Summary
Lev Grinberg’s name for the three deeply interpenetrated and interdependent institutions — the Histadrut, the state, and Mapai — whose rigidity preserved pre-state quasi-state power after 1948 and explains the failure to democratize Israel, including Mapai’s post-1967 institutionalization of the economic integration of occupied Palestinian workers (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.28-29).
Details
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After the establishment of the Jewish State, the power of quasi-state institutions created during the British colonial era and built into the weakness of civil society was preserved; these institutions dominated the new state and formed a Vicious Triangle, extremely powerful and dominant, but also highly rigid and unable to adjust to democratic dynamics and open up space to worker representation (Shapiro 1977; Medding 1972; Grinberg 1993) (PDF p.29).
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In 1960-1965 the main concern of the leaders of Mapai and the Histadrut was their complete loss of control over the workers, and the fear that in the next Histadrut elections they would lose the majority, and with it the Knesset elections and national hegemony; Mapai postponed the Histadrut elections from 1963 to 1965, formed a new block to coopt part of the revolting working class, deliberately caused the deepest recession in Israeli history after the elections to weaken the workers’ bargaining power, and institutionalized the economic integration of the occupied Palestinian workers after 1967, splitting the workers into different sectors of the labor markets according to their ethno-national origin (PDF p.28).
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In other words, the party’s powerful position and reluctance to reform the Histadrut’s quasi-state structure in order to open Political Space for democratic representation of workers was the key reason for the revision of its historic strategy of economic and political separation from Palestinians (PDF p.28).
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The research behind the concept investigated the period before 1967, starting in 1957, equipped with the neo-corporatist and dual labor market theories, examining the sequence of events that led to the institutionalization of the split corporatist political economy; the fact that the ideology of the ZLM had totally rejected the option of one state and a joint economy with the Palestinians before 1947 but institutionalized it after 1967 was “not only puzzling but disturbing” (PDF p.27).
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Chapter 3 gives the triangle’s working in full: Mapai needed the Histadrut to mobilize members and voters, secure jobs and supply resources, and supplied it activists and coordination in return; the state supplied the legal framework and funding, and the Histadrut controlled the labor market and invested in development; the mutual interdependency without any ability to change it was itself the viciousness, and the structure was finally broken up only in 1995 (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.103-104).
Related pages
Lev Grinberg, Histadrut, Mapai, Split Corporatism, Political Space, Moments of Resistance