Over the decades I have tried to show in numerous works as well as talks that individuals have basic rights, including to (private) property, just as John Locke and many of the American founders held. For these thinkers and political activists, this right constituted a bulwark against tyranny of any kind, be it of one person or millions. For a human being it is vital to have a sphere of full authority, of sovereignty, whereby one can govern one’s life, determine how one will act, what one will devote one’s life to, where and whom one will worship, what opinions one will express, what industry one will undertake, with whom one will associate and trade freely. These are requirements of the morally significant life!
This kind of thinking was deemed fundamental to respecting everyone’s humanity, the capacity to think and act by one’s own judgment, including choosing with whom one will join in various endeavors.
This kind of thinking flies in the face of many other thinkers who believe that individuals either don’t even exist or are the property of some group. The most blatant recent example of this way of understanding human social life came from east Germany whose officials justified shooting those who tried to escape over the Berlin Wall by claiming that they were stealing themselves from the country. In short, East Germans were deemed, by the country’s communists, to belong to the state, to be a cell in the organism of East Germany.
Milder versions of this idea prevail everywhere, including in many Western countries. In the United States of America, too, it is the notion that the majority may conscript the minority to its ends never mind what the minority has in mind doing. For example, how is it justified that the American government may expropriate the wealth of millions so as to bail out some others when they ask for support, even when the millions would refuse to provide this help (for a variety of reason, some good some not so good but all justly held)? Well, the minority belongs to the country as a whole and those who take themselves to rightfully represent everyone claim to be authorized to make such decisions, never mind those who disagree.
Quite apart from the fact that this is often an excuse for some people lording it over others who disagree with them, the idea is a serious fallacy because we are really individuals, first and foremost, and our consent is required to become members of groups, including of entire societies. Conscripting people to a society is a violation of their humanity as choosing, thinking, free agents. Yes, this runs up against the traditions of many societies in which for centuries some have managed to rule others with only ineffectual opposition, at least until the American Revolution. And, of course, revolutions are never quite done with after the fighting has stopped. Many remain, for example, who are still captive to the habit of tribal, collectivist thinking.
And there are some legitimate issues to sort out, as well, as for instance just how much human beings are social and how much they are independent individuals. No one is an island unto himself but neither does anyone belong to others, as slaves were believed to belong to their masters. And that is true whether the others are posing as lord and masters individually, on their own, or they unite with millions of people and then make this claim together. The claim is a false one in any case. But millions have lived in denial of it and millions still have the resulting habit of thinking of themselves as “cells in the body of society.”
Yes, of course, people are naturally bound to one another but not without first giving their consent, without retaining the exit option so no one may use them against their will. All that talk about “the people,” “das Volk,” “Society,” “Humanity,” and the like may give the impression that these refer to some being with a will of its own—“society says,” “the people’s will,” “humanity’s goal,” “the common interest,” etc.—in point of fact these are just linguistic short-cuts, as when we say “that car ran into me,” when of course it was the driver who did that!
In the name of these collectives grave crimes have been committed throughout history, especially in the 20th century, yet with the leadership of some very clever minds who are either misguided or malicious, these ideas continue being propounded. Right now, when people are panicked, they often fail to see through the malfeasance perpetrated by way of these ideas. And in our day, when so many millions are kept out of decisions bearing on public policy, democracy looks good enough to many and this is exploited and used to deny millions the self-governance to which they are by natural right entitled.
Yes, democracy is an advance over dictatorship but it can become a dictatorial device, too, unless contained by firm constitutional principles that affirm the rights of individuals. The implications of this are, of course, revolutionary but nonetheless true.
January 9, 2009
We are delighted to present Lessons in Freedom, essays by Dr. Tibor Machan, for your pleasure.
Dr. Machan holds the R. C. Hoiles Chair in Business Ethics & Free Enterprise at Chapman University's Argyros School of B&E and is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University, CA).
Visit his web site here...
