The Communitarian Constitution

3. Participation, Consensus, and the Common Good: Constructing a Communitarian Polity

c h a p t e r t h r e e Participation, Consensus, and the Common Good Constructing a Communitarian Polity What does a society look like if it is governed by contemporary communitarian institutions and values? Will it resemble its now discredited distant cousin, the communist regime, or does it more closely mirror the small, often-admired, NewEnglandtown?Orperhapsevenmoreplausibly,istheportraitofamodern communitarian polity conceptually di√erent from that of any ordered political society we have yet encountered? Beyond the particulars of the theoretical and prescriptive movement, the practical construction or vision of the entire communitarian project is important in order to appraise the merits of its fully realized form. If we are seriously to consider adopting parts or the whole of the communitarian plan, we must first visualize it. Where is sovereignty located in the communitarian scheme? How will the institutions of the polity be organized e√ectively? What values and principles will be given priority? Only with the immediate evaluation and resolution of these and other questions will we be in a position to adequately assess the possibility of a predominantly communitarian America. Attempting to envision a working communitarian polity is hazardous because few advocates focus directly on the structural framework of real politics.∞ Constructing a Communitarian Polity 79 There is no modern communitarian equivalent to the Federalist Papers, no impressively detailed and definitive description of the mechanics of a newly proposed constitutional charter. Most communitarians are content to view human nature from a grassroots perspective. Their criticism of liberal theory centers on questions of the self and the relationship of selves and only rarely on the pragmatic issue of structural organization. Furthermore, communitarians readily admit that there is no clear example of a fully functioning modern communitarian system.≤ Communitarian scholarship, in short, has not evolved beyond the question of what needs to be changed about contemporary politics, to the more pragmatic inquiry about how to systematically organize those changes.≥ As part of any e√ort to construct a fully developed political community, there exists the real possibility of building a communitarian straw man. One student of communitarianism remarks that supporters of the communitarian impulse ‘‘have been criticized for failing to develop a theory of community.’’∂ It is a delicate enterprise, therefore, to visualize a communitarian polity out of the often subtly connected writings of particular theorists, then to challenge that construction as problematic. Such a strategy (on both sides) is part of what currently inhibits the present liberal-communitarian debate. If falling into a similar trap, one will undoubtedly tend to conceive of the proposed political system in extreme or highly dubious terms so as to allow a challenge more maneuverability, and perhaps lend it additional credibility. Surely, it is easy to criticize a biased or incomplete image of the communitarian polity; it is infinitely more di≈cult to conceptualize and then critique a comprehensive and fully coherent account of such an important theory. Di≈cult, however, does not mean impossible. To avoid the many pitfalls of imagining a functioning communitarian polity, we must access at least two critical resources—the writings of communitarian sympathizers, and the Platform of the Responsive Communitarian Movement. Sympathetic accounts of the main theoretical communitarian advocates are highly useful in that they are not primarily distracted by particulars beyond the communitarian enterprise . Their agenda is strictly supportive of communitarianism, and as such, they provide, as much as possible, an unbiased and exhaustive account of the communitarian project. Authors such as Robert Bellah, Daniel Bell, William Sullivan, and Ronald Beiner have stripped community theory of its more antagonistic elements and have, in a speculative manner, highlighted (as much as possible) the precise vision of communitarian politics.∑ The Responsive 80 Communitarian Politics Communitarian Platform is equally helpful in that it is the single most comprehensive design for a communitarian polity. In a concrete way, the Platform reveals the communitarian movement’s preliminary strategy. Together, these sources of community theory provide an important glimpse into the proposed pragmatic future of communitarian politics. Another di≈culty in conceiving of a communitarian polity is to identify the common thread that runs through all communitarian scholarship. As I suggested earlier, modern communitarian thought is highly divergent, particularly when one compares the beliefs of certain conservative communitarians with the ideas of their more liberal cousins. The specific polity envisioned by MacIntyre, Carey, Grasso, and Frohnen, in short, might not fully resemble the one imagined...