ThePolity.net

This is the second part of a piece started in this post.

Private individualism’s third inclination is to define freedom in individual rather than collective terms.  Freedom is commonly considered a, if not the cardinal American value.  Contrary to political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville’s early sense that Americans value their equality more than their freedom, it seems fairer to argue at least for contemporary Americans that they value their freedom more than equality.  But whereas Tocqueville spoke of political liberty, contemporary Americans like my interviewees have a very different meaning of liberty in mind.  Given its cardinal value, the meanings Americans ascribe to freedom have enormous implications for whether or not freedom advances or undermines citizen engagement and democracy.  For this reason, I asked my interviewees to tell me what freedom means to them.  In one of the questions I posed to them, I presented them with four definitions, and asked them to choose their favorite, then explain their choice.  The question I posed went precisely as follows:

Which of the following definitions of freedom better expresses your understanding of what freedom means?

1. My ability to be what I can be, to develop myself to my fullest potential.
2. My ability to do what I want so long as I don’t interfere with others.
3. My voluntary submission to the common good of my community.
4. A group’s ability to govern themselves as a group, to together determine the conditions of their group life.

There is abundant scholarship on freedom, and those scholars who study freedom are well aware of the body of thinkers who have advanced collective rather than individual conceptions of freedom, including such disparate figures as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Karl Marx.  Countless liberal thinkers have, rightly or wrongly, expressed concern if not horror at the implications, theoretical or actual, of collective conceptions of freedom such as those of Rousseau and Marx (e.g., concerns for minority rights, private property, individual privacy).  Yet at their debatable best, many collective notions of freedom simply, basically insist that freedom entails collective self-government, and social self-development.¹ Nonetheless, whether or not academics who study freedom embrace or reject collective freedom, it is, as noted, a familiar concept to them.  The same, however, cannot be said for my interviewees.

Presented with the four choices above – the first two individual, the second two collective – the thirty-four young American professionals from whom I solicited answers overwhelmingly chose the first two answer choices:

• Half (17 interviewees) chose “my ability…to develop myself to my fullest potential.”
• Thirty-eight percent (13) chose “my ability to do what I want.”
• Nine percent (3) chose “a group’s ability to govern themselves.” ²
• Only one interviewee chose “my voluntary submission to the common good.”

Interestingly, those who chose one or the other individual definition of freedom typically gave the same or similar reason for not choosing the other individual definition: that the other definition lacked consideration for others.  Yet while my respondents generally agreed that one should take others into consideration, consideration meant making sure that one’s freedom did not step on another’s freedom.  Just as importantly, in explaining why they eschewed the collective definitions, most of my respondents indicated that they found the collective definitions alien, problematic, or hopelessly idealistic.  In the third definition, many fingered the word “submission” as alien to freedom.  As Bernard told me, “voluntary submission [pause], I don’t think that’s a definition of freedom. That has nothing to do with freedom.  If I’m only free to do what other people want me to do, then how exactly does that make me free?”  In rejecting the two collective definitions, their answers were remarkably uniform.  Corey’s rejection of the fourth definition is representative:

To me that’s not freedom.  That’s something that in practice happens within a democracy or it happens within a republic or whatever it is we have.  But when I think of freedom I don’t think of gathering together and deciding that our group will do this.  To me that makes it sound as if, let’s get together and decide what our beliefs will be, what we wear, who we live with, what we do with our families behind closed doors.  That’s not freedom.  That’s group dynamics….That’s like cultish to me.  It sounds very cultish.  And cults to me are almost the opposite of freedom. I mean, that’s a group making the decisions over what you do, rather than you.

If the two collective definitions of freedom were not “cultish,” they were “too idealistic,” “too utopian,” “unrealistic,” “communist,” “too commune living,” “tree-huggish,” “too textbook-y sociology,” “robotic,” “a sheep kind of thing,” or “1984-ish.”  In explaining why they found these two collective definitions unrealistic and/or oppressive, my respondents all followed the same cultural current to a single answer: it is difficult if not impossible to get different individuals to agree on a common project, and so any agreement inevitably involves compromise and/or the subjugation of dissenters, both of which may be “necessary evils,” but evils nonetheless.

On the other hand, many of my respondents expressed confidence that while some people on their own would choose sloth or vice, most would exercise their individual freedom in ways beneficial to others, or at least not harmful to others.  Furthermore, many of my respondents identified one or the other collective definition as democracy, not freedom.  As Patricia told me in response to the fourth definition: “I think to me that describes democracy.  I don’t necessarily think that describes freedom….I don’t know exactly what my definition of democracy would be, but that would probably be closer to democracy than freedom for me.  Freedom is different than that.”  Thus, one after another, my interviewees defined freedom as individual, democracy as collective, and/or collectives as oppressive or unrealistic.  Accordingly, if freedom is a, or the cardinal American value, it is independent from, if not antithetical to democracy.

Taken together, these three inclinations of private individualism – to make political decisions privately, to engage in politics alone or within one’s small private circle of friends and family, and to define freedom as individual – undermine democracy as a collective enterprise.

Next: “Go for it!” Self-Determining Individualism, the Language of Choice, and Political Disengagement.

Notes:

¹On freedom as collective self-government, Rousseau – like Plato, Aristotle, Tocqueville, and others – differentiates liberty from license (i.e., being able to whatever one wants, sometimes with the restriction “so long as one doesn’t affect others”) and ties liberty to obedience to one’s own law. In society, and especially in Rousseau’s social contract, or Tocqueville’s free democratic society, individuals obey a collective law each has a hand in making. On social self-development, Marx in The German Ideology, for instance, insists that “[o]nly in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in the community, therefore, is personal freedom possible” (Tucker 1978: 197).

²It is worth noting that there was a sizeable gender difference in response to this question: 10 of the 16 women (63%) who answered this question chose “my ability…to develop myself to my fullest potential” versus 7 of the 18 men (39%). In contrast, nine of the men (50%) versus four of the women (25%) chose “my ability to do what I want…”

References:
Tucker, Robert C., ed. 1978. The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.