Collectivism vs The Individual

Posted by Guest Writer on August 22, 2010 under Why | 5 Comments to Read

By David Atlee

Kirsten Powers is a liberal contributor to Fox News and she was interviewed by AOL’s Matt Lewis this week. Matt asked Kirsten how her faith has shaped her politics. Fair question. Her answer was the quintessential foundation of modern-day liberalism: “I also now see humanity as totally interconnected and am completely anti-individualism. It’s sad that Americans believe that individualism is so great, because I really do believe we would be a better country if we held the concept of community as a higher value.” Yes. That warm, fuzzy feeling that sends “tingling sensations” up the legs of Chris Matthews, the concept of ‘we are one’. Now, on the surface it does sound utopian and wonderful. Who wouldn’t want to be in a country where everyone is stress free and happy? Reality is a female dog though. This kind of society can’t work. Ask Cuba, Venezuela, The Soviet Union, or North Korea how their extreme anti-individual, collectivist society is working or worked out.

It’s no secret that liberals loathe the individual and worship collectivism. Barack Obama claimed he wanted to “spread the wealth around” so “everyone has a fair shot“. Hillary Clinton has a couple famous quotes regarding collectivism such as: “It takes a village to raise a child.” and “We’re going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.” Nanci Pelosi on spending tax dollars on the ‘poor’: “Stock market windfall profits taxes could go a long way to guarantee these [poor] people the standard of living they would like to have as ‘Americans.” – Of course. We must guarantee people who are too lazy or too incompetent to provide their own standard of living some sort of assurances that they will be taken care of by Big Brother. But, the most famous anti-individual in the last couple of centuries is the father of modern Communism himself, Karl Marx: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” This is just one glaringly obvious similarity between the thought process of liberals and Karl Marx.

There are a lot of parallels you can associate between sports and political or economic philosophies. In sports, the goal is to win. However, wins are not simply guaranteed. One must put in the amount of effort necessary to put themselves in a better position than their opponent for victory. In life, a comfortable standard of living, or even riches is not guaranteed. Unless of course you are born into royalty which is a percentage of people so small it is basically meaningless. One must put in the necessary amount of effort between education and hard work in order to achieve his or her desired outcome. Now take for example the idea of collectivism where “nobody loses”, and apply it to sports. How boring would it be to watch? If you are not allowed to win, or allowed to lose, what purpose does it serve to even compete? Let alone practice. Athletes would have zero incentive to participate and you would eventually end up with no sports at all.

Switch directions. Now apply collectivism to a society. Everything is going to be great. Everyone will have a comfortable standard of living, nobody will be poor, nobody will go hungry, everyone will have a place to live, and the beer will never run out. Utopia! Well, wait a second, who is going to supply the services necessary for this type of environment? If everyone is guaranteed a place to live, who is going to put in the necessary work to build you a house or develop the materials necessary to construct one? Who’s going to put in the necessary hours to harvest crops in order to provide food? Who’s going to go through med school so they can treat diseases? Who’s going to develop new vehicles so people will have something to drive? Who’s going to develop new technologies that make life easier? Most of all, who’s going to pay for all of this? Who would want to provide a service if someone can guarantee you the exact same thing? If everyone is guaranteed a certain standard of living, there is no incentive for anyone to achieve or create anything.

Now, apply individualism to a society: If you work hard enough and smart enough, your success will be limitless. If you choose to be lazy, your poor standard of living will be of nobody’s fault but your own. Individualism is competition which is capitalism. Take cell phones for an example. This has been one of the most competitive markets of the 21st century. Apple seems to come out with a new iphone every couple of years. Why do they keep creating new products? Because there are numerous other companies who are developing the same technology at the same time. All of these companies want the same thing: To have the best technology available to their customers. The customers (you and I) benefit greatly from this. How? With so many options to choose from (iphone, Droid, Blackberry, MyTouch…etc), the overall cost of these advanced products are cheaper because of high supply, and you are able to hold more computing power in the palm of your hand than NASA had at their disposal during the Apollo launches – all in 40 years time. Now, what if the cell phone industry was based on collectivism? There would be one company (government) with one product so everyone would have the same thing. What incentive would there be to advance the technology if there is no threat of losing your customer base?

Liberals think of capitalism as a dog-eat-dog, cutthroat, and cruel-to-the-poor way of living. Capitalism is the only way for the poor to make it out of poverty. In liberalism, socialism, statism, Marxism, or whatever you want to call it, the poor have no shot at a better life. Take Ben Carson for example. He was born into poverty in Detroit. Ben graduated from high school with honors, was able to attend Yale, and went through med school at the University of Michigan. At the wizened age of 33, he became the director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at John Hopkins Hospital. Let’s just say this guy isn’t hurting for money. The best part is, you can find story after story of someone in America who went from rags to riches through hard work. Not only did Ben Carson become wealthy in the process, but his genius in neurosurgery has saved countless amounts of lives. This is the by-product of competition. He grew tired of being picked on at school at an early age for being a failure. He outworked his classmates to become an amazing success story.

America was founded on the principles of individualism. The Declaration of Independence states that “..all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” You cannot have liberty in a collectivist society. You cannot have the pursuit of happiness in a collectivist society. Why? Liberty is tied to individualism. The pursuit of happiness is tied to individualism. In collectivism, happiness is determined by the state, not by the individual. Liberals believe that government knows what is best for society and should therefore dictate the needs of the people on the basis of the “common good”. We conservatives believe that the individual knows what is best for him or her. It is the individual that created Microsoft. It is the individual that created Google. It is the individual that created Apple. It is the individual that created Wal Mart. It is the individual that created the car. It is the individual that created the plane. It is the individual that created the light bulb. America must maintain its competitive edge which allows the individual to become successful on his or her own merits if it wants to still be the world’s beacon of freedom and prosperity. The implementation of collectivism would only lead to America’s demise.

This article was first published in the Atlee Appeal blog.

Tags: constitution, economy, individual

VA Patriot said,

The basic confusion about socialism today rises from a failure of language. One of the surest ways to clear up confusion is to return to a strict adherance to basic linguistics. When people say socialism, they talk about community. Those are not interchageable terms. Community is relationship among strong individuals who share common goals, and band together to accomplish them. The result is stronger more successful individuals. Socialism on the other hand degrades the individual to being a part of a larger collective. This defies human nature (to be free and persue happiness). Limit your liveral friend’s to specificially defined terms, and their arguments fall apart on their own. No shouting, no name calling, just logic. You may not change their heart, but remember Solomon counseled us that “a soft answer turns away wrath.” Besides its a lot more fun watching them fume while we remain calm. Even if they don’t change their heart, until they see the light, be sure they feel the heat.
ep said,

So why exactly is liberty tied to individualism, and why is it impossible to be happy in a collectivist society? Those are fairly strong accusations, and I’m interested in the philosophical reasoning behind those points.

Also, looking at stories of the American Dream might not produce a generalizable picture of what is actually happening in the United States. Qualitative evidence itself is difficult to generalize to the entire population, and anecdotal evidence is an even weaker because there is no actual sampling frame. Analysis of well-sampled quantitative data from sources such as the General Social Survey has found that parental income is still one of the strongest predictors of an individual’s income, indicating that capitalism in America probably is not an even playing field. While there are always exceptions to the rule, people who make a lot of money generally come from families where their parents made a lot of money while lower-income individuals generally come from lower-income households. There are good reasons to believe that financial status is just as much (if not more) about what family you were born into as it is how hard you work.

When we talk about winning and loosing, we’re not exactly talking about the same outcomes as sports. We end up talking about people not being able to feed their families or take their children to the doctor when they are sick.

The Bible also talks repetitively about the obligations that individuals have to each other and to the poor. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the government should be used to provide for the poor, but Jesus’ commandment that we should love our neighbor as well as we love our selves does imply that we have moral obligations to the people around us and not just ourselves, something missing from more radical applications of individualism. Even the Apostle Paul talks about economic equality as being a goal of charitable giving (2 Corinthians 8:8-15).
Larry Miller said,

The vary concept of liberty is based on the individual. How can one have freedom, if their lives are defined by someone else’s concept of what they should have and do? It does not make sense on any level.

If we only concentrate on meeting physical needs, such as food and medical care, we end up neglecting the more important and eternal part of the individual. Of course we recognize the mandate to care for the poor as described in the book of James and elsewhere. However it is the arrogance of some who take it upon themselves to define for us how those obligations should be met. They believe they have a better plan than God himself and the intend to impose it on those around us.

To call slavery liberty is reading from the same book that let the communists to call peace war, and war, peace.

Using extreme individualism as a strawman doesn’t do justice to the concept of both individual achievement and individual responsibility.

To use Christ’s teachings as a basis for socialistic, regimented behavior and thinking is the antithesis of genuine Christian thinking. Individually we decide to accept Christ and individually we enter heaven.
ep said,

I was asking more of why liberty is based on the individual. Anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism,democratic socialism and several other political ideologies all allow for individual liberty while meeting the more collective needs of the community (not to mention most modern European states). Jumping from collectivist ethics to totalitarianism seems to be creating the same type of straw man as radical individualism.

I’m not saying that the government necessarily needs to be responsible for the poor, especially not through a totalitarian state (again, this is a straw man argument). I’m saying that many of Jesus’ teachings and the description of the early church in Acts where the Church shares all property in common lean towards collectivist ethics.

I’m not sure which book you are referring to about the communist? It sounds like you are maybe talking about 1984? (George Orwell was actually a socialist, though.) Or maybe the Manifesto? The Communist Manifesto justifies the use of violence, but I don’t think it goes so far as to call it peace.

I recognized that that was extreme individualism by calling it extreme in my posting. Though, Ayn Rand, who is being discussed a lot in modern politics, did believe in that level of individualism, so it’s not completely unheard of in American political discourse. That level of individualism was also valued in Social Darwinist and Eugenic movements in the first half of the last century.

Individual interpretation of Christianity are also a more modern Western phenomenon from what I understand of Church history. There have been numerous church leaders, such as St. Thomas Moore, who have used a more collectivist framework for understanding Christianity.

I’m not sure why you are jumping to regimented behavior from collectivist ethics, but it seemed from the initial posting that the reader was being asked to choose between individualism and collectivism with no space in between. There are problems with both extremes (De Tocqueville’s tyranny of the majority at the collectivist end and Ayn Rand’s egoism at the individualist end), but I’m questioning the assumption that the Christian perspective inherently chooses individualistic ethics (not just government) over collectivist ethics when so much of the Bible teaches about the responsibilities that we have to each other. Even Old Testament law required the redistribution of property once every forty hears (Jubilee), required farmers to leave a portion of their crops for the poor (gleaning), and established systems to care for orphans and widows.
Larry Miller said,

The point my friend is missing is that ultimately collectivism must eventually lead to some form of tyranny as, unless their spirit is completely broken, there will be a time when people will wish to think for themselves.

Beyond this, there are two inherent problems with collectivism. First is that it relieves the individual of internal responsibility and lets them get away with merely following orders. The second problem is that is creates an entity between the individual and his creator that he can look to for meeting his needs.

The mere idea of collectivism leaves no room for individual differences if it is work. Participation is, of necessity, mandatory. This means that those who are motivated will work and what they create will be confiscated… not voluntarily donated (as with the early church) and given to those to, often, will not work. Thus the Randian concept of “going Galt”.

God deals with us individually, it is the other side who would like to get us to follow the group blindly to our destruction.