Making Delivery a Priority
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distinction between the public and the private. There is no abuse of public office for private gain. What we see is the abuse of a job in a business for private gain. Why is the public/private distinction important? Without the distinction, there is li le room for justice as we in the modern world understand it: equal freedom for all. The alpha male, the toll taker, and the worker are not equals. Those days are gone. This has become a class society, where class is defined in terms of wealth and power. The villagers are now divided by rank. There is no such thing as common cause or civic duty. Unless a class consciousness can be brewed only personal gain and personal motives exist. Although this is a system that may appear to the modern eye to be unfairly advantageous to the alpha male, the worker has no reason to cooperate with the toll taker to oust the alpha male, unless he is involved in a coup d’état plot, to replace the present alpha male. This is life in the “particularistic political culture” referred to by Rothstein. Remember, in this world, where equality is lost, living a life without justice is not morally reprehensible, it is merely rational. The modern mind might cry out for a revolution, changing the system into one where everyone is equally free in the public sphere. For there to be a revolution, the missing link must be reintroduced. The worker and the toll taker must see each other as equals in the public sphere, or as citizens. For people who see each other as one of “we, the people,” bringing about such a classless, egalitarian society is a common cause worth fighting for. For the cause to become a spring for action, the individual must be able to see himself or herself as a public being, as a citizen, as well as a private being with personal relationships. Such vision must become reality, not falseconsciousness. In other words, the possibility of the constitution of a liberal democratic state must become a reality. Thinkers such as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Kant were needed for the conceptual awakening. A French and an American revolution and the constitutions they brought about were needed to make it into a political reality. Once the conceptual and political reality is in place, the building of a real bridge, a bridge that allows a 10-minute crossing connecting Villages X and Y instead of the makeshift ones upstream, is no longer a daydream. Political power dedicated to serving the public interest, supported by citizens, will give the impetus for the building of the bridge, as well as developing other public goods. For such dynamic development of consciousness, the mind of the villager must be able to contemplate the possibility of a lifelong repetition of the work he does daily. He must also be able to see that some of his fellow men can end the routine and make a be er living for themselves with much less work required. The rational villager will then recognize that the matrix for the repeated game changes as he realizes that there are alternatives and will act accordingly, trying to make life easier for himself. If independence of the self is not an issue, the villager will try to gain the favor of the person in power, the counterpart of the alpha male in the chim-