The canons of conservative orthodoxy overflow with aspersions cast on libertarians on the grounds that they are too individualistic. If they are in a particularly vilifying mood, the modifier “atomistic” is appended, by which the conservatives hope to establish that the individualist ethos posits an infinite gap between one man and another. Other invectives against libertarianism (accusations of libertinism, materialism, utopianism, egoism, etc.) are often rooted in the misunderstanding concerning the individual. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/3835/what-we-mean-by-individualism/
What We Mean By Individualism
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Good article Adam. I have always found the “atomistic” charge against economists to be particularly silly. With equal justification, I could criticize chemists because they treat objects as made up of atoms, and hence obviously cannot deal with the complex interactions of substances.
Re: Stone’s paper specifically, I wanted to ask him (but we ran out of time) what he meant when he said that libertarians needed to stop thinking that individuals were the only things to have rights. The implication seemed to be that Stone thought families or churches or whatever also had rights.
I agree completely. I couldn’t say it better myself as I am not a writer.
But while I agree, the question that always faces me is “then why do we have such rampant statism tacitly backed by the masses”? All sorts of indignitites are done upon the masses every day (flourishing taxes, regulation, bans – basically nothing is allowed unless it is mandatory – is becoming the order of the day) and yet people aren’t taking to the streets every day, pitchforks in hand, except for those who contrive freedom comes from more centralization.
To my mind this statism must be “natural” in a basic sense as it does exist, and while there are masters and the mastered, it’s not as if it is controlled by one all central mastermind, it still derives from the masses choosing to exist so yoked. By and large the masses seem to have accepted domination, not from a singular central command, but from a social currency of the culture at large. It is this which systematically outputs the tyrants – that is – people WANT to dominated.
And it seems that it always has been so. People, by and large, refuse to take the pains to properly assemble a system of critical thinking and values, they apparently prefer to fit into a pre-existing system of value. So there is a basic contradiction in that people are distinctly several and finite, but choose to amalgamate based on some fanciful set of rules, many times based on superstitions, and “lose” themselves in a pleasant fog (and unfortunately swallow up those who by and large reject the rules as irrational).
So long story short, will those who hunger for a mass made up of critical thinkers who largely interact voluntarily based on their own value systems, accepting and rejecting calls to particular behaviors and living with the consequences, ever hope to change the practical conditions that really exist? Being fobbed off lightly as libertines is problem enough, but even if one of the mass of left or right deems to listen, one is simple recategorized as a fundementalist after his own causes and marginalized that way. It all seems so quixotic.
Adam Martin, that was a wonderfully articulated description of libertarian individualism. There is obviously so much ignorance out there in this area. I think that if children were brought up in homes and schools that educated them about such concepts, we would be in no fear of the masses allowing themselves to be yoked by their political oppressors.
It makes me wonder how much better things would be today, had a concerted effort been made at the outset of this nation, to keep the government out of the schools and away from the children.
Brad, is this problem based in nature or nurture? Is there something fundamental to human nature that makes most people seek a “statist” set of affairs, or is this largely a cultural trait that could be changed?
A Catholic philosopher who is a friend of mine expressed this concern, (he had written on Mises’ Human Action in cooperation with the Acton Institute). Christians believe that the body of Christ (the Church) has an ontological reality. Misesian methodological individualism seems to have no room for something like this.
I, myself, don’t think there is a conflict here, but I wouldn’t since I am a long-time libertarian and Christian. But I would like to see a careful account of how the Christian understanding of the Church is harmonious with metaphysical and moral individualism.
I would argue it’s nurture rather than nature. People accept their surroundings. Franklin wrote that “it would be a hard government that would tax the people one-tenth of their income” or something similar. Imagine how many people in his time would have agreed. Most, probably. Yet here we are.
To Franklin, a government taxing that much was inconceivable because he accepted as a universal standard the conditions of his time. Similarly, people now accept taxes around 40% of GDP as a universal, “normal” condition. Ie, because they are used to less freedom, they see an optimum level of freedom much lower than what Franklin would have seen. But if they are accustomed to more freedom (nurture), they will expect it as normal.
Sam
I completely agree but would add the comparison made with other countries. “This is this best place in the world”; yada yada.
Hi Stephen: Would you be able to present a quick introduction here on what basis it might be argued that Misesian methodological individualism might have no room for something like ontological reality. What i mean to say is, i’m ignorant of this sort of question and if it’s not too much, i would be interested to get the gist of it here.
I don’t want to dismiss the importance of Mark Granovetter‘s “problem of embeddedness” and “undersocialization” of economic thought (simply, that economic models — of markets — aren’t complex enough to model/encompass how people connect with / discover each other, socially, to form those marketplaces). But, I strongly disagree that the importance of individualism and man, not mankind’s, Will to Power (or, more accurately, the Want to Create) holds second-torch to social institutions of authority whether the State or the Church or the Family.
However, I’m an oddball Austrian Economic Scholar as I’m also largely unconvinced by “Natural Law” (though praxeology seems valid as an individual-centric anthropology). What seems more evident has become cliche in the phrase “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” — which should be obvious to the tenets of subjective theory of value and marginal utility value. However, such an insight of relativism should also suggest moral relativism — that people value their own values (again, not without the “problem of embeddedness”).
So, my view is that we have always been dealing with information, whether that of markets and the feedback of price as described in F.A. Hayek’s Use of Knowledge in Society or in quantum physics or in cognitive science (which is to say, human choice, including choosing one’s own morality).
I’m glad people such as Robert Sirico, of the Acton Institute, can convey the importance of free markets to those who subscribe to the Christain religion; though I personally find concern for the afterlife a nihilistic endeavor. Ultimately, however, I wonder if reconciling (institutionally command and control) Christianity with the distributed relativism of free markets isn’t a classic example of syncretism.
I agree with Sam that people’s willingness to be yoked is one of nurture rather than nature. Even people born into cruel slavery will accept that as the norm in life. All the more reason to promote freedom and stop the slide of civilization.
Zuzu: Thanks for expanding my vocabulary today. “Syncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate, even opposing, beliefs…” Do i understand you correctly to be saying that a belief in free markets is in opposition to or incompatible with holding spiritual beliefs? Would the premise that God created man and therefore caused human action to be good and necessary help make the reconciliation seem more reasonable?
Didn’t I read here that Thomas Woods or Thomas DeLorenzo recently wrote a book on Catholicism and free-market economics?
Yeah, here it is: http://blog.mises.org/blog/archives/003827.asp
Paul,
I think my criticism is mostly contained to the human institution of a church in Christianity as began with St. Paul, i.e. the Holy See, as it embodies a command structure intended on dictating and conforming human behavior through guilt/sin as well as a history of violence (most obvious being the Spanish Inquisition). Though, this could also extend to spiritual beliefa that personifies God as a judge or as a supernatural miracle-maker in human affairs, which can lead to those who claim to “know what God wants” to “act on His behalf”. This is similar to how European kings had claimed “divine right” to justify/legitimize their absolute authority over their fellow people.
I’m not sure I would feel comfortable in saying that studying market forces denies belief in the supernatural… but, I think that the underlying information theory of economics tends to reveal that nothing is super-natural; if anything is outside of nature then its relevance is moot. (No communication could occur, so you would never know.) However, this wouldn’t deny that “existence is just the way God thinks” or that “God is (the sum of) existence”.
Robert Sirico’s interpretation of Bible passages that humans are God’s chosen stewards of Earth and that God has endowed us with the (mental) faculties to best make use of its resources is intriguing… mostly because the traditional emphasis of the church towards wealth has been charitable transfer thereof. However, I think my point is precisely that this is Sirico’s (modern) interpretation. However, I think early Christianity, as being scapegoated by the crumbling Roman Empire whose overtaxation of the middle-class and ever-expanding welfare (bread and circuses) for the growing disenfranchised proletariat as well as its extensive paid military, greatly supported those Christians cultural use (as well as persecuted Jewish cultural use) of slave morality, which also tends to justify collectivism.
I hope I’ve somewhat answered your questions… I’m not opposed to spirituality, but I am opposed to people and their organizations who claim God as a source of their authority to restrict the freedoms of other people. Often this occurs through the emphasis of solidarity over “selfish individualism”. So I’m troubled by the notion of marketing libertarianism as encouraging some specific forms of collectivism to people who are currently of a larger collectivist mentality. (e.g. the family and the church, rather than the state, to cultural conservatives and the village/community to cultural new-left / “liberals”.)
Re-reading the article, my points are basically the same as those presented there as “metaphysical and moral individualism”… Though, I think “metaphysical” is a poor adjective for something I’d sooner term “social individualism”.
I believe this very important to emphasize that society and morality are emergent from individuals (and their choices/actions).
Zuzu, there’s more to syncretism than just that one excerpt you quoted. It’s not so much an attempt at reconciliation as an attempt at bring out a working system combining those parts. That usually involves reconciling them, but it doesn’t have to. Just as a leaky ship can be made to work with a patch rather than a true repair, a syncretistic system can be made to work if it also incorporates a systematic way of fudging inconsistencies, of never facing up to them.
other quick thoughts:
1.) Again referring to Mark Granovetter, probably the most important (and rightfully dynamic) “subsidiary institution” in our lives are our personal friendships (which includes love interests); the periphery of which constitutes Granovetter’s Strength of Weak Ties.
2.) I often run into some friction with other Austrian Scholars for my position as “anti-corporatist” (though also thoroughly anti-state). I acknowledge for the knowledge management rationale for the Nature of the Firm as well as the obvious freedom of association and organization…
However, I am opposed to the distortions created by the special government status of personhood and limited liability with state-issued corporate charter. I feel I can succinctly draw on the rationale for this as presented in the article (cited from Lew Rockwell’s ‘Red-State Fascism’):
This is why Austro-libertarians are so adamant that only individuals have rights. Institutions have no rights because they can take forms contrary to man’s nature6; the individualist proviso is that they thus must be defended only insofar as they are in accord with that nature.
Making subsidiary institutions into ends in themselves has been a disaster for the conservative movement. Neoconservative politicians have readily grasped at the opportunity to declare themselves pro-family; the result is not the flourishing of family, but rather its transformation into an instrument of state control that threatens both the natural institution of the extended family and the dignity of the individual.
Torquemada was a bad implementor, but many in Spain preferred at the time the inquisition since it did have due process to the civil judicial system. It had problems, but was not the evil – that part has been debunked by historians. It is another legend that won’t die (like the recent flat-earth story) because it is easier to think evil of the church rather than look at the truth.
On my Blog, I sum up the problem (which the article identifies, but misses the key factor) with the title “silver rule v.s. golden rule libertarians”.
It sums up much of what I’ve been commenting on in this blog.
To put it simply, will you defend MY individualism, not just your own?
The original silver rule is “Do no harm”. The libertarian application is violate no rights.
The golden rule is “Do unto others…”. It implies a duty to preserve rights. That is I must act to stop violations of your rights by others, and you must act to stop violations of my rights.
I gave the example of someone burglarizing my property, and later maybe burning it down. Do my neighbors believe in MY right to my property enough to intervene?
I do find it hard to figure out exactly which camp some belong in, but realize that a lot of private replacements for the state are ways to avoid having to deal with the golden rule. You don’t have to help me because I can or should buy protection from some agency. Going past the abusiveness of the state, and removing its apparatus, what then?
I guess I would be guilty of the same thing since I advocate minarchy, but I see it as arising out of my duty (either me and all my neighbors agree to take turns as a night watchman, or appoint one and compensate him, but the latter starts to form a state).
The point may be do we just personally defend OUR liberty, or personally defend ALL liberty?
In another earlier post, I noted that you don’t really believe in any right you won’t ACTIVELY defend for your most obnoxious enemy. If you won’t defend it, it is merely an abstract concept. Useless words like those in the bill of rights when the court proves to be functionally illiterate. If you don’t defend it in obnoxious cases, you limit it so being nice is more fundamental than the right.
You can be a perfectly good Austro-libertarian and believe that individuals have rights – but will you defend the rights you believe in? And defend them for everyone?
Conservatives might often actively defend the wrong thing, but they actively defend it.
But here is also where subsidiarity crosses the path. Normally each individual in the family defends the family – whether it is means or ends usually doesn’t come up. That entity becomes more important. The individual as “wife” is only “wife” in context of a family – individuals aren’t shapless blobs, theywant to have definition and will defend the context that defines them. In that way she becomes more individual within the context, more different from unmarried women, but more different from her husband. The golden rule looks outward in the same way – the wife defends the husband and the husband the wife – in liberty as well as everything else.
Yet typical individualism is self-centered. It revolves around “what’s in it for ME?”. This may or may not apply to particular persons of definitions, but the “ME” libertarian has been represented and has given defense of the position. Perhaps I’m proposing that the correct perspective is the “You” libertarian – my rights will only be secure when my neighbors’ are.
Are rights what we avariciously claim only for ourselves, or what we will give of ourselves to defend for others?
tz,
Do my neighbors believe in MY right to my property enough to intervene?
The important point to extract from this question, I think, is that this question only makes sense when you ask your specific neighbors in the contextual environment you live in. It’s in your interest to speaking with and know your neighbors if you’re concerned with their possible future aid.
You don’t have to help me because I can or should buy protection from some agency.
Or I can buy “cache” by investing in helping you retain your value because you’re more valuable to me that way — either through mutual protection or as a wealthier customer.
One of the major benefits of a free market is that we don’t have to formalize and bureaucratize all of our transactions.
The point may be do we just personally defend OUR liberty, or personally defend ALL liberty?
Again, isn’t the point here that the best, and in fact the only, way to defend “all” liberty is for you to defend your liberty. Collectives cannot have liberty; don’t personify organizations — they’re just organizations (no more or less).
Normally each individual in the family defends the family – whether it is means or ends usually doesn’t come up.
Here’s where the cultural conservatives jump down my throat: Families must be voluntary organizations, as any other, and without coercion.
The individual as “wife” is only “wife” in context of a family – individuals aren’t shapless blobs, theywant to have definition and will defend the context that defines them.
People can earnestly only validate themselves; external validation is a tool of jingoism / collectivism.
Are rights what we avariciously claim only for ourselves, or what we will give of ourselves to defend for others?
The way I resolve this paradox is to recognize that other people are more valuable to me as long as they are free. Free, healthy, independent people are more likely to provide greater value to me through consentual trade and more likely to emerge the security of freedom. This of course rests on a solid understanding of the difference between creating value and transferring value.
To clarify the self-validation claim: this is equivalent to self-ownership. Other people can value what you can provide in trade, such as skills and knowledge generation. But others cannot value you more than you value yourself, which is to say others cannot make a higher claim on your life than yourself.
To quote Alan Watts, “when you set someone up as an authority, never forget that the belief that you have in this authority is just your opinion.”
If, as Adam Young states, “It is man that has a nature, not mankind,” then he can only mean each and every man (woman and child), leaving us with the unavoidable conclusion that each of us has a DISTINCT nature, in which case it would be meaningless to speak of a HUMAN nature at all. Instead, each of us would be a separate species, and humanity as we know it would not exist.
This is absurd, of course, for however distinct each of us is from the other, we are just as distinctly the same (a list of over 300 “human universals” has been compiled by ethnologists). Which is to say that we are indeed HUMAN — i.e., members of distinct species with shared attributes — foremost among which is the intelligence that sets us apart from all other species.
Does this mean, then, that Plato was right all along, that the human IDEA or FORM has ontological validity, so much so that it is the really real, and each of us is but a pale reflection of this higher reality? Perhaps. Just as the highest reality, the most real, may well be the ultimate Idea we call God.
But as Steven Pinker writes in The Blank State: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, “every society must operate with a theory of human nature.” And in debunking not only the theory of the Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits), but also the theories of the Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society) and the Ghost-in-the-Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology), Pinker presents us with a scientific explanation of human nature that is good as far as it goes, but that still leaves the reader wondering precisely how we share in that nature.
The answer, I believe, is to be found in the same field theory upon which physics is based. According to the theory of “formative causation” as expounded by biologist Rupert Sheldrake, “the nature of [all] things depends on fields,” specifically, “morphic fields.” Mindful of Pascal’s dictum, “They say that habit is second nature. Who knows but nature is only first habit?”, Sheldrake writes:
“Morphic fields, like the known fields of physics, are non-material regions of influence extending in space and continuing in time. The are localized within and around the systems they organize. When any particular organized system ceases to exist, as when an atom splits, a snowflake melts, or an animal dies, its organizing field disappears from that place. But in another sense, morphic fields do not disappear; they are potential organizing patterns of influence and can appear again physically in other times and places, wherever the physical conditions are appropriate. When they to do so, they contain within themselves a memory of their previous physical existences.
“The process by which the past becomes present within morphic fields is called morphic resonance. Morphic resonance involves the transmission of formative causal influences is cumulative, and that is why all sorts of things become increasingly habitual through repetition. When such repetition has occurred on an astronomical scale over billions of years, as it has in the case of many kinds of atoms, molecules, or crystals, the nature of these things has become so deeply habitual that it is effectively changeless, or seemingly eternal.” (The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature)
Accordingly, our human nature has evolved over a sufficiently long period of time as to seem fixed, even eternal, when in reality it is a product of our past, both biologically and socially, existing in time and space as a field that is fundamentally no different from gravitational or magnetic fields. And simply put, when science is finally able to explain physical fields (as I have no doubt it one day will), I believe it will also be able to explain biological, social, and mental fields, including the one that comprises our nature.
David,
Reading what you have provided, the impression I take from it is that you’re actually concerning yourself with epistemology rather than ontology.
Specifically, I find it quite important to note that humans are not equivalent to human nature. As you also seem to attempt to infer from an overview of systems theory and emergence, it is true that the human being emerges from the DNA information, physical material, social information (such as culture and language) and so on. It is also true that humans are also capable of creating super-organisms such as meme complexes, culture, society, businesses, and so on.
However, we must be very very careful to not make the age-old mistake of personifying the other organisms / organizations.
This kind of personification can often create modeling anachronisms, which is precisely the gist of Wittgenstein’s Tractus Logico Philosophicus, as well as a founding argument of Julian Jayne’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.
For example, we say that humans possess choice because of the informational complexity of the engine of the brain. In reality, the result is likely deterministic but it cannot be predicted due to that complexity, ala Kurt Godel’s incompleteness theorem aka Alan Turing’s halting problem. (Borges also accounted for this in the Library of Babel. So, arguging free will versus determinism is inherently an irrational argument; it’s something that’s invented from the human perspective; Wittgenstein particularly cites language and Platonic ideals — as you’ve mentioned — in this regard. (To which everyone should read ‘Science and Sanity’ by Alfred Korzybski.
So again, and inconclusion, do not personify other “layers” of organism/organization “resolution” as though they operated at this “resolution”. I should also mention that, iirc, this was F.A. Hayek’s point in writing Economics and Knowledge. He uses this argument to debunk neo-classical equilibrium theory; simply put, that studying aggregates does NOT determine individual outcomes. Aggregate statistics only tells you about aggregate events; you cannot infer individual events from them. (I’m sure this is a re-discovery of something quite commonly known in stochastics and complexity theory.)
However, we must be very very careful to not make the age-old mistake of personifying the other organisms / organizations.
I realize I should also caution against the potential for racism/genoism such an assertion could be mistaken for. I don’t mean so crudely as by means of skin melanin content or genetic heritage, but for the day we should realize artificial intelligence through advanced MRI/PET scanning of the human brain. Too often with the production of films such as Stealth I draw concern that we are laying the memetic groundwork for Flesh Fairs just as Martain Luther is supposed to have sewn against Jewish culture, blossoming into the scapegoating by the National Socialists.
I’m going to cash in my geek points and admit that I was rather strongly influenced when I was younger by an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation — Measure of a Man.
typo: Martin Luther.
That about nurture making what we are used to acceptable as tax is at the root of the old saying, “an old tax is a good tax” – measuring “good” from a certain perspective, of course.
zuzu (and others, but I’m going to address a specific comment you made up there in the discussion),
First of all, let me thank the author for a splendid presentation of something I’ve been thinking toward for some time now. I’d love to see more thought put into this; I particularly want to see a work on “the thymology of the family” (to use Mises’ term).
So, as a conservative who adheres strongly to Austrian Economics, I approve of and was educated by this essay and this discussion.
But:
zuzu, you state that the family is, and must be, a voluntary association. Since when is a family voluntary? It’s true that the initial founding of a nuclear family is voluntary (at least in modern times), but at no other level and at no other time is the family voluntary, in any sense of the word. At all points after the marriage is consummated the marriage is considered a covenant, with no way out except through a complete destruction of the convenant (the terms are much stronger than the parallel concepts in contract law — a contract is dissolved when its terms are violated, while a covenant remains in force until explicitly dissolved by a divorce of the covenanting parties). The children are brought into the family through no will of their own (and in a very real sense through no will of their parents — how many potential parents would like to craft their potential children differently?), and remain so tied for a long period of time (how long is too long? Can you, as a contractarian, answer that question at all?). In a larger sense, we’re all tied to our extended families at all times, and to the extent that we can reject them (that is, to the exclusion of their genetic and cultural contribution to us) we can’t choose a new family to replace them; we become without a family.
I spoke of a thymology of the family. Perhaps more foundational would be a thymology of helplessness and/or incompetance, which would examine the value of helpless people (such as children and the very elderly) to the people associated with them, whether the association is voluntary or involuntary. Such a study would be, in my opinion, of much greater positive value than the endless thymological questions of “why do people seem to like being under hegemony so much???”. Perhaps, after having studied the thymology of an institution so essential to our existance and even our nature, we’ll be better able to state that some of the causes of statism are (or are not) a perverted form of the values that stabilise families.
And zuzu — I’m impressed with your scholarship in general, but not with your scholarship of the Christian Church. It labors under the burden of cliche and convention rather than actual historical information.
-Billy
But it is a critical point – can you have liberty where a majority don’t believe in it?
tz: Do my neighbors believe in MY right to my property enough to intervene?
zuzu: The important point to extract from this question, I think, is that this question only makes sense when you ask your specific neighbors in the contextual environment you live in.
I don’t live in contextual environments, I live among neighbors. They either believe in liberty or something else. If enough of them believe in something else, they will likely form a collective to rob me (unless I decide in the futility and try to become the local benevolent warlord instead of someone else). Or I could deprive them of life or liberty and then my life and liberty might be left intact. Neither option is very good.
If I appeal beyond my anti-liberty neighbors, it would be to something much like a state. A private protection agency would either charge me exhorbitant premiums or tell me to move.
I supposed you can ask a neighborhood of ex-sex offenders if they won’t rape your wife. I think all would say “no”, some would add “you have a wife? tell me more…”.
If you desire a free society, the composite units must believe in freedom. The principle of subsidarity still operates, but with a desire for freedom at every level.
Almost like the cannibals and the missionary puzzle – a large enough concentration of cannibals and the missionary becomes lunch.
Excellent article.
The central theological teaching of Catholicism is the doctrine of the Trinity, which describes the being of God. In this doctrine, God is described as a community of persons, three Persons in one God. Thus, at its very core, Catholicism is interested in the harmonization of the individual and the collective (society). There is an interesting article called “Christian economics” that goes into this very topic in great depth.
to zuzu,
I have at this moment “Science and Sanity” by Korzybski.
I am on the my third reading of same.
Interesting that you should reference it, in as, I have rarely if ever, come across a person who even knows of its existance , lest having read it.
I haven’t followed the thread of discussion. Your reference of the book and author captured my attention immediately.
But your reference stuck out, so I had to make mention of it.
If you have read it, my hat is off to you Sir.
If you have understood it, I kowtow to you in complete respect.
Respects,
Joseph Zack
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