical sociologists

alluded to FOs, but failed to integrate them into analysis, ignored findings

of ethnographers, missed the simultaneous functioning of elites in the

field’s two contradicting sectors, as well as how rotatzia became

circulation, enhancing the iceberg phenomenon of power and furthered

oligarchic processes. Thus they missed the true powers which shaped

kibbutz cultures and the field’s prime change process.

Anthropologists missed the context of FOs, the field’s complexity and

its societal contexts, although pioneering Landshut pointed to Movements’

role in the shaping of kibbutz cultures. Buber (1958[1945]) also pointed,

though in academic language, to the Achilles heel of kibbutz society,

Movements’ and other FOs’ violations of its principles. However, both

points were ignored and ethnographies missed how FOs’ violations

enhanced oligarchization and accumulation of power, capitals and

privileges by their heads and a few power-holders in each kibbutz who

often became patrons of its officers and turned them into peons on their

chessboards, decided their careers, castrated democracy, and achieved

self-serving conservative hegemony for good. Though critical

anthropologists exposed local oligarchs and some of their self-serving

deeds, they missed FO contexts which elevated them and assured their

status, power, privileges and continuity; thus they missed the field’s main

etiology and the major forces that shaped its cultures.

The missing of stratification was students’ most spectacular failure,

caused by seeking it only inside kibbutzim, while it was mainly shaped

outside them in FOs and other hierarchic organizations. They viewed chief

kibbutz officers as the highest stratum, but they were really juniors, far

beneath Admors, their deputies who were Cabinet Ministers and Knesset

Members, heads of large FOs and other senior pe’ilim who, due to power

and capitals accumulation, evaded rotatzia. Pe’ilim were stratified by FO

hierarchies, degree of job continuity and size, power and prestige of their

FO or outside organization. Due to rotatzia, which mostly became

circulation, their formal roles scarcely testified to their status, power,

prestige and other intangible capitals which were accumulated along


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careers in both one’s kibbutz and FOs/other organizations. Without

salaries or with uniform ones for most pe’ilim, FO fringe benefits became

main status and power symbols, explaining pe’ilim’s sticking to the

stratifying company car system, contrary to kibbutz ethos and culture.

With FOs oligarchization, power and capitals were largely gained as in

other bureaucracies by patronage and clique formation. This was another

major reason why status and power of pe’ilim, ex-pe’ilim and patrons were

less dependent on current jobs, than on their past careers and positions in

local and FOs or other external power cliques which almost all students

missed.

Circulation and Other Rotatzia’s Perils Were Missed Rotatzia created egalitarianism only in low local kibbutz offices, but from

the rank of chief kibbutz officers and upward it became circulation,

especially with the growth of FOs. Then return to the ranks became rare

and mostly short-lived, and motivated more by expediency than

egalitarianism. Circulation violated egalitarianism, but maintained rotatzia

since it assured officers of their status and power, while the return of some

pe’ilim to lower ranks kept the egalitarian image. As in all historical and

current cases of rotatzia, it enlarged continuity gaps as well as power and

capital differentials among officers, since higher-ups evaded it while most

others conformed, primarily to obtain promotion by proving conformity.

Rotatzia caused a huge waste of knowledge and expertise by ‘parachuting’

officers to jobs in which their intangible assets were useless or even

intrusive. ‘Parachutists’ opted either to detachment and hands-off

management in order to conceal ignorance and protect authority, or to

coercive strategies that used formal authority and market forces. This

caused destructive conflicts and suppression of committed-to-tasks

innovative experts and critical thinkers who were demoted, sidetracked

and exited (Hirschman 1970). Brain-drain enhanced promotion of

mediocre loyalists of conservative patrons, but, unable to promote public

aims, they shifted to personal ends (Hirschman 1982). This ruined trust,

cooperation (Axelrod 1984), creativity (Jaques 1990) and democracy,

while furthering brain-drain. Less common were involved ‘parachutists’

who became trusted transformational leaders that achieved organizational

successes, as in Guest’s (1962) case.

As in other rotatzia cases, suppressed talented innovators who did not


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exit turned to other careers in which success was rewarded by job

continuity, power, capitals and promotion, furthering managerial brain-

drain. When such careerists succeeded on the outside without help of local

officers, they followed pe’ilim violations of egalitarianism, sometimes

leading to anarchy which impaired trust, democracy, public innovation

and morality. Oligarchic processes enhanced this by encouraging both

violations of egalitarianism and self-serving motivation. Very few pe’ilim

abided by rotatzia due to ideological zeal or a negative balance of

rewards, contrary to student explanations. This balance was true only of

most local kibbutz offices, but was rare among pe’ilim who usually

conformed due to either failure in jobs, and/or loss of patrons’ auspices,

and/or to keep kibbutz good-will for future pe’ilut. Rotatzia served the rule

of conservative FO heads while concealing this fact from both members

and researchers, who missed how it enhanced patronage and cliques

formation by making officers’ status vulnerable, and thus encouraged their

seeking patrons’ auspices. Even critical anthropologists who exposed

some of its perils, missed its major effects; hence, even the few

sociologists who used their insights, missed these effects.

Patronage Promoted Conservative Loyalists, Marred

Creativity Contrary to democratic ideals, with oligarchization the promotion of

officers accorded more patrons’ auspices and clique membership rather

than competence, devotion to the kibbutz cause and ingenious promotion

of public aims. Only few patrons remained high-moral, and these were

almost only within kibbutzim. These patrons, and/or influential veteran

officers or ex-officers, nurtured democracy and trust by allowing officers’

discretion and supporting creativity. Grass-roots democracy elevated

effective radicals to local chief offices, and their creative solutions to

major problems which enhanced kibbutz ethos and culture, diffused to

other kibbutzim in which patronage was weak or high-moral patrons did

not bar implementation of democratically-ratified changes which they

opposed. This high morality was explained by patrons’ involvement in

solving local problems which made them sensitive to members’ interests

and distress, and by a democratic tradition of high-trust cultures. High-

moral patrons curbed some perils of rotatzia, but even then creativity

suffered as these patrons rarely promoted creative radicals to FO jobs, in


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accord with Hirschman (1970), while many such radicals who believed in

rotatzia’s positive effect, conformed to it, lost status, were sidetracked

and/or exited. Worse still, the few of them who did advance to FOs, at best

enhanced FOs functioning, but failed to cause lasting changes without

supporting cliques, in accord with Dalton (1959), and departed quite early.

In some kibbutzim, patronage was rare or weak without continuous

senior pe’ilim and/or successful circulators, who could care for clients’

circulation in managerial jobs. Clients have to be loyal to patrons and keep

positive images, rather than genuinely succeeding in jobs by trustful

relations with members (or subordinates in FOs) and solving major

problems. Students missed this and were misled by the public servant

masks of circulative patrons who came back to the ranks for short periods.

Topel (1979) detected patronage, but missed patrons’ true aims and

interests, analyzing their behavior without the context of FOs’ power and

status competition. Thus he missed the main aim of his circulative patrons,

to prove loyalty to supreme patrons, the conservative FO heads who

controlled FO jobs. Most of the negative effects of self-serving patronage

and the nurture of cliques have not been elucidated, nor has the breach of

members’ trust by patrons’ Machiavellianism, such as red tape and loyalist

nominations which obstructed implementation of democratic decisions.

Missing Unique Elite Careers and Their Grave

Consequences Without untangling true stratification, circulation and patronage, the

uniqueness of elite careers was missed. These careers have barely been

studied, contrary to Goldschmidt’s (1990) maxim that, even in the most

egalitarian societies, people seek a career which is esteemed by a

community. By studying kibbutz officers’ balance of rewards without their

careers, both the cost of status and power loss due to rotatzia was ignored,

and how rotatzia was avoided by circulation with promotion prospects,

which was often at the cost of servile loyalty to patrons’ conservatism. At

the height of kibbutz research, few chief officers returned to the ranks for

long, and they were mostly radicals and critical thinkers which many of

whom soon exited. Thus, survey researchers who studied only members

missed this loss and did not explain shortages of competent managers. Due

to CKP they missed another reason: non-egalitarian circulation by

privileged mediocre clients encouraged talents’ exits. According to


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economists, such talents exited due to the fact that egalitarianism deprived

them of extra tangible rewards for extra contributions, but, as many of the

talented were critically minded and/or radicals, they were deprived even

more of intangible rewards. They suffered low and insecure status, heavy

responsibility but little power, little appreciation for successful problem

solving, unfair criticism and obstruction of innovation efforts by powerful

loyalist circulators, who even obstructed some conformist solutions,

apprehending that successes would enhance innovative officers’ power

and status.

Without a Renewed Socialist Vision, Radicals’ Incoherent

Efforts Failed Oligarchic conservatism caused no renewal of a social-democratic vision

after the leftist bluff was exposed. Admors stuck to leftist concepts,

barring renewal and the updating of movements’ vision, ideology and

tasks. Socialist and liberal ideas clashed, resulting in conflicts between

their holders while conservatives reigned, causing stagnation, apathy and

abstention from offices by talented. The inevitable manning by lesser

members, degraded office status and prestige and furthered abstentions.

Mediocre officers defended their authority by detachment, hands-off

conservatism, coercive means and suppression of innovators. This was

prevented only when high-moral leaders created a truly democratic

tradition, abiding by decisions which curtailed their own and loyalists’

privileges and refraining from interfering in grass-roots promotion of

radical officers to chief offices. Creativity by these radicals modeled

genuine care for the public good, which was imitated by other officers and

members, and led to successes.

However, without a renewed socialist vision, while the gravity of the

kibbutz field elevated to power conservative, low-moral circulators when

the high-moral old guard had vanished, even in creative kibbutzim

cultures eventually deteriorated as trust and creativity declined. Liberal

ideas encouraged critical thinkers and radicals whose managerial careers

were derailed to remain and to turn to outside, non-FO careers. However,

they became alienated when kibbutz officers did not care for their special

needs or even tried to fail them by false egalitarianism. A critical mass of

such successful careerists caused anarchy when they managed to extract

privileges and violate egalitarianism; officers could not stop them as they


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imitated pe’ilim practices. Anarchy degraded officers’ status, deterred

talented members from taking office, marred creativity and curbed

democratic participation, as no one knew if decisions would be upheld or

would crumble when violated by power elites. Strong rule by conservative

patrons in other kibbutz prevented such anarchy, but at a cost of

stagnation, ineffectiveness, brain-drain, a failed economy and repeated

mass exodus crises following exits by disenchanted leaders of hashlama

groups and cohorts of offspring.

This explains some kibbutz failures and the flawed demography of

many survivors: Contrary to Rosolio’s (1999) dependency explanation, the

main reason was not officers’ complacency, but a self-enhancing cycle of

suppression of innovative young talents by conservative patrons and their

loyalists. The exit of the talented was followed by that of most of their

group; only mediocre loyalists, naive zealots and expediency seekers

remained. A new hashlama came to fill the ranks, the cycle repeated itself

and became a vicious one: residues of previous exits either backed

patrons’ suppression of innovators, or abstained from the democratic

process. Thus both ways enhanced patrons’ conservative rule and its

perils, which ruined kibbutz culture and caused further failures.

An exception that proves the rule was the case of a kibbutz with an

ultra-high exit rate which left only a small residue, enabling a coalition of

two veteran high-moral leaders and radical hashlama leaders to defeat

conservatives, initiate major creative solutions, promote kibbutz ethos,

stop brain-drain, introduce self-work factory and accomplish major

success, though only for two decades. Then a conservative patron who

kept managerial status by circulation, regained power by Machiavellian

tactics along with the repeated aid of FO heads and other outsiders, while

his radical rival leader left as he lost hope for a change of FO heads’

complacency when the system’s debt crisis ensued. Then other opponents

of the patron left as his ruling clique proved unbeaten, leading to

eradication of kibbutz culture.

Servant Leaders and High-Trust, Solidaristic Democracy

Were Rare All five cases reiterate the decisiveness of the leadership factor, but,

contrary to students’ assertion, transformational rather than charismatic

leaders explained success. Genuine solidaristic democracy was created in


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only a minority of high-trust, creative kibbutzim, by ascetic, high-moral,

radical, public servant leaders committed to the kibbutz cause, who

devoted much of their meager free time to local committees and the

Assembly, even while holding high-level FO jobs. They supported

implementation of decisions which they had opposed, and this, as well as

the vast amount of information they brought and knowledge diffused by a

critical local press, enhanced participation in decision-making, made

disobedience rare, and ensured that democratic decisions were upheld in

spirit. The rarity of disobedience in the studied democratic kibbutz

stemmed in part from a creative solution which enhanced justice in

exceptional personal cases, through a special, non-rotational appeals

committee in which the leaders participated. Though leaders became

conservative patrons and frustrated radical officers of new generations, the

democratic tradition enhanced creativity for additional decades, especially

after the 1956 blow to Admors conservative leftism, despite scale curbing

trust, democracy and equality. Creative solutions by servant officers

retained self-work and egalitarianism, curbed brain-drain, bred economic

success and overcame economic setbacks. Thus, the original ethos was

largely retained despite its dereliction in most of the kibbutz field.

Students could not explain the dwindling solidaristic democracy

because they missed oligarchy, Admors’ power self-perpetuation by

autocratic means and leftism, and the negative effects of circulation,

patronage and cliques. They exposed perils, such as excessive debates

about nominations and procedural matters, various ailments of committee

work and abstention from voting, but not the deeper flaws, primarily rule

by privileged FO oligarchy and its local clients, and the disappearance of

servant, highly trusted transformational leaders. In addition to

egalitarianism, the lifeblood of solidaristic democracy was such credible,

authentic leaders to whom members listened as this helped them to

understand the fast changing reality, the movement’s mission and tasks,

and the choice between clashing ideas about how to solve problems. These

vital elements of a healthy solidaristic democracy were fatally damaged by

oligarchic rule of Admors and FO heads, leftism, suppression of the

critically minded and radicals, and dissociation of pe’ilim from members.

Democracy became adversarial as patronage, cliques, intangible capitals

and privileges made a few conservative pe’ilim, ex-pe’ilim, local plant

managers or ex-managers de-facto rulers of kibbutzim, self-servingly


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suppressing the critically minded and talented radicals by Machiavellian

tactics and Iron Law means.

The grass-roots democracy of kibbutz branches and committees

continued to elevate chief officers with creative solutions that might have

renewed kibbutz cultures, but even in past creative kibbutzim, they were

too weak to solve major problems such as ‘lunatic’ rotatzia which kibbutz

students supported, and were soon replaced by loyalist circulators who

evaded problems and rendered debates futile. Hidden icebergs of

irreplaceable power elites failed efforts at influencing true decision-

makers (e.g., Freeman 1974); thus, even during eras of radical officers,

most democratic sessions were not worth participating in and solved no

major problems. Moreover, participation was an act of trust in democracy,

but this trust was undeserved as the ‘democracy’ was largely a show

orchestrated by power elites who denounced proposals by the critically

minded and radicals not because they were wrong, but since they might

elevate fresh powers.

‘Parachutings’, Imitative Hired Labor and Leaders

Detachment Contrary to Helman (1987), circulation did not preserve rare managerial

talent. My Reg.Ents findings (1987) were repeated in kibbutzim:

circulation bred detached ‘parachutists’, mismanagement, conservatism,

suppression of critically minded and radicals, brain-drain and abstention

from offices by the talented. Not all ‘parachutists’ fail; if one was talented,

chose direct involvement and became a trusted servant leader, he usually

succeeded. But even then ‘parachuting’ caused brain-drain and exits of

radicals since it damaged mid-level officers’ belief in rewarding devotion

to tasks and ingenuity in solving problems by promotion. The perils of

‘parachutings’ were ignored by evading FOs and critical ethnographies,

while missing how local ‘parachutists’ succeeded, by clique formation,

patronage and autocratic rule, helped by supreme patrons’ backing, use of

hired labor and other capitalist practices, like in FOs. As involved, high-

moral innovative leaders were purged from managerial ranks and mostly

exited, students did not meet them to learn from them how really

kibbutzim functioned under ‘parachutists’ rule.

Even if ‘parachutists’ followed Admors’ rejection of hired labor, they

were detached from members’ work, did not experience their complex


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tasks, barely appreciated their efforts and ingenuity outside the ‘reading

room’ of deliberations, were deaf to their opinions and indifferent to their

plight. Trusting them little, a usual ‘parachutist’ furthered distrust by

minimizing discretion and shop-floor democracy, sought market and

hierarchy controls and self-aggrandizement by growth using hired labor,

and violated kibbutz ethos by privileges that symbolized high-status. Their

camouflages of low morality as job requirements and in other ways, were

soon exposed by members as bluffs, furthering distrust, hampering both

work motivation and problem-solving, as it impaired the free flow of

knowledge and information.

A few directly involved ‘parachutists’ made radical changes that

promoted the kibbutz ethos, such as ridding factories of hired labor by

innovation, including egalitarian work practices, but their example was

rarely followed by others, especially in Ichud kibbutzim where hired labor

was de-facto legitimate. Admors ignored or suppressed innovators, using

leftism to maintain that exploitation was the prime drawback of hired

labor. Helped by the dominant scientific coalition of kibbutz students, they

neglected the main defect of hired labor, enhancing low-trust, market and

hierarchy controlled cultures leading to oligarchic rule, as Kressel (1974,

1983) exposed. The coalition ignored Kressel and missed how other

kibbutzim barred oligarchization by dissociating the kibbutz from a mass

hired labor plant, rotating its managers and using other solutions invented

by creative kibbutzim. Nor did this coalition explain the failed

industrialization of some kibbutzim: Patrons did not allow it as they feared

the rise of competing leaders who would head mass hired labor plants as

in Kressel’s Netzer Sireni.

Ignoring Stryjan, Scale, Creativity and Democracy

Problems Kibbutz students ignored Stryjan who was right concerning the

decisiveness of creativity and federative structure, as Brumann (2000) has

proven. But like them Stryjan ignored critical ethnographies, missed

oligarchization and its perils, and the integrality of high-trust cultures and

high-moral leaders for both democracy and creativity. In a democracy

public trust decides continuity or succession of leaders, but Stryjan praises

rotatzia which negates this maxim, transferring power to self-chosen,

unaccountable patrons and power elites, while scale proved to be a more


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difficult problem than he had imagined. Handy (1989) pointed to the

conservatism of federative systems due to power accumulation at the

center which stifles units’ creativity. My study supported him, but in

accord with Stryjan, it pointed to creativity due to smallness and autonomy

of kibbutzim and branches, despite FO heads’ and chief officers’

conservatism. Stryjan pointed to the flow of innovations among

kibbutzim, but missed that it was limited to agriculture and consumption,

and was rare in industry where secrets were guarded against competitors,

often other kibbutzim. This could have been solved as in Mondragon

cooperative plants,2 but it would have required trusted and creative

movement leaders open to learning from other successful radical cultures.

Contrary to Stryjan and other students’ suppositions, keeping branch or

plant democracy alive was difficult even when small, due to social gaps

created by specialization, hierarchy and generational gaps. These obstacles

multiplied in FOs. However, had their heads been replaced when the

dysfunction phase commenced by transformational servant leaders, the

latter could have nurtured democracy and creativity.

The Plausibility of High-Trust, Democratic and Creative

FOs Kibbutz research ignored Michels and complementary studies, but

democracy required solutions for oligarchic tendency. Washington and

Jefferson had created the solution of limiting presidencies to eight years,

but if Admors had resigned after eight years, Tabenkin in 1931 and Yaari

in 1935, at peak effectiveness, the kibbutz movement could hardly have

succeeded. Hence, an improvement is required to allow additional terms

for such leaders, as proposed below. If this proposal had been adopted,

Admors would have been replaced in the late 1930s or early 1940s. Could

such succession have assured the viability of KM’s and KA’s democracy,

egalitarianism and creativity? There are signs that it could have.

Tabenkin became leftist in 1937 and fatally damaged KM democracy in

1939 (Naan convention). If a new leader had succeeded him in 1935 or in

1939 in accord with the proposal below and had this leader opted to renew

democracy, he certainly would have faced opposition by Tabenkin’s

2 Whyte & Whyte 1988; Morrison 1991.


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loyalists, but he could have overcome this opposition if he had used

almost unanimous deputies’ opposition to leftism and belief in

egalitarianism and democracy. Yaari became leftist in 1939; if Hazan had

succeeded him in 1939 or 1943 due to the proposal below, leftism could

have been suppressed, and Mishmar Ha’emek’s lively democracy

(Argaman 1997) might have been replicated by other kibbutzim and could

have influenced KA democracy, in accord with Buber’s 1945 directive.

New leaders would have replaced predecessors’ loyalists by critical

thinkers and radicals like Shenhabi, Allon, Avidan and Reiner, and would

have published critics like Maletz (1945) and KA’s partisan survivors

without censorship. The large kibbutz field also required a constitution to

balance leaders’ rights and duties with those of members, as well as a

judicial system with an appeal mechanism that would have assured justice.

Therefore, the tasks which awaited these leaders would have been quite

formidable and might not have been accomplished by them, but only by

radical successors whose elevation would have been plausible, had the

solution proposed below been adopted.

New leaders could have kept Movement headquarters and FOs inside

kibbutzim like the Palmach, staffing them by members, and gearing them

to their cultures, instead of urban locations and capitalist imitation. Barker

(1997: 352) talked about “a process of change where the ethics of

individuals are integrated into the mores of a community”; FOs could have

been integrated into kibbutz mores by the above idea and by involvement

of their pe’ilim in hosting kibbutzim, as were teachers of KA’s boarding

high school in Mishmar Ha’emek. Another great help for kibbutzim could

be establishing regional plants inside them as integral parts of their

economies, sparing them the hurdles of establishing plants aimed at

outside markets and competing with other kibbutzim. Why was this idea

not adopted? A Reg.Ents concern head reacted when I raised this idea:

“Are you crazy? Do you want me to decide which price the kibbutz [which

operates such a regional plant] will get from other kibbutzim for its

products?”

A trusted regional leader and FO executives chosen democratically by a

regional parliament of kibbutz delegates could have decided this price,

fairly balancing the interests of the plant, its host kibbutz and its client

kibbutzim. Alas, for the shaky authority of my interlocutor, a ‘parachuted’


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circulator chosen by an old-boys clique of pe’ilim whose continuity

depended on power and capitals accumulation, it was a menace; such a

delicate decision would have made him vulnerable. FOs situated inside

kibbutzim would have required trusted leaders whose “ethically justifiable

behavior consists of morally correct decisions and actions, in which the

interests of society take the degree of precedence that is right, just and fair

over the interests of individuals” (Hosmer 1995: 399). Leaders’ authority

should have been assured by genuine democracy in which a relevant and

knowledgeable constituency had decided periodically by ballot to what

extent leaders were trusted, and those who did not gain enough trust were

replaced by high-moral, trusted, competent and critically minded ones

who had proven these characteristics in lower echelons. This is the

ultimate solution for high-trust, creative DWOs which are viable for long

periods, no less than bureaucracies.

Sustainable DWOs: High-Trust Cultures, High-Moral

Leaders Unlike Stryjan, high-trust cultures and high-moral leaders were found to

be more decisive than scale for creativity, and scale’s negative impact on

creativity was found largely due to curbing trust and democracy by

hierarchy, specialization and oligarchization which enhanced social gaps

and curbed solidarity. Scale increases decisiveness of leadership for

internal and external coordination and guidance of efforts by specialized

units and participants, and for shaping effective strategies and tactics, but

growing power and capitals gaps enhance suspicions and distrust that

hamper democratic leadership. They encourage a leader’s use of coercive

means, enhancing oligarchization and its perils, including elevation of

loyalists one of whom succeeds the leader and continues anachronistic

policies, but often implement them even worse, causing failures which

cause distrust and minimal conformity; s/he then uses coercive means

which further mistrust, destructive conflicts and failures (Gouldner 1954,

1955). Efforts to avert this scenario by ‘parachuting’ a talented outsider,

usually further it, as outsiders tend to use coercive means (Kipnis 1976).

Therefore, the prime step to make DWOs creative and plausible

sustainable alternatives to bureaucracies is a new succession system that

elevates critical thinkers and creative radicals to leadership, and replaces

them just as oligarchic tendencies commence.


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DWOs can last if they retain creativity (Stryjan 1989), and kibbutz

analysis points out that the ultimate condition for lasting creativity is high-

trust cultures led by high-moral leaders. Ample works cited support it, but

most organizational innovation and learning literature have only recently

alluded to trust decisiveness for sincere conveyance of critical knowledge

among collaborators in innovation, and even then, the pivotal role of

leaders in trust creation was mostly ignored.3 The literature pointed to

innovation flourishing in small units which collaborated within large

structures: business groups, R&D networks, strategic alliances, industrial

districts, etc.4 However, who created trust among unequal partners, and

how was the domineering tendency of stronger partners curbed? The role

of leaders in the creation of high-trust cultures in such structures has been

ignored. For instance, Powell (1990) found networks of innovative firms

were predicated on trust, but he did not explain how trust of smaller and

weaker partners was kept, and who assured them getting a fair share of the

fruits of cooperation. These structures are more egalitarian than usual

bureaucracies, but one may suppose that low-trust relations reign much of

the time in many of their parts due to the stronger partners’ dominance and

the tendency of market forces to ruin trust.5 Federalization of DWOs is a

better solution, provided federation democracy is genuine, solidaristic and

defended constitutionally against oligarchization. This will allow

discretion for DWOs innovation, as well as for their grass-roots

democracy and high-trust cultures to elevate critically minded, creative

radical officers, who, due to genuine democracy, will have a fair chance,

no less than federation officials, to be chosen federation head or

executives.

However, both the kibbutz experience and that of Semler’s (1993)

Semco show that the scale of work units which may achieve grass-roots

democracy, must be much smaller than that of a kibbutz or Jay’s (1972)

3 A few authors in Dierks et al. (2001) and Kramer & Cook (2004) discuss trust

and leadership, while authors in Huysman & Wulf (2004) barely deal with trust

and not with leadership. 4 Sako 1992; Dodgson 1993; Saxenian 1994; Its reviews: Fukuyama 1995; Powel

et al. 1996. 5 Gouldner 1955: 160-2; Shapira 1987.


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‘tribe’ of up to 500 people, containing no more than 10-15 people, like a

kibbutz branch and a Kochav plant department. Thus, a triple- or

quadruple-deck federative structure is required, which will enable enough

smallness within a large federation of DWOs.6 A federation’s success,

however, enhances the prestige and power of its head and may elicit

coercion efforts even during his period of effectiveness, for instance, by

limiting the discretion of units and elevating loyalists. Mitigation of such

tactics requires a parliament of delegates who are chosen personally by

members in each DWO, proportional to its size, as in the Movements’

early days, and may also be a senate of equal DWOs representation. It will

enable critically minded and creative radicals who have been negatively

selected for managerial promotion, to become delegates, allowing them

the opportunity to gain trust, power and capitals by parliamentarian

activity and the use of a free press. They would be able to use these

resources to overcome federation executives conservatism and/or enhance

creativity by replacing them.

Genuine democracy was not easy to create and sustain even in a branch

of 10-15 permanent workers and dozens of seasonal ones with kibbutz

agricultural technology of the 1930s. It succeeded only in high-trust

kibbutzim wherever talented, high-moral and competent managers trusted

workers, encouraged their involvement in branch problem-solving and

adopted their ingenious solutions, did not apprehend their success as high-

trust relations assured that members would not try to succeed them

prematurely. Premature succession in higher offices such as DWO

managers and DWO federation executives, can be mitigated by the

proposals detailed below which will slow down promotion. However,

where will successors come from? Can DWOs and their FOs use

outsiders?

Inside Successors and Grass-Roots Democracy A major reason for misconstrued failures of DWOs is the complex

etiology of organizational leadership succession and its effects on various

outcomes. It has been studied intensively since the 1960s, but with poor

6 The Shakers used this idea to maintain trust in autonomous “families”:

Latimore 1991.


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results; there has been no agreement on its etiology and on its outcomes.

Past findings have been recently brought into doubt or found to be correct

only in specific scenarios.7 Some found that outsider successors enhanced

innovation and performance, but Melman (1983) found that these effects

were short-lived: to get a grip on power, outsiders tend to seek instant

achievements to boost prestige at the expense of long-range aims, as

others and I have found.8 Outsiders were common in corporate US where

mostly ineffective managers won the promotion race,9 much less so in

Europe and rare in corporate Japan. After many Japanese firms succeeded

in besting US ones innovatively, interest in high-trust cultures led by

insiders has grown.10

In addition to Japan, past exceptional success of kibbutzim also support

the exclusiveness of insiders in such cultures, but no one has proven that it

assures high-trust and creativity for good. First of all, no such culture has a

succession system that suppresses leaders’ oligarchic tendency, which is

not prevented by periodic formal succession, as rotatzia analysis has

proved.11 Secondly, no any current succession system suppresses leaders’

tendency to promote loyalists and ruin trust of public servant officers

whose career suffer due to criticizing mistaken superior decisions

(Hirschman 1970). Thirdly, succession studies have suffered from the

basic flaw described above concerning rotatzia: Succession is only one

among many factors which shape leadership and are shaped by it, thus the

inside/outside succession question must be answered in the context of

these factors, but ethnographies which identify these factors, has not been

used by succession students.

The right type of succession system for lasting DWOs’ success, is that

7 Melman 1983; Chung et al. 1987; Cannella & Lubatkin 1993; Cannella & Rowe

1995; Khurana & Nhoria 1997; White et al. 1997. 8 Gabarro 1987; Gouldner 1954, 1955; Shapira 1987, 1995a, 1995b. 9 Campbell et al. (1995) found 58% outside successions. Career succes of

ineffective managers: Luthans 1988. 10 Dore 1973; Rohlen 1974; Ouchi 1981; Sieff 1988; Semler 1993; Fukuyama

1995. For other explantions of Japan’s success: Kamata 1981; Van Wolferen

1989. 11 See for instance oligarchic rule in a Japanese factory: Mehri 2005.


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which encourages leadership by trust and consent resulting in creativity.

Two prime leaders’ choices largely decide it: One between detachment

and involvement, and the other between conformist imitation and creative

innovation. Only the two latter choices combined can engender high-trust,

creative DWO cultures, and both choices are much depend on a leader’s

habitus. Though most Reg.Ents managers preferred detachment and

conformist imitation, Yaakov and Thomas chose the opposites, largely due

to habitus shaped for decades by a kibbutz culture which encouraged these

choices. As DWOs can only control habituses of insiders, nurturing

insiders is a main tool to assure the above choices. Insiders are integral to

DWOs minority cultures which require morally committed, servant

leaders who believe in their cause, rather than outsiders who may be

moved by expediency. Moreover, critically minded, talented insiders who

have been socialized to a DWO’s unique values and norms are better

equipped for DWOs leadership due to better knowledge of followers’

needs, aims and wishes, since they had came from their ranks. They can

also better use networks in which they are enmeshed to influence others

and introduce required radical innovations without coercion, can solve

major problems in ways that enhance mutual trust, solidaristic democracy

and egalitarianism. For instance, in corporate US most successors are

outsiders and value considerations in choosing them are minimal;

however, suitable values enhanced success: 33% of successors in whose

choice was considered suitability to extant corporate cultures clearly

succeeded; only 11% of them clearly failed (Campbell et al. 1995: 4).

Insiders are integral to high-trust DWO cultures for another major

reason: As main rewards in these cultures are received in the long-run, and

the major one is promotion, outsiders curtail this reward for devoted and

competent officers. Promotion also expresses trust, and especially so, if it

is achieved by ballot which indicates public trust, as in many DWOs.

High-trust Japanese firms use a kind of a ballot: The Ringi system, asking

the consent of prospective role-partners for an officer’s nomination, a kind

of open ballot which proves trust by the relevant constituency. In contrast,

a low-trust Japanese firm with American practices, including

‘parachuting’ outsiders, had no Ringi system (Clark 1979). This is not

incidental; a truly democratic ballot takes place when the choice is

between well-known alternatives. A ballot truly measures trust only if an

incumbent is equated with well-known candidates for succession, and not


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if voters equate him with prestigious outsiders for whom the true reasons

for their successes are barely known, their mistakes and failures have been

concealed or masked in order to ‘jump’, and their competencies, beliefs,

aims, commitments and trustworthiness are largely unknown. “The

neighbor’s grass is always greener” since, due to this lack of knowledge,

an outsider’s prestige is not contaminated by his real past as that of

equally talented and competent insiders, while they possess precious local

knowledge which he lacks. Such knowledge often encourages continuing

current practices which may require radical changes, but if a DWO’s

information system joins the openness of high-trust informal information

networks in acknowledging members of candidates’ leadership qualities as

they were exposed along their career, they can choose the right insider

who will introduce the required radical changes as in many democracies.

Slow Promotion A norm of slow promotion helps to assure trustworthy creative leaders.

Even if the Iron Law of Oligarchy is solved by the proposal detailed below

and successful leaders continue only up to a dysfunction phase, Kets De

Vries’s (1993) findings point to power’s negative effects commencing

earlier, after a number of major successes, some loyalist promotions and

cementing a ruling clique. In accord with Ansell and Fish (1999) and

kibbutz findings, a leader may become indispensable by failing critical

ascenders by using his/her loyalists. However, a strong incentive against

such low morality can be a succession system that slows promotion and

immunes leaders against early loss of standing, as Dore (1973: Chap. 9)

explains. Even the semi-rotatzia of US Presidents, the two-term-only

system, speeds up promotion as it bars some of them from continuing for

their full period of effectiveness. Hambrick and Fukutomi (1991: 723)

presume that this period is up to 11 years. Vancil (1987: 83) found that US

corporations were aimed at a CEO (Chief Executive Officer) tenure of up

to 12 years, and decisive successful deeds by leaders indicate that it may

be even longer: Ben-Gurion’s most praised deed, the establishment of the

State of Israel, was taken after he had headed the Jewish community in

Palestine for 13 years, and Tabenkin set up the Palmach after 19 years of

KM leadership. However, he commenced oligarchic leftism in his 14th

year in office, and Yaari in his 12th year. Thus, allowing highly trusted

leaders 12 years in office, and a few, ultra-trusted ones even 16 years,


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seems preferable as it slows down promotion by allowing full use of their

phase of effectiveness.

Slowing promotion in a DWOs’ federation requires a reward provision,

which will encourage heads of DWOs and branch/department managers to

prefer seeking additional terms over seeking promotion. A proper reward

could be formal symbolization of members’ extra trust of better leaders: If

each re-election to a managerial office requires a higher majority than the

previous term, this symbolizes extra trust, publicly proving the extra

esteem a leader enjoys. S/he will be known as an excellent leader since

only few are re-elected for a third term due to support by a majority of

more than two-thirds, and even fewer to a fourth term by a majority of

over 88% (see below). This extra esteem may be even more rewarding if it

also leads its bearers to head the federation, rather than a federation

official who had been a DWO head only one or two terms. This way,

higher trust in previous offices will become a prime yardstick for choosing

leaders, while creating a strong incentive for DWO heads to remain for

more terms, preferring to seek re-election rather than promotion to a

federation executive job.

Extant Iron Law Solutions, Their Defects and a New

Solution However, before detailing the proposal for deciding continuation or

succession of a federation head, let us look at extant Iron Law solutions.

Large American corporations try to obviate the Iron Law by a norm of

early retirement of CEOs: they are rewarded by generous severance

benefits known as ‘Golden Parachutes’. Vancil (1987: 83) found this a

success, as only 13% of CEOs stayed longer than the maximum

anticipated tenure of 12 years (p. 79). This expensive instrument, however,

has considerable negative effects: Like rotatzia it is formally unrelated to

a leader’s efforts and successes, while due to its egoistic nature, self-

serving deeds are encouraged, such as adding outsiders to the Board of

Directors who have approved generous ‘parachutes’ elsewhere (Davis

1994: 220). This solution is certainly not the right one for DWOs.

Another solution is a formal limit for re-election, as that of US

presidents. However, F.D. Roosevelt violated this limit in 1940 despite

institutionalization for 143 years, thus it pointed to vulnerability of a

formal limit, as also proved rotatzia violations by senior pe’ilim. Thus, a


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more robust solution is required. Roosevelt’s violation was not just an

outcome of voters’ trust in him; quite significant seemed to be power and

capitals accumulated during eight years in office that gained him support

of influential figures, support of loyalists which he promoted, etc. Hence,

the 55% of the votes he received included a significant part of the

constituency that might not have really trusted him and would not have

voted for him without these figures’ and loyalists’ influence, and other

impacts of his power and capitals accumulation. Thus, the intruding effect

of these resources should be neutralized if trust level is to decide

continuity. Neutralization can be a threshold of higher trust, for instance,

requiring a two-thirds majority for a third term. Accordingly, re-election

for a fourth term must be conditional on an even higher majority, so that

only very few exceptional leaders who remained high-moral and creative

for 12 years will gain it. This threshold should be high enough to shatter

further continuity in accord with an aimed limit of sixteen years; thus a

fifth term threshold on the same gradient would have to be above 100%,

i.e., impossible. How much higher does each threshold have to be in order

to assure that? Must the gradient of threshold elevation be linear or is an

exponential one more proper?

Goode (1978) found leaders’ prestige tends to exponential growth with

continuity; thus, in order to neutralize its growth, exponential growth of

majority thresholds should be required. A first re-election contest is

selective even with a simple majority threshold, as indicated, for instance,

by only some half of US presidents being chosen to a second term. Hence,

higher majority thresholds are required only from a second re-election

onward, and they should be raised exponentially. Thus, if a re-election for

a third term requires, let us say, a two-thirds majority, then for the fourth

term, the threshold for re-election will have to be a 88% majority, and this

creates a built-in mechanism that bars fifth term since the same elevation

gradient means over 122% majority, i.e. impossible. This limitation will

be more robust than a formal limit of terms, if it will be applied to all

managers of branches/departments, DWOs, FOs and to federation heads,

as well as to parliament delegates and federation officials, to prevent their

oligarchization.

The idea of a higher majority threshold for political decisions of special

importance is not new in democracies, and is common in deciding

constitutional changes. It was also used at least once against Iron Law: In


348

1977, the Israeli Labor Party decided to refresh its Knesset representation

by asking members who wanted a third term or more to obtain approval by

a 60% majority of its Central Committee to be eligible. Many of its

Knesset members, including KM’s Galilee, failed to pass this test and

retired (Brichta 1986: 23). However, while the 60% threshold was high

enough for making a selection among Knesset members who were

secondary to party heads, it seems too low for DWO heads and calls for

manipulations which a threshold of a two-thirds may deter. Moreover, the

60% threshold is not high enough to bar a fifth term.12 Of course, only

experience will show the right thresholds for obtaining optimal leader

successions.

Constituency: Membership and Eligibility to Participate in

Voting A major question which must be answered is: Whose trust must a

candidate gain in order to be elected or a leader to be re-elected? For

branches/departments and DWOs where everyone personally knows

officers, the answer is simple: all members with a few years of seniority,

i.e., those with some knowledge of both the current head’s performance

and his prospective successors’ records are the right constituency that will

also choose federation parliament delegates. The same principle of

constituency consisting of all knowledgeable role-partners can be used to

decide continuity of federation officials, only that it is not a natural group,

but one decided upon constitutionally. There is, however, the question of

ownership equality: Is it necessary that they all equally share holding of

DWO assets as in a worker cooperative?

In accord with Fox (1974: Chap. 2), this is not essential; high-trust

relations require that everyone is considered an equal partner in decision-

making concerning his/her work, and not an employee whose fate and the

fate of his/her work unit is decided by superiors which others have chosen.

In Brazilian Semco, in which Semler (1993) and his family hold equity,

democracy and high-trust seem to prevail, as everyone votes on all major

decisions, including the choosing and replacing of unit managers and their

12 60% threshold for a third term, means 72% for a fourth term, and 87% for a

fifth term.


349

remuneration. Ownership differences must not hamper trust and

democracy if everyone with enough seniority and proved trustworthiness

becomes an equal partner in decision-making, no more a replaceable

market commodity which is discarded in rough times or fired when

criticizing boss’s mistakes. High-trust cultures flourish by preferring

members’ and community needs over immediate profits, though long-

range profitability is essential to compete in markets. This preference does

not mean equality of ownership and salaries. As Dore (1973) and others

found, lifetime employment was integral to high-trust Japanese firms,

while its breach degraded trust (Clark 1979). Kibbutzim and Mondragon

proved that secured employment was feasible within large federations of

varied enterprises. No kibbutz ever fired superfluous members, while, in

Mondragon, during periods of economic recession or when a cooperative

collapsed, cooperators were moved to cooperatives where there was work,

and the unemployed received redundancy payments until new jobs had

been created in extant cooperatives or in a new one which the federation

established (Morrison 1991: 172-80). Thus, a large and well-led DWO

federation can assure lifetime employment for all those who proved

competence and trustworthiness.

No Bi-Partisan Politics, Parliament of Directly Chosen

Delegates

In DWO federations the question of constituencies which choose and

replace leaders is more complex and more important, as the case of

kibbutz FOs indicates. Lipset et al. (1956) studied the International

Typographical Union and concluded that only bi-party politics prevented

oligarchy in this union. According to Michels, however, political

competition enhanced parties’ oligarchization, as was true of parties in this

union; thus, it was not a solution. Moreover, Stepan-Norris (1997) found

that democracy was viable for long in a trade union federation where two

ideologies competed without organized parties. Parties are inappropriate

for deciding leadership for another reason: Thriving in competitive

markets requires the mustering of best talents and creative, critical minds

in authority jobs, while party politics curbs this, rewarding loyalty,

acumen and Machiavellianism which deters such talents and hampers

competitiveness. Bi-partisan politics in the KM, Tabnkin’s supporters


350

versus Ben-Gurion-Berl’s, enhanced oligarchy, leftism and brain-drain,

while such politics in Israel’s large bus cooperatives Egged and Dan, led

to incessant scandals, corruption charges and counter-charges, even some

criminal deeds and Machiavellianism: postponing elections to hold power,

co-opting the opposition and other tricks which signal the ailing

democracy of low-trust cultures (Russell 1995: Chap. 4).

Without parties who will choose federation heads, decide continuity or

succession, and how will they be chosen? A presidential-like vote by a

mass of federation members who are not role-partners of an incumbent

and his challengers is not suitable as they are not knowledgeable enough,

while his role-partners tend to include too many interested loyalists. A

parliament of delegates and a senate chosen by DWO members are better;

delegates and senators who are periodically convened to decide major

decisions are better equipped for making wise choices of federation heads

and their replacement as they are more intimately involved than ordinary

members with leaders’ behavior and can discern early moral decline and

dysfunctioning. In addition, an independent press is required, and a third

necessary provision is a continuity norm that makes delegates and senators

both powerful and knowledgeable, but bars oligarchization. The same

higher majority norm for each additional re-election, can prevent this

major defect of American presidential regimes.13

An important question is how to assure that many delegates will come

from among low officers and artisans, to curb pitfalls of patronage and

cliques among elites. There are also other constitutional questions: Who

will chose the federation’s Executive Committee, and how many delegates

and senators versus DWO heads and federation officials will it include?

Will they hold portfolios like Cabinet Ministers? Will DWOs establish

FOs in addition to the federation, like for instance the Reg.Ents? What

kind of judiciary is required? These are not easy questions since answers

determine power structures and require the balancing of rights and duties

of all concerned, while, unlike state constitutions, these answers must

assure competitiveness and suit both size and ramifications of a DWOs

system. Mondragon students alluded to the parallel governance structures

13 See Latin America’s literature cited in Chap. 1, and Drury 1959 on US

senators.


351

of Social Councils and Managerial Councils, but ignored the problem of

oligarchic rule, though managers continued for life, as against Social

Council members’ maximum two four-year terms.14 Casmir (1996)

findings accorded Michels (1959[1915]): The latter were quite powerless

as against continuous managers, thus the same constraints on continuity

have to reign in all major offices.

Can the Proposed Solution Make DWOs Sustainable for

Decades? The last question to be answered is whether the proposed solution will

assure sustainable DWOs. Critics may be right in pointing to my own

analysis of kibbutzim and FOs, which prove that problems of retaining

genuine democracy and high-trust cultures in a large and complex modern

organizational field cannot be solved by just one measure, the institution

of a new succession system of leaders, executives, managers and

delegates. However, they have to put the proposal in context: It will not

only enhance leaders’ morality, engender high-trust cultures and creativity

by itself, but one can presume that the leaders who adopt the proposal will

also cope creatively with derivative constitutional questions and other

problems of sustaining such cultures. Their actions will surely use kibbutz

and other DWO lessons to enhance constitutional creativity in the service

of solidaristic democracy, trust and egalitarianism, as these factors are

now known to be decisive, and their etiology is much clearer. Every

history of a viable democracy has witnessed constitutional amendments,

and the same will be true of DWOs once they become sustainable by the

basic, decisive change proposed here.

This is also plausible because once the principle of a higher majority

among a relevant constituency decides officers’ continuity, a creative

leader will have a stronger incentive to promote what Yankelovich (1991)

called high quality public judgment among constituency, since, when such

judgment fully appreciates his/her achievements, it will enhance trust and

career success. This incentive is lacking in kibbutz FOs and extant DWOs;

such judgment is inconsequential where mostly Iron Law, Hirschmanian

laws, patronage and cliques prevail. High quality public judgment is

14 Whyte & Whyte 1988: 37-41, 96-102, Chap. 14; Morrison 1991: Chap. 7.


352

feasible where information and knowledge flow freely and sincerely,

which is more plausible in high-trust cultures led by high-moral, highly

involved servant leaders. Kochav proves that such a culture has its own

self-enhancing tendencies. For instance, it breeds cultural creativity, which

enhances value consensus that enhances trust, and critical journalism

which, in turn, diffuses information and knowledge for high quality public

judgment. When the basic laws of the democratic game are changed by the

adoption of the proposal, these self-enhancing tendencies will emerge, and

ascending trust spirals due to competent, high-moral and creative leaders

will expedite the suppression, sidetracking and exiting of self-servers and

power mongers, as has occurred in creative kibbutzim in their creative

periods. These exits will curb opposition to radical new solutions, and the

enhanced creativity will enable DWOs to be victorious over bureaucratic

rivals in markets, as has been many DWOs until their oligarchic phase.15

Large, sophisticated organizations cannot succeed without a minimal

hierarchy; even a quadruple-deck federative structure is a kind of a

hierarchy which creates social gaps. Genuine democracy with trust-

dependent continuity of leaders that encourages their involvement in

solving problems shoulder-to-shoulder with lower echelons, in addition to

enhancing better, creative solutions, will minimize social gaps and

enhance solidarity. This will help leaders’ care for members’ needs,

wishes and aspirations, thus increasing commitment for their fulfillment

and encouraging transformational leadership whenever circumstances

make it essential. Hence, crises will more often be tackled effectively, and

no desperate public will remain loyal to seemingly charismatic saviors as

kibbutz members depended on Admors in the 1950s crises, and on

consultants who just sold them capitalist solutions during the current crisis

(Dloomi 2000).

The proposal can also change the fate of DWOs because it prefers

trusted, effective leaders who prove themselves for long periods in lower

echelons, over ‘high fliers’, ‘meteoric’ careerists who advance due to

seemingly outstanding performance, achieved by brilliant solutions which

are often proven to be spurious after the ‘high fliers’ are off the scene and

15 Shapira 1979a, 1980, 1990; Whyte & Whyte 1988; Morrison 1991; Heller et al.

1998; Altman 2002; Cloke & Goldsmith 2002; Sen 2003.


353

take no responsibility for bad long-term effects. ‘High fliers’ are part and

parcel of low-trust bureaucracies where only superiors decide on

promotion, causing a negative correlation between career advance and

officers’ effectiveness, as has been proven by students from Dalton (1959)

to Luthans (1988). The proposed solution will curb this tendency by

preferring servant trusted leaders like the many who brought about kibbutz

success, from Shenhabi, Avidan, Allon and my late father, to Reiner,

Yaakov, Ran and Thomas, because the main yardstick for promotion will

not be an officer’s few recent successes, but years of effective, creative

leadership with a long-time horizon (Jaques 1990), continued high

performance of his/her branch/DWO/FO achieved by mustering

participants’ intangible resources for optimal solutions. While some

brilliant officers will advance faster in lower echelons, less brilliant but

more effective and committed leaders who solve cardinal problems by

seeking deeper understanding and trying varied solutions, will advance

slower. However, since they will be re-elected repeatedly, they will

surpass the brilliants and will head the federation or other FOs due to the

conspicuousness of exceptional levels of trust in them. Moreover, even

many brilliant officers will seek re-elections as branch/DWO head to

prove the wide trust they enjoy. Thus, the proposal can reverse the

negative correlation between effectiveness and career success, and this

will greatly help DWOs to best bureaucracies in competitive markets.

With all due modesty required of a proposal which stems from the

work of a single student, I do not think the decisiveness of the change I

propose is very different from that provided by Washington’s and

Jefferson’s norm which spared the US many oligarchic perils that have

troubled Latin America with rotatzia of presidents. Moreover, the great

difference between US democracy and that of Latin America emerged

despite the partial nature of the US solution: On the one hand, it has

caused premature replacement of some presidents while still in their phase

of effectiveness, while on the other, it did not bar oligarchic Senators,

Congressmen and officials like J. Edgar Hoover (Drury 1959).

The decisiveness of succession timing can be seen in Ben-Gurion’s

most acclaimed decision, the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948,

when Jews were only 32% of the population of Palestine and were a tiny

minority in a large, hostile Arab region. He decided it when he had headed

the Jewish Agency for 13 years and the World Zionist Organization for


354

about a year and half; he was very powerful while still effective. Earlier,

he might not have been strong enough to lead the state’s establishment

through all of the fateful consequences of the decision, while a year later

(September 1948), signs of his dysfunction emerged: The dismantling of

the Palmach and the sidetracking and pushing of its best commanders out,

which seriously hurt army effectiveness, enraged Admors and left him

with no alternative but a coalition with religious, anti-socialist parties,

which survived only two years due to repeated political crises. Despite his

signed promise in the Independence Declaration, no constitution was

adopted and excessive immigration caused a major economic setback,

misery for years for half a million people and malignant social conflicts

(Shitrit 2004). If Ben Gurion had been replaced before December 1946 as

head of the Jewish Agency, he would not have been chosen WZO head

and this surely would have changed history of Israel’s establishment. If he

had been replaced in 1950, after a series of grave failures, it could have

spared Israel many of the troubles of his dysfunction phase, up to 1963

and beyond.16

Timely succession of leaders is decisive, as is the choice of the right

successors. A genuine democracy which can be achieved with the above

ideas may not assure optimization of both in every case, but it can prevent

oligarchic processes in most cases, making DWOs sustainable in the long

run by the elevation of high-moral, effective and creative, servant

transformational leaders, the ultimate condition for DWOs succeeding

bureaucracies as the hegemonic organizational form of a highly

specialized and very complex working world.

16 Failures led to his resignation in late 1953, but he returned in early 1955

(Shapira 1984: 140-1). After last resignation in 1963 he impeded his successor,

Eshkol, up to 1969, both directly and through loyalists Dayan and Peres.

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NAME INDEX Abramovitz, S. 49, 95, 99, 138. Acton, Lord 15, 135, 220. Adar, B. 62, 115, 129, 206. Adar, G. 44. Adler, P.S. 14, 27. Aharoni, A. 8, 60, 69, 73, 170, 174. Alexander, E. 198. Allon, Yig’al 173, 178, 180-5, 221,

339, 353. Altman, M. 36, 352. Am’ad, Z. 9, 11, 37, 122, 201, 223,

236, 275, 322. Amir et al. 310-11. Amir, E. 187. Ansell, C.K. 182, 345. After, Yaakov 71-2, 93. Arad, N. 71, 91. Argaman, D. 7, 11, 17, 69, 71, 88, 90,

111, 143, 168, 179, 226, 270. Arieli, E. 50, 63, 91, 94. Aristophanes, Athens playwright 10,

223. Armoni, O. 60. Arnon, O. 84. Atar, A. 62, 112, 129, 206. Avidan, Shim’on 184-5, 221, 339. Avneri, A.L. 115, 160. Avraham, Carmelit’s veteran leader

218, 253, 257-60, 269, 272, 293. Avrahami, E. 45, 50-3. Ayalon, H. 302. Axelrod, R. 8, 37, 153, 222, 330. Badaracco, J.L. 147, 203. Baer-Lambach, R. 25, 37, 79. Banay, A. 102. Banfield, E.D. 12-3, 34, 103, 116, 147,

158, 198, 209, 263. Bar-El, L. 144. Bar-Gal, Y. 40, 232.

Bar-Sinay, B. 273. Barak, Carmelit’s patron 251-61, 268,

321, 325. Barak, M. 132. Baratz, Yosef, 63, 119. Barbuto, J.E., Jr. 17, 110, 143-5. Barkai, Y. 91. Barkai, H. 3, 26, 42, 167. Barker, R.L. 146-8, 333. Barley, S.R. 57, 151. Barnard, C.I. 46. Bashan, A. 5, 45, 87, 92, 94. Bass, B.M. 143. Bate, P.S. 19, 35, 151. Beilin, Y. 8, 46, 60-1, 73-4, 82, 141,

174, 182, 185. Ben-Aharon, Yitzhak 63, 71, 162, 165,

172, 176. Ben-Avram, B. 94, 119, 144, 167. Ben-David, I. 33, 100. Ben-Hilel, S. 50, 91. Ben-Horin, T. 113, 168, 188, 235, 303. Ben-Gurion, David 72, 93, 163-5, 172-

3, 176-8, 345, 350, 353. Ben-Rafael, E. 1, 5, 16, 28, 44, 47, 53,

59, 62, 66, 68, 143, 288. Bennis, W. 143, 297, 323. Bentov, Mordechay 63-4, 69, 166,

187, 190. Berge, B. 25. Berger, P.L. 72. Berl (Katzenelson), 164-5, 169. Bettelheim, B. 41. Beyer, J.M. 17, 111, 143. Bien, Y. 5, 45. Bierly III, P.E. 25. Bigley, G.A. 14, 34. Bijaoui, S.F. 171, 191. Bilski, Kochav’s veteran patron 120,

267, 272, 279, 287, 306, 318.

Name Index

385

Binenfeld, D. 45. Bird-David, N. 56, 126. Blalock, Jr., H.M. 34. Blasi, J.R. 1, 59, 63, 66, 128. Blau, P.M. 80, 281. Bloch, Z. 249. Bloomfield-Ramagem, S. 194, 233. Bobbio, N. 136, 263. Bott, E. 277. Bourdieu, P. 1, 22-4, 38, 56-9, 64-70,

112, 126, 152, 213, 277, 328. Bowes, A.M. 41, 59, 62, 66, 112, 116,

157, 234-5, 239, 245. Bowra, C.M. 10, 264. Bradach, J.L. 35. Brichta, A. 348. Brockner, J.P. 148. Br”t, Y. 30, 75, 78. Brum, Avraham 3, 6, 40, 48-9, 63, 74-

5, 81, 86, 101. Brumann, C. 4, 12, 23-6, 44, 58, 337. Bryman, A. 6, 57. Buber, M. 1, 4-5, 24, 57, 65, 124, 131,

240, 328-9, 339. Burawoy, M. 93, 148. Burn, A.R. 10, 154. Burns, J.M. 13, 143. Burns, T. 25, 45, 116, 269, 278. Campbell, R.J. 151, 343-4. Cannella, A.A. 16, 343. Cappelli, P. 20, 25. Carmel, A. 184. Caspi, D. 270. Chatman, J. 328. Chang, C.L. 10, 109, 155-6. Chizik, M. 91-2. Chow, Y.T. 10, 109, 117, 155-6. Chung, K.H. 16, 343. Clark, R. 344, 349. Cloke, K. 7, 9, 13, 18, 106, 352. Cohen, A. 3, 4, 56, 81. Cohen, E. 89, 236, 289. Cohen, M. 60, 69, 73, 178, 181, 213. Cohen, N. 7, 64, 200-2, 306.

Cohen, R. 6, 28, 101, 212. Collins, R. 17, 64, 68, 100. Comaroff, J. 56-7. Cook, K.S. 14, 35, 341. Crozier, M. 14, 35, 44, 93, 107, 281. Czarniawska-Joerges, B. 19. Dagan, S. 69, 73, 184. Dahrendorf, R. 263. Dalton, M. 12-4, 29, 103-9, 116-8,

150, 155, 209, 221-4, 281, 332, 353. Dangoor, E. 116, 123. Daniel, A. 32, 37, 169, 186. Darr, A. 6, 30. Davis, G.F. 95, 116, 346. Davis, H.E. 10, 154, 264. DePree, M. 12, 25, 143, 147, 323. Deutsch, M. 27, 35, 105, 106, 145-8,

176, 211, 278, 282. Dierkes, M. 14. DiMaggio, P.J. 21, 24, 148. Dloomi, E. 5, 45, 352. Dodgson, M. 36, 288, 341. Don, Y. 26, 42, 234. Dore, R. 6, 14, 27-9, 34-5, 44, 53, 103,

146, 151, 177, 213, 263, 273, 343-9. Downs, A. 102, 106, 150, 196. Downton, J.V. Jr. 12, 21-2. Drin-Drabkin, H. 26. Dror, Benyamin, Beit Alfa leader, 65. Dror, L. 73, 76. Dror, T. 171. Drucker, P.F. 139. Drury, A. 154, 350, 353. Dvorkind, D. 69, 210, 274. Edgerton, R.B. 106, 150, 177. Einat, Y. 11, 31, 63, 94. Emerson, J. 271. Erickson, E.H. 38. Eshkol, Levi, 63, 68, 119, 354. Estrin, S. 17, 362. Etzioni-Halevy, E. 173. Evens, T.M.S. 66.

Name Index

386

Fadida, M. 1, 7, 55, 59, 61, 63, 68, 80, 90, 101, 111, 116, 121, 157, 194, 231, 236, 241, 244, 307.

Feenberg, A. 14, 16, 363. Fishman, A. 30. Fogel- Bijaoui, S. 171. Folsom, K.E. 10, 109, 155. Fox, A. 6, 8, 29, 34, 37, 41, 53, 106,

114-5, 148-9, 260, 277, 280, 282, 315, 348.

Frank, R.H. 70 Freeman, J. 31, 58, 116, 336. Fridman, Ushi, 49, 91-5, 99, 104, 119,

152, 212. Friedman, V. 201. Fuks, A. 9, 145, 256. Fukuyama, F. 6, 14, 35, 146, 151, 263,

341, 343. Gabarro, J.J. 10, 103, 149-51, 343. Gabriel, R.A. 10, 154. Galbraith, J.K. 95-6, 108, 120. Galili, Israel, 172-3, 180-1. Gambetta, D. 12, 33, 140. Gamson, W.A. 21-2. Gamson, Z.F. 43, 258, 271, 293. Gelbard, R. 274. Geertz, C. 20, 298. Gelb, S. 4, 48, 60-3, 69, 77, 87-9, 94,

103, 191. Geneen, H. 12, 35, 106, 146, 286, 297. Gherardi, S. 5, 58, 192. Gilboa, N. 51, 60, 62. Ginat, A. 62, 91-2, , 95, 129, 206. Gini, A. 146-7, 170. Giuliani, R.W. 11, 143, 148, 203, 286. Goldenberg, M. 71, 159. Goldschmidt, W.R. 56, 100, 127, 308,

332. Goldstein, Y. 24, 63, 69, 76, 144, 167. Goleman, D.R. 143, 185, 291, 297. Goode, W.J. 347. Gorkin, M. 41, 71, 249. Gorni, Y. 21. Gouldner, A.W. 14-6, 35, 37, 93, 103,

107-9, 151, 296, 340-3. Govier, T. 14, 35, 149. Graham, J.W. 12, 18, 143, 147, 323. Gramsci, A. 56, 161. Granovetter, M. 102, 148. Greenleaf, R.K. 12, 18, 147. Grinberg, L.L. 71-2, 94. Grint, K. 146. Grosman, Avishay, 132.

Guest, R.H. 10, 12, 27, 34-5, 44, 106,

143, 278, 296, 330.

Gur, Shlomo, 161.

Gur-Gurvitch, B. 177.

Gurevitch, M. 41.

Gvirtz, Y. 60, 63, 69, 71, 76, 88, 94,

116, 159, 165, 172-3.

Hacohen, D. 186.

Hacohen, Eli’ezer, 65. Halevi, R. 44, 63, 71, 91, 94, 99, 153. Halperin, A. 6. Hambrick, D.C. 15, 23, 110, 144-7,

169, 345. Hammersley, M. 19, 57, 150. Handelman, D. 271. Handy, C. 326. Harrar, G. 36. Harris, M. 15, 20-2, 37, 56, 77, 126-7,

272, 307, 315. Hart, P. 35. Harpazi, S. 63, 91, 112, 152. Harvey-Jones, J. 13, 35, 44, 106, 146. Hawthorn, G. 19, 91, 125. Hazan, Yaakov, 8, 60, 69-73, 77, 83,

93, 97-8, 127, 132, 135, 139, 141-2, 158-9, 162-187, 221-2, 244, 327.

Heidenheimer, A.J. 11, 224. Heller, F. 7, 352. Helman, A. 7, 11, 44, 63, 89, 101, 115. Henderson, W.D. 10, 154. Hickson, D.J. 75. Hirschman, A.O. 4, 7, 8-12, 15-6, 26,

31, 37, 57, 64, 109, 113, 145-6, 169,

Name Index

387

199, 214, 220-4, 233, 239-40, 265, 273, 279, 291-2, 298, 301-3, 326, 330-2, 343.

Holzach, M. 26, 37. Hosmer, L.T. 13-4, 34, 145-7, 175,

196, 199, 220, 277, 340. Hughes, E.C. 103, 108, 150-1, 155,

172, 177, 221. Huysman, M. 70, 340. Iacocca, L. 212. Ilana & Avner. 62, 115, 129, 206. Ingram, P. 5, 6. Israel, B. 180. Israel, Kochav’s patron 120-1, 267-8,

272, 279-80, 286-7, 318-9. Izhar, U. 143, 166, 221. Jackall, R. 12, 150, 155, 209, 224. Jackson, K.T. 147. James, A. 19. Jaques, E. 8, 29, 222, 296-7, 330, 353. Jay, A. 7, 12-4, 26, 34, 37, 44, 103,

107, 116, 146, 150, 154, 221, 254, 288, 308, 341.

Joas, H. 20, 293, 302, 304. Jones, M.O. 148. Kafkafi, E. 8, 11, 46, 60-6, 73-6, 94,

119, 144, 161-5, 168-74, 182, 236. Kanari, B. 60, 73-4, 78, 80, 94, 160-7,

172-3, 176, 179-80, 189, 221. Kane, J. 148. Kanter, R.M. 21, 47, 95, 109, 226,

300. Katzir, H. 169. Kedem, A. 53, 138. Kedem-Hadad, N. 188. Keene, A.S. 44. Kendrick, J.R. 21-2. Kerem, M. 45, 49. Keshet, S. 60, 170. Kets De Vries, M.F.R. 13-5, 107, 158,

197, 212, 220, 299, 313. Khurana, R. 343, 345.

Kinkade, K. 80, 226, 287. Kipnis, D. 150, 341. Knaani, D. 2, 21, 29-32, 74, 80, 186,

282, 316. Kochan, R. 201. Korczynski, M. 13, 34. Kornai, Janos, economist 46. Kostova, T. 69. Kouzes, J.M. 12, 147, 149. Kovner, R. 264. Kramer, R.M. 13, 42, 107, 146, 150,

199, 340. Kressel, G.M. 1, 5, 18, 29, 33-4, 44-5,

56, 59, 61, 63, 68, 80, 89, 96, 99-101, 113-7, 122-4, 157, 195, 200, 204, 229-30, 234, 237, 242, 247, 256, 287, 307, 326.

Krol, Y. 5, 50. Kuhn, T. 67. Kynan, O. 8, 46, 60-1, 73, 80, 186-9,

192. Lafferty, W.M. 7. Landshut, S. 1, 2, 5, 7, 22-4, 47, 59,

61, 65, 71, 164, 167, 236, 248, 278, 307, 328.

Landesman, Itzhak, Tnuva’s head 91-4, 99, 119, 155, 207, 228.

Lane, C. 146. Lanir, Y. 52, 100, 117. Latimore, J. 27, 341. Lavon, Pinhas, 61-3, 68, 71, 117. Lazar, Y. 5, 138. Lenski, G. 9, 15, 64, 76, 81, 126, 230. Leshem, E. 7-9, 122. Leshem, S. 51. Levanon-Morduch, E. 118. Levenson, B. 102-4, 150. Levy, Y. 111, 116. Leviatan, U. 5, 7, 11, 31, 37, 43-6, 53-

4, 63, 94, 98, 113, 122, 168, 196, 229, 303.

Lewicki, R.J. 35, 146, 149. Lewin, E. 50. Lewin, K. 1, 41.

Name Index

388

Liberman, Y. 44-5. Liblich, A. 173, 265, 270, 273. Lifshitz, O. 44-5, 49-51, 62-3, 86, 91-

5, 112, 128, 134, 152, 207. Lin, Baruch, 69, 132. Linstead, S.R. 19, 56, 148. Linz, J.J. 10, 154, 264. Lipset, S.M. 349. Livenshtein, Eliezer, 165, 221. Luthans, F. 28, 94, 99, 101, 142, 331,

340. Luz, Kadish, 62, 119. Lynn, J. 150, 154. Maccoby, M. 12, 95, 102, 107-9, 151,

209, 224-6. Machiavelli, N. 7-8, 31-3, 93, 120,

161-3, 166, 185, 254, 261, 332-6, 349-50.

Mainwaring, S. 10, 153-4, 264. Maister, D.H. 13. Malchi, M. 43, 62, 81, 102. Maletz, D. 77, 153, 289, 306, 339. Maman, D. 102. Manor, H. 155. Manor, G. 60. March, J.G. 196. Maron, S. 4, 26, 45, 51. Martin, J. 19, 150. Martin, N.H. 105, 151, 300. Marx, E. 1, 6, 56-7, 69, 150, 328. Mati, Olim’s patron 119, 231-9, 297. McCall, M.W. 298. McEvily, B. 35. McGill, M.E. 146. McGregor, D. 34. Mechanic, D. 92, 104. Meged, H. 8, 11, 63, 90, 94. Me’ir, Golda, Prime Minister 180. Melman, S. 343. Melucci, A. 22. Merton, R.K. 302. Michels, R. 4, 7-8, 12, 15, 23, 64, 96,

116, 164, 221, 254, 338, 349-51. Miller, G.J. 35.

Misztal, B.A. 13, 35. Moav, cotton gin plant manager 139. Morrison, R. 7, 13, 25, 192, 317, 338,

349-52. Moshe, Kochav’s leader 120-1, 267,

270-2, 279, 283, 287, 293, 318-9. Moti, Chen’s chief economic officer

246-7, 263. Muller, J.Z. 147, 302. Near, H. 3, 16, 34-5, 56-8, 67, 71-7,

87, 112, 136, 152-8, 161-4, 169, 171, 177, 211, 234.

Niv, A. 3, 6, 15, 21, 33, 37, 76, 81, 296, 299.

Noteboom, B. 12. Noy, D. 40, 250, 263, 283. Ofaz, A. 136. Ofer, D. 152. Oplatka, I. 10, 30, 153, 281, 323. Ostrovsky, Gershon, past KM leader

165, 170, 221. O’Toole, J. 13, 143, 147, 323. Ouchi, W.G. 6, 13, 30, 34-5, 52, 146,

152, 263, 277, 343. Oved, Y. 2, 24, 26, 29, 31-2, 80, 261. Parkinson, C.N. 14, 95, 127, 125, 199,

257. Pavin, A. 1, 5, 44, 59, 191-2, 252. Pearlman, M. 33, 75, 105, 236. Pe’eri, I. 112, 114. Peleg, G. 50, 85. Peleg, S. 43. Pericles, Athens leader 11, 153, 224,

325. Perkins, K.B. 265. Perrow, C. 20. Peter, L.J. 14. Peters, T. 213. Petersburg, O. 49, 138. Pettigrew, A.M. 56, 201. Pinye, Kochav’s hashlama leader 298-

300, 307, 312, 319-321, 325.

Name Index

389

Pitzer, D.E. 2. Platt, J. 66. Porat, D. 60, 161. Powell, W.W. 22, 25, 27, 35-6, 146,

148, 288, 341. Preece, J. 13, 27. Presthus, R. 119, 152. Putnam, R.D. 13, 35, 69, 148. Rabin, A.I. 40. Ram, U. 99. Ran, Kochav’s radical leader 218, 285,

287, 290-4, 298, 311, 322, 324-5, 353.

Ravid, S. 43. Rayman, P. 8, 16, 42, 59, 62, 65, 71,

88, 94, 115, 199, 307. Raz, A. 274. Raz, R. 62, 94. Reed, M.I. 13. Reiner, Ephraim, KA’s radical leader

162, 171-2, 175, 182, 184, 261. Rifkin, G. 35. Riftin, Yaakov, KA’s leftist leader

162, 172-3, 176, 182, 184, 261. Riker, W.H. 34. Ring, P.S. 36, 146. Ringel-Hofman, A. 62. Rohlen, T.P. 34, 146, 151, 263, 343. Ron, Y. 6-7. Rosenfeld, E. 1, 7, 59, 61, 64-7, 75. Rosenhak, D. 62, 66. Rosolio, D. 3, 6-8, 16, 42, 46-51, 55,

59, 61, 64-5, 72, 82, 87, 91, 116, 143, 231, 243, 248, 334.

Rosner, M. 1, 5-7, 24-7, 32-3, 35-8, 42-3, 45, 59, 64, 71-2, 103, 146, 168, 186, 196, 200, 202, 244, 281-2, 306.

Roy, D. 14, 277, 281. Russell, R. 5, 7, 24, 71. Sabar, N. 45, 72, 113, 316, 325. Sack, Y. 62, 75, 81, 83, 92, 167. Sagi, Carmelit’s radical 218, 253, 257,

258, 260, 268, 272, 291, 303. Sako, M. 146, 263, 335. Sanders, S. 11, 153, 265. Sasson-Levy, O. 57, 116, 226, 249. Satt, E. 195. Saxenian, A. 27, 37, 146, 288, 340. Scharfstein, B-A. 12, 146, 224. Schwartz, M. 42, 116-7, 128, 194, 252,

260. Schwartz, R.D. 59, 61, 65. Segal, D.R. 11, 153, 227. Segev, T. 172. Seligman, A.B.13, 35, 147. Selznick, P. 14. Semler, R. 4, 13, 25-6, 35, 44, 107,

146, 192, 341-2, 348. Semyonov, M. 191, 302. Sen, A. 7, 13, 352. Sergiovanni, T.J. 12, 143, 146-8. Shalem, E. 42, 47-50. Shapira, A. 180-1, 184. Shapira, R. 1, 3, 6-7, 12-6, 18, 22-35,

53, 69, 88, 99-104, 108-12, 119, 137, 159, 167, 175-7, 186, 191, 199, 202, 210, 268, 312, 327, 337.

Shapira, Y. 71, 163, 172. Shatil, Y. 199, 235, 244, 271-3, 280,

283, 288. Shaul, Chen’s patron 241-2, 246-9,

311, 321, 325. Shavit, M. 61, 73, 178. Shavit, cotton gin plant manager 106-

110, 118, 134, 139, 176, 183, 213, 224, 236.

Shavit, Y. 115. Sheaffer, Z. 44, 115. Shem-Tov, V. 73, 81, 174, 176-7, 221. Shenhabi, Mordechay, KA’s radical

leader 167, 169, 183-4, 218, 222, 339, 353.

Shepher, I. 1, 22-4, 47, 62, 65-8, 211, 228, 306, 307, 312.

Shepher, Y. 1, 33, 40, 59, 89, 99, 244. Shimony, U. 33, 37, 42, 231, 242-3. Shitrit, S.S. 353.

Name Index

390

Shlonski, Avraham, literary leader 86, 159.

Shortell, S.M. 226. Shtanger, S. 102. Shteinberg, D. 83, 128. Shur, S. 1, 59, 65, 258, 293. Shure, H. 9, 12, 60, 81, 119, 169, 174,

178, 218, 221. Sieff, M. 34, 44. Simons, Tal 4-5. Simons, Tony 286. Simon, H. 51, 277. Sitkin, S.B. 158. Smith, P.H. 186. Snow, D.A. 186. Sobel, L.A. 97. Solomon, R.C. 148. Soros, G. 66. Spilerman, S. 191, 302. Spiro, M.E. 1-3, 23, 59, 65, 80, 89,

121. Staber, U. 18. Stalin, J.V. 29, 143, 160-5, 170-5, 182,

186, 323. See also: USSR. Stein, H.F. 35. Stern, R.N. 9, 150, 252. Stepan-Norris, J. 349. Stryjan, Y. 3-7, 13-4, 18-9, 20-5, 33,

36, 53, 57, 98, 186, 213, 234, 260-1, 277, 288, 338-41.

Suttles, G.D. 148. Swidler, A. 23, 153, 196. Tabenkin, Itzhak, KM’s Admor 46,

60, 62, 67, 75, 92, 114, 138-43, 159-186, 189, 222, 235, 305, 339, 346.

Talmi, M. 5. Talmon, S. 60, 65. Talmon, Y. 1, 9, 59, 234. Terry, R.W. 12, 147-50, 203. Teveth, S. 72. Thomas, cotton gin plant’s technical

manager 106-109, 128-9, 132-3, 137-9, 182, 190, 198, 224, 226, 267, 292-5, 344, 353.

Thomas, R.J. 107, 138. Tidhar, D. 71-4. Tomer, Carmelit’s radical leader 213,

252-5, 259, 267-9, 279, 302. Topel, M. 9, 11, 30, 55, 60, 62, 66, 68,

116-23, 128-9, 136, 153, 157, 194, 200, 203, 228-30, 234, 237-9, 244, 306, 332.

Triandis, H.C. 328. Tucker, R.H. 110, 143. Turner, R.H. 22, 157. Tyler, T. 107, 148-9, 200, 297. Tzachor, Z. 3, 60, 69, 74-78, 81-3,

130, 158-62, 166-8, 169-79, 182, 221.

Tzimchi, N. 62, 68, 83, 101. Tzur, E. 172. Tzur, W. 60, 65, 68, 81, 83. Tzur, Y. 62, 129, 154, 266. Tzur, Z. 72, 75, 169, 180. Vald, E. 11, 101, 114, 153, 180. Vallier, I. 59, 61. Van den Berge, P.L. 25. Van Maanen, J. 57, 151. Van Wolferen, K. 263-4. Vancil, R.F. 15, 91, 345-6. Vaughan, D. 21. Veblen, T. 126. Velasquez, F. 264. Verlinski, Nahum, Tnuva’s head 72,

92, 119. Vilan, Y. 9, 11, 60-3, 71, 82-3, 98,

105, 129-30, 174. Vogel, E.F. 263. Wacquant, L.J.D. 22-3, 55, 66-7, 152,

277. Wallerstein, I. 11, 18, 56. Warhurst, C. 253, 260, 268. Washington, George, 97, 111, 223,

325, 338. Watt, J.R. 11, 109, 153-4. Webb, J. 35, 147, 226. Weber, M. 63, 143.

Name Index

391

Westphal, J.D. 148. White, M.C. 343. Whyte, W.F. 9, 13, 25-6, 38, 40, 57,

67, 150, 192, 297, 316, 338, 350. Willner, D. 25, 42, 71. Wolf, E.R. 169. Woolcock, M. 69. Yaakov, cotton gin plant’s deputy

manager 108-9, 128, 131, 132, 137, 200, 267, 353.

Yaar, E. 3, 25, 59, 61, 68-9, 172-3, 191-2.

Yaari, Meir, 46, 60, 66, 68, 73-4, 92-3, 99, 114, 133, 135, 138-141, 144, 157-62, 166-76, 221-2, 250, 339, 346.

Yadlin, A. 50, 62, 84, 129, 135, 139,

181. Yahel, R. 44, 93. Yanai, N. 62. Yankelovich, D. 65, 199, 226, 273,

351. Zait, D. 161-2, 165-6, 172, 176, 183. Zamir, D. 32-3, 38, 50, 186, 196, 203,

238. Zamir, Eli, TKM’s general secretary

50. Zand, D.E. 27, 35, 102, 105, 146, 149,

176, 278. Zelikovich, Mishkay Hamerkaz’s head

90-2, 107-109, 118, 128, 139, 177, 236, 257.

Zertal, M. 162.

SUBJECT INDEX

Admors (prime leaders) conservative dysfunction 28, 73-75, 80, 108, 132, 143, 164-69, 171, 181-91, 291, 300, 337; assumed charisma 109, 144, 181-5, 353; criticized 140-2, 152, 183-5, 213, 222, 300; deputies of 63, 110, 119, 172, 176; detached 177-192, 220; initial high morality 143, 158-61; kibbutzim of 60, 78, 110, 168, 179-80; leftism 143, 161-4, 169-74, 181-3, 213, 333-5; low-moral 29, 73, 109, 157, 162-92; patronage 99, 141, 175, 180-3; power 61, 68, 89-91, 114, 119, 134-6, 142, 143, 168, 170-90, 335; privileges 73, 128-33; tenure 5, 60, 92, 111, 152, 264, 328.

Athens 9-11, 31, 154, 224, 250, 264. Anarchy 43, 194-229, 298, 331-3. Beit Alfa 65, 159, 174, 183, 205,

218. Brain-drain 9, 24, 26-8, 37, 44, 52,

56, 89, 115, 153, 195, 214, 224-6, 232, 235, 240, 243, 249, 297, 322, 343-6, 349.

Cabinet Ministers 7-8, 60, 62-3, 66-

8, 79, 82, 91, 119, 132, 172, 177-80, 184, 271, 283, 329, 349.

Capitalist culture 56, 83, 132, 140; firms 4, 14, 18, 127, 158, 191, 206, 209, 228, 252, 257, 259, 302; gravity 34, 152, 225, 231, 252; owners 136, 147, 191; society 6-7, 27, 43-5, 133, 162, 204, 328.

Careers 7, 9, 11, 24-6, 29, 31, 37, 40-2, 56, 61, 66, 73-5, 87-91, 99, 107-112, 115, 121-3, 133, 137,

174, 183, 194, 201, 204, 209, 213, 215, 217, 221-5, 228, 236-9, 257, 272, 280, 284, 288, 291, 294, 297, 299, 321, 329, 332 (Also: Pe’ilim circulation).

Carmelit 26, 28, 34, 54, 111, 113, 122, 194, 204, 212, 219, 231, 235, 241, 244, 249-61, 268, 283.

Chen 81, 111, 122, 194-5, 212, 231, 240-51, 257-8, 264, 303, 309-310.

CKP (Customary kibbutz paradigm) 6-7, 22-4, 35, 39, 56, 67, 70, 76, 88, 100, 112, 115, 118, 123, 157, 231, 239, 306, 313, 332.

Cliques 19, 33, 59, 97, 108, 115, 117-24, 204, 208, 231, 252-62, 299, 330-32, 334-6, 340, 345, 350.

Collectivism 9, 25, 39, 42, 46, 53, 75, 126, 132, 187, 208, 210, 213, 216, 250.

Cooperation 37, 187, 199, 288, 294. Cooperatives 15-17, 25-6, 36, 42,

71, 84, 86, 192, 302, 337, 349. Communal societies 1-6, 21-27, 30,

33, 37, 45, 56, 64, 66, 71-3, 76-8, 157, 186, 226, 260, 282, 287, 315, 328; isolationism 3, 22, 37.

Conservatism 4, 8-10, 14, 16, 23-6, 28-32, 37, 43-56, 73, 75, 80, 107, 112, 119, 122, 124, 132, 142-5, 154, 157, 168, 171, 175, 177, 181, 185, 187, 190-2, 194, 199, 204, 211-4, 217-27, 234, 240, 247-9, 252, 254, 259-61, 265, 268, 273-6, 279-82, 286, 290, 293, 296, 298, 300, 303, 312, 320, 322-37, 341.

Corruption of officers 10-11, 103, 132, 137, 146, 174, 210, 221,

Subject Index

393

224, 242, 265, 291, 297, 349. Creativity 4, 7, 9, 14-18, 20, 22-48,

52, 54, 73, 104, 109, 114, 119, 123, 125, 132, 144, 153, 155, 159, 168, 173, 183-6, 191, 194, 204-6, 212, 218-20, 222, 224, 235, 249, 257-61, 263, 265, 268, 272-82, 294, 298, 300, 304-6, 308, 311, 316, 319-21, 323, 326, 328-30, 333-5, 337-9, 349, 351-4.

Democracy 3-4, 7-9, 11-18, 21-33,

39, 45, 55, 67, 74, 80, 93, 95, 108-14, 116, 120, 123, 126, 131, 135-42, 144, 152, 154, 157, 161, 163, 167-70, 172, 176, 181-5, 191, 299, 203, 209, 212-4, 216, 221, 226, 235, 238, 248, 251-4, 257, 261, 266-291, 303, 306, 309, 316-8, 323, 326, 328-44, 349-54.

DWOs (Democratic work organizations) 13-19, 25, 339-53. Also: cooperatives, kibbutz, moshav.

Egalitarianism 1-4, 7-9, 17, 22-5,

27-36, 39, 44, 46, 54, 56, 59, 67, 76-9, 92, 96, 100, 103, 109-15, 117, 127, 130-6, 142, 145, 151, 157, 160, 164, 168, 170, 173, 187, 193, 204-6, 209, 213, 216, 218-20, 226, 230, 235, 247, 250, 253, 268-72, 282-7, 292, 301, 303, 309, 314-8, 322, 330-5, 337, 341-3, 351.

Ein Hamifratz 129, 132. Ein Harod 78, 153, 165, 168, 180,

222, 286, 304. Field theory 1, 39, 57, 66, 152, 276. FOs (Federative organizations) 1-

194, 198, 204, 214, 219, 225, 229, 235, 240, 251, 257, 259, 263-5, 271, 283, 286, 296, 305, 318-20, 323, 325-31, 336, 338,

342, 346, 349-51, 353 (Also: Hever Hakvutzot, Ichud, KA, KM, Reg.Ents, TKM, Tnuva); capitalist-like cultures 3, 9, 23-5, 32, 39, 123, 167, 191 (Also: Autocracy, Conservatism, Hired labor, Leadership low-moral); capitalist Trojan Horses 9, 167, 328.

Gan Shmuel 33, 42, 51, 125, 130,

183-4, 186-7, 212, 235-6, 261, 267, 272, 279, 286-7, 299, 303.

Gesher Haziv 51. Geva 33, 29-30, 250. Givat Brenner 111, 204. ‘Golden Parachutes’ 16, 19, 92, 346. Hatzerim 33, 42, 235, 249. Hachof 90. Hazorea 244, 271-3, 280, 283, 288. Hever Hakvutzot 61-2, 67, 71, 79,

92, 119, 144, 164. Hulda 61. Hired labor 4, 18, 26, 31-38, 43, 54,

75, 88, 94, 98, 114, 124, 128, 130, 134, 168, 182, 185, 190, 194, 198, 203, 224, 230, 235, 237, 252, 254, 267, 282, 300, 321, 336.

Histadrut (Federation of socialist movements & labor unions) 60-2, 66, 71, 83, 92, 120, 133, 135, 144, 163, 167, 184, 285, 305.

Ichud (Hakibbutzim Vehakvotzut)

Movement 8, 60, 63, 81, 85, 92, 120, 123, 141, 185, 230, 232, 237-9, 242-4, 249, 337.

Imperial China 9-10, 109, 154. International Communal Studies

Association 22. Israeli: academy 57, 65-7, 98, 109;

armed forces 9, 69, 102, 109, 114, 173, 233, 287, 309 (Also:

Subject Index

394

Palmach); culture 152; economy 42, 82-7, 90, 105, 137, 180, 196, 252, 266, 287; mass media 271; politics 49, 62, 72, 226, 347 (Also: Socialist parties); population 44, 185, 353; society 3, 43, 47, 55, 57, 61, 74, 102, 113, 134, 172, 179, 190, 210, 212, 221; state 3, 62, 73, 120, 236, 347, 353.

Japan 14, 146, 150, 213, 263, 288,

342. Jewish Agency & subsidiaries 9, 50,

60, 63, 72, 75, 81-3, 120, 159, 163, 187, 218, 243, 294, 353.

Jewish Brigade 28, 167. Jewish Diaspora 28, 83. Kibbutz agriculture 34, 37, 42, 47,

75, 81-4, 92, 104, 118, 125, 141, 152, 166, 185, 189, 194, 202, 224, 232, 241, 250, 267; boundaries of 1; branch managers 31, 43, 59, 101, 120, 139, 194, 213, 266, 276, 280-1, 287-91, 304, 310; capitalist-like cultures 195, 213, 231, 240, 265, 339 (Also: Carmelit, FOs, Hired labor, Netzer Sireni); capitalist practices 7, 29, 33, 36-7, 46, 54, 79, 118, 158, 168, 184, 196, 213, 218, 252-4, 256, 258, 268, 281, 306, 336, 352; capitalist symbols 56, 83, 133, 140; chief officers 7, 30, 33, 44, 51, 59-62, 81, 88-99, 110, 118, 122, 136, 194, 198, 202, 205, 209, 212, 225, 230, 240, 243, 247, 255-9, 266, 273, 276, 279-83, 294, 297, 317, 320, 323, 326, 330, 333, 336, 339; culture 9, 19-38, 51-5, 79, 82, 98, 109, 125, 128, 133, 143, 151, 157, 170, 189, 219, 227, 231, 236, 251-3, 256, 261, 282, 303,

328, 334, 344; culture incoherence 20-22, 152, 326, 333; field 1, 6-8, 11, 17, 22, 26-8, 39, 44, 49, 55-7, 66-8, 73, 88-90, 93, 96, 100, 104, 108, 113, 117-24, 132, 135, 146, 154, 165, 191, 203, 212, 229, 261-3, 279, 283, 306, 316, 326-8, 333-4, 338; industry 9, 29, 32-3, 39, 42, 48, 79-82, 86, 95, 101, 169, 189, 194, 232-5, 241, 255-9, 266-8, 292, 320, 337; intangible capitals 2, 4, 9, 14, 23, 57, 63, 68, 89, 99, 106, 116, 120, 123, 137, 153, 193, 204-6, 216, 229, 240, 267, 297, 328-31; ‘internal leaving’ 6, 11, 36, 88, 222, 251, 297, 326, 333, 336. movement strategies 3, 39, 145, 184, 295, 341; population 2-3, 17, 22, 44, 50, 60, 166, 186, 192, 241, 244, 257, 265-6, 296, 303, 314, 324; power elites 1, 9, 12, 55-7, 66-8, 116, 153, 157, 174, 198, 200-211, 221-3, 225-7, 263, 275, 283, 333, 336; prestige 2, 5, 7, 9, 14-6, 53, 61-4, 69, 88, 94, 97, 102-4, 122, 127, 137, 196, 212, 215, 224, 231, 237, 249, 253-5, 257, 260, 284, 288, 294, 297; researchers 3-11, 15, 18, 22, 27-9, 31, 33-5, 37-40, 45, 55-7, 59, 61, 65, 69, 72-5, 79, 83-5, 96, 109, 113, 143-6, 153, 167, 173, 181, 191, 223, 226, 242, 293, 324, 328-31, 334-7, 344; resurrection 15-17, 74-7, 224, 253, 257-9, 264-90; socialist ideas 3, 71, 95, 113, 190, 247, 290, 315, 319, 321, 326, 333; socialist practices 24, 37, 133, 212, 252, 316 (Also: collectivism, egalitarianism, solidarity); socialist symbols 231.

Kibbutz Artzi Movement (KA) 7, 50, 60, 68, 72, 78-85, 91, 131-5,

Subject Index

395

149, 152, 159, 166-72, 177-83, 189-94, 217, 282, 324, 327, 349.

Kibbutz Meuchad Movement (KM) 60-6, 64, 71, 79, 81-5, 92, 142-4, 159-66, 169, 191-7, 179-3, 185, 188, 234-6, 274, 338, 346, 350.

Kiriat Anavim 9, 144. Knesset (Parliament) 7-8, 60, 62-3,

66-8, 76, 82, 89, 91-4, 120-1, 132, 171-3, 176, 178-81, 186, 235, 295, 300, 329, 348.

Kochav 3, 16, 26-8, 33, 50, 53, 76, 89, 95, 112, 120, 124, 129, 132, 152, 193, 204, 208, 218, 229, 235, 241, 263-326, 342, 352.

Latin America 9-10, 153, 233, 236,

241, 264, 350, 353. Leadership, autocratic 4, 7-8, 13-14,

23, 52, 55, 61, 79, 98, 108, 117, 120, 123-5, 127, 133, 142, 144-5, 157-191, 240, 247, 251-4, 264, 327, 335-6; charismatic 16, 109, 143-4, 157-8, 160, 181, 281, 334, 352; detached 105, 149, 170-191, 198-202, 220-2, 254, 302-5, 330, 336, 344; dysfunctional 15-7, 49-53, 80-1, 94-5, 108, 125, 144, 166-9, 174-6, 180, 202, 221, 251, 257, 266, 291, 298, 325, 338, 345, 350, 353; high-moral, servant 7, 11-3, 16-8, 28, 31, 34-6, 73, 94, 120, 124, 134, 144, 148, 153, 157, 173, 190, 208, 224, 229, 234, 250, 261, 265, 268, 271, 275, 281, 290, 302, 313, 321, 331-2, 347, 352-4; low-moral 7, 11, 12, 16, 28, 33, 73, 143, 150, 153, 157, 196, 204, 208-11, 215, 219, 229-61, 313, 320-25, 328-37, 345; much involved 105-8, 141, 214, 221, 247, 258, 267, 271, 277, 282, 292-5, 315, 326, 331, 336, 343; old guard 16, 204, 218, 225, 245,

248, 268, 291, 297, 300, 303, 307, 313, 321, 333; succession 11-2, 14, 18, 31, 91, 96, 103, 108, 119, 144, 152-4, 175, 223-6, 254, 267, 294, 322, 337-52; radical, transformational 12, 16, 31, 55, 124, 142-5, 157-73, 180-3, 219, 253, 261, 267-91, 297, 326, 330, 334-7, 350-3.

Maagan Michael 167, 235. Machiavellianism 7, 31-3, 92, 120,

161, 165, 184, 253, 261, 332-4. Makom 263, 269. Mashbir Merkazi, see: Tnuva Mishmar Ha’emek 68, 72, 78, 127,

133, 158, 167, 178, 182, 186, 261, 302, 339.

Mizra 51. Moshavim 25, 42, 71, 75, 82-5, 86-

7, 90, 130, 159, 167, 224, 320-2. Netzer Sireni 31-3, 98, 114, 122,

130, 195, 203, 225, 230-5, 240, 249, 287, 317, 338.

Oligarchy 4-9, 13-5, 18, 23, 26, 28-

33, 37-9, 45, 53, 59, 61-3, 73-5, 88, 93, 96, 100, 108, 113, 123, 133, 142, 146, 151, 153, 158, 167, 170, 179, 183, 193, 203, 213, 221, 226, 229, 254, 259, 264, 271, 276, 281, 290, 299, 305, 312, 318, 326-8, 333-5, 338, 342, 346, 349.

Olim 119, 193, 229-41, 244, 248, 257.

Palestinian Arabs 159, 162, 164-6,

171, 180, 183, 185, 353. Palmach 28, 39, 79, 124, 132, 136,

159-60, 163, 167, 171, 177, 179, 181-3, 240, 258, 339, 346, 353.

‘Parachuting’ of officers 11, 88, 101-4, 107, 113, 150, 167, 190,

Subject Index

396

199, 213, 217, 231, 294, 319, 330, 336, 341.

Patronage 9, 11, 16, 18, 29-33, 54, 61, 96-8, 103, 106, 110, 113, 116-26, 129, 142, 153, 174, 180-4, 202, 212, 215, 219, 222, 227, 229-34, 236-8, 240, 252-4, 257, 259, 261, 263, 272-5, 278, 283, 287, 289, 292, 296, 312, 319, 325, 329-34, 350.

Pe’ilim (FO functionaries) 7-12, 17-18, 30-37, 43, 48, 59-112, 117-142, 157-9, 166, 169, 176, 181, 187, 196, 201-9, 212, 215-21, 225, 229-32, 237-9, 242, 252, 261, 265, 268, 271, 281, 284, 290, 296, 303, 312, 320, 322, 325; circulation 7-8, 11, 61, 65, 89-92, 99-102, 108-14, 117-23, 131, 139, 151-3, 167, 189, 205, 215-7, 222, 225, 242, 251, 268, 275, 319, 323, 329-36. ex-pe’ilim 11, 18, 60, 75, 122, 139, 193, 199-201, 211, 239, 291, 296, 330, 335; privileges 2, 4-9, 14, 17, 23, 28, 37, 53, 62-66, 73, 76-9, 87, 94-7, 103, 110-3, 120, 126-38, 151, 168, 176, 193, 203-6, 211, 215, 221-6, 250-5, 271, 281-6, 307, 317-9, 329, 333-5.

Rama 26, 34, 44, 51, 68, 79, 193-

230, 233-5, 240, 248, 250, 255, 259, 265, 269, 273, 278, 287, 298, 303.

Religious kibbutzim 30. Reg.Ents (Regional Enterprises) 4,

42-4, 48, 52, 78, 81, 84-7, 98, 100-3, 107-10, 116, 126-9, 136-40, 176, 189, 197, 202, 209, 229, 237, 253, 259, 316, 321, 336, 340, 343-4; Milu’ot 50, 90-2, 98, 104, 119, 139, 151, 212; Mishkay Hamerkaz 31, 78, 89-94, 98, 106, 118, 126-30, 134-41, 176, 237.

Rotatzia 7-12, 15, 23, 29-31, 35, 60, 62, 65, 73, 87-104, 107-13, 117, 120-4, 132, 137, 139, 149-54, 180, 199, 212, 215, 220-6, 231, 240, 249, 254, 263-7, 273-5, 278, 281, 291-8, 307, 311, 320, 323, 336, 343-7, 352. Procrustean bed 11, 29, 223 (Also: Kibbutz careers, Pe’ilim).

Sa’ad 80. Scale 4, 14, 23, 25-7, 39, 45, 54, 69,

89, 138, 224, 291, 299-301, 304-9, 311, 333, 338, 341-2.

Self-work 24-6, 31-34, 37-9, 54, 88, 123, 173, 180, 208, 230, 235, 249, 254, 258, 267, 318, 321, 328, 334.

Silicon Valley 285, 341. Social movements 1-3, 6, 12, 22, 31,

36, 55, 66, 71, 77, 157, 160, 181, 315, 328.

Social research: ethnographers 6-7, 9-11, 18-9, 33, 50, 52, 56, 64-9, 87, 94, 97, 100, 108, 111, 116, 121, 142, 150, 157, 167, 170, 180, 193, 222, 226, 230, 251, 253, 259, 263, 306, 308, 328, 336, 343; DWO students 9, 12-17, 25, 105, 351-3; historians 46, 52, 55, 60, 64, 72, 75, 109, 144, 171, 328; political scientists 117, 263; divisions of 11, 18, 22, 55, 150; scientific coalitions 16, 33, 37, 68, 99, 111, 116, 264, 328, 338; sociologists 11, 19, 25, 34, 38, 40, 50, 54-6, 61, 64-8, 99, 116, 150, 167, 202, 220, 230, 244, 263, 291, 301, 328, 332.

Socialist parties: Ahdut Ha’avoda 73; Le’ahdut Ha’avoda 164; Mapay 72-3, 82, 119, 144, 160-5, 170-5, 183, 203, 305, 318, 323; Mapam 63, 73, 81, 85, 97, 157, 160, 171-2, 175-7, 181; Socialist

Subject Index

397

League 165. Solidarity 9, 11-18, 22, 24, 27, 30,

32, 36-8, 158, 162, 173, 190, 225, 253, 256, 259, 275, 287-302, 312, 316, 319-20, 328, 340, 344, 352.

‘Stockade and Tower’ 158, 165. Stratification 1, 9, 18, 22, 36, 56-69,

76, 79, 98, 109, 111, 119, 126, 128, 132, 135, 142, 148, 190, 222, 230-1, 240, 281, 306, 318, 328, 332, 341 (Also: Oligarchy).

TKM (Tnuaa Kibbutzit Meuchedet)

movement 44, 48-51, 82, 85, 91, 123, 135, 241, 246, 251, 253, 260.

Tnuva & Mashbir Merkazi 72, 82, 90-2, 99, 119, 135, 139, 154, 167, 206, 229, 287.

Trust 9-18, 27-30, 41, 44, 53, 56, 73, 94, 100-5, 124, 132, 135-7, 141-54, 158, 171-6, 180, 185, 190, 193, 198, 202, 206, 211, 214-9, 221-6, 229, 233, 240, 248, 251, 253, 261, 267, 272-81, 287, 291-9, 303, 306, 313, 320, 323-6, 330-53; distrust 9, 14, 31, 34-6, 44, 105, 137-40, 146, 148-51, 171, 196, 199-202, 208-11, 214, 223-7, 299, 312, 336, 341; low-trust 7, 14, 34, 83, 142, 146, 150, 154, 158, 190, 199, 202, 213, 219, 264, 280, 328, 338, 341, 344, 350, 353; high-trust 6-7, 9, 12, 17, 24, 26, 32, 35-7, 41, 51, 54, 112, 123, 144-6, 148-51, 174, 191, 202, 221, 225, 265, 268, 272, 276-9, 287-90, 306, 314, 328, 331, 334, 337-40, 348-9; trustworthiness 144, 149, 177, 240, 269, 297, 311, 344, 349.

US agricultural experts 166; army 9-

10, 25; corporations 15, 34, 100, 106-8, 150, 229, 342-3; officials

11, 223, 226; presidents’ semi-rotatzia 96, 110, 153, 222, 338, 344-6, 353.

USSR 83, 96, 109, 143, 160-5, 169-74, 176, 178, 181, 184, 212, 236, 290, 315, 323 (Also: Stalin, J.V.).

Yishuv (Jewish Palestine

community) 2, 93, 157-9, 163, 165-7, 171, 177.

Zionist movement 2, 72, 81, 93,

130, 133, 135, 144, 234, 282, 328; JNF (Jewish National Fund) 83, 159; socialists 2, 60, 71, 328 (Also: Ahdut Havoda, Hever Hakvutzot, Histadrut, Ichud, KA, KM, TKM, Mapay, Mapam); United Jewish Appeal 59; WZO (World Zionist Organization) 2, 71, 92, 353 (Also: Jewish Agency).

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