rather as members of a particular social group with only a coincidental
neighbour relationship to other citizens. Where there is no clear geographical
element to communalism within a nation a serious problem of ensuring
representative democracyexists. Unless separate elections are held for
voters registered according to whatever is the distinguishing group character-
istic, onlyproportional representationcan resolve this.
Commune
Commune has several meanings in politics. The more clear-cut and technical
usage is found in Western Europe, where it usually describes the most basic
level oflocal government, roughly equivalent to a British parish or local
district council, or an American township. Its more theoretically significant
usage is as a description of left-wing or radical experiments in communal
living. During the late 1960s in particular, many young radicals and ‘drop-outs’
formed collective organizations in which a few people lived together and
shared everything in an ideal form of communism, with no property rights and
a total commitment to one another’s welfare. The phrase ‘hippy communes’
came into common use to describe one form taken by this experiment in
collective living. Many communes were modelled on the Israelikibbutz, with
which they share a respectable philosophical ancestry in writers such as
Rousseauand other exponents ofdirect democracyorparticipatory
democracy, who advocated small, sharing, communal forms of social orga-
nization.
The phrase ‘The Commune’ refers to the revolutionary authority set up in
Paris after the Franco–Prussian War of 1870–71 and suppressed by the
‘Versailles’ government of Thiers with the assistance of the Prussian conquer-
ors. KarlMarxand later writers of the left have regarded The Commune as
foreshadowing modern revolutionary movements.
Communism
Communism can mean one of two things: a theoretical ideal found in the
writings ofMarx, or the actual governing principles of the self-described
communist states in the modern world. When used, for example, in the
communist parties of France, Italy, Britain, etc., it has typically referred to a
combination ofMarxistideals and support for the communist governments.
Clearly the collapse of theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
in 1991, hitherto the leading party, had severe repercussions on communist
parties elsewhere. As far as Marxist theory goes, communism is a slightly
shadowy state in which private property has been abolished, equality reigns,
and the state has ‘withered away’ because all men live in harmony and co-
Commune