#communal values

The last posting touched on the cleanliness of political systems thinking – its theorizing – in which researchers tend to bank on the rational assumption.  That is, by focusing on decision-making, the natural rights perspective can be boiled down at various levels to individuals calculating marginal cost and marginal benefits and choosing which option promises to render the highest profit or the least loss.  

While this is a powerful notion and often is sufficient in understanding human behavior, it undermines what all goes on among people when confronted with opportunities or dilemmas.  Philip Selznick picks up on this theme and argues that modern thinking about this aspect of life has become more systems oriented.  He writes that the ensuing rationality has an effect on how people measure each other  and their expectations:

 [In traditional society,] The rationality of the lifeworld is oriented toward mutual understanding … not success.  Human interaction becomes more rational as people come to know each other’s premises; as they properly interpret meanings and motivations; as they use the resources of a shared language for criticism, dialogue, and agreement.  The rationality that looks to success or goal-seeking [in modern societies] employs other resources and a different logic.  Instead of relying on human communication and natural language, which are inherently disorderly, fuzzy, and connotative, rationality is sought in artificial languages.  These include the abstraction of money and obedience.  In engineered and programmed systems, the process of Verstandigung, of working toward mutual understanding and rational consensus, are [sic] swept out as unwelcome distractions.[1]

         The problem is that certain benefits and rewards, or the standards that establish conditions as benefits and rewards, are beyond measure and money.  What parent would sell his or her child into slavery?  What amount of money would one need to give up a way of life, a religious belief, or worship?  For many, there is no amount.  And when political behavior is based on these kinds of considerations, a political systems approach fails to account for or understand the ensuing behavior.

         By way of example, a look at political decision-making by politicians can be instructive.  Game theory analysts use the analytical tool – the prisoner’s dilemma[2] – to explain how a representative in Congress would “irrationally” address a problem such as the national debt.

           Given that a representative might go to Washington with the intent to work toward eliminating expenditures on wasteful programs, that politician soon faces a dilemma.  If the representative votes for eliminating all waste, he/she manages to antagonize those interests in the home district that would benefit from the expenditures locally.

To win the campaign to eliminate the national debt, this congressperson must convince the majority in Congress to follow his/her example. Whether the representative is successful in this latter effort, the lawmaker will not be reelected because it is those interests, the ones that were put off by fighting the problem, that make the financial contributions that lead to successful election campaigns.  In addition to not supporting the waste elimination congressperson, the interests will act aggressively to replace this crusader.

As for the rest of the population, their benefits are too diffused to overcome the costs of supporting the good legislator by either making campaign contributions, working for the campaign, or even, for too many, voting. So, the championing legislator can look forward to one term, and since all congresspeople face the same conditions, it will be very likely a majority of the Congress will respond with no action on this issue.

         If, on the other hand, the congressperson votes for locally favored expenditures of federal dollars that add to the national debt and might be wasteful, the would-be crusader is likely to win the local affected interest’s active support.  If the majority of the House votes to eliminate waste, the somewhat hypocritical representative can feel the satisfaction of seeing the original desired result take place.  If the majority does not, a much more likely result, at least the featured legislator can get reelected and return to fight another day.

         Of course, if one adds to the mix the practice of log rolling, in which one representative votes for other district spending in exchange for spending in that representative’s district, the likelihood of ever eliminating waste in government spending seems systematically impossible.  Marginal thinking, in other words, can lead to conditions generally not desired by the majority of a republic.[3]

         Need one hold such a cynical view of republican governance?  Only if the system or the polity cannot engender, on the part of the citizenry, other goals and values than those based on financial or, as Selznick points out, command motives.  If other values and goals, perhaps those that emanate from communal bonds, are encouraged and promoted, could these be strong enough to make the support of this or any conscientious legislator rational?

         Such goals and values might verge on formulating and socializing a social morality.  This critique postulates that such goals and values can be developed and maintained.  Without such a possibility, which is outside the realm of concern of the natural rights perspective, one is left with the cynical conclusion that a republic cannot have the discipline to develop policy that entails sacrifice, even when the majority favors such efforts.

         Of course, a review of successful legislative ideas and ideals might demonstrate to readers that this lack of fortitude describes the system more accurately than one that entertains the possibility of conscientious politicians.  Yet the history of the nation does include a series of beneficial legislation.  While nirvana has not been reached, how many readers are willing to move elsewhere or give up on the system?  After all, this blogger has heard that he should not ask what America can do for him, but what he can do for America.

[1] Philip Selznick, The Moral Commonwealth:  Social Theory and the Promise of Community (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), 255.

[2] “The prisoner’s dilemma presents a situation in which two parties, separated and unable to communicate, must choose between cooperating with the other or not. The highest reward for each party occurs when both parties choose to co-operate.”  See “What Is the Prisoner’s Dilemma and How Does It Work?,” Investopedia (August 4, 2022), accessed February 12, 2023), https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/prisoners-dilemma.asp#:~:text=Understanding%20the%20Prisoner's%20Dilemma&text=The%20prisoner's%20dilemma%20presents%20a,parties%20choose%20to%20co%2Doperate.