There always has been something of a puzzle in social and political philosophy as to how much a political system should prize individuals and how much it should stress the prominence of the community. The question is about as ancient a theme in this discipline as are questions of the one and the many in metaphysics and stability versus change in our ideas in epistemology.

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 constitution 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 collectivity of 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 nature or 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 simply to stress the need to define things clearly and precisely, analogous to what we do in geometry. But his views did leave many with the understanding that in fact there exists a humanity apart from the individuals who comprise it. And it also left the clear impression that humanity is more important—fleet—than individuals.

Indeed, as Professor Stephen Tonsor has argued, collectivism has more of a conservative than a radical pedigree in intellectual history.^[1] This is easy enough to appreciate. After all, conservatives 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.

Failed Collectivist “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 “experiments.” Fascism, Nazism, socialism, and Communism 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 socialism in Eastern Europe. First there is the economic mess 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 impoverishment. Second, though not necessarily in importance, is the demoralizing effect of collectivism: people aren’t encouraged to see themselves as individually responsible for their conduct, so a kind of moral tragedy of the commons—that is, confusion about who is responsible for what—ensues. What one person does is really everyone’s doing—no achievement or any failure can individually be assigned because the big “we” does it all.^[2] Third, it is evident that wars are far more likely when collectivist ideologies reign than when individualism is prevalent. “War is the health of the state,” it has been said.

Now we have solid historical evidence for what previously was understood by quite a few unheeded people—that massive coercive collectivist efforts are anti-human. So do we now notice that great numbers of the intellectual community are beginning to pay closer attention to individualism? Not if by this one would expect efforts to clarify it, improve its various arguments and analyses, fine-tune its tenets.

Instead, a new collectivist movement has begun to make its way into Western culture. Iris called “communitarianism.” Its major tenets are not all that different from the other collectivist systems, despite a more moderate tone and some lip service to individual rights. Here, in brief, is what one organization trying to promulgate communitarianism is saying: “To the ACLU, libertarians, and other radical individualists, we say that the rights of individuals must be balanced with responsibilities to the community. Individuals are members of a community; neither their existence nor their liberty can be sustained without community.”

The claim advanced, in short, is that the individualist political ideal that stresses basic human rights to life, liberty, and property needs to be balanced with the competing ideal stressing the higher value of the community at large. What is the point?

We all know we have responsibilities toward our community—to wit, our parents, children, cousins, neighbors, colleagues, and people around us who may need our support, encouragement, and direct help in a pinch. Individualism by no means implies neglecting other people who comprise one’s community. There are very definite moral responsibilities each of us has toward such other persons.

Our human nature makes us not only unique individuals but also social beings. Aristotle, who severely criticized Plato’s limited communism, did not deny that human beings are essentially social—he made a point of stressing it. Our rationality enables us to communicate and cooperate with, as well as to learn from, understand, and love others. And our goal of leading a happy life, one that realizes our human potentialities, requires us to fulfill these abilities.

All in all, the point of the communitarian movement is not to remind us to be morally responsible to other people—to respect them, cooperate with them, love them when that is warranted, and so forth. Nothing in individualism rejects these ideas and ideals. Communitarianism would be benign enough if it meant no more than to remind us of our moral ties to others.

Forcing Service

In fact it means something different. We are being urged to support the enactment of laws that force people to serve their communities—to participate in programs that some people have designated as community purposes or in the public interest. Otherwise there wouldn’t be all this concern with individualism expressed by advocates of communitarianism. Communitarians are interested in diminishing the decision-making power of people as individuals. Yet, it is just such power that is required for a morally responsible rife, including one that does full justice to our moral responsibilities to others.

Although communitarianism seems benign, consider one of its hidden problems. We know who can speak for the individual, at least when he 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 speaks for the community? Is it going to be Ralph Nader? Or will it be George Bush, or some committee such as Congress? The trouble with talking about “the community” in a literal fashion as communitarianism does is that a community isn’t some concrete thing whose welfare we can determine and promote. Rather communities are collections of individual human beings with innumerable projects—legitimate needs, wants, objectives—of their own and with only a few shared among themselves.

That is one practical reason why collectivism is unworkable and why communitarians would spend their time more fruitfully in thinking about 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 Independence refers to us all when it notes that we take it as serf-evident that each has the rights to life, liberty, 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 community. 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-totted 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 community 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.