One older gentleman who, when I mentioned to him that I want to start a United Order, Kibbutz or Moshav type place here in the USA, he said to me, "They don't work!" Of course, there have been failures, but those that learned to adapt, have worked out in our modern world. The trick is, to find the right solutions!
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| Kibbutz Eilot |
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| Moshav Zekharia |
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| Moshav Nahalal |
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| Kibbutz Yagur |
Originally, out of sheer necessity for survival (i.e. equals = a very motivated people), Jews purchased land, which wasn't always good, and cleared it through very arduous work to make it liveable. A few communities started after the late Nineteenth Century call of Jewish Zionism. Degania Alef (1909) was the first kibbutz.
The Kibbutz: This word means, a gathering, in Hebrew. For your information, if my blog, Gathering Zion's People, were written in Hebrew, it would be Kibbutz Am Tzion.
This was the original model for these agricultural settlements. In the earlier days, people worked very hard to survive. They lived, ate, and worked together as a community. Everybody got the same reward or pay no matter what job they did on the Kibbutz [to eliminate rich and poor -- all jobs were equally important to the collective whole.] There were religious and atheist (cultural Jews) communities. They were successful in terms of living, but socially, damage was done because often the children grew up in a children's home on-site, and the parents, because they worked so much, did not have close family bonds with their children. The children were overseen by a few adults, and without close one on one attention everyday, children sometimes suffered by lack of caring attention, or bullying, or grew up to feel like disconnected adults because group mentality was too strong in their youth. Parents also suffered from this arrangement because of the breakup of usual gender roles within the family structure. This lack of family-arranged living is not practiced anymore.
Around the 1970s-1980s, Kibbutzes were in decline because some of the grown children or grandchildren of the founders left looking for other opportunities. Other members were aging, and some younger people had the tendency to waste food and resources. Another problem: It wasn't always easy for the kibbutz members to agree 100% in regards to how resources were going to be spent or in other day to day running of the kibbutz issues. They found that with some things, it was better to get a majority agreement in order to move forward.
After a trend of some kibbutzes closing their cafeterias or being at risk of completely closing, the Kibbutz movement had to re-invent itself. Some of them privatized to some degree or another.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/13/kibbutz-100-years-old-uncertain-future
Also, there are kibbutzes which, for several decades, have allowed (and still do) outsiders to come do volunteer work on the kibbutz temporarily. You can find kibbutz volunteer opportunities online if you are young and healthy, and you don't necessarily have to be a Jew. As society has become more complex, some descendants have returned to kibbutz life. Others work outside the kibbutz but contribute their income to the cause. Although most kibbutzes are out in the Israeli countryside or small town areas, a few are now urban. Other kibbutzes instead of being strictly agricultural, have an industry or two on-site in addition to farming.
Israel has made many innovations, not just in agriculture. Some kibbutz are now hi-tech. http://www.thetower.org/2367-kibbutzim-transition-to-high-tech-entrepreneurship/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz If you wish, please click on this link to read more about the different types of kibbutz that came about after the original type of 100% collectivism and 100% equality.
There are some large kibbutzes which offer many amenities. "Free {this}, and free {that}," said a news person who visited one of the large kibbutzes in a YouTube video. I hope that is just fun advertising and not the mentality of the kibbutz members, because no resource is truly free. Somebody works, somebody pays. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ies2R__4c58
The best thing about a kibbutz, they say, is the sense of community, and knowing that somebody has your back. It provides a safety net which normal capitalistic living often lacks. All members enjoy the same living standard. Also it provides lots of fresh air and food grown nearby.
YouTube.com is a good, quick resource for watching videos about kibbutz or moshav life in Israel.
The Moshav: It's a particular type of cooperative agricultural settlement, of usually individual farms of fixed and equal size. They emphasize community labor. Workers produce crops and goods on their properties through individual and/or pooled labor and resources; profit and foods are used to provide for themselves. Moshavim (plural of Moshav) are governed by an elected council. There is also a commitee tax which is equal for all households of the community, which means that the good farmers would be more easily able to pay the tax than the worse farmers. The Moshav style was more attractive to the later Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) immigrants, but the Kibbutz was the invention of European Jewry. All collective communities of either type have legal status with the Israeli government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshav
There are several types of Moshav, the most common are:
- Moshav Ovdim: A workers' co-op settlement. Most Moshavs are of this type. They rely on joint purchasing of supplies, and joint marketing of the produce. The family is the basic unit of producing and consuming. In simple English, the farms are independently owned but jointly worked.
- Moshav Shitufi: It is a little bit more like a kibbutz. The economics of production and marketing, and land ownership, are joint: The farming is done collectively and the profits are shared equally. Consumption is family-household based.
The Amish
I went to:
https://amishamerica.com/ and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_raising and
https://www.businessinsider.com/money-secrets-of-the-amish-2013-4
and did not find evidence that the Amish live communally in terms of their finances. However, they still help each other out when needed. They will help each other build a barn, and sometimes they contribute to a family having a hard time, say with a hospital bill. Amish hate debt and are very industrious and frugal, but will do so for a major important purchase (ex: home/farmland). They also pay taxes. Amish also pay taxes, but don't pay Social Security tax unless they work for an employer who requires it. Their communal living is more religious and social, which means that they will live geographically in close enough proximity that they live the social and religious life with each other.
Two similar groups to the Anabaptist movements, which the Amish are part of, are the Mennonites, and the Hutterites. The Mennonites are similar to the Amish, but less strict. The Hutterites, however, do live similar to a religious Kibbutz.
- Hutterites: "Hutterites practice a near-total community of goods: all property is owned by the colony, and provisions for individual members and their families come from the common resources. This practice is based largely on Hutterite interpretation of passages in chapters 2, 4, and 5 of Acts, which speak of the believers "having all things in common". Thus the colony owns and operates its buildings and equipment like a corporation. Housing units are built and assigned to individual families but belong to the colony and there is very little personal property. Lunch and dinner meals are taken by the entire colony in a dining or fellowship room. Men and women sit in a segregated fashion. Special occasions sometimes allow entire families to enjoy meals together. Individual housing units do have kitchens which are used for breakfast meals." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterites
Last but not least, Latter-Day-Saints have a history of living communally, although they were a minority of the people.
Latter-Day-Saints: In the 19th Century, the Mormons had over 200 of these communities. They all eventually closed due to problems between people within the group, or sometimes due to problems with location, like running out of adequate water for farming, or soil problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Order:
"Under the United Order, private property was not abolished. The sharing of goods, often cited as communalism, was voluntary. Members of the church who chose to participate in the United Order voluntarily deeded their properties to the church, which would then give all or a portion of it back to the original property owner as a stewardship. The "residue," or property which was over and above what the owner and his family required for themselves, was used by the church to provide to the less fortunate, who would be required to pay it back either monetarily or by labor. The private property owner was not forced to participate in the Order nor was his property forcefully confiscated. Private property owners were free to join or leave the orders and were in control of their stewardship. J. Reuben Clark, a member of the First Presidency, explained:
Lorenzo Snow, a president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also highlighted the United Order's preservation of individual free will:
***So, it's a little bit confusing, did the person own the land or not?
General human nature is to want to own the basics, at least, something which provides now and security for old age. Who doesn't want to own their own land, a place to call their own and call home, taxes aside? Everyone, except for a nomad. Everyone wants to be rewarded for effort. It's human nature to want security and comfort.
There has to be answers which satisfy the desired balance between self and others, ...ownership, and generosity in the greater common good.
How does this apply?
02/21/2020
