ABSTRACT
The tribulations of the kibbutz movement began with the establishment of the state. The kibbutz was neither able nor willing to absorb the masses of new immigrants who did not share their idealism and their values, and the spirit of sacrifice and pioneering. Gradually, an anti-kibbutz ideology developed. The kibbutz had been a Utopian enterprise; the kibbutzniks were parasites. Socialism had been Israel's great misfortune, and it had been holding back the Israeli economy. Some of this criticism was correct, and some was arrant nonsense. The kibbutz was, of course, a Utopian undertaking based on a radical egalitarian ethos, so it could work only for the idealistic elite. But there was not that much Jewish money around at the time, and those who had it preferred to invest it elsewhere.
