COMMUNITAS COMMUNITATUM
The key question in any political system is its legitimacy. -Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Basic Books Inc., NY, 1976.
It’s Plato all over again
after the acidic effects in Athens
of an excessive individualism,
after a tonic surge of new life,
after an anomic normlessness.
It’s a matter of putting everything
in the true basket again:
the good, the beautiful and the just,
in a vision of community
born in the terror of anti-community,
the soulless reality of democracy.
It’s a new age of a new Rome,
a new republic: unitary, centralized,
collectivized, resting on legally
discrete, socially free individuals
but also decentralized and local
in essence, with intimacy,
communality, pluralistic :sings:
with no marching to the sound
of one foot, with the law
set above all and the nation
set in a constellation of forces
to establish the reign of virtue
in a communitas communitatum1
in which the oneness of life
serves as the basis for
political messianism,
the religion of history.
1 this term is used by Robert Nisbet in his The Social Philosophers.
Ron Price
2 January 1997
Dear Ron,
I would like to respond here to CC but in all honesty, I'm too iffy to want to admit how little confidence I have in putting words out there that others may see.
However, if you're open to e-mail contact, my address is
rbjones02@optonline.net
I would be a UU if I were active and I have a new friend who is a
Bahai so there's much interest.
Hope to hear from you.
Cheers, JGD Ron
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