Rectifying The Concept of Community: A Political Opportunity?

In the beginning was Communitas

We are in the time of change. Every anthropological dynamic is rooted in History and finds in it both its reasons for being and its meanings, as well as the planning of becoming. Wanting to talk about community, it is therefore necessary to go back to the primordial term: communitas[1]. This Latin word comes from communis, which means 'which is common to many or to all, shared' and indicates, in an abstract sense, the common being, the commonality, in particular between persons united by relationships, that forms a whole. 

In the culture of ancient Rome, later inherited in Christian Europe, the community was not simply a gathering of people linked by human ties and interests: it was the foundation of the civitas[2], a word that indicated at the same time the totality of Roman citizens, the city and, more importantly, the status of being a citizen. The community is the authentic dimension of the person, the one where the person is formed inwardly and outwardly, acquiring the mores, that is, the values that were handed down from generation to generation, enriching themselves with meaning and embodying themselves to endure for centuries to come. The values of the ancients, mores maiorum, were a kind of ideological code based on five fundamental virtues: Fides, i.e. fidelity, loyalty, honesty, trust; a very important concept also for Roman law; Pietas, i.e. devotion and respect towards family, homeland and the gods; Majestas, i.e. the dignity of the state as the representative of the people, and also symbolized the pride and sense of belonging of the Roman people; Virtus, or the values that constituted the ideal of the virtuous Roman male, such as courage combined with political and military competence, the ability to put aside self-interest for the good of the community; Gravitas, or respect for tradition, seriousness, dignity, authority, self-control, kindness, courtesy. In addition to these fundamental concepts, which formed the basis of the Mores Maiorum, they were complemented by: the Decorum, the ability to maintain one's person intact and with honour before society; the Disciplina, the practice of inner order, the first step towards the order of society; the Benignitas, solidarity towards one's neighbour in order to contribute to the same objective; the Abstinentia, that is, the control of one's instincts and passions; Pax, peace understood as both inner and outer duty; Gloria, not as personal ambition but as the purpose of society; Ambitiosa Morte, dying with honour, the maxim that it is better to lose life than to lose honour, and death, the final act of earthly existence, crowns or mocks the person's life. 

The ethics of communitas was entirely aimed at the Common Good, to the very end of politics[3]. This objective is the driving force, the ultimate goal, the constant tension towards the full and authentic realization of the lives of the members of the community as well as the community itself. The community interest had to be placed before any egoic and individual pretension, since the community organism, made up of the people who are its members, is above the individuality of each person and generates the physical, moral and spiritual life of its members. Consequently, the life of each citizen is always aimed at the good of the community. It is from communitas that the state is born, which in its etymology means 'conduction, position, stability', ethical definitions even before material ones. A person without a community is, on the other hand, a person without an identity, an individual, who may lack roots and values but, what is even worse, has no purpose for his life, no Good to pursue.  

The Community of Destiny, a vital principle of societies

We believe that the life of societies is subject to a number of immutable laws, as is the life of individuals. The Community of Destiny is the first of these laws: where it disappears, human groups fall prey to the anarchy of meaningless living. Of course, the laws governing social life do not impose themselves as immediately and brutally as those of organic life[4]: a community whose members are no longer bound together by the Community of Destiny succumbs less quickly than a body deprived of air, but its asphyxiation, though slow, is no less certain.

What is the Community of Destiny

We understand a person's destiny to be the totality of events that affect his or her existence. A Community of Destiny can then be said to exist when people share spiritually and materially the same existence, pursuing the same ends. Community, then, in the most authentic and original sense of the term, communion of lives[5]. 

We see the need to make distinctions. Destiny is not the mere similarity that can be found between people due to belonging to the same social class, occupation, studies completed or other categorisations, because in that case we are talking about destinies that resemble each other, but are not a single destiny. However common their status, the men we have spoken of remain profoundly separate from one another.  It’s a different matter when it is the hearts that beat in unison, heading towards the same goal, with a union that transcends that of matter. Even in the difference of roles and commitments, the different members of a community are as intimately united and in synergy as are the members of a body, where everything is perfectly ordered to its function and all together, and only thus, give life to the body[6].

The typical example of such a community is that of the family, an organic community par excellence, whose very structure implies a rhythm of exchanges between the different members that are almost as intimate and continuous as those between the members of the same body. Moreover, it’s significant to note that every form of society remains healthy and vital to the extent that it is akin to the family. We note that far more than blood ties, it’s the interdependence of destinies that constitutes the family unit, that intimate and profound communion of hearts that transcends all dimensions of matter and constitutes inseparable bonds that endure in space and time. This form of community of interdependence produces the unity of human groupings, gives rise to society. 

The true Community of Destiny may include the similarity of destinies, but it does not demand it; on the contrary, it demands organic solidarity, the existence of vital bonds between people. Striking proof of the vital importance of this form of community lies in the fact that wherever it is abolished, societies do not slow to break down. Monarchies and feudal lordships collapsed from the moment the monarchs and lords no longer lived with the people and for the people; the master who no longer shares the fate of his workers becomes indifferent and hated; military leaders who live apart from their soldiers wither the enthusiasm and discipline of armies; modern politicians who pursue their own private interests or those of transnational corporations lose credibility and following, arousing the hatred of the people. From the moment people no longer feel dependent on each other within a unity that overcomes them, a disintegration of this unity takes place, moving towards inorganic fractions that mutually devour each other. There are more employers' or workers' unions the less healthy the companies are, the more class demands the smaller the national community, the more parties and movements the less unified the consciousness of what true politics is. The Community of Destiny is the barometer of the vitality and stability of societies. 

The Community of Destiny has several advantages, not only sociological and political, but also psychological, which happily influence social life. Firstly, it fosters the love that is the soul of every social unit. it is clear that we are more likely to love the being who lives alongside us and shares our joys and risks, than a distant stranger. Solidarity creates a climate conducive to sympathy, as happens for example in mutual aid and support within different social classes, or in cases of moral and material need, where people of different opinions and backgrounds who until recently lived as strangers, almost impermeable to each other, learn to know and love each other in everyday life together. Both dimensions fight selfishness, bending it to the service of the Common Good. The same happens with all the binomials of virtues and vices that are proper to human beings and that inevitably affect community life. 

To those who claim otherwise, we reply: better nothingness than imperfection? The suppression of the Community of Destiny, by creating a situation in which mutual help and care for common happiness are no longer possible except in the form of heroic selflessness, constitutes the worst solvent of social bonds, the true destruction of the human masses. These views are, moreover, confirmed all too well by the pitiful spectacle of present-day society. The feeling of the Community of Destiny allows the individual to overcome himself in time and space, projecting himself towards long deadlines that are like germs of eternity in the life of societies. History bears witness to this. 

The political need for Communities

The Community thus understood appears to be of great political utility. Indeed, there is a need for it. The contemporary world is increasingly showing the ineffectiveness of all forms of expression of the political essence of the human being (especially political parties), so it is necessary to find an effective and viable solution. In this sense, Communities of Destiny stand as an example of political organicity[7], because they are easy to implement, do not require many resources, adapt to every context, and respect traditions and different models of civilisation. Communities of Destiny represent a form of expression of each civilisation model or pole and are versatile and adaptable to further political forms, even new ones that have not yet been discovered and explored[8]. Without the Community, which is the core of civil society, other political models cannot develop.

It is thus that the Community ordered to a common destiny becomes a laboratory for the transition and application of new political theories, such as the Fourth Political Theory. Without this premise, however, an attempt to move towards new doctrines is not credible: in order to be able to insert something new, one must ensure a total transmutation of what was there before, otherwise one runs the risk of giving shape to an unnatural hybrid, which will perish after a short time. It’s a question of the physiological necessity of social systems, a total and real change must take place, not just an ideal one.

The Community of Destiny is, in itself, a dimension of political alchemy that makes it possible to transform the entire world through the gradual modification of its internal micro-elements, generating variations in the collective imagination, in the social Nous of a people, changing the noological[9] balances with which conflicts between peoples occur. This is very important, because it reminds us how change in a large political space occurs from small groups. The healing of society, understood both locally and globally, passes through many small possible steps.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Platone, Repubblica, Bompiani, Milano 2009.

Theodore DE BARY, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the learning of the mind-and-heart, NY University Press, New York 1981.

Aleksandr DUGIN, Noomachia, AGA Editrice, Milano 2019.

Aleksandr DUGIN, Platonismo politico, AGA Editrice, Milano 2020.

Roberto ESPOSITO, Communitas. Origine e destino della comunità, Einaudi, Torino 2006.

Jean-Claude FREDOUILLE, Dictionnaire de la civilisation romaine, Larousse, Paris 1986.

Lorenzo Maria PACINI, Scuola di Pensiero Forte – vol. 2, Il Pensiero Forte, Warclaw 2018.

Edith STEIN, Il problema dell’empatia, Studium, Roma 2009.

Ferdinand TÖNNIES, Comunità e società, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2001.

Wei-Ming TU, Humanity and self-cultivation, Berkeley 1979.