The individualist denies that anybody other than the individual has a rightful say in how the individual conducts himself.

Typically, the first line of attack by the collectivist is an attempt to reduce the theory to absurdity by suggesting that it implies that the collective cannot prohibit the individual from killing or otherwise doing harm to others. If this charge were true, then it would indeed contradict itself.

But note that the theory of individualism sets up its own boundaries by applying itself to all individuals. If individualism is true, it doesn’t only prohibit others from coercing me to act in accordance with their wishes; it also prohibits me from coercing others to act according to my wishes.

A popular line of attack against the libertarian – and individualist – concept of self ownership is that the freedom it implies would allow people to act immorally. This is particularly true of egalitarians who believe that their right to use force against individuals to bring about material equality is overriding.

To invoke egalitarian morality as overriding of individual consent necessarily involves the denial of self ownership. That is perhaps by egalitarians are necessarily collectivists.

But when an individual denies self-ownership, it would appear that he denies the all rights over his self, including the right to assert collectivism.

“I deny self-ownership. The collective has the right to govern me.”

He is attempting to invoke self-ownership for the purpose of assigning his sovereignty to the collective. This seems to involve a performative contradiction, does it not? If he is not claiming self ownership in order to assign his sovereignty to the collective, then he is in fact denying his own right to assign his sovereignty to anybody.

Slap a collectivist. What does he say? Does he accuse you of violating his sovereignty, or the collective sovereignty? If he accuses you of violating the collective sovereignty, you can simply insist that you are part of the collective and as such hold sovereignty over him to slap as you please. It is more likely that he will claim that you violated his “rights” (i.e., sovereignty), at which time he is in fact asserting individual sovereignty.

Anyhow, if the collective is indeed the rightful claimant to sovereignty over individuals, then all this talk by collectivists about individual rights would seem to be nonsense.

It is remarkable that both libertarians and defenders of totalitarian government start from the common premise that an individual should be free.

The bifurcation occurs in the second premise – i.e., the premise which delimits the realm of freedom. The libertarian argues that the individual is rightly free to act so long as he doesn’t pose an imminent threat to others, whereas the totalitarian argues that the individual should only be free so long as his actions do not affect others.

Of course, there is very little a human can do which cannot be construed as affecting others. The very state of being alive is considered a first order threat to envirnmentalists who advocate coercive population control measures.

Loren Lomasky, in his Persons, Rights and the Moral Community sets out a rather libertarian theory of rights.

He makes a curious assertion in regard to the formulation of an essentially individualistic social contract. He writes:

Therefore, it is a mistake to commence political analysis with a state-of-nature scenario in which each individual is entirely consumed by his own conceptions of value-for-himself and regards others as only obstacles to his own designs. Hobbsian egoism… is logically precluded from initiating relations of sociality.

Lomasky’s argument here (starting on page 69) is that individuals who act solely on the basis of self-interest would not consent to a social contract.

I entirely disagree. Purely egoistic motivation does not preclude acts of giving. I could give a cow food every day for several years, and it would not qualify as altruism. Altruism is defined as unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others. It may appear altruistic, but my motives are purely egoistic. I want meat, so I feed the cow well.

Likewise, the individualistic social contract requires me to refrain from interfering in the freedom of others. It may appear altruistic when we consider all the fun I could have violating his freedom, subjecting him to slavery, stealing his wealth, etc. But it is motivated purely by self-interest. I am not concerned so much with the freedom I offer him as I am concerned with the protection of my own freedom which I am gaining.

Richard Chappell doesn’t know what individualism is.

I’ve noticed that ideological libertarians tend to denounce utilitarian interventions (e.g. redistributive taxation) as “collectivist”, or favouring “the group” over “the individual”. I can’t make the slightest sense of this charge. Can anyone help me out?

I’d be glad to.

There’s nothing obviously anti-individualistic about harming one individual in order to benefit many other individuals.

It’s inherently anti-individual to deny the individual his sovereignty.

Put it this way: a consequentialist might think it right to give one person a papercut in order to save another from starvation or torture. The libertarian opposes this — it violates the first guy’s rights. But there’s only one individual on either side. There is no meaningful sense in which the utilitarian here is “anti-individual”, nor the libertarian “pro-individual”. They’re each for and against different individuals, is all.

Um, no. It’s not about who benefits. Individuals pay the bills, and individuals reap the benefits of other individuals paying the bills. Nobody is asking who benefits. The words “individualism” and “collectivism” refer to who is vested with the authority to make the choice.

Another way to define the terms is as answers to the question, “who is sovereign?”

If the collective is vested with that authority, my consent is not needed and my sovereignty is appropriated by the collective.

If the individual is sovereign, nobody but I can decide what I do for other individuals.

Richard Chappell continues:

Rawls famously complained that “Utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between persons.” The idea is that, just as we think that later benefits can compensate harms to an individual, so utilitarians believe that benefits to one person can somehow make up for harms to another. But there is no super-person who receives this compensation. Utilitarianism is “thus” grounded on an illusion.

This strikes me as a pretty poor argument. The problem, of course, is that utilitarianism does not assume that any such super-person exists. Rather, the theory rests on other grounds – namely, the notion that each person’s interests matter equally.

Each person’s interests matter equally to whom, the person whose freedom is being violated? The person who is benefiting from that violation of freedom? No, neither. Then who? The super-person. The administrator of the collective who has collected all resources, all reality, into one and then takes it upon himself to distribute benefits and burdens amongst the individuals as he sees fit.

It’s pretty amazing that a liberal would criticize Rawls for being too individualistic. Rawls left very little for the individual. Compare Rawls, who called himself a liberal, with Hobhouse, who called himself a liberal socialist, and Hobhouse is a radical right-winger by comparison. Richard Chappell might as well criticize Marx for being too individualistic.

An obvious case of a benefit factually outweighing a burden would be if everyone would prefer to have both rather than neither, i.e. if they were willing to undergo the burden for the sake of the benefit…Now, it’s just plain silly to deny that we can make interpersonal comparisons here.

No, it’s not silly at all. If you want to make an argument for burdens factually outweighing benefits, you are appealing to an individual. For me, the benefits of working may not outweigh the burden. The opposite may be true for another. When you attempt to transplant burdens from one person to another, the benefits immediately become irrelevant and the calculations are meaningless.

If I get a papercut and you get your head chopped off, it is absurd to deny that you have suffered a (factually) greater harm.

Agreed.

And it is similarly absurd to deny the moral counterpart, that it is more important to save your head than my finger.

Only if it is absurd to deny the Fairy Tooth counterpart as well. Moral statements are not truth-apt. To deny or assert the “moral counterpart” would be meaningless. Notice the part of the statement which gives it away:

that it is more important to save your head than my finger

Is it? According to whom? To say that something is more important is to express a subjective statement of value or priority. If the head happens to be attached to a socialist, no, it’s not important to save his head. In fact, I’d be willing to suffer a papercut if it would guarantee his head came off. Then, perhaps, socialists would learn to stop abusing individuals.

A lot of people are dying every day, and Richard Chappell obviously doesn’t believe those lives are worth his time. Is he on a flight to Somalia? Is he spending every waking hour saving lives?

Surely, by his own argument, we should allow the interpersonal comparison. Then we can ask, which is more important, to attend Princeton, or avoid starvation? If those were Chappell’s choices, I am sure he would choose to live. But since they are interpersonal, Chappell chooses to stay in Princeton. By refusing to submit to collective morality, he demonstrates his choice to be individualism. Probably a smart choice, too, because collective judgment hasn’t been all that stellar, what with the Gulag, the Holocaust and slavery and all.