A few weeks ago on The Public Discourse, Professor Anthony Esolen offered a fresh and creative criticism of Barack Obama’s now infamous “you didn’t build that” comment, challenging the President’s political statement with a largely metaphysical argument. However, my fear is that Professor Esolen’s argument may not appropriate a proper eye towards the political building blocks which support President Obama’s sentiments, blocks which are themselves grounded in what I consider valid metaphysical motivation. Before I begin my response in earnest, however, I believe that it is important in talking about the President’s words to remember that President Obama was claiming that business owners didn’t build the roads and schools which aided the growth of their businesses – not that they didn’t build their own businesses. Nevertheless, I think that Professor Esolen gets to the heart of an important political question in framing his case the way he did, and my response goes along his line of inquiry, rather than the President’s statement itself.
Though his analogies may be somewhat hyperbolic, the sentiments which inform Professor Esolen’s pictures of the government first as racketeers and finally as scavengers reveal an important political (rather than simply metaphysical) sentiment. Were the government some sort of foreign institution, such analogies would be apt. However, I contend that one can describe a logical and consistent politics and metaphysic which inform the sort of political statement which President Obama made: the government is simply the administrative arm of the community, and the community is not a foreign institution to any person. Instead, the community forms persons.
When we speak of a person, it is not the case that we are speaking simply of a body. Instead, we’re speaking of a corporeal element – the body – and a non-corporeal one – the soul (We may leave it to the theologians to hash out the nuances of dualism with regard to this phenomenon). The upshot of all of this is that when we describe a person, what we’re describing includes the sum-total of his physical, emotional, and spiritual experiences. Furthermore, while these experiences help us describe a particular person insofar as what connects them is the person who experiences them, the experiences themselves are often caused or initiated by other people. Let us take the example of Professor Esolen’s restaurant owner, Al. Perhaps Al is a religious man: were it not for the spiritual guidance he receives from his chaplain, Al would really be a different person. Al is partially comprised of the education he received in school, and the formal instruction he received at home. Similarly, the reliable city police force which protects Al and his family, giving him a piece of mind, metaphysically affects Al’s person in a non-trivial way. And so, in talking about a person, we must implicitly or explicitly refer to the people behind the person, who comprise the community or communities to which that person belongs. While in one very real sense we are individuals, we also owe the community, metaphysically, for who we are and what we become. Or as John Donne rightly meditated, “no man is an island, entire of itself; each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
Indeed, this is crucial and ought to inform the vision of personhood which one brings to the political table, so to speak. If even in our very persons we are indebted to the communal framework about us, our decision-making ought to be conducted with an appropriate regard for that very same community. In so doing, we must often surrender what might be described as freedoms, but we do so in exchange for other members of the community surrendering their freedoms as well. Such is the justification for the social contract theory upon which the American system seems to be at least partly predicated – that in exchange for certain treatments and services rendered by our fellow men through the government, we surrender certain natural rights – including property rights. The system of government, at its very core, is simply the institution through which the community chooses perform this exchange of treatments and rights, and the American political system (as is the case of most working systems in the world) is one wherein the government is explicitly given powers of taxation. Then, the sentiment that in exchange for the help one receives in growing a business, one is exactly expected to “give back to the community” is not preposterous once one buys into the Social Contract style political underpinnings.
But the polis is more than simply the government. As Professor Esolen rightly points out, when we work, we provide to the community an example of what it means to be a properly functioning person. The pedagogical beauty of right action is one communal implication of good behavior. However, this ought to harken back to the metaphysical account I provided earlier, for in many cases, we learn the beauty of “fully human work” from those who demonstrated such to us beforehand. If there is a case of a person who does such without this pedagogical influence, surely he is the exception, and not the rule.
Professor Esolen argues, seemingly anticipating this manner of rebuttal, that “risk-takers are the foundation of civil order.” This may very well be the case, but no one person himself is the foundation of the government; he is a beneficiary of the risk-takers before him and of the community which provided a space wherein he could live out his human experience as he saw fit. Even if the generic risk-taker is prior to government in terms of narrative, no particular risk-taker, such as Al, is prior to the government; even the generic risk-taker is not prior to the community. This is why Elizabeth Warren’s – and subsequently President Obama’s – “you didn’t build that” comment is actually apt. Professor Esolen is right, I think, to argue that without people like Al there would be no government as such – and perhaps even no roads and cities. But it also seems to be the case that without the polis, there would be no Al, as such. It seems, then, essential with respect to metaphysics, in talking about the contribution of a person to a society, to frame that discussion in the context of a community rather than a set of atomized individuals. The contribution of the individual does not exist sans the contribution of the community.
If America’s politics are predicated on a type of social contract – which in turn actually does have legitimate metaphysical grounding – then it makes sense for the community to say, “You owned this business when you were alive, but now that you are gone, this cut of it reverts to the general pot” because the business, while owned formally and legally by Al, would not be, as such, without the community. Since the government is merely the political arm of the community, it is proper for the community to demand compensation from Al through taxes – perhaps even inheritance taxes. Al, by himself, didn’t build anything. We all built everything in this City together.
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This article was written by ‘Tak’ and he retains all rights to this essay.
A Philosopher's Take 
Philosophical Scraps
September 8, 2012
Very interesting; I’ve been thinking along those lines myself. I’m wondering, have you ever read Alasdair MacIntyre? Some of what he said in _After Virtue_ is similar to what you’re saying. _Whose Justice? Which Rationality_? is, I think, a better book, and you might find it interesting; but it doesn’t talk as much about the role of the community in forming the individual. If you can run down his essay on patriotism, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?” I think it will say some things you’ll find very interesting, and much more succinctly than the books.
Thank you for the essay. TTFN
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Tak
September 8, 2012
I haven’t read all of “Whose Justice” yet, though I really ought to (and would like to) finish it once I have some more free time. I did, however, find myself very sympathetic to a number of the points MacIntyre makes in “After Virtue” (and in other shorter papers he writes). Though I wasn’t holding AV in my mind while writing this, I’ve no doubt that the claims MacIntyre makes there find their way into my writing in one subconscious way or another. Particularly in the second half of the book, now that I think about it, does MacIntyre hammer home details about the pedagogical role of the community and its descriptive and normative implications. Fundamentally, he seems to conceive of the government (or whatever ruling institution the community so chooses) as having an obviously pedagogical (as well as administrative) role in the life of the citizens, latching on to important themes in the ancients, particularly Aristotle. I’m quite sympathetic to this notion. Finally, though I’d never heard of it before your comment, I’ll definitely take a look at “Is Patriotism a Virtue” as well. Thanks for the suggestion!
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tinker3333
September 8, 2012
Thank you for the post – the discussion is very interesting. I do agree with both you and Professor Esolen. The problem is that it’s all too complex! I agree that there should good attempts to reward appropriately (e.g. companies should be taxed specifically for polluting and damaging the environment, for contributing to obesity, lung cancer, etc). On the other hand, housewives don’t get rewarded much except for the joy of seeing their children succeed – although sometimes this is enough to make some of them happy. Why doesn’t the government reward them for raising great citizens? I’m not trained in philosophy, I’m just interested, so apologies in advance if my thoughts don’t fit in with philisophers’ ways of thinking. Thanks again for stimulating thought on the issue.
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Steve Capone
September 9, 2012
“… the government is simply the administrative arm of the community, and the community is not a foreign institution to any person. Instead, the community forms persons.”
Do you mean to say this to the exclusion of the idea that the community, also, is formed by persons? This remark sounds strange when left by itself. I buy your argument that communities contribute to what persons inside those communities *are* – what we are *like*… but surely to say that the community forms persons demands the qualification that the relationship is, in some sense, symbiotic – they build and rely upon one another. I think this is a kind of communitarian idea.
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Tak
September 9, 2012
Indeed, I meant to argue that the two (the individual and the community) participate in a symbiotic relationship. I don’t know whether I’d call it a communitarian idea (just because that term carries a political weight which I’m not ready to commit to), but certainly I’m arguing (contra how I understood Prof. Esolen’s PD piece), that our understanding of persons ought to be communal rather than simply individual. I wasn’t arguing, however, that the community can exist without the person (indeed, as you rightly point out, that would be absurd).
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Tony Esolen
September 9, 2012
Here I am, during my once-a-week internet plunge …
The difference between us — and, by the way, thank you kindly for the reasoned discussion — is that I most definitely DO NOT believe that “the government,” by which we mean, in context, the national government of 300 million people, is an arm of the community. The protection racket that national government has become, in both of our countries, squeezes the community out of existence. The national government is a natural rival to the municipal government — and to all those institutions that form a community, before there is even such a thing as a mayor or council. The Elizabeth Warrens of the world, including Hilary “It Takes a Village, and Did I Mention That I Destest Villages?” Clinton, most certainly do not want people taking care of their own affairs — and I am not talking about individuals here, since I’m a Thomist Catholic, like MacIntyre. The last thing they want — for example — is that the people of Farmville should get together to decide their own curriculum for their own children, and should hire teachers according to their own specifications and nobody else’s.
I ask a simple question: what virtues actually make a healthy community possible? And by “community” I have something quite concrete and identifiable in mind; it is not an abstraction. I think you’ll find that our national governments have acted to undermine those virtues every time. Start with the sexual revolution …
And — I really do not think that inheritance taxes can be justified in any case. It’s little more than robbery. And it destroys the time-transcending BEING of a person, a family, and a community. Please reconsider — next time you drive by what used to be a single farm.
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philosophicalscraps
September 9, 2012
Personally, although I’m the one who mentioned MacIntyre first, I think there is a problem with bringing him into a democracy. I’m still working through the implications of his thought. Clearly, his thought is based on a polis; and clearly, a polis with millions of people is pretty hard to conceive. Under the conditions of modern industrial democracies, utilitarianism has been the working model of choice: do what will lead to the greatest happiness (votes) of the greatest number of people (voters). But as is clear in his essay on patriotism, MacIntyre seeks to apply his theories to the nation-state, encouraging every nation to seek out its own national identity. When we have an idea of what we all (or most) consider the core values of our culture, we can have a real conversation. And in giving his example of the plot to kill Hitler, it isn’t necessary or even always desirable that everyone agree. The attempted assassination was still patriotic, MacIntyre says, because it was based on German values that the plotters thought were worth defending and worth dying for. His point was that these values were communally based, even though they were used to judge the community and led to opposition to the majority opinion.
I don’t think MacIntyre has “something quite concrete and identifiable in mind.” Each community has its own definition of human flourishing, and its own list of virtues that lead towards that particular sort of flourishing. Aside from virtues that would actually destroy the community (celibacy might be one, as might unrestrained promiscuity) there is a fairly wide range of possibilities. The Thomist synthesis is one, and the one that MacIntyre himself favors; of course, even there he allows a range of options (he lost his job at Notre Dame, I’m told, because he’s an atheist—-that’s right, a Thomist atheist). What occurred in the sexual revolution was not an action by the national government; when governments get involved in sexuality, it is almost always to control it (see the sexual freedom of early communism vs. Stalinist restrictions, the limits on porn imposed by China, etc.). It was interpreted at the time as an outgrowth of liberal, non-communal values. MacIntyre would say that a subculture of the U.S. embraced those particular American virtues of individualism, personal freedom, the right to the pursuit of happiness, and equality, and ran with them. They were not universal values; perhaps an Asian Confucian culture would see no sense in them, and perhaps a culture based on Thomistic virtues would not. They are, however, virtues, even if they do not seem “virtuous.” A virtue is any character trait that leads towards a particular sort of human flourishing—-however “flourishing” is defined by the community.
Now, if you would argue that the virtues proposed by that subculture are ultimately unstable and will blow any society based on them apart, that might be a case for history to judge. There are also certainly some virtues, I think, that are as much biologically based as they are communally based. If, for example, it turns out that the vast majority of people are genetically predisposed towards some level of monogamy (with the inevitable jealousy and exclusiveness that implies) then the sort of anything-goes, no-restrictions, “natural” sort of sexuality advocated by some 1960’s communes, the Greek Cynics, and portrayed in _Brave New World_ or “Logan’s Run” would indeed be unsustainable and anti-communitarian in the long run.
As to the “I detest villages” comment, what is the answer? I’m serious. Is a Balkanized society, where there is no sense of shared project because every subculture and subcommunity has its own education system teaching its own values, its own scientific claims, its own version of history, and so on really sustainable? On the other hand, is it possible to create a shared set of values and truths and virtues by centralizing education? And, is it desirable to do so? When I was coming up through the ranks, the idea of cultural literacy and a core curriculum for college students to achieve was considered a conservative principle. It was the postmodern, Marxist or at least left-leaning multiculturalists who insisted it was oppression to suggest that every American should know basic facts of history, or have a basic competency in the works of Shakespeare or other “dead white males,” or a basic grasp of the Bible as a literary and cultural force. Now, suddenly it seems, it is the conservatives who want the right to teach only their own subculture to their children. I am not happy with either extreme; cultural oppression is not good whether it’s Protestants making Catholic children read the King James Bible in the 19th Century, or Chinese forbidding Tibetans from passing on their culture and religion today. On the other hand, the postmodern solution of everyone living in his or her own ideological echo chamber is fatal to any sort of cultural identity or cultural project. Your own reference to the elected government as a “protection racket” reflects that reality. When I was a kid, it was liberals who despised patriotism and thought loyalty to the national government was selling out your own values and the values of your group. Today, it is conservatives who argue that way; they don’t say they despise patriotism, they wave the flag as much as ever, but their loyalty is only to their tribe. Once, conservatives were the ones who venerated the FBI; today, conservatives refer to the Feds as “jack-booted thugs” or other thinly veiled Nazi allusions, regardless of whether those “thugs” are enforcing the laws chosen by the community. Poor cops: they get called Nazis either way, the only thing that changes is the political allegiance of those doing the calling.
Without some shared virtues, there is no community, and the nation becomes simply an alliance between competing subcultures who all agree to limit their warfare to non-violent methods. But the existence of subcultures means the inevitable existence of difference views of human flourishing and hence different virtues intended to achieve said flourishing; the only way to avoid some sort of internal divisions would be a level of social control which is incompatible with the reality of any representative democracy. Personally, I don’t think there is a real solution, but only a recognition of the two unacceptable extremes and a commitment to try to navigate between Charybdis and Scylla.
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Tak
September 9, 2012
Prof. Esolen — it seems then that your concern is a matter of scale, which can become a matter of form when one has a government (as we do in America) which attempts to balance the federal and the local. It seems, however, that were local governments to do many of the same things the national government currently does, your concerns would be less pointed. If that’s the case, then I think the grounds for our disagreement shift somewhat, for we cease disagree on what things the community has license to do, or even ought to do through a government, and instead we (potentially) disagree on the proper role of federalism in (particularly the American) society.
I do think there’s interesting conversation to be had about the way villages ought to interact with the national government, and I am sympathetic to your concern that in the modern political landscape there’s often little space for communities to exercise their individuality through politics. I suppose the rough response to this is to argue that communities “by in” to the current landscape when they send representatives to Congress and take money from the nation through “pork.” But this (admittedly) only tackles a surface problem. If the fundamental issue is truly that of instilling virtue (as, I suppose, Aristotle figured it was), then there’s something to be said for the ability of local institutions to do such more effectively. This is an important political question, but not quite the one I understood you as getting at in your original PD article.
However, I still don’t think your concern about inheritance taxes holds up in the face of a local government issuing them. For if the local government has invested metaphysically into Al’s life, surely its claim on Al’s property is a just one?
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rmhebert
September 18, 2012
In the humblest terms possible, I think you are fundamentally mistaken in a number of different issues. The one that bothers me the most, however, is this: if we define the government as “the institution through which the community chooses to perform this exchange of treatment and rights,” there is no possible sense in which there can be a coherent anarchist-archist debate or that there is such a thing as an intellectually substantive anarchist view to be had. Just to be clear: I’m of the mind that the argument either begs the question or the argument is a non sequitur. Let me expand on this objection.
Suppose I’m an anarchist. What sorts of views or theses are consistent with my political philosophy? I could, if I wished, concede that communities are in the relevant sense metaphysically prior to persons. I can concede that individuals owe something to their communities in virtue of the fact that their communities support individuals in the relevant ways. I can concede that whatever set of social services that you take to be essential to a well-functioning society are, in fact, essential. None of these considerations are relevant to the question whether governments are justified in taxing (or, for the matter, even existing).
Supposing that I’m an anarchist, I will contend that there is no sense whatever in which we can conflate governments with communities. Empirically, there are too many societies that have existed in which any item in the set of essential social services was not provided by governments to think that their presence in a society is indicative of a state. If you like: in early America, the roads and rails were privately owned, produced, and maintained. Supposing I’m an anarchist, I could posit that (broadly) these—and all so-called public goods—are the responsibility of the community without thereby accepting the legitimacy of governmental institutions. I might, for instance, have a conception of law that is polycentric, wherein there can be no territorial monopoly of force. I might, for instance, have a conception of property that is personal, wherein there can be no legitimate imminent domain or taxation.
I’ll return, then, to the contention that you’ve begged the question or committed a non sequitur. If you are inclined to think that the mere presence of a well-functioning community (and also the presence of whatever essential social services) is evidence of a government, then you’ve precluded any sense in which anarchists can share in your vision of community. But there is no reason to think this: you’d be begging the question. If you are inclined to include anarchists in your vision of community, then the metaphysical priority of community over persons is irrelevant to whether governments are justified in taxing: you’d have committed a non sequitur.
Ironically, I have been working on a draft post of the anarchist-archist debate. If you’re interested, I’ll have it up within the next week or two.
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philosophicalscraps
September 18, 2012
Pragmatically speaking, is there a difference between the community and government? Legally speaking, you can say “that community has no government;” but if the community cooperates at all, couldn’t you say that whatever mechanism it employs to coordinate individual efforts is de facto a “government”? I’m not familiar with anarchist theory, but I have observed the OWS protestors and attended Quaker meetings, and both efforts to maintain strict equality of members and to operate on consensus were similar. Both would most likely describe themselves as “leaderless.” A sociologist might observe some individuals who seemed to always be in the thick of things, who interacted with others more often, whose proposals were more often adopted, and so on, and might say that that person was a “leader” of the group whether that person or anyone else consciously recognized the fact. But even if there were no such de facto leader, if the groups have any cohesion then there would be some sort of group decision making and coordination.
IF this is true (and I’m not sure myself), then the difference between the archist and the anarchist would seem to be more a question of the sort of “government.” Ayn Rand seems to define “government” as that institution in society that is legitimately allowed to use force. I am suggesting, though, that it may be possible to have a government without force, at least for small groups where consensus is attainable (and where informal social pressure and disapproval can be as strong as the “shunning” in Amish communities, while lacking the formal structure present there). Would that at least give a framework for the discussion you suggest, without biasing the discussion from the start too much?
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rmhebert
September 18, 2012
I think you’d need to tell me the relevant ‘practical criteria’ that would allow us to make (or fail to make) ‘practical distinctions’ between the community and the state before I could answer the question more thoroughly.
I am willing to bet that it is a logical mistake to infer that there is no difference between A and B if there is no practical difference (to us) between A and B. Whether there is a practical difference between A and B depends on our practical interests. Whether A or B is true has nothing to do with our practical interests per se. Example: it isn’t practically relevant whether germ theory is true or if medieval vapor theory is true; the fact is that we don’t like being sick. Whether scientists say the former is true or the latter is true isn’t practically relevant so long as I can go down the pharmacy and get my medicine to make me feel better. Does that thereby mean that germ theory is equivalent — theoretically or practically — to vapor theory? No. The difference is huge. And not merely in detail: lots of other things that are practically relevant to us depend on the difference too. Similar remarks apply to any set of competing theories, political, scientific, moral, epistemological, theological, etc.
The anarchists and the nonanarchists (the archists, I call them) aren’t debating about whether there should be laws, or police, or firefighters, or hospitals, or property institutions, or whatever else you think is important for a just, well-functioning society. (They might quibble over the details of what is necessary or how to best provide these things, but that quibbling happens among archists too.) Everybody agrees that a just society needs at least some of these things. Everybody agrees that social cooperation is necessary and desirable.
What is of central concern in the anarchist-archist debate is the role government should have in the provision of these essential social goods. If you think that the government is nothing more than the mere presence of these social goods, then there is no anarchist-archist debate. I think this is a mistaken view to have because, as I hope is becoming clearer, there is a substantive debate.
The reasons for different ananarchist positions are many, varied, and sometimes complicated. Anarchists disagree among themselves about what factors are most important for their different views, just like archists disagree among themselves about the role and value of the state and the considerations important to their views.
Upshot: It isn’t permissible to define government as social cooperation.
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philosophicalscraps
September 18, 2012
I’m still working through my own answers to some of these questions. What interests me now is this: Franz van der Waal, Jane Goodall and other anthropologists and primatologists have been studying the social patterns within chimpanzee tribes, baboon troops and so on for years, believing that in primate behavior we get clues to the roots of human behavior and even morality. In addition, other anthropologists have been studying Stone Age cultures still functioning today. Between these, we are developing theories as to the origins and evolution of human society. We would seem to have an advantage over the early social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke, which generally had to imagine a “state of Nature” when we all implicitly agreed to live in a commonwealth. We have a much clearer, more detailed and more realistic picture of how government originated, and thus (in theory) the purposes of the social contract. We don’t normally call the control of the Alpha Male in a chimpanzee troop “government,” and I’m not sure whether we call the leadership structure of a Stone Age clan “government.” But what is the cutoff? When do the natural methods of social cooperation, coercion and control that we see in chimps or primitive human societies become “government”? Is it proper to think of these mechanisms as informal government? Is it only government when it reaches beyond kinship groups to unite several bloodlines? My inclination is to think of what chimps do and what we do as “government” in much the same way that both the stick a chimp uses to collect termites and the high-powered camera an anthropologist uses to record this are both “tools.” It seems to me more a matter of degrees than a qualitative difference. I think that is the essence of the political debate today. “Liberals” like Barney Frank define “government” as the methods by which people work together to attain their goals; “conservatives” see government as an enemy, the user of force to bully individuals, and speak of “starving the beast” by cutting taxes. One side could point to the evidence of Neanderthals caring for injured comrades and see that as an early precursor to attempts by our vastly more sophisticated societies to care for sick or injured members through such programs as Medicare and Social Security. The other side sees the origins of government more in the bandit clans that robbed, then conquered farming communities in ancient Mesopotamia. Both sides seem to have some historical backing. Clearly, at least some governments have been imposed by force by one group upon another. However, it seems to me that to simply rule out the other, more peaceful and cooperative model because of a prior definition of government as that which is imposed and/or maintained by force simply begs the question.
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rmhebert
September 18, 2012
I forgot to add: I don’t think it’s possible to define government without reference to force. I think a necessary condition for the existence of the state is force (plus some other conditions and specifications of force).
I like your example of the Amish community. I’ve heard some people call them described as anarchist communities. I don’t know how accurate it is, but I am at least prima facie sympathetic to the view that they might be an example of a type of anarchist society.
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rmhebert
September 19, 2012
Quick aside: As a matter of personal bias, I am unpersuaded by social contract, either as a descriptive or normative theory. In my view, it wouldn’t matter whether chimps or early societies satisfied or failed to satisfy some theory of social contract.
Onto the definition of the state. I am losing my grip on what you mean by “social cooperation” but — and maybe I’m wrong — it sounds like you’re conflating community with government. There is a legitimate distinction to be had that is logically independent of the question whether governments are justified. Maybe some governments (that perform certain social roles) are justified in existing. But doesn’t thereby mean that the state is the community, or that it is an arm of the community, or some such thing. Think of it this way: the arguments for thinking one way or the other whether a given state is justified aren’t the same arguments on offer for thinking that there is a strong community-state tie. The former is a conclusion that we would consider on the basis of our pet moral theory. The latter requires a metaphysical theory of some sort another.
I think a necessary condition for the existence of a state involves force. As far as my understanding of, say, political sociology is concerned, it’s not particularly controversial that force is part of the conception of state. We shouldn’t be particularly alarmed by this since the concept of force, by itself, is morally neutral. There are just or valuable applications of force as well as unjust uses of force. This distinction isn’t controversial either. I’d be inclined to take notes from various sociologists and philosophers and say that the state is, very roughly, a territorial monopoly of force. This definition doesn’t preclude the possibility of state-mandated health care or its provision of various social goods. Neither does this definition preclude social cooperation from state-to-citizen relations or citizen-to-citizen relations. In my view, you’d probably expect the state to monopolize the production/distribution of certain social goods, e.g. at least law and law enforcement. (There’s a story to be told here, but I don’t do that now.) The central question is whether the state is so justified in monopolizing the production/distribution of those social goods that it monopolizes.
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philosophicalscraps
September 19, 2012
My specialty is philosophy of religion and individual ethics, but not political ethics; so I’m not surprised if my use of the concepts is inexact or idiosyncratic. What I’m wondering is how humans came up with such a thing as “government,” and when communities stopped being just communities and became “governments.” Perhaps the point is when they stop being ruled by consensus and mutual social relationships and become impersonal and force-based; but I hope there’s something else. I feel that the idea that the essence of government is that it uses force, as Ayn Rand says, is a toxic concept in today’s political debate. Because so many define the State as essentially adversarial and threatening to the individual, they are unwilling to consider that perhaps there are some really, really big problems that will need the coordination of the efforts of the whole society. Global climate change can’t be addressed by the government, because it would give the government too much power and the government is always essentially evil. We can’t limit the size or risky investments of banks, because government equals force so the individual must always be protected from government—-if that means another Great Depression, it is a small price to pay. By the logic used by the Tea Party, FDR’s intervention in the private sector to turn the entire economy to producing war materials instead of civilian cars and boats that could be sold for money would seem to be problematic, since he interfered with private property rights, which means he threatened individual American citizens with force. The fact that this saved us from Nazi occupation is moot; by Rand’s logic, what he did was just as bad.
I see government as a tool, invented and wielded by humans to solve problems. I’m interested in how this tool was invented, what purposes it was invented for and how much that can tell us about how it should be used today.
I definitely agree that there is a difference between “community” and “state.” A state can contain many communities. “Community” implies some mutual relationships connecting all the members. A village can be a community, and still have a government. Other communities may not have any formal government. But what is the difference? Is it a matter of having force to back it up? Is it a matter of having more or less settled rules, particular offices and so on? After some great disaster, the government typically does not merely come in and restore law and order; it also coordinates distributing food, finding shelter for people and so on. Now, some argue that this should not be the role of government at all; government should only restore order, and allow voluntary charities to provide positive assistance. Again, the argument is that if people rely on the government to feed and shelter them after a hurricane or other disaster, they become dependent on the government; and since government equals force, this is deadly to individual freedom. To me, this seems like a very artificial distinction; ancient governments provided all sorts of services, apparently because in the evolution of human society it was useful to have a central coordinating institution to do so. It seems to me that if the government takes a libertarian approach and allows the Red Cross to take over disaster relief, it is merely contracting out that task and making the Red Cross a de facto instrument of government.
I think I do agree with you that some sort of “force” is necessary for government. That may be why the Occupy Wall Street protests fell apart; ultimately, they were unable to keep out those who had no interests in the community. I’ve read that by the end of the original occupation of Zuccotti Park, their consensus-based government had disintegrated into fist fights. The Amish have shunning; it doesn’t involve physical force, but it does apply social force and condemnation, and more or less isolates the miscreant. Quakers don’t even have that level of compulsion. But historically, even Quakers have had to use force; they just got others to do it, like when they settled Presbyterians between themselves and the Native Americans in Pennsylvania. And clearly, there is a logical distinction between State and Community. And clearly, either the State or the community can conflict with the individual. The libertarians are right in that regard; over-reliance on the State is certainly a danger. But if the State does not provide for the welfare of its citizens, either directly and formally or indirectly and informally through other institutions, it will be swept aside.
I sense that my quarrel is not with you; in fact, you are helping me clarify my thoughts, at least to myself. You are saying that force is a necessary element of government; the people I argue with seem to say that it is the sufficient element, that the sole function of the State is to apply force.
I might be rambling a bit; I have a fever. If so, I apologize.
I think part of what makes my approach idiosyncratic is that I am starting from several different models. For one, in seminary we learned polity and ecclesiology. Church “governance” still includes at least lip service to the idea of “church discipline,” but more normally deals with much broader tasks of problem-solving. Still, I concede that the threat of compulsion is always there, if not in actual force then in shunning, excommunication and so on. And a church is not a state. But can’t polity be an analogy to politics? If community governance has such broad functions, doesn’t this suggest that the State grew out of similar desires to accomplish goals? Maybe I am conflating “social cooperation” with “government.” It seems to me, though, that the latter grew out of the former and is a tool to achieve it. Government, it seems to me, is the formal, codified pattern of social cooperation.
Thanks for the discussion. I need to rest now, though. TTFN
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erinbwedel
September 18, 2012
I’m not sure if you’ve read Deborah Stone’s book: Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision Making. If you haven’t, I highly recommend it.
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sacha1nch1
September 24, 2012
whilst i greatly respect your arguments – and all the others that follow in the comments – and welcome the debates that ensue; regardless of whether or not there is any real solution to the myriad issues that subsequently arise – i must take umbrage at the title chosen for this essay…….thanks to your attempts at sound bite, i have had, for the past three days, ‘we built this city’ by starship stuck in my head…..notwithstanding their dubious ideas regarding city foundations, the song is dire….an abomination…..please bear this in mind when titling your next piece…….and keep up the good work
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Justin Caouette
September 24, 2012
Hahahahaha! @sacha, I too have that song stuck in my head thanks to this post. Abomination indeed!!
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sacha1nch1
September 24, 2012
worst song of the 80s according to rolling stone readers; quite the accolade!
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