Individualism is a massive threat to the progressives, and
it appears to become ever so much more for reasons which are oftimes hard to
explain. But what do we mean by Individualism? There are frankly a plethora of
meanings. At one extreme it is the Emersonian view of knowing yourself, being
your own person. At another extreme are that of Hayek, and then the original
construct of de Tocqueville.
As we shall see, Emerson is one of self-identity,
Hayek and refutation of communism, and de Tocqueville the personal crisis of
French society and the pending loss of social identity. Frankly none truly
provide a sense of current day Individualism. It should be contrasted to the
Libertarian view especially the Rand world-view of extreme selfish apartness.
To set our view in context, Individualism is a belief in the
sanctity of the individual, and that Government has the limited role of
protection of person and property. Individuals are free to form associations,
to transact trade and to communicate in an unencumbered manner in any fashion.
Individuals are equal before the law and each other and that Government and
Society shall in no way construct barriers for individual development or
expression. This is a simple expression of Individualism. As we shall see it
contrasts with many other views.
1. Emerson
We first begin with Emerson. Emerson was a
Transcendentalist, an inhabitant of Concord, MA. Things have changed little in
Concord since Emerson in that it is a habitat of academics and left wing
thinkers. In many ways its inhabitants often think of themselves as a step
above others intellectually as well as socially. I came to best understand that
having resided in the adjacent town of Acton, considered in many ways the down casts
of the Concord suburbs.
Thus Emerson was a voice of both Concord and Harvard elites
of the 19th century. His view of Individualism was a view of
expanding the individual’s spirit, less a view of the rights and
responsibilities, than of the concept of self-enlightenment. For example we
have from Emerson[1]:
If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises,
they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the
finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office
within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it
seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and
in complaining the rest of his life.
A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn
tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school,
preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth,
in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a
hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame
in not `studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives
already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.
Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they
are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the
exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made
flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our
compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the
books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but
thank and revere him, —and that teacher shall restore the life of man to
splendor, and make his name dear to all history.
It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work
a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in
their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association;
in their property; in their speculative views.
Here we have the Emersonian Individualism or self-reliance.
There is a feeling of self-trust and the ability to strike out on his own. This
is one view, and one which prevailed for many generations, the sense of the
individual taking their own future into their own hands. The Emersonian view is
thus not the Individualism that we see today, nor that of the settlers of
Tennessee in the same period.
2. Ockham
Then there is the Ockham view of Individualism. Ockham was
one of the first in the 14th century to express a sense of the
individual, not of the subject, one who claimed the Pope was a heretic, John
XXII, the pope in Avignon. In a sense Ockham was preceded by Columbanus who in
a similar fashion took on Gregory I on many matters. To understand the Ockham
Individualism we examine some of his logical structures. Let us examine a
statement, subject and predicate, in a manner akin to Ockham.
Namely we perform a nominalist statement. That is we deny
universals and believe only in each and every example.
We might say:
“All coneflowers are blue.”
Now what we may really mean is:
This coneflower and this coneflower and that coneflower etc.
to describe the subject. Namely we look at each and every coneflower that we
can.
But many nominalists may stop there. I would continue
expending with the predicate as well:
This blue, this blue or that blue.
Namely we may ask what specific blue we mean. I can see many
blue colors. If one were to examine the spectrum of each flower for its
blueness one would see different spectra. In fact each cell has a different
spectrum of blue. Blue as a universal does not exist, blue as a specific
expression of anthocyanins does.
Thus the nominalist sees only individuals, individual
subjects and individual predicates. Thus for Ockham only the individual exists,
the idea of an ideal such as a group is merely the temporal expression of
individuals assembling together.
3. Hayek
Then there is the Individualism of the polis, of how man and
his Government relate. The best example here is to examine Hayek.
Now Hayek states[2]:
No political term has suffered worse in this respect than
"individualism." It not only has been distorted by its opponents into
an unrecognizable caricature-and we should always remember that the political
concepts which are today out of fashion are known to most of our contemporaries
only through the picture drawn of them by their enemies-but has been used to
describe several attitudes toward society which have as little in common among
themselves as they have with those traditionally regarded as their opposites.
Indeed, when in the preparation of this paper I examined some of the standard
descriptions of "individualism,"
Indeed as Hayek states, the use of the term by those opposed
is often in a Sophist like manner of a Protagoras or Gorgias defined by them in
a manner to be rejected. Hayek clearly understood this issue. This is the key
point when dealing with Individualism, not to accept the definition of the
opponent but to seek truth.
I almost began to regret that I had ever connected the
ideals in which I believe with a term which has been so abused and so
misunderstood. Yet, whatever else "individualism" may have come to
mean in addition to these ideals, there are two good reasons for retaining the
term for the view I mean to defend: this view has always been known by that
term, whatever else it may also have meant at different times, and the term has
the distinction that the word "socialism" was deliberately coined to
express its opposition to individualism. It
is with the system which forms the alternative to socialism that I shall be
concerned[3].
I can give no better illustration of the prevailing
confusion about the meaning of individualism than the fact that the man who to
me seems to be one of the greatest representatives of true individualism,
Edmund Burke, is commonly (and rightly) represented as the main opponent of the
so-called "individualism" of Rousseau, whose theories he feared would
rapidly dissolve the commonwealth "into the dust and powder of
individuality," and that the term "individualism" itself was
first introduced into the English language through the translation of one of
the works of another of the great representatives of true individualism, De
Tocqueville, who uses it in his Democracy in America to describe an attitude
which he deplores and rejects. Yet there can no doubt that both Burke and De
Tocqueville stand in all essentials close to Adam Smith, to whom nobody will
deny the title of individualist, and that the "individualism" to
which they are opposed is something altogether different from that of Smith.
Again as Hayek states, even de Tocqueville uses
Individualism in a manner which expresses his own fears in France rather than
the actuality he observed in America.
I cannot better illustrate the contrast in which
Cartesian or rationalistic "individualism" stands to this view than
by quoting a famous passage from Part II of the Discourse on Method. Descartes
argues that "there is seldom so much perfection in works composed of many
separate parts, upon which different hands had been employed, as in those
completed by a single master." He then goes on to suggest (after,
significantly, quoting the instance of the engineer drawing up his plans) that
"those nations which, starting from a semi-barbarous state and advancing
to civilization by slow degrees, have had their laws successively determined,
and, as it were, forced upon them simply by experience of the hurtfulness of particular
crimes and disputes, would by this process come to be possessed of less perfect
institutions than those which, from the commencement of their association as
communities, have followed the appointment of some wise legislator." To
drive this point home, Descartes adds that in his opinion "the past
pre-eminence of Sparta was due not to the pre-eminence of each of its laws in
particular ... but to the circumstance that, originated by a single individual,
they all tended to a single end."
True individualism is, of course, not anarchism, which is
but another product of the rationalistic pseudo-individualism to which it is
opposed. It does not deny the necessity of coercive power but wishes to limit
it-to limit it to those fields where it is indispensable to prevent coercion by
others and in order to reduce the total of coercion to a minimum. While all the
individualist philosophers are probably agreed on this general formula, it must
be admitted that they are not always very informative on its application in
specific cases.
Neither the much abused and much misunderstood phrase of
"laissez faire" nor the still older formula of "the protection
of life, liberty, and property" are of much help. In fact, in so far as
both tend to suggest that we can just leave things as they are, they may be
worse than no answer; they certainly do not tell us what are and what are not
desirable or necessary fields of government activity. Yet the decision whether
individualist philosophy can serve us as a practical guide must ultimately
depend on whether it will enable us to distinguish between the agenda and the
nonagenda of government.
Hayek’s discussion is as close as we may come to
Individualism in the polis. Hayek takes the issue of Government control to task
and it becomes the heart of his description.
4. de Tocqueville
The earliest popularizer of the term Individualism was de
Tocqueville in his Democracy in America. He was clearly not a fan of the
concept. In fact he saw it as a threat. But as a Frenchman, having understood
the consequences of the mob, to him it meant uncontrolled anarchy. Many have
used de Tocqueville’s observations as a basis for rejecting Individualism. I
would argue, however, that it is more an expression of his fear of loss of
French culture than a true rejection of what he observed.
de Tocqueville had stated[4]:
I HAVE shown how it
is that in ages of equality every man seeks for his opinions within himself; I
am now to show how it is that in the same ages all his feelings are turned
towards himself alone. Individualism is a novel expression, to which a novel
idea has given birth. Our fathers were only acquainted with egoisme
(selfishness). Selfishness is a passionate and exaggerated love of self, which
leads a man to connect everything with himself and to prefer himself to
everything in the world. Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which
disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his
fellows and to draw apart with his family and his friends, so that after he has
thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to
itself. Selfishness originates in blind instinct; individualism proceeds from
erroneous judgment more than from depraved feelings; it originates as much in
deficiencies of mind as in perversity of heart.
Selfishness blights
the germ of all virtue; individualism, at first, only saps the virtues of
public life; but in the long run it attacks and destroys all others and is at
length absorbed in downright selfishness. Selfishness is a vice as old as the
world, which does not belong to one form of society more than to another;
individualism is of democratic origin, and it threatens to spread in the same
ratio as the equality of condition.
Among aristocratic
nations, as families remain for centuries in the same condition, often on the
same spot, all generations become, as it were, contemporaneous. A man almost
always knows his forefathers and respects them; he thinks he already sees his
remote descendants and he loves them. He willingly imposes duties on himself
towards the former and the latter, and he will frequently sacrifice his
personal gratifications to those who went before and to those who will come
after him. Aristocratic institutions, moreover, have the effect of closely
binding every man to several of his fellow citizens. As the classes of an
aristocratic people are strongly marked and permanent, each of them is regarded
by its own members as a sort of lesser country, more tangible and more
cherished than the country at large. As in aristocratic communities all the
citizens occupy fixed positions, one above another, the result is that each of
them always sees a man above himself whose patronage is necessary to him, and
below himself another man whose co-operation he may claim.
Men living in
aristocratic ages are therefore almost always closely attached to something
placed out of their own sphere, and they are often disposed to forget
themselves. It is true that in these ages the notion of human fellowship is
faint and that men seldom think of sacrificing themselves for mankind; but they
often sacrifice themselves for other men. In democratic times, on the contrary,
when the duties of each individual to the race are much more clear, devoted
service to any one man becomes more rare; the bond of human affection is
extended, but it is relaxed.
Among democratic
nations new families are constantly springing up, others are constantly falling
away, and all that remain change their condition; the woof of time is every
instant broken and the track of generations effaced. Those who went before are
soon forgotten; of those who will come after, no one has any idea: the interest
of man is confined to those in close propinquity to himself. As each class
gradually approaches others and mingles with them, its members become
undifferentiated and lose their class identity for each other. Aristocracy had
made a chain of all the members of the community, from the peasant to the king;
democracy breaks that chain and severs every link of it.
As social conditions
become more equal, the number of persons increases who, although they are
neither rich nor powerful enough to exercise any great influence over their
fellows, have nevertheless acquired or retained sufficient education and
fortune to satisfy their own wants. They owe nothing to any man, they expect
nothing from any man; they acquire the habit of always considering themselves
as standing alone, and they are apt to imagine that their whole destiny is in
their own hands.
Thus not only does
democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and
separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself
alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of
his own heart.
In many ways this was less an observation of Individualism
than a response by de Tocqueville towards the classless and open society he
found himself in. Brogan presents an excellent summary of this in his biography
of the author[5].
de Tocqueville, especially in the last sentence reveals his bias to a society
where all are equal. He still saw merit and need for a society where the right
people intermingled.
5. American Leftist
Now having briefly discussed these concepts I come to a
recent article in the NY Times. From the NY Times[6] in an article ironically
entitled “Deluded Individualism” what appears in my opinion to be some junior faculty member at an art school
opined on the nature of what he thinks individualism is. Specifically he
states:
In Chisago County, Minn., The Times's reporters spoke
with residents who supported the Tea Party and its proposed cuts to federal
spending, even while they admitted they could not get by without government
support. Tea Party aficionados, and many on the extreme right of the Republican
party for that matter, are typically characterized as self-sufficient middle
class folk, angry about sustaining the idle poor with their tax dollars.
Chisago County revealed a different aspect of this anger: economically
struggling Americans professing a robust individualism and self-determination,
frustrated with their failures to achieve that ideal.
One sees the typical and needless setting the political
stage. One need read no further to see where this “argument” is to go.
Why the stubborn insistence on self-determination, in
spite of the facts? One might say there is something profoundly American in
this. It's our fierce individualism shining through. Residents of Chisago
County are clinging to notions of past self-reliance before the recession,
before the welfare state. It's admirable in a way. Alternately, it evokes the
delusional autonomy of Freud's poor ego.
Freud notwithstanding, the Individualism is the freeing of
the individual to maximize their potential. There are times when individuals
need help, Individualism does not negate, deny, decry, or prevent that, indeed
the ability of individuals to associate for purposes of assistance is the heart
of Individualism.
These people, like many across the nation, rely on
government assistance, but pretend they don't. They even resent the government
for their reliance. If they looked closely though, they'd see that we are all
thoroughly saturated with government assistance in this country: farm subsidies
that lower food prices for us all, mortgage interest deductions that
disproportionately favor the rich, federal mortgage guarantees that keep
interest rates low, a bloated Department of Defense that sustains entire
sectors of the economy and puts hundreds of thousands of people to work. We can
hardly fathom the depth of our dependence on government, and pretend we are
bold individualists instead.
The above stretches the point. Mortgage deductions are
limited, and that is not how the rich defer taxes, it is through capital gains,
and that deferment typically goes back into rational investments, not like the
Government waste in failed companies. Yes, in many ways the Defense Department
is bloated, but so too are the ambitions to become policeman for the world. We
do not depend on Government; we all too often are burdened by Government. Farm
subsidies distort prices, and Medicare often distorts medical waste and fraud
to the extreme. Yes, those who can afford Medicare should pay more, and in
addition Medicare should be an insurance policy for extremes not for day to day
costs.
Thanks to a decades-long safety net, we have forgotten
the trials of living without it. This is why, the historian Tony Judt argued,
it's easy for some to speak fondly of a world without government: we can't
fully imagine or recall what it's like. We can't really appreciate the horrors
Upton Sinclair witnessed in the Chicago slaughterhouses before regulation, or the
burden of living without Social Security and Medicare to look forward to. Thus,
we can entertain nostalgia for a time when everyone pulled his own weight, bore
his own risk, and was the master of his destiny. That time was a myth. But the
notion of self-reliance is also a fallacy.
The slaughter houses are examples of Pigou versus Coase. We establish
Government tax burdens and then infrastructures rather than facilitating direct
punishment for doing harm, Pigou versus Coase. If bad meat caused harm, and if
we had an efficient system of remedies, then those harmed could readily seek
restitution and punishment on those rendering the harm. For example, bankers
causing a bank failure should face the most severe of punishments, the most
severe. Instead they become contributors to the current Administration.
Spinoza greatly influenced Freud, and he adds a
compelling insight we would do well to reckon with. Spinoza also questioned the
human pretense to autonomy. Men believe themselves free, he said, merely
because they are conscious of their volitions and appetites, but they are
wholly determined.
We are not speaking of the mind. We are speaking of the
reality of day to day life. We make decisions, often constrained ones, but it
is the individual who sees ways around that, the entrepreneur, who creates the
ultimate value in our society. Spinoza was the prototypical individual,
rejecting his community and setting himself apart.
In fact, Spinoza claimed - to the horror of his
contemporaries -that we are all just modes of one substance, "God or
Nature" he called it, which is really the same thing. Individual actions
are no such thing at all; they are expressions of another entity altogether,
which acts through us unwittingly. To be human, according to Spinoza, is to be
party to a confounding existential illusion - that human individuals are
independent agents - which exacts a heavy emotional and political toll on us.
It is the source of anxiety, envy, anger - all the passions that torment our
psyche - and the violence that ensues. If we should come to see our nature as
it truly is, if we should see that no "individuals" properly speaking
exist at all, Spinoza maintained, it would greatly benefit humankind.
We are to degree independent agents, but as I stated we have
substantial constraints that we manage from time to time to work around as a
goal seeking creature. The author perhaps has never met or spoken to an entrepreneur.
When going into Korea, Thailand, Russia, Turkey, Poland, etc I saw no
constraints, just obstacles that I found ways around through associations,
working with other individuals, and relying not one iota on Government or
society in the sense of the author. I was not alone, there are many such
entrepreneurs.
There is no such thing as a discrete individual, Spinoza
points out. This is a fiction. The boundaries of 'me' are fluid and blurred. We
are all profoundly linked in countless ways we can hardly perceive. My
decisions, choices, actions are inspired and motivated by others to no small
extent.
One would tend to disagree if one were an Ockhamist. A
nominalist clearly sees nothing but individuals, and society is at best a
collection of specific associations, transient as that may be.
The passions, Spinoza argued, derive from seeing people
as autonomous individuals responsible for all the objectionable actions that
issue from them. Understanding the interrelated nature of everyone and
everything is the key to diminishing the passions and the havoc they wreak.
Let me respond to this view. First, Spinoza was a bit more
than the writer contends, but that is a text unto itself. Second this is a
Sophist argument, taking a definition of Individualism to prove a point, a
definition devoid of much of what we have presented above.
6. A Canonical Model
Let me now attempt in a simple fashion to assemble all of
these elements. We commence by defining certain units. It is always useful to
do so because so many authors in a Sophist like manner attack a position of the
other side and for which the other side never took such a position.
Family: Like associations, family is a key aggregating
element. Unlike de Tocqueville who sees family as position in society, American
families often extend relationships, establish associations, and provide
support.
Associations: The Associations are what de Tocqueville
recognized when he saw the America of the first half of the 19th
century. They were freely formed and ever changing relationship between
individuals and focused on specific purposes. They may have been for trade, for
banking, for farming, or for whatever purpose. They were flexible, often open,
and frequently highly mobile. They were developed with some goal in mind, some
agenda, real and objective. In a sense the church was just another association.
Locality: This is a collection of local, to some broad
extent, of one’s neighbors and associates. One need just look at a New England
Town meeting for a typical example of locality. Not an association as such, but
an amalgam of individuals. As one moves from New England one sees less of the
individual influence. In New Jersey the town gatherings are often “managed” by
heavy handed politician who often have personal gain at stake.
Society: Society is a Platonic ideal. It is nothing more
than the amalgam of individuals, associations, families and localities. What we
see as a society in New Hampshire we see differently in California. Yet we use
the same name.
Government: This is the complex issue. Government for the
Individualist is a minimalist form, protect person and property and allow remediation
in a Coasean manner. However for the Progressive the Government is the sine qua
non of existence, the arbiter of all life and the decider of the individual’s
fate. Just read between the lines of the Times piece and one get the
understanding.
We do not deny Government and its function. We do not deny
the existence of Society and the need to interact with it. We do see its role
as limited, necessary, indeed, but not to the extent of delimiting the
potential of the individual.
[3] Hayek also states: “Both the term "individualism" and the term
"socialism" are originally the creation of the Saint-Simonians, the
founders of modern socialism. They first coined the term
"individualism" to describe the competitive society to which they
were opposed and
then invented
the word "socialism" to describe the centrally planned society in
which all activity was directed on the same principle that applied within a
single factory.”
[4] De
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Part II, Chapter 2, pp 482-484 in Mansfield
and Winthrop.
[5]
Brogan, H., Alexis de Tocqueville, Yale (New Haven) 2006, pp 355-356.
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