Reflections

...Another essential component of classical socialism is the goal of achieving much greater distributional equality than is to be found in any modern capitalist society...

...When we confront the difficult but essential task of "situating freedom" within an appropriate context, we must begin by defining such terms as family, work life, neighborhood, and community in ways that help establish the relationship to individual identity and individual freedom...

...But these minimal guarantees probably should not be carried to the point of absolute distributional equality, since elimination of all traditional differences would erase the stable links that form the basis of community...

...Our actions and practices are most fully human when they are prompted by self-understanding, not by the coercive force of external authority...

...Unfortunately, this line of reasoning entangles us in a peculiar inconsistency, for we draw no such nice distinction between capitalist theory and practice...

...This means, beyond the obvious requirements of food, housing, and medical care, assured access to the principal means of communication and transport...

...But on the other hand, this carefully controlled scientific process is supposed to culminate in a state of perfect freedom—a society that liberates the individual's deepest yearnings, eliminating conflict and pain...

...beliefs not subject to the constant scrutiny of public exchange become mere shadows, devoid of coherence or clarity...

...Regionalism in the guise of "states' rights," for instance, became in the 1950s and 1960s an easy pretext for the denial of basic political and economic rights to blacks...

...Among those of us on the Left who choose not to defend the Soviet system, the inclination has been to insist that the failures of socialism in practice are no reflection on the validity of socialist theory...

...Human behavior is not to be viewed merely as a series of physical events that can be described and explained by scientific "laws," though generations of political scientists, economists, and behavioral psychologists have attempted to explain it in just those terms...

...It can be argued that children who develop in a supportive familial setting may ultimately be better equipped to question aspects of their traditional education—including such doctrines as creationism...

...Such specious reasoning makes it all too easy for the Left in power to insist that its cause is the perfect expression of every individual's aspiration for freedom...

...The notion of community, problematic and elusive as it is, embodies a concept that the Left simply cannot do without...

...We note that a "free" and supposedly competitive market driven by the momentum of acquisitive individualism must inevitably veer toward monopoly and state capitalism, ultimately destroying both the freedom of the market and the individual liberties it supposedly sustains...

...A communitarian ideal should, therefore, envision government as a community of communities, responsible for coordinating the activities of various geographic or work-related entities and facilitating communication among them...

...And if the preservation of freedom depends on the right of geographic and social mobility, as some critics of the communitarian goal maintain, then freedom becomes meaningless when all communities are reduced to a dreary sameness...

...At the same time, many on the Left stress the importance of individual commitment to an overarching cause...

...In philosophical terms, this ambivalence manifests itself in an inclination to lurch from the universal to the particular, rationalizing the contradiction with the facile assertion that "after the revolution," everyone will be able to advance the cause by doing his or her own thing...

...Consider the current controversy over the teaching of "creationism...

...Though we may disagree about the exact application of our key concepts, communication and human action would be impossible without a shared core of meanings...

...Confronted by the grim reality of the Soviet experience, the American Left has offered two basic explanations: First, it has pointed to the backward, authoritarian society that sired the Bolshevik Revolution, and to "capitalist encirclement" and other threats that have beleaguered the Soviet Union ever since...

...What are the limits of communitarian politics...

...It warns us against the sort of brutal social engineering that wrenches individuals out of one geographic, economic, or familial environment and expects them to adapt readily to another (as, for instance, in the forced collectivization of the Russian peasantry...

...Still another difficulty that confronts us in our attempt to design an appropriate model of communitarian politics is the nature of the relationship between the community and higher political authority...

...An adequate approach to social change should begin with the recognition that it is language which forms our essence as human beings...

...On the one hand, individuals must have sufficient resources to participate freely in the social life of the community...

...Many of us may regard creationism as a sadly misguided doctrine, but a serious case can be made for allowing those communities in which it is popular to mandate its teaching in the public schools...

...That is why we cannot simply discard or disregard the traditional socialist aim of public control over the means of production...

...And the community itself can become a vague and dubious entity when the movement of capital forces individuals into a state of transiency—an almost random flux from one place to another...

...It may be that a central government would set minimum standards in such fields as education, health care, and transportation, but if these standards were to override all local discretion, local communities would have no reason to exist...

...The essence of communication is public exchange...

...It is obviously possible for any community to lapse into gross intolerance of dissenting ideas and those who express them...

...We cannot derive our definitions from the conventional formulations of mainstream social science...

...This, in turn, makes it more likely that the legitimate differences among people will be ignored...

...However, our pursuit of a humane and just society does not automatically determine what sort of community structure will best suit our needs...

...Instead, we point to the inherent contradictions of capitalist theory...

...Where a strong sense of social identity and commitment has collapsed, bureaucratic regimentation can easily take its place...

...they make their case is curiously similar to the reasoning of the Left: State capitalism, they contend, is a perversion...

...The Soviet system, with its heavy-handed bureaucratic control, enforced conformity, one-party rule, and denial of basic civil liberties, is said to be nothing more than a perversion of the socialist program of public ownership, worker control, and democracy...

...On the one hand, Marxism maintains that society can be reshaped by the application of scientific principles, much as a chemist can create a given reaction by a proper mix of ingredients...

...Any new order rising from such malformed foundations in such troubled circumstances, it is argued, is bound to have serious residual defects...

...From this analysis, Taylor argues that the great theoretical task confronting today's Left is to "situate freedom"—that is, to define a human condition which is neither oppressive nor chaotic...

...they will dwell in a political vacuum...

...In what circumstances is the community more or less likely to become an instrument of social domination...

...Political philosopher Charles Taylor is one of those who have grasped this contradiction...

...Where a strong sense of social identity and commitment has collapsed, bureaucratic regimentation can easily take its place When control over a community's means of sustenance is concentrated in a few hands, for example, the purposes of that community will inevitably be defined by the elite who cannot be expected to embrace more broadly shared values...

...It is difficult to sustain the notion that Soviet practice tells us nothing about flaws in socialist theory while insisting that the negative aspects of U.S...

...The transparent inadequacy of the capitalist argument does not relieve us of the need to face our own less than persuasive rationalizations...

...We would be well advised, politically as well as philosophically, to get back to an insight that traces its origins to Aristotle and applies with full force to modern theories of community: Universal goals are expressed—though always incompletely and imperfectly—in the particulars of family, neighborhood, and work place...

...Christopher Lasch maintains, for example, that much of the Left has stressed goals of centralization and growth while neglecting the values of family, tradition, and community...

...How far such equality can be carried is a topic of long-standing debate, but it should be possible to formulate some guidelines in our pursuit of the communitarian goal...

...Contemporary champions of capitalism—Milton Friedman, for example—are also critical of state capitalism, and the way John Buell is an associate editor of The Progressive...

...political and economic life present proof positive that capitalist ideology is bankrupt...

...This ethereal goal, when combined with total faith in the potential of social engineering, is simply a recipe for the ultimate imposition of rule by terror...

...The dangers presented by narrow communities and authoritarian families are real, but they must be weighed against the capacity of centralized state bureaucracies to engineer conformity and repress dissent...

...Ultimately, we learn about our moral commitments from our experiences in specific family and neighborhood settings, and the existence of such settings constitutes a bulwark against the accretion of excessive political power...

...But the idea that human freedom must be anchored in our shared sense of community and in our ability to communicate carries us only so far...

...The full development of this perspective will clarify—and will, in turn, be clarified by—emerging movements that hold as their central concern the building of a humane society which combines freedom and justice in healthy proportions...

...And William Appleman Williams insists that if any Left theory is to find broad acceptance and applicability, it must include a sound sense of regionalism...

...Our vision of community should, therefore, presuppose constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and press against encroachments not only by the central government but also by pressures generated in the neighborhood or work place...

...The world's first and greatest socialist experiment was supposed to point the way toward a just and humane life for all the peoples of the planet...

...But such intolerance is less likely to entail political repression when the state extends an absolute guarantee of economic rights and civil liberties...

...Second, much of the Left has attempted to deny that Soviet communism is really socialism at all...

...Within stable families, children acquire the moral and social values upon which any community must be built...

...Again, we must resolve a paradox: If communities are to define broad human values, people must interact directly, so that they see each other as full-dimensioned human beings, not merely as actors cast in predetermined roles...

...But none of these thinkers has rushed to embrace these concepts, for they recognize them as the staples of classical conservatism, readily invoked as ideological justification for perpetuating the control of society by entrenched elites...

...To acknowledge that government is responsible for sustaining a minimum level of individual sustenance and for controlling certain capital flows is not to endow it with unlimited power...

...it is not an inescapable consequence of capitalist doctrine...

...He asserts that Marxism owes much of its political appeal—and many of its problems—to a heady combination of Enlightenment scientism and extreme ex-pressivism...

...The Left, like much of American society, tends to celebrate a do-your-own-thing kind of morality...

...And if the free flow of ideas is to be preserved, government must protect the right of individuals to move freely from one neighborhood or work place to another...

...Human activity, whether in the mundane details of daily life or in actions of great political import, is too complex and too interesting to be sturfed into scientific categories or reduced to immutable laws...

...Presumably, a socialist order emerging under less arduous conditions would much more closely approximate the socialist vision...

...Human beings who are freed from all restraints will have no context in which to exercise choice...

...Still, social action and communication would not be possible if we did not share an understanding of some core concepts and exhibit a general willingness to apply those concepts to our lives...

...The larger the community, however, the less feasible it becomes to sustain face-to-face contact...

...How to attain equity without insisting on equality is one of the most formidable challenges confronting the advocates of socialist communitarianism...

...To pursue such frictionless freedom, Taylor suggests, is to invite chaos...

...Instead, Soviet socialism is characterized by thought control, blood purges, and manipulative social engineering on a scale unmatched by any but the most repressive capitalist regimes...

...When parents lose control over what their children are taught, they lose control over their own families...

...But even as we acknowledge their right-wing connotations, we cannot evade the necessity of grounding our vision of human progress in the solid foundations of family, neighborhood, and tradition...

...Other theorists have developed similar critiques of traditional Left discourse...

...This sort of tortured ideology, though by no means the only cause of Soviet-style repression, is undoubtedly a contributing factor that deserves much closer study than most of the Left has been willing to give it in the past...