What is the Community in Communitarianism?

Communitarianism is on the rise in chatterati circles. Think Blue Labour, or Red Toryism – think “a Britain that works for everyone” and the belief that we need better, stronger communities. Communitarianism neither exalts gross economic power or “social justice” over the basic priority of social stability and connectedness.

I suspect, by some measure, 80% of people in Britain are “communitarians”. But the question is “which measure?”. What does communitarianism mean, in practice? Classical liberal critic Kristian Niemitz of the IEA sees it as an empty, reactive fad that is only right when it is self-evident: “Communitarianism is the pretence that trivial clichés are profound wisdoms, and that an unwillingness to engage with economic arguments makes you an especially highbrow thinker.” (https://iea.org.uk/communitarianism-the-art-of-passing-off-trivial-cliches-as-profound-wisdoms/) (I note here with wry amusement that Kristian’s main personal target, when he sounds off about this on Twitter, is an obscure mental health nurse going by “Post-Liberal Pete”.)

So what sort of material policies do “communitarians” want? Well, it’s easier to find bad (or at least unpopular) policies than it is to articulate them positively. Nick Timothy, Theresa May’s top advisor as PM, is a communitarian – and is best known by most of us for the “dementia tax”. That sought to put a duty of financial care for the elderly on families rather than the taxpayer; it also probably lost the Tories several seats in 2017.

Again, the modern Social Democratic Party (SDP) is communitarian. It has bright and sensitive minds in the mix. One of its banner policies on community AND the environment is opposition, whether by legal sanction or otherwise, to non-stun slaughter. You know – halal and kosher slaughter. Though there is a gloss about animal rights on that (poorly evidenced and largely debunked by, amongst others, my friend James Mendehlson – see e.g. https://largebluefootballs.wordpress.com/2019/11/20/how-the-sdp-still-discriminates-against-jews-and-muslims/), it is chiefly aimed at the spread of unlabelled halal meats. This is plainly considered an infiltration by an alien culture or community. Of course, were kosher and halal to be banned here, every faithful kosher Jew would either have to import kosher meat (if allowed) or...leave Britain. Bloodless pogroms via Stena Line. Excellent neighbourliness there.

Well, if directly levying the families of those in care homes aids in building community, let’s do it. If banning kosher does, sure, sounds good. But we’ve gotten to the sticking place here: which community? Whose? And who gets to define it?

Communitarianism requires a community whose values and health it desires to uphold. How on earth is this possible in a pluralistic society? And – bearing in mind the law of unintended consequences – how do communitarians cultivate their community’s health by law without accidentally chopping healthy parts off?

I suppose in one sense I think the task is an impossible one. Communitarians identify society as atomised and drifting apart – and that is what may be fatal to their project. Kristian Niemitiz, and many others who do care about community, ultimately value personal choice over community stability. If you want to be part of a stable community, feel free to make the economically disadvantageous choices necessary – but don’t make anyone else stay. But long-term stability requires social pressure – which such a liberal emphasis disbars.

In parallel, but on the other flank, the “social justice” crowd will point out that the community implied by the communitarians – even if stripped of strange policies like the ones about banning or labelling kosher – is exclusive, and claim that its historical forerunners did awful things in the name of community cohesion. (A pertinent example – look at all those statues of community heroes who now seem to us have to believed or done evil things!) Whether fair or not, this is salient. Community implies “in” and “out”, by one metric or another. Who gets to decide which metric? (Incidentally, the post-Marxian bunch also have their metric of “in” and “out”; cancel culture is precisely about that.)

There are, I think, communitarianisms – plural. There are different visions within this part of the “post-liberal” movement. One emphasizes “white Anglo-Saxon” norms; another emphasizes linguistic or religious uniformity; another pushes something else. The many communitarianisms are not fully compatible: one that sees food traditions (an exceptionally important locus of community, historically) as paramount will tend to exclude Jews and Muslims – but a vision that emphasizes religious observance as a base for community cohesion, or that looks to the British tradition of respecting privacy, will find that a frankly appalling prospect. Without explicit reliance on religious or some other objective morality, none of these can be said to be “the best” community for us to support.

This tension is why, I think, “civic nationalism” appeals to many of those attracted to communitarianism. The emphasis becomes that which is shared in the present and historically by all Britons – legal and constitutional norms and values, an implicit social conservatism with explicit guarantees of personal freedom. The trouble here, though, is that precisely because it moves away from defining “community”, civic nationalism ends up being a blank slate of a different kind. Kristian Niemitz can still question on what basis he is required to surrender economic mobility; the post-Marxians can still dismiss the whole project as imperialist. The civic nationalist ends up with little in the way of set policy, because one has dodged the core question – which sort of civis? Which nation? This is the undoubted advantage of the “halal slaughter is weird and so are their beards” lot – there is, at least, a clear definition in play, and a clear argument why it must be enforced.

For those of us with philosophically conservative leanings, or with strong religious conviction, this may be disheartening (though I remind my religious readers that “My God is in the Heavens; He does whatever He pleases”). The horse of Cultural Uniformity has bolted, released by those clandestine lovers, Laissez-Faire and the Cultural Left. The high price of putting the horse back in the stable is one that communitarians – a pretty soft-hearted bunch on the whole – will not be willing to pay.

Of course, when at such a fulcrum moment as we are – where anything might happen, any project or ideology rise to supremacy from nowhere – it may be that a faction triumphs which grounds itself upon a particular religion or community. I doubt this faction will talk or act much like the present notable communitarians – mostly diffident and wonkish, middle-class and softly spoken. The critics of communitarianism may end up wishing it had successfully defined a singular “community” for us all to share.