The Individual and the Community; T. Machan

And no wonder. Human beings are, in a very straightforward sense, unique individuals as well as members of a distinct species, a community. How much emphasis should be placed on each aspect of their nature when we consider the consti tution of a society? Throughout history we have seen grand schemes that have favored the community as against the individual, in line with the idea Karl Marx put before us, that "the human essence is the true collectivityof man." But Marx didn't originate collectivist trends. In the West, Plato was perhaps most responsible for emphasizing the collective nature of human life. He first imagined that there are two worlds. One, where we live our particular, individual lives, is imperfect, unstable, changing, and easily corrupted. The other is the perfect, timeless, and unchanging realm that is home to the true nature of everything-including human natureor humanity!

Here we see the beginning of the idea that humankind is more important than individual human beings, if only because it can be conceived of as perfect, unchanging, and incorruptible. Plato may have advanced this picture simplyto stress the Professor Machan teaches philosophy at Auburn Uni versity,Alabama. need to define things clearly and precisely, analo gous to what we do in geometry. But his views did leave many with the understanding that in fact there exists a humanity apartfrom the individuals who compriseit. And it also left the clear impres sion that humanity is more important-perfect than individuals. Indeed, as Professor Stephen Tonsor has argued, collectivism has more of a conservative than a radical pedigree in intellectual history.1This is easy enough to appreciate. After all, conserva tives stress the importance of the tried and true opinions of the past, backed by millions of people who have gone before us. It is their collective thinking that must be deferred to instead of our individual reflections.

FailedCoUectivist"Experiments" There have been philosophical objections to all this, and, of course, in our own time we have seen the demise of many collectivist political "experi ments." Fascism, Nazism, socialism, and Commu nism are now largely discredited. And one of the central faults in all of them is their belittling of the human individual. The most recent case that points this up is the demise of socialismin Eastern Europe. First there is the economicmess in its wake: when collective needs rather than individual choices are used as guidelines for economic public policy,productivity sags, distribution is inefficient, people go hungry, and eventually the entire region suffers impover ishment. Second, though not necessarily in impor tance, is the demoralizing effect of collectivism: people aren't encouraged to see themselves as 328 THE FREEMAN • SEPTEMBER 1991 individually responsible for their conduct, so a kind of moral tragedy of the commons-that is, confusion about who is responsible for what ensues.Whatone persondoes is reallyeveryone's doing-no achievementor anyfailurecanindivid uallybe assignedbecausethe big "we"doesit all.2 Third, it is evident that wars are far more likely when collectivistideologiesreign than when indi vidualismis prevalent. "War is the health of the state," it has been said.

Now we have solidhistoricalevidencefor what previouslywas understoodby quite a few unheed ed people-that massive coercive collectivist effortsare anti-human.So do we now noticethat great numbers of the intellectualcommunityare beginningto paycloserattentionto individualism? Not if by thisone wouldexpecteffortsto clarifyit, improveits variousargumentsand analyses,fine tune its tenets. Instead,a newcollectivistmovementhas begun to make its way into Westernculture. It·is called "communitarianism."Its major tenets are not all that differentfrom the other collectivistsystems, despitea moremoderatetone andsomelipservice to individual rights. Here, in brief, is what one organizationtrying to promulgate communitari anism is saYing: "To the ACLU, libertarians,and other radicalindividualists,we say that the rights of individualsmust be balancedwith responsibili tiesto the community.Individualsare membersof a community;neither their existencenor their lib erty can be sustainedwithoutcommunity."

Theclaimadvanced,in short,is that the individ ualist political ideal that stresses basic human rightsto life,liberty,and propertyneedsto be bal ancedwiththe competingidealstressingthe high er value of the communityat large. What is the point? We allknowwe haveresponsibilitiestowardour community-to wit,ourparents,children,cousins, neighbors,colleagues,and people around us who may need our support,encouragement,and direct helpin a pinch.Individualismby no meansimplies neglectingother people who compriseone'scom munity.There are verydefinitemoralresponsibil itieseachof us has towardsuchother persons. Our.human nature makes us not only unique individualsbut also socialbeings.Aristotle, who severelycriticizedPlato'slimitedcommunism,did not deny that human beings are essenticdly social-he made a point of stressingit. our rationality enables us to communicateand cooperate with,as wellas to learnfrom,understand,andlove others. And our goal of leadinga happylife, one that realizesour humanpotentialities,requiresus to fulfillthese abilities.

Allin all,thepointofthe communitarianmove mentis not to remindus to be morallyresponsible to other people-to respectthem,cooperatewith them, love them when that is warranted, and so forth. Nothingin individualismrejectsthese ideas and ideals. Communitarianismwould be benign enoughif it meant no more than to remind us of our moraltiesto others. ForcingService In fact it means something different. Weare beingurgedto supportthe enactmentof lawsthat force people to serve their communities-to par ticipatein programsthat somepeople havedesig nated as community purposes or in the public interest.Otherwisethere wouldn'tbe all this con cernwithindividualismexpressedby advocatesof communitarianism.Communitariansare interest ed in diminishingthe decision-makingpower of peopleasindividuals.Yet,it isjustsuchpowerthat is requiredfora morallyresponsiblelife,including one that doesfull justiceto our moralresponsibil itiesto others.

Although communitarianism seems benign, consider one of its hidden problems. We know who canspeakfor the individual,at leastwhenhe or she reaches adulthood. This is the individual . himself or herself, no one else. We know well enough who is responsible for the individual once again,the person who is that individual,no one else. But who speaksfor the community?Is it going to be RalphNader? Or willit be GeorgeBush,or some committee such as Congress?The trouble with talking about "the community"in a literal fashionas communitarianismdoes is that a com munity isn't some concrete thing whose welfare we candetermineandpromote.Rather communi ties are collections of individual human beings with innumerable projects-legitimate needs, wants, objectives-of their own and with only a few shared amongthemselves. That is one practicalreason why collectivismis unworkable and why communitarians would spendtheir timemore fruitfullyin thinkingabout THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY 329 "No one is morally improvedby beingforced to be responsible.Indeed, suchforce simply robs a personof his or hermoral nature."

individualism and its nuances than in resurrecting collectivism in yet another form. Another way communitarianism misleads is by claiming that Western, and especially American, culture is truly individualistic. Although American culture is more so than many others, in fact it is by no means radically so. First, the West is infused with collectivism, and the revolution that changed this has been by no means fully embraced by all segments of society. Second, even the individualistic elements of the West aren't of the extreme or radical type a few thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes and Max Stirner, have put forward. That rare version implies that each person be treated as an entirely unique being, with no traits or concerns he or she shares with others. Rather, America's individualist tradition tends to acknowledge from the very start that we are all human individuals. The Declaration of Indepen dence refers to us all when it notes that we take it as self-evident that each has the rights to life, lib erty, and the pursuit of happiness. We do share in our humanity, and that is why we need to treat one another with respect for these rights. We are human individuals with human rights that, if respected, will enable us to live a human life of moral choice and responsibility.

Communitarians wish to place community and individual on a collision course, saying there is some kind of balance that is needed between the rights of individuals and the rights of the commu nity. But if we consider that "community" means simply a lot of other people than oneself, this makes' for majority rule. And if we consider that such other people usually leave it to a few who will speak out in their behalf, we will have a few com munity representatives dictating to the rest of us what we must do and what our "responsibilities" are. Moreover, our moral responsibilities are dis torted the moment they are made the object of law. A legally enforced moral responsibility isn't freely carried out by a person but amounts to regimented personal conduct. No moral credit can be gained in that fashion. No one is morally improved by being forced to be responsible. Indeed, such force simply robs a person of his or her moral nature.

Our communities are highly varied, depending on who we are and many other factors. Our com munity responsibilities are equally varied-I have some you don't and vice versa. They cannot be codified-and heaven help us if some group elects itself as the codifier of them. We should be concerned about efforts to foist communitarianism upon us. Of course, we can use occasional reminders of what we owe our family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, and others. But the unified, organic community is a myth. Instead of fashioning a new collectivism, let us preserve and restore the system of individualism in which we all have to go our own way to seek support for our objectives and cannot conscript others to work with us against their will. D 1. StephenJ. Tonsor,"TheConservativeOriginsofCollectivism," in Robert L. Cunningham,editor,Liberty and the Rule ofLaw (Col legeStation,Texas:TexasA&M UniversityPress,1979),pp. 224-41.

2. Ayn Rand highlightedthisaboutcollectivismin her wonderful novelette Anthem, in which a collectivistworld is bleak, morose, unimaginative,and stagnant.It is interestingthat George Orwell's similarnovel,1984,containsa majormisunderstandingwhenit per mits technologyto flourishin the midstof collectivism.Rand had it right-the creativehumanspirithavingbeen suppressed,nothing flourishesthat dependson it, includingtechnology.