Social individualism

In his book, How to be a Liberal,¹ Ian Dunt introduces the story of Benjamin Constant at the tail end of recounting of the Terror during the French Revolution.

After the execution of Robespierre came the quest to understand what had gone so wrong in France. One such famous postmortem was Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. Burke thought that the importance of ancient institutions could protect against chaos, while individuals could only be swept up in it. The political supremacy of institutions, to Burke, was so great that individuals could not constitute whole political units. Dunt illustrates with a famous quote from a speech by Burke to Parliament, “Individuals pass like shadows; but the commonwealth is fixed and stable.” (Burke, 49)

Dunt says, “The phrase 'individualism’ emerged, for the first time. But it was not celebratory. It was an expression of disgust at what had triggered the Terror.” (104) He also mentions Louis Veuillot, referred to everywhere I can find him as a “militant Catholic”, who says, “All for each, and each for all, that is society; each for himself, and thus each against all, that is individualism.” (quoted in Lukes, 50)

Against these conservatives, I dissent.

My cold shoulder for collectivism

I am also among those left cold by Zohran Mamdani’s appeal to “the warmth of collectivism.” But I simply cannot bring myself to care as much as some do. Zohran Mamdani did not shoot anyone in the face for dissenting yesterday.

Mamdani is misdiagnosing what ails us. It is not individualism, rugged or otherwise.

Writing after the Revolution, Benjamin Constant,³ the first modern liberal, “recognised that the Terror was not the result of too much individualism, but too little.” (Dunt, 105) So too with authoritarian populism.

In the United States, legislators and much of the establishment media and punditry seem to have concluded that a presidential administration that won the popular vote cannot be stopped if it orders that children be dragged from their beds and zip-tied, or mothers and babies be abused. Worse than a touchy-feely approach to collectivism is if the supporters of right-wing illiberalism have been allowed to claim “individualism”. The term must not belong to those who insist that to be an individual can only mean to stand alone.

Right-wing populists claim that they are against identity politics,² and when appealing to liberals and conservatives, will often say that individualism is being undermined by concern for minorities. It is maddening that people fall for this, but it’s not new. In his Principles of Politics, Constant wrote that, “Most political writers, above all those who wrote according to the most popular principles, fell into a bizarre error when they spoke about majority rights. They represented the majority as a real person whose existence is protracted and which always comprises the same parts.” (Book 2, Chapter 2)

Immigrants are a minority, and opposition to accommodating them and respecting their rights has made for an effective political dividing line the world over, with the right wing ginning up and weaponizing opposition to free movement. Liberal individualism demands that they be defended, regardless of their nationality, birthplace, or minority status. If they are not protected as minorities, they are not protected at all. Constant again: “To defend the rights of minorities is therefore to defend the rights of all. Everyone in turn finds himself in the minority. The whole society is divided into a host of minorities which are oppressed in succession.”

“To grant the majority unlimited power is to offer to the people en masse the slaughter of the people piecemeal. Injustice and misfortune make their way round the whole society, becoming ever more oppressive of individuals in isolation in the name of all. At the end of this dreadful rotation, all people find they have lost more, irretrievably, as individuals, than they had transiently gained as members of society.” It is when we are conceived of and defended politically as individuals, not as constituent parts of a collective, that liberalism shines. “The individual was like a light. Constant could shine it anywhere and the true moral form of what he was looking at would reveal itself”, says Dunt. (124)

Liberalism doesn’t make individuals into islands. It doesn’t leave us alone. Liberalism recognizes that individuals are social. Its whole point is to find a way for us to live together without being made into something we’re not. Individuals can choose to stand together. We choose to do it all the time. We can benefit from the warmth of those who stand with us without forgetting that each and every one of them matters.

Must reads

If you haven’t read the following, go do so:

Notes

1. I reviewed How to be a Liberal with Paul Crider and Alan Elrod at Liberal Currents.

2. HA.

3. Liberal Currents has been on a Constant kick. See here and here.

Photo (cropped) by Leo_Visions on Unsplash