Collectivism & individualism

Collectivism and individualism are two opposing answers to a simple question: what has precedence – the mass or the individual? At the Kyborg Institute we regard both soberly and take a clear, expressly subjective position on it.

Two terms – simply explained

By collectivism we understand – following Tobias Alke’s investigation in „Ausgewählte Perspektiven des Altruismus” (2017) – the general preferring of the interests of the majority over those of minorities and individuals. The individual is subordinated to the whole; if need be they are to be brought to it.

Individualism is the counter-perspective. It does recognise the community, but sets limits to its precedence and protects the individual from being simply sacrificed to “the whole”. This is no “everyone for themselves” – but the conviction that the good must happen voluntarily in order to be genuine.

Two models of order

Behind the pair of terms stand two very different conceptions of how human coexistence functions at all:

• The artificial order set from above. Its classical representative is Thomas Hobbes: he saw the human being as a born egoist who could only be held in check by an all-powerful sovereign – the “Leviathan”. Order is here imposed from outside.
• The natural, grown order. Its counter-image is a view in the tradition of Darwin and of sociobiology: the human being is, fundamentally, also a social, helpful being (see empathy). A viable order grows from within, out of the togetherness – it need not be compelled.

At the Kyborg Institute we stand on the side of the natural, grown order. Whoever holds people to be fundamentally bad needs compulsion; whoever takes their prosocial nature seriously can build on voluntariness.

Why we reject collective compulsion

The core of compulsion of collectivism we hold to be the wrong way – for three reasons that run right through the history of philosophy:

Comte. The sociologist Auguste Comte, who around 1851 coined the term “altruism”, bound it to the subjection of the individual to the will of the mass – to secure order, if need be with pressure and force. Whoever does not join the ruling value-conceptions voluntarily is to be compelled to it. It is precisely this line that leads – as Tobias Alke shows in his book – to modern models of “altruistic punishment”: prosociality that is compelled with punishment, instead of growing out of conviction. (More on the term and the state of research in the pillar altruism.)

Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche called the morality that demands self-sacrifice and subordination “slave morality”, and the mass that fights every deviation the “herd”. His critique makes conscious the collectivist power-structures that exert pressure behind a seemingly selfless façade (more on this under loving-kindness & altruism).

Laozi. Already 2,600 years ago Laozi put it in a nutshell – a thought that runs through the work of Harald Alke:

“The more the ethical order is lost, the more ordinances and laws are needed. The more ordinances are issued, the more the natural order falls apart.”

From our point of view there is a lasting experience in this: genuine values cannot be commanded. The more an ethics is lost from within, the more outer morality, rules and control take its place – and the more what would carry of its own accord is smothered.

But also no bare egoism

Whoever rejects collective compulsion is therefore no friend of a ruthless self-interest. On the contrary:

• Harald Alke sharply criticises, in „Die Ethik des Neuen Menschen”, the unscrupulous greed that goes at the cost of others – for instance where a power “is not primarily concerned to create something meaningful, but with control and power over people and states”. His standard is as simple as can be: “Do good, injure no one – not even yourself.”
• Tobias Alke criticises the economisation of helping: where helpfulness is thought of only as a cost factor and the human being only as a profit-maximising calculator, the interpersonal is lost. This too is a way of eroding the natural order.

Important: with this, competition is not excluded and egoism not demonised. A healthy self-interest – care for oneself, the representing of one’s own interests – is legitimate and a condition of our identity (see self-care). It only becomes problematic when it goes at the cost of others.

Our third way: voluntary and individual

Between collective compulsion and predatory egoism lies our actual position. Tobias Alke has condensed it into one sentence:

“The community stands no more above the individual than the individual above the community.”

Both are equally important. A human being is not worth more or less because they stand higher or lower in an order. From this equal rank there follows a third way: a voluntary, individually responsible prosociality – borne by an inner ethics and the awareness of responsibility, not by ordinance and punishment.

It shows itself concretely in the mutual giving and taking (reciprocity), in a community that strengthens us, and in lived loving-kindness – always voluntarily, never through pressure, guilt or fear. Understood in this way, individualism is no opposite of public spirit, but its precondition: only whoever begins with themselves and acts out of their own conviction contributes something that has permanence.

It is not the system, but maturity

A last, important thought – and from our point of view the decisive one. History suggests that every political system tends sooner or later to become encroaching: power attracts power, orders crust over, and the apparatuses begin to serve themselves instead of the people. The economist Mancur Olson described how mature societies become, over time, pervaded by coalitions of interest and distribution that paralyse the whole. No label – whether “left” or “right”, whether plan or market – is immune to it.

From this there follows for us a sober insight: there is no one right system that relieves us of maturity. The actual protection against encroachment is no better constitution and no better ruler, but the maturity and self-responsibility of people themselves. It is precisely this that is the arc back to the beginning: just as loving-kindness cannot be decreed, so too a free, just order cannot be compelled from above – it depends on whether individuals are ready to take responsibility and to act according to an inner ethics.

This is no ground for resignation, but an encouragement: whoever begins with themselves is not at the mercy of change. Maturity grows – in the individual as in a society.

Autoren: D. Harald Alke, Tobias O. R. Alke