A Dialectical Simplicity approach to community life
1. Introduction: The Myth of the Isolated Individual
For the last forty years, dominant political ideologies have sold us a story: that the individual is the basic unit of society. Not the family, not the neighbourhood, not the workplace or community. Just the self, standing alone—competitive, self-sufficient, responsible for their own success or failure.
This story has shaped policy, economics, even our language. We talk about “self-made” people, personal “brands,” and the freedom of choice as though connection were secondary. But in reality, we are born into relationship. We survive and thrive only through mutual care.
Dialectical Simplicity invites us to reclaim community—not as nostalgia or charity, but as the foundation of a good life.
2. Community as Praxis
Marx understood that people are not defined solely by their material needs, but by their relations to others. For him, “species-being”—what made us human—was our ability to shape our world together. Zen, in a different register, reminds us that the boundaries between self and other are porous illusions.
Taken together, these traditions suggest that community is not just a place or structure—it’s a practice. A daily, sometimes difficult, act of mutual presence. It is the web of relationships in which we come to know ourselves.
In practical terms, community is:
- The neighbour who checks in during a storm.
- The community fridge on the corner.
- The union meeting, the kōhanga reo, the local hall.
Community is built through repetition, attention, and shared labour. It is also where power can be redistributed and resilience created.
3. The Erosion of Public Life
Since the 1980s, many governments have systematically dismantled the public realm. Libraries, swimming pools, post offices, community centres, and local newspapers have been shut down or sold off. In the UK alone, more than 800 public libraries closed between 2010 and 2023【1】. In New Zealand, rural post offices and town halls once served as civic anchors—many now sit empty or privatised.
This decline is not accidental. It reflects a deliberate shift toward market logic and individualism. As public goods are replaced by private services, community is reduced to consumption: you don’t gather, you subscribe. You don’t meet, you scroll.
The result is not only loneliness—though that’s part of it—but also a loss of democratic culture. When spaces to meet disappear, so do the habits of listening, debating, organising, and caring.
4. Reclaiming the Commons
Dialectical Simplicity calls for a revival of the commons—resources and spaces shared and managed by communities for the collective good.
Historically, the commons included shared grazing lands, water sources, and forests. Today, they can include:
- Timebanks: community networks where people exchange services without money.
- Tool libraries: where people borrow rather than buy.
- Co-housing: where neighbours share gardens, laundry facilities, or childcare.
- Community gardens and marae: spaces rooted in manaakitanga (hospitality) and kaitiakitanga (guardianship).
In Aotearoa, Puketāpapa Community Driving School is one such project—a response to inequitable access to driver licences. Run by volunteers, it supports migrants and working-class people through an essential rite of passage, using a model built on trust and reciprocity【2】.
These aren’t side projects. They’re the seeds of a different social order—one based on sufficiency, cooperation, and care.
5. Localism Without Parochialism
A core principle of Dialectical Simplicity is scale matters. When things are too large, people become numbers. When they are too small, they can become insular. The sweet spot lies in community-led structures that are grounded in place but open in spirit.
In Barcelona, the municipalist movement Barcelona en Comú has shown how local democracy can be revitalised through assemblies, citizen control over housing, and participatory budgeting【3】. In Aotearoa, the Wharekawa Marae Community Development Project has combined hapū leadership with practical responses to housing, food security, and climate resilience【4】.
These examples show that the community is not an abstract ideal. It is an active strategy for justice.
6. Interdependence, Not Charity
Too often, community is framed in sentimental or paternalistic terms. But Dialectical Simplicity insists on mutuality, not charity. We are not saviours, and we are not saints. We are interdependent.
During the first COVID-19 lockdowns, communities across the world rediscovered this truth. In Aotearoa, the Student Volunteer Army, mutual aid groups, and iwi-led responses stepped in where governments could not. These were not random acts of kindness—they were political acts of care, structured by relationship and memory.
This spirit of reciprocal care is essential to a just society. It resists the commodification of everything and insists that people are more than consumers or clients. We are neighbours.
7. The Right to Stay and Shape
True community means more than just belonging—it means power. The ability to shape your environment, influence decisions, and stay rooted if you choose.
Gentrification, rising rents, and short-term lets have pushed many working-class people out of the very communities they built. Māori and Pasifika communities in places like Porirua, Māngere, and Glen Innes know this all too well. When development is imposed from above, community becomes an aesthetic—something you visit, not something you live.
Community-led planning, rent control, urban papakāinga, and democratic housing co-ops are all ways to reclaim this right. It is not enough to be in a community. People must have the means to stay—and shape it.
8. Conclusion: From Contact to Commitment
Community begins with contact, but it deepens through commitment. The commitment to show up, to listen, to share, and to build together—even when it’s messy or slow.
Dialectical Simplicity offers a simple vision: that life is richer when shared. That democracy begins not in Parliament, but in the places where we cook, gather, argue, and laugh. That solidarity is not just a slogan—it is a practice, repeated again and again, until it becomes a culture.
To build that culture is the work of our time.
References
- BBC News (2023). UK Library Closures.
- Puketāpapa Community Driving School – https://drivingschool.org.nz
- Garcia, M., & Ribas-Mateos, N. (2019). Municipalism in Practice: Barcelona en Comú.
- Wharekawa Marae Development Project – https://www.communityhousing.org.nz