The Ideology of Individualism

“…in modern times much more depends on the correct thinking through of a situation than was the case in earlier societies.”—Karl Mannheim in “Ideology and Utopia,”(1936)

“They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” — Margaret Thatcher

Ideology is a pre-constructed abstract interconnected pattern of a unified thought system that gives order to the multiplicity of experience, but is not necessary for experience. Ideology is not just about facts—but also about the order of the totality of facts. The concept of the atomistic individual is a theoretical abstraction also, not only society. If there is no society, there can be no markets but only buyers and sellers according to this nominalistic reasoning. Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and existentialist philosophy all use the concepts of “individual” and “individualism,” so that it is a highly ideological term that ranges from philosophies of atheistic egoism (Rand) to theistic existentialism (Kierkegaard). I want to revisit Hobbes again, but focus instead on his view of the individual in civil society.

The very act of static conceptual abstraction of a particular behavior of humans removes it out of context thereby circumscribing any greater significance it may have. The “economic man” is an unconscious distortion by static model driven abstract classification, “the act of rationally objectifying,” that reinterprets human beings as “individuals” absent from a greater community matrix and history. Collectivism says, “E pluribus unum,” or Latin for "Out of many, one." Individualism says, “From the one, many.” Separating the one from the many invite false assumptions about human existence. According to this ideology a mythic-philosophic “individual” drops from the theoretical sky into history miraculously already having fixed unbounded knowledge of all world history. All human motivation is reduced to a search for exchange value in this version of theoretical economic individualism. Human beings become a contractualist wealth-accumulating self-directing machine only seeking power over others. She is the Hobbesian possessive accumulator of wealth so that individualism produces a rational exchange agent from a natural human process. Hayekian Libertarianism and the other Austrian Economic School variations distort the human face—it is reified fiction.

A systematic analysis of the atomistic egocentric individual can be found in Thomas Hobbes’ (1588-1679) book, Leviathan, wherein he describes the self-interested economic man and a theory of the state and society. Hobbes’ philosophical anthropology of human behavior has a familiar ring with today’s popular version of Libertarian philosophy represented by Ayn Randian psychological egoism.[1] The Leviathan’s theory of state is linked to a belief in the intrinsic competitive nature of human beings. For Hobbes the natural condition of men is “war of all against all” for without the nation-state each person has a right to everything. Such an irrational society ruled by self-interested human beings would be chaotic making commerce impossible since no one would be secure against violence from another. In order to avoid this natural state of war rational human beings accepted, in theory, a social contract by which all persons give up some freedom for protection from another. Such a regulating state could have the form of a Monarchy, Aristocracy, or a Democracy.

[1] Footnote: Randian Self-Interest Egoism is really an anti-ethical theory. “Interest egoism,” means “Everyone always acts so as to promote his own self-interest either immediately or long run, to the exclusion of everyone else.” The first modern schools of ethical theory were moral sentiment theories (not "emotionalism") based on human "sympathy" and "empathy" which is the opposite of self-interest egoism of which there are other versions. Randian Interest Egoism is a version of “Want Egoism” or “Wantism” that states  “X wants Y; therefore, Y is right.” An ethical theory only based on self-interest is no ethical theory at all, but uses the language of ethics such as "happiness," "rational," "good," "life," "prosperous" and other tautologous names for their definition of immoral selfishness. And then out of thin air the interest egoist proclaim a universal a priori prescription--even a Duty! (Categorical Imperative)-- saying, "Everyone should seek their self-interest." If a person really believed in “self-interest egoism” they wouldn’t tell anyone since others acting in their self-interest is just more uncontrolled social competition against one’s own self-interest. I just killed Ayn Rand in a footnote.

In Hobbes’ Leviathan the state is not founded on universalistic morality, nor on political human rights, but on non-traditionalist human economic self-interest. Cultural norms are not completely arbitrary because there are some unchanging laws of nature on which norms can be based. In this case normative laws are derived from the biological competitive nature of humans according to Hobbes. Interpreting social competitiveness as human nature legitimizes competition as part of a false social totality. Karl Popper calls this interpretation “biological naturalism.” Man is only an accumulating machine seeking power over others. Biological naturalism is essentially a zoological definition of human beings.

The Hobbesian economic man is intrinsically anti-social who forms the basis of an inherently unstable community that is only designed to assist in exploiting members and accumulating power. In this view there is nothing else to connect private individuals in society except competition and human convention. Each wealth accumulator has no ethical responsibility for his beaten competitor- the poor, or anyone else. Both the unfortunate poor and the shameful criminal are indistinguishable and expelled from society as unproductive. Hobbesian power philosophy has been adapted to popular Libertarian sects in America. Libertarianism and Neoliberalism embrace this anthropological view of humans as a capital-accumulating machine. Libertarian atomized anti-social community doesn’t exist on any other foundation than self-interested advantage, possessive individualism, competition, economic contractualism, and ethical egoism if not crude materialistic nihilism. Hobbes does not deny the existence of society, only that in its natural state society is disorganized war.

For Hobbes there are no absolute values. Where there is no social covenant, no act can be called unjust. Hobbes writes in the Leviathan, “…the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law, where no law, no injustice. Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.” And there is “…no dominion, no mine and thine distinct; but only that to be every man’s, that he can get: and for so long as he can keep it." In modern advanced industrial society this competitive comportment minimizes the civil and familial to emphasize vocational privatism characterized as possessive individualism, utilitarianism, and un-coerced obedience to external authority with a fatalistic acceptance of conventional work morality (Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason, David Ingram, Yale University Press, 1987, p.15).

The Free Market Fundamentalist thought-system is based on the view of human relationships as primarily economic and transactional with rational self-interested agents producing, distributing, and selling commodities in a market that reflect rational consumer demand. The entire premise of Free Market Fundamentalism is based on a fallacy—the informal logical Fallacy of Composition. One cannot infer something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole. In other words, the buyers and sellers may be “rational,” but the market can stay “irrational” longer than you can stay financially solvent. This is the reigning ideological view today in America and is not new in the life cycles (Greek: Kuklos) of societies. See, Kuklos: The "Cycle" of Government Types From Aristocracy To Tyranny.

Market fundamentalism, Hyper-Individualism, Libertarianism, and Neoliberalism all seek to deny an obvious fact --we are all members of society and much of what we prize as the best of human achievements has come from collective effort in building a commons. We must examine human processes in a fuller socio-historical context to truly understand human existence—to recover lost human experience, and not accept an ahistorical ideological characterization of human being. When Libertarianism describes humans as merely Hobbesian wealth accumulating contractualist machines they are not only describing a false philosophical anthropology, but also prescribing a set of behavioral goals for society. The description of human behavior as egoistic self-interestedness is self-fulfilling by ideologically re-enforcing the very attributes that are supposed to be inherent unchanging laws of biological naturalism—the economically strong rule over all. As one author wrote, “the docile and gullible come in droves to prove the now tautologically objectified point.”

Chris Hedges' description of society emphasizes the importance of “place” and “community” and is identical to Schleiermacher’s view of society as a community of individuals:

“...societies are held together by a web of social bonds that give individuals a sense of being part of a collective and engaged in a project larger than the self. This collective expresses itself through rituals such as elections and democratic participation, or appeal to patriotism and shared national beliefs. The bonds provide meaning, a sense of purpose, status, and dignity. They offer psychological protections from impending mortality and the meaninglessness that comes from being isolated and alone. The shattering of these bonds plunges individuals into deep psychological distress that lead ultimately to acts of self-annihilation...” —Chris Hedges, On Contact, 1/12/19.

In America today the very concept of community is under endless attack. Within the sphere of community are cultural values that are the source of social rationality in science and knowledge (theoretical), religion and morality (practical), art and taste (aesthetics). It is these strengths within the sphere of human community that monopoly capitalism is attacking and colonizing private civil life through extreme privatization. These market forces reduce the theoretical to ends-means instrumental technology; the practical is replaced with nihilistic contractual possessive individualism; and aesthetics are reduced to manipulative consumer marketing by multi-national corporations. Society is transformed into a network of dominating pseudo-democratic administrative systems of constraint. Culture becomes an elaborate set of ideologies of socially pragmatic functional false beliefs. The personal sphere metamorphoses into social alienation, fatalism, and mental neurosis. Then in the midst of all this debris of damaged life Free-Market Fundamentalism alleges that human nature and democracy are the root problems.

Do humans have a nature? Going back to antiquity we find in the fourth century B.C. Aristotle writing in Magna Moralia about a “first nature,” and “learned custom” which can be as strong as first nature.