Why communal ethics fail when imposed at national scale
Ubuntu is a traditional African communal ethic often summarized by the phrase “I am because we are.” It emphasizes relational identity, mutual care, shared responsibility, and social harmony, holding that a person’s humanity is realized through participation in the community. In its original cultural context—small, kin-based societies with shared moral norms—Ubuntu functioned as a social ethic rather than a political system, guiding interpersonal conduct rather than governing power.
Every age produces its share of beautiful ideas that fail not because they are ugly, but because they are incomplete. Ubuntu is one of them.
Its language is warm. Its intentions appear humane. I am because we are sounds like wisdom distilled from generations of communal life. And within a narrow frame— small, voluntary, morally cohesive communities—it can be. The problem arises when a social ethic is mistaken for a political system, and spirituality and poetry are elevated into power.
Ubuntu is not wrong in the appropriate voluntary environment . But it is not free when it is not voluntary. And it becomes dangerous the moment it forgets that distinction.
❦ What Ubuntu Is—and Is Not
“A person is a person through other persons.”— Desmond Tutu
Ubuntu begins with a relational truth: human beings flourish in community. No serious philosophy denies this. We are social creatures. We are shaped by families, traditions, and shared moral worlds.
But Ubuntu goes further. It roots identity and dignity not in the human person as such, but in belonging to a group. The individual is intelligible only through the collective. Harmony becomes the highest good. Moral legitimacy flows from cohesion.
As a communal ethic, Ubuntu can foster generosity and mutual responsibility. As a governing principle, it quietly dissolves liberty. And this is an unacceptable infringement on human freedom.
Because once dignity flows from the group, the group becomes sovereign at the sacrifice of the individual.
❦ Natural Law Starts Where Ubuntu Does Not
Natural law begins from a harder, less romantic truth: the human person is spiritually and morally prior to society.
Human dignity and freedom are not bestowed by the collective. They are intrinsic. Conscience is not negotiated. Truth is not voted into existence. Rights are not permissions granted by consensus; they are limits placed upon power, on rulers, on the state.
From this foundation, community arises—not as an authority over the person, but as a voluntary association of persons who already possess moral worth. Society (the collective) exists to serve the human being, not to define him.
This is the fault line.
Ubuntu says: I am because we are.
Natural law says: I am—and therefore I may freely choose to join the we.
Those are not complementary statements. They are rival claims about sovereignty.
❦ The One-Way Compatibility Rule
Here is the distinction that resolves the confusion—and exposes the danger:
Freedom allows Ubuntu.
Ubuntu does not allow freedom.
“Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself.” — John Locke
In a society that respects private property, conscience, speech, and voluntary association, small communities are free to organize themselves communally. They may share resources. They may emphasize harmony. They may raise children within a shared moral framework. They may live Ubuntu.
And because they are free to enter—and free to exit—their way of life remains moral.
But the reverse is not true.
A society governed by Ubuntu cannot tolerate true freedom. Because freedom includes dissent. It includes refusal. It includes the right to stand apart. And Ubuntu, once scaled beyond intimate community, treats separation as betrayal.
This is not a moral failure of its adherents. It is a structural one.
❦ Why Scale Changes Everything
Ubuntu functions only under conditions that cannot exist at national scale:
- Personal knowledge
- Shared moral language
- Informal accountability
- Voluntary participation
Once scaled to millions, these conditions vanish. Harmony must be enforced. Consensus must be manufactured. Authority must be centralized. This is how communism always begins: as a beautiful idea suited to small, intimate communities, where trust is personal and shared values are assumed. But once scaled to millions, those conditions vanish. Harmony must be enforced. Consensus must be manufactured. Authority must be centralized. What began as moral aspiration ends as administrative control.
“The community” becomes an abstraction—and whoever claims to speak for it acquires power over everyone else.
What was once relational becomes bureaucratic.
What was once moral becomes administrative.
What was once voluntary becomes compulsory.
This is how communal ethics harden into collectivist authoritarian control.
❦ The Problem of Children and Authority
Nowhere is this clearer than in the treatment of children.
Natural law is unambiguous: parents possess primary authority over their children. This authority precedes the state. It is not delegated by society. It is entrusted by nature.
Ubuntu rhetoric, when politicized, blurs this line. It takes a village shifts from support to supervision, from help to override. Education becomes ideological formation. Parental conscience becomes an obstacle. Children become collective assets.
This is not care. It is dispossession; performed gently through the language of care and justice.
Every collectivist system understands the same truth: control the children, and the future follows. Ubuntu, stripped of its cultural limits and scaled through state power, performs the same function under softer language.
❦ Harmony vs. Truth
Ubuntu elevates harmony as the supreme good. Natural law does not.
Harmony without truth is merely quiet. Unity without consent is submission. Virtue without choice is theater.
A free society tolerates discord because it values conscience. A communal system suppresses discord because it values cohesion. When harmony outranks truth, dissent becomes immoral by definition.
And when dissent becomes immoral, power never lacks justification.
❦ Conclusion
Ubuntu is a communal ethic that can exist only inside of freedom. It cannot be the foundation of freedom itself.
A free society can host a thousand Ubuntu communities, each living as they choose. An Ubuntu-governed society cannot host freedom; not because it hates liberty, but because it has no place for it.
Freedom runs one way.
It begins with the person, protects the family, permits community, and restrains the state.
Anything that reverses that order—however gently phrased—does not elevate humanity.
It manages it.
Ubuntu: “I am because we are.”
Natural Law: “I am—and therefore I may freely choose to associate.”
Grace Armstrong
thehearthofvirtue.com 