Let's Gut the Political Community

by P. Andrew Sandlin

With some disgust, I recently asked one of my teenage sons (a member of the Libertarian Party!) in disgust, "Couldn't we get something on the TV news channels (both network and cable) besides politics?" Virtually every news talk show is committed to political news or discussion. Watching these channels, one would get the distinct expression that the only news in the United States is political news: the latest claptrap from President Clinton, the latest campaign missteps by George W. Bush or Al Gore, Senate hearings on everything from Microsoft to mudslides, the White House's relations with the Kremlin and Beijing, and on and on. This seems to validate the mantra, "Politics isn't everything, but everything is political." But isn't there some non-political event or trend that is newsworthy? Some dramatic business success? Some exciting family story? Some church or otherwise religious revival or reformation? Even some scientific discovery or invention that will increase the comfort or life expectancy of mankind? Can't we get away from politics for a while? In modern culture, the answer is basically, "No." There is a simple reason for this.

The Ubiquitous Political Community

Today's society is dominated by what Robert Nisbet called "the political community." Nisbet, a profoundly insightful conservative-libertarian sociologist, argued that man is an inherently social creature and, therefore, lives his life in communities (in simple terms, no man is an island). In his extensive work, The Social Philosophers, he outlined and enumerated the principal communities into which human societies have historically arranged themselves: the war community, the kinship community, the religious community, the political community, the revolutionary community, the ecological community and the pluralist community. He pointed out that in the Western world for the past three hundred years, the political community has been the dominant community of society.

What is the political community? It is a society centered in and dominated by the state. Indeed, in some people's minds, to use the term "society" is simply to utter a synonym for the "state." Before modern times, this was far from true. While ancient Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome were predominately political communities, the ancient Hebrew commonwealth, as well as republican Rome, were a mixture of the kinship and the religious community. Society was not anchored in and governed by the state, but by families (extended families, not what we would today call "nuclear" families), related to strong religious groups. The role of the state, what there was of it, was negligible. Families usually dealt with almost all social problems, even crime. Later, in the Byzantine Empire, the church was subservient to the state; but in the medieval world of the West, the church became quite strong and eventually served as a check on the power of the European states. There were abuses on both sides, but the religious community kept the political community in check.

This is a crucial task, because of all the human communities, the state is the only community that is inherently coercive. The bottom-line meaning is that the state can kill you if it doesn't like what you do. This is not true of the other two leading human communities - the kinship community (family) and the religious community (church). This is not to say that these communities cannot overstep their bounds; it is only to recognize that neither the family nor the church possesses the authority to kill you if it doesn't like what you do. Each is a government, but it is a non-coercive government. This is why many lovers of human liberty have enthusiastically supported strong families and strong churches, even if they themselves were not family people or churchmen.

The Economic Community

To Nisbet's kinship and religious community, we can add another non-coercive community - the economic community, particularly the free-market community. This community has emerged in the Western world since the Protestant Reformation, and the early classical liberals championed it. Why? For one thing, because it countered the power of a coercive state. The fact is, political tyranny is incompatible with a genuinely free-market society. Again, why? Not simply because such an economy produces wealth, though it surely does, but because it vests the vast majority of society's members with maximum decision making over their lives and property. It defranchises the monopolistic decision making of a few paternalistic elites in the political community and places extensive power in the hands of the multitude of society's individuals. This is what Ludwig von Mises calls "human action." It is the antithesis of socialism and other coercive redistributivism. Mark this fact well: socialism is not fundamentally the altruistic redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor, but the coercive redistribution of power from individuals to the state.

This bears on one of the supreme ironies of the federal government's economic coercion - for instance, its war against Microsoft. It was galling not only that statist attorneys claimed that Microsoft was a monopoly (since good economists know that an economic monopoly is virtually impossible in a free-enterprise system), but that in the United States, the federal government is the biggest monopoly of all. If we are to have a monopoly, by all means, let it be a non-coercive Microsoft monopoly rather than a coercive, Hell-bent, tyrannical monopoly of the federal government.

Alternatives to the Political Community

Lovers of liberty must work even more assiduously to support non-coercive communities like the kinship, religious, and economic communities. Because the state is a community of coercion, it must be diluted, emasculated, and chained. Strong families, churches, and businesses tend to do this. When left unhindered, they tend to assume most of the legitimate responsibilities in human society: nurture, education, bread winning, communication, health, transportation, wealth creation, and so forth. Just remember: in principle, what these communities do, the state doesn't get to do. And what the state does, these communities don't get to do. Why should we want the family, church, business, and other non-political communities to assume these responsibilities? Because these other communities are voluntary and non-coercive. You can (when of age) walk away from a family. You can walk away from a church. You can walk away from a job. But in today's Western world, try walking away from the state. Because these communities are voluntary, and non-coercive, they always do a better job of fulfilling their responsibilities in human society than the state does. These communities (collectively called "the private sector") invariably do a better job in educating a society's young, mending its ill, transporting its goods, feeding its hungry, and policing its morality than the coercive arm of the state could ever do.

Naked Individualism Is Not the Answer

Libertarians must be aware of an atomistic individualism, which sets the naked individual as the only bulwark against a tyrannical state. The atomistic individual is no match for such tyranny. Communities like the family, church, and business are, however, such bulwarks against tyranny. A few atomistic libertarians imply the traditional family is cumbersome and repressive. This is false. It is a strong, non-coercive institution that binds a society together. A multitude of strong families counters a strong, coercive civil government. Some secular libertarians attack the church; but a virile, fortified, united (orthodox!) church is a great check on the state. From time to time, a vocal sect of paleoconservatives attacks "big business," countering that what we really need is small, family businesses. We surely do need more small, family businesses; but we need big businesses too. "Big Business," like "Big Family" and "Big Church," is a great check on "Big Brother."

A main objective of lovers of liberty should be the drastic reduction of the political community and the dynamic growth of the kinship, religious, and economic communities. There will always be communities of some kind. We should work to assure that the vast majority of those communities are voluntary and non-coercive.

September 25, 2000

P. Andrew Sandlin is Executive Vice President of the Chalcedon Foundation which since 1965 has been dedicated to applying historic, Biblical Christianity in today’s world. He is the author of Christianity: Bulwark of Liberty and several other works.