Robert Paul Wolff's "Credo"

Here is a wonderful statement of belief by a modern philosopher, Robert Paul Wolff. I like it because the third paragraph is a wonderful refutation of libertarian philosophy (we are independent beings bound on by fleeting "contracts"). Instead, he presents the wonderfully positive view that we are a social species who has done wonderful things through our collaborations:

We human beings live in this world by thoughtfully, purposefully, intelligently transforming nature so that it will satisfy our needs and our desires. We call this activity of transforming nature "production," and it is always, everywhere, inescapably a collective human activity. Every moment that we are alive we are relying on what those before us have discovered or invented or devised. There is no technique, however primitive, that is the invention of one person alone. Like it or not, we are all in this life together. Even those giants of industry who think of themselves as self-made men are completely dependent for their empire building upon the collective knowledge and practice of the entire human species.

All of us eat grain we have not grown, fruit we have not planted, meat we have not killed or dressed. We wear clothes made of wool we have not combed and carded, spun or woven. We live in houses we have not built, take medicines we neither discovered nor produced, read books we have not written, sing songs we did not compose. Each of us is completely dependent on the inherited knowledge, skill, labor, and memory of all who have gone before us, and all who share the earth with us now.

We have a choice. We can acknowledge our interdependence, embracing it as the true human condition; or we can deny it, deluding ourselves into thinking that we are related to one another only as parties to a bargain entered into in a marketplace. We can recognize that we need one another, and owe to one another duties of generosity and loyalty. Or we can pretend to need no one save through the intermediation of the cash nexus.

I choose to embrace our interdependence. I choose to acknowledge that the food I eat, the clothes on my back, and the house in which I live are all collective human products, and that when any one of us has no food or clothing or shelter, I am diminished by that lack.

There are two images alive in America, competing for our allegiance. The first is the image of the lone horseman who rides across an empty plain, pausing only fleetingly when he comes to a settlement, a man apparently having no need of others, self-sufficient [so long as someone makes the shells he needs for his rifle or the cloth he needs for his blanket], refusing to acknowledge that he owes anything at all to the human race of which he is, nonetheless, a part.

The other is the image of the community that comes together for a barn-raising, working as a group on a task that no one man can do by himself, eating a communal meal when the day is done, returning to their homes knowing that the next time one of their number needs help, they will all turn out to provide it.

These images are simple, iconic, even primitive, but the choice they present us with remains today, when no one rides the plains any more, and only the Amish have barn-raisings. Today, as I write, there are tens of millions of Americans who cannot put a decent meal on the table in the evening for their families, scores of millions threatened with the loss of their homes. And yet, there are hundreds of thousands lavishing unneeded wealth on themselves, heedless of the suffering of their fellow Americans, on whose productivity, inventiveness, and labor they depend for the food they eat, the clothing they wear, the homes they live in, and also for the luxuries they clutch to their breasts.

The foundation of my politics is the recognition of our collective interdependence. In the complex world that we have inherited from our forebears, it is often difficult to see just how to translate that fundamental interdependence into laws or public policies, but we must always begin from the acknowledgement that we are a community of men and women who must care for one another, work with one another, and treat the needs of each as the concern of all.

If all of this must be rendered in a single expression, let it be: From each of us according to his or her ability; to each of us according to his or her need.

That last paragraph is interesting. That is the language of Karl Marx in his 1875 text Critique of the Gotha Programme. I have no love for Marx, he was a selfish, hideously fanatical, ideological man. But his words were at times wonderful. You just don't want to ever allow a Communist to "implement" any of Marx's ideas. Marx was a hateful person who squelched anybody who disagreed, and the Communists carried this to an even more vicious extreme. But there is some good in what Marx said. A lot of what Marx said was already in the socialist literature.

I like the collaborationist side of socialism, but I could never buy into the coercive idolization of "the State" by socialists. I prefer a minimal Jeffersonian state. I believe in a strong private economy (libertarianism/liberalism) but I also believe in a strong non-profit sector (collectivism/socialism). I want both because I believe strength comes from diversity. Just like a rich ecology involves many species with many niches. A strong human society involves a mixed economy of private, public, and non-profit organizations.

With that caveat, I'm a big fan of Wolff's Credo.