[MUSIC]

>> So who would be the standard bearer

for the Communitarian view
in, or one of the standard bearers in the,
in the tradition.
>> Well I think the best examples is,
is Rousseau.
Rousseau in the discourse on the origins
of inequality, explicitly takes on Hobbes.
Hobbes supposes that our private goods are
inherently conflicting, and they're
inherently conflicting because
of scarcity.
>> Right.
If I want something and you want it, we
become enemies.
>> Right.
And because we're rational, and this is
really
an interesting point about Hobbes Because
we're rational, we
can see into the future, and we can
recognize
that we're going to have needs in the
future.
>> Yes.
>> And therefore we're going to want to
have resources today to meet those needs.
>> Right.
>> And so, scarcity is augmented by our
rationality.
If we were not such rational group beings,
we'd be like dogs.
We'd be, we'd eat our meal, and then we'd
fall asleep.
>> Yes.
[LAUGH]
>> Until we got hungry again.
>> And Russo challenges this notion of,
of rationality and scarcity being linked?
>> No, no, he doesn't.
He he doesn't approach it quite that way.
This is, the first idea is that material,
the goods
and things that we want to satisfy our
appetites are scarce.
The second
idea is that we, the scarcity is augmented
by this for, capacity to look forward.
The third idea is that we all have
an inherent desire for what Hobbes calls
glory.
>> Yes.
>> Or we might think of it as status.
>> Right.
>> I want to stand above you.
You want to stand above me.
The thing with status is that it's zero
sum by definition
>> Right.
>> Because my status is a function of
how I stand relative to you.
So in the beginning
of part two of The Leviathan Hobbes
supposes the question, why do some
social animals live together in societies,
he mentions the ants and the bees.
>> Yes
>> Without some kind of power
structure.
>> Right.
His answer is, man whose joy consists in
comparing himself with others
can desire only that which is eminent.
>> Mh-hm, yes
>> And so that's that's the intrinsic
scarcity.
And Rousseau's critique of Hobbes is to
say, look, these kinds of desires aren't
hardwired.
>> Right.
These kinds of desires are a function of
the social world in which we.
>> Yes.
>> If we live in some kinds of social
worlds, we'll develop those kinds
of desires, and in those social worlds,
there is not much of a common good.
Because if your interests are inherently
antagonistic.
>> Yes.
>> Then there isn't
going to be a common good between you.
But in other social worlds where you come
to have desires that
are compatible with the satisfaction of
other people, and therefore no desires
that are based upon invidious distinctions
of status, then you can have
a common good and you can organize the
society in accordance with that.
>> So some societies are organized to
promote this
pursuit of honor or what Rousseau always
called vanity.
And other, and
others, could, they could organize, they
could be organized differently.
>> Yes.
>> Or be disorganized, I guess.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Is another way,
>> Yes, well, and of course to the
extent that honor
and so forth are drives of the people in
that society.
>> Right.
>> The societies are likely to be
characterized by high levels of
competition and violence.
>> Yes.
>> Or practices like dueling and other
kinds of practices that.
That lead to violence.
Pinker makes
a big point of this in his book on The
Better Angels of Our Nature.
>> Yeah, maybe you can say a word about
that.
Because we'll be fast-forwarding to, to
more contemporary discussions.
Steven Pinker, who is a psychologist and
and commentator on social and political
issues.
has, has talked about the potential for
overcoming
violence, or the, actually the historical
evolution away
from violence.
>> Yes.
>> Maybe you'll say a word about that.
>> Yes, well, Pinkers argument is that
we, we have moved
away from violence, both within domestic
societies and at the world level.
As a result of the creation of political
structures that secure
order for large, for large numbers of
people and therefore we,
people don't have to, as it were, rely on
self help to form some defense.
>> Right.
>> And so we're moving away from the
kind of Hobbesian state of nature
>> Yes.
>> Toward's a state of civil order.
And he actually draws on Norbert Elias'
work
on the civilizing process too, he
discussed that.
>> So as you know in this class, we've
read someone who
was we start off really with someone who
was much more pessimistic than
Professor Pinker with Garrett Hardin's
essay
on the Tragedy of the Commons, right?
And that seems to echo Hobbes.
In the sense that there's, although it may
not be about honor in, in Arn's case,
but there's a sense of, of conflict that
you pursue rationally.
I mean to go back to this notion of seeing
into the future, you pursue things
rationally but our very
rationality leads us to tragic conflict.
>> Right, right, this is the, this
is that paradise we were talking about
before.
From an individual point of view, I'm
inclined to advance my own private good.
>> Right.
>> Since you're inclined to advance
your own private
good, we could end up actually creating a
situation
that's worse for both of us even though
we're
being very, we're rationally pursuing our
own private goods.
And Hardin
specifically talks about common property
situations.
So, an example would be ocean fisheries.
The we've seen for example the exhaustion
of
many of the richest, worlds richest fish
stocks.
This is a result of the fact that
individual fisher Fishers.
>> Fishers.
[CROSSTALK] [LAUGH]
>> Go into these waters and take up as
much
fish as they can.
>> Right.
It's in their self-interest to do so.
>> Exactly.
Right.
And, and so as a result of everybody
acting this way, The sustain, they, their
total yield
exceeds the sustainable level of
harvesting and over
a while, the fish stocks begin to die off.
Now they, their, their mutual interest to
self, to back to
self-restraint, but they can't do it as
individuals, because if I
restrain myself and you don't,
>> Right.
>> I pay the full cost.
Of that self restraint.
>> Right.
>> I have a smaller catch, and I don't
get any of the benefits.
>> So it's rational to assume that the
other guy would, would be a free rider
>> Exactly.
>> Or would take advantage of the
situation.
And so, to prohi, to prevent that, or to
mitigate its effects.
One pursues one's own self interest, but
the result is that everyone
is worse off.
>> And we all, and we all spiral down,
exactly.
And that's the same dynamic that Hobbes
thought would
characterize the state of nature where
we're concerned about security.
I want to, to secure myself and so
therefore I see you as an, as an enemy and
so therefore It makes sense for me to
strike
first to get you before you can get me.
>> Yeah.
>> But it's exactly the same on your
part, and so as a result of this,
we're both extremely insecure.
And for both Hobbs and Hardin, the only
way that they
could think of of getting out of the
situation is to erect.
A form of authority
>> Right
>> That will limit our choices and
sanction us, coerce us.
>> Right
>> If we violate those surf's because
otherwise
we'll all be defecting, we'll all be free
riders.
And we'll fail
to bring about the common good.
>> So, so the, you can't, from that
perspective you can't discover or
you don't discover the common good, or the
social good on your own.
It has to be drilled into you, so to speak
by a, by a, an
outside authority.
>> Absolutely, and specifically talking
about an an institution that wields
coercive power,
the ability to ultimately back up those
rules that require our self restraint.
With force.
>> Yeah.
>> So that it becomes in our own
private interest to act in accordance with
a rule.
>> Right.
>> That promotes the, the interests of
the group as a whole.
>> So we don't have to deal with the
authorities who have the
power of violence, or the power to fine
us, or, or imprison us.
>> Yeah, of course that's, that's the
problem.
[LAUGH]
>> You have a new problem.
>> You, you erect the authority to
control this problem and then you
hit a new one that the authority then
becomes exploited and so forth.
>> So this is in some ways the flip
side of the Adam Smith version, right?
Or where they, where that the pursuit
of our individual interest is mutually
reenforcing
in a way that everyone benefits to
everybody's, the tide comes in, everybody
rises.
>> Right, and
the first law of social science is some
are, some aren't.
>> Right.
>> So, and so what we really need to
think
about, and what is done in a lot of our
courses
here at Wesleyan and especially in, in the
Social sciences, economics
in particular, sociology, political
science, are what we call government here.
>> Right.
>> It is to try to understand the
conditions under which spontaneous
self-interested behavior generates good
outcomes.
>> Yeah.
>> For the group as a whole, and
conditions under which it doesn't.
>> Right.
>> And so, this goes back to Harden's
point about the tragedy of the commons.
The first commons you could say is the is,
is the land itself.
>> Right.
>> And if you think about say the way a
hunter-gatherer society operates, they
treat the land as a commons.
They don't
actually take physical possession of the
territory.
>> Right.
>> They harvest the, the goods and
certainly, the foods,
>> Stuff.
>> The berries [LAUGH] and so on that
they find in nature.
And that's fine as long as the carrying
capacity of
the land is greater than the population of
hunter gatherers.
But if the population of hunter/gatherers
begins to grow, they will begin to
over harvest
>> Right, right.
>> Just like the fishers in the ocean
fisheries, and as a result of this,
it will degrade the carrying capacity of
the land and everybody will be badly off.
The solution to that problem is
privatization and this is, this is
The argument that we find first made in
this form by John Locke.
>> Right.
>> In the Second Treatise of
Government.
If we divide up the land,
>> Right.
>> And we move into settled
agriculture,
the land becomes so much more productive.
That we will be able to support a much
larger population than we
could have supported by treating the land
as a commons and we won't
degrade it because every individual
propriater has an interest in a, as in
insuring that the future flow of product
from the land will be high.
Because they pay the full cost of
any investment or self-restraint they have
to make.
But they also get the full benefit.
Whereas in the fisheries case that we
talked about a minute ago, they
pay the full cost but they only get a
small fraction of the benefit.
So by dividing up the common property
resource, that's how
Harden is using the word commons.
By making it, dividing it up into
private property you can so increase
productivity, says Locke.
>> Yes.
>> That we'll all be better off than we
were before.
>> So from Locke's perspective we don't
need such a strong external authority
because it's in our self interest to
preserve our land for the future.
We're seeing into the future, and in this
case, seeing into
the future actually helps us be more
productive?
>> Yes exactly, that's, I mean of
course, prior to Hobbes,
the great philosophers of both the
classical Greece and
Rome, of the Arab world, of the Christian
Middle
Ages all thought that reason was the key
to human harmony.
Because through reason, we could grasp the
order of things
and see what our, where our duties lay and
so forth.
So Hobbes has the extraordinary
originality to turn that on its head and
see reason is actually in some ways the
source of our, of our discontent.
>> Yes, and Harden, I guess picks up on
that in a way, right?
Its because from Hardin's perspective its
also reason in a kind of, it's almost, I
don't know if it's what we'd call it
game theory at that time, but If you
know the rational perspective will lead us
to disaster.
>> Exactly.
>> Why did he think, what was he
thinking about at that time?
What was the issue?
>> Well, he was specifically thinking
about the problem of
population and at that time, there was a
lot of concern
that population was growing at
unsustainable rates.
>> Right.
>> And the, and he was saying we
should think about population or natality
decisions reproductive decisions
as really kind of commons, because if the
world can only support a certain number of
people
>> Right.
>> Then whenever you have offspring,
you are not simply
effecting just yourself.
>> Right.
>> And your immediate household.
You're effecting everybody else in the
world.
>> That carrying capacity of the
planet, I guess.
Right?
>> Exactly.
Yeah, and so he, he thought that the
solution would be to adopt some
kind of authoritative limitations, perhaps
of the sort you saw
a few years later in China limiting what
people could do in terms of birth.
This is a, you know,
characteristic kind of Hobbesian solution.
>> Right.
[LAUGH]
>> You pass a law.
You enforce the law.
[LAUGH] With the police.
>> Right.
>> And he thought very much along the
lines that you were just suggesting that.
We can't preach to people and say, you
should be responsible, you should practice
self restraint, because, those people are
be,
in effect being being played as chumps.
>> Yeah.
>> Cause they'll practice self
restraint.
The other people will go on behaving badly
>> Right.
>> And over time the self-restrainers
will disappear from the population.
It's kind of an evolutionary.
>> Right, because those other people
will be having all thpse children.
>> Exactly.
Of course there's a lot of assumptions
being made there.
Like, if I came from a big family I'm
going to have a big family.
>> Right.
>> I'm a lip breeder.
My children will be breeder's.
But, whatever.
>> But I guess that the, the article
was you
know, it's brief, it's it's it seems in
some ways delimited.
But it caught on so much, because, perhaps
because of this notion that it was
our very rationality, the thing we're so
proud about, that was leading us to
disaster.
I mean, I guess in some ways, Horkheimer
and Adorno made a,
a, a, a parallel argument, like
it's, enlightenment itself is leading to
Fascism.
That rationality leads to disaster.
I mean, there's a, there's a, I guess, in
the
post war period, there was almost a
critique of rationality with.
Does that seem reasonable?
That
>> Yeah.
I would actually perhaps say it's a
critique of instrumental rationality.
If you think about say, a Kantian idea of
practical reason
which involves the idea of finding a
rational basis for norms,
like the norm of respecting other persons,
treating them as ends in themselves.
Hob, Kant saw, rather in a pre-Hobbesian
way, so to speak.
Kant saw the development of the human
capacity for reason as enabling them
to grasp moral principles and therefor to
learn how to live with one another.
>> Yes.
And to bring a better situation
ultimately of perpetual peace in the
world.
>> So that external authority gets
internalized, right?
We have the, we have our norms that we
conform to because
the norms are reasonable, and we restrain
ourselves rather than needing the cops.
>> [LAUGH] Exactly and in fact, this is
Well, we
probably need a little bit of cops in the
background.
[LAUGH] Because you don't want to think, I
mean, of
course the anarchists, I mean, you think
about William Godwin,
they thought we could really do the, do,
do the whole
thing and there was no need for any kind
of external authority.
For people like Rousseau and Kant and
people in that tradition We
need to recognize that we're imperfectly
reasonable and therefore there is
slippage.
But the idea, the core idea behind this
Kantian, and I,
actually he got it from Rousseau, I mean
he only said that
>> Yes.
>> Is the idea of, the question of how
could we be free, and live in society with
others.
'because if we're living in society, the
society has to have an order.
Otherwise, it's just a deglomeration and
if it
has an order, then there are rules or
norms that we're going to have to conform
to
in order to bring, to create that order.
But if I have to conform to those rules,
then how can I be free?
And their answer
is, well if those rules are rules that,
you, yourself will because you see they're
reasonable.
At least that's in Kant's terms.
Then as rational beings, you are
conforming to
those rules is conforming to your own
decisions.
>> Yes.
>> And therefore you are free.
>> So for when Rousseau says oh,
freedom or the highest
form of freedom, is obedience to a law
that you give yourself,
Harden's saying you'd be irrational, you'd
be a chump to give that law to yourself.
Because other people are going to be
cheating and you're missing out.
And worse than that, you'll disappear.
>> Exactly.
Unless of course, there's this external
authority that's sanctioning things.
The law, yeah.
>> So, so tell us a little bit about
critique's of Harding.
because I, pretty, although it caught on,
it
was, it, it captured the imagination of
people.
It also gave rise
pretty quickly to critique's within
economics, within social theory.
>> Yes, absolutely.
the, the I think the There are number of
critiques.
And they begin, they move away from
Hardin's,
or the Hardin/Hobbes kind of H squared,
[LAUGH]...
>> [LAUGH]
>> Position,
in an incremental way.
There's no bright line here.
So, we might think about the work of
Eleanor Ostrom
>> Right.
>> Who won the Nobel Prize.
And she did, actually
did empirical studies of how social groups
manage commons.
>> Right.
How farmers living in a relatively
semi-arid
area for example, managed water resources,
and
so on.
>> Yes.
>> And she talked about the, all kinds
of social arrangements
through which people could create, provide
public goods for themselves.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Without having a centralized system
of control and sanctioning.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Without the, the.
>> Yes.
>> The, the police.
>> Yes.
>> So to speak.
Now, there are always police in the sense
that,
if we are involved in a situation that is
defined by norms that are specifying forms
of reciprocity.
>> Right.
>> Your failure to conform to those
norms will lead your
the people that you're cooperating with to
withdraw cooperation from you.
>> Right.
Right.
>> And so.
Is, to the extent, for example, that your
behavior is visible.
>> Right, yeah.
>> So we can tell whether you're
playing by the rules.
>> Right.
>> And the extent that we
already have a normative structure in
place.
>> Yeah.
>> Then, the system can be relatively
self-regulating.
And we can, because it'll be in your
long-term self interest.
>> Yes.
>> To conform to the rules.
Uh-huh
>> Not alienating my fellows, yeah.
>> Exactly, because the opportunities
for reciprocity with others
make you so much better off than you would
be.
It doesn't pay to,
to take a one off and deviate then and
have people withdraw from you.
This is the kind of core idea behind the
idea of social capital.
>> Right.
And Bob Putnam, you may know his work
>> Sure
>> In Italy, where he compares
governmental performance in difference
areas of Italy
>> Yeah.
>> And argues that there are areas
of Italy where, the civic engagement and
political
engagement and the self-organizing
activities of people in
social groups to provide themselves with
various goods.
Beginning in sort of the late middle ages
with security and moving
forward into the modern period with
technology, knowledge, education and so
forth.
Creates this high level of social
capital and high levels of governmental
performance
in these areas where other areas it
created very low
levels of civic engagement and low levels
of government performance.
The irony is, is that the, the areas with
the low levels is, of
civic culture Were areas that had the pure
Hobbsian solution.
>> Yes, yeah.
Because they add the problem that create
this
strong government, which actually doesn't
solve the problem,
it creates other problem, right?
Yeah.
>> Right, and it create, it tends to
break up the one on one relationships
among people.
>> Yes.
>> That generates these webs of
interconnectedness and so forth.
And there's an economic basis to this as
well.
>> Right.
>> Because in the North where you had
these things, you had small
proprietorships and you had, artisanal
based economies and
that sort of thing.
Where as in the South, [COUGH] you had
large land owners
and plantations, well, what we would call
today, plantation style agriculture.
And you see the same thing in the United
States.
Where in the North you have very strong,
lots of small independent proprietors
developing as Tocqueville noted years ago.
>> Yeah
>> The associational
life where they cooperated together to
meet their mutual needs, and so forth.
Whereas in the South with the system of
slavery and
the system on the large plantations and so
forth, you didn't
have these kinds of things and the North
is the
bastion of democracy, high levels of
social capital and so forth.
>> Yeah.
>> So.
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