The Campaign for Community Values was launched by the Center for Community Change and forty grassroots organizations in the fall of 2007, after an extensive process to identify effective strategies for influencing the national political debate of 2008 and beyond. It grew out of a sense that our country was on the wrong track – that the extreme individualism which has come to dominate our society over the last three decades has resulted in an erosion of shared systems that make our society work. A primary goal of the campaign is to change the way Americans talk about politics. By re-inserting progressive values of interconnectedness and shared responsibility into the political debate, we hope to pave the way for policies based on community values.

The Campaign for Community Values is distinct from, and has never intended to tie its analysis or campaign strategy to, the intellectual movement known as communitarianism. However, as the campaign developed, people have frequently questioned its relationship to the intellectual and political debate on communitarianism that took place in the 1990s. Therefore, the Center for Community Change felt it necessary to further investigate communitarianism, so as to:

1) learn from the political shortcomings of the various forms of communitarianism;
2) better articulate where the Campaign and communitarianism diverge; and
3) not replicate the failings of communitarianism.

What follows is a brief summary of the underpinnings and political agenda of the communitarian movement, as well as the main critiques of communitarianism and its eventual decline.

Overview

Communitarianism grew out of a critique of liberalism, specifically a reaction to John Rawl’s 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. Two major strands of communitarians exist. Earlier writers (in the late 1970s and 1980s) did not actually call themselves communitarians, but rather were labeled as such by their critics. Mostly philosophers, they shared common beliefs regarding a critique of liberalism for: its universalism and abstraction of moral principles, as opposed to particularism and the formation of insights rooted in specific communities and real world situations; and also liberalism’s privileging of individualism and the isolated self over community, social attachments, and obligations. The “first wave” of philosophical communitarianism in the 1980s was shaped by political philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor, and Michael Walzer. It is considered ‘philosophical communitarianism’ as opposed to ‘political communitarianism’ because it did not stipulate a fixed political structure; in fact, its philosophical principles have been propagated by both conservatives and liberals.

A second group of self-defined communitarians emerged in the 1990s and shaped the “second wave” of communitarianism. Known as political communitarians, they included Amitai Etzioni (the most well-known), Jean Bethke Elshtain, Francis Fukuyama, William Galston, John Gardner, and Mary Ann Glendon. Their assertions that the individual cannot be considered apart from society follow those of their philosophical communitarian predecessors. However, unlike their predecessors, political communitarians focus on central questions regarding the nature of community, how to strike a balance between individual rights and social responsibility, and the role of government and civil society in fostering communalism. Whereas philosophical communitarians focused on such questions regarding the nature of community in their abstract form, political communitarians confront real-world examples of the contested nature of community and the political implications.

The distinctions between the two strands of communitarianism can be summarized as follows:

Philosophical communitarianism considers classical liberalism to be ontologically and epistemologically incoherent, and opposes it on those grounds. Unlike classical liberalism, which construes communities as originating from the voluntary acts of pre-community individuals, it emphasizes the role of the community in defining and shaping individuals. Communitarians believe that the value of community is not sufficiently recognized in liberal theories of justice.

Ideological communitarianism [also known as political communitarianism] is characterized as a radical centrist ideology that is sometimes marked by leftism on economic issues and conservatism on social issues. This usage was coined recently. When the term is capitalized, it usually refers to the Responsive Communitarian movement of Amitai Etzioni and other philosophers. (Wikipedia, “Communitarianism,” 2008)

Political communitarians reject both classical liberalism’s privileging of individual liberty as well as conservatives’ unfettered belief in the free market. They argue that government policy should focus on supporting communities to do what they do best: shape, nurture, and enforce the moral order of our society. In general, the political project of communitarians revolves around themes of family, public safety, and civic responsibility. They argue that individual rights hold too much weight in our society, and a greater emphasis must be placed on personal and communal responsibility. How that translates into beliefs about the role of government or a specific political agenda is explored below.

Political Agenda

A uniform logic about the role of government is noticeably lacking among political communitarians. On one hand, they argue for government intervention in the form of labor policies, national service requirements, and public health monitoring. On the other hand, they take issue with legal authority or state mandates as an effective strategy for furthering social and economic goals, preferring instead the power of ethics and moral authority, or the ‘change of hearts versus change of laws.’ Although political communitarians seem to favor what are often considered public goods, they are hesitant to place the responsibility on the state for ensuring the provision of those goods. Many in fact argue for a “moratorium on new rights” until greater civic “responsibility” is demonstrated, or that laws should legislate minimum civic duties (such as help your neighbor in a situation of imminent danger) instead of simply promote negative rights.

Political communitarians generally prefer intermediate institutions and voluntary associations as instruments for governance and resource distribution. Micro-social institutions such as neighborhood schools, the family, and civic associations take on exceptional importance for ensuring individual well-being. The communitarian concept of ‘mutual obligation’ calls for greater personal responsibility as well. For example, communitarians oppose ‘something for nothing’ benefit systems, such as welfare without work and/or family planning requirements.

The political agenda of communitarianism in the 1990s is most succinctly expressed in a document entitled “The Responsive Communitarian Platform,” co-authored by Amitai Etzioni, Mary Ann Glendon, and William Galston in 1991 and promoted by their organization, The Communitarian Network. It encompasses the themes of family, education, public safety, and civic engagement.

Family is the lead concern of political communitarians since they view it as the primary site for socialization and economic sustenance. They worry about the erosion of marriage and the competing demands of work on parenting. In fact, they view the “traditional” two-parent household as the ideal, and unabashedly promote it as the societal norm. Communitarians call for liberals to stop seceding moral issues to conservatives, and for the government to help ease the burden on parents. Their “pro-family” policies range from workplace and tax policies that encourage flexible working hours, fringe benefits for part-time workers, extended parental leave, and per-child allowances, to counseling requirements for marriage and tougher divorce laws. Some policy proposals are punitive (docking parents’ welfare checks for poor parenting); others are meant to control behavior by regulating content and exposure (locks on televisions); and still others offer social supports such as guaranteed child support when the non-custodial parent fails to make payments. Welfare reform, the expanded earned income tax credit, and fines for parents in some states who fail to meet certain requirements were communitarian policies advanced under President Bill Clinton and his domestic policy advisor William Galston.

Political communitarians insist on “character formation” through moral education and the transmission of a core set of Western values. Thus, their platform for education emphasizes a traditional European canon, which may be supplemented – not replaced – by a multicultural curriculum. Communitarians also promote courses on conflict resolution and ethics, a highly structured and disciplined learning environment, and partnerships between public schools and corporations.

As for public safety, political communitarians prefer a combination of government regulation and peer-pressure-style enforcement. Their political platform includes traffic sobriety checkpoints; alcohol and drug testing for pilots; mandatory HIV testing and requirements to notify partners upon testing positive; and strict gun control. It also calls for public outcry as a means to confront hate crimes rather than laws, and self-identification of convicted drunk drivers through mandated bumper stickers. President Clinton’s tough on crime rhetoric and his decision to place it in a ‘citizen responsibility’ frame was based on communitarian ideas.

Political communitarians’ approach to civic engagement varies from attempts to legislate greater civic responsibility; efforts to strengthen existing institutions, systems, and mediums of communication; and opposition to new rights without required responsibilities. For example, they support campaign finance reform and initiatives to increase voting and jury participation, as well as government funding for public access television. Communitarians also call for such things as required organ donation and programs of “mutual obligation” such as national service requirements for high school graduates and/or recipients of college loans.

Critique and the Communitarian Debate

Political communitarians have been attacked from all sides of the political spectrum. Liberals critique their unwillingness to address structural forces that create economic pressures on families, or to hold government responsible for provision of public goods and greater regulation of the economy. Civil liberties groups, such as the ACLU, have taken issue with communitarianism for the potential breach of constitutional rights that could occur in the case that persuasion and socialization do not sufficiently alter attitudes to the liking of communitarians and they turn towards government to legislate values and behavior. Katha Pollit’s critique in The Nation that “communitarianism is Reaganism with a human face” represents the concern of many liberals that communitarianism is social conservatism in disguise (“Subject to Debate,” The Nation, July 25, 1994/August 1, 1994).

As to be expected, conservatives believe communitarian demands for labor benefits and child subsidies too closely resemble great society programs, and oppose such ‘big government’ policies. They commend communitarians for drawing attention to moral erosion and traditional values, but believe social supports such as welfare are to blame. Libertarians take issue with increased government intervention in both the social and economic realms.

One of the principle criticisms of both communitarian philosophy and politics is its nostalgic and unrealistic view of communities. With increased globalization and new socio-spatial relationships governing work and home, such geographically self-contained communities are increasingly rare. The “vague and fuzzy” critique of political communitarianism condemning its lack of specificity is captured in a 1995 article in The Economist:

The mission, in Mr. Etzioni’s words, is to restore ‘communities.’ But what does that term really mean? Families? Neighborhoods? Towns? Regions? Nations? One answer might be all of the above. But this cannot be right. Often, reinforcing one sort of community means weakening another (“The Politics of Restoration,” The Economist, December 24, 1994/January 6, 1995).

Communitarianism is often criticized for its presumption of consensus, and its inability to acknowledge or negotiate conflict. Perhaps most importantly, many feminists, cultural and race critics, and social movement theorists have challenged communitarians’ romanticized and exclusionary notion of community, which is in fact built on racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of social oppression that enforce a strict insider/outside dynamic. Elizabeth Frazer critiques communitarianism for overlooking the ‘politics of community,’ and failing to take into account unequal power dynamics that play out in personal relationships, communal structures, institutions, and systems (Frazer, 1999).

A more populist and progressive communitarian strand critiques fellow communitarians for failing to challenge the global free market and thus letting big business off the hook. They also critique those communitarians (such as Etzioni) who advance a:

professional-managerial class communitarianism…The absence of unions, grassroots community groups, or others outside the academy…This is communitariansim without the people. (Charles Derber, Review of Etzioni’s Rights and the Common Good, 1996, p.724)

Such self-characterized populist communitarians contend that economic models based solely on increasing profits have inflicted costs on communities, and corporations should be held to account.

Amitai Etzioni - the lead spokesperson for political communitarianism - utilized his quarterly journal The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities and frequent editorials in major publications to respond to accusations of majoritarianism; social conservatism in disguise; nostalgia and traditionalism; authoritarianism; and lack of substance or proper definition. To support his own points, Etzioni often drew on the work of fellow writers he termed “responsive communitarians,” including Michael Sandel, Mary Ann Glendon, William Galston, Charles Taylor, and Robert Bellah. Etzioni’s 1995 article, “The Attack on Community: The Grooved Debate” is a summary of critiques and responses, such as those found below:

Actually the term community can be defined with reasonable precision. Community refers to a group of people who share affective bonds and a culture. It is defined by two characteristics: Communities require a web of affect-laden relations among a group of individuals (rather than merely one-on-one or a chain of individual relations), relations that often criss-cross and reinforce one another. And being a community entails having a measure of commitment to a set of shared values, norms, and meanings (Etzioni, “The Attack on Community: The Grooved Debate,” 1995, p. 3).

Responsive communitarians…fully realize and often stress that they do not seek to return to traditional communities, with their discriminatory practices against minorities and women and authoritarian power structure and rigid stratification. Responsive communitarians seek to build communities on open participation, dialogue, and truly shared values (Etzioni, “The Attack on Community: The Grooved Debate,” 1995, p. 3).

The answer to that majoritarian threat is to try to appeal to a richer conception of democracy than just adding up votes (Michael Sandel quoted in Etzioni, “The Attack on Community: The Grooved Debate,” 1995, p. 5).

The relative ease of mobility indicates that people choose which community to join and – to continue. In short, the problem of most contemporary communities in pluralistic, democratic societies is that they are rather anemic, not overpowering…Some liberal communitarians solve this problem by arguing that communities should not have one shared characterization of the common good but rather should maintain a plurality of conceptions. In this way, each person could chose to which values to subscribe. However, this assumption flies in the face of sociological fact; numerous communities have a shared set of core values, and these values are necessary for a community to be able to build consensus on specific norms and policies, in short to function as a community (Etzioni, “The Attack on Community: The Grooved Debate,” 1995, p. 5-6).

Etzioni countered critiques of excessive liberalism and welfare state politics in his response to Roger Scruton’s 1997 article “Communitarian Dreams” by emphasizing that communitarians seek a balance between individualism and civic responsibility, as well as favor a limited role for the state:

Properly understood, the idea of community avoids the simple dichotomy between “I” and “we” (Etzioni, “Community, Yes. But Whose?” 1997, p. 1).

Communitarians sometimes sound like conservatives of both camps because they want to shore up the social and psychological foundations of virtue but also to keep the state in its place. Solving this dilemma calls for a new approach, and this is where communitarians stand apart: they reconcile the social conservative’s quest for shared virtues and the laissez-faire conservative’s devotion to limited government by relying on the community-not the state of the individual-as the first and foremost protector of the social order (Etzioni, “Community, Yes. But Whose?” 1997, p. 2).

Scruton portrays communitarians as great defenders of the entitlement-driven national welfare state-and hence foes of local communities. But these are not the communitarians I know. The communitarian platform that I cited earlier endorses the idea of subsidiary, which calls for the dispersal of authority. Subsidiary demands, in the first instance, that individuals, including the most disadvantaged, take responsibility for themselves; failing this, it obliges family members and communities to step in. If these fail-and only then-the state should have a role, but mainly to enable and support these primary institutions-a notion that informs GOP Senator Dan Coast’s proposal to encourage private charities to take over programs now carried out by the government. As everyone but Scruton seems to know by now, communitarians invariably favor such face-to-face social solutions over statist bureaucracy (Etzioni, “Community, Yes. But Whose?” 1997, p. 3 4).

The credibility of communitarianism began to erode in the late 1990s. As Etzioni and his colleagues attempted to satisfy critics on all sides, the political philosophy increasingly appeared to many to be too diluted, idealistic, or incoherent. Furthermore, the more that politicians embraced communitarianism (often to legitimate centrist and right-wing policies), the less communitarianism was viewed as a distinct movement that had something new and worthwhile to offer. A 2003 article in The Nation recounts this ironic turn of events:

Much of the difficulty had to do with his “third way” communitarian message. The political blood support of the Clinton era made Etzioni’s plea for nonpartisanship sound naive, if not disingenuous. If Clinton could gut welfare while simultaneously praising communitarianism (“You are my inspiration,” Clinton told Etzioni one New Year’s Eve), maybe the movement was more style than substance. Were communitarian ideas merely protective coloration for politicians of the left and right? Was a movement admired by Bill Bennet, Dick Morris, and George W. Bush itself worth admiring?

Conclusion

It is important to reiterate that the concept of the Campaign for Community Values developed independently of political communitarianism and was not intentionally based on any of its principles. Many sharp differences are in fact notable between the political project advanced by the Center for Community Change and its partners, and that of the political communitarian movement in the 1990s. For example, political communitarians demonstrate an unwillingness to confront structural economic and political forces, and often focus on voluntarism instead of the role of government or institutional reform in addressing hardships faced by families and communities; whereas the Campaign is focused on policy change that is especially aimed at improving the conditions of communities of color and poor people. If pressed to take a position on political communitarianism, it is likely that the Center for Community Change would share many of the critiques described above, such as concerns regarding infringements upon civil liberties; normative definitions of community that range from unsophisticated, nostalgic and vague, to dangerously exclusionary and repressive; and socially conservative values.

However, areas of overlap may also be worth noting. Political communitarians’ support of progressive labor and tax policies that help families make ends meet and restore the balance between work and the rest of life may find traction among the organizing projects at the Center for Community Change. Similarly, belief in the value of civic engagement may occupy shared ground, although the Center for Community Change goes further than political communitarians in supporting get out the vote initiatives and holding elected officials accountable. And at least at a general level, communitarianism and the Campaign for Community Values both stand in opposition to excessive individualism while also recognizing the need to restore the balance between personal responsibility and shared responsibility. Yet, their respective viewpoints again diverge on the meaning of shared responsibility and strategies for achieving it.

A number of lessons thus emerge from this brief study of political communitarianism. As the Campaign for Community Values develops, the Center for Community Change will face a similar challenge in satisfying audiences with a precise and coherent articulation of what is meant be community or community values, without being normative. The Campaign for Community Values will be challenged to advance specific shared values/commonalities while also emphasizing – and creating space for – plurality, difference, conflict, and the restoration of power imbalances.

The Center for Community Change should also take care not to replicate glaring failures of political communitarians. For example, the Campaign for Community Values will need to advance a notion of community that is visionary, and actionable. If it lacks vision or distinction as something “new,” it will get subsumed in current political debates, not sufficiently challenge the status quo, or not be taken seriously; if it is characterized as utopian it will be considered too unrealistic and quickly abandoned. Lastly, as the Campaign for Community Values increasingly saturates the public debate and gains footing among power holders, it will be important to ensure that it does not become diluted or co-opted.

Via Movement Vision Lab

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