Primary text & editorial annotation · Chapter 01 · pp. 5–13
Community as the foundation of human life
Community is life.
Community is not an addition to individual life. It is the social ground on which language, identity, knowledge, freedom and human development can emerge at all.
Open original at page 5 ↗Starting point
We become human through one another.
Deluism understands human beings as fundamentally social. From care in the first years of life to language, culture and knowledge, individual development always depends on relationships with others. Mutual aid is therefore neither a sentimental extra nor private charity, but a condition of human life.
Critique
Hyper-individualism erodes our common ground.
An order that elevates private success, competition and self-sufficiency into ideals weakens trust and collective responsibility. Isolation, alienation and political powerlessness then appear to be personal problems even when they are produced by social structures.
Consequence
The common must become institutional.
Community should shape politics, the economy and culture through local assemblies, mutual-aid networks, cooperatives, communal forms of housing and public cultural spaces. A society succeeds when its relationships can carry people and no one is abandoned.
Critical examination
Can appeals to community suppress individual difference and the right to withdraw?
Yes, if belonging is placed above rights. This principle is therefore limited by equal freedom, pluralism and federal fundamental rights.