The largest and most persistent problem for the human being since he/she first trod the earth has been survival, and the human species has not only survived, but flourished, by recognising the necessity for collective rather than individual behaviour. Human life is social life, and the human being is a social being. That is demonstrably correct and is what I would call a truism. Had the first human beings been motivated by an individualist impulse they would have assuredly perished, and I would not be writing this, nor would you be reading it. We can do so only because the human being is a socially cooperative being, and it was this facet of the human nature that secured their survival. That is not to dismiss the very selfish and self-centred aspects of human nature, but the demands of self-preservation ensure that it is in our own self-interest to cooperate with others and develop a division of labour in even the most basic of tasks, particularly those that form the basis of our security.
As a result, the dominant ideology of individualism that has been slowly poisoning and destroying our society for the past forty years, that formed the basis of Thatcher’s sinister claim that there is no such thing as society, is, in the first instance a denial of human nature. It is wrong and has no basis in any empirical analysis of the human condition. I do not personally believe that any serious thinker actually believes it. Thatcher and her minions were, as I have often said, well schooled but not at all well educated. To such people individualism is a mechanism, a means to an end; it is not a serious or even well informed philosophy. Indeed, from my perspective it is not a philosophy, it is a poison, both to the intellect and to society.
It is by adopting an individualist perspective that policy makers are able to label poverty and inequality as the result of life choices. If there is no society, then society cannot be responsible. There are only individuals and families according to the blessed Margaret, and so all problems are the result of individual and familial choices. There is no, nor can be, poverty and inequality resulting from class, race, ethnicity or gender etc., as these are socially constructed concepts and are therefore invalid as analytical explanations. You will begin to realise how stupid individualism really is the more you consider its implications, but, when it is embraced by governments and policy-makers, when it becomes institutionalised as a dominant ideology, it ceases to be comically stupid and becomes dangerously stupid. The individualist presents the human being as an essentially atomised individual whose only social reality is within a family structure and who does not relate to social institutions and structures which are regarded as something rather abstract and distanced from their everyday experiences; that in general, our social experience does not extend beyond the family and the types of neighbourly relationships that create types of voluntary associations. This approach is necessary if you propose attacking and discrediting our social structures and institutions and convincing people that they are dispensable and can be substituted by other arrangements that will perform their functions better and more efficiently. If they can be portrayed as somehow sitting outside of society and unrelated to everybody’s daily life, then they are indeed dispensable. Thus the whole of the Thatcher project was based on destroying Britain’s public sector, promoting the neoliberal agenda of privatisation and contracting out the services and functions of the major institutions that compose society such as health, education and welfare. By attacking, discrediting them, and denying their integral social centrality you can then justify their removal as a public service and utilise their necessary functions for profit. Her project involved a transfer of wealth and power upwards to a voracious and immoral elite and the reduction of the standard of living of working people as far as possible in order to enhance that same elite with levels of wealth that could never be justified or spent. It was however, a total denial of social reality.
It is for that reason that the British elite enthusiastically embraced the modern concepts of free market individualism and neoliberal economics, and it is crucial that we understand and establish the significance of the terms of reference that motivate economic theory and policy-making in order that we can have a clear understanding of why they have failed so spectacularly and caused so much social damage. However, as we cannot blame society for our failings because it doesn't exist, we must find scapegoats. Enter the EU and immigration, perfect! Thus, by adopting a whole series of false hypotheses, we are suffering from a whole series of disastrous conclusions for which we had to provide a whole series of false explanations, and a gullible British public lapped them up because they wanted to, with the exception of the more intelligent and civilised Celtic elements.
Fundamentally we are faced with the reality that the whole structural basis of modern Britain is founded on that series of false hypotheses, the most basic of those being the nature of the human being. I’m afraid that I have only touched on this topic, but hope it gives food for thought. Individualism must be confronted and challenged before it destroys the social fabric of life from the inside, because all serious and real solutions can only come from the perspective of the human being as a social being. You have been warned.
Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat
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