By Miriam Tramer
The Israeli kibbutz is based on totally communal production and ownership of property, while locked into a capitalist market economy of a colonial repressive state.
In Israel, I visited a kibbutz in the Jordan Valley and talked with Margaret and Amnon, a couple with two children. Amnon is the son of founders of the kibbutz and Margaret is Australian. She went to the kibbutz to work as a volunteer, married Amnon and stayed.
The kibbutz is not immune to the pressures of the crises in the national and international economy. As well, the Likud government was deeply antagonistic to the kibbutz movement, and imposed on it punitive interest rates (40-45%) which it did not impose on the cooperative agricultural movement based on private ownership, the moshav. This has placed enormous pressures on kibbutz finances, and economic rationalist ideas have taken hold, leading to vigorous debate.
Amnon is a full-blooded economic rationalist. He says that the source of the economic problems of the kibbutz, besides the crippling burden of debt, are poor management practices and some people "swinging the lead". He admits the latter are only a few, but "It does get to me. I know it shouldn't, but it does."
Currently there is a proposal simply to record the hours people work, not to alter pay, but there is considerable resistance. Amnon says that it comes from those who are not pulling their weight. He thinks a public record of people's hours worked would apply a certain social pressure to improve their social responsibility.
At present, while there is a general expectation that people will work at least a certain number of hours per week, some people, alleges Amnon, take numerous days off and there is no sanction. (Most things, such as housing and food, are provided to members of the kibbutz as of right, with no payment required.) On the other hand, if you want a holiday, you have to apply to the secretary of the kibbutz. Amnon thinks it would be better if everyone had to work a certain number of hours per week and be free to take time off without going through a bureaucratic procedure.
There are also moves to pay different rates for work requiring different levels of skill and responsibility. As well, it is proposed to appoint managers on merit. The current procedure is for members of the kibbutz to elect managers.
Amnon says, "One problem is that people are just not interested in going to kibbutz meetings any more, so these decisions are made by a minority. And what", he says contemptuously, "can an old lady, who has been here since the year dot, know about what skills are required to manage an enterprise efficiently?". The sexism and ageism are my mind a founding kibbutz mother, clinging to the ideals of equality and community embedded in the project to which she has devoted her life.
One example where economic rationalism appeared to have worked was in the allocation of electric power. Previously, moral exhortation had been the only method of persuading people to be more thrifty with power.
It had been decided that people should pay for their electricity. An average amount of usage was calculated for households of various sizes and the monetary value of this was distributed to kibbutzniks. If you used less than the average amount, you were better off. If you used more, you had to pay more than the allowance allocated to you. In one year the kibbutz cut power use by 30%.
Margaret and Amnon said that they were freer in their use of electricity because they would be paying for any extra they used. Despite this, they used less than their allocated amount. They realised that previously their more responsible, cautious use of electricity had been far outweighed by the selfishness of others. Amnon was hot about this.
However, this application of economic rationalism was in fact rational compared with what goes under that name in the West. Here monetary allocations are actually reduced in the name of economic rationalism and are not based on a realistic assessment of needs. Here, economic rationalism is an ideological cover designed to reduce public or community spending, and the needs of individuals are left unmet. The application of economic rationalism on the kibbutz, at least with the example of the electricity, was not designed to reduce the well-being of people but to ensure a genuinely more rational use of resources.