The end of Gemeinschaft - the dawn of... what?

Gemeinschaft is a German word which indicates a type of social grouping which has been actively extinguished over the past century; indeed I saw into almost-total obliteration during my working life. Yet, Gemeinschaft used to form the basis of all human society. 

The features of a Gemeinschaft grouping include a relatively informal, self-selected (and self-regulated) group of men who are united by common interests and/or purposes. Examples would include the Medieval craft guilds and learned professions. But also much smaller groupings of men such as clubs and hobby groups, and social/ discussion groups such as the Oxford Inklings.

I emphasize men, because women very seldom form such groups, or even participate in them - and there are (I think) no examples of mixed sex Gemeinschaft groups that were stable over time.

What has been apparent over several generations is the replacement of Gemeinschaft by at first mixed sex, then woman dominated, formal, externally-controlled/ internally rule-based bureaucracy. 

Why? Ultimately because bureaucracy has been a major strategy of purposive evil in the world - because it is intrinsically demonic in nature: anti-God, anti-spiritual, anti-human.

Gemeinschaft has been attacked by feminism on one hand - which regarded all-male groups as inherently oppressive to all-women; and on the other side by an inferred sexualization of Gemeinschaft as latent or covert male-male sexual attraction. 

In reality; the major thrust of hostility was that Gemeinschaft contains an intrinsic goodness in terms of the basis of its cohesion - whereas bureaucracy is intrinsically evil. 

Yet, on theoretic and empirical grounds, it seems obvious that we cannot return to a world dominated by Gemeinschaft ... It certainly looks as if modern men do not even want Gemeinschaft: they are not pressing for more Gemeinschaft, modern men are not spontaneously doing Gemeinschaft. 

So now there is hardly any need for the authorities even to repress or disrupt it; and anyone who yearns for Gemeinschaft will find it difficult or impossible to get going; and will find it almost impossible to sustain.

We must not accept bureaucracy, because it is evil - yet we cannot go back to traditional Gemeinschaft because it is obsolete - so, as usual, we need to develop hitherto unprecedented creative possibilities; and these may need to be be so radical as to require extremely high motivation of a kind only possible when based on strong and personal religious convictions. 

And there is our clue. We must build from what actually does motivate and is Good; no matter how small such groups may be, to begin with.  

Note added: The cause of the decline of Gemeinschaft is - like the cause of decline in all human institutions and groupings - the loss of Christianity as a framework and assumption for human life. This deletion either obliterates Gemeinschaft aspects altogether - as for the mass of young people whose lives are dominated by mass and social media; and large, variable and loose groupings. Or renders smaller interest-orientated groups weak and labile, being merely contingent mutual venues for pleasurable pastimes. One should not mistake these hedonically-justified residues for the internally-cohesive, mutually-aiding and -influencing, and temporally-resilient Gemeinschaft groups of history: strong enough to serve as the building blocks of functional human society.  

Gemeinschaft not Gesellschaft: In the Fourth Gospel Jesus tells the disciples that Christians should grow as a loving 'family', not as a formal institution

One of the most striking, and indeed shocking, aspects of reading the Fourth Gospel as the primary and most authoritative source about Jesus- is that Jesus tells the disciples to propagate the faith as a 'family' of believers and says nothing about setting up a church.

To use the old German Sociological terminology: Christians ought to be a Gemeinschaft, not a Gesellschaft - a loving community, not an institutional society.

In a long section (Chapters 13-17*) describing the night before the crucifixion; Jesus instructs the disciples on the meaning of his teaching and what they should do after his departure. What he seems to be saying is that the disciples have (since the departure of Judas Iscariot) a mutually loving 'family'; and that future Christians should be the same.

The themes (here and elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel) are all about love between Christians; in effect, a group cohering by a web of love. Love cannot be imposed. A loving group can and does grow, as a family grows by marriage and children - but only one person at a time, and only by mutual consent. It is clear that this is the consent of friends, not of master and servant.

Is there then to be no structure to the Christian community? It is not explicit, but the structure of family is sustained throughout the Fourth Gospel - including that between Jesus and his Father. The family of Mary, Martha and Lazarus (who is himself the author of the Fourth Gospel) is a major feature of the Gospel; Mary's marriage to Jesus in indicated in three places; and Lazarus (Jesus's brother in law) is made the son of Jesus's Mother at the crucifixion.

I assume, therefore, that the Christian community would have the same kind of internal structure of authority as an ideal family.

What I take from this is that Jesus intended for his followers to be structured and operate like a loving family - a family that adopted new members, as well as marrying and procreating them.

*John 15: [7] If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. [8] Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples. [9] As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love. [10] If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love. [11] These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. [12] This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. [13] Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. [14] Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. [15] Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you. [16] Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. [17] These things I command you, that ye love one another. [18] If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. [19] If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. [20] Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.

What did Feminism (etc) get right?

Feminism is a bad thing, and whatever the intention of the original advocates - the intentions of modern feminists are evil (as revealed by their actions).

But all successful evil contains Good else it cannot be at all persuasive; and feminism has been extremely successful. Therefore, it is unlikely and probably undesirable merely to undo it.

Furthermore, by my general understanding, feminism is a sub-branch of that Leftism which grew from the late 1700s in Britain as a bad response to the good (indeed divine) destiny represented by romanticism.


So, the case of feminism is a microcosm of the general problem that we are confronted by the insanity and evil of the anti-Christian atheist Left - but the only proffered alternative is a reactionary-traditionalist re-set to (pretty much) pre-modern conditions.

Notably, both alternatives will destroy modern, post-industrial revolution, civilisation - so that seems doomed from all perspectives.  However, if we consider the good impulse of romanticism - of which leftisms such as feminism are a perversion, I think we get the individual rebelling against the imposition of system.

The general sense of this argument is that Civilisation is an external system, and intrinsically oppressive - and this oppression was amplified by the industrial revolution. I mean that we seem to be expected to fit our-selves into The System - and this System also includes traditional religion; which regards the individual's primary duty as obedience to a prior set of beliefs, rules, practices etc.


Leftism was based on the promise that the traditional system could be replaced by a new system that would be built-around The Individual. A top-down system to impose individuality...! People ought to have noticed that this is self-contradictory - however they didn't and they still don't notice this.

If we know in our hearts that what we want is a life that 'serves' the individual, is built around and from the individual; the implication is of the abolition of politics, economics, law and so forth - these being in essence components of The System. Instead of being based on Organisation, life would need to be small scale and based on the family.

(We want Gemeinschaft and not Gesellschaft - to use the classification of Tonnies and Weber from a century ago.)


I keep coming-around to this same conclusion, from different directions and different arguments: the end of civilisation, a return to small-scale, familial tribalism - but this time by choice and in full self-consciousness and with spiritual Christian motivation: based on Direct Christianity.

I keep returning to the conviction that this is what will happen, that all other alternatives are closing-off or being rejected.


So, what did feminism get right? That each person is and ought to be known as an unique individual.

What did feminism miss out? That men and women are (ultimately, over an eternal timescale) distinct and complementary parts of the One Complete Human: Man - as a complete entity, which must be achieved and is not 'given' - is a man and a woman as an eternal loving dyad.