From an early Proudhonian point of view, not the later Proudhon of federalism, community is not something to worship, romanticize, or dissolve the individual into. It is something to treat with suspicion whenever it becomes coercive, moralizing, collectivist, or even when it appears voluntary but begins to generate a collective will above the individual. The individual does not exist for the community.
From an early Proudhonian point of view, not the later Proudhon, community is not something to worship, romanticize, or dissolve the individual into. It is something to struggle against whenever it becomes coercive, moralizing, or collectivist, and even when it does not openly appear as such but begins to generate a collective will above the individual. The individual does not exist for the community. Proudhon even wrote a letter to Karl Marx denouncing what he called “community,” precisely because he feared that socialism could easily turn into a new moral and collective authority over the individual.
If you push the early Proudhon to his logical conclusion, not the later Proudhon with his concept of federalism, which resembles Hoppe’s idea of a “thousand Liechtensteins,” you could even oppose communes and communities as such, including covenant communities. The problem is not only the State, but any collective arrangement that begins to treat the individual as a mere part of a social body. Once “community” becomes an entity with its own will, its own morality, and its own authority, it risks becoming a miniature State.
From an Austro-individualist anarchistmaxxing perspective, I do not believe these kinds of arrangements can ever be truly voluntary in the full sense. At the same time, in an anarchist society, you cannot legitimately restrain someone from voluntarily associating with others, even if the arrangement itself seems collectivist, inefficient, or philosophically mistaken. This creates a real tension: one may oppose collectivist forms of association philosophically while still recognizing that people must be free to enter them if they choose.
For that reason, I personally believe the ideal is single ownership, with one clear owner who bears responsibility, exercises control, and avoids the ambiguities of shared claims. Sadly, co-ownership already exists even under state capitalism in the modern Western world. In my view, co-ownership is a form of communism, even when it is entered into voluntarily, because it blurs individual property rights and replaces clear ownership with collective administration. It may be legally tolerated, and even voluntarily chosen, but that does not make it philosophically individualist.
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