Chapter XXVI. Social Organization For Consumption.
_Individualism._--While the social organization is necessarily thought of as a group of individuals, whose individual wants and plans and growth and character must be the chief incentive for action, it is necessary to avoid the extreme of individualism. In escaping from the false analogy implied in considering society an organism, there is a tendency to make the individual not only of final importance but independent of association. Excess of competition is represented in the maxim, "Every man for himself." In the effort to carry out this maxim and in opposition to restraints of society, whether by law or by custom, many are led to advocate an abolition of organization, leaving all welfare to be secured by appeal to the individual judgment and conscience of men. It is true that back of all law is the law of righteousness in individual souls.
Under the name of "autonomy" theorists propose to appeal to this conscience of individuals, making every soul a law to itself. Such theorists assume that every human being will be wise and virtuous, or take the consequences of his failure. They forget that all organizations for constraint are a part of the natural consequences of failure in self-control.
Under the name of "anarchy" groups of people all over the world have united to destroy what they consider arbitrary rules in government. Anarchists differ from autonomists in putting foremost the destruction of existing governments. Their ideals of right and wrong and their methods of individual action for individual welfare are left for the future to develop, after the rule of the present has become no-rule. Their present organization, as far as it is public, appears to be, in almost direct contradiction of their principles, an absolute despotism. The same idea has gained followers in some countries, particularly in Russia, under the name of "nihilism."
While in some instances such movements may be but a natural reaction against tyranny, the view of human wants and human welfare which all these advocates present is far from being correct. The grand economic fact that groups are superior to individuals in actual efficiency is beyond dispute; and it is equally true, though not so often stated, that groups gain greatest satisfaction for a given consumption of wealth. It is only when great numbers share in satisfaction that the highest range of wants can be gratified. Moreover, even individual wants are largely social. Each finds his highest pleasure in the society which nature has provided. The chief reasons for accumulating wealth are in what men can do for each other. Any individualism which overlooks these principles is opposed to welfare, and so self-contradictory.