Communal Democracy and its History
| Author | Antony Black |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9248.00066 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Communal Democracy and its History
ANTONY BLACK*
University of Dundee
Communes and communal thought are an essential part of the history of democracy.
By recognizing this we can re-discover the connection between democracy and local,
small-scale self-government, and see that democracy has a communitarian as well as
a liberal foundation.
In the human sciences, to misconstrue the history of a thing is usually to mis-
construe the thing itself. So it has proved in the case of democracy. The `liberal'
notion of democracy, long dominant in Britain and previously in France,
implied that, so long as governments are elected on a universal franchise and a
number of speci®ed liberties are maintained by law, democracy is in place. This
view is libertarian, individualist and statist. The debate on the role of
`community' in human experience and in prescriptive social and political
thought1has not so far succeeded in undermining the ascendancy of liberal
individualism in Anglo-American political thought. Elsewhere in Europe and in
the developing world, the idea that individuals and their liberties may be pro-
moted through the communities they belong to has been more widely accepted.
Partly because it was the common assumption of the German Romantics, Hegel
and Marx, this idea has had to struggle to maintain its respectability in the mid-
to late-twentieth century. Community is still scarcely recognized as in any sense
an essential ingredient of democracy.2The `people' to whom `power' is ascribed
are conceived as an aggregate of unrelated individuals. But no-one imagines
society in any other context to be like this. The exclusion of community from
the dominant language of politics (as distinct from sociology and social policy)
may partly account for the weakness of the communitarian dimension in
Anglophone thought generally.
One reason for this, and also one consequence of it, lies in the way the history
of democracy, both as a theory and as a practice, has been presented. For here
the liberal-individualist interpretation has been and remains in almost complete
ascendancy. That this is a strongly retrospective and ideological interpretation
has long been clear. This interpretation has most unfortunately, and I believe
unwittingly, been reinforced by a recent collection of essays by eminent scholars
#Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
* I am grateful for comments from Jimmy Burns, Maarten Prak and Michael Wilks, and to Anne
Aitken for typing.
1Cf. S. Avineri and A. de-Shalit (eds), Communitarianism and Individualism (Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1992); A. Black, State, Community and Human Desire: a Group-centred Account of
Political Values (Hemel Hempstead, Wheatsheaf, 1988).
2But see Paul Hirst, Associative Democracy: New Forms of Economic and Social Governance
(Oxford, Polity, 1994).
Political Studies (1997), XLV, 5± 20
which is in some danger of being received as authoritative.3I want here to
present an alternative hypothesis for the origin and development of democracy
in Europe.
In terms of Benjamin Constant's contrast between ancient and modern
liberty, according to which the former was active, participatory and collective,
while modern liberty seeks individual independence to pursue private happiness
without interference,4the history of democracy has been and still is largely
written on the understanding that democracy was, is and ought to be the
handmaid of modern liberty. Indeed, Constant's argument that the attempt to
reincarnate ancient liberty in the modern world was partly responsible for the
revolutionary Terror in France remains a subtext of Anglo-Americanism. Thus
one starts (of course) with ®fth-century Athens, proceeds to the `republics' of
`renaissance' Italy, and thence (aided by a Machiavellian moment) to the
English Revolution and 1776. This is tolerable if one is expressly writing the
history of modern liberty or liberal democracy. But as a history of democracy in
a general sense, it leaves out a whole epoch of historical development and a
whole dimension of democracy itself. It is very unfortunate that John Dunn and
his colleagues have adopted this view, since I am sure they would not wish to go
this far in supporting individualism against communitarianism; and insofar as
they did, they would certainly not deliberately have chosen to do so by means of
a sternly selective historicism. But that is the public eect which their work is
likely to have, especially in the intellectual milieu into which it has been thrown.
The purpose of this article is to indicate what is missing and to argue that this
omission has seriously misleading implications for the understanding of
democracy today. It will be argued that communalism is woven into the history
of democracy, and indeed of liberty, as inextricably as are individual liberty and
individual equality; the commune should occupy centre stage beside the polis
and city-state.
By `commune' is meant here an internally self-governing group, whether or
not sovereign, which orders its aairs through the consensus of its full members.
It very often refers to a territorial association, especially a village or small town
with its environs and the inhabitants thereof (the usual meaning of the French
commune, German Gemeinde and Italian comune). For present purposes I
include also associations based upon function, such as religious communities
and craft guilds. Commune may be, but is not always, further distinguished
from civitas (city or city-state) by being limited in size to face-to-face com-
munities, capable of self-determination without representation, through an
assembly of all members. In European history as elsewhere, both non-property-
owners and women (except when they inherited property as widows) were
excluded. It is a condition of communal status that families or heads of house-
holds are property-owning members. In other words, the commune referred to
here arises in a society of peasant- or artisan-proprietors. Self-government
through consensus means that rules relevant to the interests of all members,
about methods of production, distribution of ®eld strips, prices, quality of
goods, social behaviour including the suppression of some crimes, and
6Communal Democracy and its History
#Political Studies Association, 1997
3John Dunn (ed.), Democracy: the Un®nished Journey, 508 BC to AD 1993 (Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1992).
4B. Constant (B. Fontana, ed. and trans.) Political Writings (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press, 1988), pp. 102± 14.
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