Freedom and Community: Holding the Tension
Almost 25 years ago I wrote an article in the American Psychologist introducing an emancipatory communitarian philosophy. Recent books remind us why we need to promote such philosophy. Among others, this call has been voiced in Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? (2020), Robert Putnam’s The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (2020), and Amitai Etzioni’s Happiness is the Wrong Metric: A Liberal Communitarian Response to Populism (2018).
As we fight hyper-individualism and its deleterious consequences for the world, I thought it would be useful to remind ourselves what are the main tenets of an emancipatory communitarian philosophy, especially in light of calls for freedom that ignore community well-being. The misplaced emphasis on freedom NOT TO wear masks is endangering the rest of us. Their freedom to ignore community well-being is curtailing our freedom to be free of disease and possible death.
Communitarianism underscores the balance between rights and responsibilities. In opposition to individualistic notions of the good life, communitarianism upholds the common good. This approach is not meant to replace the important contributions of a rights orientation, when such is necessary, but rather to balance the scale. Although claiming one's rights and asserting one's identity are fundamental principles, problems arise when these values predominate at the expense of others such as communion and distributive justice and when there is a resurgence of individualism.
In a communitarian society members would collaborate in setting an agenda for social change. Policies and practices would be primarily proactive and directed at social systems. Local and grounded knowledge would help assess the needs and goals of communities. Communitarian practice would emphasize collaboration and power sharing. Groups of citizens would negotiate the contents, procedures, processes, and ethical parameters of community life. Communitarian perspectives de-emphasize self-determination and stress instead reciprocal or mutual determination. As psychologist David Bakan stated over 50 years ago, "the moral imperative is to try to mitigate agency with communion" (1966). This orientation envisions a society in which mutuality, participatory democracy, and distributive justice prevail and in which the citizenry is politically conscious, active, and involved.
Community organizers have developed and enacted many participatory strategies for collaboration and participation at a community level. These strategies invite community members to define their needs and resources, to devise strategies for change, and to take ownership of the process. These practices promote self-determination, caring and compassion, collaboration, participation, and human diversity. Worker co-operatives in England, the United States, and Canada; co-operative cities such as Mondragon in Spain; and kibbutzim in Israel provide living examples of communitarian principles in action.
But many communities are not utopian sites of nirvana. In fact, many communities have proven to be oppressive of the individual. People should not romanticize the concept of community, for "many societies are sources of oppression" (Shapiro, 1995). As Shapiro stated, "past exemplars of 'community' are ancient Greece, the early days of the USA, and the middle ages, all of which excluded large number of groups from shaping the social goods and values of those communities.” Indeed, stronger communities are known to oppress weaker communities. This is why communitarians should not ask for any type of community but for just and fair communities in which everyone's emancipation is a primary concern.
This is why emancipation is a precondition for the pursuit of the good life and the good society. Unless people's idea of the good life is servitude and suffering, they require a certain amount of freedom to pursue their objectives. Therefore, even before people can discuss the particulars of the good life and the good society, there is a need to ensure that people are afforded the necessary liberty to make their own choices and to pursue them without oppressive restrictions, FOR AS LONG AS THEY DO NOT RESTRICT THE FREEDOM OF OTHERS. This is why we must hold the tension between individual rights and responsibilities to the community. As we describe in our new book, How People Matter: Why it Affects Health, Happiness, Love, Work, and Society, this philosophy is embodied in a We Culture, one in which we all have the right and responsibility to feel valued and add value, so that we may all experience wellness and fairness. An emancipatory communitarian philosophy holds the tension between rights and responsibilities, between feeling valued and adding value, between wellness and fairness, and between freedom and community.
Dr. Isaac Prilleltensky is an award-winning academic and author. He is also a coach, consultant and a researcher. His latest book, co-authored with his wife, Dr. Ora Prilleltensky, is How People Matter: Why it Affects Health, Happiness, Love, Work, and Society (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Press here to order.