As we can see from this list, a community requires a commitment to a certain social order—and usually to a place—that, by definition, must constrain some choices. In return for security, support, and belonging, members surrender some of their freedom. This explains why creating community in America today is so difficult—few want to compromise their ability to make choices. This is especially true among those with the resources and/or capacity to relocate as soon as a better opportunity beckons—the very people whose leadership and role-modeling communities can ill afford to lose.
Quoting this because it’s vital for anyone who wants to create or join any kind of intentional community. A lot of punks talk about starting intentional communities, because they want the kind of close community organization that this post talks about. But the problem is, when interpersonal relationships within the community get hard, and they will, inevitably, get hard, if people are free to leave, people will leave. And then your community collapses from lack of members.
You see a lot of anarchist organizational principles among mutual aid groups for homeless people and poor people in America. And I think that’s because in those cases poverty itself supplies the coercion that keeps the group together - they make peace with one another because they can’t afford to leave the group and live separately.
You also see anarchist organizational principles in organizations centered on shared religious, philosophical, or cultic beliefs. Same idea. People are unwilling to leave the group because they believe it’s morally wrong to abandon the community of believers, or they fear being spiritually and culturally isolated among non-believers, so they work harder to solve interpersonal problems and keep the group together.
But if people are free to leave a community and suffer no consequences for it, and staying in the community does have a consequence - accepting abusive behavior by other community members, for instance - people will leave. It’s normal, it’s understandable, and it inevitably breaks down communities. And that’s why I don’t think the authors’ understanding of community is at all wrong. In the long run everybody finds themselves in situations where they have to submit to their community’s authority in order to remain in the community. And when people leave instead of submitting, that breaks community, and everyone, especially the children, suffer for it.
It’s a balance. Communities are to some extend fluid. Creating coercive conditions that make people stay even if they don’t want to is just as bad for a community as people abandoning them.
A community that is attractive to outside newcomers can manage a certain amount of attrition of their original members and it is probably healthy for the overall community to allow such replacement to happen.
I think your depiction of community requiring people to accept abuse from “the community’s authority” comes from growing up in a legal and cultural framework where abusers are systematically protected and rewarded. Where being able to cheat colleagues out of their fair share because the contract is written in just the right way gets you more money than you can ever spend; where victims of rape aren’t allowed to warn each other because the community will judge them for making accusations, or find them guilty of libel.
How could a community in a statist society end up with any other choice than between falling apart or accepting the abuse of the guy the police will protect? But that’s not an inherent property of community, it’s just an inherent property of statism.
That is not to say we have to wait for the end of states for communities to be more egalitarian. The bylaws of a community organization can do a lot of work towards making it more pleasant for its members, similarly to how the democratic Separation of Powers doesn’t solve tyranny but does make it a lot more mild. Ultimately sufficiently dogged abusers will find a gap, but it’s nice for the time that it lasts.
For the more general insight that a community needs some pressure to prevent it from falling apart under internal forces even if those internal forces are neither assisted by outside forces nor empowered through crappy internal bylaws, you’re conflating coersion and incentive. Coersion is typically violent and based on positive punishment. But there are also negative punishment, positive reinforcement, and negative reinforcement. Poor people cooperating to survive is an example of negative reinforcement: their cooperation allows them to use their resources more effectively to avoid harm.
In short, when an authority is abusive: you have three options. Leave, submit, or remove them from power. It is not the fault of communities that states make this last option difficult.
Quoting this because it’s vital for anyone who wants to create or join any kind of intentional community. A lot of punks talk about starting intentional communities, because they want the kind of close community organization that this post talks about. But the problem is, when interpersonal relationships within the community get hard, and they will, inevitably, get hard, if people are free to leave, people will leave. And then your community collapses from lack of members.
You see a lot of anarchist organizational principles among mutual aid groups for homeless people and poor people in America. And I think that’s because in those cases poverty itself supplies the coercion that keeps the group together - they make peace with one another because they can’t afford to leave the group and live separately.
You also see anarchist organizational principles in organizations centered on shared religious, philosophical, or cultic beliefs. Same idea. People are unwilling to leave the group because they believe it’s morally wrong to abandon the community of believers, or they fear being spiritually and culturally isolated among non-believers, so they work harder to solve interpersonal problems and keep the group together.
But if people are free to leave a community and suffer no consequences for it, and staying in the community does have a consequence - accepting abusive behavior by other community members, for instance - people will leave. It’s normal, it’s understandable, and it inevitably breaks down communities. And that’s why I don’t think the authors’ understanding of community is at all wrong. In the long run everybody finds themselves in situations where they have to submit to their community’s authority in order to remain in the community. And when people leave instead of submitting, that breaks community, and everyone, especially the children, suffer for it.
It’s a balance. Communities are to some extend fluid. Creating coercive conditions that make people stay even if they don’t want to is just as bad for a community as people abandoning them.
A community that is attractive to outside newcomers can manage a certain amount of attrition of their original members and it is probably healthy for the overall community to allow such replacement to happen.
I think your depiction of community requiring people to accept abuse from “the community’s authority” comes from growing up in a legal and cultural framework where abusers are systematically protected and rewarded. Where being able to cheat colleagues out of their fair share because the contract is written in just the right way gets you more money than you can ever spend; where victims of rape aren’t allowed to warn each other because the community will judge them for making accusations, or find them guilty of libel.
How could a community in a statist society end up with any other choice than between falling apart or accepting the abuse of the guy the police will protect? But that’s not an inherent property of community, it’s just an inherent property of statism.
That is not to say we have to wait for the end of states for communities to be more egalitarian. The bylaws of a community organization can do a lot of work towards making it more pleasant for its members, similarly to how the democratic Separation of Powers doesn’t solve tyranny but does make it a lot more mild. Ultimately sufficiently dogged abusers will find a gap, but it’s nice for the time that it lasts.
For the more general insight that a community needs some pressure to prevent it from falling apart under internal forces even if those internal forces are neither assisted by outside forces nor empowered through crappy internal bylaws, you’re conflating coersion and incentive. Coersion is typically violent and based on positive punishment. But there are also negative punishment, positive reinforcement, and negative reinforcement. Poor people cooperating to survive is an example of negative reinforcement: their cooperation allows them to use their resources more effectively to avoid harm.
In short, when an authority is abusive: you have three options. Leave, submit, or remove them from power. It is not the fault of communities that states make this last option difficult.