The Dialectic between the Pioneering Ethos and Socialist Ideology in the Israeli Labor Movement: David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Aharon, 1948-1967

Abstract

The pioneering ethos and socialist ideology are two of the Israeli Labor Movement’s main characteristics. Unlike the standard approach that regards them as complementing bases, this article examines their differences: the pioneering ethos, which encouraged dissociation from general society and assumed that the ideal society could only be established outside of it; and the basic assumption of socialist ideology that social change must emerge from within. This was the inherent tension in the Labor Movement. 

The theoretical basis of this clash can be found in Max Weber’s distinction between ‘ethos’ and ‘doctrine’ (in his study on the link between the ‘Protestant ethic’ and ‘spirit of capitalism’) which his expounders transferred from the religious sphere to the political arena. 

The article analyzes David Ben-Gurion’s speeches and articles in the 1950s and Yitzhak Ben-Aharon’s in the 1960s, and concludes that despite their affiliation to rival political wings in the Labor Movement and their support of opposing versions of Zionist-socialist ideology, both Zionist-labor leaders held the same pioneering ethos whose internal tension revolved around the difference between ‘pioneer’ and ‘worker’.