The Common Good

Its Politics, Policies and Philosophy

Marcus G. Raskin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000704822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

First published in 1986. In this thought-provoking book the widely acclaimed thinker and activist, Marcus Raskin, moves beyond the limits and failures of socialism and capitalism to an original theory of social reconstruction for a humane society. Presenting concrete alternatives for education, health, economics and national security he develops a new conception of democracy and the rule of law in relation to our common good.

A political and philosophic tool designed for those who search for alternatives in their lives and in the world, The Common Good shows how to organize for social reconstruction, the type of leadership now required, and the importance of restoring progress as a political purpose. Defining politics as broader than the mere manifestation of power, Raskin's vision helps the left and liberals find their way towards a new public philosophy and program.

1

The common good

It is a curious irony that the phrase “common good” which should find itself in all spheres of human existence is more likely than not restricted or banished from the harsh world of politics and everyday life. We come to believe that such ideas cannot apply to the actions of states, and that conscious efforts at projecting the common good in the marketplace are held to be disastrous. Some offer the silent judgment that the common good is best served when there is none. Others take the view that a common good with government as the engine leads to authoritarianism or even totalitarianism. But this flimsy catechism is not helpful when we consider the activities of modern day life. The purpose of this inquiry is to resurrect the common good and present the contours of a public philosophy to this end. Such a philosophy requires us to escape false or irrelevant dichotomies and categories which obscure the policies and paths of social reconstruction.

We are prone to believe that actions of people are centered in two different realms each with its own code. In one realm it is taken for granted that men dominate; namely in the realm of the state. In the other realm, that of society, women are expected to have a central role, albeit a support and maintenance one. They are to care for the family, religious institutions, schools and provide the non-remunerative subsidy to the economic corporation while they act as the caretakers of the young. In capitalist society they are to act as the organizers of consumption.

In society relationships sometimes can be associative and unburdened by hierarchic or administrative control with natural affection and cooperation enhancing the quality of individual life. Thus, in society there are spaces for action where the actors seek their own social, political and economic combination. The actors can even recognize the intimate, unmediated through extrinsic state demands – often but not always.

Such societies are permissive, and usually they are democratic. Yet, even democratic societies do not escape coercion. Coercion is often clothed in traditional social roles and rituals that are suffocating and tend toward the relationship of dominator and dominated.

The carrier of these roles is often the family although it can be passed on through religion and the law as it is used to protect property. In the past racism which is laced through the society was supported by the state’s administrative and legislative regulations. Sexism is also passed through the way institutions are structured and the values they propound. Most states are never far from their central roots, namely the control and use of violence and coercion. The state uses its organization of power, its “monopoly” of violence to coerce or mandate outcomes, although other modes of suasion are used as well. Depending on the character of the society or the nature of the constitution the state will either be limited or seek to be coextensive with all aspects of society. Wielders of state power may strike a separate peace with churches, or there may be a pious, hands-off attitude towards family. However, the state is thought of as the instrument to command, when it wants to, the resources of the society for its purposes and it may insist on all manner of invasive activity into all institutions.

According to the anarchists, whether Simone Weil or Paul Goodman, the state is so suffused with violence and war preparation and war making that it cannot escape its origins and the purposes that those with power, invariably men, place on the process of governing.¹ The state leaves virtually no room for an internal, self-corrective mechanism to operate. Once a government begins arming it loses proportion and the society, including its various institutions, legitimates the state through passive or active support. The institutions of society find it difficult to correct the state and its activities. This is why some anarchists dislike global concepts such as Society for they play into the hands of the “statesmen.” Such concepts miss the diverse and irremediable differences of groups. According to Goodman, for example, people live in societies and groups of associations not in a Society. Others have argued that it is a mistake to think that freedom can be authorized or mandated through the state. Freedom is bonded through direct relations which, as Martin Buber would have it, are optimally face to face and precede modes of governance.²

Such ideas are sprinkled around in modern thought and practice. The Marxists talked about the withering away of the state: the anarchists insisted on it, the conservatives demanded it. Political pragmatists argue that governments should have limited powers. The Founding Fathers describe spheres of power which different levels of governments should have, believing that the federal system is the one most likely to protect individual liberties.³ The purpose of the delineation of power both within the government and between the government and society, it is said, will limit the possibility of total power of the state. In its extreme view this belief holds that governments should get out of the way of the natural industry of the people, and in its modern form, governments should get out of the way of the corporations so that well-being may be attained.

While some of these ideas have an attraction and a certain charm to them and some may be more right than wrong they are not very useful once we look at the developments of society and governments and once we introduce the notion that human beings have needs and rights which precede their relationship to the Other or to a group irrespective of political category. There is now recognition that needs can only be fulfilled through relationship with the group. Self-independence, if it ever existed, is certainly not a condition of modern industrial societies where dependence, interaction, and trust are integral to the group or another for virtually everything.

When there is a recognition of personal need of the other and the realization that we are born into relationships, institutions, problems and potentialities we either seek our own personal interest at the expense of others or we seek the common good, realizing that the common good itself begins from an ensemble of prior rights which human beings can concretize in their relationship to each other and through each other as well as through and against social and state institutions. Once people say that there should be a common good and when we say that everyone is endowed, as American thinkers and statesmen have said, with certain inalienable rights, namely life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we have curious but altogether felicitous results. Each institution is constantly challenged to line up in that pursuit, whether public or private, and the power of government is to be used for that purpose. It becomes an actor and is acted upon. According to this view the institutions of the society and the state fall under intense scrutiny from each other, from other groups and institutions for they too are to have the common good in mind as they fulfill the revolutionary charge of pursuit of happiness. In this framework power is shared and free-floating within a force field of the government, institutions and peoples. Government is challenged to secure the common good as institutions become aware of their shortcomings, as individuals and other groups press claims against each other and the government for new rights or old ones reinterpreted and applied more broadly.

When the consciousness of submerged humanity awakens, the motive force is present for profound change which then reshapes the purposes of government and other controlling or central institutions of society. Boundaries, protocols and customs shift in the struggle of power, authority and autonomy between private institutions and the government.⁴

Throughout the struggle between the society and the state runs the issue of the economic underpinnings for all citizens. The common good begins from the principle of a common social product to be equitably shared. How this is to be accomplished reflects a continuous, sometimes dialectical relationship between the institutions of society and the state as they come together in new shapes and forms with each element of society challenging the other to make good, to find a common good for everyone to pursue happiness. This includes the challenge of direct action and the constitutional response of protecting that direct action. The modern world has chosen, for the most part, democracy and democracy is a system knowing no bounds and encouraging those who had no apparent voice to find their voice. It seeks the common good throughout the society enabling people to find themselves. Of course such concepts as democracy and the common good are not set in concrete. They too change and they do so through inquiry and struggle.

In Chapter 6 I discuss the character of the modern democracy with specific emphasis on what could happen in the United States. But I will begin with the common good and its meaning for when we think about the common good we know that it should be throughout the society and in the government, not separated by boundaries or false dichotomies. We intuitively recognize that common good encompasses all humanity in its entirety and recognizes the ‘morality of liberation’ to attain a measure of happiness for all. The common good calls us to escape categories which have worked as instances and institutions of oppression. Actors for the common good seek means (that of social reconstruction) to find a path and networks that defeat those dichotomies and institutions which keep people from themselves and each other and which do not recognize the inherent dignity of all. The task of social reconstruction is a continuous affirmation of potentiality and practical hope. This optimism is not easy to maintain.

In a time when so many of us feel thrown, or alone and sinking, and in a time when our institutions and knowledge seem to reflect our problems rather than offer any cure or amelioration to them, is there any sense at all in talking about the common good for and among us? In an age of narcissism, selfishness and inattention, is there any value to proclaiming the need for a common good beyond class, or family or self – and trying to show how it just might be achieved?

In an age of deformed institutions and economic turbulence, is there any sense to reinvigorating our social and economic institutions, transforming them so that they will serve the economic, social and psychological dignity of all people? In an age of mass manipulation where politicians package themselves like commodities and where politics is synonymous with power, is there any value to concerning ourselves with a different, humane conception of politics and leadership?

In a system which is both complex and vulnerable where the expert and specialist give the false appearance of knowing and governing wisely but where the citizenry may be aware of even less, is it responsible to argue for a principle of inclusion which allows all to participate in decision making beyond their social role, class and function? In an age where reason is detached from feeling and ethical consequences where we allow ourselves to become slaves of an almost autonomous drive to civilization’s extinction, is there any value in relying on our collective reason and common sense as the primary way of saving ourselves and the future of mankind?

And in a time where people are told to hug old social structures, assert fundamentalist dogmas, and seek the repeal of social gains made by women, poor people, workers, since the French and American revolution, should not people argue for more rather than less democracy, for more participation rather than trusteeship and oligarchy to protect and extend the gains of the past?

And finally, should the thrust for social reconstruction be made at all during a time of conservative orthodoxy?

The answer to each of these questions is “yes” if we want civilization to last beyond the twenty-first century. Every activity of politicians, artists, scientists, workers, religious people, farmers, business entrepreneurs, even those whose vocations are not obvious, like intellectuals, must incorporate the way these questions can be affirmatively answered. This inquiry is meant as one key to answering these questions. They are meant to show that the common good as a path can be found.

The common good is not static; it shifts with our understanding and our discoveries of what is possible, of what humankind can positively create. In the day to day search for the common good those concerned with political action and those having to make conscious choices soon become aware that the common good is made up of contradictory and antagonistic elements. Often these antagonisms are between the new and the old. But no one should assume that the “new” or the “old” is a priori preferable over the other. In the age of modern science there is always a tendency to dismiss the old for the new. Indeed, the market system stimulates this tendency and there is enough that is rotten in tradition, or decaying in the old which justifies revolutionaries and capitalists alike in wanting to begin from scratch to erase history and its artifacts. But the reality is that the path of the common good encompasses the culture of the past, not in the sense that people should be controlled by another time, but in the sense that the accomplishments and struggles of the past, of other generations, are not to be treated lightly. The accomplishments of others reflect the cumulative power and wisdom of civilization.

The terror of nuclear armaments and the seemingly autonomous direction that institutions involved in the arms race are taking is that they are placing the accomplishments of the past on the butcher block. They oblige those committed to social reconstruction to stay the hand of those who would be our butchers. There is no other choice but to defend what has been built and struggled for over the generations, namely, our cities, technological, religious and artistic treasures.

It is more important than ever for people to understand that with thermo-nuclear weapons as the vanguard of instruments to destroy civilization, a radical position must be that it is not only the destruction of the future that we oppose, but the destruction of the cultures of the past that we live within which we cannot countenance. In any case, it is hard to know what is past and what is future. (J.D. Bernal has correctly pointed out that the basic engineering of the twentieth century is the work of nineteenth-century scientists. They made it possible for us to hear both rock and Palestrina at home conflating the centuries.)⁵ If people do not remember their yesterday, or that of others, they become alienated from themselves and their work. Indeed, they have lost consciousness of themselves and of others. They are rootless, given over to anything and anybody. And those who act irresponsibly with power, taking on the ways of cultural vandals, thrive on the destruction of any consciousness of the past.

This is not to say that “talked about” history is the full history. Our understanding of events of the past is invariably incomplete and flawed. Often the descriptions are mythical, screened through the dominant fashions of one’s own time. This obvious observation should help to free us from assuming that reported history is the only history. And that what others say happened in the past should dominate our future actions. Thus while on the one hand we must guard humankind against the destroyers of civilization for the sake of the common good, another element in seeking the common good contradicts those reactionaries and conservatives who dote on tradition, turning formerly functional forms into fetishes. Once we recognize and realize what others have accomplished we do not have to be governed by their successes or failures. By comprehending and protecting the past, finding and protecting traditions and styles of art, music, law, politics, science and literature we learn that it is not necessary to build our shelters of thought and practice in completed traditions. We can transcend them because we will know what we do not want, what shelters we cannot fit into.⁶ With this recognition we do well to pay close attention to the cyclical aspects of natural history, namely the seasons and their repetitive character, the menstrual cycles of women, the seasons of plantings, the invariability of the individual’s death and the personal need that people have to socially belong throughout their lives.⁷

As I will suggest in the last chapter of this book, where we seek wrenching political actions we must never forget the cyclical nature of day to day life.⁸ Otherwise we will not comprehend the vulnerability, limits and perpetual needs of humankind. Our political actions will not be successful for we will demand too much or too little of ourselves and others.

There are five important questions which comprise the common good and which should be kept in mind as political change is accepted. The first is how should freedom be integrated into the common good? The second is whether there is a universal definition of the common good which all people would readily recognize? The third is does responsibility for the common good rest with everyone or with trustees? The fourth is how does the common sense lead to the common good? The fifth is if it rests with everyone, does that mean the common good is derived from adding people’s private interests with pragmatism being the way to find the additive common good?

Freedom and the common good

The cyclical nature of life does not contradict the need and impulse for freedom. It means, however, that in the generation of the common good a variability to the meaning of freedom will be championed by different people and groups who have differing needs and appetites.⁹ While there are variations in the meaning of freedom,^10...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The common good
• 2 Becoming leaders and organizers
• 3 Social caring
• 4 Economy for the common good
• 5 Securing the nation: an alternative foreign and defense policy
• 6 The next stage of democracy
• 7 Progress and the common good
• Notes
• Index