Anarchist Democracy and the Ideal of Communal Individuality

This article examines debates about the relationship between anarchism and democracy, focusing on hidden assumptions regarding the proper relationship between the individual and the community in anarchist theory and practice. My argument is that whereas positions on the issue tend to polarise into competing camps – either anarchism and democracy are fundamentally incompatible, or they are seamlessly compatible – a more nuanced account guided by the anarchist value of communal individuality would allow for the possibility that anarchism is the most radical form of democracy, yet also something qualitatively different from and beyond it. Anarchist democracy, in turn, might be conceived as what I have elsewhere termed a ‘grounded utopian’ ideal that can renew the democratic promise by recalling its radical heritage, and pushing it towards a horizon both revolutionary and realisable.