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Change, Community and SubsidiarityPhilip Camara, co-convenor of Subsidiarity Movement International

March 13, 2010

 

Some analysts wonder if it is possible to use the principle of 

subsidiarity in a country like the Philippines amidst the claim that

“communities do not anymore exist, most especially in the urban

areas”. The thinking further goes “to honor autonomy, particularly

of communities, they and it have first to exist”.

Clearly, they believe that “modernism” and a modern state have

no space for the traditional aspects and values of a “community”.

While our day to day experience in Metro Manila will bear out

some truth in the above view, the question arises: does

Subsidiarity require traditional communities to thrive? I do not

believe so.

 

David Round, A New Zealander columnist in his March 7, 2010

blog has this to say about traditional community life:

 

“…like the life of anyone in a small simple close-knit community, one which is, by our 

standards, without privacy, intellectual curiosity or freedom. Inevitably, in any village where

 people live next to each other and spend all their waking hours together, everyone knows

everyone else’s business, and private life is impossible. Private thought, different from

everyone else’s, is impossible. Freedom, as we understand it, is impossible, for social cohesion

requires adherence to traditional ways and loyalty to traditional leaders. Any deviation from

the norm is actually threatening to the community. Consequently freedom of thought and 

intellectual curiosity cannot exist either. Life there is, by our standards, both extremely

constricting and extremely boring.

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 Everything comes at a price. Strong communities are excellent things. But the price of 

community is the loss of the individual. This is in the very nature of things. Those who sing the

 praises of simple happy community life often display a considerable degree of condescension

and even hypocrisy. They would be horrified at the suggestion that they might live that way

themselves. It is an ideal they have no intention of trying; it is something for other, lesser folk. If for a second they entertain the possibility of living that way, it would have to be as one of the

leaders, vested with traditional and unquestioned authority, not as one of the common herd.” 

Many times we see this view displayed as a defense of the shift

since the 16th century from community to individualism and the

formation of the nation-state. In between the nation-state and the

individual are intermediary organizations notionally segregated

by spheres of politics, economics, and culture. In the modernworld, there is no quarter given to community. Most societal

power is shared between those spheres and only the crumbs are

given to the households. Yet, all life springs from the households,

in the form of production, consumption, taxes, ideas, cultural

works, and new human beings. It is generally, in the households

that the individuals are recharged to perform. Without the

household, the individual could not sanely exist for long.

Given the primordial role of the individual acting within

institutions the community of households are nothing more than

shared space, a shared common area and shared infrastructure

maintained by different institutions that have operating manuals

and need hardly any community interaction to keep moving well.

What is the vision of those who espouse Subsidiarity as an

organizing principle where power over function is devolved to the

lowest feasible conscious unit ? In other words, some tasks are

best carried out by individuals, some by household, others by

groups of households sharing the same territory, and still others

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by their government representatives and/or agencies, some state,

some national.

SMI believes the following:

- Way too much power over functions have been removed fromhouseholds and network of households sharing space and facilities tothe detriment of a just, more prosperous and equitable society;

- Practicing the organizing principle of Subsidiarity does notpresuppose the existence of traditional communities. In fact, none of thecharacteristics of what Mr. Round describes in a traditional communityare a prerequisite for subsidiarity to be practiced. As long as there arehouseholds (and there will be households until Kingdom comes) and aslong as households share a common territory (and there will be sharedterritory until we succeed in discombulating ourselves) then practicingSubsidiarity is not only possible but desirable;

- Beyond the community of households sharing an accessiblecommon territory with its attendant infrastructure lies a whole range of supra organizations that too can be integrated with this basicsubsidiarity-practicing unit: village government, school boards, healthbodies, peace and order councils, disaster management councils, etc.At least in the Philippines, it is very obvious that all of those front line

organizations are extremely anemic because real power and budgetsare under powerful politicians and their allies who control national,centralized agencies.

- Our typical middle class residential experience is that of sharingspace with neighbors in enclosed subdivisions or same-incomecondominium buildings. Here, there is privacy, and really very littlecommunity interaction except maybe for the monthly request for duespayment and reading the report of the officers. But the fact is commonspace and management is shared. Therefore, the opportunities for practicing Subsidiarity are already present and some of which arerealized through the residential associations. But typically, theassociations just end there. They have no more upward hierarchy butyet you could imagine the very interesting possibilities if there werefederations of homeowner associations within Barangays, the firsttangent of community– government interaction. Why aren’t there? Onlybecause we do not honor the principle of subsidiarity.

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- In fact, the likely cause of having no federations of residentialassociations is precisely the fear by the powerful that power willimmediately have to be shared with these bodies. If Barangayresidential association federations were further federated by cities, sowill the power of Mayors have to be shared due to the increasedaccountability mechanisms.

- Without subsidiarity the natural order of things under our systemof “superiority” (where the few control the many as well as the budgets)is what we see today: corruption at the top, helplessness andhopelessness at the bottom.

- With subsidiarity the life blood returns to the household and thenetwork of households giving life and strength to simple but doablethings like solid waste management, peace and order, utility servicemanagement, etc. But more important than any of that is the reclaiming

of space, of identity, of initiative, of a community building that Fr.Horacio de la Costa dreamed of connecting to common goals (national)and recapturing the bureaucracy.

SMI’s vision of shared power under the organizing principle of 

Subsidiarity will hopefully elicit the support of the gate-keepers

and status-quo power wielders who somehow still think that the

Philippines can still be fixed by better institutional operating

manuals, maybe a better basic law of the land, good governance

practitioners, etc. etc. but never to question the colonial-eraorganizing principle of superiority itself.

As Bob Dylan sang in the 60’s :

How many years can a mountain exist

Before it is washed to the sea?

 Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist

Before they’re allowed to be free (from poverty)?

 Yes ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head

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Pretending he just doesn’t see?

 The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,

 The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

Recent statistics of increasing OFWs, poverty rates, infant

mortality, NPA / Muslim insurgencies (>50,000), malnutrition,

preventable deaths, joblessness tell the story of our state,

organized for the benefit of the powerful, failing it’s people.

Indeed, it’s been 489 years since the installation of our colonial,top-down, “pinatulo”, trickle down, resource-and-people-

exploiting governance system. When will it end? The answer is

blowin’ in the wind.