Harold,Philip. "Robert Nisbet's Visible and Invisible Communities." The Catholic Social Science Review 15, (2010): 175-191.

Abstract:

Communitarian Robert Nisbet’s most famous book, The Quest for Community, falls short of what it intends to prove. Nisbet misinterprets Tocqueville on the nature of individualism and fails to comprehend the nature of the modern state. Most importantly, he never asks whether the local communities which he takes to be so valuable could themselves ever be oppressive. The failure to inquire into the nature and substance of justice allows Nisbet to emphasize the evils of centralization while suppressing any possible benefits. Such an unbalanced argument ignores true subsidiarity and in the end renders itself incoherent.
Introduction
The thought of Robert Nisbet on community has given birth to contrary political impulses. Nisbet was one of the founders of the modern conservative intellectual movement, yet his most important book, The Quest for Community (first published in 1953), was reissued in the 1960s in large part because it became very popular with the New Left.1 Nisbet’s stress …

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