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Thoughts of British and Dutch intellectuals and public servants on communitarianismThe following is excerpted from British MP Liam Byrne’s presentation to the Fabian Society on a new communitarian perspective on opportunity during a series of seminars on social mobility. “The lesson I’ve learned is a twist on the old new Labour maxim. We say that individuals do best when part of a community. What I’ve learnt is that it can be impossible for individuals to flourish without a community. Without a set of values and standards that we share; without a set of obligations to each other that we honor; without a set of places and institutions that we feel we own. These collective goods allow every individual to get ahead in life. This has become my definition of communitarianism. And I learnt it not in books; nor in Whitehall. But from what we’re trying in Hodge Hill… “Breaking the cycle of decline is not easy. But I want to offer three pointers on where to get started. First and perhaps most important, respect is the ground floor of Renewal. You simply cannot bring prosperity to a place unless you bring it peace. This is in one sense, obvious. If you live in our poorest areas, you’re twice as likely to be a victim of crime – and economically it is simply more expensive to do business. But the importance of the respect is more fundamental than this. “Let me explain…you can’t simply pluck community leadership off the shelf. It is too often scarce. As I put together our vision of community-led renewal – Hodge Hill 2020 – I realized the need to understand this absence of leadership. I then found the root cause pretty simple. The absence of the basic requirement of a safe, secure neighborhood. Frankly, it is hard to ask individuals to become leaders of change when they do not feel safe to walk in their streets and use public spaces; or feel confident enough in the neighborliness of their neighbors to seek to work together with them… If you live with a sense of fear, rather than a spirit of solidarity, when disorder breeds insecurity and when fear breeds isolation, the call to responsibility will go unanswered. So if you don’t start by being tough on crime, you won’t have a community to help you get anywhere… “Second, communitarians believe every individual has an obligation to get on in life “So my third lesson for inner city renewal therefore is to add a new dimension to our agenda for public services. To help centers of local services, become centers for local society…And in some of Britain’s poorest places, these public assets are the only foundations on which to build community. [To] ask of these institutions therefore - not only to serve those who most need the state but also to knit communities together – is very demanding. How do we boost their capacity to do this? … just as the community is a great under-tapped ally for public servants doing their job – so, public services are still an under-tapped asset for the community. “Over three years we have pulled together a network of social entrepreneurs – entrepreneurs who have spotted opportunities in the asset base around them…They work round the clock; but most importantly, they work around the corner from where local residents need them...And their partnership with community institutions opens a new two way street; Where public servants can draw from community power. And where community power can make every pound of public spending go further and further. I think this new joint venture, this new alliance, between community institutions and their own third sector, will be amongst the most important in transforming our poor places.”
The following is excerpted from British MP Liam Byrne’s remarks to Quilliam titled “From common challenge to common purpose." “This week our focus has been on the big question of the kind of economy we want to emerge from this downturn. But many in Britain today are asking a second question; which is what kind of society do we want to see emerge? If you ask that question, you’ll get a myriad of answers. But in my experience, the answers have a common theme. Because in essence, what people in England want today is a society where the price and the prize of globalization feel better balanced… To strengthen the values that we share; “In a world where people move across borders more than ever before, can we in this country celebrate both our differences and also what we share? In a world where global financiers often pursue cut and thrust, can we in Britain restore a sense of care and trust in our economic model? In short, I feel our challenge today is this: in a world without walls, how can Britain change and adapt and keep up with the world around us, and still feel like home? My answer is an agenda to strengthen the values we share – and the sense of identity that badges those values for the world to see… “Let’s start in our constitution; in our cities; in our class-rooms; our communal life; and in our conversations. Let me take each in turn. When we feel that we share a national story, it is easier to see our links to each other. When I was Immigration Minister I spent months talking to hundreds of people around the country about their Britishness. Many talked about the little things that sometimes mean everything; a cup of tea; pubs, cider, queuing, proper chocolate; fish and chips, darts, fashion, the seasons and the countryside, walks and clubbing. Many mentioned bigger things: the BBC, the NHS, the monarchy. But what emerged most was the values of tolerance and above all of fairness; a healthy disrespect for authority yet a keen sense of order. And in views on immigrants, people were clear; we are not a nation of Alf Garnetts; but we want newcomers to sign up to the rules of the road. Now Jack Straw has given us the opportunity in the green paper on rights and responsibilities, the opportunity to codify that story; it is an opportunity to get our story straight – to share it, and to live it. Second, are our class-rooms…Third, in our cities… Fourth, in our communal life… “Finally, there are our conversations…In a diverse community like mine, with the chance to talk to people from all corners about all things, I am constantly struck by how the things we have in common with each other, are so much greater than the things that set us apart. The truth is, on the basics and the big things, we see eye to eye; Yet we fail to see this in each other, because we don’t talk to each other enough…That’s why I see in a constituency like mine, the importance of the work of local leaders, whether they are community leaders, religious leaders, political leaders in finding ways of bringing people together around the arts, history, culture, sports, faith to get people out of the streets they live in, into the streets of others… We have more to gain from the world at large, than we have to fear.”
The following is excerpted from Dr. B van den Brink’s commentary at the Trudy van Asperen lecture on May 14, 2009. “In his essay ‘Atomism,’ Taylor concluded that members of liberal societies have an obligation to belong to these societies, i.e. an obligation to actively care for its social forms, its common goods, its multi-faceted practices of freedom…last week I asked the first year philosophy students in my introductory course on social ad political philosophy…if they found that anything may be wrong with or problematic about the idea of an obligation to belong…and not one of them objected…If society protects the social conditions of autonomy, or agency, the most cherished social forms, then, yes, its members should recognize an obligation to belong and actively contribute to it. “…the reaction of my student may well indicate that the communitarian project has become an integral past of the defense of a sustainable liberalism, a liberalism that has gained reflexivity with regard to the social and political conditions of individual collective freedom… it seems that many of them things of the state and government ideally as authorities that, as a good parent maybe, watches over the integrity of the community and its members. Not just conservative forces in Dutch society have that conception nowadays; it is a quite widespread image of what we call in the Netherlands ‘vaderjte staat,’ ‘father state’ and can be found throughout the political spectrum…The state foes not stand mainly for individuals, or their political participation, it rather stands for a cultural horizon in which we lead our lives together, samen, as our Prime-Minister tends to saw whenever there is trouble. This idea of political togetherness fits well with the communitarian idea of politics, and we know for a fact that the course of present Dutch government has been directly inspired by communitarian thought.” |
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The Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies |