Counterfeit Individualism



The theory of individualism is a central component of the Objectivist philosophy. Individualism is at once an ethical-political concept and an ethical-psychological one. As an ethical-political concept, individualism upholds the supremacy of individual rights, the principle that man is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others. As an ethical-psychological concept, individualism holds that man should think and judge independently, valuing nothing higher than the sovereignty of his intellect.
   The philosophical base and validation of individualism, as Ayn Rand has shown in Atlas Shrugged, is the fact that individualism, ethically, politically and psychologically, is an objective requirement of man’s proper survival, of man’s survival qua man, qua rational being. It is implicit in, and necessitated by, a code of ethics that holds man’s life as its standard of value.
   The advocacy of individualism as such is not new; what is new is the Objectivist validation of the theory of individualism and the definition of a consistent way to practice it.
   Too often, the ethical-political meaning of individualism is held to be: doing whatever one wishes, regardless of the rights of others. Writers such as Nietzsche and Max Stirner are sometimes quoted in support of this interpretation. Altruists and collectivists have an obvious vested interest in persuading men that such is the meaning of individualism, that the man who refuses to be sacrificed intends to sacrifice others.
   The contradiction in, and refutation of, such an interpretation of individualism is this: since the only rational base of individualism as an ethical principle is the requirements of man’s survival qua man, one man cannot claim the moral right to violate the rights of another. If he denies inviolate rights to other men, he cannot claim such rights for himself; he has rejected the base of rights. No one can claim the moral right to a contradiction.
   Individualism does not consist merely of rejecting the belief that man should live for the collective. A man who seeks escape from the responsibility of supporting his life by his own thought and effort, and wishes to survive by conquering, ruling and exploiting others, is not an individualist. An individualist is a man who lives for his own sake and by his own mind; he neither sacrifices himself to others nor sacrifices others to himself; he deals with men as a trader—not as a looter; as a Producer—not as an Attila.
   It is the recognition of this distinction that altruists and collectivists wish men to lose: the distinction between a trader and a looter, between a Producer and an Attila.
   If the meaning of individualism, in its ethical-political context, has been perverted and debased predominantly by its avowed antagonists, the meaning of individualism, in its ethical-psychological context, has been perverted and debased predominantly by its professed supporters: by those who wish to dissolve the distinction between an independent judgment and a subjective whim. These are the alleged “individualists” who equate individualism, not with independent thought, but with “independent feelings.” There are no such things as “independent feelings.” There is only an independent mind.
   An individualist is, first and foremost, a man of reason. It is upon the ability to think, upon his rational faculty, that man’s life depends; rationality is the precondition of independence and self-reliance. An “individualist” who is neither independent nor self-reliant, is a contradiction in terms; individualism and independence are logically inseparable. The basic independence of the individualist consists of his loyalty to his own mind: it is his perception of the facts of reality, his understanding, his judgment, that he refuses to sacrifice to the unproved assertions of others. That is the meaning of intellectual independence—and that is the essence of an individualist. He is dispassionately and intransigently fact-centered.
   Man needs knowledge in order to survive, and only reason can achieve it; men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason, can exist only as parasites on the thinking of others. And a parasite is not an individualist. The irrationalist, the whim-worshiper who regards knowledge and objectivity as “restrictions” on his freedom, the range-of-the-moment hedonist who acts on his private feelings, is not an individualist. The “independence” that an irrationalist seeks is independence from reality—like Dostoevsky’s Underground man who cries: “What do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason, I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four?”
   To the irrationalist, existence is merely a clash between his whims and the whims of others; the concept of an objective reality has no reality to him.
   Rebelliousness or unconventionality as such do not constitute proof of individualism. Just as individualism does not consist merely of rejecting collectivism, so it does not consist merely of the absence of conformity. A conformist is a man who declares, “It’s true because others believe it”—but an individualist is not a man who declares, “It’s true because I believe it.” An individualist declares, “I believe it because I see in reason that it’s true.”
   There is an incident in The Fountainhead that is worth recalling in this connection. In the chapter on the life and career of collectivist Ellsworth Toohey, Ayn Rand describes the various groups of writers and artists that Toohey organized: there was “... a woman who never used capitals in her books, and a man who never used commas ... and another who wrote poems that neither rhymed nor scanned ... There was a boy who used no canvas, but did something with bird cages and metronomes ... A few friends pointed out to Ellsworth Toohey that he seemed guilty of inconsistency; he was so deeply opposed to individualism, they said, and here were all these writers and artists of his, and every one of them was a rabid individualist. ‘Do you really think so?’ said Toohey, smiling blandly.”7
   What Toohey knew—and what students of Objectivism would do well to understand—is that such subjectivists, in their rebellion against “the tyranny of reality,” are less independent and more abjectly parasitical than the most commonplace Babbitt whom they profess to despise. They originate or create nothing; they are profoundly selfless—and they struggle to fill the void of the egos they do not possess, by means of the only form of “self-assertiveness” they recognize: defiance for the sake of defiance, irrationality for the sake of irrationality, destruction for the sake of destruction, whims for the sake of whims.
   A psychotic is scarcely likely to be accused of conformity; but neither a psychotic nor a subjectivist is an exponent of individualism.
   Observe the common denominator in the attempts to corrupt the meaning of individualism as an ethical-political concept and as an ethical-psychological concept: the attempt to divorce individualism from reason. But it is only in the context of reason and man’s needs as a rational being that the principle of individualism can be justified. Torn out of this context, any advocacy of “individualism” becomes as arbitrary and irrational as the advocacy of collectivism.
   This is the basis of Objectivism’s total opposition to any alleged “individualists” who attempt to equate individualism with subjectivism.
   And this is the basis of Objectivism’s total repudiation of any self-styled “Objectivists” who permit themselves to believe that any compromise, meeting ground or rapprochement is possible between Objectivism and that counterfeit individualism which consists of declaring: “It’s right because I feel it” or “It’s good because I want it” or “It’s true because I believe it.”