The Moral Dimension in Theoretical Context

The Moral Dimension in Theoretical Context

Edward W. Lehman

Department of Sociology, New York University, New York, NY 10012, USA

Correspondence: edward.lehman@nyu.edu

SASE’s founding and the publication of The Moral Dimension are nearly concurrent events springing from Amitai Etzioni’s call for a new socio-economic theory.  A decade later, SASE, in creating its system of research networks, established “Communitarian Ideals and Civil Society”which is sponsoring today’s panel.  Our network was set up to further Amitai’s newest project, responsive communitarianism.  But for many who assembled in Vienna in 1998 socio-economics and communitarianism had at best a tenuous connection.

So why should SASE’s communitarian network now commemorate the publication of The Moral Dimension?  We do so because, despite shifts in subject matter, Amitai’s writings are marked by far more continuity than disjuncture  – i.e., buttressed by what he calls an “I&We” paradigm.  In fact, he has recently rechristened his economic theory “communitarian economics” (2007a).  Today I will argue that The Moral Dimension (1988) provides the strategic vantage point from which to assess how the “I&We” paradigm connects the Etzioni of A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations (1961) and The Active Society (1968) with the Etzioni of The New Golden Rule (1996) and Security First (2007).11

Amitai defines the “I&We” paradigm as follows: “It assumes that the study of human behaviour in general must …include a study of macro societal, historical and cultural factors.  These factors must be incorporated into a paradigm as part of the ‘We’ that encompasses and penetrates and, in part, informs the individual, the ‘I’” (2007a, pp. 168-68).  I focus here on how the “I&We” paradigm as rendered in The Moral Dimension represents Amitai’s clearest reformulation of Parsons’ two  presuppositional topics: social action (i.e, the I) and social order (i.e., the We).

The Problem of Social Action

The first two-thirds of The Moral Dimension elaborate the I or action component of the paradigm by revising Parsons’ action frame of reference (see Parsons [1937] 1968, especially pp. 727-75) which posits that social action is the fundamental unit of analysis for all social sciences.  It asserts that action, including economic action,  is simultaneously rational and material, on the one hand, and nonrational and normative, on the other.  Norms shape actors’ goals and how actors define their social situations.

While Parsons never doubted the centrality of rational action in the trajectory of history, Amitai has always been more skeptical about its primacy in social action and society generally, even in the economic realm.  As early as in Comparative Analysis ([1961] 1975) he decries judging any organization’s success using only economic efficiency as a criterion.  He sees that all participants’ behaviors have a normative component.  In The Active Society Amitai (1968) adds knowledge to values as an indispensable symbolic dimension of action.

By the time of The Moral Dimension, N/A (normative-affective) factors are seen as swamping rational (L/E or logical-empirical) factors in the making of choices and decisions.  Even economic actions are at best “sub-rational” and are more likely to be “nonrational” (1988, pp. 89-180).  Amitai still emphasizes the vital importance of knowledge for sharpening action’s rational potential.  But he argues that we must “move beyond rationalism, to take into account the positive roles of values and emotions…” (1988, p. 89).  Values shape the two irreducible goals or “utilities” of economic and social action: the self-interested pursuit of pleasure and abiding by one’s moral commitments.

But since values are “subjective”, isn’t moral relativism inevitable?  Parsons saw an unbreachable barrier between the worlds of “facts” and value judgments.  Amitai has never been comfortable with this separation and as early as in an Epilogue to The Active Society he presents a theory of “basic human needs” as a vehicle for bridging the facts-value chasm (1968, pp. 618-66).

By 1988 Amitai recognizes that any reconciliation of facts and value judgments must be part of a theory of action that acknowledges both pleasure and moral duty.  The analysis of action constitutes Parts I and II of The Moral Dimension.  Yet a study of how values (and emotions) contour the limits of rational behavior (Part II, pp. 88-180) will not suffice.  A satisfactory theory must also include a deontological component as an integral aspect of action (Part I, pp. 21-87).  This dimension legitimates specific duties and pleasures and offers participants and observers criteria to judge the authenticity of competing values without “filters”.

Amitai’s revision of action theory pervades all of his subsequent works.

The Problem of Social Order

Part III of The Moral Dimension addresses the We in Amitai’s paradigm: the problem of social order which focuses on how best to conceive of multiple acts by multiple actors to leave open a potential for coordination, cooperation and predictability.

By the late 1950s Parsonsian theory was under assault, especially by new forms of rational-choice and conflict theories.  Parsons had no convincing reply to these attacks.  For him, acceptance of social order based on anything other than morality unraveled his synthesis of rational and normative theories of action.

Amitai’s Comparative Analysis ([1961] 1975) stepped into this void.  All actions have a normative dimension (thus preserving the action frame of reference) and order is translated into a question of compliance.  Yes, Amitai says, all action has a moral dimension but social order in some settings depends on people complying with norms because it pays to (utilitarian) or because they are afraid not to (coercive); they do not always comply because they love either the rules or the rule givers (normative).

Nonetheless, Amitai has continually advocated the superiority of normative compliance while not making it order’s exclusive cornerstone.  This privileged position of normative compliance only becomes a pivotal feature of his theorizing in The Active Society where he raises the level of analysis from organizations to society.  This book’s stress on macrosocial actors broadens our understanding of compliance which in turn requires the study of consensus-formation structures.  Elites must be “responsive” to non-elites who have to be afforded a share of power, a sense of efficacy, and reduced alienation.  In short, consensus formation is normative compliance on a societal scale.

Part III of The Moral Dimension crystallizes what social order looks like.  Amitai says: “Individuals do play a role, but within the context of their collectivities” (1988, p. 181).  Building on The Active Society’s macrosociological perspective, he focuses on the “social capsule” for ordering economic and all other actions.  When a collectivity operates as a “macro-actor”choices and decisions can become more rational than those made by individuals alone (1988, p. 182).  Macro-actors play a critical role in coordinating self-interested market competition and in enhancing societal order.  They shape the “social capsule” in which self-interested (viz., market-like) actions are made more orderly by normative or coercive means  – or by a combination of the two.  In The Moral Dimension the cardinal social-order topic is the management of economic competition’s dysfunctions by moral communities and political authorities.

This heightened emphasis on the moral bases of autonomous actions and collective responsibility has led Amitai to communitarianism.  Although The Moral Dimension continues The Active Society’s stress on the positive role of government regulation, The New Golden Rule (1996) focuses is on building a “good society” by searching for shared core values via a judicious balance of rights and responsibilities.  While deontology still plays a role,  Amitai now argues that order or consensus is best formed by voluntarily building or revitalizing shared values via moral dialogues which go beyond rational deliberations.  Dialogues can define the “good”, without lapsing into “culture wars”, only when certain moral rules are followed (1996, pp. 104-6).

However, he continues to concede a secondary place to the hierarchic imposition of virtue.  In a recent essay, Amitai (2009) asserts that coping with the current global economic crisis requires consensus formation and coercive mechanisms, i.e., not just a stronger political regulation of markets but also a moral transformation that can reduce “consumerism”.

Amitai (e.g., 2004, 2007) has similarly applied this principle to the international realm:  containing terrorism and ruinous intersocietal competition calls for the establishment of supranational communities and institutions which balance security and morality.  In sum, the liabilities of unadulterated self-interest are best managed on all levels within a “social capsule” which, despite normative compliance’s unique advantages, must be ready to be coercive if the consensus formation falters.

Conclusions

In conclusion, The Moral Dimension is pivotal not just for its expansive vision of economic life.  It is also important because it is deliberately constructed around the presuppositional issues of action and order.  It thus clarifies the “I&We” paradigm and the connection between Amitai’s early works and his recent productions.  In the process, we appreciate more fully why “Toward a Communitarian Economics” would indeed be a more appropriate subtitle for this remarkable book.