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Covid-19 and Religious Liberty

Readers of this blog might be interested in my recent post on Canopy Forum trying to shed some light on the current theological and legal debates about shutting down live religious services during this time of plague.

Perry Dane

The Good and human flourishing: an ethics of subsumption and transcendence?

 

There are a handful of prominent ethical doctrines or moral philosophies in the Western (secular) philosophical tradition (with some of their ideas found in Asian worldviews as well): (i) deontology or Kantian ethics; (ii) utilitarianism or consequentialism; (iii) virtue ethics; (iv) care ethics; and, finally, (v) a more or less teleological conception which accords pride of place to consideration of the human good and flourishing (or ‘the Good’ and eudaimonia). There is also something called, after Jonathan Dancy, (vi) “particularism,” or, in the title of his book, Ethics Without Principles (Oxford University Press, 2004), but it appears to be a bit of an outlier among ethicists and philosophers (I’m happy to be found mistaken on this score).*

 

Over the years, I have immersed myself in much of the literature found in the first three, while according a little time to learning about (iv), care ethics, at least in so far as that has been developed by Michael Slote and Nel Noddings (much of it first inspired by the work of Carol Gilligan). I’ve never felt any special allegiance to any of these moral theories or ethical doctrines (sometimes morality and ethics are distinguished, but we can ignore the value of that distinction for our purposes), that is, until now: I’ve arrived at the belief that (v), the teleological version, is more or less capable of subsuming much of the best work in the other five “theories.” This is more an intuition or gut feeling than anything else because I’ve not tried to work out the specific arguments to support my conclusion. I suspect my underlying motivation comes from the Jain epistemological doctrine of relativity, anekāntavāda, one of three interrelated and mutually supporting doctrines for reasoning and logic (the others being syādvāda, the theory of conditioned predication, and nayavāda, the theory of partial standpoints). In brief, anekāntavāda refers to the principles of pluralism and multiplicity of viewpoints, the notion that truth and reality are perceived differently from diverse points of view, and that no single point of view is the complete truth (thus no ethical doctrine fully captures the nature of morality or the virtuous life). With both the late B.K. Matilal and Jonardon Ganeri, we might look at the Jain doctrine of anekānta as visualizing Truth on the order of a many-faceted gem, each facet (or ‘truth’) nonetheless possessing “a completeness and coherence of its own.”

 

But, you’re no doubt quick to point out, I’ve now ranked one ethical philosophy over the others insofar as I think it capable of subsuming the principal philosophical insights of the remaining ethical theories. True enough, so to that extent I’ve deviated from the Jain model of reason and rationality I’m claiming to see the gem, so to speak, in toto, from all sides! But such deviation—or transcendence—from, or of, relativity and pluralism is likewise found in the Jain tradition, so perhaps one can view my tutored hunch or intuition as analogous (in a far more reductive and modest if not pedestrian sense) to the claims of “omniscience” (kevalajñāna) made by the kevalin (in Jainism, an enlightened being; with virtually identical claims being made in two other ‘orthodox’ and ‘heterodox’ Indian/Indic philosophical traditions), for there are “awakened” or “enlightened” beings in these religious/philosophical worldviews capable of having, as it were, a transcendental  knowledge or spiritual awareness, while still embodied, of Absolute Truth (which, definitively speaking, is inexpressible, while its spiritual state is indescribable). As my former teacher Nandini Iyer writes, we find in Indian classical philosophy, “which is always connected with religion” (that is, should we not view Cārvāka/Lokāyata as part of this early period, which is arguable) a fundamental belief in the possibility that mere mortals are capable of actually attaining

“a perfect knowledge of Reality—a ‘scientia intuitiva’ that leads to the Divine or the Absolute Truth. The conceptual frameworks [in our case, the various ethical philosophies] we build in the realm of rational thought are not useless just because they cannot describe Ultimate Reality. Serious examination of, reflection on, these explanatory and interpretive schemes, their differences and overlaps, are crucial to expanding and deepening our understanding of reality, even if these conceptual frameworks (any or all possible combinations and collections of them) cannot bring us the Absolute Truth. If nothing else, they enable us to understand the relativity of conceptual truths and structures, and make us see what Pascal meant when he said that the highest function of reason is to show us the limitations of reason.”

   

I am thus not claiming the teleological formulation of ethics represents “absolute truth,” but perhaps it helps us expand and deepen our understanding of ethical living, of a moral life well lived to the extent that it can (or might) subsume and transcend these competing ethical doctrines!

* I don’t intend to be dismissive of theological ethics, or religious ethics in general, it’s simply not part of this discussion. Indeed, I think there is much to be learned from religious ethics, even if one does not share their specific theological or metaphysical premises and convictions. A fine illustration of this is provided by Linda Zagzebski’s book, Divine Motivation Theory (Cambridge University Press, 2004), several ideas from which were put to good use in Amy Olberding’s Moral Exemplars in the Analects: The Good Person is That (Routledge, 2012).

        

Wo-Chi-Ca—a communist children’s camp: education in democratic and egalitarian values under the polestar of social justice

Apologia

While summer camps are, for the children (perhaps for some of their charges as well) and in most respects, a break from the typical school year, I think preschools, primary (or elementary), and secondary schools in this country should aim for learning experiences more akin to Wo-Chi-Ca and similar communist summer camps in this country from the 1920s through the 1950s. In addition, contemporary anarchist philosophy of education and pedagogical practices likewise provide us with several highly refined models worthy of emulation, particularly insofar as they reveal principled commitment to a prefigurative praxis which embodies—as far as is possible in a Liberal capitalist democracy—an alternative democratic and socialist society (or facets of that society) here and now (a ‘realistic utopia’ or as ‘heterotopias’). This entails an “integral education” (i.e., both manual and mental labor) committed to the moral psychological and political imperatives and obligations of personal autonomy (including the possibilities for self-development and self-realization) in complementary consonance with the revolutionary values of liberté, egalité, fraternité basking in the light of participatory and deliberative democracy. One of the fundamental normative criteria we can use to assess our progress in this regard will be evidenced in the extent to which happiness—or eudaimonia—has unequivocally become an aim of education, and thus whether or not our educational praxis “contribute[s] significantly to personal and collective happiness.”

… [T]he educational system does not add to or subtract from the overall degree of [economic] inequality and repressive personal development. Rather it is best understood as an institution which serves to perpetuate the social relationships of economic life through which these patterns are set, by facilitating a smooth integration of youth into the labor force. This role takes a variety of forms. Schools foster legitimate inequality through the ostensibly meritocratic by which they reward and promote students, and allocate them to distinct positions in the occupational hierarchy. They create and reinforce patterns of social class, racial and sexual identification among students which allow them to relate ‘properly’ to their eventual standing in the hierarchy of authority and statue in the production process. Schools foster types of personal development compatible with the relationships of dominance and subordinacy in the economic sphere …. [T]he educational system operates in this manner not so much through the conscious intentions of teachers and administrators in their day-to-day activities, but through a close correspondence between the social relationships which govern personal interaction in the work place and the social relationships in the educational system. [….]

… [T]hough the school system has effectively served the interests of profit and political stability, it has hardly been a finely tuned instrument of manipulation in the hands of socially dominant groups. Schools and colleges do indeed help to justify inequality, but they also have become arenas in which a highly politicized egalitarian consciousness has developed among some parents, teachers, and students. The authoritarian classroom does produce docile workers, but is also produces misfits and rebels. The university trains the elite in the skills of domination, but it has also given birth to a powerful radical movement and critique of capitalist society.* [….] [T]he organization of education—in particular the correspondence between school structure and job structure—has taken distinct and characteristic forms in different periods of U.S. history, and has evolved in response to political and economic struggles associated with the process of capital accumulation, the extension of the wage-labor system, and the transition from an entrepreneurial to a corporate economy. — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (Haymarket Books, 2011; first published in 1976 by Basic Books).

* There are a number of titles that speak to the birth of such Left radicalism in universities and colleges in this compilation.

Happiness and education are, properly, intimately related: happiness should be an aim of education, and a good education should contribute significantly to personal and collective happiness. [….] Through more than five decades of teaching and mothering I have noticed … that children (and adults, too) learn best when they are happy. This is not to say that harsh methods are never effective in production rote learning, nor does it mean the intermittent vexation and occasional failure are absent from a happy student life. On the contrary, challenge and struggle are post of the quest for knowledge and competence. However, struggle is an inevitable aspect of learning; we educators do not have to invent struggles for our students, and students who are generally happy with their studies are better able to bring meaning to difficult periods and get through them with some satisfaction. — Nel Noddings, Happiness and Education (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Happy people are rarely mean, violent, or cruel. Having said that, and I believe it is largely true of individuals, I will immediately modify it by noting that groups and even whole societies can be happy, while others suffer under their exploitation and neglect. We shall have to ask in what sense such people are happy. I will however, affirm the initial claim: happy individuals are rarely violent or intentionally cruel, either to other human beings or to nonhuman animals. Our basic orientation to moral education, then, should be a commitment to building a world in which it is both possible and desirable for children to be good—a world in which children are happy. — Nel Noddings, Happiness and Education (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

In the past, great educators have devoted much thought to the issue of aims, but today we hear little such debate. It is a though our society has simply decided that the purpose of schooling is economic—to improve the financial condition of individuals and to advance the prosperity of the nation. Hence students should do well on standardized tests, get into good colleges, obtain well-paying jobs, and buy lots of things. [….] Education, by its very nature, should help people to develop their best selves—to become people with pleasing talents, useful and satisfying occupations, self-understanding, sound character, a host of appreciations, and a commitment to continuous learning. A large part of our obligation as educators is to help students understand the wonders and complexities of happiness, to raise questions about it, and to explore promising possibilities responsibly. [….] [E]ducation should offer many, many opportunities for students to hear about and participate in activities that may yield minor ecstasies—gardening, hiking in the wilderness, holding an infant, watching a sunrise or sunset, cooking a terrific meal, coming home to the companionship of family, listening to favorite music, surfing an ocean wave, coaxing a houseplant to bloom, reading poetry, having tea and cookies with an elderly grandma….  — Nel Noddings, Happiness and Education (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

Notice right at the start that public schools in liberal [capitalist] democracies pay very little attention to preparation for personal life. Most of our attention goes to preparation for higher forms of education, and thus for the world of paid work. We do give some lip service to preparation for civic life, but most of our attention in the area goes to national histories, voting rights, and the like. It is preparation for civic life writ large, not for neighborhood life. Civic life, as interpreted in school, is not a domain in which many of us seek happiness. Happiness lies closer to home. This domain of community comparable to the child’s street or play yard is absorbed almost entirely into the category of personal life. — Nel Noddings, Happiness and Education (Cambridge University Press, 2003)

… [T]he real story of anarchist education … is unfolding in the nondescript classrooms of under-resourced inner-city schools, in the leafy grounds of independent schools; in grimy youth clubs; on the streets; in theater halls and in seminar rooms. [….] [A]ctivists and teachers … are practising, experimenting with and developing various forms of anarchist education: through street theater; through anti-racist, feminist and critical pedagogy; through the founding and running of experiments in collective living; through innovative approaches to art education, sex education, political action against oppression, community projects, and numerous other initiative that challenge dominant mind-sets and political structures and form part of the ongoing chorus of what [Colin] Ward called ‘voices of creative dissent.’ [….] Philosophers of education and educational practices can benefit from a serious examination of anarchist ideas, and … many of these have value whether or not one endorses anarchism as a political ideology…. The question of ‘what should our society be like,’ is for the anarchist … logically prior to any questions about what kind of education we want.  The view of society, which informs the anarchist ideas on education is … a normative vision of what society could be like. The optimality of this vision is justified with reference to complex ideas on human nature and values…. The anarchist utopia … is built on the assumption of propensities, values, and tendencies in which, it is argued, are already present in human social activity. — Judith Suissa, Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective (PM Press, 2010).

This post on The Workers Children’s Camp or Wo-Chi-Ca (founded by the Furriers’ Union) is part of an ongoing series on “laudable communism and communists.” It so happens that I first learned of Wo-Chi-Ca when doing research on the remarkable Black artist, Charles White. White met his second wife (after Elizabeth Catlett), Frances Barrett, at the camp, where she was a counselor, while White himself was for a time its art director. One of the photos is a piece White did for the camp: Untitled (Mural Study, Camp Wo-Chi-Ca), 1945, tempera and graphite on illustration board. Soon thereafter I came across Dick Flacks’ inspiring account of his childhood years at the camp in the joint autobiography he wrote with his wife, Mickey Flacks (I’ve known Dick since his days as one of my teachers at UC Santa Barbara back in the mid-1980s). This provoked me into thinking afresh about philosophy of education and pedagogical practices.   

The material immediately below (lightly corrected and edited) is based on an oral history interviews with Judy Hodges. That is followed by Dick Flacks’ enchanting account of his years at “Camp Wo-Chi-Ca” (a title that is, strictly speaking, redundant) from the book he co-wrote with his lamentably late wife, Mickey Flacks (1940-2020), Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America (Rutgers University Press, 2018.

“Wo-Chi-Ca camp was birthed in 1934 amidst World War II, McCarthyism, The Great Depression, and the Cold War. Wo-Chi-Camp is short for Workers Children’s Camp. It was an interracial co-educational summer vacation camp found in New Jersey. The emergence of this camp came from summer vacation homes designed for people with ties to the Communist Party. Originally, these spaces were inter-generational, but the adults began to realize that the youth needed their own summer community as well. In 1934, a New Jersey farmer and his wife donated 127 acres of land to start Camp Unity, the first interracial camp supported by the communist party in the United States. Camp Unity would then be called Workers Children’s Camp or Wo-Chi-Ca for short.

‘The idealist who would found Wo-Chi-Ca wanted their children to experience “The World of the Future” today, through shared living with those of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. They especially wanted to welcome Negro children to their new camp. Labor-based, co-educational, affordable, inter-racial: for a children’s camp in 1934, a revolutionary concept.’ Wo-Chi-Ca’s directors wanted ethnic diversity and racial integration. Many of the campers came from union families and so the ethnic diversity was not hard to get, but the racial integration was more difficult. African Americans at the time were barred from most unions and were segregated in the ghettos. So, the organizers of the camp decided to reach out to Black neighborhoods in order to ensure that Black children had the same opportunities as Whites. This was particularly important because the McCarthy era had created distance among the NAACP and the Communist Party. Wo-Chi-Ca would serve as a way to support the Civil Rights Movement. Wo-Chi-Ca was very successful at doing this and in 1943 there was one Black child for every 5 White children at Wo-Chi-Ca.

Camp ran for five periods of two weeks each, with room for 200 children at any given time. The camp committed itself to music and the arts. It was well known for its commitment to raising awareness and building appreciation for arts and music. Art and music was used as a strategy to build relationships across ethnic and racial divides that were happening as a result of the segregation that was in place. Wo-Chi-Ca committed itself to diversity both in their campers and their staff. They wanted to create an intentional integrated space throughout the entire camp.

Famous artist[s] [such as] Pete Seeger, Paul Robeson, and Woody Guthrie had visited or worked at the camp during its time. Paul Robeson, an American singer and actor, was actively involved in the camp. He first came to the camp in 1940 and returned every year to sing, play ball, and talk to the campers. The camp also saw other notable artist such as Charles White, Canada Lee, Pearl Primus, Ernest Crichlow, Jacob Lawrence, and political figures such as Howard Fast and Dr. Edward Barsky. These individuals would come to the camp to talk about their experiences and struggles with trying to change the world.

By diversifying the staff and campers and inviting prominent leaders from the Black community to the camp, the camp served as a uniquely strong educational environment. Black campers were able to see other Blacks in positions of authority. The camp served as a glimpse of what the world should be. It softened prejudices and stereotypes and created friendships with children before they were socialized into racism. This camp also reflected a change in ideology that was in line with society. This ideology was one that was child inclusive, labor oriented, and community focused. They did this through art programming that connected art education with deeper understanding of collective struggle.

‘Camp Wo-Chi-Ca, like other leftist camps at the time, believed in intentionally and openly discussing race and class. However, Wo-Chi-Ca’s focus on intentional dialogue was also complemented by the everyday camp practices. Camp Wo-Chi-Ca addressed race and class in two separate, but connected ways: through staffing (discussed earlier) and programming. This intersection of staff and programming seeped into several categories: visual arts, performing arts, recreation, and political activism.’ (Charles White)

Wo-Chi-Ca was a progressive educational summer camp for kids. These young pioneers were activist and leaders. Judy Hodges was among the campers during the 1930’s and 1940’s learning about the importance of loving all humankind as well as playing board games and receiving swimming lessons.

In the early 1950’s the camp fell to the pressure of McCarthyism and closed its doors. Like many other leftist camps, Wo-Chi-Ca struggled with threats ranging from community members to state and federal pressures. The biggest pressure was financial. After the IWO [‘The International Workers Order (IWO) was an insurance, mutual benefit and fraternal organization founded in 1930 and disbanded in 1954 as the result of legal action undertaken by the state of New York in 1951 on the grounds that the organization was too closely linked to the Communist Party’].was placed on the U.S. Attorney General’s ‘List of Subversive Organizations,’ the camp could no longer get federal tax exemptions. The camp’s name was changed several times in order to avoid the financial issues, but to no avail. The camp closed and its commitment to social justice and racial integration was forced to be carried out by the campers and staff members. Judy Hodges was one such camper who has continued abiding by the ideology instilled in Wo-Chi-Ca. Her best friend Sandy Ackerman has faithfully stayed true to the values at the camp as well. Their commitment is a testament to the power of the camp.” [….]

*          *          *

“The summer of 1947 was … my first time away at children’s camp—another big marker of exciting growth. The camp I went to was called Wo-Chi-Ca, in New Jersey. The name sounds like a Native American word, but it actually was a contraction of Workers Children’s Camp. Wo-Chi-Ca was created under the auspices of the International Workers Order (or IWO—the Communist Party-oriented split-off of the Workmen’s Circle). The camp’s creation was a departure from the ethnically based cultural projects of the IWO (including the establishment of Camp Kinderland, the left-wing Yiddish camp, founded in 1923, where Mickey and I later fell in love). In contrast, it was, intentionally and systematically, designed as an interracial camp, with staff chosen to be racially mixed and campers brought not only from middle-class Jewish neighborhoods like mine but from all parts of the New York region. The camp’s fees were cheap, and a good deal of subsidy was available to enable poorer minority kids the opportunity to have a terrific time together outdoors in the country, getting to know and be close to people of ‘all races and religions.’ But alongside the intention to create a kind of interracial oasis were other moral concerns that shaped the program and the experience. For example, there was a kind of ‘camper democracy’ in which each bunk elected a representative to a camper council that was responsible for convening camp-wide town meetings, and there was a good deal of camper participation in planning group activities. These practices of democracy were largely symbolic. Still, as a camper, I was absorbing the idea that this was the way the world should be organized.

We kids took such learning to heart. During my first summer at camp, a bunch of us undertook a picket of the group director’s tent. I don’t recall what the issue was, but we went on strike for a whole afternoon. I’m not sure whether the camp authorities were pleased that the kids had learned that particular form of expression. This was my first direct experience with a picket line and strike, but it seemed to fit in with the songs and the discourse that I had been raised from birth to hear and that were celebrated every day at camp. I ended up going to Wo-Chi-Ca for the next four years, and I think of those years as having had a very profound impact on shaping who I am.

Music was crucial in the camp. Some of the counselors were highly spirited musicians in the Pete Singer vein. Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert, who joined Seeger and Lee Hays to form the Weavers, got their start as counselors at Wo-Chi-Ca, as did other folk performers of note, such as Ernie Lieberman and Bob Carey. Seeger (oddly) never came to Wo-Chi-Ca, but we had a young counselor named Dave Sear whose banjo and voice were identical to Seeger’s when you closed your eyes. In 1948 we came to camp to discover an astonishing-looking building, with a big sign that read: Paul Robeson Playhouse. It was a recycled Quonset hut from World War II [a picture of which I’ve provided], and it seemed huge to a little kid—the size of a full-scale gym. It served as a very effective auditorium, and its acoustics were such that when a group of kids were singing, the sound was just overwhelming, at least to my young ears. In that hall, our group singing became an enrapturing daily experience. [….]

One summer, some of the bunks got caught up in discussing racial stereotyping in comic books and children’s games. A kid had brought a Little Black Sambo board game to camp. After much camp-wide discussion, the bunk wrote a letter to the Milton Bradley Company, calling attention to the crude stereotypes portrayed in the game. The company responded to the letter and eventually tried to transform the game to eliminate the stereotypes. The comic book discussions were aimed at sensitizing kids to racist images—not only of blacks but also of Asians, Mexicans, and other sorts of caricature. Indeed, the discussion spilled over to a more general cultural criticism. Somehow, in the midst of swimming, sports of all kinds, theater, singing, and crafts, alongside endless lights-out-dirty-joke telling and talk about girls and coupling—there was a lot of pretty serious discussions about Reds and red-baiting, capitalism and socialism, and race.

[….] Wo-Chi-Ca somehow had become a significant haven for embattled cultural workers. Particularly important, I think, was that for some of the great African American artists who were on the camp’s staff, it provided a little livelihood and relaxed time. They included Pearl Primus, a major figure in the dance world, and artists, Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence, and Ernest Crichlow. Each week the camp’s town meeting or other assemblies feature fascinating guests. Among them were people who had been blacklisted, including harmonic master Larry Adler, dance Paul Draper, novelist Howard Fast, poet Aaron Kramer, and basso Kenneth Spencer. A legend in the camp was Ella Reeve ‘Mother’ Bloor—the Communist Party’s own Mother Jones—and Aunt Molly Jackson, an old-time veteran of the class war. But of course, the leading guest was Paul Robeson. In the late thirties Robeson had been a key figure in raising money and support for the camp, attracted strongly by the project of making an interracial children’s paradise. I was at camp when Robeson visited in 1948. My group took the softball field, and he somehow was on the field with us (and I am certain that I got a Robeson tickle in the ribs).

His visit that year was an especially big deal, because it was on that occasion that the Robeson Playhouse was dedicated. Robeson’s voice filled the hall as he talked and sang about his vision of a world music [a vision realized insofar as today we would not use the article ‘a’ in reference to such music]. A number of other dignitaries o the IWO were onstage as well, including the famed graphic artist Rockwell Kent, who was honorary president of the organization. We were accordingly immersed in the cultural world of the communist movement (including a surfeit of Soviet movies, mixed with Charlie Chaplin shorts on the weekly movie nights).

That a communist-run camp was an indoctrination program for inducting young minds and bodies into the dogmas and disciplines of the Party is probably taken for granted. The story I’m telling is different, and it had a surprising outcome, for me at least. It’s the story of an intensely moral project whose aim was to inculcate not doctrine and party loyalty, but radical democratic and egalitarian values [this is another illustration of what I term ‘laudable communism’]. About a fourth of the staff were African American, and one out of five children who attended were black—so the lived experience of the camp, combined with the content of its program, surely had significance when it came to the racial attitudes of those who went there. Along with this was the lived experience of camper democracy, of cultural criticism, and of valuing American cultural traditions (embodied in folk music and square dancing, in reading the works of John Steinbeck and Carl Sandburg, and in much else that came to us in those years following the era of the Popular Front and the New Deal).

For me, the experience at camp had a lot to do with how I came to be a conscious, identified, and committed lefty, fusing that leftism with a powerful conviction about the necessity of democracy in the fullest sense. That conviction was important a few years late in enabling me and others like me who had been at Wo-Chi-Ca to question and then reject the Communist Party’s authority and legitimacy, because the Party in the United States as well as in the Soviet Union departed so totally from the democratic principles that we had imbibed in our time at camp. [….] Defending democracy at that time meant becoming aware of and resistant to the Red Scare and the attempt to purge the Left from American life. My experience with Bobby Williamson and his family and the others (many of whose children were fellow campers) who had been indicted under the Smith Act and related government prosecutions was my first personal encounter with that emerging climate.

At home, I was beginning to sense the dangers. My parents became more wary of having evidence of left-wing affiliation lying around, exposed. So, although we subscribed to the Daily Worker, copies were hidden away, whatever company was coming. And like many other red diaper babies, I remember an occasion when there was a housecleaning to remove a lot of pamphlets and other incriminating materials and to store them away in secret hiding holes in the house. A very traumatic episode in that process revolved around Camp Wo-Chi-Ca in the last year I was there. Local hooligans were threatening the camp—carloads of local youth drove into camp, demanding that the sign with Robeson’s name be removed and threatening to burn down the playhouse. By the end of the summer, we later learned, some staff were patrolling the camp’s grounds with arms because of threats to poison the water supply.

That was in 1950, in the aftermath of the Peekskill riots. These were the violent episodes in which Paul Robeson concerts, planned for outdoors, near Peekskill, New York, were attacked by mobs. White youth recruited by veterans groups beat people while police stood by. It was that experience in the late summer of 1949 that probably crystallized the view in Party circles that there was a fascist threat in the United States.

For fifteen years prior to the rioting, Robeson had been popular on a global scale. He was probably the highest-paid black performer in the world and was certainly one of the best-known and most recognizable human beings on the planet. His stage and film performances were celebrated, his recordings sold widely, and his concerts in the United States and Europe sold out. But Robeson had been to the USSR and in the late thirties had turned articulately to the left, speaking out on race issues in the United States and against the Cold War and favorably on the Soviet Union after World War II.

After Peekskill, Robeson was totally banned from making public appearances, on the grounds that his presence would invoke violence. His commercial record contracts were terminated. His passport revoked. Camp Wo-Chi-Ca, as one of Robeson’s projects, had become a target of hater locally and consequently faced multiple dangers to it survival.”

In 1951, a new camp (with a new name) opened on the site, operating for one year before moving to the state of New York.

References and Further Reading

• Aptheker, Bettina F. Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel (Seal Press/Avalon, 2006).
• Baldwin, Kate A. Beyond the Color Line: Reading Encounters between Black and Red, 1922–1963 (Duke University Press, 2002).
• Barnwell, Andrea D. Charles White (Pomegranate Press, 2002).
• Barrett-White, Frances, with Anne Scott. Reaches of the Heart: A Loving Look at the Artist Charles White (Barricade Books, 1994).
• Bentley, Eric, ed. Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938–1968 (Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002 [Viking Press, 1971]).
• Biondi, Martha. To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Harvard University Press, 2003).
• Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (Haymarket Books, 2011 ed. [1976]).
• Caute, David. The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower (Simon and Schuster, 1978).
• Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (Verso, 2010 [1997]).
• Dossett, Kate. Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
• Duberman, Martin Bauml. Paul Robeson (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988).
• Flacks, Mickey and Dick Flacks. Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America (Rutgers University Press, 2018).
• Gladchuk, John Joseph. Hollywood and Anticommunism: HUAC and the Evolution of the Red Menace, 1935–1950 (Routledge, 2006.)
• Goldstein, Robert Justin. American Blacklist: The Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations (University Press of Kansas, 2008).
• Goodman, Jordan. Paul Robeson: A Watched Man (Verso, 2013).
• Gore, Dayo F. Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War (New York University Press, 2011).
• Hartman, Andrew. Education and the Cold War: The Battle of the American School (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).
• Haworth, Robert H., ed. Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education (PM Press, 2012).
• Haworth, Robert H. and John M. Elmore, eds. Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces (PM Press, 2017).
• Horne, Gerald. Black and Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944-1963 (State University of New York Press, 1986).
• Horne, Gerald. Communist Front? The Civil Rights Congress, 1946-1956 (Associated University Presses, 1988).
• Horne, Gerald. Black Liberation/Red Scare: Ben Davis and the Communist Party (University of Delaware Press, 1994).
• Levine, June and Gene Gordon. Tales of Wo-Chi-Ca: Blacks, Whites and Reds at Camp (Avon Springs Press, 2002).
• McDuffie, Erik S. Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Duke University Press, 2011).
• Mishler, Paul C. Raising Reds: The Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps, and Communist Political Culture in the United States (Columbia University Press, 1999).
• Morgan, Stacey I. Rethinking Social Realism: African American Art and Literature, 1930-1953 (University of Georgia Press, 2004).
• Mullen, Bill V. Popular Fronts: Chicago and African-American Cultural Politics, 1935-46 (University of Illinois Press, 2^nd, 2015 [1999]).
• Noddings, Nel. Happiness and Education (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
• Oehler, Sarah Kely and Esther Adler, eds. Charles White: A Retrospective (The Art Institute of Chicago/Museum of Modern Art/Yale University Press, 2018).
• O’Reilly, Kenneth. Hoover and the Unamericans: The FBI, HUAC, and the Red Menace (Temple University Press, 1983).
• Ryan, Alan. Liberal Anxieties and Liberal Education (Hill and Wang, 1998).
• Smethurst, James. The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946 (Oxford University Press, 1999).
• Storch, Randi. Red Chicago: American Communism at Its Grassroots, 1928-35 (University of Illinois Press, 2009).
• Suissa, Judith. Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2010 (Routledge, 2006).
• Von Eschen, Penny M. Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937-1957 (Cornell University Press, 1997).
• Wald, Alan M. The Responsibility of Intellectuals: Selected Essays on Marxist Traditions in Cultural Commitment (Prometheus Books, 1992).
• Wald, Alan M. Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left (University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
• Wald, Alan M. Trinity of Passion: The Literary Left and the Antifascist Crusade (University of North Carolina Press, 2007).
• Wald, Alan M. American Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War (University of North Carolina Press, 2012).
• Washington, Mary Helen. The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s (Columbia University Press, 2014).
• Weigand, Kate. Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

Relevant Bibliographies

• After Slavery & Reconstruction: The Black Struggle for Civil Rights, Freedom, and Equality in the U.S.
• Anarchism: philosophy and praxis
• Attica Prison Uprising (September 9, 1971 – September 13, 1971): Notes, Timeline, and Essential Reading
• The Black Athlete and Sports
• Blacks and Food Justice: A Guide to Resources
• Blacks on the (Radical) Left
• The Black Panther Party
• Capitalist and Other Distortions of Democratic Education — From Etiological Diagnosis to Therapeutic Regimen
• Democratic Theory
• Detroit: Labor & Industrialization, Race & Politics, Rebellion & Resurgence
• Elections and Voting
• The Great Depression & The New Deal
• The History, Theory & Praxis of the Left in the 1960s
• Malcolm X (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965)
• Marxism
• Marxism (or ‘the Left’), Art & Aesthetics
• Pan-Africanism, Black Internationalism, & Black Cosmopolitanism
• Progressive Philosophy of Education and Pedagogical Practices: liberté, egalité, fraternité in light of participatory and deliberative democracy
• Social Security & the Welfare State
• Workers, the World of Work, and Labor Law

Progressive Philosophy of Education and Pedagogical Praxis: liberté, egalité and fraternité in light of participatory and deliberative democracy

   

Progressive Philosophy of Education and Pedagogical Praxis: liberté, egalité and fraternité in light of participatory and deliberative democracy

• Aronowitz, Stanley. The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001.
• Avrich, Paul. The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the U.S. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980.
• Bailey, Richard. A.S. Neill. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014 (Continuum, 2013).
• Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books, 2011 ed. (1976).
• Brighouse, Harry and Michael McPherson, eds. The Aims of Higher Education: Problems of Morality and Justice. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
• Chan, Ming K. and Arif Dirlik. Schools into Fields and Factories: Anarchists, the Guomindang, and the Labor University in Shanghai, 1927-1932. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.
• Coben, Diana. Radical Heroes: Gramsci, Freire, and the Politics of Adult Education. New York: Garland Pub., 1998.
• Cullen, Stephen. Children in Society: A Libertarian Critique. London: Freedom Press, 1991.
• Dennison, George. The Lives of Children: The Story of the First Street School. New York: Random House, 1969.
• Dewey, John. Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1916.
• Dewey, John. Experience and Education. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1938.
• Emery, Kathy, Sylvia Braselmann, and Linda Gold, eds. Freedom School Curriculum: Mississippi Freedom Summer, 1964. A pdf. doc. (with photos, 408 pgs.). Original link at the Freedom School Curriculum website.
• Ferrer y Guàrdia, Francisco. The Origins and Ideals of the Modern School. London: Watts, 1913.
• Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder, English edition, 1970 (1968).
• Freire, Paulo, and Donaldo P. Macedo. Literacy: Reading the Word & the World. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, 1987.
• Freire, Paulo and Antonio Faundez. Learning to Question: Pedagogy of Liberation. London: Continuum, 1989.
• Freire, Paulo, Ana Maria Araújo Freire, and Donaldo P. Macedo. The Paulo Freire Reader. London: Continuum, 1998.
• Giroux, Henry A. Education and the Crisis of Public Values. New York: Peter Lang, 2012.
• Goodin, Robert E. Reflective Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Goodman, Paul. Compulsory Miseducation. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin, 1971.
• Graubard, Allen. Free the Children: Radical Reform and the Free School Movement. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.
• Haworth, Robert H., ed. Anarchist Pedagogies: Collective Actions, Theories, and Critical Reflections on Education. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012.
• Haworth, Robert H. and John M. Elmore, eds. Out of the Ruins: The Emergence of Radical Informal Learning Spaces. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2017.
• Hemmings, Ray. Fifty Years of Freedom: A study of the development of the ideas of A. S. Neill. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952.
• Horton, Myles and Paulo Freire (Brenda Bell, John Gaventa, and John Peters, eds.) We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990.
• Illich, Ivan. Deschooling Society. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
• Irwin, J. Paulo Freire’s Philosophy of Education: Origins, Developments, Impacts and Legacies. London: Continuum, 2012.
• Levine, June and Gene Gordon. Tales of Wo-Chi-Ca: Blacks, Whites and Reds at Camp. San Rafael, CA: Avon Springs Press, 2002.
• Kozol, Jonathan. Free Schools. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972.
• Mackie, Robert. Literacy and Revolution: The Pedagogy of Paulo Freire. London: Pluto Press, 1980.
• Mayo, Peter. Liberating Praxis: Paulo Freire's Legacy for Radical Education and Politics. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004.
• Miller, Ron. Free Schools, Free People: Education and Democracy after the 1960s. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002.
• Mishler, Paul C. Raising Reds: The Young Pioneers, Radical Summer Camps, and Communist Political Culture in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
• Neill, A.S. Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing. New York: Hart Publishing Co., 1960.
• Noddings, Nel. Happiness and Education. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Noddings, Nel. The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education. New York: Teachers College Press, 2^nd, 2005.
• Noddings, Nel. Democracy and Education. New York: Teachers College Press, 2013.
• Noddngs, Nel. Philosophy of Education. New York: Routledge, 4^th, 2018 (Westview Press, 2016).
• Ryan, Alan. Liberal Anxieties and Liberal Education. New York: Hill and Wang, 1998.
• Springer, Simon, Marcelo Lopes de Souza, and Richard J. White, eds. The Radicalization of Pedagogy: Anarchism, Geography, and the Spirit of Revolt. London: Rowman and Littlefield International, 2016.
• Steele, Tom. Knowledge is Power! The Rise and Fall of European Popular Educational Movements, 1848-1939. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2007.
• Suissa, Judith. Anarchism and Education: A Philosophical Perspective. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2010 (Routledge, 2006).
• White, Patricia. Beyond Domination: An Essay in the Political Philosophy of Education. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983.

   
Related Bibliographies 

• Anarchism: Philosophy & Praxis
• Capitalist and Other Distortions of Democratic Education — From Etiological Diagnosis to Therapeutic Regimen
• Democratic Theory
• Human Nature and Personal Identity
• Marxism, Art and Aesthetics
• Otto Neurath & Red Vienna: Mutual Philosophical, Scientific and Socialist Fecundity
• Philosophy, Psychology, and Methodology for the Social Sciences
• Psychoanalytic Psychology and Therapy
• Utopian Imagination, Thought, and Praxis

    

This list of titles is also available here.

Toward a binational democratic state in Palestine

In 1939, Great Britain proposed a “one-state” solution in Palestine after concluding that the partition proposal was not acceptable to either the Jews or the Arabs. In its White Paper of the same year, the Government noted that the Mandate, which included the notorious Balfour Declaration, was not intended to convert Palestine into a Jewish state against the will of the Arab population:

“His Majesty’s Government therefore now declare unequivocally that it is not part of their policy that Palestine should become a Jewish State. They would indeed regard it as contrary to their obligations to the Arabs under the Mandate, as well as to the assurances which have been given to the Arab people in the past…. [….]

It is proper that the people of the country should as early as possible enjoy the rights of self-Government which are exercised by the people of neighbouring countries. His Majesty’s Government are [sic] unable at present to foresee the exact constitutional forms which Government in Palestine will eventually take, but their objective is self-government, and they desire to see established ultimately an independent Palestinian State. It should be a State in which the two in Palestine, Arabs and Jews, share authority in Government in such a way that the essential interests of each are secured.” — Malcolm MacDonald, Secretary of State for the Colonies, in a statement presented to the Parliament (1939).

An Israeli Settlement on the West Bank (Getty Images)

In the Los Angeles Times last year (May 23, 2019) George Bisharat argued the case for a democratic, one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a position I happen to agree with:

[….] “The two-state solution is dead, laid low by a thousand cuts – or, more precisely, by the hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, whose immovable presence ensures that no genuinely sovereign Palestinian state will ever emerge there. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have both played a role in delivering the final blows: Trump with his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and Netanyahu by promising voters prior to his recent reelection to begin annexation of the West Bank. [….]

It is time to face some undeniable facts: First, despite Israel’s every effort to establish and maintain a Jewish majority, the two peoples living under Israeli rule hover at near parity, at approximately 6.5 million Jews and 6.5 million Palestinians. Second, Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs are destined to live together in Israel/Palestine in perpetuity. Neither people can or should be forced to leave the land in which they reside and to which they are passionately committed. Third, segregation, of which the two-state solution was a form, is not the answer. As Americans know from our own historical experience, separate is never equal. Finally, it is only equal rights and justice that can provide the foundation for a durable peace for Israelis and Palestinians.” [….]

In his online column yesterday at the Times (July 11), Nicholas Goldberg reports that “Peter Beinart — a Jew who keeps kosher, attends an Orthodox synagogue, is beloved by the liberal intelligentsia and has long been a supporter of two states for two peoples” has likewise “concluded that the two-state solution is dead, and that a single state of Jews and Palestinians is a much more promising path to peace. Beinart, a thoughtful and powerful writer who is a former editor of the New Republic, has long been critical of Israel, but has never gone this far.

In an article in Jewish Currents magazine Beinart says the 53-year-old Israeli occupation of the West Bank, continued settlement building and now the threat of partial annexation have made it clear that a two-state solution would mean ‘a fragmented Palestine under de facto Israeli control.’ It is time, he says, to abandon the goal of a separate Palestinian state. While he doesn’t say that a binational, democratic state is the only possible answer (he also mentions the possibility of creating two separate but deeply integrated states), he writes hopefully and encouragingly about a single state in which both peoples would have a home and enjoy equal rights.

It’s obvious why that is so threatening to traditional Zionists: The creation of a single democratic state would inevitably mean the end of the Jewish state as we know it. How could the new country be truly democratic, egalitarian and binational — and officially Jewish at the same time? Beinart suggests that Jews and Israelis begin thinking in terms of a Jewish ‘home’ rather than a Jewish ’state.’” [….]

The full column is here.

Essential Reading

• Abunimah, Ali. One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. New York: Holt McDougal, 2007.
• Azoulay, Ariella and Adi Ophir (Tal Haran, trans.) The One-State Condition: Occupation and Democracy in Israel/Palestine. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013.
• Hilal, Jamil, ed. Where Now for Palestine? The Demise of the Two-State Solution. London: Zed Books, 2007.
• Kovel, Joel. Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
• O’Malley, Padraig. The Two-State Delusion: Israel and Palestine—A Tale of Two Narratives. New York: Penguins Books, 2015.

See too my Israeli-Palestinian conflict bibliography.

Toward the integration of facets of Liberalism with Marxism: freedom (as self-determination), human community (‘fraternity’ and solidarity), and self-realization for the eudaimonistic individual and sovereign artificer of the Enlightenment

This SEP entry by John Christman on “Autonomy in Moral and Political Philosophy” provoked the following reflections from yours truly:

Toward the integration of facets of Liberalism with Marxism: freedom (as self-determination), human community (‘fraternity’ and solidarity), and self-realization for the “eudaimonistic individual” and “sovereign artificer” of the (European) Enlightenment

Too often the concepts of moral and political autonomy (I am more interested in the former as a necessary condition of the latter) are crudely mischaracterized or misunderstood (at least outside philosophical circles), viewed as asserting or implying something like extreme individualism, political libertarianism, or even solipsism and social atomism (or some combination thereof). And moral autonomy has an ineluctable psychological foundation and dimension that is not always appreciated or fully spelled out. As fundamental values in the tradition of Liberalism (which have roots in classical Greek philosophy), one might plausibly argue that Marx presupposes or assumes the achievement of moral and political autonomy with regard to our capacity for self-realization. In fact, insofar as freedom (as self-determination), human community (‘fraternity’), and self-realization¹ are axiomatic moral values and principles for Marx, it would appear that he must perforce rely on a strong conception of moral autonomy, with regard to its possibility, our potential for its attainment, indeed, its imperative necessity, which accounts for our well-considered desires expressed in social and political terms. Moreover, and perhaps easier to discern or less controversially, the value and ideal of moral and political autonomy can be said to ground the at once analytic and normative concepts of alienation and exploitation in Marx’s writings. In both cases, as R.G. Peffer has pointed out,² the notion of moral autonomy in Marx has some ontological or metaphysical weight if we take it to entail the fundamental notion of human dignity (and its correlate, the good of self-respect). Marx’s evaluative judgments and language reveal what Hilary Putnam has called “fact/value entanglement,” and thus bind the description to the normative without effacing the distinction.

Marx’s commitment to a well-honed conception of moral and political autonomy is explained by Peffer summarizing and commenting on a passage from The German Ideology:

“The goal of humanity-in-society is (or should be) self-activity, i.e., activity not controlled by outside (‘alien’) forces but directed by one’s own self [self-determination as a necessary condition for self-realization]. Realizing self-activity means that individuals are no longer ‘subservient to a single instrument of production’ nor ‘subject to the division of labour’ nor in thrall of any of many ‘natural limitations,’ i.e., limitations that are consciously planned and willed by individuals but that can be eliminated once they succumb to conscious planning and willing. These phrases manifest Marx’s commitment to a standard or principle of freedom as self-determination. His commitment to the value of human community is manifested in his claim that the formerly divided and isolated individuals [those subject to exploitation and alienation given the nature of production and the division of labor] will, under communism, be ‘united individuals’ who freely and cooperatively control social production, whose instruments are ‘made subject to each individual, and property to all.’ Finally, his commitment to the value of self-realization comes out in the phrases concerning the ‘development of a totality of capacities’ and ‘the development of individuals into complete individuals.’” In The German Ideology and elsewhere in the Marxist corpus, we learn that

“[g]enuine personal freedom permits the individual to have available the (social) means of cultivating his or her gifts to their full potential. But the means of self-development are not available to individuals except in genuine community because … (1) outside of the establishment of establishment of a real community in advanced industrial societies (i.e., outside communism), the vast majority of people will not have access to the leisure time and the material and cultural resources requisite for genuine self-development [which of course implies that some people do in fact possess such leisure time and the requisite resources]; and (2) outside of a genuine community it is impossible for individuals to realize one of their most fundamental human potentialities—a potentiality sought by all persons unless they are warped by pernicious social conditions—namely, full community, i.e., full universal, communal, social, or ‘species’ consciousness. ‘In the real community the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their association.’”

In Democracy and Moral Development: A Politics of Virtue (University of California Press, 1991), the late David L. Norton’s notion of “eudaimonism” provides us with an outline of how moral autonomy emerges from and is nurtured within certain kinds of community, allowing for the individual to transcend that community insofar as the person has learned to think for herself, to be a self-determining human animal, to have developed the “capacity to be one’s own person, to live one’s life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one’s own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces, to be in this way independent.” But independence in this sense does not mean or imply the absence of interdependence or demean the significance of intersubjectivity, for it remains intrinsically “associative as an interdependence based in a division of labor with respect to realization of values:”

“ […. ] [E]udaimonism is a variety of moral individualism, unlike some forms of individualism it does not conceive of individuals as ‘atomic,’ that is, as inherently asocial entities [I think such forms are fairly rare, at least in philosophy, political and otherwise, so this is a bit of a straw man. But a pernicious sort of ‘individualism’ as an ideology in capitalist societies tends towards a narcissistic or irresponsible kind of individualism in which one’s’ self-interests’ tend toward selfishness or obsessive preoccupation with one’s own wants and desires, failing to take into account the effects or consequences of same on others...]. [….] [E]udaimonism recognizes persons as inherently social beings from the beginning of their lives to the end but contends that the appropriate form of association undergoes transformation. As dependent beings, persons in the beginning of their lives are social products, receiving not merely material necessities but their very identity from the adult community. The principle of association is the essential uniformity of associates, usually expressed in terms of basic needs. Subsequent moral development leads to self-identification and autonomous, self-directed living, but is associative as an interdependence based in a division of labor with respect to realization of values. The principle of this form of association is the complementarity of perfected differences. Accordingly, the meaning of ‘autonomy,’ if the term is to be applicable, must be consistent with interdependence. … [It thus] means, not total self-sufficiency, but determining for oneself what one’s contributions to others should be and what use to make of the values provided by the self-fulfilling lives of others. [In such cases,] [t]o follow the lead of another person in a matter he or she understands better than we is not a lapse from autonomy to heteronomy but a mark of wisdom.

[M]oral development leads to self-identification and autonomous, self-directed living, but is associative as an interdependence based in a division of labor with respect to the realization of values. The self-fulfilling life of each person requires more values than he or she personally realizes and is dependent upon other for these values. The principle of this form of association is the complementarity of perfected differences. Accordingly this meaning of “autonomy,” if the term is to be applicable, must be consistent with interdependence. [This] means, not total self-sufficiency, but determining for oneself what one’s contributions to others should be and what use to make of the values provided by the self-fulfilling lives of others. To follow the lead of another person in a matter he or she understands better than we is not a lapse from autonomy into heteronomy but a mark of wisdom. [….] [T]he self here is conceived of as a task, a piece of work, namely the work of self-actualization [or ‘self-realization’ in the Marxist sense]. And self-actualization is the progressive objectivizing of subjectivity, ex-pressing it into the world. This recognition exposes as a fallacy the modern use of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ as mutually exclusive categories. Every human impulse in subjective in its origin and objective in its intentional outcome, and because its outcome is within it implicitly from its inception, there is nothing in personhood that is ‘merely subjective,’ that is, subjective in the exclusive sense. Narcissism (with which individualism is sometimes charged) is a pathology that tries to amputate from subjectivity its objective issue. It is real enough, and was a propensity of some romantic [species of individualism[ ] that judged experience by the occasions it affords for the refinement of the individual’s sensibilities. But the supposition that individualism is narcissistic subjectivism represents (again) a failure to recognize divergent kinds of individualism. For eudaimonistic individualism, it is the responsibility of persons to actualize objective value in the world.”

In Reflective Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2003), one of our foremost democratic theorists, Robert E. Goodin, has provided us with a succinct historical and theoretical account of communities of one kind another, from thin (but not negligible) “communities of interest” (these can be extended into forms of ‘enlightened’ self-interest, as the political philosopher Stephen Holmes has documented) to communities of “generation,” “meaning,” “experience,” “regard,” and “subsumption” (The last is constitutionally prone to, when not exhibiting, group pathological symptoms: ‘The fanatically immersed self is to be properly regarded as the subject, and object, of psychotherapy.’): “Whereas the [European] Enlightenment fiction is that sovereign artificers [i.e., more or less morally and politically autonomous individuals] make communities, the communitarian emphasis is upon the various ways in which communities make individuals; literally, in the case of communities of generation; figuratively, in communities of meaning, experience, and regard.” [….] [T]he classic Enlightenment ‘community of interests’ can be extended beyond its most crassly calculating roots. Enlightened self-interest dictates far more mutual respect—even in the service of ultimately narrowly egoistic concerns—than one might intuitively suppose. Let us recall that the self of the Enlightenment’s sovereign artificer might be interested in all sorts of things (be they people or principles, causes or communities) that range well beyond narrowly egoism, standard construed. [….] Communitarian critics of the Enlightenment model [e.g., Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Sandel, Charles Taylor and Michael Walzer] are looking for something beyond any of that, however. Their talk of communities of generation, or meaning, or experience, or even of regard, points to something that stands above and beyond any calculation of enlightened self-interest. Communitarians themselves would phrase this in terms of the social construction of identity, of the communal ‘sources of the self.’ … [T]he communitarian emphasis is upon the various ways in which communities make individuals: literally, in the case of communities of generation; figuratively, in communities of meaning, experience, and regard. In the end, though, all those propositions turn out to be almost puns or metaphors, asked to bear more weight than mere metaphors can reasonably be expected to sustain.” [….]

For both Goodin and Norton, community, in the beginning, middle and end, is about—in the words of the latter—the “sociality of true individuals.” While the sovereign artificer of the Enlightenment recognizes the role of “received community and tradition,” it is not privileged at the expense of true—morally and politically autonomous—individuals. It is such individuals who at some point in their lives—say, at the age of reason—become capable of choosing their community and tradition (which may, thus need not, entail leaving the tradition and community of one’s birth and socialization). For the eudaimonistic individual prescribed by Norton, what is paramount is that this choice is not willy-nilly in the sense that the individual is obliged to choose what is for that person the “right community and tradition” befitting self-determination and self-realization. Norton describes this endeavor as “part of the inherent moral obligation of self-discovery and self-actualization.” The “choice” in this case, is one made in awareness of a plurality of alternatives by a person who, as we say, knows her own mind:

“For eudaimonistic individualism, individual self-actualization is inherently social. This is so because it manifests objective worth in the world which, as objective, is incomplete without recognition, appreciation, and utilization by appropriate others. Accordingly, for every person there is ‘natural community’ comprising those others who recognize, appreciate, and can utilize his or her worth in their own self-actualizing enterprises. The obligation of the individual to relate to this community is identical with the moral obligation of self-actualization; her choice of herself is her choice of this community; and the choice(s) must be true commitment(s) if it (they) is to fulfill her inherent moral obligation. The effect of this is to ground both choices in self-knowledge and to support the teaching of common sense that commitment by persons who ‘know their own minds’ are trustworthy.”

Presumably, the normative conception of community in Marxism builds upon the notion of community that respects the Enlightenment’s “sovereign artificer,” which is fundamentally at odds with the communitarian model, whatever their cluster of shared features. As Goodin explains,

“The difference between the Enlightenment’s sovereign artificer and the communitarian’s encumbered self in this regard lies not in the capacity to express … ‘we-oriented’ sentiments but rather in the standpoint from which such sentiments are expressed. The sovereign artificer [like Norton’s eudaimonistic individual] stands partially apart from the ‘we’ in question, constituting an independent locus of value and judgment to be blended with others to form the ‘we’ in question [hence the role of democratic norms, processes, and procedures arising from considerations of participation, representation, and deliberation]. The encumbered self, in so far as it is constituted by the attachments that constitute the ‘we,’ is naturally subsumed within it. Thus, while both Enlightenment and communitarian models provide for information [and knowledge] transfer and value alignment among members of a group, there are important difference in what each envisages as going on in those processes of transmission and alignment. Where the Enlightenment sees sovereign artificers deliberating from a number of independent perspectives, the communitarian sees embedded selves in communion with one another. Where the Enlightenment sees the exercise of independent judgment, the communitarian sees revelation and the incantation of shared sentiments. [….] In the Enlightenment model, independent agents come together to talk. What they say to one another matters. It is capable of influencing them, of changing their minds. But it is none the less a case of independent agents interacting with one another, in some meaningful way. In the communitarian model, agents lose whatever independence they ever had when they come together to talk, they subsume themselves within a discursive community. In the process, what people do is not simply ‘influence’ one another but rather ‘remake’ one another. Communitarian conversations end not so much in agreement or convergence as in the remaking of interlocutors in such a way as to deprive them of any independent stance from which to disagree [without surrendering their communal identification or sundering their communal ties]. [….]

Contrary to the claims of communitarian critics, the sort of ‘sovereign artificer’ posited by liberal Enlightenment theory does not stand wholly outside human society [or myriad communities]. On the contrary, such agents would find themselves situated in perfectly recognizable communities of various sorts. However [morally and politically] sovereign they may be, truly enlightened artificers would immediately see that they are far from autarkic. They need the cooperation of others to work their will on, and in, the world. To secure that cooperation on a sustained basis and in maximally efficacious ways, they would have to adopt and adhere to social norms [and obligations] of roughly the sorts communitarian critics standardly claim as uniquely their own. That is the first sort of ‘community of enlightenment:’ a community of enlightened self-interest (and, mutatis mutandis, of ‘enlightened advocacy’ for those of their interests that extend beyond themselves). Sovereign artificers also inhabit a ‘community of enlightenment’ in the second sense that they enlighten themselves (they learn facts and fictions, meanings and significance, techniques and values) in and through their association with others. However sovereign they may be, real actors in the real world are inherently limited in their time and information and understanding. What they have, they have acquired only through their experiences; and those experiences are ones which are (hardly accidental, but not exactly intentionally, either) shared with others. Enlightenment in this sense, is gained through communities.”

Finally, one could say that Liberal values and democratic principles and practices serve as constraints on the “kinds of communities that sovereign artificers [and Marx] could sanction.” Democratically self-governing citizens as Enlightenment sovereign artificers or eudaimonistic individuals cannot abide by or countenance “communities of subsumption.”

Notes

1. One of the better—if not the best—account of what this means in the Marxist tradition is provided by Jon Elster in his essay, “Self-realisation in work and politics: the Marxist conception of the good life,” in Jon Elster and Karl Ove Moene, eds. Alternatives to Capitalism (Cambridge University Press, 1989): 127-158.
2. See Peffer’s Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice (Princeton University Press, 1990).

Elections and Voting: Recommended Reading

Ending Trump’s misrule and restoring confidence in the presidency demands the undoing of impediments to free and fair elections. That will entail root-and-branch campaign finance reform, an end to voter suppression, new defenses against foreign interference in elections, and reining in the digital disinformation engines. These are perhaps only the minimum demands for restoring American democracy. — David Rothkopf

Jacob Lawrence, The 1920’s…The Migrants Arrive and Cast Their Ballots (1974)

Elections and Voting: Recommended Reading

• Anderson, Carol. One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018).
• Bensel, Richard Franklin. The American Ballot Box in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
• Berman, Ari. Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015).
• Budge, Ian. Politics: A Unified Introduction to How Democracy Works (Routledge, 2019).
• Budge, Ian, Ivor Crewe, and Dennis Farlie, eds. Party Identification and Beyond: Representations of Voting and Party Competition (John Wiley, 1976).
• Condorcet, Marquis de (Iain McLean and Fiona Hewitt, trans. and eds.) Condorcet: Foundations of Social Choice and Political Theory (Edward Elgar Publishing, 1994).
• Daley, David. Ratf**ked: Why Your Vote Doesn’t Count (Liveright Publishing Corp., 2016).
• Daniels, Gilda R. Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America (New York University Press, 2020).
• Enelow, James M. and Melvin J. Hinich, eds. Advances in the Spatial Theory of Voting (Cambridge University Press, 1990).
• Hasen, Richard L. The Supreme Court and Election Law: Judging Equality from Baker v. Carr to Bush v. Gore (New York University Press, 2003).
• Hasen, Richard L. The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown (Yale University Press, 2013).
• Hasen, Richard L. Plutocrats United: Campaign Money, the Supreme Court, and the Distortion of American Elections (Yale University Press, 2016).
• Hasen, Richard L. Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy (Yale University Press, 2020).
• Lijphart, Arend. Democracy in Plural Societies: A Comparative Exploration (Yale University Press, 1977).
• Lijphart, Arend. Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990 (Oxford University Press, 1994).
• Lijphart, Arend. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries (Yale University Press, 2nd ed., 2012).
• Lowenstein, Daniel Hays, Richard L. Hasen, Daniel P. Tokaji, and Nicholas Stephanopoulos. Election Law: Cases and Materials (Carolina Academic Press, 6th ed., 2017).
• Mackie, Gerry. Democracy Defended (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
• May, Gary. Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy (Basic Books, 2013).
• McGann, Anthony J., Charles Anthony Smith, Michael Latner, and Alex Keena. Gerrymandering in America: The House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, and the Future of Popular Sovereignty (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
• Passarelli, Gianluca. Preferential Voting Systems: Influence on Intra-Party Competition and Voting Behaviour (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
• Przeworski, Adam and John Sprague. Paper Stones: A History of Electoral Socialism (University of Chicago Press, 1988).
• Rae, Douglas W. The Political Consequences of Election Laws (Yale University Press, revised ed., 1971).
• Smith, Erin Geiger. Thank You for Voting: The Maddening, Enlightening, Inspiring Truth About Voting in America (HarperCollins, 2020).
• Smith, Terry. Whitelash: Unmasking White Grievance at the Ballot Box (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
• Tangian, A.S. Aggregation and Representation of Preferences: Introduction to Mathematical Theory of Democracy (Springer-Verlag, 1991).
• Wehle, Kim. What You Need to Know About Voting—and Why (HarperCollins, 2020).

See too these compilations:

• After Slavery & Reconstruction: The Black Struggle in the U.S. for Freedom, Equality, and Self-Realization
• Contemporary Democratic Theory
• Toward an Understanding of Liberalism
• Mass Media: Politics, Political Economy and Law