THE contribution by Prof Amitai Etzioni in the World Review (January 3rd 1996), posed some important questions about how we view ourselves in the world in future decades. But a key problem in the article's proposal lies in the very concept at its heart that of community.
Prof Etzioni rightly rejects individualism and goes on to argue for a way of being in which one's community cane make demands of one's loyalty and thus limit behaviour ash well as provide support, direction and meaning. By community he means a group of people who share a common set of values, norms, and meanings, a common history and identity. This is exactly the problem.
Let us take an example that of the United States. What particular community did Prof Etzioni have in mind here as the one with which the nation will identify or in whose interest the national political elite will act? The community of black descendants of slaves, disenfranchised, economically and socially marginalised? The community of powerful white descendants of slave owners, with common economic cultural values and a collective interest in ensuring their political dominance? Or the community of Vietnam veterans? Or the community of gays and lesbians? The list is endless.
What the professor is proposing is the dangerous demand again of the great old bogy that has haunted the long project of democracy the notion that this is a community out there which, if we could strengthen and make resistant to outside assaults, would bring security and safety.
What we need instead is a revitalising of a different old bogy, but this time radically reworked within the international arena that of pluralism (not prioritising any particular set of values or histories over any other) remodelled in a cosmopolitan way which states that what we must work on is common humanity rather than a nostalgia for some real or otherwise community. The difference may seem obscure but it is vital.
Any attempt to construct a community means drawing up rules of membership which will inevitably include some and exclude others. The defining of and working with the concept of community is very problematic. It means ultimately drawing lines. To consciously cross over that line, or to be unable to cross inwards (for reasons of profound difference, for instance) means abandonment by that community. It means that that community no longer has responsibility for the welfare of outsiders.
It is exactly because powerful states have arrogated to themselves the moral supremacy of "community", facilitating the ignoring of those outside and the denial of their intimate interconnectedness, that the unprecedented global problems of poverty and in equality, the drawing of lines between the rich and the poor, have been enlarged.
Cosmopolitanism, in contrast to the communitarianism, which Prof Etzioni has proposed, says that while differences do exist between peoples, we must not build on these but extract from them the universalism of humanity.
Thus we all have social, economic, political, cultural and other rights regardless off where we live. Thus states must not act just out of the interest of their national communities but out of the interest of all cohabitants of the ecosystem we share.
But, lest I be accused of naivety here, let me make clear that I am not proposing a disintegration of national boundaries and the destruction of the differences between and within peoples.
What I am arguing for is a new order, a new transcendence, in which rights and responsibilities exist, are upheld and expanded on based on universal values rather than she values and norms of this or that community.
To illustrate the difference let us take the recent French testing of nuclear weapons in "the Pacific. Communitarianism can justify this on the basis that it may serve the security interests of the French and, as we now know, the Nato community.
Cosmopolitanism would argue instead that such a policy must take into account the interests of those living in the region, fishing its waters and those who may be affected by its impact. Cosmopolitanism argues that human rights are never negotiable to the interests of any particular community.
Interestingly, Prof Etzioni does not tell us how the community he desires will relate across boundaries to other communities. But he does give us a clue. Speaking clearly from the western experience, he says that moral and social institutions should be shored up now before they collapse.
In other words, the existing communities need to be strengthened against what he calls anarchy" but against what can also be seen as the acting out of other communities on their historic exclusion. This acting out may be, and is often, very destructive for all. But shoring up existing divisions, and thereby perpetuating exclusion, is not the answer.
While Prof Etzioni correctly states that communitarianism is a growing phenomenon, particularly in the US, it should also be pointed out that there is another growing phenomenon. This is a type of cosmopolitanism to be found in a new consciousness of human rights activists, environmentalists, solidarity groups, women's groups, and indeed, community groups who seek a universalist dialogue to dislocate their exclusion and the global dominance by one set of values, norms, and meanings and one common history.
What we need is, to quote another writer in the field, a conceptual jail break from all such traditional thinking. That is the real challenge that confronts us as we face the millennium.