Abstract
This chapter scrutinises the debates over the structure and governance of communities in the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall. It explicates how a range of thinkers, who presented their ideas as communitarian, challenged both the advocacy of market individualism and the siren calls for a return of authoritarian leadership. Their cogency is examined with reference to the democratic communitarian critiques of the moral and economic supremacy of market forces (Miller, Boswell, Bellah, Derber); and the liberal communitarian responses to disputes over how to deal with moral clashes, especially in relation to contested public policies (Selznick, Spragens, Etzioni, Galston). The chapter concludes with an overview of the progressive synthesis of communitarianism (Tam) that fully integrated the principles of mutual responsibility, cooperative enquiry, and citizen participation.
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Notes
- 1.
While these writings share a number of key themes and approaches, they do not subscribe to a single all-encompassing communitarian doctrine. In that respect, communitarianism is no different from liberalism , socialism , feminism, anarchism, or conservatism , in that its exponents may disagree with each other in a variety of ways despite having certain core characteristics in common.
- 2.
Kropotkin’s writings on mutual aid first appeared in 1902; Nisbet’s book, The Quest for Community, was originally published in 1952. Neither of them described their outlook as communitarian, and their views on government institutions were substantially different from those contained in established communitarian writings.
- 3.
For example, McCulloch (1984) compares the views of Morris and Kropotkin on fellowship, and assumes they can be used as a basis for deducing what must be implied by communitarian theory.
- 4.
Although it is not uncommon to come across casual references to ‘conservative communitarianism’, there has been no systematic work to present any such theory. When Winfried Brugger put forward his three-way differentiation of liberal communitarianism , egalitarian-universalist communitarianism, and conservative communitarianism, he rightly cited Selznick and Etzioni as liberal communitarians, oddly classified Dworkin and Habermas as egalitarian-universalist communitarians, and cited no thinker other than Tönnies as an advocate of conservative communitarianism (Brugger 2004). As we have seen in Chapter 4, it is the rejection, rather than acceptance, of Tönnies’ misconceived Gemeinschaft -Gesellschaft dichotomy that distinguishes communitarian thinking from nostalgic pining for traditional communities.
- 5.
There are important similarities between Jonathan Boswell’s democratic communitarianism and Paul Hirst’s associative democracy (Hirst 1994).
- 6.
He also referred to it as a form of ‘left communitarianism’ (Derber et al. 1995, pp. 196–213).
- 7.
For example, should the freedom to transact cover the buying and selling of children, the ordering of contract killing, or the private acquisition of all drinkable water in a defined area?
- 8.
As with cooperative practices with Mondragon in the Basques region, the cooperative firms across the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy, and the Co-op Group in the UK.
- 9.
A cooperative investment agency would be bound by its founding principles to serve the needs of cooperatives rather than simply providing returns to external investors. For an outline of what may be involved in such an agency, see Tam (2015).
- 10.
Miller’s ideal of the nation -state echoes the communitarian thinking of Mazzini , Bourgeois , and Croly , all of whom champion liberal , progressive, internationalist nations , and without exception against jingoistic nationalism .
- 11.
He also drew on his extensive experience in examining business culture and practice to draw attention to what may help or hinder public cooperation (Boswell and Peters 1997).
- 12.
This line of thinking on continuity is backed by game theory analysis that shows that the tendency to cooperate is reinforced by a long sequence of play, whereas temptations to back out or cheat are increased if only a few moves in a short exchange are expected to take place.
- 13.
- 14.
Bellah insisted that he regarded himself a communitarian only on the basis that communitarians are understood as believing that ‘more substantive ethical identities and a more active participation in a democratic polity are necessary for the functioning of any decent society’ (Bellah et al. 1991, p. 6).
- 15.
These will include those who are worried about long term job security , those pressured into accepting undesirable terms, and those who need to find work but are unable to do so.
- 16.
In the UK, the Liberal Democrats were itself formed from a merger of the old Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party that split from the Labour Party in 1981.
- 17.
Although Marquand’s ideas have often been described by commentators as ‘civic republican ’, when writing on the problem of market forces, he set out ‘an alternative response based on the notions of community and social capital … [which] stands for a stakeholder economy , in which market works for the public good instead of against it; for a vibrant public domain … [and] for bottom-up, locally led development instead of a centralist Fabianism of the past’, and he called it the ‘vision of a communitarian ethical socialism , combining individual empowerment with social solidarity ’ (1995). Both Marquand and Miller advocated communitarian reorientation of socialism —some may say, back to its cooperative roots. See also Marquand (1988).
- 18.
While liberal communitarian thinking rejects the characterisation of liberal and communitarian ideas as inherently opposed to each other, it maintains that the extent to which the two can be integrated depends on the principles invoked in particular formulations. As we saw in Chapter 4, although major liberal theorists such as Dewey and Hobhouse sought to develop liberalism in a more communitarian direction, this is not something embraced by everyone whose political views exhibit liberal features.
- 19.
- 20.
There are also critics who focus on the policy proposals Etzioni put forward, but their disagreement is with specific details of Etzioni’s policy proposals rather than his broader communitarian conception of how to approach public policy deliberations . Communitarian thinkers can share the higher-level conception while coming to contrasting policy recommendations (just as liberal and conservative thinkers do). On Etzioni’s policy views on families and education , see Demaine (1996).
- 21.
Even what may be regarded as a matter of personal taste can be escalated into a social conflict. For example, immigrants can be castigated for eating ‘ethnic’ food rather than switching to national dishes (whatever those maybe); and one British politician infamously claimed in the 1980s that people were not real citizens of the country if they in sports supported another country’s sports team.
- 22.
Galston was especially concerned that a simplistic demarcation of public affairs and religious activities could lead to unwarranted mutual distrust. Much more attention, he believed, should be given to enabling people with different religious views and/or secular commitments to support each other in pursuing goals that (even if it is for different reasons) they regard as morally important.
- 23.
As explained in Chapter 1, we will leave aside generic, rhetorical, and pre-conceived uses of the term as these have little connection with the intellectual development of communitarian thinking.
- 24.
The ability to understand how to differentiate what warrants acceptance as true and what should be rejected as dubious or unsubstantiated.
- 25.
As we saw in Chapter 2, when the debates about what should guide the development of communities emerged and intensified over the period of sixth to first century BC, the leading advocates could be grouped under the headings of ‘absolutist’, ‘detached’, ‘egoistic’, and ‘reciprocal’. Proponents of absolutist views wanted to close off enquiries on every front by giving the last word to an authority that is beyond challenge. Those who favoured detached views insisted that individuals could go with whatever answers they wanted. Those with egoistic views about the superiority of their own ideas, tended to support an authoritarian position if they or people they were aligned with could wield that authority, but would otherwise switch to sweeping rejection of authority so it is less likely that they could be held back from pushing their agenda when that is damaging for others. The quest for a reciprocal alternative led to subsequent development of communitarian ideas.
- 26.
- 27.
As Anne Phillips observed, ‘we are a network of beliefs , desires and emotions that constantly reweaves itself … There is no “core” self behind all our differences, but neither is there one difference that essentially constitutes our self’ (Phillips 1991, p. 58).
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Tam, H. (2019). Communitarianism Articulated: 1989–2001. In: The Evolution of Communitarian Ideas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26558-8_6
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