Voluntary Sector and Public Policy are a "Natural"

I had a discussion yesterday with a young man who is wanting to get into the fundraising profession from having been a business entrepreneur, also a history major at UM, graduated mid-1980s. We had a very interesting discussion ranging here and there through history and through the breadth and depth of the nonprofit sector. Parts of that discussion got me thinking, and my thoughts turned to "community." So today's diatribe has to do with how we all relate to one another in a multi-cultural, pluralistic society, the global community.

I'm thinking back to the roots of our democracy, and am being aware of the fact that the basic principles held by the Founding Fathers came out of the liberalism of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. And, in fact, two aspects of our life in this country had their origins in this philosophy: democracy and capitalism.

It is interesting to note that Enlightenment liberalism was based on the individual, and held the individual as the center of its thought. So we have economic principles based on what an enlightened person would do; we have democratic principles based on what (presumably educated) individuals will do, or what they need to do to have "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." And I have also seen "pursuit of happiness" translated as "property." Life, liberty and property.

Madison, for example, in dealing with "factions" in the Federalist papers understands the effects of individuals who happen to associate voluntarily with each other to do in their neighbor and profit at the neighbor's expense -- whether as persons or states. Hamilton had a few interesting things to say about individual states as factions within the larger colonial whole. The political arena is focused on individual states, or individual persons as the acting agents. The concepts of democracy do not necessarily fit well when it comes to groups or collectivities of people. We still think of them as individuals who happen to get together, but we don't think of them as communities that have some kind of integrity on their own. And we can see how this came out of a time when "collectivity" -- in terms of empire and church -- had become so completely oppressive as to subjugate and destroy the initiative and needs and aspirations of the individual..

Now we can see also how capitalism has evolved from feudal times. The feudal manor - the castle set amidst the farming community -- a symbiotic relationship. Then mercantilism -- the people of the countryside were the markets for the city, and the resources of the country focused on and were sent to the city, along with protectionism against traders from foreign city-states. Then colonialism, where the raw materials and resources of vassal states flowed to the colonial powers, and those vassal states were forced to purchase the manufactured goods of the colonial powers. "We'll take your raw materials, you'll buy our manufactures, and you cannot produce anything manufactured." I believe I recall that in the Chicago Freedom Movement we used to call that "plantation economics." To some extent, and J.W. Smith is very strong on this, the IMF debt structure for underdeveloped countries mirrors that economic tradition.

And then we can see how the Church, first Catholic, then Catholic or Protestant, cared for the basic community needs of mankind. Particularly in Catholicism we have the "religious communities" that were trying to be examples to the rest of the society on how we should live together as human beings, expressing the "community" nature of our psychic makeup In fact, early on in the development of the Holy Roman Empire, we can see government and church each struggling to gain the advantages of state and the advantages of community for itself. The church striving to take over the state, the state trying to preserve its integrity over against the Church and community. Another by-product here is the unfortunate fact that Protestantism neglected to carry with it anything that approximated the religious communities, and so was caught up in the web of thought and activities focused solely on individualism.

We can see that there is a need for governance for the people, someone to organize the resources, focus the resources on getting the people what they need to live. The state focuses on keeping enemies at bay, providing protection, providing administration of common concerns, such as crime, crop failure and famine, maybe disease control And we see the need for community -- getting together, being social animals, voluntarily associating together to do tasks, celebrate life, create moral underpinnings, ethical behavior, socialization of the "natural animal" in all of us. The church used to take care of this -- still does for those that believe. Up through the "Ike" generation there were strong elements of "Victorianism" that held the moral center together. But no longer today in a secular, multi-cultural, pluralistic society.

So here we have these two ideas brought together: democracy and capitalism. Individuals acting on their own behalf both economically and politically. But what we're lacking now is a sense of community -- or, more exactly, a "system" to deal with our life together -- particularly within a highly diverse, pluralistic society. When the church commanded everybody to worship the same way, the community was firmly in its hands. In a pluralistic society this cannot be the case. Yet we do need some "group" or "community" principles to guide everyday interactive behavior, whether in person or on the Internet. Democracy supplies the system for our governance; capitalism provides the means for bread, but what about the means of gathering together. I'm thinking of mores, ethical behavior, politeness (if you will) or the principles that guide every individual in social as well as civic conduct. Reining in greed, avarice, fear, distrust, hatred, flight and fight.

In the last half of the 19th century and into the first several decades of the 20th century, we had three related but distinct movements that tried to fashion systems that would bring together government and community. We had communism, socialism and fascism. Each was tried in many forms and instances. Each has failed. Was it the problem of trying to combine "community" with "governance"? Or was it an error in judgment about how to fashion communities in ways that meet human needs as individuals and human social needs? With communism you have the collective, with fascism the state as the primary "community." In one you toil with everyone else -- community is defined as those who labor together. In the other, we are proud to be people of a nationality, a country, a nation, a state, and in that we find our identity as the state shapes both conduct and destiny.

Whatever the problems and reasons for failure within communism, socialism and fascism, we are left today without an adequate set of principles for how we conduct ourselves as groups, or communities. So, for example, there is much within capitalism that promotes itself to individuals. But nothing that puts a cap on the pursuit of individual greed, the bent for injustice, the desire to make war on other people(s), the propensity to "grab" what the other kids in the sandbox have for one's self.

So how are we going to deal with this? In terms of government structure, the Founding Fathers, Madison included, found a way to deal with factions: we need to preserve liberty while defining boundaries for behavior. So we have, as part of government, a system of civil laws and penalties. But this doesn't really address the issues of "community" that involve arenas other than the ways we would do actual harm to each other. It doesn't, for example, address civility, manners, ethics, morality. It provides no guidelines for these, leaving it up to the individual to sort these things out according to individual beliefs. Again, the roots of Enlightenment liberalism are evident here. So we see the limits of this philosophy.

Yet we very much need something relating to "community" as we find ourselves in an increasingly globalized situation. We have a democratic system of government, we have a capitalistic system of economics. But what governs both the governors and the businessmen? What directs systems of legislation in ways that are more just, more human, more appropriate for society in which diverse peoples live peacefully together? What is it that governs and provides limits to the entrepreneurial spirit when it hitches its wagon to the star of incessant greed?

I am thinking we are in need of something here that government cannot provide, by the very nature of the constraints placed upon it, and that business will not provide, by virtue of its limited understanding of humans as solely economic beings. And where I am looking for "that something" these days is in the experience, the traditions, the sensitivities, the many impacts on society that the voluntary sector provides us. And I'm thinking that formation of national, state, or local public policy needs to be a three-way pursuit of government, business and the voluntary sector, working more ostensibly, and in a more structured way together, not just a two-way pursuit between business interests and government. And one of the chief and compelling reasons why I think this could work is that government and voluntary sector organizations have in common a value that business does not have: namely, the value of acting on behalf of the good of society -- the compulsion to make society continually better, more whole, more just, more peaceable for all citizens. Government has it in terms of what majority rule can bring. Nonprofits have it in terms of caring for all those who must, by virtue of circumstances or choice, stand outside the ruling majority's situation and decision.

So this is why -- in the name of and for the sake of "community" values -- that I would advocate for a distinct and recognized place at the public policy table for voluntary and nonprofit organizations. We tend to have the history and background, the skills, the diversity of experience over centuries, that bring more human values, more community-oriented values to the fore, and thus we are an appropriate complement to both government and capitalism in the fashioning of public policy.