Community first?
Angela Merkel no longer talks about freedom. What does that mean about her outlook for Germany?
An interesting piece in the New York Times today points out that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stopped using the word “freedom,” and now emphasizes “solidarity, justice and security.” As the article goes on to suggest, the change in rhetoric has been accompanied by a free hand given to conservatives in her own party.
In one sense, this seems like a rehash of the classic tension between what some would call individualism versus communitarianism. The former organizes political societies around the individual, the latter, around the community.
What’s odd though is how one commentator describes the shift:
“What people need right now is not someone who tells them to rely on their own capabilities but who will tell them that the state will help them out,” said Henning Riecke, a security expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations.
To American ears, this sounds like a different opposition, one between individual responsibility and collective responsibility.
The two pairs — individualism/communitarianism, individual/collective responsibility — are undoubtedly related, but they’re not clearly the same thing. Individual and collective responsibility both ask who is responsible for the individual–himself or everyone? But for communitarians, the basic unit of analysis is the community.
When Americans were making the opposite argument in the 1980s and 90s — that people ought to rely on their own capabilities, not look for a helping hand from government — it wasn’t in the name of freedom as liberty (nor were objections to personal responsibility couched in the language of “solidarity”). It was about freedom as taking responsibility for one’s choices.
In fact, it seems like Ricke is describing the American experience more than the German one. New policies that radically expand state power to boost state security aren’t the warm caress of government on the vulnerable. They’re interventions that prize the rights of the community over the rights of individuals.
–Sam
Related posts:
- Untramelled Liberty = Community?
- John Ford, philosopher
- How the West was lost
- Changing American Dream
- Looking backwards, moving forwards
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