Next: The Road to the Good Society

Rating:
Summary: Provacative
Review: Amitai Etzioni has produced yet another stimulating book. With the enormous economic success of the 1990s, Etzioni asks us to think about what's next? The pot of gold is also filled with a golden rule. In Next, Etzioni sets an agenda for a rich society to become a good society. Using the communitarian approach, for which he has become the leading advocate, Etzioni not only points out the necessary components of a good society, but shows us how to get there.

Etzioni outlines what he calls a centrist communitarian approach, but this centrist approach is quite different from the 3rd way hailed by the centrist New Democrats. While Etzioni shares, to some extent, the New Democrats' belief in the use of market incentives to achieve policy objectives, he does not attach himself to a midpoint between Republicans and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Instead, he argues for a policy agenda that is at once very liberal (e.g., arguing for a much more generous safety net) and conservative (e.g., supporting government funding of religious organizations' to fulfill social services).

Etzioni's communitarian approach relies heavily on communities, rather than on the state or on unfettered market, as the primary agent for ensuring that social obligations are met. Next is a thoughtful book, which I recommend to any citizen interested in public policy.

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing, but sometimes funny
Review: I ordered this book with high hopes. The reviews led me to believe it offered concrete suggestions for pressing problems. It just isn't so.

This book seems to be primarily for people who want to rationalize the status quo: others suffer for reasons you can't influence, you are a good person for just talking about problems in the world while doing nothing about them, etc. If you believe people who suffer get what they deserve or are simply a side-effect of the glorious free market then this book will be laughable to you. If you believe making the world better for everyone is the primary obligation for members of "good society" then this book will be disappointing to you.

Etzioni mouths some standard platitudes, for example that we need universal health care, but inevitably either guts his statements by describing that he means something entirely different from what is understood by those statements or he backpedals furiously. Sometimes he does both at once.

Here's a prime example, again regarding health care: "However, securing everyone a rich basic minimum of health care as a start should no longer be delayed if we seriously seek to move toward a good society". What exactly is the oxymoronic "rich basic minimum" to which he refers? We just don't know, and subsequent pages are no help. As Etzioni reminds us often, this is something for further discussion (outside his book, of course) and dialogue.

From the merely comical "rich basic minimum", we move to the stunningly wrongheaded comment that "there is a profound tension between treating people as ends and as a source of profit". There is nothing profound about this, nor is there tension except when the market is allowed to have its way with few controls. Rather than taking the much more "people as ends" focused view that the market must serve society and must be constrained when it fails in that role, Etzioni asks us to believe that we shouldn't always treat other people as people - sometimes they really are commodities to be bought and sold for money.

Perhaps I am especially disappointed because I had such high hopes for this book. I'm sticking with Amartya Sen and Wendell Berry because even if I don't always agree with them, I can always tell that they care deeply for others and want to offer suggestions for improving the world, not empty cliches.

Rating:
Summary: The good society -- and moral responsibility
Review: This essay deals with how to develop what civilized people have been craving since the ancient Greeks or earlier: the good society. This is basically a question of social ethics, and for the author the good society is one in which a preponderance of relations among people are of the I-thou type. Some of our relations are necessarily of the instrumental, I-it kind in which we use people (to some extent) in order to achieve our goals, but in the good society these will be strictly limited in number and in most of our dealing with others we will take people as ends in themselves, in their personhood, and not as means to other ends. The author presents the good society as a community of communities, a third element that must be given as much or more importance as the government and the market. Communities are the intellectual "centers" where people meet each other most easily as persons and treat each other as ends in themselves. Society is a collection of such value-sharing communities formed around affective bonds and moral culture. The various motivations for community formation include age group, work, school, neighborhood or any other social situation that brings together the common interests and values of people. Many social functions currently carried out by the government could be handled, and handled better, by communities, which have up to now been the neglected partners of government and market.
In his third chapter the author describes what he calls a soft moral culture, which is soft not because of the norms it promotes but because of the way it fosters them. It is the midway between the authoritarian morality of the postwar years and the kind of moral vacuum in which American society seems to be operating at present. He advocates a formal - as distinct from material - ethics in which the strident language of rights would be slightly muffled but of course not completely silenced, so that more people can reflect for themselves on what is truly good for themselves and for society.
In his fourth chapter he shows that much could be gained if the government would stop treating the people to whom it dispenses services as mere clients and started treating them like citizens. He pleads for more discernment about which roles the government should properly maintain and which ones (and to what extent) should be contracted out to private (for profit) entities. Here he examines current policy and practice with regard to prison facilities, welfare, health insurance, availability of experimental medications, and protection of the environment.
Still, we must live with the market and the largely anonymous, instrumental relations it encourages. The economy should be strengthened but not allowed to grow disproportionately to other human values. The author decries corporate welfare and speaks eloquently in favor of investing in people. It is well known that while American universities are among the best in the world, elementary and secondary schools are a disaster area. Most work during the first two years of college are largely remedial. At this moment first educational priority must be given to recent immigrants and their children.
In chapter six the author takes on the way politicians have used the democratic process to carry out private vendettas and political lynching. Here he discusses several cases that were in the news during the 1990s. He does not suggest changing the rules of the political game but saving them and teaching those who use them how to use them fairly and with the common good as the general goal.
The author then discusses the issues involved in celebrating cultural and ethnic diversity in America while working toward an ever more united nation. Inequality will never be eliminated but its harmful effects can be limited. Especially in regard to equitable educational opportunities for young children, programs initiated within the community and promoted by the government and the market have been especially successful.
Books of this kind should be much more important among the American reading public than they are now. We need to analyze our recent past without too much interference from political rhetoric. We need to be reminded that we have made mistakes, some of them grave. Our future can be very bright if we develop the kind of moral culture Etzioni advocates. And if we don't, we cannot claim that no one warned us of the consequences. I would recommend this book to anyone who believes in the good life for him- or herself and for everyone else, that is, anyone who believes that moral culture and community values are just as important as the government or the stock market. Maybe they are more important. For those who do not believe this, maybe reading this book will convince them.