In the book: Reinventing Civil Society (Civitas, 1993), David Green writes:

“Markets generate more prosperity, but `more goods’ do not make a good society.

The challenge we face today is to identify a sense of community or solidarity that is compatible with freedom. Competitive markets coordinate the efforts of people who may be self-interested, even selfish, but they do not create solidarity.

Contrary to the view attributed to Mrs Thatcher, that there is `no such thing as society’, there is indeed such a thing. But it is not synonymous with the state. It is the realm of `activity in common’, which is at once voluntary and guided by a sense of duty to other people and to the social system on which liberty rests. “

It’s exemplary of social forces that support the market, but are critical of the neoliberal approach, and shares a predilection for the primacy of civil society.

The peer to peer approach has a strong bias towards civil society, towards the self-organization in pursuit of the creation of common value.

This creates strange bedfellows, for example, both European leftist developers and U.S. libertarian programmers, share a support and love for open source development.

As we see above, the focus on civil society is also taken up by many ‘conservative’ forces as well.

We already discussed social catholic traditions after our visit to the Vatican in May , but there is another, more ‘Anglo-saxon’ tradition.

You will find all the documentation on that in a book by David Green, Reinventing Civil Society, which is well worth reading, though there are also disturbing aspects, at least from my own point of view, such as an opposition to the welfare state, redistributive justice, equalization, and even equality of opportunity. Anybody who regularly cites Hayek is already suspect in my eyes, which may be uninformed, as I see him mostly through the lens of dominant neoliberalism.

The tradition represented by Green, and which is opposed to both the economic rationalism of the left and the right, is called Civic Capitalism or Communal Liberalism. Green rejects the utilitarian view of man that is carried by modernism.

The book itself is a very interesting historical excursion in the emergence and growth of mutual aid (Friendly Societies) practices in the 19th century, and how they were destroyed in the 20th, in two phases, 1911 and 1948. In 1911, a first national insurance act supported by the medical establishment succeeded in sidelining the mutual aid societies, who as reprentatives of the medical consumer presented a threat to specialized interests; and in 1948, they were completely destroyed and nationalized after the introduction of the NHS.

As someone steeped in a country dominated by the social-democratic tradition (Belgium), I’m amazed at how thorougly this tradition and historical fact has been erased from our social memories.

The history of the practices and governance of the Friendly Societies is very fascinating, and shows many congruences with the current interest in peer governance.

So here is an important question: to what degree is dialogue possible around a common favouring of civil society and peer to peer practices? Can ‘progressives’ and ‘conservatives’, forces of the ‘left’ and the ‘right’, find common ground?

Here’s the motivation behind David Green’s book (remember it was written in 1993):

“This book began as an attempt to consider the lessons the former communist countries of Eastern Europe might be able to learn from Western experience of voluntary welfare provision. But, as the study proceeded, it quickly became obvious that we in the West have done almost as much harm to our own voluntary associations as the communist countries, not as part of a deliberate effort to create a mass society of individuals ruled by an elite, but as a result of the inadvertent displacement effect of the welfare state. By narrowing opportunities for personal idealism in the service of others, the welfare state has eroded the sense of personal responsibility and mutual obligation on which a resilient civil society rests.

As I began to think about how best we could re-invigorate our once rich and varied voluntary, communal life it also became obvious that the economic philosophy which had come to dominance in the 1980s did not provide intellectual tools adequate to the task. This inadequacy was particulary reflected in the social policies of the Thatcher years, which were dominated by a hard-boiled economic rationalism which failed to do justice to human character and potential.

We only have to look at our own language to discover the rich variety of virtues that make a free society work and which describe the obligations we all owe to one another. Good character, honesty, duty, self-sacrifice, honour, service, self-discipline, toleration, respect, justice, self-improvement, trust, civility, fortitude, courage, integrity, diligence, patriotism, consideration for others, thrift and reverence are just a few. Yet many of these words cannot readily be used today in ordinary talk. To the modern ear, they have a ring of either antique charm or total obsolescence.

The leading voices of Thatcherite philosophy invariably saw the Thatcher revolution in moral terms.

They hoped to restore what Shirley Letwin, in her excellent book The Anatomy of Thatcherism, called the `vigorous virtues’ of self-sufficiency, energy, independent mindedness, adventurousness, loyalty to friends and hardiness in the face of enemies. The Thatcherite emphasis on the vigorous virtues was of central importance in halting the pace of Britain’s genteel economic decline. And today, the superiority of robust market competition compared with socialist planning is accepted across the political spectrum. But, Thatcherism suffered from a missing ingredient. It is the thesis of this book that the missing dimension was its inadequate emphasis on the `civic virtues’, such as self-sacrifice, duty, solidarity and service of others.

Over twenty years ago in 1971 the IEA’s Editorial Director, Arthur Seldon, commissioned The Morals of Markets by the philosopher H.B. Acton to examine the moral questions raised by competition. In the heat of the subsequent battle to improve public understanding of economic problems, the issues raised in that book were put to one side but now, in recognition of its continuing relevance, the Liberty Fund has republished The Morals of Markets. Reinventing Civil Society is an attempt to refine and develop further our thinking about the moral dimension of a free society.”

Here are some significant excerpts dealing with the mutual aid tradition, and we’ll continue our treatment of this book with a separate focus on civic capitalism and how exactly the break with this mutualist past occured:

The Role of Friendly Societies:

“For liberty was not only an intellectual ideal, it was the guiding philosophy of the common people who acted out its values in their everyday lives. This reality is nowhere better exemplified than in the work of the friendly societies, those organisations for mutual aid which flourished in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and which were joined by the vast majority of working men, far exceeding the membership of the other characteristic organisations of the working classes, the trade unions and the co-operative societies. (In 1910 there were 6.6m registered members of friendly societies; 2.5m members of registered trade unions; and 2.5m members of co-operative societies.)
The friendly societies are of additional interest for two other reasons. First, the record of the friendly societies contradicts the wide perception today that, although a market society is undoubtedly the best way to generate prosperity, it provides inadequately for the health and welfare of its citizens. As Chapters 3-10 relate, the historical reality turns out to have been the opposite of the legend of welfare before the welfare state widely believed today.
And second, the experience of the friendly societies shows that we have under-estimated the displacement effect of the welfare state. Thatcher Governments thought it an adequate response to defects in the health service, for example, to introduce competitive tendering within the state system. But this was to misunderstand the true character of a free society. Competitive markets are a necessary but not sufficient condition of freedom. The welfare state did not only suppress the incentive system of the competitive market, it also suppressed those institutions which served as proving grounds for men and women of good character and which provided outlets for idealism, service and achievement. We must therefore find new ways to re-energise `civil society‘.”

Expanded treatment of the topic here.

The role of Civil Associations:

“If Oakeshott is correct in identifying the absence of overwhelming concentrations of power as the essence of liberty, how can we account for the peculiar character of the state in Britain?

According to Oakeshott, modern European states can best be understood as torn between two contradictory methods of association which are the legacy of the medieval age. The first mode of association he calls `civil association’ and the second `enterprise’ or `purposive association’.

An `enterprise association’ is composed of persons related in the pursuit of a common interest or objective. In the pure form of such an association there are not several purposes, but one sovereign purpose. The task of leaders is to manage the pursuit of this goal and to direct individuals as appropriate. A nation might comprise many such enterprise associations, including business corporations, but here I am concerned with nation-states which take on this character. In a nation of civil associates people are related to one another, not because they share a concrete goal, or are engaged together in a substantive task, but in that they acknowledge the authority of the jurisdiction under which they live. Respect for the authority of the law does not imply that every person supports every law. The law is a changing phenomenon, and so what commands respect in a civil association is both the law as it stands and the law-reforming process. The laws specify the conditions to which every person subscribes as each pursues his or her self-chosen life style. This type of association is therefore a system of law and its jurisdiction. People are associated, not because they share the same substantive wants, but because they accept the same conditions in seeking to pursue their own goals as they believe best.5 Each is under an obligation to act justly towards others, and each person enjoys equal status under the jurisdiction. The character of the laws is central. In both an enterprise association and a civil association people are subject to rules of conduct, but in an enterprise association the rules are instrumental to the pursuit of the common aim. In the pure form of civil association, the laws are moral stipulations, not instrumental commands.

Under a system of civil association the sense of solidarity of the people as well as the legitimacy of the government derives from the shared sense that the social system gives everyone their chance to do the best they can in their self-chosen sphere of life and also from popular awareness that the continuance of liberty depends on everyone doing their bit. The sense of solidarity in an enterprise association, however, derives from the belief that each person is part of a single grand scheme, in practice either to modernise or develop the nation’s resources or to mould human character in a new direction. Thus, in a nation organised as an enterprise association, individuals are instruments of the government; whereas in a civil association the government is an instrument of the people, charged with keeping in good order the institutions which allow people to pursue their self-chosen ideals. Historically, Oakeshott characterises the two types of association as outcomes of medieval thought and practice. The enterprise association approximates to `lordship’ and the civil association to `rulership’. In medieval times kings were lords of their domain or estate, and therefore managers of their people. Kingship in the age of lordship was, therefore, estate management. The King was lord of the manor.”