The term ‘the individual’ is so widely used in everyday language that its implications and political significance are often ignored. In the most obvious sense, an individual is a single human being. Nevertheless, the concept suggests rather more. First of all, it implies that the single human being is an independent and meaningful entity, possessing an identity in himself or herself. In other words, to talk of people as individuals is to suggest that they are autonomous creatures, acting according to personal choice rather than as members of a social group or collective body. Second, individuals are not merely independent but they are also distinct, even unique. This is what is implied, for example, by the term ‘individuality’, which refers to what is particular and original about each and every human being. To see society as a collection of individuals is therefore to understand human beings in personal terms and to judge them according to their particular qualities, such as character, personality, talents, skills and so on. Each individual has a personal identity. Third, to understand human beings as individuals is usually to believe in universalism, to accept that human beings everywhere share certain fundamental characteristics. In that sense, individuals are not defined by social background, race, religion, gender or any other ‘accident of birth’, but by what they share with people everywhere: their moral worth, their personal identity and their uniqueness.
The concept of the individual is one of the cornerstones of Western political culture. Although the term itself has been used since the seventeenth century, it has now become so familiar that it is invariably taken for granted. And yet, the concept of the individual has also provoked philosophical debate and deep ideological divisions. For instance, what does it mean to believe in the individual, to be committed to individualism? Does individualism imply a clear and distinctive style of political thought, or can it be used to support a wide range of positions and policies? Moreover, no political thinker sees the individual as entirely self-reliant; all acknowledge that, to some degree, social factors sustain and influence the individual. But where does the balance between the individual and the community lie, and where should it lie? Finally, how significant are individuals in political life? Is politics, in reality, shaped by the decisions and actions of separate individuals, or do only social groups, organizations and institutions matter? In short, can the individual make a difference?
Individualism
Individualism does not simply imply a belief in the existence of individuals. Rather, it refers to a belief in the primacy of the individual over any social group or collective body, suggesting that the individual is central to any political theory or social explanation. However, individualism does not have a clear political character. Although it has often been linked to the classical liberal tradition, and ideas such as limited government and the free market, it has also been used to justify state intervention and has, at times, been embraced by socialists. For example, some thinkers see individualism and collectivism as polar opposites, representing the traditional battle lines between capitalism and socialism; others, however, believe that the two are complementary, even inseparable: individual goals can only be fulfilled through collective action. The problem is that there is no agreement about the nature of the ‘individual’. The various forms which individualism has taken therefore reflect the range of views about the content of human nature.
All individualist doctrines extol the intrinsic value of the individual, emphasising the dignity, personal worth, even sacredness, of each human being. What they disagree about, however, is how these qualities can best be realised. Early liberals expressed their individualism in the doctrine of natural rights, which held that the purpose of social organization was to protect the inalienable rights of the individual. Social contract theory can, for instance, be seen as a form of political individualism. Government is seen to arise out of the consent of individual citizens, and its role is limited to the protection of their rights. However, if this form of individualism is pushed to its logical extreme, it can have libertarian and even anarchist implications. For example, nineteenth-century American individualists such as Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) and Benjamin Tucker (1854–1939) believed that no individual should sacrifice his or her conscience to the judgement of politicians, elected or otherwise, a position which denies that government can ever exercise rightful authority over the individual.
This anti-statist individualist tradition has also been closely linked to the defence of market capitalism. Such individualism has usually been based upon the assumption that individual human beings are self-reliant and self-interested. C.B. Macpherson (1973) termed this ‘possessive individualism’, which he defined as ‘a conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them’. If individuals are essentially egoistical, placing their own interests before those of fellow human beings or society, economic individualism is clearly linked to the right of private property, the freedom to acquire, use and dispose of property however the individual may choose. As such, individualism became, in the UK and the USA in particular, an article of faith for those who revered laissez-faire capitalism. Laws which regulate economic and social life – by stipulating wage levels, the length of the working day, interfering with working conditions or introducing benefits and pensions – are, from this point of view, a threat to individualism.
Very different implications, however, have sometimes been drawn from the doctrine of individualism. For example, modern liberals, such as T.H. Green and L.T. Hobhouse (1864–1929), used individualism to construct arguments in favour of social welfare and state intervention. They saw the individual not as narrowly self-interested, but as socially responsible, capable of an altruistic concern for fellow human beings. Their principal goal was what J.S. Mill had termed ‘individuality’, the capacity of each individual to achieve fulfilment and realize whatever potential he or she may possess. Individualism was therefore transformed from a doctrine of individual greed to a philosophy of individual self-development; egotistical individualism gave way to developmental individualism. As a result, modern liberals have been prepared to support government action designed to promote equality of opportunity and protect individuals from the social evils that blight their lives, such as unemployment, poverty and ignorance. Some socialist thinkers have embraced the notion of individualism for the same reason. If human beings are, as socialists argue, naturally sociable and gregarious, individualism stands not for possessiveness and self-interest but for fraternal cooperation and, perhaps, communal living. This is why the French socialist Jean Jaure`s (1859–1914) could proclaim, ‘socialism is the logical completion of individualism’. Modern ‘third way’ thinkers, such as Anthony Giddens (1994), have attempted a similar reconciliation in embracing the idea of ‘new’ individualism, which stresses that autonomous individuals operate within a context of interdependence and reciprocity.
Individualism is not, however, only of importance as a normative principle; it has also been widely used as a methodological device. In other words, social or political theories have been constructed on the basis of a pre-established model of the human individual, taking account of whatever needs, drives, aspirations and so forth the individual is thought to possess. Such ‘methodological individualism’ was employed in the seventeenth century to construct social-contract theories and in the twentieth century has become the basis for rational-choice models of political science. The individualist method underpinned classical and neo-classical economic theories, and has been championed in the modern period by writers such as Hayek. In each case, conclusions have been drawn from assumptions about a ‘fixed’ or ‘given’ human nature, usually highlighting the capacity for rationally self-interested behaviour. However, the drawback of any form of methodological individualism is that it is both asocial and ahistorical. By building political theories on the basis of a pre-established model of human nature, individualists ignore the fact that human behaviour varies from society to society, and from one historical period to the next. If historical and social factors shape the content of human nature, as advocates of ‘nurture’ theories suggest, the human individual should be seen as a product of society, not the other way around.
Individual and Community
Support for individualism has not, however, been universal. Political thought is deeply divided about the relationship between the individual and the community: should the individual be encouraged to be independent and self-reliant, or will this make social solidarity impossible and leave individuals isolated and insecure? Advocates of the former position have normally subscribed to a particular Anglo-American tradition of individualism, described by US President Herbert Hoover as ‘rugged individualism’. This tradition can be thought of as an extreme form of individualism, its roots being found in classical liberalism. It sees the individual as almost entirely separate from society, and so discounts or downgrades the importance of community. It is based upon the belief that individuals not only possess the capacity for self-reliance and hard work, but also that individual effort is the source of moral and personal development. Not only can individuals look after themselves, but they should do.
The bible of this individualist tradition is Samuel Smiles’s Self-Help ([1859] 1986), which proclaimed that, ‘The spirit of self-help is the root of all genuine growth in the individual’. Smiles (1812–1904) extolled the Victorian virtues of enterprise, application and perseverance, underpinned by the belief that ‘energy accomplishes more than genius’. While self-help promotes the mental and moral development of the individual, and through promoting the entrepreneurial spirit benefits the entire nation, ‘help from without’, by which Smiles meant social welfare, enfeebles the individual by removing the incentive, or even need, to work. Such ideas found their highest expression in the social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and his followers. For them, individualism had a biological basis in the form of a struggle for survival among all individuals. Those fitted by nature to survive should succeed; the weak and lazy should go to the wall.
Such ideas have had considerable impact upon New Right thinking, and in particular upon its attitude towards the welfare state. Advanced most stridently in the 1980s through Reaganism in the USA and Thatcher-ism in the UK, the New Right attacked the ‘dependency culture’ which over-generous welfare support had supposedly created. The poor, disadvantaged and unemployed had been turned into ‘welfare junkies’, robbed of the desire to work and denied dignity and self-respect. From this perspective, the solution is to bring about a shift from social responsibility to individual responsibility, encouraging people to ‘stand on their own two feet’. This has been reflected since the 1980s in the reshaping of the US and UK benefits systems, through, for instance, reductions in benefit levels, a greater emphasis upon means-testing rather than universal benefits, and attempts to make the receipt of benefits conditional upon a willingness to undertake training or carry out work. Critics of such policies, however, point out that so long as social inequality and deprivation continue to exist, it is difficult to see how individuals can be held to be entirely responsible for their own circumstances. This line of argument shifts attention away from the individual and towards the community.
A wide range of political thinkers – socialists, conservatives, nationalists and, most emphatically, fascists – have, at different times, styled them-selves as anti-individualists. In most cases, anti-individualism is based upon a commitment to the importance of community and the belief that self-help and individual responsibility are a threat to social solidarity. ‘Community’ may refer, very loosely, to a collection of people in a given location, as when the populations of a particular town, city or nation are described as a community. However, in social and political thought the term usually has deeper implications, suggesting a social group, a neighbourhood, town, region, group of workers or whatever, within which there are strong ties and a collective identity. A genuine community is therefore distinguished by the bonds of comradeship, loyalty and duty. In that sense, community refers to the social roots of individual identity.
Among contemporary critics of liberal individualism have been com-munitarian theorists who stress the importance of common or collective interests. In that view, there is no such thing as an unencumbered self; the self is always constituted through the community. Not surprisingly, socialists have also taken up the cause of community, seeing it as a means of strengthening social responsibility and harnessing collective energies. This is why socialists have often rejected individualism, especially when it is narrowly linked to self-interest and self-reliance. Although modern social democrats acknowledge the importance of individual enterprise and market competition, they nevertheless seek to balance these against the cooperation and altruism which only a sense of community can foster. Individualism has also been regarded with suspicion by many conservative theorists. From their point of view, unrestrained individualism is destruc-tive of the social fabric. Individuals are timid and insecure creatures, who seek the rootedness and stability which only a community identity can provide. If individualism promotes a philosophy of ‘each for his own’ it will simply lead to ‘atomism’, and produce a society of vulnerable and isolated individuals. This has, for example, encouraged neo-conservatives, such as Irving Kristol in the USA and Roger Scruton in the UK, to distance themselves from the free-market enthusiasms of the liberal New Right.
Socialist and conservative concepts of community have been influenced at several points by academic sociology. Sociologists have distinguished between the forms of community life which develop within traditional or rural societies, and those found in modern urban societies. The most influential such theory was that developed by the German sociologist Ferdinand To¨nnies (1855–1939), who distinguished between what he called Gemeinschaft or ‘community’, and Gesellschaft or ‘association’. To¨nnies suggested that Gemeinschaft-relationships, typically found in rural com-munities, are based upon the strong bonds of natural affection and mutual respect. This traditional sense of ‘community’ was, however, threatened by the spread of industrialization and urbanization, both of which encouraged a growth of egoism and competition. The Gesellschaft-relationships which develop in urban societies are, by contrast, artificial and contractual; they reflect the desire for personal gain rather than any meaningful social loyalty. The French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) also con-tributed to the understanding of community by developing the concept of ‘anomie’ to denote a condition in which the framework of social codes and norms breaks down entirely. In Suicide ([1897] 1951), Durkheim argued that, since human desires are unlimited, the breakdown of community, weakening social and moral norms about which forms of behaviour are acceptable and which are not, is likely to lead to greater unhappiness and, ultimately, more suicides. Once again, community rather than individual-ism was seen as the basis for social stability and individual happiness.
On the other hand, it is clear that a stress upon community rather than the individual may also entail dangers. In particular, it can lead to individual rights and liberties being violated in the name of the community or collective body. This was most graphically demonstrated through the experience of fascist rule. In many ways, fascism is the antithesis of individualism: in its German form it proclaimed the supreme importance of the Vo¨lksgemeinschaft or ‘national community’, and aimed to dissolve individuality, and indeed personal existence, within the social whole. This goal, distinctive to fascism, was expressed in the Nazi slogan ‘Strength through Unity’. The method used to achieve this end in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy was totalitarian terror: a police state employing repression, persecution and widespread brutality. Although the fascist conception of community may be little more than a grotesque misrepresentation of the socialist idea of voluntary cooperation, extreme individualists have some-times warned that any stress upon the collective has oppressive implica-tions since it threatens to downgrade the importance of the individual.
The Individual in Politics
Questions about the role of the individual in history have engaged generations of philosophers and thinkers. Clearly, such questions are of no less importance to the study of politics. Should political analysis focus upon the aspirations, convictions and deeds of leading individuals, or should it rather examine the ‘impersonal forces’ that structure individual behaviour? At the outset, two fundamentally different approaches to this issue can be dismissed. The first sees politics entirely in personal terms. It holds that history is made by human individuals who, in effect, impress their own wills upon the political process. Such an approach is evident in the emphasis upon ‘great men’ and their deeds. From this point of view, US politics boils down to the personal contribution of presidents like Roosevelt and Kennedy, or Reagan and Bush; while UK politics should be understood through the actions of prime ministers such as Churchill, Wilson, Thatcher, Blair and so on. In its most extreme form, this approach to politics has led to the fascist Fu¨hrerprinzip, or ‘leader principle’. Influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche’s idea of the ‘superman’, fascists portrayed leaders such as Mussolini and Hitler as supremely gifted individuals, all-powerful and all-knowing. However, to see politics exclusively in terms of leadership and personality is to ignore the wealth of cultural, economic, social and historical factors that undoubtedly help to shape political developments. Moreover, it tends to imply that the individual comes into the world ready formed, owing nothing to society for his or her talents, qualities, attributes or whatever.
The second approach discounts the individual altogether. History is shaped by social, economic and other factors, meaning that individual actors are either irrelevant or merely act as puppets. An example of this approach to politics was found in the crude and mechanical Marxist theories that developed in the Soviet Union and other communist states. This amounted to a belief in economic determinism: political, legal, intellectual and cultural life were thought to be determined by the ‘economic mode of production’. All of history and every aspect of individual behaviour was therefore understood in terms of the developing class struggle. Such theories are, however, based upon a highly determi-nistic, indeed Pavlovian, view of human nature that does not allow for the existence of a personal identity, or the exercise of any kind of free will. Furthermore, they imply a belief in historical inevitability which even a passing knowledge of politics would bring into doubt. But where does this leave us? If individuals are neither the masters of history nor puppets controlled by it, what scope is left to the individual action? In all circumstances a balance must exist between personal and impersonal factors.
If individuals ‘make politics’ they do so under certain, very specific conditions, intellectual, institutional, social and historical. In the first place there is the relationship between individuals and their cultural inheritance. Political leaders are rarely major or original thinkers, examples like V.I. Lenin being very much the exception. Practical politicians are therefore guided in their behaviour and decision-making, often unknow-ingly, by what the economist Keynes referred to as ‘academic scribblers’. Margaret Thatcher did not invent Thatcherism, any more than Ronald Reagan was responsible for Reaganism. In both cases, their ideas relied upon the classical economics of Adam Smith and David Ricardo (1772–1823), as updated by twentieth-century economists such as Hayek and Friedman. Ideas, philosophies and ideologies are clearly no less important in political life than power, leadership and personality. This is not, however, to say that politics is simply shaped by those individuals who dream up the ideas in the first place. Without doubt, the ideas of thinkers such as Rousseau, Marx, Keynes and Hayek have ‘changed history’, by both inspiring and guiding political action. Never-theless, at the same time, these individual thinkers were themselves influenced by the intellectual traditions of their time, as well as by the reigning historical and social circumstances. For example, Karl Marx, whose intellectual heritage dominated much of twentieth-century politics, constructed his theories on the basis of existing ideas, in particular, the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel, the political economy of Smith and Ricardo, and the ideas of early French socialists such as Saint-Simon and Fourier.
Second, there is the relationship between individuals and institutions. It is often difficult to distinguish between the personal impact of a political leader and the authority or influence he or she derives from his or her office. For instance, the power of US presidents and UK prime ministers is essentially derived from their office rather than their personalities. Simi-larly, the personality of Soviet leaders was perhaps of less significance in influencing Soviet politics than was the Communist Party’s monopoly of power. The party was, after all, the source of the leader’s wide-ranging authority. This is what the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) meant when he suggested that in modern industrial societies legal-rational authority had largely displaced charismatic and traditional forms of authority. In this light, individual political leaders may be of less importance than the parties they lead, the government institutions they control, and the constitutions within which they operate. Nevertheless, individual leaders can and do make a difference.
There is no doubt, for example, that institutional powers are to some extent elastic, capable of being stretched or enlarged by leaders who possess particular drive, energy and conviction. This is what H.H. Asquith meant when he declared that the office of the British prime minister was whatever its holder chose to make of it. Charismatic and determined prime ministers have undoubtedly stretched the powers of the office to its very limits, as Thatcher demonstrated between 1979 and 1990. US presidents like F.D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson were undoubtedly able to extend the powers of their office by the exercise of personal skills and qualities. In other cases, of course, leaders have helped to found or restructure the very institutions they lead. Lenin, for instance, founded the Bolshevik Party in 1903 and, between the 1917 Revolution and his death in 1924, was responsible for creating the institutions of Soviet government and mould-ing its constitutional structure. In the case of dictators like Hitler in Germany, Pero´n in Argentina and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, leaders have sought to wield absolute power by emancipating themselves from any constitutionally defined notion of leadership, attempting to rule on the basis of charismatic authority alone.
Third, there is the individual’s relationship with society. There is a sense in which no individual can be understood in isolation from his or her social environment: no one comes into the world ready formed. Those who, like socialists, emphasise the importance of a ‘social essence’ are particularly inclined to see individual behaviour as representative of social forces or interests. As pointed out earlier, in its extreme form, such a view sees the individual as nothing more than a plaything of impersonal social and historical forces. Although Marx himself did not subscribe to a narrow determinism, he certainly believed that the scope for individual action was limited, warning that ‘the tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living’. Politics, however, has an infinite capacity to surprise and to confound all predictions precisely because it is a personal activity. Ultimately, politics is ‘made’ by individuals, individuals who are clearly part of the historical process but who, nevertheless, possess some kind of capacity to shape events according to their own dreams and inclinations. It is impossible, for example, to believe that the course of Russian history would have been unaffected had V.I. Lenin never been born. Similarly, if F.D. Roosevelt had died from polio in 1920 instead of being paralysed, would America have responded as it did to the Great Depression and the outbreak of the Second World War? Would the shape of British politics in the 1980s have been the same had Margaret Thatcher decided to become a lawyer instead of going into politics? Would the Labour Party’s ‘modernization’ have proceeded as it did had John Smith not died in 1994 and had Tony Blair not succeeded him?
Post a Comment