WHAT COMMUNITARIANISM IS 47

COMMUNITARIANISM IS A PROCESS, NOT A PRE-DETERMINED DOGMA

THE COMMUNITARIAN PLATFORM IS A WORK IN PROGRESS

INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITARIAN POLICY STUDIES, 2000; The Communitarian Platform,

This is only a beginning. This platform is but a point in dialogue, part of an ongoing process of deliberation. It should not be viewed as a series of final conclusions but ideas for additional discussion. We do not claim to have the answers to all that troubles America these days.

COMMUNITARIANISM SEES IDEAS AS CONTINUUMS ALONG WHICH WE MUST CHOOSE BASED ON A BALANCE OF FACTORS TO PROVIDE THE BEST SOLUTIONS

Those philosophical liberals who tend to reject the term community altogether see society as based on a social contract establishing procedures of fairness, but otherwise leaving individuals free to serve their own interests. They argue that under modern conditions, if we think of community as based on shared values and shared goals, community can exist only in small groups and is not possible or desirable in large-scale societies or institutions.

A deeper analysis, however, reveals that it is possible to see this supposed contrast of contract vs. community as a continuum, or even as a necessary complementarity, rather than as an either/or proposition. Surely procedural norms of fairness are necessary in large-scale social institutions; but any group of any size, if it has a significant breadth of involvement and lasts a significant length of time, must have some shared values and goals. Consequently societies and institutions can never be based solely on contract, striving to maximize the opportunities of individuals. They must also, to some extent, be communities with shared values and goals.

RESPONSIBILITIES ARE NOT INDIVIDUALLY DETERMINED, BUT ARE SOCIALLY DETERMINED INTO EXISTENCE

INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITARIAN POLICY STUDIES, 2000; The Communitarian Platform,

It has been argued by libertarians that responsibilities are a personal matter, that individuals are to judge which responsibilities they accept as theirs. As we see it, responsibilities are anchored in community. Reflecting the diverse moral voices of their citizens, responsive communities define what is expected of people; they educate their members to accept these values; and they praise them when they do and frown upon them when they do not. Although the ultimate foundation of morality may be commitments of individual conscience, it is communities that help introduce and sustain these commitments. Hence the urgent need for communities to articulate the responsibilities they expect their members to discharge, especially in times, such as our own, in which the understanding of these responsibilities has weakened and their reach has grown unclear.

COMMUNITARIANISM BALANCES RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES TO BEST SOLVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS OF ALL SORTS IN ALL SOCIETIES

INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITARIAN POLICY STUDIES, 2000; Communitarian

At the heart of the responsive communitarian vision lies a simple precept: the quest for the good society is in part the search for a healthy balance between rights and responsibilities, between individual freedom and the requirements of the social order. A society can err in either direction. Pre-democratic societies typically emphasize obligations at the expense of individual rights. Late-twentieth-century liberal democracies often have the opposite problem, stressing rights to the neglect of responsibilities.

In speaking to today’s authoritarian societies around the world, communitarians demand a greater acknowledgement by governments of the rights and dignity of the individual. In speaking to the modern democracies, and especially our own society, communitarians call for a greater recognition by citizens of their obligations to society and to one another.