The Monochrome Society

Amitai Etzioni is one of the most insightful observers of American society, a brilliant intellectual, and a great writer. He has best articulated the political and social "third way" between Left and Right that has powerfully shaped the agendas of the Clinton administration, Tony Blair's New Labour Party in Great Britain, and the new administration of George W. Bush. The Monochrome Society can serve as either a provocative introduction to Etzioni's thinking for first-time readers or as a fascinating demonstration of the power of communitarian thought for readers familiar with his work. Neither group should miss this book.

At the book's more philosophical end, Etzioni stresses the complex intellectual and affective sources of individual choice. One example, explored in 'Suffer the Children', is the penchant of civil libertarian groups to portray children as 'mini-adults'. Based largely on tacit and deeply questionable assumptions about human agency, this approach significantly distorts attempts to address the needs of children. More generally, in 'Social norms: the Rubicon of Social Science', Etzioni notes that the failure of jurists and political theorists to appreciate social norms may seriously effect the approach to, and efficacy of, social policy. A person's choices, he writes, 'reflect the culture or values of their community, their social formulations of the good.... often in ways of which they are unaware (229)'. Similarly, Etzioni asks 'Is Shaming Shameful?' or is shaming, on the basis of social norms, a more humane, effective, and democratic alternative to punishment?

While The Monochrome Society revolves around a 'concern with social virtues and the social foundation on which they rest (xiii)', most of the book focuses on specific public issues. Etzioni discusses, for example, both the possibility of cross-cultural moral judgments and the related, surprisingly widespread, agreement on values among America's diverse racial and ethnic groups. In 'The Post-Affluent Society', he notes the movement towards, and virtues of, a lifestyle of 'voluntary simplicity' and modest consumption. He writes as well about the role of holidays, of a 'stakeholder' approach to corporate governance, and the potential of 'virtual' communities. Each of these chapters provide hopeful and constructive contributions to public debate.

Throughout the book, Professor Etzioni underscores the fact that advocates of 'civil society' must be clearer about the substance of the institutions they champion. A voluntary group may as easily be dedicated to racial hatred as to bowling. Ultimately, it is the part institutions may play in the creation of a 'good' society that matters most. Written in an uncomplicated style and gracious manner, The Monochrome Society is a significant and practical contribution to that end.

The Monochrome Society also carries forward an argument Etzioni has made before about the advantages of modern communities. Many fear that the revival of community will also revive unwanted invasions of privacy, and dangerous restrictions on freedom. But Etzioni argues that this fear is unwarranted in contemporary pluralistic societies, in which individuals are "able to choose, to a significant extent, the communities to which they are psychologically committed" Others have the opposite fear, that communities in contemporary pluralistic societies are too weak to foster virtue. But Etzioni argues that the weakness of contemporary communities, while troubling, is also exaggerated. The story of a "woman, convicted of welfare fraud [who] preferred to be jailed rather than wear a sign admitting, "I stole food from poor people," indicates the moral authority of at least one modern community, and Etzioni has many such stories to tell. Modernity has weakened communities, so that they will not be puritanical, while leaving them some resources, so that their task of fostering social virtues will not be quixotic.

In this way, Etzioni plants his communitarianism firmly on the middle ground between extreme advocates of liberty and extreme advocates of community. However, it is hard to see exactly where Etzioni stands on this vast middle ground because The Monochrome Society contains two communitarian visions. Call one Communitarianism A and the other Communitarianism B.

Communitarianism A, represented in such essays as "Is Shaming Shameful," argues that liberty depends on moral norms that are transmitted partly through the laws but mainly through institutions like the family and civic associations. It argues, also, that a good society promotes a limited set of core values and virtues. To support the arguments of Communitarianism A, one need not be a communitarian. One can be a liberal, like Arthur Schlesinger, who defends the idea that the United States is defined by a set of core values every bit as forcefully as Etzioni does in "The Monochrome Society." Or one can be a neoconservative; indeed, the arguments of Communitarianism A find a natural home in the pages of the Public Interest. Communitarianism A is directed not against liberalism but against liberalism gone extreme.

If the Public Interest is a natural home for the arguments of Communitarianism A, Dissent is a natural home for those of Communitarianism B, represented in such essays as "The Post-Affluent Society." Unlike Communitarianism A, Communitarianism B makes a frontal assault not only on certain extreme liberalisms but also on classical liberalism, or at least on the commercial spirit that has long been associated with it. Communitarianism B cannot utter the following words and phrases without putting them in scare quotes: "private property"; the "their" in "their property"; the "natural" in "natural rights." When Etzioni espouses Communitarianism B, he sympathizes with the voluntary simplicity movement, which views wanting more than one needs as at least prima facie evidence of an unhealthy concern with status. He writes hopefully of the emergence of a moderate counterculture grounded in postmaterialist values. Communitarianism B is not inconsistent with Communitarianism A but goes far beyond it in its desire for a transvaluation of the values of modern liberal societies.

Moreover, Communitarianism A is inegalitarian because it emphasizes how moral norms are internalized by "nonrational means, such as "group enthusiasm generated through rituals and appeals." When Etzioni espouses Communitarianism A, he tend to speak of elite "designers" of community who, with the help of expert knowledge, determine how to balance face-to-face and virtual elements of community, or how to "recast" holidays to serve the needs of communities better. Communitarianism B, on the other hand, emphasizes dialogue, a highly egalitarian mode of generating the core values to which a community devotes itself. But there is a tension between egalitarian dialogue and inegalitarian persuasion that does not dissolve altogether in Etzioni's observation that human beings are "both persuadable and deliberative creatures."

Similarly, Communitarianism A emphasizes the authority of communities, where authority is understood to restrict the scope of rational choice severely. In a section of "Social Norms: The Rubicon of Social Science," Etzioni argues that many, though not all, norms "are passed from one generation to the next; and they derive authority by virtue of their being a part of tradition rather than reflecting deliberations." Communitarianism B, on the other hand, is so reluctant to restrict individual freedom that the same tradition whose authority contrasts so sharply with reason in one essay becomes merely "one major source of options people consider," in another, in which Etzioni also insists that the "conflict is not between choice and tradition." The Monochrome Society defends communitarianism well against a number of stock charges. But perhaps it does not do enough to rescue communitarianism from a charge Etzioni is impatient with, namely that it is vague. Communitarianism A and communitarianism B are not contradictory, but they define such different visions of community on such different points on the political spectrum that their tensions cannot easily be ignored.