communal (komunal)

[= G.communal (in comp.) = Dan. kommunal, The system of communal tenure, it must be admitted, was hostile to permanent or even transient improvement, because it left the personal advantage of outlay on such land insecure. Thorold Rogers , Work and Wages, p. 91. Did the primitive communal ownership survive, there would survive the primitive communal control of the uses to be made of land by individuals or by groups of them. H. Spencer , Man vs. State, p. 86. The year 1200 may be regarded as the date at which the communal constitution of London was completed. Stubbs, Const. Hist. (2d ed.), § 803. 2. Communistic. See communalism. They bought at Nauvoo houses sufficient to accommo date them, but very little land, renting such farms as they needed. They lived there on a communal system, and ate in a great dining room. Nordhoff , Communistic Societies of the U. S. communalism (kom'u-nal-izm), n. [F. communal is me, communal , communal, + -is me, 1136 -ism.] The theory of government by communes or corporations of towns and districts, adopted by many republicans in France and elsewhere; the doctrine that every commune, or at least every important city commune, should be virtually an independent state in itself, and the nation merely a federation of such states. The movement in favor of the autonomy of Paris is an old one, and has been supported by many able and respectable French men. One in favor of the movement is, how ever, properly called a communalist, and not a communist, and the movement itself is communalism - not communism. R. T. Ely, French and German Socialism, p. 21. There were several Socialist journals, all of which advocated Bakunin's programme, Anarchy or Communalism ; that is to say, the absolute independence of each comOrpen, tr. of Laveleye's Socialism, p. 234. [F. com mune.