Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza'ir (The Young Guard) constituted a unique and autonomous kingdom within Zionism in which the integration of pioneering praxis and revolutionary socialism reached its zenith. The kibbutz was the basis of the social cell which would build Jewish nationalism, while at the same time – at least on the declarative level – it upheld the concepts of class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its ideology was an intellectual, elitistic version of Marxism which aspired to set itself apart from the centralist, mass socialism of the Second Aliya. Even though Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza'ir adopted socialism at a relatively late stage – only in the second half of the 1920s – it regarded itself as a revolutionary vanguard which was entitled to criticise both the Second and the Third Internationals. Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza'ir's political doctrine was complex and inventive as a result of its need to make revolutionary ideas consistent with a social and political reality which they did not fit. The aspiration towards ‘ideological collectivism’ and the ceaseless attempt to mould a world-view which would distinguish it from all the other streams of Zionism featured prominently in Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza'ir's history. The annals of the movement represent a constant effort to preserve organisational autonomy together with ideological homogeneity and internal unity.

Ha-Shomer Ha-Tza'ir's leaders, Meir Ya'ari and Ya'akov Hazan, may well have been the most talented faction leaders in Israel's political history. From the day they met in 1924 on a hay-waggon taking them from Nahalal to Haifa, they formed the most successful duumvirate in Israeli politics.