Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

THE KIBBUTZ AS A LABORATORY FOR EQUALITY 343
private property of any kind would be allowed. Work would be so
allocated that no one could occupy a special position or fill an office for
more than a certain time. Even the most talented, when their turn came,
would have to give up everything else for the hardest manual labour.
Membership in this form of society would have to be entirely voluntary.
No one could be kept there against his will. There would be no wall.
Other ways of life would be known and within easy reach.
In order to test our thesis, the experiment would have to have been in
progress long enough for a generation to have been raised within the
realm of the new society with no personal memories of other forms of
social life.
The kibbutz as a laboratory for equality
Unlikely though it may seem, such a society actually exists. There are
more than two hundred community settlements of varying sizes which,
though the villages may differ in certain respects, accord with the ideals
and customs outlined above. 4 A further requirement would be accurate
studies of these settlements by different observers, among them experienced
cultural anthropologists who have done research in cultures similarly
inclined towards simplicity. And these, too, are at our disposal. The
society in question is, of course, that of the Israeli communal settlements,
or kibbutzim. A number of social scientists have rightly
described the kibbutz as one of the most important laboratories for the
study of human beings under special social conditions. For these represent
the first 'utopian' communal foundation, literally and deliberately
based upon socialist ideals and emotions, and one which, instead of
disintegrating after a year or two, has continued to function for half a
century.
For comparative cultural science and anthropology, the kibbutzim are
considerably more valuable than the communities of primitive peoples,
because the former are settlements whose founders and subsequent
4 Between 1948 and 1958, the population ofIsrael more than doubled, but kibbutzim
membership increased by only about 25,000. At the beginning of 1957, it comprised
some 80,000 people. In 1948 there were 177 kibbutzim and in 1958 a total of 229. A
report by S. S. King in the New York Times from which these figures are quoted is
headed 'The Kibbutzim lose their Attraction. '