The fundamental question isn’t about small business (main street) vs. big business (corporations), even though that is important in terms of sustainability; or even about the 99% vs. the 1%, although that is a central question in regard to justice.  The fundamental question is simple:  Will financial centers serve as the centers of our life together or will civic centers?

The United States began, as you know, with property owners.  The American Revolution in many ways was a commercial, not a civic, revolution.  Still, slave owners like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington wrote about liberty and human rights.  In time, these implicit civic themes were expanded on by some states granting non-owners the right to vote, and later by the Civil War.  After the war former slaves could vote even without owning property.  Jim Crow laws soon took away these rights, but the notion that civic membership was no longer based on property ownership remained.

Further expansion of civic membership occurred when women won the right to vote and workers won the right to organize.  Later, in the civil rights movement, we got a foretaste of a nation of citizens, instead of a nation of property owners.  The law and order reaction to this dream, as well as the attack on labor unions, has dimmed the lights on the possibility of a civic life together.  We now have a major political party that despises the civic.  We also have some progressives that have abandoned the civic and think they can fight financial centers (streets) without it.  A big mistake.

On the one hand, a civic center is a particular place.  In San Francisco, it is around Market and Hyde.  It is also a public space—a space for the people.  This space, however, is not just a location; it is also a space for conversations—civic conversations.  These conversations can actually happen in other places.  They are civic because they are open, not private, and equal, not hierarchical.  They are spaces where we realize ourselves as citizens.  In these conversations, we move out of the feudalistic structures of global capitalism and recapture the spirit of democracy—a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  In this civic space, we have the necessary means—empathy, good arguments, laws and law enforcers, even prisons—to ensure that our future is guided by civic values rather than financial interests.

If we are all commoners, then our social differences are secondary.  If our social identity is absolute, then what we have in common is ignored, or denied.

So here is the dilemma.  We exist together in our separate and conflicting social identities.  No one can deny that.  Still, we exist together.  We cannot deny that either.  On the one hand, the process of socialization gives us our identity.  I am a white, middle class, mid-western (USA) male. Furthermore, my social relationships—husband/wife, parent/child, teacher/student, and so on—make me who I am. But that is true of others too.  One thing we have in common is the fact that each one of us has a particular social life.

This dilemma can be resolved through the civic.  The civic, as I understand it, refers to open and sharing conversations in which participants recognize one another as citizens—as members of the civic.  The civic does not erase the social barriers that separate us, but it allows us to see how others interpret them.  Sometimes, such mutual interpretation can turn our social conflicts into civic disagreements.

Disagreements arise because we live in different social worlds.  If our particular social identity totally defines us, then civic conversations are impossible. Civic conversations become possible only when we recognize our common humanity. At the same time, the full potential of our common humanity remains largely unrealized if we do not step up and participate in the process of constructing and evaluating civic arguments about how to improve our social life.

Can we do this?  Can we end the systemic drive toward empire?  I don’t know.  I do believe that it is not determined.   We have choices.  At the same time, I also see that the current trends are strong and moving forward.  It is a strong wind.  Our only chance, it seems to me, is to tell the truth instead of telling what sells.  We must abandon marketing strategies, even the marketing of old ideas like the American Dream, and develop good civic arguments for moving toward a future for all.

This may seem idealistic, but that is only true for those who have not been paying attention.  Nothing is more realistic today—especially in terms of our future—than good civic arguments.

We cannot afford another empire.  We must develop alternative economics—an economics of provision—if we want to pass on a healthy planet to our grandchildren.

When I was writing Civilizing the Economy, I thought it was the world of commerce, especially its Anglo-American version, with its entrenched pathology of denial and myopia (denial of slavery and myopia about markets).  Now, I think that this world is so intertwined with the world of politics, that repairing the political world is a necessary condition for pushing the economy toward justice and sustainability.  Money, of course, is a problem.  But even more frustrating is the dominance of commercial discourse in the world of politics.

To understand this more fully, we can make a distinction between a civic and a commercial argument. They both have their place, but not each other’s.  In a commercial argument, we haggle over the value of something, and try to convince the other that our product or idea is the best one.  This occurs in what is commonly called “the marketplace of ideas.”  Such arguments appeal to our interests, and we seek to find a coincidence of interests—a win/win situation—where we can agree.  In commercial arguments, we treat our ideas as properties or commodities that we try to sell to others.  So how does this differ from a civic model of communication?

In the civic model, speakers participate in the civic.  Much like we are engaged in the English language right now, as I write and you read this text, citizens become engaged in a civic conversation through participation in it.  In these conversations, instead of trying to sell their ideas as though they were commodities, participants spend time together developing new ideas that will move the conversation forward,

This difference between a commercial exchange and civic engagement is really central to understanding civic arguments.  It is like the distinction between ownership and membership.  If we think we own our ideas, then we protect them as we protect property, or we sell them for the right price (a promotion or at least some recognition).  If we see our ideas as belonging to a language and a culture, then we can enjoy their development as we become more familiar with the vocabulary and attitudes that constitute civic arguments.

As members of the civic, we can acknowledge each other as global citizens. This membership does not replace city or national citizenship, but rather expands it to include those with whom we share the planet, share this time, and share a similar planetary future.  It is grounded in what we share rather than in what we own.

Here is the paradox.  Although commercial arguments ultimately rely on the civic; in our current conditions, they suppress the civic both in the worlds of commerce and in politics.  Politics has become almost nothing but marketing. There are other possibilities.  The civic could serve as the basis for a political world based on democracy where speech is used to develop ideas—such as we see with many of the conversations stimulated by the Occupy movement. There is a place for commercial arguments, but not in the world of politics.

Of course we cannot and never will want to all have the same amount of all the same things. Still, from a civic perspective, private ownership would be a good idea only if it promotes the just distribution of provisions better, or at least as good, as other means of allocating resources.  Civic justice is grounded in the notion of our common civic membership.  To begin our reflections on justice from a civic perspective is to begin not with what people have but with what people share, or the commons.

The Commons

            We live in a historical context that has been enriched by the contributions of previous generations.  We are the benefactors of previous creations in music, dance, literature, architecture, technology, and knowledge.  We can enjoy this common resource in public libraries, museums, and parks as well as on the Internet. Contemporary musicians bring forth the legacy of music in new and creative ways, but they do it by accessing a common tradition and rendering it for our time and place.  When you listen to “world music” that relies on African tribal rituals, who owns this music?  How should it be distributed?  Should it be available for all to enjoy?  Who should pay the studio that made the production?  What is fair here?

There is not only a cultural or knowledge commons, but also a planetary commons.  We all live on the same planet, and we have common needs for its resources such as water, fertile soil, clean air, and most importantly, the sun—the ultimate source of all energy.  How should we share these resources?

One way of thinking about this is that of a “fair share.” A fair share would be when people get enough, not too much and not too little.  This is actually Aristotle’s idea of justice as a virtue.  Justice, for him, lies between the excess of too much and the deficiency of not enough.  So what is a fair share of things for all civic members?

A Fair Share

            Suppose you had a large plate of spaghetti for a group of eight.  At first thought, a fair share would be to give everyone the same amount.  What if some were hungry and some were not?  Then a fair share might be to give each person what he or she wanted.  What if some had prepared the spaghetti while others watched TV?  Should the providers get what they want and then the others divide the rest?  Or, what if some were to leave for work after the meal?  Would their fair share be more than the share for the others?  It seems like a fair share depends on the circumstances.  At the same time, we all need to eat.  We are all members of the civic and civic justice would require that everyone has enough, even though some may get more than others if that would be fair.

This relational question is not about family relationships.   We are either born into a family or we decide to join or to make one.  We become family through a shared commitment to live together.  Family members, of course, may question how they are related, but this is a family matter.  The civic question, on the other hand, is about our relationship to the stranger—to the other.

This question, of course, may not elicit a civic answer.  In fact, it seldom has. When the Europeans encountered the “strangers” in the Americas, their answer certainly was not civic.   For most of Western history, if men questioned how to relate to women, their answer was not civic.   In fact, a civic answer to the question of how we should relate to the other is actually a rarity, and yet, it is the path toward a just global community.

So what is the civic answer?  It is that the other, the stranger, and I belong to the civic.  We are all members; members with equal moral equality, with equal dignity.   We all live at the same time, on the same planet, and our children will inherit the same future.  This is all true, but there is more.  We share, in different ways, the moral obligations to live together and to care for our planet.

Our various social identities, as you know, cause everything from bad jokes to war.  As long as we try to find a social solution to our social alienation, we remain trapped in the structures of inequality.  Only when we seek a deeper answer to the question of how we can live together will we find the civic answer.  Right now, the emergence of the civic waits for asking the right question in the right way.

Insurance, of course, is not a commons like the land or cultural knowledge.  It is something created by communities for their protection.  The idea is simple.  If we all participate, each one of us shares the cost of any one of us needing the service.  This is the principle behind the idea of insurance.

In traditional societies, people lived in communities where everyone was “insured” of care if they had participated in the sharing of care—in reciprocal relationships with communal members.  Members would care for each other because they had been cared for before and they could count on being cared for in the future.  It as a caring community based on reciprocity.

While there are efforts to restore such relationships of reciprocity today, the cost of some provisions we might need are simply too high for the capacity of local communities and health care is one of them.

We need enough people in the insurance pool to pay the costs and we need everyone in the pool so they have access to health care when they need it.  For the 99% of us, we do not have the means to pay for the health care we might need.  If we want a fair share of the care, we need to pay a fair share of the costs.

With insurance, a fair share is not the same for givers and receivers.   Not all of us will need extensive health care, so our share of the costs will be small.  For the few of us that need extensive care, the share we receive will be large.  That’s the way it works.  We are all civic members who together create a shared commons that works for everyone.  I can only hope that the Supreme Court judges understand that health care insurance is not build for property owners but for civic members.