The Evolution of Communitarian Ideas by Henry Tam

Author:Henry Tam
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030265588
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Contesting the Depersonalising Market

In response to the economic chaos, totalitarian atrocities, and military aggression of the 1930s/1940s, a range of counter-measures were deployed by the US and UK and their allies. Many of these chimed with the vision of thinkers who pressed for the reforming of communities to facilitate mutuality in interpersonal relations, and guard against the threat of depersonalisation in every sphere of life. From the late 1940s to the end of the 1970s, a new societal model evolved in the West that offered greater opportunities for inclusive community life than ever before.12 It might have been heavily criticised by communist regimes in other parts of the world, but many of those living under communist rule would rather move to the West than stay where they were. More significantly, there were disputes within the West itself as to whether the changes brought in should be strengthened or reversed. We will in in this section look at four policy areas where communitarian advocacy for greater reform impetus increasingly clashed with a resurgent ideology of depersonalisation centred on the sanctity of the market .

The four areas to be reviewed are: economic regulation; social parity; cooperation for common security ; and the right to respect. In each of these areas, there was a growing divide between those who wanted to see more reforms to support communitarian social development, and those who argued for their idealised conception of the market to displace state intervention. The latter believed that individuals should be left to give or take what they wanted through market transactions. If the terms they sought were not obtainable, they would have to move on to their next preference and so on, until they arrived at an available option. There would be no question about the respective bargaining position of individuals in the marketplace, and certainly no query about how some had come to be able to strike deals that others could not afford to refuse. The market , liberated from state control, would enable each and every individual to exchange what they could offer for what they could thus obtain from others, and attain the best of all possible lives for themselves.13

Let us begin with a look at economic regulation. Communitarian thinkers in the nineteenth and early twentieth century had been deeply concerned about how concentrated economic powers were fuelling exploitation and corroding social solidarity . It was in the US, where this concentration had reached unprecedented levels, that big banks and businesses generated the boom-and-bust sequence which led to the Great Depression. The persistent over-production and underpaying of workers led to excess supplies and rising redundancies. People were encouraged to sustain their income by borrowing and speculatively buying shares, but the economic recession led to more business closures, job losses, and plummeting share prices. The economic disaster in the US then infected Europe, with mass unemployment and financial chaos ruining countless lives.

The US under President F. D. Roosevelt responded with careful regulation of utilities, business practices, banking arrangements, and currency

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