In his book, The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science, Ludwig von Mises rejects the “mythology of methodological collectivism.” Collectivist mythology supposes that because humans are members of groups and form themselves into societies, human action is best understood as “social action.” Collectivists explain individual choices—or the historical events in which individuals were involved—entirely by reference to their group.
Mises gives the examples of “groups of people descended from the same ancestry or those of people living in the same geographical area.” History is then explained as the outcome of the collective will, collective preference, and collective action in the relevant time and place. Thus, for example, collectivists depict a person’s worldview as a reflection of his ethnicity, nationality, social status, economic class, and similar group characteristics. For the same reason it has become customary to accord legal rights based on group identity, on the assumption that people’s experience of life is primarily determined by their membership of the group to which such special rights are accorded.
Mises rejects that view. He explains,
The collectivistic method is anthropomorphic, as it simply takes it for granted that all concepts of the action of individuals can be applied to those of the collectives. It does not see that all collectives are the product of a definite way in which individuals act; they are an offshoot of ideas determining the conduct of individuals.
Individuals may indeed often act by reference to what other people in their group are doing, exercising no independent judgement of their own, in what is commonly referred to as “herd” behavior, but this does not mean human behavior is determined by the herd. The herd is constituted by individuals, each of whom acts in accordance with the behavior observed. It still remains the choice, or preference, or behavior, of the individual who acts in conformity with the views of others and matches his behavior to that of others as depicted in social norms or group trends. Mises explains:
In studying the actions of individuals, we learn also everything about the collectives and society. For the collective has no existence and reality but in the actions of individuals. It comes into existence by ideas that move individuals to behave as members of a definite group and goes out of existence when the persuasive power of these ideas subsides. The only way to a cognition of collectives is the analysis of the conduct of its members.
Collectivists are also wrong to view human action as merely an instinctive or natural response to the prevailing environment, in the reflexive way that plants respond to the environment in which they are rooted. Human beings are certainly influenced by their social, political, or economic environment, but this does not mean that their actions are determined or dictated by that environment. It follows that the choices or actions of individuals who dissent from the majority are not somehow invalid, nor do they call for an explanation, merely because they do not conform to the group. Collectivists view such dissenting behavior as inexplicable, often claiming that the dissenter “must have been paid” or must be suffering from “self-hate” or “false consciousness.” But it is not inexplicable for an individual to disagree with the rest of his “group” or to respond to his material conditions in a manner that differs from how most other people of his group respond. As Mises explains, we may observe that most people often do fall in with their group, but it does not follow that man is inevitably driven to fall in with his group without the exercise of any will on his part. To hold that view would be to erase an essential attribute of human nature.
An example may be taken from the racial identity debates. In an article titled “Are Black voters deserting Biden?” we learn that most black people are loyal to the Democratic Party:
During this month’s discussion of young Black voters hosted by Brookings as part of their Race, Prosperity and Inclusion Initiative, Howard University political science professor Marcus Board, Jr. said that the normal Republican Black vote in presidential contests ranges from eight percent to 15%… these numbers reflect a level of loyalty to the Democratic Party that has existed since the late 1960s and continues to this day.
The loyalty of black voters to the Democratic Party today follows the same pattern as the previous loyalty of black voters to the Republican Party, which prevailed from 1865 until the late 1960s when the “black vote” swung to the Democratic Party. The pattern of black people voting as a bloc is corroborated by “historical survey data that shows somewhere between 83% and 86% of all Black voters have identified with the Democratic party since 1994.” Dissenting black voters—the 8 to 15 percent—are viewed by collectivists as some sort of mysterious discrepancy that calls for a sociological explanation. Why are they not voting with their race? Did someone pay them to dissent from their racial hive mind? Perhaps, as former President Joe Biden suggested, they “ain’t black”?
These questions befuddle collectivists who cannot conceive of an individual making his own decision about how to vote. Looking further back into another historical example, it is often assumed that opinions of slaves were inherently determined by whether they were “field slaves” or “house slaves.” According to this view, field slaves desired freedom while house slaves were content. The merest acquaintance with the historical facts shows that this explanation bears little relation to the facts. Harsh conditions often pertain indoors, while bucolic conditions often pertain in the fields. The slave narratives reveal many instances attesting that a brutal slave owner would usually not have slaves expressing contentment, unlike a benevolent slave owner who inspired devotion. Nor does the desire for liberty depend entirely on one’s material conditions. In the most restrictive of conditions there may be some who rest content, while in the most comfortable of conditions there may be some who yearn for escape.
Mises clarifies that the importance of methodological individualism does not merely entail rejecting all notions of “we” that people may use to describe their group identity. He does not deny the importance of group identity, observing in Human Action that “there are nations, states, and churches” but, nevertheless, “nobody ever perceived a nation without perceiving its members.” Because “definite actions of individuals constitute the collective,” we understand the collective through a study of individual action. He distinguishes different uses of the concept of “we,” because his concern is with epistemology rather than with political discourse. He gives the example of a Canadian who does not personally skate saying, “We are world’s foremost ice hockey players.” In this example it is clear what is meant, and nobody would suppose the term “we” to mean that the speaker personally, plus every single Canadian, is necessarily a world class hockey player. But this conversational use of “we” is not an appropriate foundation for understanding or solving political or economic problems, nor a justification for rules and edicts that restrict individual liberty.
Problems arise when community leaders say what “we” want in order to justify destructive policy prescriptions. For example, those intent on destroying Confederate monuments begin with the “I” when describing the “harm” they suffer from the existence of historic monuments:
I got my first taste of the racist meaning behind the Confederate symbol when I was just 5 years old… Watching videos of Confederate statues be taken down in places around the country, especially in Richmond, has been an emotional moment that gives me chills and holds a personal meaning.
That is a clear statement of personal experience. But then comes the policy prescription that all the statues must be destroyed, and the narrative of “personal meaning” surreptitiously shifts to the “we,” to encompass the collective experience of entire generations of black people:
The emotional pain caused by Confederate symbols and imagery is an extension of centuries-worth of trauma from slavery that has been passed down from generation to generation and exacerbated by police killings of Black people. The removal of these statues and symbols are reflective of a changing of the guard of who tells America’s history that has been festering for some time. It’s no coincidence that Virginia is once again at the heart of the discussion since it’s one of the beginning chapters in America’s dark history.
In this way the collective foundation of historical group experience is treated as the foundation for policy interventions. In rejecting methodological collectivism, Mises exposes the faulty premise underlying such arguments. In such political debates, people frame their personal preferences as a collective demand for “social justice” by depicting the stated harm as one that affects society as a whole. The use of “we,” and the claim to speak on behalf of generations of suffering people, is used as a political fig leaf to mask the absence of any reasons for destruction: the only reason given is that it will mollify the offended group.
Mises exhorts us to look deeper than these types of political debates in understanding the contention between individualism and collectivism. Rejecting methodological collectivism is not simply about debating whose interests in society should prevail in cases where the interests of an individual are pitted against the interests of the majority, but raises a more fundamental question of how to understand human action. The fundamental point is that in all cases, it is always the individual who feels, thinks, decides, and acts, not the group. This means that it is to individual views that we look to ascertain whether the stated social “harm” is real in any objective sense. The issue here is not merely which side should “win” a political contest. At stake is a more important issue concerning how we ascertain the truth about history and the reality of human experience. As Mises explains,
The meaning of philosophical individualism has been lamentably misinterpreted by the harbingers of collectivism. As they see it, the dilemma is whether the concerns—interests—of the individuals should rank before those of one of the—arbitrarily selected—collectives. However, the epistemological controversy between individualism and collectivism has no direct reference to this purely political issue. Individualism as a principle of the philosophical, praxeological, and historical analysis of human action means the establishment of the facts that all actions can be traced back to individuals and that no scientific method can succeed in determining how definite external events, liable to a description by the methods of the natural sciences, produce within the human mind definite ideas, value judgments, and volitions. In this sense the individual that cannot be dissolved into components is both the starting point and the ultimate given of all endeavors to deal with human action. (emphasis added)
