Abstract
Reflecting on the most recent stage of his career, the communitarian, Amitai Etzioni, gives three reasons for what he perceives as his loss of influence. First, the media prefers an argument between strongly opposed positions, but Etzioni is neither liberal nor conservative. Second, the media prefers specialized intellectuals, but Etzioni has refused to “stick to his knitting.” Third, Etzioni has taken an unpopular, dovish position on China. I argue that Etzioni is mistaken about the reasons for his and communitarianism’s rise and perceived fall and offer a more optimistic assessment than he does of the potential influence of his thought. I use this local problem of historical interpretation to question Etzioni’s global interpretation of modern history.
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Notes
Etzioni, Amitai and Jonathan Marks. Summer 2003. “Communitarianism and Classical Liberalism: A Dialogue.” The Responsive Community 13:3: 50–60.
As Wilson Carey McWilliams has observed, Etzioni’s communitarianism, its genuine “middle way” aspirations notwithstanding, “leans decidedly to the left of center” (Wilson Carey McWilliams. Spring/Summer 2004. “The Journey of a True Communitarian.” The Responsive Community 14:2: 99.
Etzioni, Amitai. 2003. My Brother’s Keeper: A Memoir and a Message (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), 405.
Etzoni, Amitai. Winter 2014. “My Kingdom for a Wave.” The American Scholar 83:1, 38.
Etzioni, Amitai. 1968. The Active Society: A Theory of Societal and Political Processes (New York: The Free Press), x-xi.
Etzioni, “Wave,” 38.
Deneen, Patrick. 2006. “From the Active Society to the Good Society: The Second Sailing of Amitai Etzioni.” In The Active Society Revisited. Ed. Wilson Carey Mc Williams (Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield), 311–18.
Etzioni, Brother’s Keeper, 362.
Deneen, 318, 320.
Henderson, Keith. April 19, 1993. “Advocate for a Changing Society.” The Christian Science Monitor.
Etzioni, Amitai. 1976. Social Problems (Englewood Cliffs, NJ).
Etzioni, The Active Society, 68; Social Problems, 170.
Etzioni, The Active Society, 619–28; Social Problems,
. Etzioni, Amitai. 2006. “The Active Society Revisited: A Response.” In The Active Society Revisited.
Etzioni, The Active Society, vii, 6.
Etzioni, Social Problems, 173.
Etzioni, Brother’s Keeper, 363.
Etzioni, Active Society, 7; Social Problems, 172.
For a complementary discussion of the early and late Etzioni’s, see Lehman, Edward. 2000. “From Compliance to Community in the Works of Amitai Etzioni.” In Autonomy and Order: A Communitarian Anthology. Ed. Edward Lehman (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield):xvii-xxiv.
Etzioni, “Wave,” 31–32.
Brother’s Keeper, 313.
Etzioni, “Wave,” 34–35.
Etzioni, Brother’s Keeper, 301.
Etzioni, “Wave,” 38.
Heclo, H. 1986. “Reaganism and the Search for a Public Philosophy.” In Perspectives on the Reagan Years. Ed. John Logan Palmer (Washington D.C., Urban Institute Press), 44–45.
Bell, Daniel and Irving Kristol. Fall 1965. “What is the Public Interest?” The Public Interest 1: 5. Admittedly the group had not yet acquired the neoconservative label, which Michael Harrington pins on them in 1973. But even in its most overtly conservative manifestations, a worry about untrammeled individualism remains.
Etzioni, Social Problems, 20–27.
Bell, Daniel. Summer 1992.” American Intellectual Life: 1965–1992.” The Wilson Quarterly 16:3: 84–85,
Etzioni, Amitai. 1977. “The Neoconservatives.” Partisan Review 24:3: 436–37.
Etzioni, Amitai. 1993. The Spirit of Community (New York: Crown Publishers), 18–20.
Etzioni, Brother’s Keeper, 369.
Etzioni, Brother’s Keeper, 362, 369.
New Hampshire Democratic Primary Debate, Jan 5, 2000, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH.
Fukuyama, Francis. September 199. “The End of History?” The National Interest 16: 18.
I do not mean to suggest that periods of great national stress are not hospitable to cultural politics, but they do not seem to me to be hospitable to what Etzioni himself characterizes as a concern for moral dialogue and soft morality.
Etzioni, The Active Society, 9–10.
Etzioni, “Response,” 334–37.
Etzioni, Amitai. 1996. The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic Society (New York: Basic Books), xvii, 8–9, 3.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. 2000. Democracy in America. Trans. and Ed. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 491.
I consider the relationship between Tocqueville and Etzioni in a 2005 manuscript, “Alexis de Tocqueville and Amitai Etzioni: Interpreting and Acting in History,” posted by the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at this address: http://aladinrc.wrlc.org/handle/1961/1420.
Tocqueville, Democracy, 3, 8, 427.
Tocqueville, Democracy, 616.
Tocqueville, Democracy, 616.
Tocqueville, Democracy, 597.
Tocqueville, Democracy, 672.
Etzioni, “Response,” 335.
Etzioni, Brother’s Keeper, 324.
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Marks, J. Keep Rowing: Amitai Etzioni and History. Soc 51, 362–368 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-014-9793-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-014-9793-y