What is the common good and who cares? It’s been on my mind since taking a continuing ed class about the writing of the Constitution. The instructor insisted that delegates to the Constitutional Convention were focused on the common good as the standard to be met. They never arrived at a shared definition of what it might be, but they created a constitutional framework through which it might be achieved.
It was a great accomplishment because the Constitution became an enduring framework able to work toward a common good not yet envisioned. Convention delegates’ personal ideas about the common good were limited to what was communally good for white men of property. They accepted slavery and the dehumanization of blacks; they were ambivalent about free white men of inferior means and status; the common good for women was what men said it was. There’s no point in getting upset with them. They did what they were able to do, and it was extraordinary. They created a revolutionary form of representative democracy in which checks and balances kept tyranny at bay, made government subordinate to the electorate, and made it possible for the system to accommodate new ways of thinking that have slowly overcome the limitations of old ways. Through it all, the idea that government should serve the common good remained. But what is the common good?
Philosophers have debated the subject for at least 2,500 years in two primary streams of thought. One stream emphasizes the importance of public goods, things held in common to be shared by the whole community. For instance, common ideals and social values, the village common pasture, or access to camp, hunt, graze and farm on lands owned by no one. The other stream emphasizes the ways in which private goods are distributed to each person for their exclusive use. Goods like rights to private property, free speech, relief from servitude to a lord, and so on. The two streams are not mutually exclusive. Each contributes to a greater whole, but where do these goods come from? The genius of the founding fathers was their determination that all goods, public and private, reside with the people, and are granted by them to the government through constitutions and laws. Other emerging European democracies had it the other way round: all goods belonged to the government (monarch) which granted them, as it saw fit, to the people.
That’s an obvious over simplification, but it will suffice for the purpose of this short essay because it’s time to move on. If the common good is so important, what’s become of it in our own day?
In recent times there was an unwritten, ill-defined consensus among most Americans about what was meant by the common good. It lasted through the war years into the 1960s and a little beyond. Some called it the liberal consensus. At its core was the ideal of a white middle class family living comfortably, but not extravagantly, in a nice neighborhood. It defined what it meant to be American. Shared values and government programs were the common goods that made that life possible as The American Dream. 1960s civil rights movements and legislation demonstrated that the black community had been systematically excluded from the common good; their voices were never considered an important part of any national consensus. Protests declared that the common good wasn’t common if blacks were excluded. Vietnam War protests soon shredded the notion that there ever was a consensus, even among the white population. Protesters challenged the legitimacy of governments, public institutions, standards of public morality, and values of the white middle class. Ironically, the era’s social disruptions created a long awaited opening for libertarian business interests to begin dismantling government policies and programs that created the white middle class so they could be more free to reduce the cost of labor, and less hindered by unwanted oversight, all in the name of individual rights as the epitome of the common good. The decline of the middle class had begun just as minorities were gaining access to it.
Since then, the language of rights, especially property rights, has been the dominant Republican theme. The language of rights, especially civil rights, has been the dominant Democratic theme. Rights, one way or the other, have become the anchor for however the common good is understood. Tea party libertarianism is determined to make individual rights to do as one wishes with what is one’s own the essence of the common good, with little room for anything held in common as a public good. Liberals also emphasize the importance of individual rights from a different perspective: the right not to be systematically oppressed by others, or denied equal access to benefits of private property rights.
The language of rights is not unimportant, but if rights do not also demand responsibility and obligation, they mean nothing. The common good requires it. Rights claimed for one’s self must be partnered with responsibilities to use those rights in ways that are not harmful to, or deny the the rights of, others. It means they come with an obligation to be concerned for the rights of the whole. The founding fathers understood that. True, for them the whole was limited to free white propertied men, but it isn’t for us. The whole must include not only all persons, but also creation itself.
The language of rights, especially private property rights, has become so dominant that it’s all but silenced the language of community, and the importance of public goods, communal goods. Fear mongering has made communal synonymous with communism. Associated anti-tax sentiments equate public expenditures with theft. The language of rights is fatally weak if it ignores goods held in common, public goods, as essential to the existence of a sustainable, prosperous community, and the responsibility of each member of the community to contribute equitably to their cost.
Public investment created the economic, social and physical infrastructure that made the white middle class possible. Symbiotically, private investment rode its coattails, adding value on the way. That comprehensive infrastructure is old and wearing out. Anti-government, anti-tax interests have undermined its foundation and prevented its adequate maintenance. The world has changed since it was created in the post war years. It needs to be replaced. A new understanding of what infrastructure is requires public investment in health, education, information networks, cybersecurity, environmental policies and much more. Essential elements of the old infrastructure need to be reinvented: affordable housing assistance, low cost post secondary education, secured voting rights, universal health care, highways, electrical grids, and so on. The language of rights must make way for the language of community to have an equal voice. Private rights cannot be fully enjoyed if the social, economic and physical conditions are not present to develop the prosperity of the whole community.