COMMUNITARIANISM SOLVENCY 67

COMMUNITARIANISM IS APPLICABLE UP AND DOWN THE POLITICAL SCALE

THE COMMUNITY OPERATES IN A PLURALISTIC SENSE, ALL THE WAY UP TO A GLOBAL LEVEL

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

Communities are best understood as frameworks within which diverse interests are served and ordinary life goes forward. This pluralistic image of community is evident in Amitai Etzioni’s idea that community is "a community of communities," or, as I have put it, a "unity of unities." These phrases are meant to capture a remarkable feature of communal life. A flourishing community builds upon and is nourished by other unities, notably persons, groups, practices, and institutions. These constituent unities characteristically claim respect and protection. Although boundaries may be blurred, for example between family and school, each has its own special functions, values, and needs. Hence what we prize in community is not unity of any sort at any price but unity that preserves the integrity of the parts. The unity of community is, ideally, a federal unity.

COMMUNITARIANISM VALUES ALL COMMUNITIES UP THE LINE TO THE CATEGORY OF ALL HUMANKIND

INSTITUTE FOR COMMUNITARIAN POLICY STUDIES, 2000; The Communitarian Platform,

http://www.communitariannetwork.org/platformtext.htm // acs-EE2001

We are heartened by the widespread invocation of democratic principles by the nations and peoples now emerging from generations of repression; we see the institutionalization of these principles as the best possible bulwark against the excesses of ethnic and national particularism that could well produce new forms of repression.

Although it may seem utopian, we believe that in the multiplication of strongly democratic communities around the world lies our best hope for the emergence of a global community that can deal concertedly with matters of general concern to our species as a whole: with war and strife, with violations of basic rights, with environmental degradation, and with the extreme material deprivation that stunts the bodies, minds, and spirits of children. Our communitarian concern may begin with ourselves and our families, but it rises inexorably to the long-imagined community of humankind.