Voluntarism (action) - Varieties

Varieties

Voluntary provision of services to religious, civil, medical, educational, environmental and other private or governmental organizations doubtless has a long history. Such volunteer efforts keep expenses down for non-profit and philanthropic organizations, empower individuals and groups to help others, and make volunteers feel needed.

Voluntarism flourished in the 19th and early 20th centuries and was empowering especially to women who had been excluded from political participation outside the home. Women’s organizations dealt with social problems created by rapid industrialization and urbanization, and by massive immigration which were not addressed by institutions of the time and had a great influence on American political culture.

Voluntarism also is used to describe non-coercive methods of recruiting soldiers, from participants in European and American military service to youthful combatants in civil war in Sierra Leone.

Voluntarism has been a phrase used in labor relations. In Britain, it means the state refrains from directly intervening in industrial relations. In the early American labor movement it meant trade unions should focus on “pure and simple” gains in wages and working conditions and not independent labor politics and industrial unionism.

In his book “Willful Liberalism: Voluntarism and Individuality in Political Theory and Practice,” Johns Hopkins University political science professor Richard E. Flathman argues that liberals must understand more about individuality and self-reliance and self-responsibility and therefore be more acceptance of voluntary action and less concerned with ordering political society. He notes that “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations,” which he describes as “of a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, general or restricted, enormous or diminutive.”

In sociology, voluntarism is an important aspect of the action theory of Talcott Parsons, as well as other theories of social action and agency.

Free market advocates, libertarians and anarchists call for voluntary efforts to replace most or all government efforts, using both moral and utilitarian arguments.