Confronting Injustice

Social Activism in the Age of Individualism

Umair Muhammad

• Publisher: Haymarket Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781608465712
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Radicalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

"Written by an activist for activists... a powerful call for collective action against the social causes of poverty and climate change." — Climate & Capitalism A new generation of activists working for economic and environmental justice, and against war and poverty, confronts critical questions. Why is the world so unjust and crisis-prone? What kind of world should we fight for? How can we win? In this panoramic yet accessible book, Umair Muhammad engages with these and other urgent debates. He argues that individual solutions like "buying green" are dead ends and that hope for the future lies in a radical expansion of democracy and the transformation of the economy from one based on profit to one that can meet human needs. "A highly recommended read for those who are interested in working together to transform society." —Chelsey Rhodes, founder of DelusionsofDevelopment.com "This book will force activists to check their intentions. I wasn't even halfway done before I wanted to share it with everyone I knew." —Maryama Ahmed, Toronto-based community organizer "A wide-ranging and unflinching look at the global nature of the challenges contemporary activists seek to address. Its blend of environmental and anti-imperialist analysis, grounded in direct organizing experience, makes this a powerful and important resource." —Dru Oja Jay, coauthor of Paved with Good Intentions "What [Umair] provides is an opening statement in an important discussion that activists must have... A must-read book for today's activists." —Ian Angus, author of A Redder Shade of Green

CHAPTER 1

The Age of Individualism

Our system is one of detachment: to keep silenced people from asking questions, to keep the judged from judging, to keep solitary people from joining together, and the soul from putting together its pieces.

—Eduardo Galeano1

Our present age is alternately referred to through the use of various words and phrases: neoliberalism, market fundamentalism, the age of inequality, as well as others. All of these stand fundamentally for the same thing. The Indian journalist Palagummi Sainath explains, “You can call it what you like. Some people call it neoliberalism. Some people call it corporate globalization … Some of us with a more limited vocabulary, we call it capitalism.”2 The different descriptors of our age may refer to a specific aspect, phase, brand, or result of capitalism, but at the end of the day, capitalism is what it is. The same is true for the phrase I have chosen. “The age of individualism” is used here to denote the cultural values that have arisen out of capitalism.

Capitalism is often thought of strictly as an economic system in which production is held under private ownership and control. A more complete evaluation, however, requires us to regard it as an entire social system. It not only determines the ways in which we engage with each other in the economic sphere, but in all aspects of our lives. In its quest to sustain perpetual growth, capitalism commodifies all that it can. It turns interactions and activities that were once outside the reach of the market into things that have dollar signs attached to them, and it continuously brings needs into being where none previously existed.

Prevailing opinion regards the age of individualism as an altogether good thing. The cultural values that have accompanied modern capitalism are celebrated and a triumphant narrative has been devised to explain the virtues of our age. We are told that our culture prizes the individual over and above society. The individual has been set free, in the sense that the market supposedly gives her equal opportunity to fulfill her desires—crucially, we are told that no one will get in her way, and she cannot come in the way of anyone else. Our concept of individual freedom is, hence, rooted in the following principle: “You stay out of my way, and I will stay out of yours.”3

It is plainly evident that the prevalence of this kind of individualism is driving us apart. People today lead atomized, self-absorbed lives. We have retreated away from each other, into our homes, and into ourselves. While this negative concomitant of rampant individualism is sometimes openly recognized and its presence is regarded as less than ideal, the dominant culture has made peace with it. It is all seen as part of the march of progress—an inevitable consequence of economic development. The attitude seems to be: if the price to pay for individual freedom is social distance, then so be it.

Unfortunately, the individualism we have is of a deficient quality. Individualism should imply uniqueness, difference, originality among individuals; that is to say, it should imply individuality. The individualism of our day utterly fails in this regard. Social detachment has not been a boon for individuality. It seems, instead, to have secured the opposite outcome. Oddly enough, the age of individualism is also the age of conformity.

Mass production, if it is to be sustained, must be accompanied by mass consumption, and therein lies the source of our conformity. With the rise of the assembly line in the early twentieth century and the accompanying intensification of the production of consumer goods, “men and women,” observes historian Stuart Ewen, “had to be habituated to respond to the demands of … productive machinery.”4 The status of conspicuous consumer, once reserved only for the wealthy, has been thrust upon everyone in industrialized nations and is working its way through the world as a whole. Our identities as family members, friends, students, workers, and citizens have come to be subordinated to consumerism.

Relationships between people are increasingly mediated with the help of commercial values. We go to school and work so that we can gather the means to partake in consumption. As for citizenship, when we think about participating in an effort to create societal reform, our minds first, and often only, consider the changes we can make in our consumption choices. The political sphere is rarely seen as worthy of engagement other than, of course, through token actions like voting and signing petitions.

According to the supporting narrative of the age of individualism, we should not be worried about the lack of serious engagement in the political sphere. Citizenship, in the strict sense of the word, is outdated. We are told that the market, which functions to satisfy individual wants, is much more democratic than any official political process could ever be. This “democracy” of consumption continuously grows in breadth and scope with the market, as those who are already conspicuous consumers increase their levels of consumption and formerly poor people join the new global middle class and become consumers. Everyone, goes the official narrative, can expect to be raised out of poverty and take part in the consumption frenzy. Oh, what a wonderful world it will be.

As we will discuss in the second chapter, our system of mass consumption relies on mass inequality and exploitation to function. It cannot be relied upon to meaningfully raise living standards for the underprivileged in our world. And as we will see in the third chapter, what a wonderfully unsustainable world it already is.

Claims about the democratic nature of our social system are the central focus of interrogation in this chapter. I hope to demonstrate to the reader that, in fact, the economic and political arrangements of our day are fiercely undemocratic. Rather than democracy (rule of the people) we have plutocracy (rule of the rich).

To start with, I ask how we can create a social system in which individuals may come to have individuality. I find that the answer lies in placing individual freedom atop a social foundation, which is in turn democratically constituted. I then take most of the rest of the chapter to examine various undemocratic aspects of our age. The discussion especially takes note of the nature of corporate power and the inability of a profit-oriented news media to create an informed citizenry. The chapter ends with a short discussion about how social activism, which seeks to change things for the better, is often too burdened by the strictures laid down by our age to create meaningful impact.

Whither individuality?

The individual and society are often squared off against one another. We are told that we should be watchful of the value we give to society, lest it encroach upon individual liberty. There is perhaps some merit to this worry, but it should first be asked whether the individual and society have to be seen as necessarily opposed.

Margaret Thatcher, one of the leading advocates of modern-day individualism, once famously stated that “there is no such thing as society.” According to this view, what we call society is simply a collection of individuals, while the individual is something of a self-sovereign, autonomous being. Any given society, thus, takes the form that it does because of the individuals that make it up. On the basis of such a perspective, it seems apparent that the individual deserves to be valued, while any claims that society makes on the individual need to be rebuffed. The individual should be left alone and not be burdened by obligations to support others.

This way of looking at the individual and society, however, is not consistent with reality.

An individual who is part of a society is who she is only because she is a part of that particular society. The individual becomes herself in large part through her interactions with others; she is a social creation. She has those who came before her and those who exist alongside her to thank for her identity. Language is perhaps the most easily identifiable feature of an individual’s makeup that finds its source in historical and current social interaction. Only because others communicate through the use of spoken language can any individual do the same. In addition to language, the ideals we hold, how we perceive the world around us, the knowledge we have gained, the technology we use, and the careers we follow are in large part what they are because we are a part of a particular society.

Since the individual relies upon others for her development and she herself contributes to the development of other individuals, the individual and society do not appear to be necessarily opposed to each other. And social obligations do not seem to be outright insidious. Rather, it appears natural and necessary for individuals to have obligations to each other as well as to future generations.

At this point we are presented with a potentially frightening picture. If society can call upon the individual to fulfill social obligations, what is to become of individual freedom? To mediate this worry, we have to re-examine what freedom means. The age of individualism, as we have noted, anchors individual freedom upon the following principle: “You stay out of my way and I will stay out of yours.” As a general rule, individuals should not inhibit each other’s attempts to seek fulfillment, but this formulation of freedom as a standalone has the potential to be brazenly hostile to the concept of society. Just as the individual is a social creation, an accurate description of individual freedom must be firmly positioned on a social foundation.

It is perfectly fair to discuss freedom in terms of the ability an individual has to achieve fulfillment. It must be recognized, however, that society contributes to this freedom by doing quite a bit more than simply getting out of the way. Society helps to cultivate the desires the individual has and helps her to achieve these desires. If I enjoy playing soccer and not baseball, for example, it is likely that my feelings have been cultivated by the society in which I live and others around me likely feel the same way. In order to fulfill my desire to play soccer and improve my game, I will need regular access to a public field, and I will also need others to come along with me.

Moreover, our desire is often to seek not individual but collective fulfillment. I may desire to score a goal or two during a soccer match but a greater desire of mine will likely be for my team to win the match regardless of whether I am able to score.

Since society plays such an important role in helping individuals develop and achieve their desires, the concept of individual freedom cannot be thought of in individualistic terms. We need to work to structure society in ways that allow it to empower the individuals who are a part of it. We need to build a protagonistic society: one that seeks to enhance individual freedom by cultivating and helping to fulfill healthy physical, intellectual, and moral desires among individuals while discouraging the development and fulfillment of destructive desires.

It is not necessarily a violation of individual freedom for a society to lend itself to the fulfillment of certain desires over others. In fact, it should be clear that society cannot help but contribute to the cultivation of desires. Members of society can and should seek to create an environment in which individuals are protected from harm and are directed towards meaningful development. Just as a collective can cultivate an interest in soccer among individuals, it can cultivate an interest in rampant drug abuse among them; just as a collective can push individuals to become consumers, it can push them instead to become citizens; and just as a collective can encourage conformity, it can encourage individuality.

While it is clear that society has a mandate to actively shape the lives of the individuals who are a part of it, we do have to be wary of the very real dangers that have the potential to accompany this mandate. It is possible for individual freedom to be inhibited as a result of the active effort of a collective. Individuals can be taken advantage of, forced to give up their individuality and conform to a standard, or destroyed r...