Collectivism, Individualism and Authoritarianism
Collectivists hate people. There can’t be any other explanation of why the worst atrocities have all been committed by collectivist authoritarians. There are no tyrants who call themselves individualists, or libertarians. Tyrants abhor the idea that the people they rule over should have freedom of self-realization or independence. Why can’t this be more widely acknowledged in the 21st century after watching the ruthless destruction of Ukraine perpetrated by Russia? Putin was raised, indoctrinated and advanced through the Soviet culture of collectivism, he is a product of it.
The primary ideological struggle in the last 100 years has been individualism vs. collectivism. Capitalism against communism, the USA against the USSR. A multitude of uprisings and wars have occurred where people were attracted to socialist/communist ideologies only to be disappointed with the results and attempted to escape from collectivist tyranny. That general theme has been played out many times, from the Soviet Union and its eastern bloc countries, to Vietnam, and other Asian nations that transitioned from communism to capitalism.
Free market capitalism is built on the idea that each person is responsible and accountable for themselves, individualism. Business owners must manage their companies to be profitable and continue operating. They contract with their employees and require a certain level of performance, accountability, to maintain employment. Each citizen in a free market economy must be self-sufficient, able to support themselves without being a burden on others, who also support themselves.
Our history progressed from hunter-gatherer with roving bands of individuals, to agriculture with city-states, to industrialism with a global economy. During that time, various philosophers tried to explain our situation, do we have free will, are events pre-determined, do we really have agency as individuals, or does our environment control who we are? Libraries around the world contain volumes addressing these ideas from the perspective of different cultures. The underlying question is how much freedom should individuals have?
Western society evolved over the centuries to value individual freedom over the collective, Eastern cultures have generally been the opposite, valuing the collective over individuals. Notice that has been where much of the world’s conflicts, between “eastern” Russia and Asian nations against American and European nations. Western societies embraced free market economies that rapidly out-produced the centrally controlled economies. Individual initiative and innovations were highly valued, those things didn’t threaten the power of leaders that defended freedom.
As humans, we can’t escape the collective of society. We are social beings, we have families, live in communities and are dependent on each other for survival. Unlike other animals that live in groups, each person is self-aware and has their own perception of the world around them. That collective perspective becomes our cultures, our civilizations. We need each other to survive. We can be generous while taking care of ourselves. Specialization grows out of the modern industrial society, enhanced by individual liberty which advances our quality of life because we can trade freely with others who are experts at their livelihoods.
Social contract theory arose a few hundred years ago that suggests individuals must consent, either implicitly or explicitly, to surrender some of their freedoms in order to live within a civilized society. Collectivists exploit that concept by demanding individuals must totally submit to the collective, otherwise those individuals are “selfish”, “greedy” or anti-social. Individualists push back, saying it is the best interest of society as a whole to respect individual freedom.
That is the challenge of how government should operate. Should it uphold individual liberty, or collective power? A society that respects the rights of each person can hardly become authoritarian. Collectivist societies have a propensity to become dictatorships, the people don’t value their own liberty and allow government to oppress them.
Modern libertarianism is the biggest defender of individual liberty, based on the non-aggression principle. As long as people don’t force others and nobody can claim direct harm from the violent actions of others, people should be able to make their own decisions, form contracts, peacefully trade and interact with each other without threat or acts of violence. Each person can be as generous or stingy as they want, nobody forces them to make their own choices. Most people actually live like that in their personal lives, people are libertarian at heart; very few bullies thuggishly take whatever they want from others. But when people join together collectively, they dispense of their libertarian traits and become bullies, granting government powers to take property from each of us, to engage in violent conflicts, to punish and imprison people who don’t follow the collective’s mandates.
Our perception of our political establishment has evolved to the left/right, collectivist/individualist spectrum, but it doesn’t really capture the entire sphere of personal and economic liberties promoted by each in just a single dimension. Right-wingers can be oppressive, left-wingers can promote individualism. The two dimension “Nolan” chart and various similar models help to describe how personal freedoms and collective power relate to each other. A wider adoption of the two axis model between authoritarianism/liberty and civil/economic would better illuminate the differences between our growing political divide.
Why has collectivism descended into tyranny so often? Those who seek control over others apparently don’t really value the lives of the people they rule over. There are plenty of people, humans are expendable, just dispose of those who don’t follow and replace them with those who will. Contrast this with leaders who respect personal freedom, they don’t liquidate their own citizens to terrorize the remaining citizens so they value freedom. Citizens of a free society inherently value freedom, you don’t promote freedom with tyranny; but somewhat paradoxically in order to defend freedom, violence is required to dispose of those who seek to destroy freedom. It’s a fine line; when does defending freedom become oppressive? Hopefully the collective of individuals that value their individual liberty will prevent that from happening.
This article has been broadly focused on the individual vs the collective and how personal responsibility relates to mutual dependency. There are always the edge cases where some people cannot take care of themselves for whatever reason, but for now I didn’t address the social safety net and charity. Collectivists exploit those edge cases. There is also the issue of how corporations within a capitalist economy are actually a government created entity, with collectivist underpinnings. That leads into state capitalism, where nations that call themselves communist embrace capitalist features in order to improve their people’s standard of living. These are subjects best left to other articles.
Nationalism is another form of collectivism, declaring that a certain nationality or race, a group of people, have special rights and privileges. Nazi Germany is another example of collectivism, advertising themselves as socialists, speaking as nationalists, declaring that other races were inferior. Left-wingers dance around that issue, trying to distance themselves from the worst dictator in history by not acknowledging how anti-individualism can lead to totalitarianism. That is for another article some other day.