Communitarianism...how I would define it..

I'll try to write this web log entry emulating the style of the Economist newspaper...its writers (or editors) construct...  typically... an article that poses a question...then spends the first part of the article discussing all the reasons why it's possible to answer the posed question oppositely to the response warranted by the facts presented...and then takes the remainder of the article to patiently persuade the reader to come around. 

 So!!! The modern version of communitarianism arose, I think, and in my mind, as an alternative to the cult of individuality and personal freedom rampant among conservatives. ...that is an ideology with little emphasis ...maybe paying lip service ...'oh sure we have to have an army'.. ...on responsibly to the common. 

I maintain that individual freedom is only desirable in the context of the presence of other human beings. It is not a relevant subject, for example, if there is only one individual on earth. 

So to the eternal question of whether the individual exists first and then the community, I think the answer is obvious...the individual technically...but it' an irrelevant question... except in the context of a community of people....don't you agree?...

It's not an issue independent of context....so in the important and salient sense, community precedes the individual...that is an individual exists in concept only when there is more than one...and more than one means there is a 'community' and by the existence of more than one, there is a necessity to begin to define the rights and responsibilities of the individual versus the rights of the community. 

Succinctly, then, communitarianism is, again to me, the belief that individual freedom (i.e., the condition where minimum restraint is imposed by individuals or groups on any other) must be balanced by individual responsibility. 

And until that goal is accomplished (which, of course, it never will be...at least not in my lifetime because its Utopian or non achievable) the 'community' or 'civil society'.... within the confines of which individualism defines itself by 'contrast' .... must assume the responsibilities not otherwise accepted by individuals who shirk or are unable to fulfill ...that is the community must assume it if there is to be a just society. 

{Maybe an example is useful here: since individual health is mostly beyond individual control...that is health is less a matter of choice and more a function of genes inherited from parents,  lifestyle often influenced greatly, if not outright controlled (as, for example, children by parents) by others, a common physical environment, and eventually age which, at least so far, is inevitable by nature.}

So one's health while not entirely out of the individual's control...but I maintain is mostly so... and since individuals.... and the communities they form... exploit common resources and wealth from a common source...the earth...social justice demands a proportionate contribution from each toward the maintenance of the health of all. 

I like John Rawls on this subject...he developed a theory of justice that boils down to 'fairness as justice.'

If an individual shirks her responsibility or is unable to fulfill it, then the community is obligated to cover the shortfall. The concept of community or civil society emerged in Europe in the eighteenth century in part to describe private business activity. From Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith to Bernard Mandeville and David Hume, the philosophers who developed this idea spoke of the unintended good to society that results from selfish economic activity. 

In Mandeville's famous phrase, "private vice is public virtue." This concept that an unintended consequence of the sum total of all acts of individuals responding to their own desires is collective good is a principal argument against communitarianism.. that communitarianism is, simply, superfluous. 

I'm in complete agreement with the social objective that each individual must be free to exercise as much autonomy as is compatible... in the real-world context that no individual is an island...and moreover...no individual life is really worth living except within the community of other individuals collectively....with the counterbalancing responsibility to the community that ensues from a concept of justice as fairness.