There Is Nothing New About Collectivism Or Progressivism
As long as human beings have been
social there has been a struggle between individual liberty and those
extreme tendencies that pull us away. These enemies of the
individual fall into two categories, self-centeredness and
group-centeredness. Both of these enemies take on and have taken on
many names throughout history. Today I'm going to name a few of
them.
The Worthy Struggle
First I feel a need to point out why
this epic struggle matters. Individual liberty is the prime enabler
of individual expression, individual thought, and ultimately
innovation and invention. While those who don't share my zeal for
individual liberty may disagree, it is none the less for me and
millions of others, the engine of progress and hope for a brighter
future. Without it we may manage some things, but with it we speed
into the future with a well founded confidence that we will meet
whatever challenges it may hold and be at least adequate to them.
And even if with some greatly diminished individual liberty we might
achieve some greater thing, there would be no point in it, for as
Patrick Henry so memorably suggested, even death is preferable to life without liberty. And further, even if some catastrophe over-comes us
because of our unwillingness to abandon liberty, we would have taken
the better option between extinction and survival as something less
than human.* In short, the struggle for individual liberty is the
struggle both for a life worth living and a struggle for the best
that we as a species can do, for the pursuit of that latter is what
makes the former.
Now for the enemies list.
Self-centeredness
Whenever I read scholarly works on
individualism I see this repeated error, mistaking the avid pursuit
for individual liberty for a totally self-centered self-interest.
There are even those who favor individual liberty who mistakenly
believe that if everyone looks completely out for themselves, without
regard for most anyone else, the world will be a better place. It is
in their belief system that some how everything will work out for the
best this way. Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged is
often associated with this sort of view, though I personally would
not say if the characterizations of her philosophy are fair or not. I
just haven't read enough of her works to do my own analysis.
The term for this sort of philosophy as
characterized is Social Darwinism. Whoever may be the source
of it, it is just one of the latest masks worn by this particular
ancient enemy of individual liberty. This ancient enemy, no matter
what mask it chooses to wear, always uses the same tactic. It
essentially argues that everyone should be free to do whatever
pleases them, and that will allow the strong to have their way and
the weak much less so, and in the process the best of humanity will
rise to lead us to our best as a species.
The power of this argument is that it
resembles the argument for individual liberty so much that many
individualist fall for it, the parts about letting people do what
they please and the being led to be our best as a species. The
problem with it is that it doesn't actually say what it sounds like
it's saying. For this philosophy, when it says everyone should be
free to do whatever pleases them, it really means no one should try
to stop the strong from picking on the weak. That's a far cry from
cherishing individual liberty, not to mention a recipe for civil
disorder.
Logically there's a huge problem with
this as well. You can't be for the individual if you want your own
interests to run over someone else's, since they are an individual
too. The logical ends of Social Darwinism is also antithetical to
the struggle for individual liberty. Once the strong rise to the top
to lead, what are they? Their power over other individuals is as
absolute as their acknowledged superiority. They are virtual
despots. While it is true any individual would be free in a society
based on Social Darwinism to challenge those at the top, their actual
individual liberty would be limited not just by their willingness to
exercise it, but by the strength of their personal resources to
overcome those established before them. How can this be
individualism? Can an individualist be in favor of a system that by
design only grants liberty to some, but not most? Social Darwinism
is just another excuse amongst many for the supposed right of some to
rule others.
Another common mask of this enemy today
is the “do your own thing”, “live and let live”, “everyone
just leave everyone else alone”, and “do what feels good”
philosophy. For some this is a not so well thought out philosophy
but one they follow none the less. For others it is one of
considerably deeper thought. The ancient Greeks formalized this in
the philosophy called Hedonism.
Unlike Social Darwinism, there is
supposed to be no conflict of interests in a Hedonistic society.
This is because everyone's goal is to maximize personal pleasure and
minimize pain, and it is in that part about minimizing pain that
people are expected to avoid conflicts with others whenever possible.
In spite of the negative connotations
associated with the term Hedonism, the actual core of the philosophy
has a lot of appeal, but I see a few problems with it none the less.
One big one in particular as is relevant to the struggle for
individual liberty is it looks outward in only a passive and selfish
way, that of avoiding pain. What happens if your neighbor's liberty
is threatened? Why should you care?
To Hedonism's defense, in a totally
Hedonistic society your neighbor's liberty would never be threatened,
but the problem with that defense is we don't live in such a society,
and without a lot of caring about more than just pleasure and pain,
we have little chance of ever living in one. Hedonism is essentially, in a
way, trying to live as though individual liberty has been secured and
continues to be safe whether that's true or not. And as any
psychologist can tell you, pretending a problem isn't there or can
never be there only helps the problem.
Then of course there is just raw
self-centeredness and self-indulgence. There is little long-term
value to any philosophy that centers on these things. Perhaps if
there is no meaning to our lives, our existence, these could be
worthy center-pieces to a serious philosophy, but for those of us who
struggle earnestly for anything beyond our most basic physical needs,
we at the very least believe we know better, so on that very large
common ground I'll say no more about this, the least reputable
expression of self-centeredness.
Group-centeredness
The pursuit of maximizing individual
liberty is a balancing act. Self-centeredness is one direction to
fall in where only the strong end up with liberty, for lack of
protection for the weak. The other direction to fall is
Group-centeredness where the individual is diminished in the name of
the group. They are the two extremes of a spectrum. Interesting to me is that which ever way we fall, if we
fall, we end up in essentially the same place. Here are some of the
recent masks of this other extreme.
Collectivism is one. I tend to
use this term to describe all of the group-centered systems across
the ages, but most think of it only in its contemporary form, which
justifies itself as looking out for the least fortunate in society
(See the Wikipedia entry for a relatively neutral definition). One
of the arguments of collectivism is that there is a common good that
over-rides individual liberty and dignity from time to time. Some of
its proponents go on to make a moral argument that it is wrong for an
individual to not share wealth and/or property with those less
fortunate. This, they argue, then justifies some degree of forced confiscation and
redistribution.
The obvious problem with this moral
argument is that it takes a moral decision away from the individual
by forcing compliance with someone else's very un-individualized
decision. Allow me to illustrate with an example. If an old lady
with a walker needs to cross a busy street, it seems the right thing
to do to help her across if you are able. That is a moral and
charitable decision. Now what if someone else orders you to stop
whatever you're doing and help her? Are you now doing what is
morally correct if it wasn't your decision? What about the person
who ordered you? Do they know for sure that there may not be some
reason you shouldn't help, like maybe you're having a heart attack or
stroke and need to call 911 and wait for an ambulance? It doesn't need to be that serious of an obstacle of course. There are many others
of a lesser nature, some obvious obstacles and some more subjective,
but the point is it is best to allow you to make the decision
yourself.
Anyone who, believing they know what's
best for you or society, who then uses the force of law to make you
participate, and thinks they are morally justified is walking through
a figurative field of land mines. The mines are of a logical and
ethical nature. Can you build a moral society out of amoral rule
followers? Is it ethical to make someone act charitably? Even if
you aren't technically steeling their wealth and property from them
with redistributive government policies, aren't you at least stealing
their opportunity to truly act charitably?
More
to the point of individual liberty and dignity, collectivism's
assertion of a greater common good gives it undue justification to
run over the individual. There is no such thing as a good, at least
as determined by human means, that can be clearly said to be so much
more important than another good, that it justifies forcing any
individual to sacrifice theirs for it. If there was, then we should
all seek some great enlightened group of people to direct us in the
details of our lives, and history should already be replete with
great societies who found such leaders and followed them to their
betterment, but that is not the case.
History
instead is full of examples of how whenever a nation or society has
sought some higher goal, some greater good, some common good at the
expense of individual liberty or dignity, that nation has ultimately
left a legacy of horror and suffering. This is because whenever we
as human beings pretend that our ideals and best understandings of
the divine are greater than the individual or equal to God, we become
monstrous fools. We forget or never think to ask this basic question
If no two of us can always see everything the same way, how can any
one of us be worthy to make decisions for the rest of us? We fail to recognize that someone else may see
something differently than we do, and when we do, we fail to respect them as a human
being separate from ourselves.
Many
have rightly argued that just because the Nazi's philosophy was a
combination of Social Darwinism and Collectivism does not mean all
followers of these things are ready and willing to send millions to
death camps. They also rightly argue that it insults the memories of
those who survived such atrocities to suggest such, but it also
insults their memories to pretend that it was a group of non-human
monsters who did this, and not real human beings like ourselves.
Let
us not just look at the holocaust which is so painful and awful a
memory that it's hard for us to accept it happened, though we must. How about the
aftermath of the French Revolution as described so graphically in
Tale Of Two Cities.
Groups of people, especially when they see themselves as in line
with their societies in general are capable of horrors against
individuals that they could never consider as individuals. Yes,
let's put that more personally. We are capable of these horrors
whenever we allow ourselves to be convinced that we are part of a
group that by virtue of being a group has some common good that
supersedes what some individuals may see as good or precious to them.
“Ridiculous!”,
some may say, and I can see their likely point. What about national
sovereignty and laws against thievery and sociopathic behavior? Are
they not examples of a common good superseding some individual's
perception of good? No, those are examples of lesser evils, not
common or greater goods. That's a very important distinction that
many who argue for collectivism miss. The choice between two evils
is some times necessary for a society, for such situations happen,
some wars for example, but the choice between goods is never a
necessary choice for a society. Good by its definition neither harms
by its presence or absence. For a government to make any decision
for an individual that it doesn't need to could be the simplest
functional definition of tyranny.
Other
recent masks are Communism,
Socialism,
Progressivism,
Fascism,
and Absolute
Monarchies. I'd
consider throwing in Corporatism as I believe it is yet another mask
of the same thing, but explaining that may require an article unto
itself. As different as these things may seem to be from each other,
even to the point that their adherents kill each other at times, they
are all at fault for the same reason from the individual liberty
perspective. They all depend on the invention of the the common
greater good to justify running over the individual. Yes, even
absolute monarchies justify their power ultimately with a common
greater good argument. They rule for the sake of their nation's
people and that their power was absolute was justified as being in
their people's best interest. The divine right argument may seem at
first to be different but essentially it says God decided it was
in the best interest of the people that a given monarch rule them.
One
could also follow the money, so to speak, to see this same point.
With a mere formal exception for Fascism, not a functional one, all
property and wealth in a nation under these systems is ultimately
that of the nation. Individuals may be allowed to operate to an
extent as though it's there's, but given the perceived needs of some
common greater good anything and everything can be taken from an
individual. Whether one says the wealth and property belongs to the
people, the nation, or the crown it's all the same insult from an
individual liberty perspective. It is also all the same essential
false argument, that some common greater good exists.
The Ancient Struggle
And so the
ancient struggle goes on. It's very ironic, if not out right
perverse, that Progressives, Socialists, and other collectivists
assume the mantle of human progress and accuse people like myself of
wanting to “turn back”, as one President Obama has taken to
putting it. It is after all those like myself that work towards the
maximizing of individual liberty who fight against the tyranny and
horrors that inevitably result when people like him use governmental
power to advance what they think is best for us. We are the only
ones actually pointing the way forward, not him.
>> Notations <<
* “ we would have taken the better
option between extinction and survival as something less than human”,
should not be taken as an argument for euthanasia since the measure
of what it means to be fully human is not in our physical state of
being, but in that we endeavor to do the best we can with whatever we
have and can ethically obtain.
