Agape and Communitas

Luigino Bruni on the Christian sources of market society

Luigino Bruni’s The Genesis and Ethos of the Market traces the social origins of the market economy and market society. At root, the rise of the market involved a “change in the nature of human relations,” a new ethos as much as a new structure of production, distribution, exchange (ix). It originates in a revolutionary conception of civil fraternity, though Bruni charges that today’s capitalism has abandoned that foundation. “The great task that awaits us,” he writes, “is to go beyond this market economy without renouncing the civilizational achievements that this economic and social system has delivered in the most recent eras.” We need to rediscover interpersonal relationships, which will free us from our “lonely immunitas,” but we need to do it without falling into oppressive forms of illiberal communitas (ix).

Bruni borrows communitas and immunitas from Roberto Esposito. Both derive from munus, which refers to a gift that bears an obligation. Such gifts create asymmetrical relations, relations determined by status. Based on munus, ancient communities were hierarchical, with limited individual freedom, communities of a sort but without individuals. No one could exempt or “immunize” himself from the controlling power of the munus. Traditional society was communitas without immunitas, as contemporary society is immunitas without communitas, a collection of buffered selves more or less frequently bumping off one another.