Communitarianism

[JSE]

Communitarianism is the name given to a contemporary critique of liberal theory and a postive account of a community based state within political philosophy. See the entry from the Stanford online philosophy dictionary. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/communitarianism/

[CelticArtist]

I was curious about the root of the word, because I don't like the memory of Communism.

I found this which explained the "commune" word.

http://www.mcgees.net/fragments/essays/back%20burner/Choosing_Poros.html

"Before the Christian revolution, the term societas described human social animals as "walking with" one another. After the Christian revolution, the term communitas described human social animals as "praying with" one another. The distance between passing anonymously on the street and bowing down in a Holy place to pray captures a whole new way of thinking about interpersonal relationships, putting virtually everything that is public on more intimate and less political footing. The 5th-century Greek polis had a patron god or goddess, and each polis had elaborate rituals for honoring their divinity. As far as I can determine, however, the ontology of "Being Athenian," did not entail "communing" with each other in praise of Athena. Athenians had no community, nor could they have understood the difference it makes to conceive oneself living in community and not in polis."

Interesting. I still don't like any word with "Commu-" in it. Still too near the 40 million Ukranian and Russians killed. Women and children eating grass from spring fields with their stomachs burning up from hunger.

[Pushkin]

Communitarianism has little to do with Communism.

[JSE]

Communitarianism has little to do with Communism.I must start reading up on Third Positionism in greater detail but it is surely a form of communitarianism?

[Steyr]

Communitarianism is the name given to a contemporary critique of liberal theory and a postive account of a community based state within political philosophy. See the entry from the Stanford online philosophy dictionary. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/communitarianism/
Hmm, I had a difficult time getting past the first sentence on account of this:
"Modern-day communitarianism began in the upper reaches of Anglo-American academia. . ."

Overlooking the initial handicap, it reminds me too much of Fake's racial communitarianism, or was that Anglo-Communitarianism? But looking back one can see now why Fake was so in love with the whole idea.

[JSE]

Hmm, I had a difficult time getting past the first sentence on account of this:
"Modern-day communitarianism began in the upper reaches of Anglo-American academia. . ." Yes, I didn't like that. Of course that is a bit of self-congratualtory self-promotion. It didn't start there at all. Its a name coined for a very old approach to society going back to the Germany of Luther's time. The long running debate in Germany up to the 1930's cettred around the tension between Gesellschaft (society) and Gemeinschaft (community). The more immediate sources for the idea that human groupings are by nature communal as opposed to society - which is a bourgeois conception - goes back to Hegel. Recent communitarians of great influence would be the Scotsman and Catholic Alistair McIntyre. The core idea is that liberal individualism is to be countered by the view that communities are the basic element. Communitarianism is a poliical philosophy that is suited to Catholics, Nationalists, NS etc.


Overlooking the initial handicap, it reminds me too much of Fake's racial communitarianism, or was that Anglo-Communitarianism? But looking back one can see now why Fake was so in love with the whole idea.Fake is an ignorant prat who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. H eis also an intellectual schizoid who regularly reinvents himself as soon as he gets bored with one pose. At the moment he thinks he's FDR.

[paul7777]

This secular judaic crap, make your own rules up as you go along. This is multi-culturalism dressed up as distrubutism.

Anyone remember that druggie communitarian hippy place in denmark called Cristiana ?



"Christiania is a unique part of Copenhagen. The residents there declared independance in 1971, when it was one big commune. People still live there and the authorities leave it intact, even thought there is a open market for drugs. While walking through Christiania you´ll see a kind of market with such unusual products as hash cookies. I have been there in broad daylight and it is far from being a dangerous place and quite a few tourists visit there. Just remember that taking pictures is forbidden in certain areas."

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0304-2421(197521)2%3A1%3C63%3ACAC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6

http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Denmark/Koebenhavns_Kommune/Copenhagen-162183/Off_the_Beaten_Path-Copenhagen-Christiania-BR-1.html

[Pushkin]

I must start reading up on Third Positionism in greater detail but it is surely a form of communitarianism?

Yes it certainly is, if you wish to interpret "Third Positionism" broadly.

[JSE]

Yes it certainly is, if you wish to interpret "Third Positionism" broadly.I think its probably the other way round. Communitarianism is a broad concept (communtities not society) under which TPism is a sub-category.
E.g., there are forms of communitarianism that would be incompatible with TPism and which we would not be sympathetic to.

[Pushkin]

I think its probably the other way round. Communitarianism is a broad concept (communtities not society) under which TPism is a sub-category.

It depends on how you define either concept. "Third Positionism" or "Third Way" is essentially a broad ideological concept that has numerous varities to it. Under that notion, communitarianism can be seen as a major component of such a worldview(which often is the case).

Yet then again, you are also right that the reverse can apply as well.

Essentially communitarianism and TPism are closely related concepts, yet the nature of their relationship is very flexible.

[JSE]

Essentially, distributism distinguishes itself by its distribution of property. Distributism holds that, while socialism allows no individuals to own productive property (it all being under state, community, or workers' control), and capitalism allows only a few to own it, distributism itself seeks to ensure that most people will become owners of productive property. As Hilaire Belloc stated, the distributive state (that is, the state which has implemented distributism) contains "an agglomeration of families of varying wealth, but by far the greater number owners of the means of production" ("The Servile State", 1913). This broader distribution does not extend to all property, but only to productive property; that is, that property which produces wealth, namely, the things needed for man to survive. It includes land, tools, etc. ("The Servile State", 1913).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DistributismThis is exactly what is needed. The means of production in the hands of the community rather than the state/capitalists.
Another idea promoted by Belloc et al was decentralisaton. As much power and decision-making as possible should be devolved to local communities. The national state is then free to concentrate on national policy, foreign affairs and defence.

[Liam Ó Loinsigh]

This is great stuff. I am delighted to see the indoctrination process is going according to plan :D

[Green Liam]

This is great stuff. I am delighted to see the indoctrination process is going according to plan :D

I'm not sure that I'd classify it as an indoctrination process, ITP - it naturally follows that Distributivism to some degree would be adopted by Nationalists and Republicans, particularly those who have read their Connolly while at the same time have lived to see the outing or the barbarism of the Soviets and their allies.

For instance:


If you remove the English army to-morrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain.

England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.

England would still rule you to your ruin, even while your lips offered hypocritical homage at the shrine of that Freedom whose cause you had betrayed.

Nationalism without Socialism – without a reorganisation of society on the basis of a broader and more developed form of that common property which underlay the social structure of Ancient Erin - is only national recreancy.

It would be tantamount to a public declaration that our oppressors had so far succeeded in inoculating us with their perverted conceptions of justice and morality that we had finally decided to accept those conceptions as our own, and no longer needed an alien army to force them upon us.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1897/01/socnat.htm

Now, this he wrote in 1897 before Socialism had been applied anywhere with any degree of success, and so he was free to advocate Socialism without the baggage of associated causes and governments. The point being, however, that unless you throw out the transnational economic system, you'll never be without necessary ties to foreign capital, and chances are you shall always remain subservient to the source of the foreign capital, which in the case of Ireland would naturally be England. Hence, without economic reform the National struggle is meaningless as you merely make yourselves slaves by other means.

Third Positionism is also something which speaks loudly to men and women of Irish blood because of the deep roots within the Catholic Church of both the Irish and Third Position/Distributivism. Likewise, the lack of any automatic ties to an "international worker's movement" or anything of the like allows adherents to focus on their own, without feeling the need to allow in Africans or Chinamen just because they're fellow proletarians or some crap (frankly, one of things that pissed me off the most was when I found out that they'll take all these filthy louts from turd-world countries, and when their little brats are born they become automagically Irish citizens, whereas I have to go through all kinds of hoops to claim what ought to be my blood right just because I happen to have been born in a country that doesn't entirely suck).

But anyway, yes - the Third Position is quite right and exactly what is needed; and it goes well with the call for radical decentralization, and perhaps even the RSF New Ireland plan, which has always sounded workable to me.

[Rígh-Fhéinnidhe]

This is exactly what is needed. The means of production in the hands of the community rather than the state/capitalists.
Another idea promoted by Belloc et al was decentralisaton. As much power and decision-making as possible should be devolved to local communities. The national state is then free to concentrate on national policy, foreign affairs and defence.

I printed off the Communtarianism document and will give it a good read tonight. The above quote is very similar to Brehon Laws. JSE you should study the Brehon Laws for a few weeks and I think the right social philosophy you are looking for will be evident within them. In Brehon Law, the land was owned both communally and privately. At local level within the Tuatha system there was absolutely no such thing as a TAX. Taxation only came into play when people were given extra privilages and when they traded outside the local community. A small tribe could exist free on their land without ever having to pay anyone any tax what so ever. They had an obligation, to upkeep their trackways etc, to provide and educate their children, to look after their elderly and to contribute for the maintanance of the Tuatha hospital etc, but that was all. They gave freely without obligation tributes to their Rígh, and he inturn invested it back into the community, and used it to finance projects that were for the communities benefit. It would not be described as communism, nor could it be described as imperialism. What the Brehon Laws were, was they were based upon Natural Law and a system of government where all prospered. You could form projects based upon co-tenancy or for your own private investment, whichever you were interested in. There was no such thing as stealth taxes, of hidden taxes, of VAT etc. These are only all modern inventions created to upkeep the unproductive and to falsely distribute the wealth, where the state takes control and few benefit.

[just a lurker]

At local level within the Tuatha system there was absolutely no such thing as a TAX.
No, instead there were the crippling burdens of cios and ceach.


... given extra privilages ...
...is a nice euphemism for the forced acceptance of turastal.


A small tribe could exist free on their land without ever having to pay anyone any tax what so ever.
...with a standard of living enjoyed by our friends in the third world...until a larger neighbour subdued them.


They gave freely without obligation tributes to their Rígh
Nonsense. The Righ had a right to land within the fintiu and accepted cios and ceach as well as extracting coin and livery in latter years.

[JSE]

Great to see you back, JAL! :thumbsup

[just a lurker]

Great to see you back, JAL! :thumbsup
Thanks. I'm awful busy these days so I don't get to post much but I like to have a look at what's going on every now and again.:Eire