Commonwealth Personalism

Part of the culture series of articles.

Summary

• The Commonwealth has strong institutions, but the roles they confer generally belong to a person and not to the post.
• This is an expression of personalism, which is a cultural understanding of the fundamental nature of an individual in the country.
• In this system, a single person may hold several jobs, commissions, attestations and endorsements at once. It also confers an inherent dignity by reflecting both the relations and essential independence of an individual.
• In this sense, Commonwealth personalism has both individualist and collectivist characteristics, distinct both from its continental neighbours and the Far East in its positive view of liberty.

Read more: Courtesy, Titles, Personal Work, Ludic Productivity

Commonwealth personalism is the common understanding of the person in Commonwealth society, and much of the moral character of its politics. It holds that a person is a good in themselves who cannot be used as an object or as the means to an end, and that a person is made through their relationships with other people. It closely resembles the Catholic personalism of Emmanuel Mounier and Jacques Maritain, and shares a source with Commonwealth subsidiarity. Very few Commonwealth people would call themselves personalists, and the word is mostly used in academic and religious contexts. Nonetheless it is apparent in the country’s law, workplaces, manners and institutions, and is perhaps better described as the common nature of Commonwealth civic society than as a conscious belief of ordinary people.

This is an unusual position for a country that is officially a lay, secular republic and forbids public worship in its schools and government. Many Commonwealth people are folk Catholics, especially in Kalina and Verde, but most are not very religious, and a lot of Catholic social teaching has made its way into Commonwealth society without its theology. As such, Commonwealth personalism does not invariably ground the dignity of a person in God, as Mounier did, but also in civilisation. The Commonwealth still talks about civilisation as a process, becoming more civilised each day and forever, and to them civilisation means dignity, independence and pleasure.

Individualists With Collectivist Intentions #

Foreigners often assume the Commonwealth is a collectivist society, since it has no money, they wear a lot of uniforms and make abstract political references to the common good. This is misleading, and they are not collectivists as such. Commonwealth people are basically individualists in the Western fashion, and expect to choose their own work, home, friends and beliefs. What separates them from Americans or Europeans is that they do have collectivist intentions – they are substantially more codependent on their communities, and they expect to derive their standing from their relationships with other people rather than from wealth or family.

In this sense, they are by their social nature somewhat personalist in their compromise between the person and society. They retain characteristics of both individualists, in their preoccupation with the individual and freedom, and collectivists, which considers the person in their relation to class, nation or family. The Commonwealth person is defined by their relationships but is not reduced to them, and so is never expected to sublimate themselves entirely to the state or to a belief system. This is the basic difference between the Commonwealth and the Soviet Union or the developmental states of the Far East, which ask the person to subordinate themselves to the revolution or the nation. It manifests in many ways, including a social egalitarianism that can both intimate and vicious, and which invites suspicion of fast achievement.

The Person and the Post #

In the Commonwealth, people tends to collect roles over a lifetime, since roles conferred by its institutions are arranged with the person and not with the position. Ministries, bureaus, the police and the armed forces set standards federally and apply them locally, and their authority is real, but they accredit people rather than “fill positions.” In this system, the commissions, attestations and endorsements follow a person between roles, and so better indicate their expertise and ability.¹ It is part of the real material nature of employment in the country, in which a role is something physically conducted – and so a person may hold several. People are “their own offices;” their own “contractors;” even while being understood through their relations. In this sense, they are more cognisant of the person than individualist societies, which end up subordinating people to economic roles, rearranging their shape to fit them.

A clear example is the police officer, who holds a base commission from the Commonwealth Police College that confers the basic powers of an officer, including arrest. Specialised endorsements, or qualifications, then determine the expertise with which they may act – as a detective, or a ranger, or a soldier, or all of them. They do not transfer between departments as police do overseas, because expertise in this case belongs to the officer. In principle, any person in the Commonwealth can be a police officer, a soldier, both or neither.

Example

A grade is held under a warrant, and so it follows the person. A Commander who transfers from an Army company to a police division remains a Commander, and a promotion under one warrant is a promotion under the other. In the same way, a State Secretary holds a commission for a single programme and returns to their other work when it ends, and professional titles like Doctor and Captain are held until death.

Work #

Read more: Social Economy, Commons Economy, Ludic Productivity

Commonwealth workplaces are sociable, and in some offices the afternoon is essentially a social occasion of tea, conversation and long lunches. Since there is no money there are no wages, and so labour cannot be bought or sold. Commonwealth people go to work for complex internal and social reasons – respect, interest, the company of their colleagues – in what is called ludic productivity. It is difficult to treat a person as a means to an end in this system, because there is no way to compel them with money.

Some work still has to be done efficiently, and in the Commonwealth that work is given to machines. Most Commonwealth industry is automatic, and its machines are treated as workers are overseas: used in strictly efficient ways and judged by what they produce. The separation is deliberate. Machines are means to an end and people are not, and so the two are kept under different economic logic even when they work side by side.

About 38% of workers hold several part-time jobs and another 21% have a full-time job and side work, so a lifeguard on Monday may be a clerk on Tuesday and a librarian on Thursday. Most workplaces also set aside about a fifth of working time for personal work, which an employee spends on work of their own choosing. This is a country where competence is demonstrated rather than guaranteed by a qualification, and a person is generally known by what they have done among their colleagues and not by where they went to school. Make no mistake – adults are still required to register an occupation under Regular Service. But the choice of occupation is left to the person, and so employment in the Commonwealth has come to resemble work rather than toil.

Manners and Belongings #

For an egalitarian country, Commonwealth society is unusually courteous. ‘Sir’ and ‘Madam’ are the default terms of address, children address adults by title and surname, and strangers are often addressed by their apparent occupation (‘Policeman’, ‘Butcher’). Respect is the fundamental currency of a social economy, and it is given to people in their roles.

Most people also own their homes, though not in the way foreigners would understand property. Ownership is not an abstract legal instrument but a claim built up through years of occupation, maintenance and use. This is a system of land sovereignty and a preoccupation with stewardship. It is a complex and poorly understood system that is both weaker and stronger than binary legal ownership overseas, and can reward longtime or generational use of property with incontestable ownership. Property under control of a municipality or government may use it as incentive – immediate titles may sacrifice the public’s claim to an apartment or business in exchange for the provision of a service.

Even uniforms, which are an object of conformity in most countries, are personal in the Commonwealth. They are understood not as a means of control but as a basic signal and common dress, and so a neat and coherent appearance is valued above rigid conformity. Hair and jewellery are not policed in schools as long as they are safe, and accessories are a distinguishing characteristic of Commonwealth life in both cultural and secular forms. Commonwealth clothing is generally made to be modified, and home tailoring, mending, monogramming and dyeing are a basic part of how people dress.

Subsidiarity #

Personalism and subsidiarity have similar origins in Christian social teaching, and in the Commonwealth they are difficult to separate even in secularised form. Political authority begins in the municipal assembly of between 500 and 2,000 citizens, and cascades upward only where necessary under the doctrine of municipalism. A petition for a State Secretary can originate in a municipality, and civil servants carry federal practice with them from one posting to the next. Industry is organised in much the same way. In this sense, the person is both upstream and downstream of Commonwealth institutions – institutions are formed from persons, and in turn give persons their commissions, titles and ranks.