At a recent session on Socio-Economics in Berkeley, I argued that a civic economy would be superior to our current property-based economy because it would include everyone. A participant asked if I thought that civic membership should be voluntary or forced. Given the two choices, I said forced. On further reflection, I think the question was a set-up. A better question is whether everyone belongs to the civic or not.
Libertarians come in different stripes, and the differences largely depend on their foundation. Some have their origin in the peculiar Anglo-American tradition of grounding liberty in property. Some others see liberty as a civic right guaranteed by the Constitution.
For the United States government to require that everyone carry health care insurance is not socialism, but neither is it libertarianism. What about seeing it as a third form of government that we can call: “civicism.” Civicism believes that all citizens have certain obligations to each other based on such civic norms as solidarity, moral equality, and reciprocity.
According to Aristotle, even though families and clans preceded the emergence of the city, the city was the end that human communities aimed for. To be a good member of the city—a good citizen—was the human telos or final end. In some ways I think he was right.
How different from the world that Adam Smith created for us that treats everyone as traders, engaging in the exchange of properties to become wealthy. The truth is that we today live more in the legacy of Adam Smith than of Aristotle. We tend to define the good life in terms of ownership instead of membership.
Marvin T. Brown, Ph.D teaches business and organizational ethics at the University of San Francisco and Saybrook University in San Francisco.
This book is the culmination of 30 years of teaching and writing on business and society from a communicative perspective. Visit workingethics.com for more information.
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