A Debate: Comments on Science and Socialism
Halpern, Ben
The title I have given my remarks on Mr. Diamond's essay-review on the crisis of the kibbutz movement amounts to a confession that I am going off on a tangent. Some apology should, no doubt,...
...Diamond wants to stress is the vast difference in significance between the kibbutz and the great and historic although crisis-afflicted institutional systems...
...While it may be a more delicate matter if I attempt a rough analysis of Mr...
...Diamond makes a number of statements about the ownership structure of the kibbutz, and about diverting "surplus value" from hired labor, of which "most kinds.., are cheaper to support than most members," in order to raise the standard of living of members,—particularly an alleged privileged class among them...
...On the latter point, Mr...
...One single solution for one universal crisis seems to be predicated, with no allowance for various solutions responding in the same general spirit (hence, by an ethic not by a science) to differing local situations...
...Indeed, his statements are so contradictory and yet so blandly certain of the same conclusion from opposite premises, that one is tempted to apply to Mr...
...So MUCH for the prejudices of science...
...A few, however, take on hired hands—and these cease to be kibbutzim...
...Since, by hypothesis, the kibbutz was founded as an expression of such a rebellion and of nothing more, it follows that the kibbutz can have no earthly significance for a modern, living in the 1950's...
...Diamond's motivational system than if he does the same for the kibbutz, yet perhaps the delicacy of the operation may be overlooked if it gets us into such interesting areas (particularly for DISSENT) as certain current prejudices of social science and perplexities of socialism...
...So you're a Marxist...
...Reading these pieces in the light of subsequent events, I find them naive in spots—pardonably so, I hope—but quite as full and concrete on the subject as anything I could cook up for this occasion...
...The leaders will refuse to make even the slightest modifications to adapt to reality...
...But that will get them nowhere with Mr...
...Will they declare that their kibbutz is no longer a kibbutz...
...On the one hand, he tells us that "kibbutz institutions operate with unusual rigidity...
...But in any case, even if one proved that collective child rearing could somehow produce a "normal" personality capable of living in a kibbutz (in the rigid form within which Mr...
...And others, from his own data, feel that...
...Spiro's book (the subject of the review) believes that kibbutz children may grow up so motivated as to be suited for kibbutz living...
...The idea of institutional systems with built-in crises, as in the Marxian analysis of feudalism and capitalism, is familiar enough...
...Nor do I suggest that it is pointless to discuss at what point the kibbutz would cease to be a kibbutz and become something else...
...We get contradictory prognoses from him, agreeing only in their pessimism...
...Diamond, one gathers, hardly believes in this possibility...
...Diamond's essay-review on the crisis of the kibbutz movement amounts to a confession that I am going off on a tangent...
...1951) . While referring to I40 my own writings, I refer to a piece entitled "A Problem in Practical Socialism" in the October, 1945 issue of Jewish Frontier, discussing the question of hired labor in the kibbutzim and in Histadrut cooperatives at an even earlier stage...
...Diamond lets us suppose that the kibbutzim actually behave according to his prescriptions...
...And as the most crushing denial that any of us should look to the kibbutz for inspiration he refers to "the general air of disillusionment and frustration pervading Kibbutz life today...
...not because of "inherent contradictions" dreamed up by cultural anthropology and without meaning to the persons involved...
...This is what Mr...
...If they accept the dictates of history and psychology and alter their practices, they are lost anyway—because, according to Mr...
...Yes," admitted my shocked and startled friend...
...Diamond: the social inventiveness and principled casuistry which the kibbutzim have employed in order to adapt their ideals to their practical obligations...
...Both in the West and East, it is only the ethical and, if you will, metaphysical problems of human dignity, human equality, and human liberty that can animate a socialist attitude, and the Shtetl of Rome, Italy...
...The rest of my apology is that I frankly find Mr...
...Owing to his preconceived diagnosis of a "structural crisis," Mr...
...But this is precisely what Mr...
...Diamond wants to give this common trait an uncommon systematic significance...
...Now a few words about the perplexities of socialism...
...Now, I AM FAR from wishing to deny that there is a crisis of the kibbutz movement...
...Our own brands of socialism seem to have little significance for the countries of the East (let us forbear to discuss how pregnant with meaning are our socialist philosophies in relation to our own situation) , while Eastern socialists who do not wish to go the way of Moscow have regarded the kibbutz and other socialist settlements of Israel as examples from which to learn...
...As for the effect of conditions in Palestine itself, where the kibbutzim served as an effective means of colonization, Mr...
...His analysis is in a state of crisis, while he fights a desperate rearguard action against the facts, refusing to entertain the possibility that the idea itself may he at fault...
...What we were really looking for was Man...
...Who, me...
...Will the members leave...
...and this is what places it in a situation of internal crisis...
...The most characteristic kibbutz group, the Kibbutz Hameuhad, never believed in it...
...If this were what the built-in crisis of the kibbutz meant, one could imagine its lasting for generations to come...
...Ergo, most kibbutzim will die out by attrition...
...As the kibbutzim become wise, they find this out...
...The "shtetl" is now unquestionably dead, and nothing proves it so tellingly for the American intellectual as the mild vogue of literary nostalgia for the "shtetl" which has recently been noted...
...My own articles dealt concretely with this question...
...Tell me," says Sereni, "Is it true that Marxism has begun to enjoy a vogue here...
...A thorough examination of these problems would, I am quite certain, lead to a very far-reaching revision of these "conclusions...
...If there is a question of defining those modifications which the kibbutz can undergo without ceasing to be the kibbutz, it is because the kibbutzim themselves are troubled by these questions and take them seriously...
...It is, first of all, a socialism which seems to see the whole globe as a single system of socio-economic-historical dialectical development...
...This, more or less, is also the dogmatic conclusion of a psycho...
...Excellent," cried Sereni, "I'm a past master at the Marxist demonstration of Zionism...
...The kibbutzim themselves are much too concerned about it to let anyone else ignore it...
...When one declares that such systems cannot last, all one means is that they cannot last forever...
...If this could happen, it would involve changing preconceived notions of Kardiner's and other systems, and Mr...
...analyst like Abram Kardiner, to name one example, about the childrearing practices of the kibbutzim...
...Diamond will no longer recognize them as kibbutzim if they depart from principles which he describes as not only rigid and mechanical but also as irrelevant and unrealistic...
...It is because of this that he denies that the socialist or humanist, Marxian or Freudian theories and the socialist party activities of the kibbutzim have any relation to their structural principles...
...For, he concludes, "They thus cease to exist as kibbutzim...
...in these respects the kibbutz may well serve us as a symbol and perhaps as an example...
...Diamond deplores...
...One may ask, what advantage has a social scientist over anyone else if he has to be guided by what the subject regards as his crisis and his principles, instead of applying a systematic approach of his own which allows him to predict what the subject cannot suspect...
...Diamond says nothing specific as to this...
...But the fact is that the kibbutzim are not bound by Mr...
...Let these references serve as my excuse if I do not enter into a detailed discussion of what is by now a fairly well-known, fully documented, and—for a crisis—surprisingly long-standing "crisis...
...It is a socialism, moreover, which, on the one hand, expects institutions to solve all resolvable problems of Man, and to do so by ignoring, apparently, all human problems of an unscientific,— that is to say, ethical, let alone metaphysical—character...
...Diamond simply waives discussion of this as a possible reality principle built into the kibbutz structure at the very beginning...
...WHAT MR...
...In the kibbutzim, the leaders—and not only the leaders—resist changes in practices which embody principles with a tenacity that seems disproportionate to anyone who does not share their principles...
...But what Mr...
...But Mr...
...On the other hand, we find him saying that the kibbutz may well succumb to circumstances and begin "hiring labor" or making greater allowances for the needs of privacy...
...Diamond his own strictures against the kibbutz leaders...
...There is nothing strange about that...
...They will not give up their youth-movement collectivism, and accordingly, one infers, will continue to submit both the older members and their own children to conditions such as the human psyche (by hypothesis) cannot tolerate...
...Diamond's own socialism is like is perhaps indicated by these observations...
...But if there is a crisis in the kibbutzim, it is because of conflicts of . principle that the members themselves experience...
...Either way, they are lost...
...What remains vague is just what is going to happen when crisis finally succeeds in "dissolving the collective structure" of the kibbutz...
...The resolvable non-ethical and non-metaphysical problems of men in America today— and generally in the democratic West—probably do not require socialism as their solution, except the "creeping" kind socialists are reluctant to recognize as socialism...
...In other parts of the world—particularly the excolonial world—one or another form of totalitarianism is probably better adapted scientifically for the solution of these problems than is democratic socialism...
...above all, we have not succeeded in discovering Man...
...About the crisis of the kibbutz movement, I wrote a rather full account, everything considered, in the Summer, 1949, issue of Modern Review (a quarterly then published by the American Labor Conference on International Affairs) , supplemented by articles in the Jewish Frontier then and later (June 1949, Sept...
...Diamond seems to imagine...
...Even the founders of the kibbutz have themselves grown up and can no longer sustain a social system based on attitudes of post-adolescent rebellion: hence, the internal crisis of the kibbutz...
...They are neither so rigidly doctrinaire as he paints them nor, when they adjust to realities, need they do so by such abject submission as he says is their only alternative...
...The whole of history is nothing but the working out of such inevitable debacles...
...But none has faced it simply by abandoning principle...
...Considered as an internal system, the kibbutz arose as an expression of a romantic, cultist, youth-movement-style rebellion against "the Shtetl or its equivalent...
...Both the "external" and "internal crisis" of the kibbutz, he contends, have come to a head in the same generation that saw it born...
...Such rigidity, he suggests, is not merely an apologetic stance provisionally taken, but, in the kibbutzim, it is a permanent, fundamental attitude which cannot be compromised without destroying the community...
...Diamond's attitude to the "crisis" more interesting than his analysis of it...
...These statements sound, in a vague way, as if some examination of the costaccounting records and other economic data regarding the kibbutzim stood behind them...
...as they remain brave, they do not let it make them renounce their goal...
...What concerns Mr...
...When the now aging pioneers in Palestine first built the kibbutz, it was an effective colonizing instrument...
...Thus, the kibbutz becomes nothing but the reflection of neurotic fancies such as appealed to romantic cultists of the rebellion against the "Shtetl or its equivalent...
...As a practitioner myself with a residual sense of professional solidarity, I appreciate the point...
...What do you think I am, a boob...
...Consequently, one infers they will not attract new immigrants and will die out by attrition...
...Mostly, he says, they rigidly resist any concessions to the reality about the new immigrants: that the newcomers will not work on kibbutz land, with kibbutz machines, or in kibbutz enterprises except as hired labor...
...Diamond dooms it to remain) it wouldn't save the kibbutz, because anyway the external crisis will finish it off...
...not because Mr...
...It is the inevitable fate of institutions seeking to embody ethical principles to find that Man continues, in the final analysis, to live a life in which exaltation is only occasional, quiet desperation pervasive, and contentedness often a sign of resignation...
...All this because, according to his definition, the community is simply the reflection of a post-adolescent rebellion shared by its members...
...It should be noted that this conclusion seems to be meant literally...
...It is men who are not worthy.'" What Mr...
...The conclusion is that a system tied to rebellion against • It appears that "its equivalent" must mean Jews from industrial and commercial cities or administrative centers like Lodz and Bialystok, Odessa and Warsaw, while the rebellion referred to was a rebellion against such patriarchal elders of Zion as the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, the Bundists and the Sejmists, and other backward agrarian types...
...Diamond's dilemma...
...It is a rather representative attitude...
...As for the problem of hired labor, more and more kibbutzim have faced the realities of this situation...
...If they rigidly adhere to romantic and irrelevant principles of collectivism, they will expire because history and psychology are against them...
...Some apology should, no doubt, he made for such a bald procedure...
...I must conclude briefly, and I fear, dogmatically...
...But it gets us nowhere if the systematic approach we wish to apply cannot in principle be verified, because it operates on the principle of "Heads I win, tails you lose...
...A romantic rebellion against the "shtetl" is, consequently, even worse than dead: it is passe...
...Diamond's approach is guilty of...
...The conclusion is not revolutionary nor does it have so devastating an impact as Mr...
...Let me make it...
...The "crisis" of the kibbutzim, he says, is a "structural" crisis, a built-in crisis "characteristic of the social form of the Kibbutz itself...
...To begin with, the idea that the be-all and end-all of kibbutz living is the drowning of privacy in a collective spiritual communion was never the idea of more than a small group of kibbutz members for a relatively brief period...
...the institutions have revealed the inadequacies of Man, rather than vice versa...
...Hence, one is forced to conclude, the kibbutz cannot possibly last...
...Today it is not effective any longer in the face of mass immigration: hence, the external crisis...
...Diamond's rigid and irrelevant criteria, they will no longer be kibbutzim...
...As for the psychology of at least some members of the cult (very reminiscent, by the way, of the post-Marxian psychology of some contemporary sophisticates—except that it was resolute, varying from grim to gay, rather than disoriented, varying from doleful to dull) , an extreme but telling example of the kind of romantic sentimentality it could produce is this story about a rebel against pre-industrial patriarchalism can have no significance for our own industrial era...
...From my own acquaintance with the subject, which admittedly could stand some brushing up, I have the strongest doubt whether this is the case...
...As the Kibbutznikim often say, 'The Kibbutz, as a social form, is excellent...
...Diamond more than anything else in his review is the fear that someone may imagine the kibbutz possesses some significance for a socialist in our times...
...In the West, too, the kibbutz became for many socialists of an idealist type a symbol to take heart from...
...Parallel phenomena outside the kibbutz should certainly be familiar to a reflective social scientist, for any layman could easily supply a long list...
...DIAMOND'S REVIEW does is to place the kibbutz movement in a systematic predicament from which it can have no possible escape except by death or "disintegration...
...He quotes one kibbutz member (from Spiro) as saying...
...When Enzo Sereni came to recruit and train kibbutz members in America in 1935 or thereabouts, he was met at the dock by a premature anti-Stalinist friend of mine...
...The most significant part of this story is not mentioned at all by Mr...
Vol. 4 • April 1957 • No. 2
