Community: A Work in Progress

Professor Ian Maitland advances a version of utilitarianism, constrained by Robert Nozick’s minimal state, that finds no connection between the pervasiveness of “market values,†which he gamely pursues, and the kind of problems that dominate our social scene. In his judgment, the prevailing tendency towards community or communitarian ends needlessly obstructs freedom, the overriding value of the libertarian-minimal state. When coupled with wrongheaded and perverse policies, communitarianism shackles the free market with crippling inefficiencies. This paper will interrogate Maitland’s characterization of communitarianism, challenge his view that traditional values can be instrumentalized without harming community, and paint a more plausible and complex picture of the communitarian tendency.