The Conflict of Collectivist and Individualist Values
The question of the relative importance of the individual
and the collective in society may be the oldest in political thought.
While philosophies emphasizing the collective over the individual have
been articulated and challenged in every era by every human civilization
in existence, cohesive theories and systems promoting individualism over
collectivism have emerged only over the past 300 years. These individualist
theories were a product of the Enlightenment, a period during which a new
idea of human nature was slowly taking shape. In contrast to the
traditional collectivist view of man as a mere cog in the machine of the
state, the individualist liberals saw man as an independent rational being,
capable of making his own decisions and being responsible for them.
Condemning societies based around order, discipline, and servitude to supra-personal
goals, the hallmarks of collectivism, the individualists went on to establish
free societies emphasizing liberty, toleration, and self-rule. Individualist
theories rapidly evolved and diversified, spreading from Europe to the
rest of the world. Wherever they went, they met with opposition from
some form of collectivist theory, initiating a worldwide ideological debate
that continues to this day. The values of modern collectivists differ
very little from those of their predecessors, the ancient despots who demanded
that their subjects spend their lives erecting pyramids or cathedrals.
Although most modern theories contain some collectivist
elements as a means of achieving a necessary degree of order, the differences
between truly collectivist and individualist modern philosophies can be
traced to their differing conceptions of the role played by the community
in defining the individual. Collectivists say that the individual
is defined by his or her interaction with the community, while individualists
emphasize that a community is a voluntary association, one that lacks legitimate
authority to assign roles based on some sort of common good.
In recent years, theorists such as Frederich Hayek,
Michael J. Sandel, Amitai Etzionni, and Robert Wolff have examined modern
political and social issues using their own individualist or collectivist
theories, continuing the ancient debate. While each of their theories
is unique, Wolff would fall into the collectivist category, Hayek would
fall into the individualist category, and Etzionni and Sandel somewhere
in between, but more on the collectivist side.
As a Marxist, Wolff argues that the individuals
must submit to the collective to achieve a stable egalitarian utopia.
Marxism, more than any other philosophy, has influenced modern collectivist
thinking by adding equality and fraternity to the traditional collectivist
values. As a result of this coupling, Marx broadened the appeal of
collectivism in a more sophisticated and individualist 19th century world.
Marxists have argued that the values of capitalist society will inevitably
bring about its own destruction through a crisis of overproduction, and
that the development of class-consciousness among the workers will cause
them to rise up in revolution against their bourgeois oppressors and establish
a new society without private ownership of the means of production.
As materialists, Marxists believe that men’s values are created by their
experiences in the world, so people living in capitalist society will see
each other as objects to be used for gain, not as individuals, and will
treat them accordingly. When capitalism is dismantled, individualist
capitalist values will gradually be replaced by unselfish collectivist
communal ones. As Wolff himself explains “...man is social in the
sense that his essence, his true being, lies in his involvement in a human
community.” (BT p29) Having made this assumption, Wolff reasons that
values in society are to be imposed by the state and that tolerance cannot
be sustained.
He begins his essay “Beyond Tolerance” by listing
the virtues that enable men to live: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice.
From his omission of reason, the virtue underlying these four attributes,
the basis of his political philosophy becomes transparent. He claims
that the virtue of the US today is tolerance in the form of democratic
pluralism, which he associates with interest group politics and federalism.
His objection to these structures is that they force society to look at
the world in neutral terms and prevent us from developing a sense of the
common good. He doesn’t believe that the institutions themselves
are neutral at all and claims that they fail to serve the interests of
many groups or to address many society-wide problems.
In particular, Wolff argues that pluralist systems are not responsive
to social justice or other collective goals, since they allow individuals
and factions to promote their own interests. He adopts the Marxist
argument that in doing so, we come to see each other only as obstacles
or instruments in relation to our own goals, not as members of our community
with whom we should be bonding and building a sense of fraternity.
The alienation and antagonism associated with free pursuit of our own goals
prevents us from attaining a sense of the common good necessary for the
collective goals of “social progress.”
Wolff concludes, therefore, that tolerance has outlived
its usefulness and that the state should cease its pretense of neutrality
towards the pursuit of individual goals and take a more active role in
directing individuals. If “men are the children of their societies
throughout their lives” (BT p32) and, as he implies, are incapable of making
their own decisions about what is best for themselves and their community
without proper coaching by the state, then this is the only way to define
and deal with social issues. The federalist system, which shields
individuals from the power of the state is therefore counter-productive
and should be dismantled in favor of a centrally planned, more orderly
system that promotes “socially responsible values.”
Essentially, Wolff argues that a society needs to
have a single governing ideology and that it should be socialism.
That ideology needs to be enforced by the state and dissent must not be
tolerated or the sense of common good imposed by the state will collapse.
Everything must be centrally planned to minimize internal conflicts that
could detract from our sense of community and unity of purpose. Without
that sense of community, Wolff claims that we will become completely dissatisfied
with our lives and kill ourselves, since we depend on them for our mental
well-being. I find his collectivist ideals and view of society too
close to those of the Stalinists, Maoists, Nazis, and Khmer Rouge to be
compelling. History has shown that such authoritarian, anti-individualist
states are far from the fountainheads of community spirit that Wolff imagines.
Regimes with such ideologies justify the use of terrible violence against
their own people and massive oppression, all in the name of “the common
good,” a nebulous and potentially dangerous social construct. The
abolition of tolerance means justification of totalitarian forms of power
and denial of men’s most basic rights and dignities whenever they fall
into conflict with official party lines.
Etzionni and Sandel are both communitarians, who argue for more restrained
collectivist goals than Wolff and demand a preservation of individual autonomy
wherever possible. While they echo Wolff’s materialist argument about
the nature of man and his dependence on the community, their goal is to
create a social order that is “largely” voluntary but remains within the
accepted standards of the community. They agree that men need support
from their community or they lose their individuality and their ability
to reason and act freely. (GR p25), As Etzionni puts it, “not only are
human beings social by nature, but also... their sociability enhances their
human and moral potential” (GR p26)
In his book Democracy’s Discontent Michael Sandel
offers his political theory in response to two American fears: that, “individually
and collectively, we are losing control over the forces that govern our
lives,” and that, “the moral fabric of community is unraveling around us.”
He claims that the elevated status of rights in American society has led
to some dangerous social problems. (((If individualist rights are
absolute and can never be challenged, this arrests moral debate. )))) If
moral questions are never addressed or resolved, situations intolerable
to the community will arise and there will be no way to settle them.
The inability and unwillingness of liberal individualist governments to
solve such problems defies the point of having a government at all, according
to Sandel. He believes that to fulfill their potential and be effective,
governments cannot avoid promoting a generally agreed upon collective morality
and ideal of “good life,” even if this necessitates some coercive measures.
Using records of court cases and public debates, Sandel argues that
the effort to raise rights to their current excessive level led the American
people away from their traditional, more collective republican philosophy
and towards the unsatisfactory “neutral” procedural republic, under which
politics are consciously separated from moral purpose. Such states
fail to address all human needs, particularly those of community and self-rule.
He describes the citizens produced by these states as “freely choosing,
unencumbered selves” who are told to respect all ways of life since all
have an equal right to exist, despite the attitudes of the community towards
them. This atomistic view of society fails to promote the fraternal
and unified atmosphere so important to happiness and individuality.
Sandel offers a “Republican” public philosophy as
an alternative to the individualist liberalism he blames for our increasingly
intolerable national situation. In this alternative theory, the common
good is valued more heavily than the rights of individuals, and (positive)
freedom of self-rule is valued over (negative) freedom (DD p25).
He felt that citizens should be obligated to participate in their community,
and that if their values and those of the community fall into conflict,
those of the community should take precedence, even if this leads to coercion
or exclusion over self-regarding matters.
Amitai Etzionni emphasizes the importance of balancing
the values of individualism and collectivism, arguing that both are valuable
and important to society, but that neither should monopolize the society’s
values. In The New Golden Rule: Community and Morality in a Democratic
Society he argues that since the 1960s the US has lost its equilibrium
and now encourages too much autonomy at the expense of justice, order,
and stability. Despite our current problems, however, he doesn’t
believe that by itself collectivism or authoritarianism is a solution,
since repressive ideologies have drawbacks of their own.
Instead, Etzionni seeks to define a balance of freedom
and authority beneficial for both the individual and his community, and
allow the balance to shift with the needs of the times in a “metastable”
system. To do this, individual autonomy must be respected and preserved,
but not accepted as an end in itself. Likewise, the collective is acknowledged
as a legitimate source of common goals and sense of community. Like
more extreme collectivists, he accepts the necessity of imposing order
to deal with political problems, but insists on a number of conditions
and rules in doing so.
The most important of these rules, the new golden rule, states: “Respect
and uphold your society’s moral order as you would have society respect
and uphold your autonomy.” (GR p xviii) If this rule is followed
and enforced, Etzionni believes that a stable, orderly, and free system
can function. Such a society would accept the imposition of order
from its republican government and would possess a sense of common purpose
reflecting the values of its members. Etzionni claims that such a
society would maintain a “thick” social order, which would provide firm
guidance and a sense of fraternity to its members, which he believes will
help them better define themselves as individuals. Although this
“largely voluntary” order should not be rigid and inflexible, he acknowledges
that its maintenance will require some coercion.
Having established this need, he concludes that
the classic individualist criteria of “harm to others” is too nebulous
and unclear to guide the invasion of privacy and intrusion of the state
(GR p20). Instead he offers four rules of his own: The cause of the
intrusion must present a clear and present danger to the society, other
non-coercive measures must be tried before the individual’s autonomy is
violated, the intrusion must be kept minimal, and efforts must be made
to prevent unintended side-effects of the action. (GR p52)
Etzionni clearly presents a kinder, gentler form
of collectivism, but his criteria for imposing order, as strict as they
are, still push him into the collectivist camp. Like Sandel and other
more collectivist Communitarians, Etzionni argues that the individual is
defined by his relationships with other people; starting in childhood and
throughout the rest of our lives, we internalize the attitudes and values
of our community. The community therefore serves as a normative starting
point that individuals can later break from, so long as they observe the
golden rule. Individuals still depend on their communities no matter
what they choose, however, so people must participate in them and respect
their morality. The moral voice of the community should play an informal
role much like that of the state, and individuals still must contend with
some degree of imposed order from both.
Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom in 1944 to warn Western nations of
the growing influence of collectivist ideologies and the threat they pose
to liberal society. He argues that Nazism and Bolshevism are more
similar than they may first appear, in that both of their aims are collectivist.
He objects strenuously to collectivism in any form, arguing that with the
subordination of liberty to anything, society takes the first step down
“the Road to Serfdom,” a path that leads to totalitarianism unless action
is taken to reverse the process.
Hayek was an economist before he was a political
theorist, and economics play a large role in his work. He condemns
all forms of central planning because he denies that any central planning
agency can ever be as efficient and responsive as the free market is.
He asserts that the market is a form of spontaneous order in which free
individuals make arrangements that best serve their needs. He reasons
that since individuals’ needs are served better and with less coercion
through spontaneous order than any form of central planning, central planning
cannot be in the common good. Suppressing individual liberty is never
compatible with the common good and actually threatens it, not only with
lost efficiency but also with long term economic and intellectual stagnation.
Order inhibits progress where freedom spurs it.
Hayek defines freedom as “The fundamental principle
that in the ordering of our affairs we should make as much use as possible
of the spontaneous forces of society, and resort as little as possible
to coercion.” (RS p20) He does not deny that some coercion will be
necessary to protect the rights of law-abiding individuals, but this coercion
must not be arbitrary or extensive. Order imposed with coercive methods
can only lead to greater conflicts and more extensive use of such powers.
Hayek concludes that the role of the Government must be to protect
rights (including national security), keep competition open, and set policies
that make the best use of free markets. As an individualist, he finds
imposing order and forcing society to follow a particular plan to further
an arbitrary common good totally unacceptable.
Each of the four ideologies has merits and drawbacks,
all of which are derived from the philosophers’ underlying assumptions
and values. Where Wolff emphasizes order, Sandel emphasizes sense
of community; Etzionni stability; and Hayek freedom. Their arguments
leave open the question of what values are most desirable, and as Sir Isaiah
Berlin points out, that decision is dependent on the situation faced by
the individuals making the decision.
The common feature of the three more collectivist
theories is that their values are partially determined by explicitly materialist
views of human nature. Wolff, Sandel, and Etzionni all claim that
we define ourselves by involvement with community, and that the features
that define our individuality are internalized based on experiences within
our “primary groups.” This leads collectivists to their critique
of freedom, pluralism, and liberal individualism: Without “limits on desire
and ambition,” Wolff claims that we will find ourselves “drawn into an
endless and frustrating pursuit of pleasure.” (BT p31) Without some sense
of community and the moral guidance it provides, we cannot make rational
decisions, develop values, or find happiness. Indeed, all three thinkers
assert that in the absence of these bonds, individuals go crazy and often
kill themselves. (BT p31)
All three deride and deny the possibility of defining oneself by using
reason to choose a path through life. Reason seems to me the only possible
way. The process they describe as “internalization” is extremely
complex. At every stage of our lives we are bombarded with millions
of experiences with different meanings and varying degrees of significance.
The individual that results from this accumulation of experiences is not
the result of some arithmetic process in which the number of experiences
supporting different sides of an issue are compared to determine the individual’s
opinion of it. People are capable of reason, interpretation, and
skepticism. When we have an experience, we interpret it and the lesson
we learn may be quite different from that of another person. We all
have some natural inclinations, drives, and needs that give us some common
ground, but our ongoing process of self-definition is based on reason,
personality, and instinct, none of which originate from outside ourselves.
From our very first conscious experience, we begin to learn, interpret,
and discover our identity, all in a pattern and direction that we determine
for ourselves. Experience can lead us to alter that direction, but
that shift is our response to the experience, not the consequence of having
absorbed the experience. People change at the rate they want to change.
While we may be happier and have access to richer experiences when we have
a close bond with a “primary group,” this does not justify the collectivist
conclusion that the community is more vital to individuals than freedom
of thought and expression.
While the collectivist writers show great sympathy
for those who take their own lives after being deprived of community atmosphere,
one wonders whether their isolation was another symptom of the same mental
unbalance that led them to take their life and not the direct cause.
No truly rational person would take his own life under any but the most
exceptional conditions, so these individuals are clearly not the best cases
to study the way in which individuals define themselves. Looking
at the lives of sane and healthy people may be more revealing. The
situation also begs the question: “How is their self-regarding decision
to commit suicide my concern?” The fact that some people respond
in that manner to a given way of life does not give society a mandate to
ban that way of life and demand that individuals participate in their communities.
If they choose to be depressed hermits and eventually kill themselves,
that is their own decision. I believe that efforts should be made
by other concerned individuals to prevent that course, but an individual’s
right to live and die as he chooses should not be infringed.
Collectivists hurtle this barrier to authority with
the assertion that since the community determines the values of its members,
its duty is to pick a set of “good” values and promote them, even at the
cost of liberty. As Hayek points out, the idea of a common good superceding
liberty and entitling the state to intrude into people’s lives is problematic
and undesirable, since we have no way of knowing the merit of any goal.
The best way to find what is “good” for a society is to allow its members
to set their own priorities and find their own ways to achieve their goals.
Wolff, Sandel, and Etzionni, however, fear that allowing individuals to
do so could harm both the individual and the community, but see a sense
of the common good as vital to the community. Morally, however, it
seems difficult to justify depriving individuals of their autonomy for
such causes.
Despite Etzionni’s critique and argument to the
contrary, I agree with Lord Acton’s statement “Liberty is not a means to
a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.”
By allowing us to live by reason and as we choose, it is liberty, not community
that allows us to establish and maintain authentic identity. In a
free society one cannot be forced to say one thing and think another, thus
living a lie and placing one’s true identity and sanity at risk.
By itself this quality makes liberty more desirable than any collective
goal or common good. Ayn Rand, one of the most devoted individualists
of all time asserts in Atlas Shrugged that collectivism indicates a deep,
irrational psychological desire to reduce oneself to the smallest and least
important state imaginable—death. One can choose to live or not live,
she argues, but if you choose to live you must live by reason. And
to fully realize the power of reason and live at one’s highest potential,
one needs liberty. To support collectivism is to support the values of
Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone and Socrates’ judges in Plato’s The Trial
and Death of Socrates. Treating opinions differing from those of
the community as criminal cannot be justified.
Collective action should not be coerced, so it must
take the form of voluntary associations in civil society. Some cooperation
is necessary in solving the problems forced by nations, but this does not
necessitate order imposed from above. Spontaneous order of the sort
evident in the marketplace is more flexible, responsive, and directly connected
to the needs of participating individuals than imposed order, and if it
fails to respond to a crisis, that is the responsibility of those involved.
Through reason, some people will develop values that lead them to collectivism;
others individualism. The freedom to develop one’s own values and
explore their consequences is a necessary and important part of life, and
one that I don’t believe can justifiably limited in the name of any common
good.
Through a variation on the Hegelian dialectic, Marxist-Leninists
saw the world as the battleground of a massive, perpetual ideological struggle
that they would eventually win, resulting in “the end of history.”
Hayek, too, saw the world as an ideological battleground. The stakes
of the battle between individualism and collectivism are great, and the
volume of thought directed at it is inspiring. It may never be resolved,
and may end only when technology and human reason render all forms of politics
obsolete.
William Serwetman
21 December 1998
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