Core Beliefs
Often times people will attempt to understand individualism or collectivism by comparing the “symptoms” of each system. For example, one might to to make sense of the systems by looking at, say, positions toward government funding of NASA.
Individualists oppose government funding of NASA. Collectivists usually support government funding of NASA.
A non-analytical thinker might attempt to draw conclusions based on these “symptoms” of the belief systems instead of looking at the core beliefs.
Individualists hate science and think we shouldn’t go to space, one might think. Or collectivists think that conducting silly experiments in space is worth risking the lives of many fine young men and women.
Both assumptions would miss the mark. The truth is to be found in the core beliefs, not the symptoms of those beliefs.
At the Core: Equality
Larry is a farmer. He gets up at three in the morning every day and works the land until six in the evening. As a result, he is a very wealthy man. His house has 5 bedrooms, 3 baths and a ten car garage.
Bob is also a farmer. He thinks Larry is a mental case. Bob wakes up at noon every day, plays some video games, catches his favorite daytime drama on the boob tube and exerts just enough energy to get by. There are a lot of things he’d rather do than toil in the sun. He is of course poor. His picture appears next to the word “poverty” in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Is this economic inequality fair?
An individualist will say yes. They are both afforded an equal amount of individual freedom.
A collectivist (”Liberal” in America, or Socialist in Europe) will say no. When one person has more wealth than another, it is economic injustice.
Shouldn’t people be free to keep the wealth they earn?
No, the collectivist says, because wealth is the result of “racial and sexual discrimination”, “some undifferentiated, collective process”, “exploitation of the poor”, ”intergenerational wealth transfer” or “wage slavery”.
While individualists believe that most wealth is earned and rightfully belongs to the person who earned it, collectivists do not believe that individuals consenting to employ or be employed is legitimate. It’s an illusion, and all earnings belong rightfully to society collectively.
So, while collectivists see economic inequality as a problem, individualists do not. Individualists may see poverty as a problem, but – like obesity, foul breath and sexual perversion – not a problem for the government.
For collectivists like Paul Krugman, economic inequality is not just a problem insofar as it tolerates poverty. According to Paul Krugman, it is a gross injustice for a CEO to be paid more than an upper middle class white collar worker.
The collectivists offer two solutions to the perceived problem of “economic inequality”. One is communism. The other is socialism, or “Liberalism” as it’s known in the US. (”Liberal” in Europe still means “liberal”, as in less government regulation.)
Communism purports to create economic equality by paying everybody, ideally, the same wage no matter what work they do.
Now, is that really equality? If I do back-breaking work all day under a blazing sun and get the same wage as a person who travels the country taking pictures of nature for the ministry of tourism? No, that can’t be equality.
“Socialism” originally meant communism. Communism ultimately killed hundreds of millions of people and even its greatest defenders abandoned it. Today communism is defended by only the most fringe elements of the Left who fancy themselves “idealists”.
The newer forms of socialism, first expounded by Henri De Man, allowed capitalism to continue operations. Socialism would come in after capitalism had worked its magic, in the form of income redistributive taxes.
Today this is the most common form of socialism, known as social democracy.
Some folks may suggest that social democracy has respect for individual freedom, but the truth is that social democracy only respects individual freedom so long as that freedom cannot be sacrificed for the perceived good of the ruling majority.
Next up, more on the collectivist answer to the perceived problem of inequality.
