The sociologist who founded communitarianism
Amitai Etzioni 1929–2023
Amitai Etzioni wanted people to take care of one another. The IsraeliAmerican sociologist and prolific author was the founder of the communitarian movement, which holds that people’s identity comes from their place in a community. Staking out a middle ground between Left and Right, he argued that individual liberty relied on having a responsible citizenry, which, in turn, relied on robust institutions like local government and the family. Both liberals and conservatives found fault with the theory—the former saw hints of authoritarianism, the latter threats to individual freedom—yet it won favor in the 1990s with world leaders such as President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “We are not simply individual citizens or economic creatures who have selfinterests,” Etzioni said. “We have not just rights but also obligations to our family and country and even the global community.”
Born Werner Falk in Germany, Etzioni was beaten by other children when he was very young for being Jewish, said The Washington Post. “As the Nazis took control,” the family fled abroad separately, regrouping briefly in Greece and emigrating to Palestine in 1937. Now known by his new Hebrew name, Etzioni grew up on a kibbutz and fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. He studied under philosopher Martin Buber at Hebrew University and then came to the U.S. to complete a doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley. “Barely a decade after landing in America, Etzioni was famous,” said The New York Times, “writing books and articles far afield from the turgid corners of sociology.” He was a full professor at Columbia University by 1967 and a senior adviser to President Jimmy Carter by 1979. The following year, he started teaching at George Washington University, where he led the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies.
Etzioni remained at GW for over three decades, writing hundreds of articles, both academic and mainstream, as well as more than 30 books on everything from nuclear proliferation to sexual ethics. A wide-ranging public intellectual, he often seemed “to be a one-man profession,” said Time. But by the 2010s, he was worried about the fate of his movement—even criticism of him had slowed. “Despite my confidence that the message I have hammered out would do the world a lot of good,” he said in 2014, “no one seems to be listening.”