Communality, rationalization and distributive justice: Changing evaluation of work in the Israeli Kibbutz

A Utopian outlook in the earlier kibbutz has sustained symbolic criteria in the evaluation of work. However, a process of rationalization has enhanced the instrumental importance of work and stimulated individualistic self-fulfilment. Facilitated by changing conceptions of distributive justice, social evaluation of work has become both more materialistic and more differentiated. The increasing praise of talents and of the market value of work output at the expense of manual dexterity and moral virtues jeopardized kibbutz egalitarianism long before the recent period of economic and social crisis. Yet, economic setback has boosted decommunalization and further blurred the distinction between equitarian symbolic and equitarian materialistic rewarding.