Justice of a Different Kind: The Original Kibbutz

Abstract

The aim of this article is to compare and contrast basic moral principles of justice, as articulated by Rawls (1999) and by a presumably utopian society (the original Israeli Kibbutz) that purposefully attempted to design a community that was just and free, by collectivizing it. The principles it evolved were noble but its outcome was doomed to failure because by making social justice the dominant goal it did not allow for sufficiently free liberty of individual moral agents on which social justice is based