Community, Communitarianism, and Libertarianism

"Community" is often a dishonest euphemism for sinister interests

community  1) Originally, this word meant a ^*society of sufficiently modest numbers inhabiting some geographical region of a sufficiently modest size that practically everyone in it is at least known of by everyone else. Thus, they interact and share an identity and some interests. 2) By extension, “community” came to be used non-geographically of occupational and cultural groups; such as ^*academics or musicians. Although to the extent that they ^*organise to further common goals they are really ^*interest groups. 3) Among the ^*politically correct, “community” is often a euphemism for a minority group that is ascribed ^*collectivist ^*rights (or ^*privileges): black community, ^*homosexual community, ^*disabled community, etc. These are not communities in any serious sense or even clear interest groups: for their alleged representatives are typically self-appointed (with mass media connivance) and often have little idea what their supposed communities think as they have not consulted them properly, if at all. But to the extent that these “communities” are hypothesised for the purpose of ^*initiating imposed ^*duties on, and extracting ^*tax-^*extortion from, other people, they do increasingly become partly separate, socially ^*parasitic, groups that damage the ^*liberty and ^*welfare of their victims (and probably also their own in the long-term: due to the undermining of their ^*responsibility). 4) Local ^*authorities (^*political ^*powers) now like to describe as “community services” all the inefficient, and often dubious, tax-funded facilities they use to ^*bribe the local electorate to gain their ^*votes. 5) “Community service” is also the euphemism for the forced ^*labour dished out to those ^*persons found guilty of infractions—less serious than those that supposedly deserve prison—of ^*state commands posing as ^*law.

communitarianism  A nebulous ^*political movement and ^*ideology that seeks to promote the values of communities understood as people that share a sense of geographical and cultural identity. This involves ^*rights and ^*duties that are seen as going beyond (i.e., contradicting to some degree) those of an ^*individualistic and ^*contractarian ^*society (of which a ^*libertarian society would be the most extreme kind). Communitarians see this as the lost solution to many modern social problems. But exactly how is often left vague and apparently due to misunderstandings about such things as individualism and ^*markets.

A literal ^*community is not what most people appear to want: they increasingly opt for the relative individuality and anonymity that they find in cities, in which about half the world’s ^*population now chooses to live. A form of ^*collectivistic communitarianism—as modern, ^*national, ^*democratic ^*politics is, albeit writ large—overwhelmingly causes the social problems people have. These can only be solved by greater individualism; in particular, by ^*depoliticisation. That said, real communities of any size and with any rules can be contracted into on a completely libertarian basis (some communitarian theorists insist that one can only be born into a real community, but that would happen eventually anyway). If these communities were to be attractive to some people, then they would be freely chosen (just as workers’ cooperatives can be and, very occasionally, are freely chosen). So, it is not clear why any communitarian system need be ^*aggressively imposed.

See ^*atomism.

(These are entries from A LIBERTARIAN DICTIONARY: Explaining a Philosophical Theory [draft currently being revised]. Asterisks indicate other entries.)