Communitarianism & the Left

We live in what historian Lawrence Goodwyn has called “an age of sophisticated despair.” Centralized corporate structures and the modern bureaucratic state acquire an eerie life of their own, take on autonomous power in much the same sense that Marx once described the machinery that defined the pace, rhythm, and structure of workers’ lives. And the pessimism that forms a background for contemporary political discussion is magnified by current developments—Reaganism, the de...