The most persistent objection to liberal political theory has been to its individualism. Liberalism's critics often invoke the idea of community when taking it to task, partly because they wish to reject what they see as the liberal understanding of persons as separate and self-contained atoms, sharing certain formal rights – pre-eminent among these, the right to be left splendidly isolated.

Michael Sandel, for example, criticizes Rawls for advancing a political theory giving primacy to justice, and presupposing that justice is a virtue of a society peopled by separate individuals whose goals and values are as independent of society as they are. This typically liberal stance, for Sandel, is mistaken because it does not appreciate the extent to which individual selves – and their desires – are not separate from, but are constituted by, the community into which they are born.