Communitarism versus Neoliberalism

Communitarism versus Neoliberalism

Cristina Pop, West University of TimisoaraAssignment on “Ethics and Social Justice”

“Social Inclusion in Europe” Master Programme 2005-2007


Two of the most widely supported ideologies of today’s Western world, communitarism and neoliberalism set their focus on different (rather opposite) concepts, thus leading to different (even conflicting) discourses and policies.

This paper will first show a brief presentation of each of the two concepts, mentioning also their main critiques and responses to the latter. The separate presentations will be followed by a comparison between the two ideologies, using a table that displays their main differences. I will then conclude by stating my personal position on the topic, addressing especially the aspect of social justice.

Communitarism

Although not an entirely new concept, the term of communitarism has only recently (during the mid-nineteenth century) started to be used with the meaning shown below. Its advocates emphasize on the role of communities in the society, supporting the idea that the definition of what is “good” should be transmitted and enforced by the society through its units like the family, school or voluntary associations. This binds communtarism to previous ideas, like the ones of Catholic theology (seeing church as a community) or the socialist doctrine (workers’ solidarity).

These are the key concepts on which communitarism is based:

1.civil society: the totality of voluntary organisations and institutions which, differing from the family, state and market, are the basis of a functioning society. Although some communitarians (like the early theorists or the Asians) emphasize more on the role of the state and the necessity of authority, the “responsive communitarians” (an influential movement started in the USA by Amitai Etzioni and William A. Galston), set focus on the principle of responsibility, promoting the idea of an involved and active citizen. Both political and non-political organisations in civil society contribute to moving towards this ideal, by raising social awareness and therefore increasing participation in community life.

2.social capital: “the collective value of all social networks and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other”, as defined by Robert Putnam in his study “Bowling Alone”. The core of communitarism relies on the idea of shared values recognized inside of a community. Putnam mentions two complementary components of this concept:

- “bonding social capital” – networks between socially homogenous groups of people;

- “bridging social capital” – networks of socially heterogeneous groups.

3.positive rights: communitarians are concerned with rights like free education, a safe and clean environment, universal health care, affordable housing or even the rights to a job. Programs motivated by these goals are sometimes criticized because their implementation can interfere with the negative rights of the citizens (the most common example being that of paying more taxes for supporting these programs). This criticism is countered by the concept of responsibility towards society, mentioned above.

One of the main issues when speaking of communitarism is the very notion of “community”. The ideology itself has been contested many times as being based on an undefined, vague term, and therefore with no possibility of practical results. As a

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response, Etzioni brought a definition for a community by these two characteristics: “first, a web of affect-laden relationships among a group of individuals, relationships that often crisscross and reinforce one another (as opposed to one-on-one or chain-like individual relationship); and second, a measure of commitment to a set of shared values, norms, and meanings, and a shared history and identity – in short, a particular culture”.

Another concern of communitarism’s opponents is related to the standardization implied by the commonly shared values in a community. This brings two risks: one is the loss of individuality, the other is having standards that are not shared by all the members, but imposed by only part of them. While this view can well apply to the traditional view of a community, communitarians of today promote the idea of a community where consensus is not silent, it is constantly challenged and reshaped.

Neoliberalism

Regarded by many as an economic ideology, neoliberalism is a political-economic philosophy that focuses on the idea of free market. Supporting the lack of state intervention in the processes of the market, neoliberals see the laws of free market applying from the national level to the individual one – countries are similar to virtual corporations, “selling” themselves as investment locations, regions and cities are businesses inside these fictive corporations, while every person becomes an entrepreneur, managing his/her own life in order to maximize their advantages on the labour market.

The main points of neoliberalism include the following:

1. the rule of the market: no bonds imposed by the government to private enterprises, no labour unions, no price control – total freedom of movement for capital, goods and services. The neoliberal theory implies that "an unregulated market is the best way to increase economic growth, which will ultimately benefit everyone".

2. deregulation and cutting public expenditure for social services: this is meant also for reducing state control and for maximizing profits.

3. privatization: in order to achieve greater efficiency, all enterprises, goods and services should be owned by private investors. Criticism of this concept points to the fact that, in practice, this process has only led to concentrating more wealth in the hands of a few people.

4. individual responsibility: each individual is held completely responsible for his/her success in managing the small-scale enterprise represented by himself/herself.

The main idea behind neoliberalism is competition – only the best ones will survive on the market, they will prove maximum efficiency, they will achieve profit. Not only what is traditionally considered “business” is to be regulated by the market, all aspects of society are subject to the same mechanism: education, culture, health care, even the private life of a person is conducted by a marketing strategy aimed at getting (even out of personal relationships or free time) a better status in regard to employability. An example of this effect on the individual level is the demand for plastic surgery from people (mostly women) who, this way, aim to keep their jobs or get access to better ones (this applies to

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work fields like television or show-biz).One important point raised by critics of neoliberalism refers to this very topic – the effect of this globalised business orientation on the individual. First, there are the people who are not fully market-compatible – many neoliberals acknowledge their existence and the need to create special services for them, which leads to questioning the ideal of universal applicability of market principles.

Second, there are many effects regarding work conditions, like continuous assessment, increasing flexibility (hiring on fixed-term contracts or on a temporary basis, repeated corporate restructurings), individualisation of the wage relationship – all these are seen by opponents of neoliberalism as causes for over-involvement in work, work under emergency or high-stress conditions and weakening of collective standards or solidarities.

Though a goal of neoliberalism is increasing efficiency, criticism points out that the intensification and multiplication of transactions (an aim itself of the ideology), by leading to a large and rapid growth of the financial services sector, contradicts the idea of “less bureaucracy, more efficiency”.

Main differences between communitarism and neoliberalism

Communitarism NeoliberalismCentral idea

- community: a cohesive group of people, sharing a web of relationships, a common culture and a high level of responsiveness to the members’ true needs

- market: the traditional meaning of this term has been outrun, the principles now tend to apply in every aspect of social life

Main concepts- sharing: members of a community share the same values and culture

- competition: individuals/business organisations/nations compete on an extending market

- rights and responsibilities: all members of a community are guaranteed the same rights and share equal responsibilities towards society

- employability: the criteria for belonging to the society is the ability to use one self’s labour potential to the maximum

- participation and dialogue: members of the community get involved in constantly challenging and changing the shared values, so that these represent the real values of all the community members

- profit and flexibility: the aim is for each individual/private organisation to maximize profit, the only regulation being the “natural” flow of the market

- social orientation: communitarians are highly concerned with ethics and social processes like those of forming, transferring, challenging the common values

- economic orientation: society is seen as a market where every exchange is actually a (more or less explicit) business exchange

- values: the shared values of the community are the basis of all policies

- transactions: any form of action is regarded as a transaction

Nation state- civil society: it is seen as the basis of a functioning democracy, complementary to

- international trade: multinational corporations put global profits before

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the state organisations community interestsThe individual

- member of the community: sharing the same rights and responsibilities with the other members

- entrepreneur: is expected to develop a strategy of personal marketing in order to become successful on the labour market

- active citizen - resource used in economic processes- conformity? – critics address the risk of standardizing the individual in order to fit the community; the response is that in an authentic community it is the individuals that together shape what is common

- autonomy? – neoliberal theory supports the idea of freedom, stating the free market leads to best results for everyone; yet, practice shows that the increase of competition on all levels is actually imposing both individuals and organisations a set of informal laws that one has to follow in order to survive

- sense of security: it is a result of belonging to the community and having particular rights guaranteed

- sense of freedom: the focus is on the individual and his/her success, without being tied to the community

Issues related to social justiceInclusion/exclusion

- common values: the authentic community allows its members to define this common set of values and strives to address their real needs, thus setting premises for an inclusive society

- survival of the fittest: the demand on the market is the one saying who is “in” and who is “out”, therefore leaving a wide space for exclusion of those who are not fit for the labour market

- free public education: access to education not only assures the transmission of the community’s values, but also provides the individual with a starting point in life, partially addressing the concept of “equal chances”

- privatization of education: neoliberals consider that all services, including education, should be subject to the rule of the market and should be owned by private investors

Unemployment- labour unions: part of the civil society, they are an important actor on the scene of public-private interaction

- individualisation of contract: encourages competition between individuals and brings the employee to the status of an independent contractor, setting a high degree of responsibility on various matters

- the right to a job: the state and civil society do, by specific means, regulate the frame for employment contracts

- obligation to maximize one’s employability: competitiveness of labour market produces effects like contracts getting shorter and shorter, insecurity of job tenure and menace of layoff

Poverty- social services supported by the state: rights as that to free education, affordable housing and a job are supported by communitarians

- no intervention from the state: neoliberals see the wealth distribution produced by the free market as the only “fair” distribution

Environment- the right to a clean and healthy environment: communitarians support laws for fighting and preventing pollution

- maximum efficiency in using resources of any kind: neoliberals see nature (even humans) solely as resources in the

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economic process Genetic engineering

- well being of the community: some critics mention the risk of accepting gene selection in order to maximize the benefits of the community, by having more fit members; however, this seems hardly probable in the lights of the inclusive spirit of communitarism

- social Darwinism: being close to the idea of competition between members of society shared by neoliberalism, this concept presents a high risk of accepting genetic engineering in order to produce individuals that are most likely to succeed

Conclusions

From the table presented above, it is obvious that the communitarian approach is close related to concepts of social justice, while the neoliberal one has no concern for this matter and is even, in some points, going against them.

What the communitarians need to develop more are the practical measures for the implementation of what they stand for. Yet, given the general business-oriented culture the Western world has been developing, it is not easy to prove in practice that a communitarian program is truly reliable. For example, Maccobi speaks of Boimondeau, a cooperative watch factory in France, based on an organisational culture that combined work with learning, collective and individual development; it was seen by Fromm as an ideal organisation and was one of his main arguments for supporting the principles of communitarism. Maccobi mentions that the factory did not survive “in the competitive marketplace”, proving by this that “the communitarian ideal remains theoretical. It is not a convincing solution.” I believe his argument can be countered with his words exactly: “the competitive marketplace” is, from the start, a neoliberal characteristic of the society in which this factory existed. So the failure of Boimondeau can only be considered as proof for the failure of communitarism as long as we accept the principles of neoliberalism as valid – which is not an objective evaluation.

While I believe that communitarism still has a long way to go until proving its applicability, I see it as highly necessary to promote its principles. Its concepts cast the light on the value of humanity – not only man as a social being, but also the human being with its intrinsic value. This last statement may be countered by those who fear that setting a high importance on the concept of community will lead to a standardization of the community’s members (which is a risk to produce exclusion of those who do not “go with the majority”). For preventing this from happening, there are some points to be considered:

- first, as mentioned by Bloemers, the definition of community must include the characteristic of responsiveness towards the members’ real needs; this prevents the situations when a community is oppressive towards part of its members;

- the traditional view of community is obsolete nowadays; mobility has increased rapidly especially in the last century, leaving the opportunity for many people to choose the community they want to be a part of; besides, there is an overlapping of communities – one individual belongs to more communities at the same time (family, work place, sport club etc.), so there is space for one community compensating for what the person misses in the others;

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- by setting great importance to education, communitarism incidentally gives the solution for its survival – values of the community are constantly transmitted, challenged and enforced; this means that the communitarian principles, once shared by the community, will be carried on and developed by the further generations.

I cannot deny the validity of the main idea behind neoliberalism, competition. Indeed, in order to improve we need to evaluate our results and our selves, but leaving this evaluation totally up to the “free market” has proven to bring side effects like the spreading of commercial over educational, isolation of the individual (through minimizing the role of the community, even to the level of the family) and a sense of insecurity on the personal level (not only because of the mentioned isolation, but also due to reasons like the maximized flexibility of the labour market or the relativity of values – one has to always adapt to the current demand of the market in order to survive).

And, most of all, the principle of “survival of the fittest” is a major cause for exclusion; of course, it is easy to praise competition when you are winning or setting the rules; but it looks so different when you look at it from the side of those who are not fit to compete. For this, we need the sense of community, of being responsible not only for our selves but also for the others. Society needs to balance the principles of the free market with the ones of responsibility towards the community.

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References

Bloemers, W. (2003) “Ethics and Social Justice”Bourdieu, P. (1998) “Utopia of endless exploitation - The essence of

neoliberalism”, Le Monde diplomatiquehttp://mondediplo.com/1998/12/08bourdieu

Christensen K, Levinson D. (2003)

“Communitarianism,” Encyclopedia of Community:From the Village to the Virtual World, Vol 1, A-D,

Etzioni, A. "The Diversity Within Unity Platform" and “Sovereignty as Responsibility"http://www.amitaietzioni.org

Maccoby, M. (1994) “The Two Voices of Erich Fromm: The Prophetic and the Analytic”http://www.maccoby.com/Articles/TwoVoices.html

Martinez E., Garcia A. (2000) “What is Neoliberalism?”, Global Exchangehttp://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/econ101/neoliberalDefined.html

Raapana, N. (2005) “What The Communitarians Stand For”, The Anti-Communitarian Leaguehttp://nord.twu.net/acl/standfor.html#sample

Schmidt, V. A. (1995) "The New World Order, Incorporated: The Rise of Business and the Decline of the Nation State", Daedalus, Vol. 124, no. 2 http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/schmidt.htm

Shah, A. (2005) “A Primer on Neoliberalism” and “Criticisms of Current Forms of Free Trade”, in “Free Trade and Globalization”http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/FreeTrade.asp

Treanor, P. (2005) “Neoliberalism: origins, theory, definition”http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html

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Communitarism versus Neoliberalism

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