{"id":795,"date":"2011-10-07T16:36:54","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T20:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/?p=795"},"modified":"2011-10-28T14:26:25","modified_gmt":"2011-10-28T18:26:25","slug":"capitalism-socialism-and-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/?p=795","title":{"rendered":"Capitalism, Socialism, and Community"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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I want to add some additional comments to those I made at the last SD
\ndiscussion on the issue of socialism, capitalism, and human nature. I would
\nargue that while capitalism gives a full reign to the satisfaction of human
\ncompetitive instincts for wealth and power over others, it does a very poor job
\nof providing for the human instincts for community and solidarity.<\/p>\n

In saying this of course I am aware that the word “community” is a very hard
\nword to define. Currently community is used to refer to abstractions as large
\nscale and impersonal as “national,”\u00a0 “international,”\u00a0 or “faith” communities.”
\nThe word “community is used to describe\u00a0 to the communal relationships that
\nexist within small religious sects and the various village and clan communities
\nof traditional agrarian societies. So in order to define what I mean I will use
\nthe classic definition of community given by the great German sociologist
\nFerdinand Tonnies in his book Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft ( Community and
\nSociety) written in 1887. Tonnies makes a distinction between “society”
\n(gesellschaft) which tends to be the impersonal, large scale world of politics,
\neconomics, urban anonymity and atomized individualism and “community”
\n(gemeinschaft) which are the tightly net, small scale, face to face forms of
\nliving which have characterized most early human societies. Early hunting
\ngathering bands, early horticultural villages, clan societies, and traditional
\nagrarian peasant villages were all forms of gemeinschaft. Latter forms of
\ncommunity within\u00a0 earlier forms of capitalism would be the working class, ethnic
\nneighborhoods of 19th\u00a0 and\u00a0 20th century America. Modern religious bodies such
\nas churches, synagogues, and mosques at least to a certain degree recreate ties
\nof community in the modern world with varying degrees of success. The wikipedia
\narticle on “gemeinschaft” characterizes it thusly.<\/p>\n

Gemeinschaft<\/strong> (often translated as community<\/a><\/em>)
\nis an association in which individuals are oriented to the large association as
\nmuch, if not more than, to their own self interest. Furthermore, individuals in
\nGemeinschaft are regulated by common mores<\/a>,
\nor beliefs about the appropriate behavior and responsibility of members of the
\nassociation, to each other and to the association at large; associations are
\nmarked by “unity of will” (T\u00f6nnies, 22). T\u00f6nnies saw the family as the most
\nperfect expression of Gemeinschaft; however, he expected that Gemeinschaft could
\nbe based on shared place and shared belief as well as kinship, and he included
\nglobally dispersed religious communities as possible examples of Gemeinschaft.
\n….Gemeinschaften<\/em> are broadly characterized by a moderate division
\nof labour<\/a>, strong personal relationships, strong families, and relatively
\nsimple social institutions. In such societies there is seldom a need to enforce
\nsocial control externally, due to a collective sense of loyalty individuals feel
\nfor society.”<\/p>\n

Given that for tens of thousands of years humanity has lived in and in fact
\nevolved within a matrix of small scale closely netted communities of the
\ngemeinshaft type, I think that it can be said that life within such community is
\nhardwired into the human gene pool.<\/p>\n

What is also clear is that modern capitalism has developed a society which is
\nincreasingly unfriendly toward gemeinschaft forms of community. Modern society
\nis increasingly a society of the isolated individual in which the largest
\ncommunity unit is the often dysfunctional nuclear family. Individuals of course
\nover the course of their lives do attempt to establish communal ties through
\nworkplace friendships, clubs, and religious bodies, etc. It is clear however
\nthat most of these relationships tend to be fleeting and ethereal by nature. And
\ncertainly they are seldom characterized by any sense of common purpose or
\ncollective meaning.<\/p>\n

There are of course a multiple of reasons why capitalism has been disruptive
\nof traditional communities and unfriendly to the development of new forms of
\ncommunity. There are three that are the most obvious. The first and most obvious
\nis that capitalism has disrupted the rural life of villages and small towns
\nincreasingly by concentrating rural populations within huge cities.<\/p>\n

This movement of people out of rural areas,\u00a0 disrupting and destroying many
\nforms of community, has not gone unchallenged. In the United States in
\nparticular and\u00a0 other nations as well, tightly net ethnic, working class
\nneighborhoods developed within the large cities during the course of the 19th
\nand 20th centuries as a means of maintaining some stability and community in
\npeople’s lives. Unfortunately within information age capitalism even these forms
\nof community have began to breakdown.<\/p>\n

The second characteristic of modern capitalism that has been disruptive to
\ncommunity has been the cultural production of an almost universal capitalist
\nideology of extreme individualism \/ consumerism. The supreme goal of life in
\nthis worldview is the enhancement of the individual and the meeting of his \/ her
\nconsumption desires. The second goal is that individuals must increase their
\neconomic status within the capitalist society. It follows that if these two
\ncultural drives are primary then any need for community must be relegated to
\nsecond or third place in people’s lives.<\/p>\n

The third characteristic of modern capitalism which destroys community lays
\nwithin the structure of the capitalist work place itself. The workplace for the
\nvast majority of the world’s “employees” is simply a place in which one
\nexchanges ones labor for a weekly or biweekly paycheck. The capitalist workplace
\nis a place in which one must suppress ones real desires to serve the will of a
\nhierarchy of owners, stockholders, CEO’s etc. It is the realm of unfreedom and
\nservitude. It is not a place of freedom, autonomy, or creativity. Thus it is not
\nsurprising that the capitalist workplace itself is not the center of community
\nin peoples lives.<\/p>\n

It is of course easy to point out the evils of capitalism, it is more
\ndifficult to show how a concrete socialist society might work and how some of
\nthe negative consequences of capitalism can be overcome. Certainly the Communist
\nsocieties of the past were not successful and they did little to build viable
\nforms of human community. In fact by their actions they openly opposed such
\ncommunities.<\/p>\n

The fact is that a real existing socialism on a national scale has never
\ndeveloped. However through the examples of worker cooperative movements such as
\nthat of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, a realist vision of what a future
\nsocialism might look like can be seen. A socialist society would be one in which
\nthe dominant form of property would be cooperative and one in which workers
\nwould simultaneously own and democratically control their places of labor and
\neconomic enterprises.<\/p>\n

That transformation of the relationship of workers toward capital, the means
\nof production, would also likely transform the life of workers toward the work
\nplace, work itself, and toward other workers. The workplace would become
\ntransformed from a place of unfreedom and repressive hierarchy to one of
\nfreedom, egalitarian forms of ownership and autonomous self management.<\/p>\n

Within a society of free workplaces, it is easy to envision that, second to
\nthe family, the workplace itself would become the primary place of community in
\npeople’s lives. Instead of community being lived out primarily within the
\ncontext of its earlier forms, it would develop primarily in relationship to the
\nself governing workplace. Other forms of community would follow. Thus the
\nresidential pattern of cities would perhaps change\u00a0 to meet a desire of workers
\nto live within closer proximity to their places of labor and each other. After
\nall the workplace would be much more central to life than it is in its currently
\nalienated form.<\/p>\n

It is also possible that newer forms of democratic government perhaps of a
\nmore directly democratic nature will develop. This could stimulate new forms of
\nface to face political organization which could form the basis of more communal
\nlifestyles. Religious bodies may change. Of course Jewish, Christian, Muslim,
\nand other religious faiths would continue. But society’s new forms of community
\nwould perhaps inspire religious revival in which the major faiths would
\nreexamine older forms of religious community for example, that of Christian
\nmonasticism, the Sufi brotherhoods, or the close forms of communal life of the
\nJewish Hasidim. These earlier forms of religious community could be utilized by
\nthe more creative elements of the traditional faiths in order to develop new
\nforms of common life. While\u00a0 competitive capitalist society sees any kind of
\nreal communal life as strange and bizarre, the newer forms of cooperative life
\nthat would develop within the matrix of socialist society would perhaps
\nreinvigorate the life of religious faiths.<\/p>\n

OK, of course socialism is not just around the corner. I do not delude myself
\nthat it is. Of course much of this writing has been a exercise in “wishful”
\nthinking. However much of what we have on our side is “hopeful or wishful”
\nthinking. The endless protests of the left, its bottomless hatred of the United
\nStates, its dogged obsession with direct action or on the “realism” of single
\nissue politics will at its best produce results that hopefully may roll back
\nsome of the attacks of the tea party right. It seems to me that if we are to get
\nany where we have to go back to radical thinking regarding basic human realities
\nsuch as community, power, freedom, and justice. That is what I hope I have done
\nin this article. If we don’t do this we will be simply running a race on a
\ntreadmill, a race that we can not win.<\/p>\n

Glenn<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I want to add some additional comments to those I made at the last SD discussion on the issue of socialism, capitalism, and human nature. I would argue that while capitalism gives a full reign to the satisfaction of human … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=795"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":841,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795\/revisions\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialistcurrents.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}