Jessica Watson sailed around the world. As she returned home, she was met by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who hailed her as “Australia’s newest hero.” “You do our nation proud,” he said. “You are a hero for young Australians … and young Australian women.”
But Watson said she had to disagree with Mr Rudd as “I don’t consider myself a hero. I’m an ordinary girl who had a dream. You just have to have a dream and set your mind to it.’’
Reading the comments on the blogs, we can see fairly clearly who is offended by the heroic theory of man and the accompanying repudiation of the feeble child theory of man.
Political individualism is the assertion that no man has the right to violate the individual sovereignty of another man. When the government violates a man’s freedom by telling him who he can or cannot marry, as in the case of gay marriage bans; or when the government tells him what he can or cannot smoke, in the case of criminalization of marijuana, the government is in those cases collectivizing the sovereignty of the individual under the sovereignty of other individuals; namely, the voters.
Government isn’t the only agent which collectivizes sovereignty of individuals. Ted Bundy collectivized the sovereignty of his victims under his own sovereignty. Thieves collectivize the sovereignty of their victims under their own sovereignty. Individualism opposes all collectivization of sovereignty of innocent, competent adults. Children and others who are through medical abnormality incompetent may not be eligible for full sovereignty.
Individualism recognizes that the only crime which occurs is the violation of an individual’s sovereignty.
It seems like this position would be easy enough to understand. But questions do arise. Individualism as you’ll find it here recognizes the need for organized collective action. But, some ask, isn’t that collectivism?
No! Collective action, as long as those participating are doing so voluntarily, is not collectivist in the political sense. The confusion arises from different meanings of collectivism and individualism. Political individualism is not moral individualism. Political individualism does not condemn voluntary conformity; neither does it endorse conformity. It is a political statement, not a moral one and not a psychological one.
So let’s say that a citizen’s collective boycotts a fast food chain because the citizen’s collective opposes the hiring practices of the fast food chain. At this point, an uninformed person might scream, “You hypocrites! When the government does that, you call it a crime, but when the citizen’s collective does it, it’s okay? That’s just hypocrisy! When the government coerces, it’s wrong; therefore consistency demand that individualism condemn coercion when it’s done by boycott as well.”
This is of course the consequentialist confusion, and it’s absurd. The consequentialist attempts to deny that a meaningful distinction exists between acts if the consequences of those acts are the same. This type of argument is best dealt with by employing a reducio along these lines:
Bob is in the hospital and needs a liver transplant. His brother refuses a transplant, and Bob dies. The next person to occupy that bed is Roger. Roger also needs a liver transplant, or he will die. Roger’s brother comes into the room, pulls out a gun and shoots Roger in the head. Roger dies.
Consequentialist logic tells us that, consequences being the same, both brothers are guilty of murder. Consequentialist logic utterly fails to differentiate between killing and letting die.
Individualism does not fail in that respect. Individualism tells us that Bob’s brother did not violate Bob’s individual sovereignty, so Bob’s brother is free to go home. Roger’s brother, on the other hand, did violate Roger’s sovereignty, so Roger’s brother gets to go someplace other than home.
Let’s go back to the case of the boycott. There is another argument to be made, one which attempts cast collectivist democratic laws as voluntary. A recent critic argued thus:
“Nobody is forced to pay taxes. Taxes are voluntary. If you don’t want to pay your taxes, nobody is going to force you to pay taxes.”
The argument reminded me of an argument presented by Harry Reid wherein Reid argues that taxes are voluntary.
Unfortunately for Reid, many tax protesters have tried out his argument in the courts. In Johnson v. Commissioner, the court found the claim “that the tax system is voluntary” to be “frivolous.” In United States v. Richards, the argument was determined to be “without merit.” In another case, the court added additional sanctions because of the frivolity of the argument.
The essence of the argument is a denial of coercion as a meaningful concept. “Sure,” the critic argues, “the government imposes consequences for not paying taxes, but the choice is still yours and there are always consequences for the decisions we make.”
By this argument, for it to be said that somebody was forced to pay taxes would involve the victim deciding not to pay taxes no matter what, but then being foiled by IRS agents physically taking control of his hand and forcing the hand to sign a check made out to the IRS. Anything less would not be coercion, but free choice.
What if they held a gun to his head and threatened to shoot him if he didn’t pay?
No, that’s still his choice. He has the choice to not pay, doesn’t he?
The implications of this argument are astonishing. Imagine such a person on a jury in a case where a rapist held a gun to the head of a woman and demanded that she submit to him. This, to the Harry Reid types, would not be coercion and thus not rape.
We can be thankful that individualism does not rely on such muddled concepts. Within individualism, any threat of violence against an innocent person is a violation of his sovereignty.
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. John Stuart Mill writes thus:
That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
The bifurcation occurs in a 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 environmentalists who advocate coercive population control measures.
While the text above, written by John Stuart Mill in 1859 (not 1869 as commonly cited), aimed at individual liberty, it also provided the enemies of individual liberty the grounds upon which they would attack it. In the paragraphs following the cited text, Mill argues that the freedom he speaks of cannot be applied to children.
He then argues that entire societies are unfit and ought to be viewed as children. He spoke of “backwards states of society in which the [human] race itself may be considered as in its nonage.”
So all one has to do to defeat Mill’s individualism on its own terms is to argue that adulthood is a myth, that all men are in fact no different from children. That is the argument employed by L T Hobhouse in his Liberalism (1911) and by adherents of social determinism theory and genetic determinism theory.
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.
The positive liberty versus negative liberty debate gets old, and it isn’t particularly productive.
If we hold that liberty, usually referred to as individual liberty or personal liberty or negative liberty is the highest moral good, we’re simply setting ourselves up for a number of criticisms.
The first type of criticism centers around the definition of liberty. This is the positive versus negative liberty debate.
Are the security guards at the Waldorf Astoria interfering with my liberty when they remove me from the premises as a trespasser? Is my daughter interfering with my liberty when she refuses to play chess with me? Is an employer interfering with my liberty when he refuses to hire me?
All those questions could be avoided by replacing “liberty” with “individual sovereignty”; surely nobody is suggesting that I am sovereign over the Waldorf Astoria, my daughter, or the employer. And it would be unjust to advocate a liberty which comes at the cost of unjust violation of an individual’s sovereignty.
The second type of criticism precipitated by defining liberty as the highest moral good, as Jan Narverson appears to do in The Libertarian Idea, is the kind which suggests that liberalism does a better job of providing liberty.
In a certain way, they probably could, if they weren’t so horribly inept at running the government. For instance, let’s say they took Bill Gates money. All of it. He does have a net worth of $58 billion.Take that money and redistribute it all to the libertarian bloggers, and we would have a lot more effective liberty than we had before.
I don’t have the liberty to go live in Paris for a year. With the money that previously belonged to Bill Gates in my wallet, I’d have that liberty.
But we do not want that kind of liberty, because it collectivizes sovereignty. Today it’s Bill Gates money, tomorrow it’s my money, and my house, my kids, and my employment.
So stop saying “liberty” when you mean individual sovereignty. And stop framing libertarianism as a moral theory. It should be contractarian and entirely morality neutral.
