Theorising the Radical Moral Communitarian Agenda
| Author | Roger Hopkins Burke |
Introduction
This is the second of two papers which has returned us to a discussion about the rationale, theoretical foundations and the policy implications of a ‘new liberalism’, or a radical moral communitarianism. The first paper (Hopkins Burke, 2014b) explored the political philosophy of communitarianism which became extremely influential both in the USA and the UK during the 1990s and which in essence proposed that the individual rights promoted by traditional liberals should be balanced with a commitment by individuals to responsibilities in the communities in which we live. It was nevertheless observed that the actual implementation of communitarian policies in reality placed an overemphasis on responsibilities to the detriment of the rights of individual citizens. Meanwhile, the alternative agenda proposed by radical egalitarian communitarians conversely went rather beyond the position taken by traditional liberals and placed a greater emphasis on the economic rights of individuals with appreciably less emphasis on their obligations to society.
There followed a discussion of the neoliberal response to apparent economic decline, the resultant fall in business profitability and the subsequent failings of the strategies introduced to reverse these trends. All of this is evidenced by the incremental expansion of an acutely unbalanced economy. One where an ever growing sector of economically non-productive people are looked after and controlled by another growing sector of economically non-productive people. Which is all part of a neoliberal communitarian matrix of disciplinary tutelage strategies introduced to manage a fragmented, and increasingly impoverished, diverse population in the interests of the market economy.
It was observed in that earlier paper that these neoliberal interventions have merely accentuated socio-economic problems and impacted negatively on the process of capital accumulation, to the extent where it was proposed that a tipping point had been reached. Indeed, it was now appropriate to seek another way of doing things. This was not simply because the present policies and strategies implemented have led to the creation of a fundamentally unfair and unequal society, a normative argument, relatively easy to ignore by neoliberals, but also one which recognises that it is not working effectively in the material interests of capital accumulation, an economic argument, which it is much harder to ignore.
In the concluding comments it was proposed that the basis for that new way of doing things, one which provides an appropriate and fair balance between individual (including material economic) rights and responsibilities to the community, lies in the work of Emile Durkheim and his observations about the moral component of the division of labour in society. It is this recognition which provides the theoretical basis of a radical moral communitarianism which challenges the orthodox articulation of that political philosophy and its hybrid variation in neoliberal communitarianism. It provides a revised formulation which actively promotes both the rights and responsibilities of individuals and communities in the context of an appreciably more equal division of labour.
Significantly, radical moral communitarianism is founded on a particular conception of (French) individualism which provides the basis of a rather different form of social organisation than those which emerge from its rival and extremely influential conceptions of individualism (Anglo-Saxon and German individualism) and which inform the mainstream, radical egalitarian and neoliberal variants of communitarianism. It is thus important that we explore the origins and development of these three different conceptions of individualism in Western thought and their very considerable implications for the form of social organisation in which we live.
The Development of the Concept of Individualism in Western Europe
The development of the concept of individualism in Western Europe can be identified within the disciplines of Christian theology, politics, economics and cultural studies. We will consider the contribution of each.
Individualism and Christian theology
Prior to Christianity the only individual was the rare person who was in a position to renounce worldly affairs, was self-sufficient and thus fully independent in a society where the secular was the dominant political force. With the emergence of Christianity we get a fundamental shift in the conception of humanity which the nineteenth century German Protestant theologian and philosopher Ernst Troeltsch identifies as man as an individualin-relation-to-God: where all people are equal in the presence of God but where, at the same time, the (Catholic) Church emerges as a form of institutional link, a mediator, between the individual and the divine (Dumont, 1994).
It was with St Augustine (354–430 CE) that the concept of sacred kingship, where the position of monarch is considered to be identical with that of a high priest and a judge and which had been the dominant orthodoxy until that time, is replaced by the idea that the State should be completely acquiescent to a dominant Church. However, at the same time, we can observe a subtle advance in the concept of individualism where the State is conceived to be a collection of men united through agreement on values and common utility (see below). The Church now pretends to rule, directly or indirectly, which means that the Christian individual is now committed to the world to an unprecedented degree. He or she is an individual with responsibilities and obligations via their membership of the Church and this includes Kings and the aristocracy. It is with John Calvin (1509-1564) and the (Protestant) Reformation that this relationship completely changes and the individual becomes fully part of the world and individualist values are dominant without restriction or limitation (Bouwsma, 1988).
It was Martin Luther (1483-1546) whose actions as a disillusioned Catholic priest had previously removed God from the world by rejecting the mediation institutionalised in the Catholic Church. Significantly God was now accessible to the individual consciousness. The ritualism of the Catholic Church and the justification of good works which had previously enabled the person access to heaven were now replaced within Protestant theology by the concept of justification through faith, which left to the individual some margin of freedom, that is, whether to believe (faith) or not to believe. This was now a matter of individual choice.
Calvin later went further than Luther and declared that the individual has complete impotence in the face of the power of God and neither good works or faith guarantees access to heaven (Bouwsma, 1988). Now at first sight, this appears to be an important limitation rather than a development of the notion of individualism, but Troeltsch warns us against interpreting Calvin in terms of the unfettered atomistic individualism which we will see later is central to the Anglo-Saxon conception. Instead, there is the concept of the imposition of values: the identification of our will with the will of God. The Puritans who followed the lead of Calvin believed that the Bible was God's true law, and that it provided a plan for living. The established church of the day described access to God as monastic and possible only within the confines of ‘church authority’ which was the will of God. The puritans simply stripped away the traditional trappings and formalities of Christianity which had been slowly building throughout the previous 1500 years. Theirs was an attempt to ‘purify’ both the church and their lives.
It is thus with Luther, Calvin and the Protestant Reformation that we can identify the origins of a specific Germanic conception of individualism where the person expresses their individuality in relation to close identification with something greater than themselves, in this case God, but later in the case of Germany, the Volk; in the case of Marxists, the proletariat; or for others, simply society however it might be constituted (Dumont, 1986). It is thus a conception of individualism that has its origins in sixteenth century Germany but which clearly has had considerable impact outside the frontiers of that country.
Individualism and politics
The political perspective on individualism has two useful starting points. First, there is the combination of Christian revelation and Aristotelian philosophy in Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the medieval philosopher and theologian, where at the level of religion each person is conceptualised as a whole being, a private individual in direct relation to their creator, and on a political level where they are considered to be a member of the secular commonwealth, a part of the social body. Second, there is the theory of Natural Law that dominates in the period leading up to the French Revolution, where the idea is to establish an ideal society while starting from the individual person of nature. The device for this purpose was the idea of contract which in turn involves the combination of two elements. The first or `social' contract introduced the relationship characterised by equality or `fellowship'; the second or political contract, introduced subjection to a Ruler or a ruling agent.
Subsequently, the philosophers reduced this multiplicity of contracts to one. First, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) makes the social contract a contract of subjection. This occurs when individuals come together and surrender some of their individual rights and hand these over to an emergent state; a sovereign entity like the individuals now under its rule used to be, and which creates laws to regulate social interactions. In this way human life is given order and is no longer ‘a war of all against all’. Second, John Locke (1632–1704) replaces the political contract by a Trust. Taking the opposite view...
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