Anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between people are those which are characteristic of community. In a community, social order can be maintained without the state; so too can the approximate economic equality which community requires. So that, insofar as community was shown in the last chapter to be not incompatible with individual liberty, it can be said, contrary to the claims of liberal writers, that the principal ideals of communitarian anarchists (and of some other socialists), namely anarchy, liberty, equality and community, form a coherent set.

As they stand, the arguments I have used apply to a single community in isolation, to its internal relations. But what of the relations between communities, between a community and the rest of the world? Do not some of the problems of anarchy, which can be ‘solved’ by the egalitarian community internally, reappear in the relations between communities? If, in the absence of the state, behaviour destructive of social order and behaviour tending to promote economic inequality can be inhibited and contained between individuals because they are co-members of a community, what is to control such behaviour between people who are not of the same community? It would appear to be an implication of the argument in Chapter 2 that, in a world constituted of communities, order and a rough material equality among communities can be maintained insofar as the relations between communities are those characteristic of community, unless the communities themselves are to be subject to an inter-communal state. But communities are necessarily small, and ‘universal community’ impossible.