Communalism
Communalism, as developed by Murray Bookchin, proposes that political life should be rebuilt around face-to-face assemblies in towns and neighbourhoods. These municipalities would federate with one another, hold the economy in common and organise it on ecological lines.
- The municipal assembly of citizens is the basic unit of democracy.
- Municipalities should confederate rather than submit to a nation-state.
- The economy should be municipalised and run with ecological limits in mind.
Bookchin set out the programme, which he also called libertarian municipalism, from the 1970s onward in works such as The Ecology of Freedom (1982), drawing on the Athenian assembly and New England town meetings. Abdullah Öcalan adapted it as "democratic confederalism", which has shaped the self-administration of the Kurdish-led regions of northern Syria since 2012.
Skeptics doubt that assemblies can manage the scale and technical complexity of modern economies, and worry about the pressure on individuals to conform in small communities. Other anarchists object that it still relies on majority rule.
Countries and historical regimes whose 12-axis profile is closer to Communalism than to any other ideology in the test.
Historical regimes
Method: each ideology is placed at a typical position on the 12 axes, scored from 0 to 100 toward the first pole. Ranks compare it with the other 45 ideologies; matches are 100 minus the average distance across all axes. The positions are our own calibration, not taken from any third-party source.