As long as those whose basic needs have been well-sated, whose creature comforts have been secured, keep defining the purpose of life as making more and more dough in order to purchase more and more consumer goods, we will not rein in wild capitalism, protect the environment (climate included), advance social justice, or, arguably, stop killing one another. Only after we come to see that additional goods add precious little to our happiness; that pursuing them is Sisyphean — the more we gain, the more we seek; and that deep contentment and human flourishing rise out of spiritual projects and bonding with and caring for others, shall we be able to come to terms with much that bedevils us.

These are hardly new thoughts. What is current — and provides the reason the new President is well advised to keep this topic in mind and in the public eye — is that the incessant quest for ever more material goods is at the heart of the economic crisis. President Obama correctly mocked President Bush for calling on people to go shopping after the September 11, 2001 attacks on America. However, today Americans and the citizens of many other nations are again urged to go shopping to dig us out of the current economic crisis. (This is what a stimulus package is all about.) Moreover, there is no doubt that given the way the economic system is set up, if people do not buy stuff, there will be more unemployment and more people will lose their homes and empty their retirement funds.

However, the good way out of the crisis does not lead to a return to the old ways of the better-off purchasing ever larger homes, stocking them with ever more appliances, and driving SUVs and Humvees. It does not call for people to save nothing and to go into debt in order to buy still more goods — many of which those who are better-off do not really need — nor for people to labor long hours, take work home, delay retirement, send their teenagers to labor at fast food chains, and cut short social and cultural life to make some more money.

The precept of a good life calls for setting ceilings for purchases and for work, for setting fairly modest limits on that which we seek to own and purchase, and on the amount of time we are willing take away from our children, spouses, friends, communities and ourselves, in order to work.

There are a whole slew of public policies that can express, foster, recognize and promote the good life. A steeply progressive income tax will do wonders. Consumption tax (or VAT) on all items that are not defined as basic goods, will help send a message. Limiting government insured or subsidized mortgages to houses of a reasonable size (McMansions are out), a tax on gas guzzlers and on cars by weight, and insuring only one bank account up to 100,000 dollars (rather than the current, unlimited number) are but a few illustrations of setting limits.

Last but not least, there is a deep connection between a life worth living and social justice. To achieve a major reallocation of wealth, those who have more than enough must find sources of contentment other than laying their hands on still more goods. This is what many religions offer. Those who have lost this source of goodness, or have found it twisted, are called upon on to search for other springs of meaning. And nobody is better placed or more equipped than President Obama to return us to this old, but never more current, subject: What makes a good life.

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The hostile reception new communitarianism encountered from some of the Czech leaders mirrored concerns initially raised by leaders and intellectuals in other former communist countries when they were first exposed to our message. It also reflected the particular position of its prime minister, Václav Klaus. Klaus has been credited with the quick transition of the Czech Republic from a communist to a capitalist economy. He defines himself accurately as an extreme Milton Friedmanite and has taken great personal umbrage to my book The Moral Dimension, which challenges libertarian assumptions of Friedmanite economics. When Klaus ran into me during the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1997, he grabbed my lapel, waved his index finger in my face, and announced in a booming voice, “You are crippling my republic! You are undermining what we are trying to do! You do not understand that egoism and the profit motive are the best part of human nature. You work for those who want to return my country to communism!”

Fortunately, I was aware before this encounter that understatements and mincing words were not Klaus’ trademark. Rather than punching back, I tried to calmly defend the communitarian position. My main argument was that by providing people with a strong but community-based social fabric, they would not react to rough and tumble capitalism by running back into the arms of a communist-ordered social life. After the translation of my first communitarian book, The Spirit of Community, into German, Klaus joined a seminar I was conducting in Alpbach, Austria, for the European Forum in 1998. For a short while, he listened, but then he pulled out a prepared statement and read in a voice that vibrated down the corridors, and up the Alps.

Communitarianism… in its aversion to individualism and its advocacy of coercive means of fostering human association, is another form of collectivism.

Klaus next voiced concern alluded to by other leaders of previously communist countries:

Communitarianism wants to socialize us by forcing us into artificial, not genuine, not spontaneously formed–groups or groupings. Communitarianism cannot win through preaching only…. they try to reach the legislators and to legislate the world according to their dreams.

By this time the seminar was familiar with our viewpoint. It seemed that most present considered Klaus’s barrage to be way off the mark. It made it easier for me to respond gently one more time. After the seminar Klaus and I went for a long stroll and then joined a few others for a lunch that lasted nearly three hours. It soon became obvious that Klaus’s bluster was skin deep. He rushed to emphasize that “there was nothing personal in my statements” and that “I just enjoy debating.” During lunch he regaled us with stories about his boxing days, about testing a new racing car and other daredevil acts he was involved in. When others chimed in with their anecdotes, Klaus would soon work to recapture the center of attention. It did not take a psychologist to figure him out. Moderation, whether as a brand of communitarianism or lifestyle, did not suit Klaus’s personality any more than a society could be based on his extreme libertarian principles. The fact that his government fell apart, despite his very considerable economic achievements, suggested that there might be more room for communitarianism in the Czech Republic than Klaus favored. (It would not take much.) The best evidence to that effect was the leadership of Václav Havel. When Klaus heard that Havel had invited me to participate in his Forum 2000, Klaus simply said, “He is not my kind of a guy!” and for once Klaus was very much on the money. Every bone in Havel’s body–and more importantly, the depths of his soul–is dedicated to the civic society and, through it, to his version of communitarianism. Havel carried his vision not merely to his people but to large parts of the world, through speeches that have won him great acclaim and following. I was very much looking forward to exchanging ideas with him. On arrival in the pompously elegant, baroque Prague Castle in which the Forum took place, I found that Havel was surrounded by VIPs, including Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Adam Michnik (a flamboyant, well-known Polish dissident), Wei Jingsheng (a leading Chinese dissident), a bishop, a chief rabbi, and an Indian poet-philosopher who kept reciting the same poem about the inner beauty of lotus flowers. Moreover, Havel was absent from a good part of the proceedings; his staff explained that his health required that he rest frequently. When I finally found myself alone with Havel, I found that his command of English was not much better than mine of Czech, in which I could not so much as buy a Pilsner Urquell. I did, though, not leave Prague completely empty-handed. I brought with me the text of a new address by Havel that we published in our quarterly The Responsive Community. In it, Havel predicted that in the next century the nation-state would cease to evoke the kind of emotional and irrational commitments it had in the past. Loyalty to the state would instead be divided among families, communities, and organizations of which we are members. Above all, he called for a commitment to principles higher than the particular interest of this or that nation, especially to human rights, freedom and human dignity, which Havel suggested are a reflection of an “infinite” and “eternal” force. I have no firsthand evidence to support my hunch that the Czech people’s views lie somewhere between Klaus’ hostility and Havel’s natural communitarianism. Possibly, as the distance from the communist days increases, Czechs will find it less onerous to acknowledge their own communitarian bases and expand on them. One thing I can conclude with much confidence: citizens of all former communist societies cannot go long without some new, shared moral understanding. Those in older capitalist nations need them too, but their absence is merely more glaring in the vacuum left by collapse of communism. Communitarianism has a lot to suggest to these people–especially if we are better able to show to that it has no affinity whatsoever to communism.   

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If one is not blown away by all this eminence, and refuses to shut down one’s critical mind, one soon notes that this approach sets the wrong priorities both in dealing with deproliferation and in dealing with Russia. The most serious threat to our security, that of our allies, and to world peace, is very widely agreed to be that of terrorists getting their hands on a ready-made nuclear weapon. (Making new ones is much more of a challenge for them, although making radiological bombs is not nearly as taxing.) The most likely place terrorists could steal, bribe their way to, or otherwise commandeer nuclear weapons, is a country not even mentioned in either of the Quad’s main statements (January 4, 2007; January 15, 2008), nor in many of the admiring accolades that followed: Pakistan. 

The notion that if the United States and Russia will live up to their commitments under the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which requires them to eliminate their nuclear arms, other nations will follow, has no foot to stand on. Take, for instance, Pakistan, which keeps some arms in part as a deterrent to the much larger Indian conventional forces, which it cannot match. Hence, even if India gave up its nuclear bombs (a very unlikely event) Pakistan feels it could not follow. The same holds for Israel’s stockpile and Iran’s plans to build some such bombs. All these nations have strong reasons of their own to hold such arms. They serve as a valuable deterrent, keeping their perceived enemies at bay. This and other reasons will not be modified by whatever the United States and Russia do or do not do regarding their own stockpiles.

When I mentioned this observation to a supporter of the Quad’s agenda, an expert on nuclear deproliferation, she responded that at least such superpower disarmament will stop the critics of the West from "whining." Indeed, representatives of several nations, especially India, often argue that because the big powers have not abided by their NPT commitments, they should not be expected to do better. However, the argument that if the United States and Russia behaved better, the rest would follow suit, is akin to suggesting that to deal with a student who routinely fails to bring his homework to class, "because my dog ate it," all that is needed is to take away the dog. Doing so will not make the student fulfill his duty, but merely force him to come up with another excuse.

In dealing with Russia, the greatest priority for the United States is to encourage Russia to further improve its controls over the fissile material from which nukes can be made and of the thousands of tactical nuclear arms Russia possesses. Reducing the Cold War instruments, the long range missiles and strategic nuclear weapons–on which the Quad focuses–are much less of an issue. They are already relatively well-controlled and, moreover, are not well suited for terrorists equipped with speed boats, shipping containers, and trunks, thus dismantling them is much less urgent. Even if these strategic Cold War arms are granted top priority, years will pass before new treaties are negotiated, and even then they will require the approval of the U.S. Senate, which in the past has not been very receptive to new treaties. Next, the United States is keen to gain Russia’s cooperation in stopping Iran’s nuclear militarization. Neither mission is affected by the extent to which the two powers deal with the Cold War weapons.

In short, one hopes that the new president will not be swayed by that which is popular for now, but will do first that which must be done first: Prevent terrorists from getting their hands on nukes and rogue states from developing or stock-piling these most dangerous of all weapons of mass destruction.

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