The former UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, once famously said: “And, you know, there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.” It was interpreted to mean that individuals and their families should seek their own interests first and foremost, all the way and all the time, and let others look after themselves.
Others have said that she was misinterpreted, in that what she really meant was that people should first try to solve their own problems and those of their families and friends, and only resort to government as a last resort.
Recently, I wrote about the ‘economy of communion’ in the context of the failure of the free market. In brief, the economy of communion encourages businesses to consider themselves as an integral part of the communities they operate in.
Maybe Thatcher was right. There should not be such a thing as society. However, we should not move backwards from the concept of a society to the concept of the individual; but we need to evolve from a society into a community.
The concept of a community is based on the concept of the common good, emphasising solidarity and subsidiarity. It considers not just one aspect of well-being, that is economic well-being, but other aspects as well, such as social well-being, cultural heritage, effective democratic institutions, education, as well as moral and spiritual well-being.
We need to re-establish the framework of values within which our economy functions and develop our society into a community
The sense of community gives us a sense of mutual accountability, the process by which persons agree to be held responsible for the commitments they have made to each other, by respecting the law of the land, and relies on trust around shared objectives. We know where and how to contribute for the good of others. Moreover, the sense of community places the human person at the centre and the economy is there to serve the human person and not the other way round.
In order to evolve from a society into a community, we do need to think creatively. We have grown accustomed to believe that all we need is a government, a parliament and a free market for things to function well. For too many years we have led ourselves to believe that as long as we have a parliament that legislates, a market that is allowed to operate freely and a government that oversees everything, then we have a successful and sustainable economic model.
This thinking presumes that when we think of the word ‘state’, it has been taken to mean the representative institutions, which it is not; while the market has been taken to mean the economy as a whole, which it is not. Institutions are just one aspect of a representative democracy, which also includes the provision of public goods without discrimination, good laws and the correct application of those laws. Equally the market is just one aspect of economic democracy, which also includes efficiency, the correct functioning of markets and the fair distribution of wealth.
These notions have failed us and, in some cases, have failed us miserably. Today we recognise this approach does not work and that economic development, progress and the common good require a great deal more than a parliament, a government and a free market. This is why we need to think creatively.
We need to develop the participative element in our democracy and promote civil dialogue and social cohesion. Equally we need to stop thinking of the human person in a single dimension – the ‘consumer citizen’ – and relations among persons being reduced to the level of just transactions.
All this applies to Malta as well. We need to challenge ourselves in the way our economy is functioning. We cannot continue to allow ourselves to be sacrificed on the altar of the economy, where social relationships do not count at all, but the only concept that counts is profit and, worse still, profit at all costs.
If we have any doubt about all this, let us just look at only one element – the irreparable harm that has been caused to the environment. We need to re-establish the framework of values within which our economy functions and develop our society into a community.