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Despite Aulich there has been a narrowing of the Adult Community Education (ACE) sector to mean provision at a community level or 'community adult education'. The paper examines this slippage through a critique of the concept of community. It argues that the communalisation of ACE reflects the shift from welfare to corporate capitalism in which the state seeks to transfer its public sector responsibilities to non-government agencies. Adult education has been re-defined in terms of a 'communitarian discourse' which draws on strong traditions of social utopianism and welfarism and strives for social harmony in the face of social disintegration. The critique helps to explain some of the difficulties shared by ACE and other community services and sketches some ways in which ACE providers will attempt to resolve the tensions inherent in their new natures as community agencies.