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.
