UMASS Extension has been reorganized to focus on community based needs as described by members of those communities. As a public institution it is important to understand the nature of community in a democracy and how the loss of community affects public institutions. In an Atlantic Monthly (March, 1996) America's Search For a New Public Philosophy and his new book published by Harvard University Press, Democracy's Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy. Harvard professor, Michael Sandel makes a compelling case that public institutions have not been able to address the frustration and despair of the American people. Sandel forcefully states that "individually and collectively, we are losing control of the forces that govern our lives" and further that "%the moral fabric of community is unraveling around us." This is the condition of our lives, the condition which must be faced by public organizations working in partnership with communities. To serve the people of the Commonwealth, we must understand the nature of democracy and community in America today.

The confusion and isolation of individuals in America today is the product of a worldview built upon individualistic definitions of "the good life" that were born during a period of rapid economic growth, fueled by seemingly endless petroleum supplies and guided by an economic theory which assumed that continued growth is not only possible for a moral imperative. The economic theory that has dominated the political debate of the past 40 years contrasts starkly with the community based theory of government that presided during the first 150 years of the American experiment. Sandel states that central to the older theory is the belief that "%liberty depends on sharing in self-government" and that community responsibilities are the necessary condition for personal liberties. This is compared with the current theory in which it is assumed that "freedom consists in the capacity of people to choose their own ends."

Sandel states that "the public philosophy by which we live cannot secure the liberty it promises, because it cannot inspire the sense of community and civic engagement that liberty requires." Public institutions must support the development and sustenance of community. In retrospect it is easy to see how the economic growth after the turn of the century destroyed local communities, resulting in fewer opportunities for self-government.

Rapid industrialization in the early 1900's along with the railroads and national telegraph system was expected to connect the nation more closely. In many ways Americans of the early twentieth century were closer than ever before. Urbanization and the concurrent increased specialization and division of labor in American business seemingly created greater interconnectedness

While industrialization and communication allowed specialization to flourish, this so-called interdependence was based on more financial dependency than on a shared vision of a common national project. Jane Addams wrote; "theoretically, the division of labor makes men more interdependent and human by drawing them together into a unity of purpose." However she continued; "the mere mechanical fact of interdependence amounts to nothing."

The progressives were mixed on their response to the loss of community and the rapid growth of business. Sandel wrote: "some sought to preserve self-government by decentralizing economic power and thus bringing it under democratic control. Others considered economic concentration irreversible and sought to control it by enlarging the capacity of national democratic institutions." Theodore Roosevelt sought to regulate big business, increase the power of the national government, and to build a shared vision through his "new nationalism." Roosevelt promoted a new form of national citizenship, described by Herbert Croly in The Promise of American Life (1909). Croly stated that America needed more centralization of government and at same people would feel more a part of a national community. This political theory, which was dominant from the New Deal until recently has not been one of citizenship and self-government, but a utilitarian view that supported continued economic growth balanced by distributive justice for individuals. Economists and political leaders believed that the primary economic goal for America was to promote a rapidly rising total output of goods and services and full employment. The "rising tide floats all boats" philosophy was convenient, as it allowed individuals the right to pursue their own ends as defined by their own desires and values. Nevertheless, despair and frustration increased in the 1960's, and government could not solve the problems faced by individuals. The problem was more basic. It was a loss of community.

It is surely difficult to imagine a return to a strong civic culture at a national level. Sandel wrote; "from Aristotle's polis to Jefferson's agrarian ideal, the civic conception of freedom found its home in small and bounded places, largely self-sufficient, inhabited by people whose conditions of life afforded the leisure, learning, and commonality to deliberate well about public concerns." At the same time, it is surely desirable. Sandel described the situation. He wrote; "despite the expansion of rights in recent decades, Americans find to their frustration that they are losing control of the forces that govern their lives." He continues: "even as we think and act as freely choosing, independent selves, we confront a world governed by impersonal structures of power that defy our understanding and control."

Today, there is a mounting agreement that individuals need to participate in institutions that help build civic character. However, one of the difficulties as described by Sandel is "in striking ways, the challenge to self-government in the global economy resembles the predicament American politics faced in the early decades of the twentieth century. Then as now, new forms of commerce and communication spilled across familiar boundaries and created networks of interdependence among people in distant places. But the new interdependence did not carry with it a new sense of community."

What railroads, telegraph wires, and national markets were to her time, satellite hookups, CNN cyberspace, and global markets are to ours - instruments that link people without necessarily making them neighbors or fellow citizens or participants in a common venture.

Communities of tomorrow must be both transnational and local.

Sandel writes; "The hope for self-government today lies not in relocating sovereignty but in dispersing it. The most promising alternative to the sovereign state is not a cosmopolitan community based on the solidarity of humankind but a multiplicity of communities and political bodies - some more extensive than nations and some less - among which sovereignty is diffused. Only a politics that disperses sovereignty both upward and downward can combine the power required to rival global market forces with the differentiation required of a public life that hopes to inspire the allegiance of its citizens."

"If the nation cannot summon more than a minimal commonality, it is unlikely that the global community can do better, at least on its own. A more promising basis for a democratic politics that reaches beyond nations is a revitalized civic life nourished in the more particular communities we inhabit."

"Since Aristotle's polis, the republican tradition has viewed self-government as an activity rooted in a particular place, carried out by citizens loyal to that place and the way of life it embodies. Self-government today, however, requires a politics that plays itself out in a multiplicity of settings, from neighborhoods to nations to the world as a whole."

Public institutions must support the full engagement of citizens, businesses, neighborhood associations, and civic groups in solving their own problems.

John M. Gerber, 1996