Communitarianism: Balancing Individuality and The Common Good

Communitarianism is one of those ideologies that you commonly don’t hear about too often. It’s an ideology living in the shadows of liberalism and conservatism, which is disheartening because communitarianism happens to be the best ideology to have a society live by. They aren’t extremely individualist like practiced in liberalism, nor are they extremely traditional like conservatism. I believe in communitarianism because they believe people are naturally compassionate, and social but that it is society that makes people selfish and competitive (Communitarianism Lecture). I also like that communitarians believe that people should live by their own rules, and be apart of a community, rather than only having self interest. Lastly the idea of self government that everyone actively participates in sounds better for a society rather than something like an economic democracy expressed in Marxism.

When it comes to human nature, communitarianism’s believe that people are naturally social and compassionate, but that it is society today that makes them competitive and greedy. I personally agree with this because competiveness is advertised everywhere. For example, there are endless TV shows such as Survivor or American Idol, that portray the competitiveness that conservatism believes human nature holds (Communitarianism Lecture), but with the education and the skills that communitarianism teaches, people will return to being naturally social and compassionate (Review Lecture). Another topic that is a battle between communitarianism and conservatism is the principle of freedom. While communitarians believe that people should be allowed to live by their own rules, conservatives believe that people should stick to customs and traditions. As long as the people are living rules that benefit the community, communitarians believe that you should live by any rules you desire, and that you shouldn’t be restricted to traditional roles. Traditional roles supported by conservatives such as having a religion, and having traditional values like the mother stays home, while the father makes the income (Conservatism Lecture).

Government in the eyes of communitarians, is not a major key, but rather having a civil society is more important. When government does come into play, a direct democracy is what’s best to maintain a good and healthy society (Communitarianism Lecture). Since the main principle of communitarianism is communities, and being active within them, having a strong direct democracy is important to make sure that everyone’s voices are heard. With this kind of government, citizens have access to more information, while they “seek to curb the role of private money, special interest, and corruption in government,” (Etzioni p. 36). The ideology that would oppose this idea of government the most would be anarchism hands down. For anarchism, government all together is a huge threat to society, and should be taken down and away as soon as possible, in order for society to healthy and functional. Anarchist believe that government or centralization takes away people’s natural ability to make their own decisions, and that in a way brainwashes citizens into believing there is no other way to run society (Goodman p. 52). Although anarchist argue this, communitarians focus on not having a large centralized government, but rather small self governed communities that focus on making sure everyone is actively participating and having their voices heard.

Lastly, and what I feel communitarians stress the most is having communities within society, and being active within those communities. They believe with living in a community, you get in return what you put in, and if everyone actively puts good into a community, you can only end up with a good society (Communitarian Lecture). When living in a community, your main focus is what’s best for that community, even though you are still granted the freedom of living by your own rules. In other words, “our communitarianism concern may begin with ourselves and our families, but it rises inexorably to the long-imagined community of mankind,” (Etzioni p. 43). An ideology that would have an issue with doing what’s best for the common good would be liberalism. Liberalism is all about individual rights, and as long as you aren’t causing anyone harm, you can live by any rules you want and only have your self interest at mind (Liberalism Lecture). What makes communitarianism a better option than liberalism is that they are strictly about individualism, while communitarianism has the best of both worlds of having the right to live by individual rules, while being cautious of what’s best for the common good.

Communitarian is honestly in my opinion, the definition of having the best of both worlds. You get your individual wants, and morals because no person is the same nor thinks the same. Yet you also don’t lose focus of the community in which you are living in, and actively try to get everyone’s voices heard. The common good for the people is what will make everyone happy, but in order to do that, the individual people have to be happy as well. With Communitarianism, I believe achieving both of those things are very possible.