Conference given at the Junto meeting at Niederhoffer and Niederhoffer, New York City, February 1, 1996 [Also available in a Spanish version]. Reproduced in Arms, Law & Society , No. 5 (Spring 1996), p. 1-18.
Why would an individual accept to know -- let alone to produce on demand -- a number with which the State chooses to identify him? This would seem to fly in the face of the individual's conscience of his own dignity which is not reducible to a numbered component in a social machine. Most people, however, apparently think there is nothing to raise a fuss about, either because they have no keen conscience of their own dignity or because they actually believe that it is enhanced by a State-assigned identity. I will argue that such a reaction is inconsistent with the individualist sentiment on which the survival of individual liberty depends.
At the lowest level, one may take the individualist sentiment to mean simply the conscience by an individual of his separate existence and the necessity to maintain it. Although this conscience certainly provides a basis for the individualist sentiment, I take it to mean more than this, i.e., to include a deeply felt attachment for one's personal dignity, independence and responsibility.
I am focusing here on individualism as a sentiment, not on individualism as a social theory or a social system, although the these different categories may be reinforcing. I will by and large skirt psychological and philosophical questions on the relations between perceptions, sentiments and ideas, which ones cause the others, etc. I will be content with the assumption that there are some relations between them, and between them and social results, and concentrate on the following questions: Is such an individualist sentiment necessary for the existence of a social system based on individual liberty? Is it compatible with society and the State? And why has it apparently declined over the last decades?
1. The individualist sentiment and individualism
Individualism refers to things of different orders: "individualist" can qualify a sentiment, a theory, or a social system. Although it seems safe to assume that the individualist sentiment, the theory of individualism, and the experience of living in a society based on such theory, are mutually reinforcing, the relations between these kinds of individualism are not always straightforward.
For instance, the individualist sentiment as I have defined it is not coextensive with methodological individualism. Methodological individualism is a heuristic approach according to which we can only understand social phenomena by starting from individual perceptions and actions. Although it is difficult to imagine a sentimental individualist not adhering, from sheer experience, to methodological individualism, a methodological individualist may be prepared, like Friedrich Hayek recommends, to submit to social rules that he does not understand and cannot rationally justify. Taken one step further, this stance becomes inconsistent with the individualist sentiment. For suppose that the Welfare State is subsumed under these social rules: our methodological individualist may then have to admit that the individualist sentiment is misguided and socially inefficient.
The individualist sentiment is more closely related to political individualism. Political individualism is the theory claiming that, or a social system in which, individual welfare is the end of society and of the State (if the latter is necessary). In an individualist political system, individuals are free to organize their lives according to non-individualist values (this is much less true, mutatis mutandis, in a socialist system); and, to make an understatement, some individualists are not lucky enough to live in individualist societies. But it is more difficult to imagine somebody believing in political individualism who does not have a strong individualist sentiment, for this would mean that he attaches more value to other people's individualities than to his own. Similarly, a sentimental individualist will normally believe in political individualism, except perhaps if he holds the "aristocratic-individualist" view that only a chosen few are able to look after their own welfare; even then, though, he may want to hedge his bets lest he would, under a different system, be considered not part of them. In other words, even the "aristocratic individualist" is incited to choose political individualism.
The question of who is to evaluate individual welfare is related to the existence of two kinds of political individualism. It is mainly this bifurcation in political individualism that breaks the natural relation between individualist theory and the individualist sentiment. "Libertarian individualism," as I will call it, would let each individual be the sole judge of his own welfare, and is fully consistent with the individualist sentiment. "Statist individualism," on the other hand, gives a role to the state in this evaluation and will therefore frequently clash with the individualist sentiment. The closeness of the relationship between political individualism as a theory and the individualist sentiment then depends on what kind of theory we are talking about. I am mainly interested here in libertarian individualism which is closely related to the modern conception of individual liberty.
If theories, experiences and sentiments are mutually reinforcing, the lack of one dimension will ultimately threaten the others. Consider the individualist sentiment vis-à-vis the social system. A libertarian individualist society can probably not maintain itself without many individuals holding the individualist sentiment. Conversely, it is less likely that the individualist sentiment will strive in a collectivized society. Or consider the relations between the individualist sentiment and theories of political individualism. A believer in libertarian individualist theory is more likely to develop the individualist sentiment, and a sentimental individualist is more likely to be attracted to libertarian individualist ideas.
The last point brings us back to the relation between sentiments and ideas, between emotions and reason, which we planned to skirt. Yet, there are some reasons to believe that they are not independent realms, if only because people usually try to maintain some consistency between their values and beliefs, their lives and ideas. Promoting the individualist sentiment is as useful as, and perhaps more useful than, arguing for a disembodied free market.
2. Individualist sentiment, society, and the State
Is the individualist sentiment opposed to society? Some authors have thought so. Perhaps the most representative of them was French sociologist Georges Palante (1862-1925). What Palante called "la sensibilité individualiste" was a reaction against all social constraints, to which strong individualities could not submit. Although he is himself often close to libertarian individualism, he explicitly did not distinguish between society and State: "Society," he wrote, "is as tyrannical as the State, if not more. This is why between coercion by the State and by society, there is only a difference of degree."[1]
By defining the individualist sentiment in such a strong way that it opposes society as much as the state, Palante would seem to deny that man is a social animal. Or perhaps what he calls "superior individualities" are not as much social animals as common people -- hence his defense of "aristocratic individualism." In any event, such a characterization leaves little room for the rules of conduct which individuals, and even individualists, voluntarily adopt because they are perceived as furthering their personal interests in a social setting. Palante's view is that the individual is always oppressed by the group, as if the only alternative was complete autarky on one hand, and group domination on the other. This ignores the possibility of the individual participating in social relations by following individualistic kinds of rules that do not require him to be unconditionally at the mercy of the group. We know, if only from economic theory, that such rules exist, develop spontaneously, and are not inconsistent with individual development. In other words, if man is a self-interested social animal, his individualist sentiment will not oppose society as such, but only certain kinds of society.
By refusing to deal with it, an individual can leave a social group or a society where he perceives the cost of conformity to be higher than the benefit of cooperation. There are only two cases where this is not a relevant option. The first one occurs in the context of a primitive, isolated society where there is nowhere to leave, and ignoring the group means dying of starvation: the exit option is available, but will not normally be exercised because the cost of oppression is always (or nearly always) lower than the benefits of cooperation.
The other case is the State. Even if you believe that the costs the State imposes on you are higher than the benefits it provides you, and even if you could establish social relations outside the State, it will not let you do it: one cannot ignore the State more than one can leave a primitive society. But the underlying constraints are different: the State forces you to buy its package of costs and benefits, even if you think you could fare better by yourself out of it. It may be that the cost-benefit ratio of the minimal State is, for everybody, lower than one; let's anyway assume that this kind of State can be justified in this manner. But as the State grows, there will come a point where one, two, ten, a hundred individuals will judge that the cost is not worth it. Since, in their own evaluation, they could establish profitable social relations out of the State (or form another State), these individuals are not oppressed by the group or by society, they are tyrannized by the State.
Although one can imagine stateless societies where social norms would be totalitarian,[2] it is usually only the State that can impose inescapable group power. At any rate, such is the case in a civilized and open society. For example, political correctness, persecution of smokers, or other forms of Puritanism could not ignite American society as they now do without the support of State laws and power. In other words, the State is a necessary condition for group power in any civilized society; it is more difficult to ignore part of the State than to ignore part of society. The State is society's more dangerous power, which is why the individualist sentiment is properly anti-State.
In our countries, individuals may, of course, leave one State to go and live under another. But their original State will often try to make this difficult, for instance by forcing them to renounce their citizenship, i.e., to make an irreversible decision. Moreover, as there is no place on earth without a State, as the whole world is a State cartel, one also has to find a State that will accept him. Each State claims a territorial monopoly, and will not allow one to leave it while remaining in local civil society. The State forbids one to stay where he is, on his own property, yet refuse the costs and benefits of the State. (If he tries, they will move him to another piece of property called "jail.") By legislating that somebody out of the group is, at best, nothing more than a tourist, the State literally defines the individual in terms of group membership.
Even if the State institutionalizes and enhances in some way an individual's identity, the individualist sentiment will clash with it as soon as his individual dignity is defined in terms of political arrangements.
Another way to reach the same conclusion on the anti-statism of the individualist sentiment is through the concept of personal responsibility, which can hardly be dissociated from individual dignity. Society as such does not diminish individual responsibility; indeed, it gives it new dimensions. The State, by its very nature, negates some individual responsibility, if only the responsibility of assuring his own protection; of course, the Welfare State goes much farther. Indeed the numbering of individuals by the State and other forms of State-defined identity are a consequence of denying individuals their own responsibility for taking care of their retirement or spending their own money. Insofar as individual dignity implies individual responsibility, negating the latter also negates the former. Consequently, the individualist sentiment will clash with the State, and the more powerful the State, the more violent the clash will be.
3. The decline of the individualist sentiment
I have defined the individualist sentiment as a concern for one's own personal dignity, individual independence and responsibility. One can characterize the individualist sentiment differently, for example by replacing individual independence and responsibility by an egoistic and narcissist concern for one's material comfort and security (related to the idea of "cocooning"). This sentiment, which we may call the "narcissist sentiment" to distinguish it from the individualist sentiment, is antisocial and not necessarily antistatist. It is closely related to the kind of individualism that Tocqueville feared and which, indeed, characterizes our epoch.[3] The narcissist sentiment is to statist individualism what the individualist sentiment is to libertarian individualism.
Some authors have claimed that the narcissist sentiment, by elevating individual achievements above collectivist ideals, actually works along with the individualist sentiment towards libertarian individualism.[4] This is far from obvious. The individualist narcissist has no objection to rely on, and be dependent upon, the State for his comfort and security. He will think, for instance, that the social security number enhances his narcissist identity. As a student of this phenomenon writes, "the police state is not only generated by the autonomous dynamics of the 'cold monster,' it is demanded by these now pacified and isolated individuals," and "the whole of society falls under state wardship."[5]
Historically, the distinction between narcissist individualism and the individualist sentiment parallels the one between American and European individualist values, although this distinction would require some qualifications. For the individualist sentiment accompanied the spread of libertarian-individualist ideas all across the modern Western world, but it certainly reached its highest summit in the American spirit and traditions. Benjamin Franklin, whom we are celebrating by holding this Junto meeting, can be quoted in this regard:
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.[6]
The difference between the true individualist sentiment and its narcissist version can also be illustrated with Henry David Thoreau's ideal to be a good neighbor and a bad subject. The narcissist individualists reverse the adjectives: they don't mind being bad neighbors and good subjects as long as it suits their interests.
During the 20th century, the individualist sentiment has certainly been on the wane, including in America of all places. Americans, who refused national ID, have now welcomed it under the guise of social security numbering. This decline has taken place at the same time as the narcissist sentiment was reaching its dominant position -- which confirms the latter's inconsistency with the individualist sentiment.
How then can we explain the decline of the individualist sentiment? One explanation has to do with the decline of religion.[7] The argument is not only that the Judeo-Christian tradition provided a theoretical basis for the claim of each person's own dignity, but also that the transcendental morals carried by religion is necessary for the maintenance of liberty and social order. There may be something true in this hypothesis, but I would argue that it is at best a partial truth. Not all religions or religious interpretations are individualistic. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century witch hunts were not exactly individualist undertakings. Moreover, many contemporary churches have adopted much of the advancing anti-individualist ethos. Furthermore, does the individualist sentiment come from religion, or could it not be the other way around? (Do we believe in eternal life because we believe in God, or is the converse?) Perhaps rationalism is a dead-end, but there is also something discomforting in the idea that blind faith is necessary for the preservation of individual liberty.
Another explanation, implicit in much contemporary discourse, is that the progress of civilization is naturally detrimental to the individualist sentiment. Civilization, the argument goes, implies social interdependence, peaceful relations, and increased state power, all of which contradict the individualist sentiment. I have argued that the individualist sentiment is not inconsistent with social interdependence. We could also invoke here Hayek's argument that, contrary to what Mussolini thought, individual liberty -- and hence the individualist sentiment -- is a necessary condition for social complexity, while State intervention undermines it.[8] Similarly, the history of the 20th century suggests that the State is much more dangerous to peace than the individualist sentiment.[9] The latter can hardly be opposed to civilization as it was a founding block of Western civilization.
Now, if we view the decline of the individualist sentiment as a consequence of the enlargement of the State, we would still have to explain why the former was unable to counteract the latter. Here, we have an interesting theory on how autonomous growth of the State automatically undermines the individualist sentiment -- the theory of the State as an addictive drug.
We must first admit that social conditions and norms have an influence on individual preferences. This, of course, is not the same as saying that society completely determines individual preferences. But it does negate the neoclassical assumption that individual preferences are given and immune to social phenomena (like persuasion or advertising). In other words, between the Marxist view of complete social determination of individual preferences and the neoclassical assumption that individual preferences do not change, we adopt an Austrian middle position where individual preferences are not given and may change in response to outside influences.
Following Michael Taylor, Anthony de Jasay has developed the theory of the addictive state in his seminal book, The State.[10] The idea is that the more the State intervenes to produce public goods or to provide assistance, the more indispensable it will appear. There are many reasons for this. State intervention will starve voluntary efforts -- for instance, private charity becomes less urgent when the Welfare State takes over, and entrepreneurship in insurance is thwarted by social security and social programs. Individuals will become used to counting on State assistance and will plan their affairs in view of expected help and entitlements. And State interference in delicate and complex social mechanisms will necessarily have unintended effects, which will call for further interventions -- like when the State kindly helps people who are unemployed because of labor laws.
Insofar as people's preferences change with experience and habits, State intervention will affect the individualist sentiment: reliance on the State will replace love of individual independence and responsibility, and individual dignity will be viewed as a function of State guarantees. A recursive phenomenon of State growth is generated: the more State you have, the more you want. The State is addictive -- and, we may add, much more dangerously than tobacco, alcohol or heroin.
As the individualist sentiment is, for a variety of reasons, stronger in certain persons than in others, not all individuals will become equally addicted to the State. As de Jasay notes, some will develop an allergic reaction instead: they will come to hate the State more and more violently. This would explain (although not necessarily justify) the psychology of, say, Randy Weaver or events like Oklahoma City: people with an individualist sentiment will end up fighting or blowing up things, even if they blow up the wrong things or do it for the wrong reasons.[11]
I have often wondered (especially when I was a member in good standing of the establishment) why individualists so often appear to be odd, strange, queer, eccentric people. Benjamin Constant lived an emotionally tortured life. Albert Jay Nock's friends joked that he lived in Central Park.[12] Lysander Spooner was too poor to marry the only woman of his life. Georges Palante marked his students' exams in the company of prostitutes, and he committed suicide in 1925. And Ayn Rand was not exactly the girl next door. All these individuals, except for Nock, died childless, a bad way to transmit their individualist genes if such things exist.[13] In a statist society, an allergy to the State is a pretty crippling disease -- which you would expect to be covered under the American with Disabilities Act, if the source of the allergy were not also the cause of the law. So it is not necessarily that one is an individualist because one is an eccentric, causality may run the other way around.
Although, for somebody trained as a neoclassical economist, ideology is even more difficult than sentiments to fit into social processes, I must say a word about how the egalitarian ideology has contributed to the demise of the individualist sentiment. Egalitarians want individuals to be made equal in some respects other than formal rights. Anthony de Jasay brilliantly demonstrated how equality in some respect (say, "equal pay for equal work") implies increased inequality in other respects ("to each according to his needs," for example). But State-imposed equality in any respect does always increase equality along one dimension, i.e., equality in submission to the State. This frontal attack on the individualist sentiment has probably been the main consequence of the egalitarian ideology.[14] Furthermore, when there is no restriction on the content of law, even equality under the law may lead to the same result. In a sense, the egalitarian ideology has produced not the abolition of slavery, but its extension to free men.
4. A little case study: the right to keep and bear arms
The demise of the right to keep and bear arms (albeit less pronounced in the US) provides an interesting case study of the individualist sentiment and its decline during our century. Contrary to what most people think, this was a generally recognized right in 19th-century Europe and most notably in England. Its two justifications, self-defense against common criminals and resistance to tyranny, were theoretically unquestioned and were natural implications of the individualist sentiment.[15]
Indeed, individual dignity requires the recognition of the right to keep and bear arms, as illustrated a contrario by US laws that negated it for the slaves.[16] There are circumstances when individual liberty is difficult to enforce without it. "For my own part," wrote Henry David Thoreau, "I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State."[17] Or, went the saying among the Russian Jews persecuted by the advancing Nazis, "A gun is a passport for the forest!"[18] As for individual responsibility, there is an insuperable contradiction between the mystique of the sovereign citizen on the one hand and, on the other hand, his real master not trusting him with arms. Logical consistency in this framework (although not libertarian principles) would, it seems to me, require that any citizen arriving at the poll booth should be frisked for firearms, for if he is not responsible enough to carry a revolver, he is certainly not wise enough to vote.
Now, this so obvious right to keep and bear arms has been more or less extinguished in most Western countries, and has been curtailed, sometimes severely, in the US. One official reason of state is that guns cause a net increase in crime since they are inefficient in self-defense. Such an excuse flies so obviously in the face of facts that other motives must be suspected. A second, implicit if not official, reason is that we don't need to resist tyranny anymore. Although this is contradicted by historical experience, we are probably getting closer to the true motives of the abolitionists and their supporters. I submit that the basic motive of State control of firearms is to give the shot of death to the individualist sentiment; and that the State has succeeded controlling firearms because the individualist sentiment was already dwarfed in the minds of the majority.
We can also observe here how the formal rule of law has contributed to undermining the individualist sentiment and helping the State grow. Once any equal law is recognized as legitimate, prohibiting something to individuals who are likely to use it unlawfully justifies regulating everybody. There are only two ways out of this absurdity: either abandon the idea of equality under the law, or accept that not all equal laws are legitimate. Insofar as it is widespread in society, the individualist sentiment would lead to the second alternative; otherwise, the minority of individualists may prefer the first one to equal slavery.
Conclusion
I have argued that individual liberty cannot survive without the individualist sentiment being shared by a large number of people. The individualist sentiment is compatible with society -- at least with an open society -- but in strong opposition to the State as we know it. And this sentiment has been declining (at least partly) because individuals have become addicted to the State.
If this is true, defending liberty requires rehabilitating the individualist sentiment and breaking State addiction, a tall order indeed -- like saying that a drug addict has to restore his confidence in himself and break his addiction. Where is the chicken and where is the egg? It may be that fulfilling the order will require (here or elsewhere) another American revolution, but this is another topic.
1. Georges Palante, La sensibilité individualiste (Paris: Alcan, 1909; Éditions Folle Avoine, 1990). See also Georges Palante, L'individualisme aristocratique, Edited by Michel Onfray (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1995). [Return to main text]
2. Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy and Liberty, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, 1982). [Return to main text]
3. Gilles Lipovetsky, L'ère du vide. Essais sur l'individualisme contemporain (Paris: Gallimard, 1983). [Return to main text]
4. Alain Laurent, Histoire de l'individualisme (Paris: PUF, 1993). [Return to main text]
5. Gilles Lipovetsky, op. cit ., p. 219. [Return to main text]
6. Suzy Platt, Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (Barnes & Noble, 1993), p. 201. [Return to main text]
7. Jane Shaw, "Faith and Freedom: Can liberty survive without religion", Liberty , January 1996, pp. 37-41. See also Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). [Return to main text]
8. Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945). [Return to main text]
9. See Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth (1945; Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1990. [Return to main text]
10. Anthony de Jasay, The State (London: Basil Blackwell, 1985), especially pp. 208-227. See also Michael Taylor, Anarchy and Cooperation (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1976). [Return to main text]
11. An interesting account of the sources of political violence is given in Randy Barnett, "Foreword: Guns, Militias, and Oklahoma City", Tennessee Law Review , Vol. 62, No. 3 (Spring 1995), pp. 443-449. [Return to main text]
12. Robert Thornton quotes Van Wyck Brooks as saying of Nock that "no one knew even where he lived, and a pleasantry in the office was that one could reach him by placing a letter under a certain rock in Central Park" - A Note to the Reader, in Albert Jay Nock, Cogitations (Irvington-on-Hudson: The Nockian Society, 1985), p. 10. [Return to main text]
13. If so, perhaps in the long run individuals with the right genes to accept continuous humiliation by the State will thrive and have large families of future social welfare recipients; while the sentimental individualists will be "socially misadapted" at best, and live "nasty, brutish and short" at worst. See Georges Palante on suicide in L'individualisme aristocratique , Edited by Michel Onfray (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1995, p. 42): "Or, si l'on pouvait faire une pareille enquête, elle révélerait probablement que l'individu a été beaucoup plus souvent conduit au suicide par le sentiment d'un lien social devenu intolérable que par un sentiment pénible d'isolement ou par un sentiment d'inquiétude dû à des liens sociaux devenus plus précaires." [Return to main text]
14. See Bertrand de Jouvenel, The Ethics of Redistribution (1952; Indianapolis, Liberty Press, 1990, p. 72): "The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State." [Return to main text]
15. See my Le droit de porter des armes (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1993); and, on the Anglo-American tradition, Joyce Malcolm's outstanding To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994). [Return to main text]
16. For example: "No slaves shall keep any arms whatever, nor pass, unless with written orders for his master or employer, or in his company, with arms from one place to another. Arms in possession of a slave contrary to this prohibition shall be forfeited to him who will seize them." (A Bill Concerning Slaves, Chapter 51, Virginia Assembly, 1779; in Albert Fried (Ed.), The Essential Jefferson (New York: Collier, 1963), p. 140. [Return to main text]
17. Henry David Thoreau, A duty of Civil Disobedience (1849), available at http://www.cs.indiana.edu/ statecraft/civ.dis.html.[Visited February 1996] [Return to main text]
18. Lester Eckman and Chaim Lazar, The Jewish Resistance: The History of the Jewish Partisans in Lithania and White Russia during the Nazi Occupation 1940-1945 (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1977), p. 117. [Return to main text]