What Individualism Is Not. (2024 Edition)

A time-machine conversation with the great Frank Chodorov.

This essay by Frank Chodorov first appeared in the June 20, 1956, issue of National Review. Chodorov was also editor of The Freeman—a position I once held. As editor of that august publication, I imagined what it would be like to take a time machine back to 1956 and converse with Chodorov, perhaps to sit and share a nip or two of something stiff. Here is a playful approximation of that conversation. My part of the dialog will appear in italics like this.

The time machine hums to a stop. I step out.

Mr. Chodorov, thanks for sitting down with me. Let’s talk a bit about the fate of what was once called “liberalism.”

The bottle is now labeled libertarianism.

But its content is nothing new; it is what in the nineteenth century, and up to the time of Franklin Roosevelt, was called liberalism—the advocacy of limited government and a free economy. (If you think of it, you will see that there is a redundancy in this formula, for a government of limited powers would have little chance of interfering with the economy.)

It’s true. Interfering is one way of putting it. You wouldn’t believe it if you could see today’s level of interference—the debt spending, the corruption, the monetary distortions—it’s unsustainable. But very few people who advocate for limited government and a free economy are left. At the cusp of a collapse that will rival the Great Depression, more people are arguing about whether men can be women and women can be men.

So, what happened to liberalism and liberals?

The liberals were robbed of their time-honored name by the unprincipled socialists and near socialists, whose avidity for prestige words knows no bounds. So, forced to look for another and distinctive label for their philosophy, they came up with libertarianism—good enough but somewhat difficult for the tongue.

They might have done better by adopting the older and more meaningful name of individualism, but they bypassed it because it too had been more than sullied by its opponents. The smear technique of winning an argument is as old as argument. The mud with which individualism has been bespattered still hides its true character, and every so often new gobs are thrown at it by “scholars” who simply don't like it. Some of the modern traducers even affect the conservative title.

You are correct, sir—to this day. Today’s so-called liberals, who poached the name as you say, frequently join with conservatives in using libertarians as a scapegoat for everything that goes wrong. Both “sides” make up a power-sharing cartel and then blame libertarians for everything that has gone wrong, even though libertarians have never held power.

But, to be fair, libertarians have themselves to blame. They committed cultural suicide. You see, there has always been a set of splinter factions among them, but the two most vocal fractions were the Consequentialists and the Moralists. The consequentialist avoided talking about culture and values at all costs. The Moralists wanted to distill all morality into one axiom: The NAP, or “the non-aggression principle.” Imagine being a curious, open-minded person caught between these two at a party. (Let’s put it this way: no one was getting laid, much less being converted.)

Once these libertarians had done themselves in, this small tribe was divided and conquered. Many assimilated into today’s left and right, which may be unrecognizable to you now. But that’s a matter for another day.

The mudslinging started long ago, but the more recent and best-known orgy occurred in the early part of the century when the heaven-by-way-of-government muckrakers attached to individualism a value-impregnated adjective—rugged. The word itself has no moral content; when applied to a mountain it is purely descriptive, when applied to an athlete it carries a favorable connotation. But, in the literary usage of the muckrakers, it designated what in plain language would be called skulduggery. It has no more to do with a philosophy than has any form of indecent behavior.

Thus, the “rugged individualist” was the fellow who threatened to foreclose the mortgage on the old homestead if the fair damsel refused his hand in marriage; or he was the speculator who made use of the stock market to rob “widows and orphans”; or he was the fat and florid buccaneer who lavished diamonds on his ladylove. He was, in short, a fellow whose conscience presented no obstacle to his inclination to grab a dollar, and who recognized no code of ethics that might curb his appetites. If there is any difference between an ordinary thief and a rugged individualist, it is in the fact that the latter almost always keeps within the letter of the law, even if he has to rewrite the law to do so.

Weirdly, Mr. Chodorov, this rugged individualism sticker is still being slapped on people, ironally by the most selfish people of all. These are folks who call government authorities ‘community’ and outsource their responsibilities to those authorities. They never mention that the original individualists used to look out for each other, as with barn raisings and mutual aid. The New Individualist wants to take out $120,000 in loans for college and insist that those who never attended college pay them off. When hard-working souls who paid off their loans protest? The New Individualist hurls insults like monkey feces, “rugged individualist” being the least offensive among them.

To the socialist, of course, intellectual integrity is excess baggage, even as morality is excess baggage to the rugged individualist. If the word rugged could confound the opposition, why not use it to the full? The fact that individualism, as a philosophy, looks upon the state with a jaundiced eye would hardly deter the socialist (to whom the state is the all in all) from equating individualism with the manipulation of the state in the interest of the rich. Rugged individualism was a propaganda phrase of the first order. It was most useful in bringing the soak-the-rich urgency to a boiling point.

Yessir, that’s still true.

The phrase gained currency at the time when the leveling mania was fighting its way into the American tradition, before the government, making full use of the new power it had acquired under the income tax law, took hold of the individual by the scruff of the neck and made a mass-man out of him. It is an odd fact that the socialist is quite in agreement with the rugged individualist in advocating the use of political force to achieve one's “good”; the difference between them is only in determining the incidence, or the recipient, of government-given “good.”

It is doubtful whether the robber barons (a synonym for rugged individualists) ever used the government, before the income tax, with anything like the vigor and success of the socialists. At any rate, the stigma of ruggedness has stuck, so that the collectivist “intellectuals,” who ought to know better, are unaware of the difference between thievery and individualism.

—Sorry to interrupt. But do you remember a minute ago when I said you probably wouldn’t recognize the left or right? Well, you put your finger on the matter. Both are collectivists when it comes to the matter of thievery.

The left is still composed almost entirely of thieves. But they’re not just interested in stealing resources from people and our future (debt spending). These days, they want to steal positions and offices from people based on considerations of identity—sex, race, and so on. Imagine a world, Mr. Chodorov, where merit has almost nothing to do with a position or office. Instead, you are installed to satisfy an identitarian quota.

Baffling, ain’t it?

The right—after decades of sidling up to the military-industrial complex—has gone full populist. They’ll talk a big game about freedom, but most of them have embraced an “America First” agenda, forgetting that America is made up of individuals. So, while they are correct that authorities should prioritize public expenditures on behalf of those forced to pay them, you don’t hear them talking very much about doing away with all the destructive socialist redistribution systems or grotesque military expenditures. It’s just that all of these expenditures—despite record debt—ought to go to “America” and Americans. It’s still collectivism. At least this right still believes in free speech. (I think.)

The besmirching of individualism, however, had a good start before the modern era. The original defamers were not socialists but solid proponents of status, the upholders of special privilege, the mercantilists of the nineteenth century. Their opposition stemmed in part from the fact that individualism leaned heavily on the burgeoning doctrine of the free market, of laissez-faire economics, and as such presented a challenge to their preferred position. So they dug into the age-old bag of semantics and came up with two smear words: selfish and materialistic. Just like the later socialists, they had no compunction about twisting the truth to suit their argument.

Whoa boy. Still the case. And mercantilism has come back with a vengeance! The right started it with all manner of protectionist policies. But the left doubled down on most of them, not to be outdone. So, both parties are now both protectionist and redistributionist. Nobody is setting out a vision of individualism and communitarianism. So, we have two rival mobs fighting over the same territory in a great, unsustainable protection racket.

Laissez-faire—that is to say, an economy free of political interventions and subventions—holds that the instinct of self-interest is the motive power of productive effort. Nothing is produced except by human labor, and labor is something the human being is most parsimonious about; if he could satisfy his desires without effort, he would gladly dispense with it. That is why he invents labor-saving devices. But he is so constituted that every gratification gives rise to new desire, which he proceeds to satisfy by investing the labor he saved. He is insatiable.

The log cabin that was palace enough in the wilderness seems quite inadequate as soon as the pioneer accumulates a surplus of necessaries, and then he begins to dream of curtains and pictures, inside plumbing, a school or a church, to say nothing of baseball or Beethoven. Self-interest overcomes his aversion to labor in his constant drive to improve his circumstances and widen his horizon. If the individual is not interfered with in the enjoyment of the products of his labor, his property, he will multiply his productive efforts and there will be a general abundance for the benefit of society as a whole.

Gosh, Mr. Chodorov, would that it were so, today. What’s happened, though, is people figured out that, instead of producing, saving labor, and saving seedcorn, they can vote themselves goodies—pictures, plumbing, and schools. Once they did, they never looked back. The rise of the welfare-warfare state broke that vital yoking of freedom to personal responsibility and pulled the agentic individual out of her community. I know. Freedom is nothing without responsibility. Individualism is nothing without community. “Liberals” or “libertarians,” of course, have always known this. But instead of fighting for this, they went around talking about “free markets” or bludgeoning people with the NAP. Of course, we agree that free people in entrepreneurial markets create prosperity. And I think we agree that people should not initiate violence. But this is not the Alpha and Omega of discourse. So nobody gives a crap about what libertarians have to say.

It is in the free market that self-interest finds its finest expression; that is a cardinal point in individualism. If the market is regularly raided, by robbers or the government, and the safety of property is impaired, the individual loses interest in production, and the abundance of things men live by shrinks. Hence, it is for the good of society that self-interest in the economic sphere be allowed to operate without hindrance.

Look, as I said, I agree. The trouble is, people got tired of hearing that message. Then, they got distracted by wars and tempted by welfare. Then, they forgot the message entirely. I don’t know whether it makes sense to resuscitate that conversation. It will probably take a collapse to make it relevant in an era where people are obsessed with who’s dating whom, who's showing up at sporting events, and who's getting welfare (foreigners or citizens). America has become a society of spectacles, amusements, and goodies. The powerful can act with impunity as we stare at our Instagram feeds and get the latest news about teens sterilizing themselves to change genders. (Crazy huh?)

But self-interest is not selfishness. Self-interest will impel the manufacturer to improve upon his output so as to attract trade, while selfishness will prompt him to seek the special privileges and state favor that, in the end, destroy the very system of economic freedom on which he depends. The worker who tries to improve his lot by rendering better service could hardly be called selfish; the description rather fits the worker who demands that he be paid for not working. The subsidy seeker is selfish, and so is every citizen who uses the law to enrich himself at the expense of other citizens.

You have just summed up the nature of our economy, apart from a few enormous technology companies that the government uses to censor and surveil us.

Then there is the charge of “materialism.” Laissez-faire, of course, rests its case on abundance; if people want lots of things, the way to get them is through freedom of production and exchange. In that respect, it could be called “materialistic.” But, the laissez-faire economist as economist does not question or evaluate men's desires; he has no opinion on the “ought” or “should” of their aspirations. Whether they prefer culture to gadgets, or put a higher value on ostentation than on spiritual matters, is not his concern; the free market, he insists, is mechanistic and amoral. If one's preference is leisure, for instance, it is through abundance that his desire can be best satisfied; for an abundance of things makes them cheaper, easier to get, and thus one is enabled to indulge a liking for vacations. And a concert is probably better enjoyed by a well-fed aesthete than by a hungry one. At any rate, the economist refuses to pass judgment on men's preferences; whatever they want, they will get more of it out of a free market than one commandeered by policemen.

But the critics of the nineteenth century blithely passed over this point, even as modern socialists ignore it. They insisted on attaching moral content to the free economy; it is a philosophy, they asserted, that puts a premium on things, rather than on cultural and spiritual values. Its emphasis on abundance is materialistic and the ultimate outcome of a free economy is a society devoid of appreciation for the finer things in life.

Correct, sir. People are drawn to their empty amusements but are also starting to feel aesthetic, spiritual, and philosophical anemia. Such nourishment must be paid for, too. That’s not materialism, that’s reality. Every minute you meditate or ponder the universe is a minute you aren’t doing something else. Everything has a cost. Most people are trained to avoid paying such costs, today.

I suspect that you and I share a belief that real community—people looking after each other in our shared interests and shared needs—is a source of spiritual nourishment. But the real selfish materialists decided the government should do everything. So more resources go off to distant capitals. With what is left, we pay our smartphone bills and stare at our devices, compounding the anemia. (This is a smartphone. Cool, huh?)

Returning to the defamation of individualism, another value-laden word that was, and still is, hurled at it is hedonism. (At least one modern writer, who maintains that a Christian cannot be an individualist, seems to be championing this nineteenth-century criticism.) The label stems from the fact that a number of self-styled individualists and disciples of Adam Smith associated themselves with an ethical creed known as utilitarianism; the most famous are Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, and John Stuart Mill.

The basic tenet of this creed is that man is constitutionally driven to avoid pain and to seek pleasure. Hence, in the nature of things, the only morally good conduct is that which favors this pursuit. But, a problem of definition arises, since what is pleasure for a philosopher might be pain for the moron. Bentham, founder of the school, who was more interested in legislation than in philosophy, solved the problem nicely by drawing up a coarse calculus of pleasure; and then he enunciated a principle of legislation based on it: that is morally good which promotes the greatest good for the greatest number.

Ah, yes, this debate rages on. And so does utilitarian thinking. The policy think tanks love all this, so, of course, they are ignored. They throw their Consequentialist whitepapers over the moat at the special interests in Washington. They won’t dare craft something so ennobling as the Declaration of Independence of the Rights of Man. But the special interests have no interest in policy consequences—i.e., utilitarian welfare, much less the “General Welfare.” They are interested in the welfare of their clients and belly up to the Great Trough. Given this reality, it’s a wonder the policy think tanks are still in business.

Coming from an avowed opponent of privilege and an advocate of limited government, this do-gooding doctrine is a strange anomaly. If the moral measure of legislation is the greatest good for the greatest number, it follows that the good of the minority, even a minority of one, is immoral. That would hardly accord with the basic tenet of individualism that man is endowed with rights, which the majority may not tamper with. This contradiction bothered Mill (whose essay On Liberty is high dogma in the individualist's creed) no end; his doctrine of freedom of thought and expression was hardly consistent with the majoritarianism of Bentham. In this philosophic conflict, his loyalty to his father (Bentham's closest associate) and to Bentham won out, and in the event, he was logically driven to a qualified endorsement of socialism. Without intending to, he demonstrated the incompatibility of utilitarianism and individualism.

Neo-socialists are not all unaware of the fact that utilitarianism plays into their hands. Nevertheless, when discussion gives way to epithet-throwing, individualism is still denounced as “hedonism.”

If I were going to open up some academic discussion on the conflict between rights-based theories, utilitarian theories, and virtue ethics, I’d want to talk about how they can be synthesized into a threefold braid. We’d need a pragmatic set of protocols for how to reconcile these when they conflict. Alas, these academic debates are sadly useless. We’re better off using metaphors to talk about the current state of affairs.

The Powerful think of the People as herds to be prodded this way or that for ends beyond their kin. The People still, quite shockingly, think of the Powerful as stewards of the public trust, though this illusion is finally starting to fade. Some among the herds are starting to go feral, so the powerful are starting to erect and electrify fences so as to maintain a national Skinner Box.

Be a good girl and push the lever? Get the pellet.
Be a bad boy and try something else? Get the zap.

If individualism is not what its detractors call it, what is it? That is a reasonable question to ask, but a more difficult one to answer, simply because, as a pattern of thought, it has engaged many minds over the ages, and has thus acquired a number of facets; philosophy knows no “party line.” Yet, it is possible and permissible to summarize in a single paragraph the principal tenets of individualism, or those which its modern votaries are in some agreement upon.

Metaphysically, individualism holds that the person is unique, not a sample of the mass, owing his peculiar composition and his allegiance to his Creator, not his environment. Because of his origin and existence, he is endowed with inalienable rights, which it is the duty of all others to respect, even as it is his duty to respect theirs; among these rights are life, liberty, and property.

You’re going Lockean here at the end? You are in 1956. The trouble is, talk of a Creator and you or me as a unique creation never did much good, whatever your “metaphysics.” The powerful worship different gods, and they are still happy to play the part of Pharaoh. So, for decades, most people—even if they claim to be Christian, Jewish, or Muslim—still worship in the Church of State.

Following from this premise, society has no warrant for invading these rights, even under the pretext of improving his circumstances; and government can render him no service other than that of protecting him against his fellow man in the enjoyment of these rights. In the field of economics (with which libertarians are rightly concerned because it is there that government begins its infringement), the government has no competence; and the best it can do is to maintain a condition of order, so that the individual may carry on his business with the assurance that he will keep what he produces.

That is all.

I’m sorry to report, Mr. Chodorov, that—today—good economics is ignored, individualism is still a term of derision, and libertarianism is dead. Thank you for all that you did to try to save us. Unfortunately, things aren’t looking so good. I have to return to my own time, now, but it was great talking to you.