After reading the opinion pieces published by Martin van Staden, Ivo Vegter, and Ernst Roets, it became clear that there seems to be a common misconception among communitarian proponents and their arguments to limit individual liberty.
This misconception seems to centre around the idea that individual liberty leads to the disengagement of the individual from their responsibility toward society, or community.
Community and the concept of misplaced concreteness
Communitarians argue that the apathy of individuals toward their responsibility for their community is the result of unrestricted freedom of the individual. Of course, this argument is made in light of the issues surrounding progressivism and the moral injunctions individuals may have with regards to political and social concerns within our society.
The argument is also presented and accompanied with the reference to the “greater good”, or rather more commonly known as the “common good.” To directly quote Ernst Roets’s article:
“When we strip our conception of freedom from the community and the pursuit of the common good, we lose it.”
Roets and many cultural conservative communitarians suggest that freedom is [intimately] connected to the community and the pursuit of the common good. If society separates this notion of “freedom” from these elements, then individuals lose or diminish the value of freedom.
Freedom, in this context, refers to individual liberty, or autonomy. Roets suggests that: true [individual] freedom cannot be fully realised in isolation from the social context and well-being of the community as a whole, and implies that the recognition of individual rights should be accompanied by the recognition of the responsibilities and obligations individuals have toward others within the community and the “collective good”.
Ethical whole
Roets placed strong emphasis on the idea of the “ethical whole”, or the “ethical community”, which refers to the collective organisation of individuals and their shared values, laws, and institutions. It must be made clear, however, that while this, at first glance, is criticism against individual liberty, and though it does exhibit collectivist thought, it is fundamentally different to socialism, statism, and other broader branching collectivisms.
What Roets is not arguing for is the subordination of the individual towards the “ethical whole”. Instead, he highlights the interplay between individual freedom and responsibility within the community. This is an important distinction.
As with other collectivist ideologies, communitarianism has serious flaws. I attribute this failure to the idea of “misplaced concreteness.”
That is to say that Roets, much like the other collectivists, treats abstract concepts or mental constructs, such as community or society, as if they were concrete, independent entities with actual existence, and attributes to them properties, intentions and causal powers as if they had an independent existence.
It is important to understand that the abstract concept of community and/or society is a mental representation and tool for understanding and discussing the world, but that it does not have an independent existence outside of our conceptual framework.
It is with this in mind that we should strive to create laws and limitations that are centred around concrete entities, such as individuals, to ensure that our concepts of “justice” and “fairness” are equitable (accessible to all) and apply equally to all individuals within any given society or community, regardless of moral imposition.
Laws and limitations that seek to limit individuals’ rights based upon abstract concepts such as society or community inevitably lead to disastrous outcomes, as we’ve witnessed with relation to our conception of “the common good” with regards to the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown restrictions.
The common good that isn’t common, nor good at all
Which now brings me to a crucial point. A point, I believe, that if not addressed adequately, can prove to be a detriment for individual liberty within our generation: the common good.
To address this question, one has to ask: “Does the individual exist for the sake of the community or society? Or does the society or community exist for the benefit of the individual?”
The adherents of any collectivist ideology, whether it is Roets’s conception of communitarianism, or Stalin’s Communism, and so on, believe that the individual exists for the benefit of society.
As Ludwig von Mises noted in Epistemological Problems of Economics, as he was critiquing collectivism:
“The individual has to subordinate himself to, and conduct himself for, the benefit of society and to sacrifice his selfish private interests to the common good.”
“The common good before the individual good.” Thus proclaimed many of collectivism’s most infamous adherents. Thus the notion of the “common good” is an underlying foundational concept throughout collectivist thought, and that communitarianism is no exception.
It is this underlying foundational belief in the “common good” that resulted in death, destruction and suffering en masse, as an end result wherever it was implemented. Again, though, I have to stress this. Roets is not advocating for the implementation of the “common good” on a state level. He merely believes that individuals can only be truly free if they have a commitment towards a community, and that the commitments of the individual should be based on an abstract concept such as the “common good” of that community.
It is important, however, to also know, and understand, that even though different, that the expectation of the individual is the same, regardless of the political inspiration or situation.
How does placing the good of the community above the good of the individual tend to such unfortunate outcomes? It is, after all, a show of compassion [interest/engagement] to sacrifice our own interest for the “common good” of the community.
At first glance, Roets’s position might seem like a virtuous position to take, however the expectation here is to have someone real, the individual, give up their own desires for something abstract [the community], which in itself is nothing more than…
“a term, a concept for the symbiosis of a group of human beings. A concept is not a carrier of life.” -C.J.Jung (Volume 15 Practice of Psychotherapy)
And as Ludwig von Mises further clarified in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science:
“Society does not exist apart from the thoughts and actions of people. It does not have ‘interests’ and does not aim at anything. The same is valid for all other collectives.”
It [community] cannot think, act, speak, or choose, and because of that, individuals, or a group of individuals, must be granted the ability to define the common good and then have the authority to enforce it. This is what Martin van Staden’s article sought to point out to Roets. “Who decides?”
Self-anointed
Since the dawn of civilization, the ruling classes or political elite have anointed themselves (through either birth, divinity, election, or rebellion) as arbiters of “the common good”. More often than not, this notion of the “common good” amounted to nothing more than “good” for people in these positions. As Nathaniel Branden wrote in The Psychology of Romantic Love:
“With such [collectivist] systems, the individual has always been a victim, twisted against themselves and commanded to be ‘unselfish’ in sacrificial service to some allegedly higher value called God or pharaoh or emperor or king or society or the state or the race or the proletariat – or the cosmos. It is a strange paradox of our history that this doctrine – which tells us that we are to regard ourselves, in effect, as sacrificial animals – has been generally accepted as a doctrine representing benevolence and love for humankind. From the first individual… who was sacrificed on an altar for the good of the tribe, to the heretics and dissenters burned at the stake for the good of the populace or the glory of God, to the millions exterminated in… slave-labour camps for the good of the race or the proletariat, it is this [collectivist] morality that served as justification for every dictatorship and every atrocity, past or present.”
It is with the above that we proclaim that:
“The individual is king, and all other things exist for the service of the king.” -Auberon Herbert (Lost in the Region of Phrases.)
And it is with this understanding that we can say that even though individuals are a part of many groups or collectives, such as their school, college club, town, city, province, community, society, or nation, the individual is greater than them all without exception, and that these things exist for the profit and use of individuals.
Individual apathy and atomisation
The concern that too much individual freedom disenfranchised individuals and that individual liberty creates an apathetic attitude toward communities, to me at least, seems disingenuous, and is a mischaracterisation or misunderstanding of such liberties to begin with.
Those of us that support individual liberty and rights are not insensitive, or apathetic toward the plights and suffering of the community. Rather, we recognise that granting the freedom to individuals to pursue their own good and social cooperation, allows prosperity to emerge in a bottom-up manner, which in turn improves the ability of individuals within the community to help and uplift others. After all, without the wealth- generating mechanism of freedom, no number of good intentions will clothe, feed, or house the poor and destitute.
Upon hearing this, collectivists may retort that an emphasis on the rights of individuals, rather than the common good, inhibits social cooperation. It promotes an atomised population where every man and woman is an island and they are all left to fend for themselves.
Yet, this seems backwards. We (individuals) are naturally social creatures. Atomisation of individuals only ever occurs when a community or state enforces social isolation under the guise of “the common good”. Or as Joost Meerloo noted in the Rape of the Mind:
“…behind the iron curtain the most prominent complaint of the totalitarian system was the feeling of mental isolation. The individual feels alone and continually on the alert. There is only mutual suspicion.”
Or as Carl Jung puts it:
“The mass State has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man; it strives… for atomisation, for the psychic isolation of the individual.”
Remove clamps of coercive control
It is for this reason alone that the best way to promote social cooperation and a prosperous society is to remove the clamps of coercive control and allow individuals to make their own choices with respect to their own lives, as long as we (individuals) do not threaten another’s right to the same means and end.
Individual rights empower individuals to take charge of their lives, fulfil their needs, and exercise their freedom. These rights are based on the belief that individuals have inherent value and should not be forced or exploited for the benefit of society. They encompass the ability to make independent choices, pursue personal goals, and have control over their acquired resources.
We (individuals) are a means to an end unto ourselves. Individual freedom is the only true genuine good to pursue, at least as a matter of public (coercive) policy. Anything that seeks to limit the individual’s rights and liberties on the basis of abstract concepts such as community, society, state, nation, or the common good, merely serves as a controlling mechanism for the few in positions of authority who have no business, knowledge, or virtue, to tell any other individuals how to pursue their own good.
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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