The Politics of Individualism

Bill Vallicella is an individualist:

1. The individual is the locus of being and value. As important as groups and institutions are, they exist for the sake of the individual and his flourishing and not vice versa. We need groups and institutions to socialize us, thereby lifting us from the plane of the merely animal; but the true task is one of self-individuation.

I agree with that, as should be clear from my previous post. But what I find interesting (and a little strange) is that BV uses this individualism as the basis of his conservatism. He continues:

2. Accept #1, and you cannot be a liberal in the current acceptation of this term. Contemporary liberalism is scarcely distinguishable from socialism, which of course implies the subordination of the individual to the collective and the curtailment of the individual's liberty...

3. An economic corollary of #1 is that the money people earn belongs to them and not to the government. The individual does not have to justify his keeping of his money; the government has to justify its taking of it. Inequalities of wealth are inevitable because people have different levels of ability and make different uses of the abilities they possess in accordance with their free choices. There is nothing wrong with inequality as such.

But neither #2 nor #3 follow from #1. They might follow from a very different sense of 'individualism', understood not as a metaethical claim about the 'locus of value', but rather, a first-order claim of ethical egoism:

(1a) The appropriate focus of an individual's concern is on their own welfare, rather than that of others. We need other people to help bring about our own flourishing, but they only matter insofar as they benefit the self. The welfare of others need not concern one.

Now, I can certainly see how this abhorrent principle could be conducive to conservatism. But it should be clear that the individualism in #1 bears no logical connection to the egoism of (1a). If anything, I would argue that recognising the value inherent in each individual should lead one to reject egoism. After all, egoism fails to recognise the value of all those individuals other than yourself!

This brings us to BV's claim that liberalism effectively involves "the subordination of the individual to the collective and the curtailment of the individual's liberty".

Before I offer a substantive response, allow me a brief partisan rant: How are liberals curtailing individual liberties? We're the ones who favour civil liberties, remember? It's conservatives who favour imprisoning people without trial and shipping them off to Syria to be tortured. And it's conservatives who oppose homosexuality and voluntary euthanasia, and keep butting their "morally superior" noses into other people's private lives. [End rant. Ah... that feels much better!]

Perhaps BV was thinking of issues like gun control, where liberals tend to think that restricting individuals' abilities to harm others will make everyone better off. Is this ideal somehow antithetical to the individualism of #1? Quite the opposite, I would have thought. We take protective measures to help prevent harms to individuals precisely because we value their well-being! (Whether gun control is actually the best way to achieve this is a separate question.) As the prisoner's dilemma shows, sometimes the best results for individuals can only be obtained through collective means, where each gives up some contribution for the common good.

So there's no necessary connection between #1 and the thin 'formal' freedom venerated by conservatives and libertarians alike. But I do think it is supportive of the more substantive freedom advocated by liberals. Insofar as we recognise the value of individual persons, we should also recognise the importance of enabling them to achieve their goals and live a flourishing life.

This brings us to #3, where BV claims that individualism precludes economic redistribution. This claim is misguided. Now, I agree with him that there is nothing intrinsically bad about inequality. What is bad is the suffering of individuals who live in poverty and lack the options that are open to the rest of us. Redistribution of resources might help improve the lives of those less fortunate individuals, at relatively insignificant cost for those already living in luxury.

So I take individualism (i.e. the claim that the individual is the locus of value) as the basis for my liberalism. Contrary to BV's assertions, I don't think it supports conservatism at all. His arguments only go through on an equivocation between the 'individualism' of #1 with that of (1a), i.e. egoism.