Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Housing enmasse/kibbutz/hello from Riverdale

[Hune Margulies (hm64]

I know the Kibbutz quite well. In particular I'm conversant with the
theoretical literature and history of its development. I think it's OK to
place the kibbutz and US style cohousing in a common historical tread,
that is, the attempt to develop communal styles of life. What I would
caution, is not to attempt to compare or place too strong an affinity
between these two housing institutions. The Kibbutz evolved out of a
national and social historical circumstance the like of which cannot be
replicated elsewhere, not even in Israel itself, accounting partially for
the changes in the Kibbutz's inner structure away from "communism" and
more into "communitarianism". The original ideas of the Kibbutz, those
found in Buber, A.D. Gordon and other were strongly influenced by european
left-pacifist-anarchism (especially by Landauer). They were also committed
zionists struggling to build a new nation with scarse financial and
natural resources. common ownership of land and the means of production
was only natural considering the lack of a capitalistic class of
entrepreneurs. American intellectual tradition never included within its
mainstream any of the anarchist type philosophies, (again, within its
mainstream intellectual baggage) nor it had to undergo the same national
liberation experience. American economic development was quite different
from that experienced by early Israel. It seems to me that perhaps, and
this is only an early historical observation, while many cohousers see the
kibbutz as a sort of "elder brother", justifiably so, many present day
Kibbutz leaders might actually want to seriously look at the
American-cohousing experience, considering that economic and social
conditions of nowadays Israel resemble more those of America than earlier
Israel did.  
Hune