Individualism

by Robert Villegas

  A primer is a statement of elementary principles. It is not an exhaustive analysis. With this in mind, I have striven to provide, in as brief a manner as possible, the fundamental concepts, ideas, and practices that revolve around the issue of racism in our society. I hope it provides the foundation for others to examine the issues in more comprehensive detail. You might consider it a starting point.

  My intellectual foundation is the philosophy of Individualism. You will not find here suggestions on how the government or other collectives can solve the race problem. It is my position that a collective cannot solve it. You will find here a viewpoint that stresses what each person can do about racism, for I believe that racism is a problem of individuals, and can only be solved by individuals changing their minds and actions.

  Much of the discourse about race today is fraught with shouting, demonizing, and outright racism, with the loudest racists screaming that they are not racist. Race divisions are tearing our country apart. Our children will repeat the same mistakes unless someone takes a viewpoint apart from the traditional and current views. I hope to give a wider perspective to the issue so we, as individuals, can come to terms with each other.

  One may wonder why it is necessary to define terms like discrimination and prejudice. One would think that most people understand them, especially after our century, when most of the bloodshed has been the result of racism. However, if you ask the average person to give you a definition of prejudice, you often hear, after a pause, that prejudice is unfairness toward minorities. This is only an "armchair" definition. There is much more involved. The fact that racism results from a logical fallacy, a fundamental thinking error that anyone can commit has not occurred to many people. That racism is the result of a pseudo-scientific theory with a long history has been forgotten. That this theory of race has been barely analyzed or refuted keeps us thinking racially today.

  We have made little progress in eliminating the impact of racial separation and exclusion and cannot do so in today's political climate because collectivism and racism stand in the way. Unless we challenge the status quo, this issue will tear at the very foundation of our society.

  As we’ve discussed previously, collectivism is a philosophical and political ideal. Throughout history, it is one of the many impractical "ideals" that the human race has allowed to dominate political philosophy. At base it derives from a false metaphor. In simple terms, the metaphor postulates that it would be a wonderful world if each person functioned like a cell in a larger organism. Like that cell, man's role would be to unselfishly work to keep the organism, society, alive and healthy. The tragedy for the collectivist is that the metaphor throughout history has broken down at the crossroad between man’s nature as an autonomous being and what the collectivists want to make of him. This means, in collectivist terms, he should be a slave who supports only the organism. So, to fulfill the metaphor, collectivists believe it is the purpose of the government to mold the individual, to educate or force him to perform his role. From this metaphor, the bloodiest century in history has unfolded.

  Among intellectuals, few have tried to expose the inapplicability of this metaphor. Most have striven to figure out ways to make collectivism work with the solution always being force against the individual.

  Collectivism has been the preferred form of social organization for many decades now. Most of the major political movements of the 20th Century were openly collectivist, including communism, fascism, welfare statism, socialism, etc.

  Collectivism has been put over on the average Individual as a romantic ideal, wherein group solidarity is portrayed as a benevolent process offering hope, strength and a feeling of belonging. However, this is a myopic view of collectivism. The full perspective involves warnings that belonging to a group is necessary for survival, that one is evil if one chooses to be different, and that those who are not part of "our" collective are suspect and to be hated.

  The best critics of collectivism were Ayn Rand and Frank S. Meyer. Both were strident individualists.

  Ayn Rand wrote:

  "Collectivism means the subjugation of the Individual to a group--whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ‘the common good.’"[11]

  In his book IN DEFENSE OF FREEDOM, Meyer writes:

  "Society and the state were made for Individual men, not men for them. This was once a truism in America and through much of the West; but in the past few decades all the prospering political ideologies--Communism and Nazism, socialism, the milder theories of the welfare state--have founded themselves upon the opposite axiom, that Individual men are secondary to society."

  Collectivism is at the root of many of our institutions, and has not boasted any significant contribution to humanity. It requires a moral dualism wherein those who are not willing to contribute to the "good of society" are considered alien and evil, deserving of enmity and persecution. Modern collectivism carries this further: if one is not a member of the "right" collective, then one deserves to be excluded from humanity; to be ridiculed, ostracized, outlawed, or in some opinions, executed.

  The German Nazis had a wholly collectivist society. Their political system held race as its basic principle. Individuals were irrelevant except in their conformity to the racial consciousness fostered by Hitler. If a German was "in" (possessed pure Aryan blood), he was part of an elite. If he was "out" (anybody else), survival was made impossible, no matter what profound value he possessed. As testimony, consider the Nazis' reluctance to work toward the development of the atom bomb because atomic theories were invented by a Jew, Albert Einstein.

  Marxism fostered the collective called the "Workers of the world." A person was good if he had no connection to the evil collective called the Bourgeoisie (affluent middle class). With the victory of communism in 1917, many Bourgeois Russians had to make up new pasts for themselves to avoid persecution as enemies of the state. If one could prove that he had never been affluent then one could have a job and a life somewhat livable. If one could not prove that he had been poor, or if one was denounced, his future and that of his children was bleak.

  Collectivism's theory of man violates the basic truth that each of us is an individual, not a cell, not an ant, not a mindless robot who does what he must do. Collectivism considers the Individual as dispensable, controllable, taxable and weak. It does not recognize that each person has rights the government should not trample. The achievements of individuals are thought to result only from man's collective instincts and have nothing to do with conscious choice. Individuals are merely "resources," bodies that populate the most important element in the universe, the all-worthy "society" or collective. It is because of this view that collectivist societies always fail or decline. When human beings are considered superfluous, they will not offer to society the fruit of their knowledge, wisdom and skills. The result is malaise, decline and eventually the need to exploit others outside the collective who can provide through slavery or expropriation the goods not produced within the collective.

  Collectivism needs socially engineered people; people willing to sacrifice their lives, money and minds for the collective. In its educational systems, collectivism and self-sacrifice have always been preached as if they were unquestionable. Such notions create people who know only one thing: give in to any demand made by others. When the schools teach children that their collective is the master of the world, they will grow up to vote for the politicians who repeat those ideas. When the schools teach them that "rights" like a right to a job, housing, clothing, food, health care, etc., should be enforced by government, they will vote for politicians who promise those things. That the government can only get its power from a gun does not occur to them and is seldom mentioned. That the government can only obtain the benefit of one person at the expense of another does not occur to them and is seldom mentioned. That the government's gun must be pointed at one person in or
der for another to have a free meal does not occur and is seldom mentioned. That such rights as Individual rights and the right to property are not part of public discussion in a collectivist society does not occur to them and is seldom mentioned. They have become "good" citizens.

  A collectivist government sets policies only for or against collectives. Therefore, it is subject to the pressures exerted by the most powerful groups. Today, in our country, every prominent group has exerted its most powerful political clout to get for itself whatever advantages it can from government. We have devolved into a society of men and not of laws, a society where who you know or who you are (of what collective are you a member) is more important than what you know or how well you do. Today, politicians pursue power by appealing to one collective after another, promising each special favors, at the expense of the smallest minority, the Individual who must pay for the banquet. Individuals are not important for politicians. What is important is how much money they can dole out to groups that will keep them in power.

  As Ayn Rand and others have pointed out, there is no such thing as a collective. A "collective" is only a group of individuals. There is no way to have an impact on a collective in a positive way unless one affects the individuals within the collective. One does this by dealing with the individual, not the collective to which he is supposed to belong.

  If there is no such thing as a collective, there is no such thing as a collective good. This is because the idea of "good" or "benefit" applies only to the individual. Here again, collectivism and government miss their target. In fact, collectivism creates most of the disharmony in society. Far from being a benevolent ideal, it has caused many of the ills associated with man's history. This is because of the divisions it creates and the political battles that result. For instance, collectivism divides individuals into several antithetical groups: social planners and docile citizens, beneficiaries and providers, exploiters and exploited, nobility and peasantry, the rich and victims of society, favored groups or races and the enemies of such groups (scapegoats).

  These divisions create resentments and antagonisms. They engender group warfare, power struggles and power politics, as each group vies for political power and money, each fabricating whatever justifications it can to wrest political power from those who presently have it. Those who have power will fight to keep it and they must decide which groups to ignore, which to dispose of, or which groups to exploit for further schemes.

  The masters of collectivism are the leaders who presume to know what is best for society. These are the manic-depressive politicians, rulers, or emperors. To be considered great, they need massive programs, unlimited power, large projects, gigantic monuments, tremendous expenditures, smiling, approving faces and sunny days to bask in.

  Social planners provide them with their rationalizations. They consist of philosophers, intellectuals, teachers, bureaucrats, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists and many others who provide the ideas that organize and structure society. Today, most of them get their ideas from the collectivist ideas that prevail. Because of this, they provide little productive value and are effective only in that they influence decisions that devastate lives.

  When individuals are defined according to groups; when they have identity only by reference to collectives; then the hand of collectivism controls the society. Today "groups" proliferate. The number of such groups, the number of their demands, the irrationality of the demands, and the vastness of the "politically correct" vocabulary that one has to know in order not to offend any particular group, confirm the victory of collectivism in our society, not an effort to eradicate discrimination. Principles, like Individual rights, property rights, equality before the law, are swept away and made mute by the view that what counts in all matters is the group to which a person belongs. Social justice has become synonymous with "group justice." Decisions in government and in private affairs are often based upon defining the group to which a person belongs and weighing the status of that group in society.

  We must understand that the “enemy within” is our own collectivism, our insistence on defining ourselves according to groups. Collectivism requires conformity in thinking and solidarity in attitude. It breeds the storm trooper mentality and engenders the fear that is a major component of political domination. People are taking sides and refusing to listen to other sides while presuming that opposition groups are evil and to be dismissed. We are bashing each other to such a degree that cooperation is almost impossible. This is true of almost every group today.

  As collectivism goes, so goes racism. Without collectivism, there could be no such idea as race. It was the Nazis, as we know from history, who were among the most ardent collectivists and racists. Their "race" was their collective, and it was the world's duty to subjugate itself to their "Aryan superiority." It is within the context of collectivism, the "we" against "them" dualism that it creates, that today's race issue can be most fully understood. "Race" is a collectivist term that brings with it all the negatives associated with collectivism: group warfare, propaganda and xenophobia.

  The opposite of collectivism is Individualism. Individualism takes each person as a value, in himself, not as a member of some group, not as a stereotyped non-entity distorted out of proportion to what he is. Individualism holds that society should be organized by the idea that each person has a right to the pursuit of happiness. It holds that this right is inviolable. It proceeds from the idea that life and property belong to the Individual and are not to be appropriated by any demagogue who demands sacrifice to the collective. It holds that the human being is unique, a sovereign entity who should never be manipulated or discarded. His intellectual nature makes him so. He cannot be herded.

  Individualism has nothing to do, historically, with the oppression suffered by many under the banner of Imperialism and colonialism. Individualism is the philosophy that fought such ideas and struggled to release man from the shackles of slavery to any institution. Individualism holds that your soul is yours to create in the image that you prefer, that it cannot be molded by society or the desire to melt into a group. An individualist does not become a storm trooper who does only what the leader says. He would question and decide what is right, then follow his own judgment. An Individualist fights for the right to be free of oppression and collectivism.

  Collectivism means nothing but destruction for humanity. We cannot simply make an idea valid by the number of its adherents or by the efficiency of their swords, guns or missiles. With this thinking we create a cognitive mistake (Man is a mindless cell sacrificing for the collective), a misreading of reality (He can be conditioned to function like one), an untruth (The Individual is not important), an ideological dead-end (We should structure our society around an all-powerful collective) that have a disastrous consequence: inhumanity. For those who think that ideas are meaningless, that they have nothing to do with the real world: look at what has happened under the idea of collectivism.

  Indeed, the history of humanity is replete with ideas that have had devastating effect on the lives of innocent people. One of the most vicious is that some races are superior to others. What is racism? How can we best understand it?

  The term "denigrate" means to tarnish a person's image or reputation. The term means, at root, to "make black."

  If one were to analyze why and how such terms as light versus darkness, white versus black, knowledge versus ignorance, and good versus evil became synonymous, one would learn much about the human psyche and human development through the centuries. One thing is certain, throughout later human development, when a European looked at a person with darker skin, that person was thought savage and inferior. The darker skinned people considered the European to be interesting and strange. That the light skinned one held ideas of domination, conquest and superiority could not have occurred to them at first meeting. History has recorded that Europeans were, for the most part, tribal and collectivist in their views about life and social structure. They also believed i
n the "universality" of their God, that they had been charged by Him to fulfill their "destiny." That fulfillment meant taking God's teachings to the corners of the earth, "Christianizing" and "civilizing" "primitive savages" who dwelt there. Such a charge included their right to subjugate those never before touched by their idea of God. Those who did not submit must be knowingly evil, of the devil and deserving of death.

  When slavery began, such views were unquestionable. Dark skinned Africans were thought to be virtual animals, good only for hard labor. That they were human beings with rights did not occur to those men who ruled the world and stood to gain wealth from their unwilling labor.

  The fathers of modern racism (what I call racial theory), the men who brought such ideas into the twentieth century, were Arthur de Gobineau (Frenchman, b. July 14, 1816, d. Oct. 13, 1882) and Houston Steward Chamberlain (Anglo-German b. Sept. 9, 1855, d. Jan. 9, 1927). They believed that Nordic or Aryan men were a superior "race" destined to dominate history. They postulated that other "races" were inferior and they warned that if the Aryan race did not preserve its racial purity it would decline and become inferior as well. Through convoluted analyses that can best be described as pseudo-science, they purported to prove that specific characteristics were genetically (through the blood) linked to certain groups.