The Coronavirus and the “Common Good”

Among the many lessons that we have re-learned the hard way during the Covid-19 pandemic is the idea that there is a “common good” – benefits that we all share.   Our public health system at its best is a common good.  The coronavirus pandemic could be called a “common bad.”  

The common good is, in fact, an age-old idea.  It was a major theme in the writings of Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece, and it has long been featured as a moral principle in Christianity.  For instance, Pope Francis in his 2015 Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, a major doctrinal pronouncement for the Catholic Church, explicitly called for a reorientation of our global economic system away from capitalism and self-interest toward serving the common good.  The Pope used this term no less than six times in his landmark 2016 speech to the U.S. Congress. 

The common good was also emphasized by America’s Founding Fathers.  James Madison wrote about it in The Federalist papers under the heading of the “public good,” and the preamble to our Constitution proclaims that one of its fundamental objectives is to promote “the general welfare” of “we the people.”

Modern writers on the subject, such as Robert Reich in his recent book The Common Good, argue that it should also include shared social norms and operating principles – like social trust, respect for law, telling the truth, cooperation, inclusiveness, and perhaps even devotion to equal opportunity and political democracy.  And, of course, we should follow the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  The Golden Rule is a basic norm in virtually every culture and religion. 

In his classic treatise on social justice, the Republic, Plato invoked the idea that a human society is like an organism, a set of interdependent parts that serve the common purpose of meeting our basic needs through a division of labor.  As Plato put it, “A city, or a state, is a response to human needs.  No human being is self-sufficient, and all of us have many wants.  [So] the origin of every city is human necessity…. [However], there is a diversity of talents among men; consequently, one man is best suited to one particular occupation and another to another….  We can conclude, then, that production in our city will be more abundant…if each [person] does the work nature [and society] has equipped him to do…”   Plato concludes: “Where, then, do we find justice and injustice?... Perhaps they have their origins in the mutual needs of the city’s inhabitants.” 

There is, however, a radically different model of society that can also be traced back to the ancient Greeks.  In this model, it is claimed that a society is simply a marketplace where goods and services are exchanged among various individual “purveyors” in arms-length “exchanges”. In this model, there is no overarching common purpose, but only the pursuit of our individual self-interests.   (This premise also undergirds capitalist economic theory, needless to say.)   As the conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously asserted: “There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.”  

In this model, individuals may have inalienable “rights” but have no obligations other than to pursue their self-interests.   Indeed, various conservative theorists, such as Friedrich Hayek, Robert Nozick, and the prominent novelist Ayn Rand, have rejected the very idea of a common good.  As Rand explained, "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life…”  One of her fictional characters tells us that “Man’s first duty is to himself…His moral law is to do what he wishes…”

I believe a middle-ground between these two opposing models can be found in yet another ancient idea, namely, that an organized human society represents a “social contract” -- an implicit (and sometimes explicit) agreement among the individual members that includes both rights and duties, or benefits and reciprocal obligations.  A society is at once a coalition of individuals and families pursuing their own self-interests and a complex interdependent system with an overarching shared purpose that depends upon close cooperation and reciprocity.  As the great eighteenth century statesman and political theorist Edmund Burke famously expressed it: 

Society is indeed a contract... [But] the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership in trade...to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties.  As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained by many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.  Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primeval contract of eternal society.

I refer to it as a “biosocial contract,” because its fundamental purpose is to provide for the basic survival and reproductive needs of the members.  From an evolutionary/biological perspective, the basic, continuing, inescapable challenge for all living organisms is survival and reproduction.  Life is quintessentially a “survival enterprise,” and every organized cooperative society, whether it be in social insects or humankind, is at bottom a collective survival enterprise – a “superorganism” as the biologists call it.   Whatever may be our aspirations, or our illusions (or our economic status, for that matter), the overarching purpose of a human society is to provide for the basic biological needs of its members, and of the society as a whole over time.  Our basic survival needs – some 14 categories in all – define the priorities for every human society, every human superorganism, and they are the foundation for any more exalted objectives.  The common good begins with meeting our shared basic needs. 

Accordingly, we must respect our “contractual” social obligations because we have a stake in our shared biological purpose -- preserving and advancing the collective survival enterprise, the superorganism, and we have a mutual obligation to do so under the social justice principle of reciprocity – a moral precept that is foundational for any society.   Anything less is exploitative.

There are, in fact, three distinct fairness principles that play a vitally important role in our social relationships.  They represent the goal posts, so to speak, for achieving a legitimate and fair society.   These principles are (1) equality with respect to providing for our basic survival needs; (2) equity with respect to merit (or “giving every man his due,” as Plato put it in the Republic); and (3) reciprocity, or paying back for the benefits we receive from others, and society.   These three fairness principles – equality, equity and reciprocity – must be bundled together and balanced in order to achieve a stable and relatively harmonious social order.  It could be likened to a three-legged-stool.  All three legs are equally essential.  They represent the moral foundation for the common good, but our shared basic needs must have the highest priority. 

Our basic needs represent a non-negotiable imperative.   They are absolute requisites for the survival and reproduction of every individual, and of society over time.  As I propose in my forthcoming new book, Superorganism:  Pandemics, Climate Change, and the Case for Global Governance, a social contract focused on the common good must start with a universal “basic needs guarantee.”  This priority is grounded in four key propositions: (1) our basic needs are increasingly well-understood and documented; (2) although our individual needs vary somewhat, in general they are equally shared by all of us; (3) we are dependent upon a great many others for the satisfaction of these needs; and (4) severe harm (even death) may result if any of these needs is not satisfied.  

Equally important, satisfying our basic needs is a prerequisite for achieving the voluntary “consent” of the governed and a “legitimate”, sustainable superorganism.   As Plato appreciated, social justice is an essential enabler for the social contract; there has never been sustained (voluntary) cooperation in humankind without it.  (Yes, slave systems can impose cooperation by force, but they are costly, unstable, and notoriously short-lived.)   A basic needs guarantee is the most effective antidote to anarchy and authoritarianism alike.  

As Roger Cohen, a New York Times op-ed columnist, noted in a recent essay about the coronavirus pandemic: “The world that emerges from this cannot resemble the old.  If this plague that cares not a whit for the class or status of its victims cannot teach solidarity over individualistic excess, nothing will.  If this continent-hopping pathogen cannot demonstrate the precarious interconnectedness of the planet, nothing will.  Unlike 9/11, the assault is universal.”   

Going forward, the common good must become a global priority.  The alternative will almost certainly be a common bad.