Change, Community and Subsidiarity

Philip Camara, co-convenor of Subsidiarity Movement International

March 13, 2010

Some analysts wonder if it is possible to use the principle of

subsidiarity in a country like the Philippines amidst the claim that
“communities do not anymore exist, most especially in the urban
areas”. The thinking further goes “to honor autonomy, particularly
of communities, they and it have first to exist”.

Clearly, they believe that “modernism” and a modern state have

no space for the traditional aspects and values of a “community”.

While our day to day experience in Metro Manila will bear out
some truth in the above view, the question arises: does
Subsidiarity require traditional communities to thrive? I do not
believe so.

David Round, A New Zealander columnist in his March 7, 2010

blog has this to say about traditional community life:

“…like the life of anyone in a small simple close-knit community, one which is, by our
standards, without privacy, intellectual curiosity or freedom. Inevitably, in any village where
people live next to each other and spend all their waking hours together, everyone knows
everyone else’s business, and private life is impossible. Private thought, different from
everyone else’s, is impossible. Freedom, as we understand it, is impossible, for social cohesion
requires adherence to traditional ways and loyalty to traditional leaders. Any deviation from
the norm is actually threatening to the community. Consequently freedom of thought and
intellectual curiosity cannot exist either. Life there is, by our standards, both extremely
constricting and extremely boring.
Everything comes at a price. Strong communities are excellent things. But the price of
community is the loss of the individual. This is in the very nature of things. Those who sing the
praises of simple happy community life often display a considerable degree of condescension
and even hypocrisy. They would be horrified at the suggestion that they might live that way
themselves. It is an ideal they have no intention of trying; it is something for other, lesser folk.
If for a second they entertain the possibility of living that way, it would have to be as one of the
leaders, vested with traditional and unquestioned authority, not as one of the common herd.”

Many times we see this view displayed as a defense of the shift

since the 16th century from community to individualism and the
formation of the nation-state. In between the nation-state and the
individual are intermediary organizations notionally segregated
by spheres of politics, economics, and culture. In the modern
world, there is no quarter given to community. Most societal
power is shared between those spheres and only the crumbs are
given to the households. Yet, all life springs from the households,
in the form of production, consumption, taxes, ideas, cultural
works, and new human beings. It is generally, in the households
that the individuals are recharged to perform. Without the
household, the individual could not sanely exist for long.

Given the primordial role of the individual acting within

institutions the community of households are nothing more than
shared space, a shared common area and shared infrastructure
maintained by different institutions that have operating manuals
and need hardly any community interaction to keep moving well.

What is the vision of those who espouse Subsidiarity as an

organizing principle where power over function is devolved to the
lowest feasible conscious unit ? In other words, some tasks are
best carried out by individuals, some by household, others by
groups of households sharing the same territory, and still others
by their government representatives and/or agencies, some state,
some national.

SMI believes the following:

- Way too much power over functions have been removed from
households and network of households sharing space and facilities to
the detriment of a just, more prosperous and equitable society;
- Practicing the organizing principle of Subsidiarity does not
presuppose the existence of traditional communities. In fact, none of the
characteristics of what Mr. Round describes in a traditional community
are a prerequisite for subsidiarity to be practiced. As long as there are
households (and there will be households until Kingdom comes) and as
long as households share a common territory (and there will be shared
territory until we succeed in discombulating ourselves) then practicing
Subsidiarity is not only possible but desirable;
- Beyond the community of households sharing an accessible
common territory with its attendant infrastructure lies a whole range of
supra organizations that too can be integrated with this basic
subsidiarity-practicing unit: village government, school boards, health
bodies, peace and order councils, disaster management councils, etc.
At least in the Philippines, it is very obvious that all of those front line
organizations are extremely anemic because real power and budgets
are under powerful politicians and their allies who control national,
centralized agencies.
- Our typical middle class residential experience is that of sharing
space with neighbors in enclosed subdivisions or same-income
condominium buildings. Here, there is privacy, and really very little
community interaction except maybe for the monthly request for dues
payment and reading the report of the officers. But the fact is common
space and management is shared. Therefore, the opportunities for
practicing Subsidiarity are already present and some of which are
realized through the residential associations. But typically, the
associations just end there. They have no more upward hierarchy but
yet you could imagine the very interesting possibilities if there were
federations of homeowner associations within Barangays, the first
tangent of community– government interaction. Why aren’t there? Only
because we do not honor the principle of subsidiarity.
 - In fact, the likely cause of having no federations of residential
associations is precisely the fear by the powerful that power will
immediately have to be shared with these bodies. If Barangay
residential association federations were further federated by cities, so
will the power of Mayors have to be shared due to the increased
accountability mechanisms.
- Without subsidiarity the natural order of things under our system
of “superiority” (where the few control the many as well as the budgets)
is what we see today: corruption at the top, helplessness and
hopelessness at the bottom.
- With subsidiarity the life blood returns to the household and the
network of households giving life and strength to simple but doable
things like solid waste management, peace and order, utility service
management, etc. But more important than any of that is the reclaiming
of space, of identity, of initiative, of a community building that Fr.
Horacio de la Costa dreamed of connecting to common goals (national)
and recapturing the bureaucracy.
SMI’s vision of shared power under the organizing principle of
Subsidiarity will hopefully elicit the support of the gate-keepers
and status-quo power wielders who somehow still think that the
Philippines can still be fixed by better institutional operating
manuals, maybe a better basic law of the land, good governance
practitioners, etc. etc. but never to question the colonial-era
organizing principle of superiority itself.

As Bob Dylan sang in the 60’s :

How many years can a mountain exist

Before it is washed to the sea?

Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist

Before they’re allowed to be free (from poverty)?

Yes ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head
 Pretending he just doesn’t see?

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,

The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

Recent statistics of increasing OFWs, poverty rates, infant

mortality, NPA / Muslim insurgencies (>50,000), malnutrition,
preventable deaths, joblessness tell the story of our state,
organized for the benefit of the powerful, failing it’s people.

Indeed, it’s been 489 years since the installation of our colonial,
top-down, “pinatulo”, trickle down, resource-and-people-
exploiting governance system. When will it end? The answer is
blowin’ in the wind.