In praise of the individual

Their criticisms, however, take slightly different forms. The religious believer will describe individualism as selfishness, which leads to sins such as greed, murder, and fornication. The socialist criticises individualism as self-interest which undermines the collective good of the society. Where they totally agree is in asserting that the rights of the individual should not take precedence over the rights of the many. Put another way, the good of the society must always be placed before the good of the individual.

This seems like a morally irrefutable stance. Who can argue that what benefits the mass of people must have priority over what benefits a single person? But what sounds good in theory is often not good in practice – indeed, the historical experience of humankind suggests that, when it comes to politics, the better something sounds in theory the worse it usually is in practice. Consider the first collectivist political systems - theocracies. We had the priest-kings of the Aztecs, a society in which human sacrifice was an integral part of the social order; we had the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, with its torture of heretics, wars, and stifling of intellectual work; and nowadays we have the Islamic countries, with their stalled economies, inadequate education, and absence of civil rights. In the last century, we have also had the secular collectivist religions of fascism, Nazism, and Communism – all oppressive, economically inefficient, and murderous.

As the eminent historian Robert Conquest notes in his book The Dragons of Expectation, “The main general lesson of history, and especially of recent history, is that overriding control of society should not be in the hands of any economic or other stratum, nor in the hands of the state itself. Highly centralised and doctrinaire regimes have time and time again proved deeply destructive.” But the thick-skulled leftists have still not learnt this lesson, hence their high praise of Fidel Castro and Cuba – even as these self-same propagandists remain comfortably ensconced in the very capitalist countries they like to badtalk.

Such hypocrisy is typical of religious apologists and socialist ideologues. Even their characterisation of individualism is nothing but a caricature. Individual rights are not rights given to some hypothetically isolated person - indeed, the very concept of “rights” is dependent on a social contract. The assumption behind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is that unless the rights of the individual are made paramount, the collective good of the State will not be served. The leftist and religious apologists hold an opposing view, that unless the rights of the State (or religion) are made paramount, the good of the individual will not be served.

Deciding which view is correct is not difficult. The most prosperous and stable societies - those with the highest per capita GDPs, the lowest crime rates, the best education and health care systems – are all societies where the State respects the rights of the individual (and follows secular principles). Moreover, this political philosophy has not created a society full of rapacious, purely self-interested persons. On the contrary, these are societies where the average citizen is very aware of their social responsibilities. That makes perfect psychological sense, human beings are more likely to act responsibly in a system which respects them as individuals, rather than one which views them as clones in a collective. That is why the position of religious zealots - that homosexuality, pornography, abortion, evolution, and atheism will cause social collapse - is disproved by the facts. It is the societies which allow individuals to be different, once those differences do not trespass on other people’s rights, which are the most civilised and also the most happy.

As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen notes in his book Freedom as Development, “Freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means. Political freedoms (in the form of free speech and elections) help to promote economic security. Social opportunities (in the form of education and health facilities) facilitate economic participation. Economic facilities (in the form of opportunities for participation in trade and production) can help generate personal abundance as well as public resources for social facilities. Freedoms of different kinds can strengthen one another.”

And, in case you want to know how highly people value their individual freedoms, consider this, Adrian White, an analytical social psychologist at the University of Leicester, has carried out the first comprehensive survey of subjective well-being around the world – a happiness map.

“We were surprised to see countries in Asia scoring so low, with China 82nd, Japan 90th and India 125th,” said White. “These are countries that are thought as having a strong sense of collective identity which other researchers have associated with well-being.”

Of the 178 countries listed, Cuba was ranked 83rd – the lowest in the Caribbean region. The citizens of every other Caribbean country – including Guyana, Jamaica, Grenada, and TT – were all happier than the people living in Fidel’s socialist paradise.

E-mail: kbaldeosingh@hotmail.com

Website: www.caribscape.com/baldeosingh