Communities are groups of people who live in the same village (city, village, village, settlement) and are connected by common spiritual, political and economic interests. One of their main features is as follows: each member is aware that it belongs to a team that is different from the others. The community is a form of self-organization of society. We offer to get to know her in more detail.
Community in a broad sense
In a broad sense, communities are any communities of people connected with each other that have developed historically. This relationship is due to the place of residence (urban or rural community), membership of its members to a particular denomination (confessional), similarity of occupations (professional). In addition, communities are associations whose members can be related by a common place of birth or by belonging to a particular ethnic group. This applies to people who live outside their historical homeland (fraternity).
Narrow community
In a narrow sense, communities are forms of social organization of the population that are considered to be among the oldest. They are characteristic of the early stage of development of all civilizations. One person, or a group of several people in the era of primitiveness, as a rule, could not survive. It was very difficult for her to provide herself with at least a minimum of resources and necessary products. Therefore, people had to form large communities in order to farm together. At the same time, they were united by consanguinity - the most natural sign. So there was a clan community. Its definition is as follows: it is a collective of relatives who lead a joint household. In the early stages of the development of the tribal community, this was hunting, then gathering, and finally cattle breeding and / or agriculture.
Community functions before the state
In conditions when the state did not exist yet, all relations related to religious beliefs, the economy, family and family relations were concentrated at the community level. She provided her members with everything necessary, was a self-sufficient organism. The community included individual families, the nature and size of which depended on what were the features of the development of this civilization. At first, the community often coincided with the clan. The tribe was an association of several communities. This was the way society was organized in antiquity.
Brownie or family community
A brownie or family community is considered a special kind of tribal. What are its features? The signs of a tribal community of this type are as follows. It consists of a large family, comprising from three to five generations of immediate relatives. After cattle breeding or farming began to form the basis of the community economy, the role of the most experienced members increased. They were called elders. They became the organizers of collective labor, religious leaders, and leaders of the military militia. These people had deserved authority in the eyes of other community members. At the institute of military leaders and elders, scientists today see the embryo of future property and social inequality.
Community Territory
Consciousness of blood relations between community members weakened with an increase in the number of relatives. More and more distant representatives of the clan settled next to each other. Some began to create families outside the community. Thus, in the association of people not all the signs of the tribal community were observed. In the course of social evolution, it was replaced by territorial, or neighboring. The association of people took place in this case on the basis of the proximity of their residence.
The role of the community after the emergence of the state
The community was made up of individual families who ran their own households. She had partial or complete self-government. More often than not, the neighboring community united free farmers. In relation to the state, she occupied a subordinate position.
The community in the countries of the ancient world played the role of the primary link in the social system, its indivisible cell. It was she who was the subject of paying taxes (taxes) and supplying soldiers for the army. The community often turned into a political and territorial unit of the state. Within its framework, relations were regulated by unwritten, customary law, and after some time were already fixed with the help of state laws. As long as the community performed its duties to the state, it usually did not interfere in its affairs. This was facilitated by the so-called mutual responsibility, which operated within the community. It meant that all its members were responsible for the rest.
Nomadic community
The type of neighborhood community depended on the occupation of people. Nomadic, for example, distributed pastures, organized mutual assistance during natural disasters or the death of cattle. Nomadic communities had to guard their herds all the time, so they had a permanent military organization.
Agricultural community
The agricultural community was somewhat different. Its main task was to regulate the economic and land relations arising between its members. We note an important feature of the community: common use of water resources, forest land and pastures. In each civilization, it had its own characteristics, depending on the form of government and the strength of the state, the availability of suitable land for cultivation. For example, among the peoples of medieval Asia and in the communities of the ancient East, each family received its allotment for the growing season. This allotment was the property of the community, and the state was the supreme owner of the land. In ancient Rome and ancient Greece, a member of the community had rights to his allotment. But exit from it led to their loss. Members of the German early medieval community (the so-called brand) had unconditional rights to allotments. At the same time, the functions of the community were limited to judicial and issues of using common lands.
Community Loss Process
Why did this form of association of people break up? Let's look at the main reasons. As a result of the fact that the population of the community increased significantly, there was a shortage of land suitable for cultivation. Then restrictions on the size of the allotment began to be introduced. Peasant allotments with the development of feudal land ownership became the property of the feudal lord. Various forms of their land and personal dependence on the lord began to spread. At this time, the community began to monitor the timely payment of rent by the peasants to the feudal lord. She gradually lost her judicial functions, and her self-government became very limited. However, neither the procedure for using community-owned lands, nor the methods of cultivating the land practically underwent changes at this time. The professional differences of the caste community members (India, Ancient Egypt, tropical Africa, medieval Japan, Oceania) were reinforced by a strict division into castes.
Some common signs of a community
Urgent agricultural work, requiring a lot of effort (harvesting, mowing, etc.), in most civilizations was carried out together by community members. The most important decisions, including questions about the distribution of various duties and state taxes, were made by men at general meetings. Current affairs were led by the head of the community. He also represented her before government officials.
What signs of the tribal community did we forget to mention? She, as well as territorial, has tendencies to equalize the social and property status of farmers. The greater tax burden was borne by its rich members. The strength of the community depended on the number of farmers in its composition. Therefore, she tried to prevent a situation in which her members would be ruined.
How did the community die?
The community in most civilizations is an indispensable sign of a pre-industrial, or agrarian, society. She died in several countries of Western Europe as a result of the fact that the feudal lords completely seized the lands belonging to her. So the life of the communities was destroyed. However, this process most often occurred as a result of an industrial revolution, the formation of a capitalist structure, the development of commodity-money relations in society, and also because of urbanization, that is, the rapid growth of the urban population. Peasants went to work in cities where large industrial enterprises existed. This gradually weakened the community. The burden of duties assigned to each of its members grew. At the same time, the gap between the poor and the rich in it widened. The latter were weighed down by the restrictions imposed by the community on the use of land, and tried to get out of it. As a result of this, she was losing the wealthiest members. Left without them, the community became unable to fulfill the obligations imposed on it by the state. Therefore, the state authorized its dissolution. People ceased to live as a community, the division of its property began. Note that varieties of the neighboring community still exist in a number of countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.