The establishment of Israel and the flood of Jewish refugees from Europe and the Arab world presented challenges and opportunities for kibbutzim. The immigrant tide offered kibbutzim a chance to expand through new members and inexpensive labour, but it also meant that Ashkenazi kibbutzim would have to adapt to Jews whose background was far different from their own. Until the 1950s, nearly all kibbutzniks were from Eastern Europe, culturally different from the Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Iraq. Many kibbutzim hired Mizrahi Jews as labourers but were less inclined to grant them membership.

Ideological disputes were also widespread, leading to painful splits, sometimes even of individual kibbutzim, and to polarisation and animosity among members. Israel had been initially recognized by both the United States and the Soviet Union. For the first three years of its existence, Israel was in the Non-Aligned Movement, but David Ben-Gurion gradually began to take sides with the West. The question of which side of the Cold War Israel should choose created fissures in the kibbutz movement. Dining halls segregated according to politics and a few kibbutzim even had Marxist members leave. The disillusionment particularly set in after the Slánský trial in which an envoy of Hashomer Hatzair in Prague was tried.

Another controversy involved the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany. Should kibbutz members turn over income that was the product of a very personal loss? If Holocaust survivors were allowed to keep their reparation money, what would that mean for the principle of equality? Eventually, many kibbutzim made this one concession to inequality by letting Holocaust survivors keep all or a percentage of their reparations. Reparations that were turned over to the collective were used for building expansion and even recreational activities.

The split between different factions within the kibbutz movement evolved between 1948 and 1954, when finally three kibbutz federations emerged, each aligned to a different Labour party: Ihud with Mapai, Meuhad with Ahdut HaAvoda, and Artzi with Mapam.

Kibbutzniks enjoyed a steady and gradual improvement in their standard of living in the first few decades after independence. In the 1960s, the kibbutzim standard of living improved faster than Israel's general population. Most kibbutz swimming pools date from the 1960s.

Kibbutzim also continued to play an outsize role in Israel's defence apparatus. In the 1950s and 1960s many kibbutzim were in fact founded by an Israel Defense Forces group called

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First Aliyah immigrants were largely religious, but those of the Second Aliyah were mainly secular. A Jewish work ethic thus replaced religious practice. Berl Katznelson, a Labor Zionist leader articulated this when he said "Everywhere the Jewish labourer goes, the divine presence goes with him."

The first kibbutzim were founded in the upper Jordan Valley, the Jezreel Valley and the Sharon coastal plain. The land was available for purchase because it was marshy and malaria-infested. The Zionists believed that the Arab population would be grateful for the economic benefits that developing the land would bring. Their approach was that the enemies of the Arab peasants were the Arab landowners (called effendis), not fellow Jewish farmers.

Kibbutz members were not classic Marxists though their system partially resembled Communism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels both shared a disdain for conventional formulations of the nation state and Leninists were hostile to Zionism. Nevertheless, in the late 1930s, two kibbutz leaders, Tabenkin and Yaari, initially attracted to anarchist ideas, pushed their movements to reverence of Joseph Stalin's dictatorship and of Stalin whom many called Shemesh HaAmim ("The Sun of the Nations").

The USSR voted at the UN for establishment of Israel. Stalin became hostile to Israel after it became apparent that Israel would not turn communist, so the USSR began serving diplomatic and military interests of various nations in the Arab world. This caused major crises and mass exit in both Kibbutz Meuchad and Kibbutz Artzi kibbutzim, especially after the 1952 Rudolf Slánský Prague show trials in which most of the accused and executed party functionaries were Jews and the 1953 Doctors' plot in Moscow of mostly Jews. Nonetheless many kibbutzim cancelled Purim celebrations when Stalin collapsed on March 1, 1953. Despite Communist atrocities and increasing state antisemitism in the USSR and its satellites many in the far left kibbutz movement, like Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Guard) viewed Stalin with awe and leader of the "peace camp". The party paper Al HaMishmar (On the Watch) presented this view. Kibbutzim were run as collective enterprises within Israel's partly free market system. Internally kibbutzim also practiced active democracy, with elections held for kibbutz functions and full participation in national elections in which the members generally voted along the lines of the kibbutz movement ideology. Jewish religious practices were banned or discouraged in many far left kibbutzim.

Kibbutzim were not the only contemporary communal enterprises: pre-war Palestine also saw the development of communal villages called moshavim. In a moshav, marketing …

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The principle of equality was taken extremely seriously up until the 1970s. Kibbutzniks did not individually own tools, or even clothing. Gifts and income received from outside were turned over to the common treasury. If a member received a gift in services—like a visit to a relative or a trip abroad paid for by a parent—there could be arguments at members' meetings about the propriety of accepting such a gift. Up until recently, members ate meals together in the communal dining hall. This was seen as an important aspect of communal life.
When the first children were born at the kibbutz there were inevitably some ethical dilemmas that needed to be solved. One of these was that the kibbutz was striving for equality, including the equality of the sexes. Women were only seen as separate because they gave birth to children, automatically tying them to the domestic sphere. In order to liberate women and promote gender equality, they could not be tied to solely domestic duties and child care giving. The Kibbutz wanted to give women the opportunity to continue their work in the agricultural sector and industrial sector. As such, Chayuta Bussel states: "Communal education is the first step towards woman's liberation."

Along with gender equality, the issue of parenting under the communal way of life was a concern. The parental tendency is to view the child as a personal possession and to dominate them. The founding members of the kibbutz agreed that this was not conducive to community life. They also thought it was selfish of parents to want to control their children and that this did not give room for the child to grow as their own person.

To solve these issues the founders created the communal children's houses, where the children would spend most of their time; learning, playing and sleeping. Parents spent three to four hours a day in the afternoon with their children after work and before dinner.

Collective childrearing was also a way to escape the patriarchal society that the founders came from. Children would not be dependent on their fathers economically, socially, legally or otherwise and this would eliminate the father's authority and uproot the patriarchy.

In the children's houses, trained nurses and teachers were the care givers. It was felt that relationships of the children and their parents would be better because parents would not have to be the sole disciplinarians. Children grew up in the community environment and grew up with children who were born in the same year as them. The financial responsibility of the children was shared by the community.

The …

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