The Communitarian face-off: a left v right debate

By Joe Cox

It was good to see Duncan Weldon taking a look at the different schools of thought developing in progressive politics. It’s a relief to hear that ideology is not dead after Blair sounded the death knell a few years ago.

Compass will explore the left and right debate around ‘Communitarianism’ in our upcoming event this Wednesday, July 15th (further details at the bottom of the post).

I thought I would kick off the debate early here on LabourList by picking up on a couple of thoughts on right communitarianism. Just to refresh:

Right Communitarianism
“The task of progressive politics – or conservative politics – is to fill the moral vacuum created by a combination of neo-liberalism in the economy and life-style liberalism in society. This requires that we rebuild a strongly moralistic civil society to meet social needs which neither the free market nor the traditional welfare state can meet satisfactorily. To this end, we must build a new political and economic localism. We must ‘recapitalise the poor’ in order to empower them to crawl out from under the welfare state. The welfare state itself must be cut back, with government switching its emphasis radically to assisting independent groups in civil society to carry out welfare functions. State policy will limit market freedoms and will be informed, e.g., in developing a new civil society of welfare, by authoritative accounts of good behaviour. A nihilist liberal politics of arbitrary freedom must be replaced with one of collective morality.”

Firstly, I have to take issue with the threat of left-style liberalism and the moral vacuum; when I look around I don’t see a moral vacuum, I see disempowerment, frustration and inequality but no lack of morality. I think this is mainly the problem of markets trampling over people, leaving people atomised and alienated with little control over their lives. I also find it uncomfortable that the state or any government should try to engineer a strongly ‘moralistic civil society’. Who decides these objective morals? Decrying ‘nihlistic arbitrary freedom’ just sounds like deep conservative traditionalism, I believe in more freedom, both negative and positive. Where I wholly agree is in collectivist values, in a sense, this is the only way we can be free.

Secondly, I am not sure how ‘recapitalising the poor’ would work in practice. There has been a transfer of wealth and power from labour to capital since the 1980s, if the poor are recapitalised, will they not travel upwards again? I cannot pretend to know the answer to that but I think that ensuring labour has a greater share of GDP may be a better solution.

Thirdly, the “welfare state should be cut back?” I just can’t agree with this. I think the safety net should be strengthened and made more generous, especially in these difficult economic times. Whole swathes of the workforce are threatened with unemployment through no fault of their own. This is where the state needs to step in. The Welfare Reform Bill shows that dramatically reducing welfare often leads to attacks on the most vulnerable groups in society – I would be very cautious of this.

Whatever your perspective, it’s a timely and much needed debate. I urge you to join us for:

The Communitarian Face-Off: A left versus right debate.
Chair: Mary Riddell (Daily Telegraph)
Speakers: on the left will be Jon Cruddas MP for Dagenham and Neal Lawson, Chair of Compass.
Defending the conservative position will be Oliver Letwin MP for West Dorset, and Phillip Blond.
The event will take place from 6pm-7.30pm on Wednesday July 15th at the Abbey Centre, 34 Great Smith Street, London, SW1P 3BU.

To book please email gavin@compassonline.org.uk.

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1. The Daily Politics debate
2. No retreat on equality in the face of recession
3. Tired and emotional? Orwell Prize shortlist debate
4. Clarion call for open debate
5. The new centre-left economic consensus