A Living Revolution: Anarchism in the Kibbutz Movement

San Francisco: AK Press, 2009. Introduction by Uri Gordon

Publisher's Blurb:

An intentional community based on cooperative social principles, the kibbutz has played a major role in the development of Israeli society. Nowhere else in the world have such experiments in egalitarian living and shared labour been as successful or as enduring. From the early twentieth century, when large numbers of European Jews fled persecution and pogroms to settle in Palestine, to the present day, the kibbutzim have remained a thriving network of communal enterprises.

A Living Revolution explores the foundations of the kibbutz movement, providing a detailed look at their initial economic, social, and political organisation. Basing his research largely on newly translated letters, diaries, and essays by key figures and participants, James Horrox uncovers a deep and explicitly anarchist strain running through the movement’s early days. Not only does this illuminate a neglected aspect of Jewish history, it takes serious issue with Marxist and other historians, especially those who see the kibbutzim primarily as progenitors of the Israeli State. At the same time, it depicts anarchism as both an inspiring utopian ideology and a viable social practice.

"Zionism has always been an overly complex phenomenon. From its very inception, it sheltered a plurality of radical ideologies, many of which remain inherently opposed to the nationalist and market-driven values that it has become synonymous with. If Jews are ever going to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and bring a just peace to the Middle East, we will need to reacquaint ourselves with these traditions, many of which remain alive and vital today. Moving back in time to the inception of Israel's kibbutz movement, ending up in the misery of the present, British journalist and scholar James Horrox does just that. Excavating Israel's anarchist ideological heritage, Horrox illuminates a progressive political history that Israelis can actually be proud of, and look to as a source of renewal, as natural to their politics as militarism and ethnic conflict. At a time when most literature of this kind follows the familiar path of critique and denunciation, James Horrox achieves the same results by going in the opposite direction. This is a deeply inspiring book that will make you think twice, and question the prevailing consensus that only right-wing politics work in Israel".

— Joel Schalit, author of 'Israel vs. Utopia'