“We need to rediscover communitarianism afresh as a defining but often overlooked strand of the Labour tradition. From the co-operative movement to trade unions, Labour’s greatest achievements have come when it has empowered people to work for change from the bottom up for the common good.”
- Andy Burnham, ‘Reclaiming power together: a politics of community to renew Labour’s purpose’, in UCL Policy Lab, Britain Renewed: Labour and the Communitarian Tradition (2025).
After complaining incessantly that Keir Starmer could not do the ‘vision’ thing, commentators are now wondering what the defining motif of Burnham’s plan for the country’s future may turn out to be. What, they may well ask, is communitarianism?
What is communitarianism?
Communitarianism, as a philosophical and political way of thinking about human relationships and societal co-existence, gained its name from a series of academic works published in the 1980s/1990s. There are broadly two interrelated currents in this development. The first relates to philosophical criticisms of theories that misconceive people as self-contained entities who are entitled to choose one’s own path regardless of their relationships with others. The most prominent of these critics – Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Michael Walzer, and Michael Sandel – came to be widely known as exponents of communitarianism. The second current involves a number of writers who challenged the encroachment on human solidarity and cooperation by either the callous market or an over-centralised state. These included David Miller, Jonathan Boswell, David Marquand, Henry Tam, Philip Selznick, Robert Bellah, Amitai Etzioni, Charles Derber – all of whom not only advanced policies to enhance mutual understanding and collective efficacy, but explicitly used ‘communitarianism’ and ‘communitarian’ to describe the ideas they were putting forward.
Etymologically, ‘communitarianism’ thus came into our intellectual lexicon. At the same time, it can be noted that there was no right-wing champion of sectarian, authoritarian, or nationalistic politics who tried to take on the communitarian appellation. So, excepting for those who, like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty-Dumpty, think they can use any word to mean whatever they want it to mean, the conceptual parameters of communitarianism are essentially set by these two groups of thinkers. And what they have in common is a rejection of self-focused individualism (especially in ethics and economics) in favour of sustained progress towards policies and institutions that facilitate mutual regard, shared deliberations, and cooperative endeavours.
Philosophical and political communitarianism
Let us first look at the philosophical communitarians (Taylor, MacIntyre, Walzer, Sandel). The main reason why academic colleagues gave them this common label is that they all hold that we can only coherently discuss issues of identity, ethics, and autonomy in the context of our relationships with others. As members of communities we have to take into account what others think about how we should behave towards each other, and what needs to be preserved or altered in the way we live. No individual can legitimately declare that he or she has an indisputable claim as to what is right or wrong irrespective of others’ experiences.
This has at times led some to charge communitarian thinking with being anti-liberal and blindly protective of oppressive hierarchies embedded in many communities of the past. But that would be overlooking a crucial element which these communitarian thinkers emphasise – development through shared learning. Communities are not static entities. Rules, customs, institutions evolve as people experience how different practices impact on their lives. History confirms that communities which are more open to learning and cooperation – as opposed to those rigidly closed off from exchanges of ideas or collective adaptations – are more adept at problem-solving and attaining more satisfactory outcomes.
For the second group of communitarian thinkers – sometimes referred to as the political communitarians – societal governance at every level should be guided by a commitment to ensure that policy ideas are developed through the informed involvement of all who may be affected by them. A communitarian-minded government would accordingly support cooperative learning and participatory decision-making, and remove barriers that obstruct civil interactions and deliberative engagement.
The publications from this group show what the communitarian political agenda encompasses. In the UK, David Miller’s Market, State and Community (1989) advocated reforms that will help to develop a socially responsive economy that engages citizens with a strong sense of civic identity. Jonathan Boswell’s Community and the Economy (1990) set out proposals to nurture more effective cooperation across a wide range of stakeholders in determining and pursuing common socioeconomic objectives. In his books, The Unprincipled Society (1988) and The Progressive Dilemma, (1999), David Marquand argued for communitarian, decentralist, and participatory approaches that empower citizens to better understand and shape public policies. Henry Tam’s Communitarianism: a new agenda for politics and citizenship (1998) applies the principles of cooperative enquiry, mutual responsibility, and citizen participation to improving the provision of education, work opportunities, and public protection for citizens; and to reforming state, business, and third sector institutions.
Their arguments were reinforced by their American counterparts. Robert Bellah echoed Boswell’s communitarian call for a shift from individualist assumptions in organisational culture and structure, and greater support for citizens to take part in civic life (The Good Society (1991); Habits of the Heart (1996)). Like Marquand, Philip Selznick argued in The Moral Commonwealth (1992) that all institutions should be developed to enable mutual learning, cultivate shared values, and facilitate cooperative working. Amitai Etzioni’s The Spirit of Community (1993) and other works set out policies to help parents care for their children, teachers promote civic values, government bodies fulfil their responsibilities in safeguarding public wellbeing, and counter the influence of special interests in politics. Charles Derber, in works such as What’s Left? (1995) and Corporation Nation (1998), championed a communitarian synthesis of Scandinavian social democratic practices and the approaches of cooperative enterprises to displace the irresponsible market arrangements that damage lives and undermine social stability.
The progressive lineage of communitarian politics
Beyond these writers, we can trace the intellectual DNA of communitarian politics back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the ideas that would come to define communitarianism emerged through the works of a number of seminal thinkers.
Figures such as L. T. Hobhouse and R. H. Tawney in the UK; John Dewey and Mary P. Follett in the US; and Leon Bourgeois and Emile Durkheim in France, offered distinctly communitarian critiques of both laissez faire capitalism and technocratic state socialism, and proposed the development of mutually supportive relations and cooperative governance to enable communities to shape democratic decisions.[1] Their collective influence marked a notable communitarian reorientation of liberal and social democratic thinking towards a politics which takes collaborative human connections as a core objective. This can be seen in relation to a number of critical issues.
Equality, for example, is to be considered in the context of power relations. If some people through their wealth, prevailing status, or control over businesses bring about situations which are oppressive to others who are unable to resist them, society is thrown into a state of disequilibrium. The wider the power gap, the greater the insecurity. The subjugation of some by others on the basis of race, gender, socioeconomic, or any other difference corrodes community life.
In redistributing power, however, the aim is not to hand power to one side to dominate the other, but to build harmonious, collaborative relationships. In the workplace, militant confrontation should be superseded by cooperative decision-making. This can be achieved through worker representation on management boards or worker cooperative structures which, as experiences in Nordic countries and a wide range of cooperatives around the world were to show, would engender better working environments and more satisfactory outcomes for all involved.
Of course, there are always those with power – in business or any other sphere of life – who refuse to lessen the hold they have over others. Communitarian thinkers recognise – unlike naïve (or more commonly, cynical) conservative voluntarists who insist we should just rely on persuading powerful people to do the right thing – that at some point government may have to step in to level the proverbial playing field. What is distinctly communitarian is the focus on the need to involve the public in sharing their thoughts, reflecting on the evidence, and deliberating on policy options.
The emphasis on open, inclusive learning has two important implications. First, in relation to education it means that students should learn to discern what to accept as reliable, how to think critically, and engage in constructive discussion with others to tackle contested issues. Secondly, such an ethos of cooperative learning provides a basis for determining the legitimacy of claims about risks, benefits, costs, etc which impact on public policies, and enable us to back collective remedial actions even when some try to invoke their individual ‘rights’ (or business autonomy) to continue acting in ways that are detrimental to others.
From mid-20th century on, communitarian ideas continued to enrich the progressive tradition. The writings of Martin Buber, Emmanuel Mounier, John Macmurray, for example, indicted both the dehumanising treatment of people by authoritarian regimes in the 1930s/40s (and which is sadly a pertinent issue again with the resurgence of far right politics), and the crushing alienation of impoverished individuals by profit-obsessed markets. The concern with cultivating and protecting authentic interpersonal relations – of trust, respect, mutuality – would come to be addressed on many fronts. Michael Young pioneered numerous institutions and networks to help families and communities support each other.[2] John Stewart led the way for citizen engagement and community governance.[3] Elinor Ostrom demonstrated how the joint management of common resources can be more beneficial than other approaches.[4] Robert Putnam pointed to a wide range of examples of community collaboration.[5] And in Progressive Politics in the Global Age, communitarian writers responded to policy challenges such as those relating to the family, corporate power, economic growth, and globalisation.[6]
Communitarianism and New Labour
The New Labour government (1997-2010) was influenced by communitarian ideas in important ways. The influence did not reach every part of the government, since not all Ministers bought into the agenda.[7] But the impact of communitarian thinking was palpable in policy areas where Ministers such as David Blunkett, Hazel Blears, John Denham, Fiona Mactaggart, and others, pushed for the wider applications of community engagement and empowerment.[8]
For example, under the banners of Neighbourhood Renewal, Active Communities, Civil Renewal, Neighbourhood Policing, and other community-orientated programmes, New Labour achieved substantial improvements by ensuring public bodies explore with citizens what should be done rather than merely ‘consulting’ on pre-established plans, supporting a wide range of community development activities, and investing in the infrastructure of the community sector. The communitarian approach was applied to enabling local communities to shape regeneration programmes, and prioritising environmental improvements through Neighbourhood Management. Community crime reduction was enhanced by local councillors and public officials actively involving residents in suggesting, assessing, and reviewing actions, resulting in notable reduction in crime and the fear of crime.
The cross-government Together We Can programme promoted both innovative and tried-and-tested techniques to build community links and facilitate public input into collective policy formulations. Schools were more widely used for community activities; communities gained better understanding of the criminal justice system through magistrate shadowing, community justice centres, and participation in setting community payback projects; community champions were trained to help develop local activities for sustainable development; community rail projects connected local activism with transport improvement; and a variety of arrangements were devised to help people consider policy options that might affect them. Meanwhile, initiatives such as Take Part, Guide Neighbourhoods, and Civic Pioneers, enabled local people to learn practical skills to assess public issues constructively and make their case through dialogues and partnership working.[9]
In other policy areas, citizenship education was introduced to raise understanding of civic rights and responsibilities, along with the Active Citizens in Schools scheme to enable young people to explore how to help improve their community. Community health collaboratives were established with health outreach workers engaging with members of the community who through their jobs can build up relationships with others who might not normally be inclined to access formal health-related advice. Extensive support was channelled to community enterprise development, community asset management, and community coproduction of public services. These gave communities greater capability and confidence in improving their quality of life. Furthermore, costs were often reduced because mistakes were avoided as a result of early involvement of communities, and delivery was enhanced through positive community input.[10]
Despite the many successes, communitarian ideas were not applied effectively across the board in the New Labour years. There were Ministers and civil servants with strong technocratic mindsets who did not see the need to involve communities when they ‘knew’ what should be done. There were those who viewed communities as a cumbersome intermediary when the state should interact with individual members of the public like any organisation with their customers. Some were so distrustful of community input that they overloaded community groups with over-prescriptive instructions and excessive central monitoring. The biggest problem was that New Labour did not invest enough in building up expertise internally or sustaining capability externally. After Labour’s loss of office in 2010, the Conservative-led coalition swiftly decimated the community sector, and put an end to most programmes designed to support deliberative civic engagement. Labour itself seemed to have lost its memory of the valuable difference empowering communities could make, and drifted away from true communitarian concerns.
Reconnecting with communities today
Rediscovering communitarianism should remind us of the need to build cooperative relations across communities to engender effective collective actions. In dealing with the many challenges facing society – pressures on the NHS, defence spending, housing shortage, intensifying climate change, etc. – no government can afford to leave it to technocrats or the market. Political leaders must empower people to share ideas and engage them as partners in securing improvements. Lessons from the past should be drawn on to guide policy development today.
In all policy areas, the capability and opportunities for people to be properly informed and involved should be supported by:
- enhancing education and training that nurture participatory skills, critical thinking, and consensus-building.[11]
- facilitating input into neighbourhood policing and community sentencing, community health outreach, neighbourhood management, community conference for conflict-resolution, and deliberative assessment of spending priorities.
- expanding meaningful community activism through community enterprise, ownership of community assets, and community-guided regeneration.[12]
More should be done to strengthen community efficacy and cohesion by:
- enabling people to have greater democratic influence with proportional representation, more extensive devolution, better control over vital public resources that had previously been privatised, and more effective mechanisms to hold those in public office to account.[13]
- providing long-term investment for the training and recruitment of community development workers, and the revitalisation of community infrastructure organisations.
- promoting inclusive integration by supporting community groups across the country to involve people in familiarisation events and fun activities, learn about each other’s customs and cultures, and engage in community-wide projects.
At the same time, action needs to be taken to deal with deep-seated problems that fuel societal fragmentation:
- the persistent circulation of harmfully misleading and divisive communications through private media outlets and platforms must come under effective regulatory restraint, while independent public broadcasters such as the BBC and Channel 4 should be given better protection from cuts or privatisation.
- the escalating insecurity over paid employment should be addressed by expanding workers’ input into management decisions, wider establishment of worker cooperatives and cooperative platforms, the development of comprehensive work transition training and support programmes (potentially funded by AI companies’ growing revenue from innovations that displace current employment opportunities), and the provision of a suitable form of Universal Basic Income.
- the corrosive culture of denigration and avoidance of tax should be countered by consistent highlighting of tax avoiders as offending against law-abiding citizens, and rigorous enforcement in ensuring that billions of pound of unpaid taxes owed to the country are collected.[14]
Communitarianism is ultimately concerned with developing mutually respectful and cooperative relations within and across communities so that people can play a meaningful part in shaping their lives. It is the antithesis of endorsing tribal nationalism, embracing prejudices camouflaged as ‘traditional values’, or demanding responsibility from the vulnerable while acquiescing in the irresponsibility of the powerful. A government that knows how to share power with communities in devising solutions at all levels will be one that commands greater public trust and more effective policy outcomes.[15]
Henry Tam is the author and editor of books on politics and public policy, including Communitarianism, Time to Save Democracy, and (forthcoming in 2027) The Truth about Culture Wars. He is the Director of Question the Powerful, and Convenor of Citizen Network’s Communitarian Forum. He taught at the University of Cambridge, and was Head of Civil Renewal in the previous Labour government.
[1] Hobhouse and Tawney challenged the old laissez faire liberalism and Webbs-favoured centralised state socialism. See Simhony, A. and Weinstein, D. (eds), (2001) The New Liberalism: Reconciling Liberty and Community, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; and Dennis, N. and A. H. Halsey (1988) English Ethical Socialism, Oxford: Clarendon Press. On Durkheim and Dewey’s ideas, see Cladis, M.S. (1992) A Communitarian Defense of Liberalism: Emile Durkheim and Contemporary Social Theory, Stanford: Stanford University Press; and Ryan, A. (1995) John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism, New York: W. W. Norton.
[2] Dench, G., Flower, T., and Gavron, K. (1997) Young at Eighty, Manchester: Carcanet Press.
[3] Ranson, S. and Stewart, J. (1994) Management for the Public Domain, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
[4] Ostrom, E. (1993) ‘A Communitarian Approach to Local Governance’, National Civic Review, 226-233.
[5] Putnam, R. D. and Feldstein, L. (2003) Better Together: Restoring the American Community, New York: Simon and Schuster.
[6] Tam, H. (ed) (2001) Progressive Politics in the Global Age, Cambridge: Polity.
[7] See Hale, S. (2006), Blair's Community: Communitarian Thought and New Labour, Manchester University Press. Hale mentioned me and Jonathan Boswell in her book as communitarians whose ideas were neglected by New Labour. I later explained that as Head of Civil Renewal I did manage to bring some of my ideas to bear with the support of Ministers, but there’s no denying that not all departments engaged with communitarian policy development. As for Tony Blair, while he was associated with various communitarian soundbites, he was by no means a consistent advocate of communitarian policy ideas.
[8] From 2000 to 2010, I was a senior policy official with the New Labour government, responsible for various policy areas including community safety, neighbourhood regeneration, civil renewal, and community empowerment. I worked closely with many Ministers on taking forward communitarian initiatives.
[9] For a selection of examples from the Together We Can programme, see this resource guide: https://hbtam.blogspot.com/2019/07/together-we-can-resource-guide.html; see also Tam, H. (2011) ‘Rejuvenating Democracy: lessons from a communitarian experiment’, Forum, Vol. 53, No. 3, pp. 407-420.
[10] David Blunkett and Hazel Blears were key figures in advancing communitarian policies in the New Labour years. See Blunkett, D. (2003) Active Citizens, Strong Communities: Progressing Civil Renewal London: Home Office; Blears, H. (2009) ‘Empowerment Delivers More Efficient Outcomes’ (annex to CSV Edith Kahn lecture), London: DCLG; Blears, H. and Blunkett, D. (2019) ‘The Road to Empowerment’ in Tam, H. (ed) Whose Government is it? the renewal of state-citizen cooperation, Bristol: Bristol University Press.
[11] More detailed discussions can be found in Tam, H. (ed) (2023) Who’s Afraid of Political Education, Bristol: Policy Press.
[12] See case examples in Tam, H. (ed) (2021) Tomorrow’s Communities: lessons for community-based transformation in the age of global crises, Bristol: Policy Press.
[13] For a range of reform proposals, see Tam, H. (2026) Democracy SOS, Sheffield: Citizen Network.
[14] HMRC's own estimates put the amount of taxes that were due but not paid at £59.2 billion (for the 2024 to 2025 tax year).
[15] There is a growing recognition that communitarianism has a key part to play in the advancement of social democratic politics. See, for example:
Wallis, E., (2025) ‘Social Democracy Now: Why communitarianism provides the roadmap the left needs today’, Fabian Society: https://fabians.org.uk/publication/social-democracy-now/ .
Klemperer, D., (2025) ‘The Communitarian Challenge’ in UCL Policy Lab, Britain Renewed: Labour and the Communitarian Tradition, pp.7-8.
Jervis, J., (2025) ‘Think Communitarian’, Labour Renaissance: https://labour-renaissance.org.uk/think-communitarian-forget-aping-the-right-or-indulging-the-left-labour-must-unite-the-quiet-mainstream/ .
See also Citizen Network’s Communitarian Forum: https://citizen-network.org/work/communitarian-forum