The collectivist doctrines look upon the individual merely as a refractory rebel. This sinful wretch has the impudence to give preference to his petty selfish interests as against the sublime interests of the great god society. FULL ARTICLE by Ludwig von Mises
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/14484/the-collectivist-dogma/
The Collectivist Dogma
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A video explaining the mentality behind it all.
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7523395
One downside of these sort of explanations is that they are ignoring “emergent behavior”. “Society is not an entity in itself. It is an aspect of human action. It does not exist or live outside of the conduct of people. It is an orientation of human action. Society neither thinks nor acts. Individuals in thinking and acting constitute a complex of relations and facts that are called social relations and facts.”
Isn’t this little different from saying that humans are not really humans, but rather aggregations of molecules, and that humans don’t really think but are really just the sum of their parts? I understand that Mises said something about this, but nonetheless, is Mises saying that emergent behavior does not exist?
Emergence is either metaphorical or a descriptive device when it comes to human relations. Individuals act purposively and create the cooperation which builds complexity. But this complexity, no matter what you name it or how spontaneous and original the resultant order appears, is not a thinking and acting being. It is the concept of emergent behavior that should be accused of reducing humans to behaviorist or evolutionary impulses. Only by this dehumanizing reduction is such collectivist aggregation possible.
As Mises said, arithmetical analogies have no meaning here. A human is not the “sum” of his molecules. The man and the parts that make him up are different levels of analysis of the same thing. Trying to figure out which level is the “real” one is a pointless exercise.
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