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The Libertarian EncyclopediaMachan's Little Libertarian Encyclopedia
Chapter 5: Collectivism
Collectivism includes the various sociopolitical systems that envision human communities as cohesive, even single units, ones with a certain common purposes or goal, akin to how teams or orchestras have such common goals. Harmony, cooperation among all, and progress toward the assigned objective are seen as the great attributes of such collectivist systems — socialism, communism, fascism and the like.
In the case of some animal species collectivism is the norm. Bee hives and ant or termite colonies are such. Their natural and healthy state is absolute solidarity. Other species tend toward collectivism, although it may not be essential for the survival of every member to be united with some group of its kind. Wolves run in packs but can carry on alone, as well, in some circumstances. So the individual wolf is not always a specie-being, what Karl Marx called humans: "The human essence," he said, "is the true collectivity of man."
But collectivism falls pray to the fallacy of composition. It involves lumping individuals into a huge group and ascribing to them capacities, even faculties that only the individual members can have. "Society says," "We decided," "America is violent." Strictly, none of these claims could be true because, to start with, society has no mind and mouth with which to say anything. Nor are we able to decide anything — you may, I may and so may others and together we may reach the same conclusion, including leaving some to do it for us. That is the only sense in which "we" have decided.
Ordinarily it is well enough appreciated that such expressions among to linguistic short cuts. "America is violent" is supposed to mean, usually, that most folks in America are willing to deploy violent means to solve problems. Unfortunately, the care necessary to keep this in mind is not always diligently enough exhibited.
Accordingly, such theorists as Karl Marx explicitly argue that humanity is "an organic whole." It is a conscious being in the process of development, with communism its final stage. (Marx talks of the age of ancient Greece as humanity's childhood!) How so, if humanity has no convictions, thoughts, memories, imagination, intentions, purposes or any other attributes that individual human beings do? Why is this kind of thinking even plausible?
The reason is that in some contexts human groups nearly become a whole. A close-knit acrobatic team, for example, or orchestra or choir clearly exhibits attributes that come close to incredible single-mindedness. A jamming jazz ensemble not only works as a single musical unit but embarks on the kind of spontaneous innovation that we would usually expect only of individual human beings unencumbered by the baggage of having to please and cooperate with others. But no, sometimes people unite so well, fit so perfectly, and have a sense of one another's rhythm that it almost looks like individuality has disappeared.
Yet it is precisely individuality that makes such harmonious cooperation possible among members of that acrobatic team, orchestra or choir, and where failures come from, as well — for example, when someone fails to pay close heed to what is needed to keep the unity intact. The complex activities such groups undertake together require the utmost concentration on the part of individual members.
More than even that, when we consider carefully the composition of such groups we note that there is usually a critical mass beyond which they cannot function well. A jazz group can jam but not, say, a swing band — too many people, for one. The same is true with teams and choirs and other human ensembles.
But there is, perhaps, an element of inspiration and hopefulness that is spurred on by witnessing the beauty of harmonized human activities, sometimes to the point of wishing to see it extended globally. When someone like Karl Marx envisions humanity itself acting like an organic whole — as a goal-directed, integrated biological self-propelled organism - he extrapolates from that musical ensemble to all of humanity, convinced that what is possible for the small group could be, indeed ought to be, realized throughout the entire species. So he seriously proposes that we are specie-beings, organisms that belong to the species and form a unity with it all.
Of course, Marx realized that this isn't so at the present and hasn't been so ever. But his vision of its vague beauty formed for him a standard of humanity's health and well being, to be achieved in the future and used to judge the present.
The big problem with this vision is that the individuality of every human being can extend to embrace only so many others, after which the fit will be forced and, indeed, must be coerced when its realization is attempted.
Human beings are essentially individuals, as well as geared to moderate social entanglements. Voluntary choice reaches out to form only so many social relations. Our emotional make-up does not prepare us to be intimate members of the entire world society, not even of a country. Despite what President Reagan said, America is not a family, nor is Ireland or Iran. Families are sized in just the way that with some attention and vigilance their members can stay close to one another — celebrate birthdays or weddings, mourn the dead, attend to the sick.
If we were the kind of collective beings Marx and other champions of collectivism imagine us to be, we would dry up emotionally. We would lose our capacity to love intimately, to care to be close. We would have to spread our emotional energies way beyond what they are capable of. Just think: circles of friends and families are reasonably sized, so that one is not always torn between sadness about someone's mishap and joy about someone's good fortune. But if we had an intimate relationship with everyone who is part of humanity, nothing could be felt toward others because it would be canceled out by opposite feelings every time.
The kind of community that fits human beings varies a good deal — some are much more gregarious than others. And it must be left to choice to discover how much intimacy is right — how many communities we can honestly join.
The individual's right to choose freely whether to belong to this, that or another group is the best moderator of our social capacities. Sure, we can over or underestimate what we are capable of in this as in many other regards. But in the long run it is best to leave it to each of us instead of having some visionaries impose on us an impossible and ultimately destructive social dream.