Machan's Little Libertarian Encyclopedia
Chapter 11: Individualism
Individualism is the view, put briefly, that human beings are identifiable as a distinct species in the natural world and have as at least one of their central attributes the capacity to be unique rational individuals. Whatever else, then, is central about being a human being, it includes that each one, unless crucially debilitated, has the capacity to govern his or her life by means of the individually initiated process of thought, of conceptual consciousness.
Furthermore, excelling as such an individual human being is the primary, proper goal of each person's life. A just political community, in turn, is one that renders it possible for this purpose to be pursued by all (or as many as is realistically possible).
As the novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand put the point — following similar observations by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas — adult persons are "beings of volitional consciousness." This involves, among other things, the crucial capacity to choose to embark upon — to initiate — a process of (thoughtful) action.
If we are the type of entity that can be a causal agent, the initiator of its behavior, this serves as a crucial basis for individuation: different human beings will be able to and would actually choose to exercise their conscious capacities and direct their ensuing actions differently. Putting it more simply, if we have free will, our diverse ways of exercising it can make us unique. So even if there were nothing else unique about different persons, their free will could introduce an essential individuality into their lives. (This is something that will have a major impact on the social sciences, on psychology and psychotherapy, and, of course, on ethics and morality.)
Yet different people are also uniquely configured, as it were, as human beings; thus they can face different yet equally vital tasks in their lives. Our fingerprints, voices, shapes, ages, locations, talents, and, most of all, choices are all individuating features, so we are all unique. This is the crux of the individualist thesis. Nonetheless, since we are all such individuals, we constitute one species with a definite nature possessed by each member. This may seem paradoxical: one of the defining attributes of the human (kind of) being is the distinctive potential for individuality, based on both diversity and personal choice.
The position has certain implications that are very close to what is usually thought to follow from a somewhat different, often labeled "radical," individualism. These implications are the existence of the libertarian political ideas and ideals of individual rights to life, liberty, and property. We might call the earlier version of individual "atomistic" or "quantitative," while the latter "classical."
Atomistic or radical individualism is distinct. It is usually linked to Thomas Hobbes and his nominalist and moral-subjectivist followers. Its most basic, ontological thesis is that human beings are numerically separate bare particulars. Their individuality is quantitative, not qualitative, primarily consisting of their being separate entities, not of their capacity and willingness to forge distinctive lives of their own.
A problem some see with the neo-Hobbesian individualist tradition is that it implies that political norms are ultimately subjective — usually taken to be mere preferences. For Hobbes, to start with, "whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good: and the object of his hate and aversion, evil." So the classical-liberal polity is itself, by the tenets of such individualism, no more than some people's preference, one that others may not share, quite legitimately. As some critics have put the point, in terms of the Hobbesian individualist position liberty is just one among many different values people desire. This political tradition has, thus, been vulnerable to the charge of arbitrariness, of resting simply on preferences that some people — for example, the bourgeoisie, capitalists, or white European males — happen to have.
Even in Hobbes's time there were other versions afoot, usually linked to Christianity. By the tenets of a Christian version, each person is a unique child of God, thus uniquely important and not to be sacrificed to some purpose of the tribe or state, for example. This, at least, is one path to the conclusion that a just political community must make room for the sovereignty of the individual human being — one's ultimate and decisive role in what one will do, be it right or wrong. Another path is the secular, neo-Aristotelian view in terms of which while human beings are rationally classifiable as such, one of their essential attributes is that they can and usually choose to be unique. So, in contrast to Marx's claim that "The human essence is the true collectivity of man," the classical individualist holds that "The human essence includes the true individuality of every human being."
In the radical individualist tradition a major libertarian element is the subjectivity of values. Accordingly, free market economists have tended to reject all government regimentation of social affairs, seeing them as driven by subjective preferences that cannot be known to anyone other than those who hold them. Such a view has served to undermine all efforts to impose values on individuals.
The classical individualist position argues that values are objective but also most often idiosyncratic and require free choice to give them moral significance. This, too, prohibits government imposition of values but not for skeptical reasons. And it enables one to defend the political value of liberty is more than simply one of many subjective preferences.
As far as free markets are concerned, one main reason they function more successfully than statist alternatives is that in a free market individual aspirations, goals, preferences, values and such have a major impact on what will be produced. This, in turn, results in a more prosperous society than one where such individual goals and so forth are trumped by various so called public interest considerations that, in fact, are no more than the interest of vocal groups of individuals overriding that of others. Even the famous calculation problem identified by Austrian economists makes more sense if individualism is true. The reason governments cannot allocate or price goods and services properly is that such resources are ultimately (albeit objectively) valuable for individuals, not collectives.
The individualism that underpins much of libertarian political economy has vital implications for public policy. In the law, for example, the position of criminal culpability gains support from it. The rejection of collective guilt or pride in social theory also has its support. In environmental public policy it makes clear sense of the ubiquitous phenomena of the tragedy of the commons, suggesting that human beings must have an individual stake in caring for resources before those resources can be expected to be well cared for. Public officials, since they can only represent a very general public interest — to secure the rights of individuals — have no clear cut guide to policies of resource preservation and conservation.
Libertarianism is seen by most to rest on some version of individualism, although there are exceptions. Some believe that the betterment of society as a whole is what requires an individualist social and legal policy, even though there is nothing ultimately true about individualism. If, however, it is treated in public policy as if it were true, the results will be advantageous to the entire community. (Karl Marx held a view akin to this, claiming that for at least a stage of humanity's development, namely, capitalism, the illusion of individualism was very useful since it inspired a great deal of productivity.)
Still it is difficult to see how libertarians can avoid being also individualists. This is especially true of those who stress the need for the protection of basic human rights in the Lockean individualist position.