COMMUNITARIANISM SOLVENCY 65

COMMUNITARIANISM PRACTICE WILL BUILD STRONGER COMMUNITIES

COMMUNITARIANISM PROMOTES CONGENIAL SOCIAL PLURALISM

PHILIP SELZNICK, professor emeritus of law and sociology at the School of Law, University of California at Berkeley, 1996; Social Justice: A Communitarian Perspective, The Responsive Community, Volume 6, Issue 4, Fall 1996, http://www.gwu.edu/~icps/selznick.html // acs-EE2001

For communitarians the main tenets of pluralism are very congenial. Social power must be dispersed and balanced–but not fragmented. Therefore we seek a richly textured civil society, which has many benefits, including limiting the power of the state. It is often forgotten, however, that civil society depends vitally on law, which is part of government. Furthermore, we need effective government to secure public goods, such as environmental protection, basic science, and much else that is lost if we rely on market mechanisms alone. And we should be sensitive to the potential for abuse of power by all leaders, private as well as public.

COMMUNITARIANISM DEFENDS SOCIAL PARTICULARNESS BECAUSE IT BUILDS ATTACHMENTS AND ROOTEDNESS

PHILIP SELZNICK, professor emeritus of law and sociology at the School of Law, University of California at Berkeley, 1996; Social Justice: A Communitarian Perspective, The Responsive Community, Volume 6, Issue 4, Fall 1996, http://www.gwu.edu/~icps/selznick.html // acs-EE2001

At the same time, communitarians recognize and defend the virtues of particularism. These virtues include loyalty and piety, especially accepting responsibility for children, parents, and others to whom we owe special obligations. Particularism arises from the experience of connectedness, which makes us aware that we are implicated selves, bound up with lives that we have created and that have created us.

Most people flourish, morally and psychologically, if they have strong and stable attachments to specific families, communities, and ways of life. This accounts for the persistent pull of culture, including recurrent pleas for authenticity and rootedness; and for the backlash that occurs when these needs are ignored or unmet.