Why do just struggles, but poorly conducted, lead to communitarianism?

The injustices suffered by women are entirely real, and deserve to be denounced and fought. The same goes for the injustices suffered by people of color, homosexuals, autistic people, etc. However, the fair struggle that results from this often turns out to be counterproductive. Let's see why.

For the moment, since in our societies, decision-making is structured by the play of alliances, and not by the justness of the cause, all these social categories, to weigh at the political level and obtain changes, have not had other solution than to consolidate their support.
However, if a category fails to obtain the support of a significant part of the rest of society, because it is not yet psychologically mature, or not motivated, then the only solution remaining is to massively recruit the people concerned. And the simplest, most effective way to achieve this is to wage a structured fight on the basis of us versus them. Indeed, this appeals to our instincts and avoids having to go through the long and slow process of pedagogy which is aimed at our intelligence. But this is not without consequences.

On the one hand, this tends to produce a bargaining type response, with a minimum level of response that decreases as the number of communities increases. On the other hand, conversely, social conflict increases with the number of communities, because each individual tends to define himself more and more by his particularities which oppose him to the majority. In the end, this system of struggle can hardly escape the alternative of denial or communitarianism.

The solution involves switching from an us-versus-them type struggle within each category, to a common struggle for a fairer collective decision-making process, which makes it possible to deal simultaneously, without putting them in competition, without systematically opposing individuals, all injustices. In practice, this involves restructuring political life around the notion of problem solving, whereas for the moment it is structured around the game of alliances. This shift is the whole point of the book From capital to reason.

 

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