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Lessons learned in the classroom

Posted on April 26, 2012April 25, 2012 by Staff

By Judith Blau

Now that one of America’s foremost intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, has published a book on Occupy, I predict debates and discussions will spring up fast and furious on college campuses, matching the enthusiasm, perhaps, of what is happening in communities, including ours. One aspect of this discussion has to do with solidarity goods that are res extra commercium (outside of markets) and res publica (in the public realm). Solidarity goods include human rights – for example, the rights of the disabled, children, women, minorities and migrants, and civil and political rights. I will not speak for Occupy but share some of my students’ remarkable answers to a question I asked on their final exam about solidarity goods.

“Banks,” some wrote, “should be turned over to public control.” Others wrote that economic competition was a public good and utilities should not be monopolized. Still others argued that democracy should be participatory, perhaps through e-governance with universal participation in decision-making. Nonprofits in Carrboro, with which many were familiar, were cited as examples of organizations that work in the interest of promoting solidarity goods, and others stressed that universal health care is a solidarity good. It bothered many of them that the environment is not now protected as solidarity goods, which spells disaster for climate change.

Solidarity goods, many insisted, cannot exclude anyone. American individualism, they argued, fuels economic inequalities and poverty to the detriment of communities and society.

I threw this question to them out of the blue – honest – nothing in my lectures or discussions covered this. I will never underestimate young peoples’ idealism and the seriousness with which they think through their idealism, and square it with the grave problems their generation will face.

Judith Blau is the director of the Human Rights Center of Chapel Hill and Carrboro and a professor of sociology at UNC.

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