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CHAPTER 4
KEY CONCEPT COLLECTIVISM
Mikhail Bakunin (see p. 111) and other anarchists used collectivism to refer to self-governing associations of free individuals. Others have treated collectivism as strictly the opposite of individualism (see p. 24), holding that it implies that collective interests should prevail over individual ones. It is also sometimes linked to the state as the mechanism through which collective interests are upheld, suggesting that the growth of state responsibilities marks the advance of collectivism.
Collectivism is, broadly, the belief that collective human endeavour is of greater practical and moral value than individual self-striving. It thus reflects the idea that human nature has a social core, and implies that social groups, whether ‘classes’, ‘nations’, ‘races’ or whatever, are meaningful political entities. However, the term is used with little consistency.
In the West, however, the social dimension of life has had to be ‘reclaimed’ after generations of industrial capitalism. This was the goal of nineteenth-century utopian socialists such as Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, who organized experiments in communal living. Fourier encouraged the founding of model communities, each containing about 1,800 members, which he called ‘phalansteries’. Owen also set up a number of experimental communities, the best known being New Harmony in Indiana, 1824–9. The most enduring communitarian experiment has been the kibbutz system in Israel, which consists of a system of cooperative, usually rural, settlements that are collectively owned and run by their members. However, the communitarian emphasis of the kibbutz system has been substantially diluted since the 1960s by, for instance, the abandonment of collective child rearing.
KEY FIGURE
ROBERT OWEN (1771–1858) A British socialist, industrialist and pioneer of the cooperative movement, Owen’s A New View of Society (1816) envisaged a transformation in human nature consequent on a change in its environment, suggesting that progress requires the construction of a ‘rational system of society’. Owen advanced a moral indictment of market capitalism, which he proposed should be replaced with a society based on small-scale cooperative communities in which property would be communally owned and essential goods freely distributed.
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Cooperation If human beings are social animals, socialists believe that the natural relationship among them is one of cooperation rather than competition. Socialists believe that competition pits one individual against another, encouraging each of them to deny or ignore their social nature rather than embrace it. As a result, competition fosters only a limited range of social attributes and, instead, promotes selfishness and aggression. Cooperation, on
the other hand, makes moral and economic sense. Individuals who work together rather than against each other develop bonds of sympathy, caring and affection. Furthermore, the energies of the community rather than those of the single individual can be harnessed. Peter Kropotkin (see p. 113),
Cooperation: Working together; collective effort intended to achieve mutual benefit.
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