Pioneer Without Followers

The United Kibbutz Movement was established in 1927 as a union of several kibbutzim that had been established previously. It was centered at Kibbutz Ein Harod. The Movement was established as a national movement whose primary goal was to settle the land of Israel with large and growing kibbutzim as the best way to realize the goals of Zionism. The Movement was centralized and determined, through its central institutions, how the individual kibbutzim were to operate. The fundamental principles on which the kibbutzim operated were equality and cooperation. Equality meant that each person would give to the kibbutz according to his abilities and receive according to his needs. Cooperation held that kibbutz members did not own private property. There was common ownership of all production and consumer assets.
In most years, the kibbutz was unable to provide for each person according to his needs, and in practice there was formal, quantitative equality among the members in various consumer products. Differences were allowed only according to the principle of seniority. Housing, for example, was allocated according to seniority