Individual and community

I

You could write about this topic from a sociological, psychological or economic perspective – even from a metaphysical perspective. But I will approach it as an old-fashioned political theorist asking the classic question: How do individuals come together to form a political community? And to this question there are a couple of classic responses, generally understood as polar opposites. Polarities and dichotomies are currently out of fashion; still, they will provide a useful frame for my argument.

The first response describes the political community as a limited partnership. Self-interested individuals come together, rather as Thomas Hobbes wrote, for the sake of physical security and other social goods, and they form a polity. We might not call this a community, not in the strong sense given to that word by contemporary communitarians. But these individuals do have a common cause – their own safety and well-being – a common territory and a government committed, let’s say, to the Trinitarian version of human rights: life, liberty and property. Theirs is a minimalist, laissez-faire state, within which they pursue their life plans, but they do this together or, at least, side by side – so they constitute a community of sorts.

A community like this would be easy to join – and easy to leave if a neighbouring state offered, say, greater safety. It would have a well-trained police force and a professional army. The education of children would be in the hands of their parents, who would choose among private schools run by educational entrepreneurs, promising these or those results. Taxation would be very low (just to pay the police and the army) since the partners would regard taxes as the equivalent of forced labour – the conscription of the time and energy necessary to earn the money demanded by the government. Besides the state there would be other voluntary associations, some philanthropic, some devoted to a cause (animal rights, for example), some whose purpose was simply the advancement of their members. Religion would be a private affair. The partners would take no interest in each other’s faith, so long as it did not threaten anyone’s safety.

This would a radically inegalitarian community, with the inequalities of concern only to the men and women who suffer from them. The partnership agreement would bar any collective concern and, of course, any redistributive programme. So: a libertarian community. How would the partners choose a government? Presumably they would vote, but there would be an implicit understanding that the richest partners would have the greatest influence, and their wealth would make their influence effective. Again, the only people who would object would be those with no influence at all, and the partnership agreement would offer them no recourse except to enrich themselves.

II

The second response doesn’t actually describe individuals coming together; it starts with men and women who are already together – if not politically then culturally, linguistically, religiously – and who have been together for a long time. They constitute a people or a nation or perhaps a cluster of peoples who have inhabited the same territory for centuries. So this response begins in media res, with men and women who have a history. The political community natural to them, according to Jean Jacques Rousseau, who is a good polar opposite for Hobbes, is a civic republic of equal citizens who recognize a common good.

You might think of this as an unlimited partnership, a community in the strong sense. Its benefits are not delivered to the members by a minimal state and an invisible hand but rather by the intentional efforts of the members themselves, working together, committed to each other, engaged in governing themselves. Theirs is a participatory democracy.

The citizens, Rousseau says, ‘fly’ to the assemblies and endure long meetings. Actually, they enjoy long meetings: they derive a greater proportion of their happiness from public than from private activities. The republican state isn’t minimalist; it is a strong state that enforces and sustains the equality of the citizens. But there is no need for police – the citizens watch and reprimand one another. Miss a meeting and a neighbour will come to remind you of the next one.

The citizens do everything for themselves. Just as there are no representatives, so there are no professional or mercenary soldiers but rather a citizen army. Rousseau actually suggested that the corvée of the ancien régime – enforced labour on the king’s highways – should be replaced by conscripted labour on the republic’s highways. Similarly, older citizens rather than professional teachers would teach in the state schools. Private or parochial schools would be banned or strongly discouraged. Organizational life would be limited. Indeed, citizens would be so busily engaged in civic activity that there would be little time or energy for voluntary associations. What we call ‘civil society’ would be a largely empty space.

The schools would teach patriotism above all else – love of country, love of the republic. In his Constitution for Poland, Rousseau describes public schools that teach Polish history, Polish geography, Polish literature – and nothing more. There would be a civil religion designed to re-enforce feelings of belonging, with public ceremonies and holidays that the citizens celebrate together. This is how patriotic men and women are produced and re-produced, loyal citizens who will not be tempted by opportunities elsewhere.

The republic does not bar exit, but citizens cannot leave if the political community is in danger; presumably they wouldn’t want to leave at such a time. In ancient Athens, a key precedent, citizens considering suicide – another form of exit – had to petition the Senate for permission, and they were granted permission only if they were deemed no longer useful to the polis. A modern republic would not go that far, but it would certainly encourage citizens to devote their lives to the political community and not to think first of their own troubles. In a libertarian, laissez-faire community, by contrast, there could not possibly be an obligation to live for the state. Suicide would be free.

III

Here we have two accounts of the connection between individual and community – one an account of maximum looseness, the other of maximum tightness; libertarian and communitarian. No doubt the two are stereotypes and exaggerations. They are also utopian in the sense that nothing like them exists in the real world. They are the creations of theory. What we actually see around us are corrupt, capitalist oligarchies committed to laissez-faire and totalizing regimes of a populist sort, whose maxim is nationalist solidarity. The libertarian and communitarian utopias are relatively benign compared to these real-world regimes. But neither of them suggests a satisfactory way of bringing individuals and communities together. The first puts equality at risk; the second puts liberty at risk.

Now that I have established the polarity, the natural and familiar next move is to say that the best connection between individual and community lies somewhere between these two – lies roughly in the magical middle. And, of course, that’s right, and I am going to argue for a middle position, which I will call social democracy (easy for me since I have been a social democrat all my life). But I won’t stop there because I don’t believe that social democracy, at least in its standard versions, does justice either to the spirit of individuality or to the emotional content of community. So this is my agenda: I will defend the middle position and then look beyond it.

IV

I am sure that my readers know the advantages of social democracy, but I will work my way through them anyway. First comes the commitment to equality – not absolute equality, no Procrustean bed, but much greater equality than you would find in a libertarian society. Social democracy requires a strong state capable of taxing its members, redistributing resources among them and providing the services that constitute a welfare system. Hence, second, a social democratic state is enjoined to defend a set of rights beyond the standard three, including healthcare and economic security. Property rights will be constrained and regulated by the state. Serious taxation, then, but conscription only for the army and, perhaps, some form of national service for young men and women, with options so that they can choose how they serve – nothing like Rousseau’s republican corvée (or Trotsky’s industrial army).

So – the third advantage – the citizens will do some things for themselves, but not everything. They will elect representatives rather than fly to the assemblies themselves. Some of them will join political parties and social movements to defend their interests or, sometimes, their ideals. But the state’s civil service won’t consist of amateurs-in-office but of competent professionals, accountable to the citizens. Accountability will always be an issue given the extent of the state’s engagement in regulating the economy and providing welfare services. We learned in the months of the Covid pandemic how important a competent civil service is. I won’t say that social democracy has always produced such a civil service, but it is more likely to do so than any other political formation. Perhaps this success makes the political participation of citizens seem less important. Still, participation will certainly be higher than in the libertarian utopia; at the same time, citizens will be able to join in many other activities – far more than would be possible (or permitted) by the communitarians.

In 1957, I was travelling with my wife across Yugoslavia, then a relatively new communist society, and I arrived in Zagreb on the day of a mini-marathon. We found a bystander who explained what was happening. In your country, he said, some people run and some people watch. Here, everyone runs. An exaggeration: he wasn’t running. But still, a helpful explanation. Social democracy, you could say, restores the balance between runners and spectators.

The large majority of children in a social democratic society will attend public schools, where they will be taught by professional teachers. They will study the history, politics and literature of their own country, but not only that. Since social democrats are also internationalists, the children will also study global geography and politics – a fourth advantage – and the history and culture of other countries. The aim would be to produce citizens committed to each other, the necessary basis of the welfare system, but also competent citizens, able to vote intelligently on matters of domestic and foreign policy.

One might ask more from democratic education: that it teach students to think critically, to imagine different ways of doing things, to engage with the ‘others’, whoever the ‘others’ are. Some teachers in a social democratic society will teach that way. But I think that there is in social democratic culture a sense of achievement achieved: greater equality, success in delivering healthcare and other benefits, poverty significantly reduced – a sense, then, of completion, which breeds complacency rather than criticism. Understandable, perhaps, given the real-world alternatives, but still disturbing. Critics sometimes say that social democracy is boring, and there is something to that – something also to be said in favour of political boredom. Remember the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times! If social democratic politics is uninteresting, there are other things to do that aren’t.

The middle position is unexciting but, still, a success. Indeed, social democracy can plausibly be described as the most decent and most humane politics of the last century. Nonetheless, I want to suggest two moves beyond it, using our recent and current experience with the Covid pandemic to help me explain the moves.

V

I will begin with a story that was told many times during the early days of the crisis. The Obama administration, thinking ahead, contracted with a small (start-up) company that made cheap, portable ventilators – to buy and store large numbers of the machines. Along came a big company that made big and expensive ventilators, bought the smaller company and stopped the production of the cheap ventilators. Our laissez-faire government approved the sale and the merger of the two companies into one – which then cancelled the contract on the grounds that it wasn’t profitable. So here is a story of predatory, profit-driven capitalism: so it was told and so it was. But none of the critics seemed to notice that this was also a story about the value of the entrepreneurial innovation represented by the smaller company. Defenders of capitalism claim that kind of innovation as a feature of a free market economy and a non-regulatory state. Not an exclusive feature, but still more likely there.

Entrepreneurs aren’t necessarily good people; they invent and produce a lot of junk – but also things like cheap ventilators. So they are necessary people: we should always make room for their activity and provide the required incentives, not only money but also celebrity and honour. It is no affront to social democratic equality, as I understand it, if the inventor of the cheap, portable ventilator makes more money that I do and is more widely known. And we shouldn’t think only about economic inventors but also about the entrepreneurs of politics and culture. There should be room everywhere in our society for bold, innovative, ambitious, risk-taking individuals.

Since the New Left of the 1960s, there has been a marked aversion to the very idea of leadership on the political left. This is a mistake: political movements need individuals who can enthral and inspire a crowd, organize a demonstration or win public attention for a fledgling organization. Leftists who claim to work as a collective, that is, a committee, generally don’t work very long. Committees are right for achieved social democracy, but the vaunted leaderlessness of a new and inchoate project like, for example, Occupy Wall Street, does not make for survival. The civil rights movement of the 1960s provides a better example. Martin Luther King was first among equals in a remarkable group of Black preachers – some of whom were, to my ears, at least as eloquent. But he was allowed to stand out.

We should, of course, avoid the right-wing adulation of Great Men – but still recognize the usefulness, the social and political value, of talented, adventurous and ambitious individuals. Make sure they are accountable to the rest of us, but do not require them to hide their talents.

VI

For my second move beyond the middle, it will be helpful, again, to begin from where we are (I am writing in December 2020). The pandemic makes for a statist politics; it is a time when we need a competent civil service, leaders who can talk intelligently and compassionately to their people, and citizens ready to accept a new social discipline. But precisely because of this, the time that comes next, the after-time, should be a time of free-wheeling democratic activism, engaged social criticism and large-scale participation. What would that be like?

I have always believed that the place for communitarian intensity and the emotional commitment that makes people ‘fly’ to the assemblies is not the state, not the political community but the social movement (other organizations too, religious, cultural, philanthropic, but I will focus here on the movement). A decent state doesn’t need that kind of intensity, and in any other states, it can make for a very nasty and aggressive nationalism. Still, intensity and commitment are humanly important, and for many people working closely with others, even arguing fiercely with men and women who are, like you, committed to a cause – this is emotionally and intellectually fulfilling. It does make a difference, of course, what the cause is. The emotional intensity of a fascist movement is fulfilling, I guess, for its activists. But that’s not a reason to give up on a participatory politics. You just have to defend its openness and its commitment to a society where the right of opposition is always recognized and protected. Know your enemies and stick close to your friends, who are committed, like you, to civil liberty and equality.

The movement, Eduard Bernstein famously declared, is more important than the end. Bernstein was a good social democrat, but he understood that even what I called an achieved social democratic state would not be, not ever, fully achieved. There would be new inequalities – between bureaucrats and the rest of us, perhaps, or between the highly educated and the less educated. We already see the beginnings of a social hierarchy that is connected to class, as in the past, but also to office and education. So political and social movements with the old commitments to justice and equality are still necessary – and that’s where men and women can find the warmth and intensity that states cannot and should not provide. The friendship of citizens that Aristotle described long ago is relatively cool compared to the camaraderie of movement activists.

I began with the polarity of a libertarian and a communitarian polity and so set up an opposition between whose poles social democracy mediates. The mediation is successful, I argued, the success most visible in these pandemic days wherever social democrats have established universal healthcare. But this isn’t the ‘end’. We still need, will always need, the activity of adventurous, entrepreneurial individuals and warm-hearted, sometimes, hot-headed movement militants. These two, individualists and militants, often find themselves on opposing sides of our political conflicts, but they can usefully, happily, co-exist.