By communitarianism, I refer to movements and ideologies that seek to transform society by creating so-called alternative economic and living situations such as food cooperatives, health centers, schools, printing workshops, community centers, neighborhood farms, “squats,” unconventional lifestyles, and the like. Allowing for the works of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the notable spokespersons of communitarianism have been Martin Buber, Harry Boyte, and Colin Ward, among many others. The word communitarian is often interchangeable with the word cooperative, a form of production and exchange that is attractive because the work is not only amiably collective but worker-controlled or worker-managed.
At most, communitarianism seeks to gently edge social development away from privately owned enterprises—banks, corporations, supermarkets, factories, and industrial systems of agriculture—and the lifeways to which they give rise, into collectively owned enterprises and values. It does not seek to create a power center that will overthrow capitalism; it seeks rather to outbid it, outprice it, or outlast it, often by presenting a moral obstacle to the greed and evil that many find in a bourgeois economy. It is not a politics but a practice, whose constituency is often a relatively small group of people who choose to buy from or work in a particular cooperative enterprise.
Murray Bookchin in 2000 about communalism :
It should not be confused with communitarianism, which refers to small initiatory projects like a "people's" food cooperative, garage, printing press projects that often become capitalistic when they don't fall apart or succumb to competition by other enterprises.
