Is Individualism Inevitable?

What if Marx’s idea of a teleological flow of history toward socialism is not only wrong, but reversed? What if, to the contrary of his theory, the history of human political systems actually forms a trend toward individualism, not collectivism? A closer analysis of any model of statism will demonstrate that most of them are extraordinarily inefficient and outdated. I have long heard the common argument that humans want to be led, that they desire for a strong and powerful leader who would instruct them what to do. Although the latter observation is true, the following question of whether or not that will be the case in the future is very much worth asking.

Indeed, much of early human history was plagued by god-kings, tyrants and czars with nearly unlimited, often divinely warranted political power. Even before the formation of these structures, tribes and clans often had supernatural shamans or chiefs who singlehandedly ruled their village or were ruled by primitive religions with totalitarian tendencies. Because of this, the freedom of an individual in early human history was severely limited either by the physical presence of the intruding state, or by the presence of oppressive religious tendencies that often sought human sacrifice, genital mutilation, and torture.

If we follow the historical development of human history, it becomes clear that alongside the growth of wisdom, experience  and human intelligence is a liberation of the individual from statist tendencies. Tyrannies, God-Kings, and Czars gave way to democratic and republican governments. However, even those were not entirely free from the statist elements. The brave democratic experiment of the Greeks, for example, was an extraordinary advancement of political theory at its time; but even it was severely restricted by the authoritarian religious element that still persisted in its culture, and the surrounding states that were still largely totalitarian. Therefore, the experiment was limited both internally and externally, leading to its inevitable isolation and collapse.

The Greeks were just a bit too early.

Consequently, the crucial point of my theory is in the hypothesis that the trend toward individualism is, in many ways, inevitable. As human beings get more intelligent and experienced, they will shed the need for powerful supervising state and empower the individual with a greater degree of self-management and liberty. The second step to this process would be the deterioration of the need for religious guidance and supervision. It is important to underscore that both of these changes have to happen genuinely, and that a mere replacement of religious statism with government statism or vice versa doesn’t free the individual in any way.

The Soviet project of the “perfect democracy,” for example, only managed to abolish the power of the Russian Orthodox Church and place it in the hands of the Communist Party. In the following articles, I will continue to explore this theory and address possible arguments against it.