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12 ELIEZER BEN-RAFAEL________________ The Kibbutz in the 1950s; A Transformation of Identity A kibbutz is primarily a model community. This model embodies the values of sharing, social equality, and self-management, which, overall, had been until recently widely retained over the decades. Yet the same is not true of the relations between the kibbutz and society. The kibbutz's position in the Israeli setting of the 1950s differed greatly from what it was in the days of the Yishuv. This change was intimately bound to the kibbutz's presentation of self vis-avis society. The retention of the community model notwithstanding, the postYishuv kibbutz indeed exhibited a drastic shift of identity. This transformation is explored in this chapter. A FORM OF TRANSFORMATION Analysts of Israeli society refer to the pre-state years dominated by pioneering and Zionist organizations as a formative period.1 This outlook conveys the assumption that ever since its creation, the Israeli setting has been "predisposed " to respond to challenges in accordance with patterns inherited from the earlier Yishuv experience. However, and in spite of the weight of circumstances and legacies, the behavior ofindividuals, groups, or institutions cannot be denied a degree of autonomy depending on inner motivations.2 This autonomy ofdecision of social actors should be especially consequential when drastic changes of situations set them in new roles, confronting each other with new interests and perceptions. These kinds of change certainly took place when the divided Mandatory Yishuv, headed by an extraterritorial body (the Jewish Agency), became a sovereign state, in the middle of an armed conflict and with a population being transformed by mass immigration. The Yishuv, to be sure, was still recognizable in many aspects of the new state, yet institutions, groups, and individuals were now to carry new roles and share new interests. New rules ushered in a new era. When viewed retrospectively, the Yishuv then appears as but the "pre-revolutionary" period which had prepared the revolutionary era that started with the creation ofthe state, and endured until the essentials ofthe new social order crystallized. Unlike post-1789 France or post-1917 Russia, however , these are the same social and political forces which dominated the Yishuv and continued to be the major actors in the new Israeli reality. Hence, 265 266 Eliezer Ben-Rafael transformation, in this case, primarily means, in structuralist terms,3 shifts of identity implying the adoption of new models of behavior by the same actors. Among these actors, the kibbutz movement held a special role, and constituted both a unique and an exemplary case. We define "identity" as the complex set of assertions which make up the actor's concept of self. These different components or facets express a multiplicity of-possibly contradictory-influences and aspirations, and are not necessarily congruent with one another. Incongruence among facets of identity is bound to create contradictory pressures on behavior, and the notion of transformation then refers to the possibility of a change of relative emphasis on the diverse components-and related behaviors--of actors' concepts of self. Consequently, shifts in the relative emphases granted by social actors to the various components of their identity also imply changes in the tensions characteristic of their condition. It is in this perspective that this chapter discusses the transformation of the kibbutz's identity during the first decade of the state. The kibbutz is primarily a model community which puts universal values into practice. By its pioneering calling, this model also responds to what Aron4 calls an elite-social, ideological , and symbolic. This elite, moreover, was highly politicized. Its members were recruited from political movements and it was, therefore, tempted to translate its social status into leadership status. These aspirations were not evenly shared throughout the kibbutz movement, and varied with the diverse ideological origins of groups and members; yet they were representative of a majority. Seeing the movement's restricted membership (7-8 percent of the whole Jewish population), the ambitions were grounded in a presentation of self which highlighted the kibbutzniks' utmost degree of mobilization on behalf of national and ideological goals. In this respect, the kibbutz movement became convinced that they were realizing Lenin's concept of vanguard.s At the same time, the kibbutz members also forcefully asserted that they belonged to modem civilization, displaying a quasi-religious attitude toward physical work, if"productive" and then lucrative. By both its communal-farm structure and its vigorous economic motivation, the kibbutz was in fact, an example of a capitalist class...

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