In Locke this personal sovereignty is based on the idea that the rights of each are of divine origin, but not all individualist theories are based on this premise. Still others derive a theory of individual rights from arguments about the necessity for personal freedom and autonomy for self-actualization and growth. The essence of communitarian thought is that the community can be thought of as a bearer of rights, or at least as the holder of interests, to which an individual's interests may have to be subordinated in some cases. Marxist communism and socialism are clear examples of this idea, although modem American social thought is full of additional examples. Like tribalism, monarchism is an early and common example of a communitarian theory, but some communitarians are sincere democrats.
Military conscription is another such idea.
As with individualist social thought, there are many different versions of communitarianism. Although they differ in regard to, say, the relative values of the community's interests versus the individual's interests, or the nature of the community, they share the fundamental premise that communities have rights and interests which may occasionally override individual rights or interests. There are several aspects of the commercial world, some of which seem to rely on or demonstrate communitarian ideas and some of which seem to be based on individualist ideas. For examples let's look at two of the fundamental structures of the business world, the corporation and the entrepreneur. The corporation is a highly structured, hierarchical organization.