DUFF & NONSENSE!: But when the Jews are dumb, they're really, really dumb!

But when the Jews are dumb, they're really, really dumb!

Many a time and oft', I have declared my admiration for the intelligence of Jews but even so, they do sometimes get things very wrong. The perfect example has arisen in an article in The Spectator this week by Johan Norberg. It is summed up by its title: "The rise – and disastrous fall – of the kibbutz". Now, I can vaguely remember as a young person - yes, even that far back! - hearing about the Israeli kibbutzim, in which Israelis of various ages joined together to form 'collectives' to till the land, grow their crops and raise their livestock. Nobody received more money than anyone else, such 'profits' as arose were shared equally but only to the level to cover neccessities. To a young person it all sounded rather attractive. Alas, it was not!

As Mr. Norberg puts it:

Joshua Muravchik, who has documented the rise and fall of the kibbutz, explains that the first sign of trouble in paradise was the revolt against collective child-rearing. To break the tyranny of the bourgeois family unit, children were raised in separate houses, where they lived and slept. Some enjoyed it, but others have described the terror of being ripped from their parents, left to the mercy of gangs of other children. Family ties were seen as the nemesis of perfect collectivism. Indeed, Jon Lansman had only one complaint about his kibbutz: ‘I was disappointed,’ he mused, ‘by the absence of children’s houses’ — he had hoped his kibbutz would include a separate building for children to be honed into impeccable young socialists.

For those not familiar with Mr. Jon Landsman, he is the leader of an extreme socialist sect within the Labour party which, with the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, has now reached a position of real power inside the party.

Mr. Norberg continues with his history of the collapse of the Israeli kibbutzim. Needless to say, 'it wos the wimmin wot done it!'

There was another powerful force that kibbutz utopians had not taken into consideration: women’s preference for choosing their own outfits. In a traditional kibbutz, clothes were deemed to be collective property. Dirty clothes were handed to a central laundry, and clean ones were handed out in exchange — but no tabs were kept on whose were whose. Women hated it and demanded cash allowances to buy their own clothes. As the pioneers warned, this opened up a Pandora’s Box of savage individualism. If you could own clothes, why not toiletries or furniture or even individual refrigerators?

Yes, it's always that damned irritating human nature that interferes with 'the best laid plans of mice and men':

There were other problems too. What happens when you can’t fire a slacker or reward someone productive? A scholar of kibbutz education, Yuval Dror, realised: ‘People like me who started as socialists concluded that you can work hard and get nothing while others don’t work hard. It is so unfair.’ Another kibbutz veteran concluded that his community was turning into a ‘paradise for parasites’.

And so, slowly but inexorably, the entire structure collapsed. Even so, it is another credit to Jewish intelligence that nobody attempted to enforce the system against the wishes of the people. If 'Jezza' and his 'polit-bureau' ever gain power in Britain, can we rely on them not to use extra-legal powers of coercian to enforce their mad dreams? I would not bet on it!

Posted by David & Son of Duff | Permalink