Social Democracy and the Covid-19 Challenge in the Post-Crisis Kibbutz

Historically, under the Labor Zionist dominance of the Yishuv and young Israel, the Kibbutz - a movement perceiving itself as the Zionist spearhead - took on itself the main national tasks while developing as a collective and equal communal model. However, against the backdrop of the gradual weakening of the Israeli Labor camp and its constructive socialist foundations, the rise of the neoliberal right, and chiefly the Kibbutz’s existential crisis (1980s-2010s), the Kibbutz had to concentrate on its survival. As such, it retreated from its collective patterns and became a non-political “fluid” sector, ready to engage with any bureaucratic institution or political force in order to realize its narrow materialistic interests. With time, though, the Kibbutz recovered economically and demographically and seems to have leveraged its achievements with the aim of improving its sectoral abilities. An interesting finding that the paper highlights is the Kibbutz leaders’ current search for updated social-democratic significance as a community of mutual responsibility. The case of Covid-19 reveals this very clearly, since in the course of the pandemic the Kibbutz showed a discernible tendency to re-become a caring community. Our conclusion is that the present-day Kibbutz is striving to remain a relevant intentional community even if less equal and less communal. On that basis we may cautiously suggest that the present-day post-crisis Kibbutz illustrates that Gemeinschaft spirit may contribute to societies’ resiliency.