Individualism

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INDIVIDUALISM

Individualism as the free, unfettered expression and development of the self in life's social arenas—the political, cultural, and economic—is one of the few consistent American ideals, tracing a bright line through the course of the nation's history. Whereas European observers such as Alexis de Tocqueville tended to see American individualism as a dangerous centrifugal social force, Americans have generally embraced the individual as a self-contained, value-creating, contract-making actor whose preservation and encouragement were consistent with the needs of society and the community. Disagreements have emerged primarily about how best the individual may be reconciled with and included in society.

In the early part of the nation's history, a narrow brand of communitarian Reformed Protestantism gave shape to American individualism. But during the twentieth century the reconciliation of the individual with the needs of the community was increasingly based on a vision of society as a voluntary collection of individuals seeking their own advantage in the marketplace, with government acting primarily as a guarantor of individual rights. Ideally, through the function of the free market, individuals are automatically attracted to work that is useful, producing a product or service that others need. Acting through the free market individuals are able to find that work for which they are best suited, and which will provide the maximum opportunity for individual self expression and development. Relying on their own efforts, individuals are free to improve their social and economic standing, improving the fortunes of the groups to which they belong in the process.

Through work that is at once free and of service to others, society forms as a network of bridges of self-interest between individuals, creating intricate interdependencies. As Emile Durkheim famously observed, work may be the tie that binds societies together. Individualism has emerged as a public issue primarily when Americans have lost faith in the automatic function of the free market to support the individual, the Great Depression being a key example.

The massive unemployment of the Great Depression appeared to many to challenge the ideal of work-based free market individualism. However, unemployment compounded work and marketplace failures that had been festering for decades. Since the turn of the century, modern jobs that required little skill and offered few opportunities for creativity had eroded the hope that work could be the avenue for self expression and craftsmanship. The jobs that still existed offered little chance for pleasure and satisfaction. The rise of corporations, advertising, and mass society further complicated a simplistic faith in individualism. Concentrations of wealth and political power appeared to be limiting social mobility, casting serious doubts on one of the nation's other precious ideals: an egalitarian, classless society of individuals.

Even the strongest supporter of the traditional idea of American individualism, Herbert Hoover, saw the need to find new ways to preserve individualism in an era of giant bureaucracies, corporations, and standardization. Hoover sought to redeploy large-scale organization in the service of "self-help," "spiritual development," and the individual through "purposeful planning" and his "association idea," a strategy largely dependent on government encouragement of business voluntarism.

Others, however, veering to the political left, sought to reenergize the Progressive movement's corporate ideal, emphasizing the need for community and the importance of solidarity and state action to assure the "public interest." Arguing for a planned society, such critics of excessive individualism as John Dewey, Lewis Mumford, Robert Lynd, and George Soule sought to counter the Depression's threats to both the individual and the community. Turning increasingly to the state to regulate the free market, leaders such as Henry Wallace (Roosevelt's secretary of agriculture and third-term vice president) emphasized "cooperative achievement" and "organic" communities, and stressed the need for increasing cooperation in American life.

Such critics hoped that by becoming more cooperative in its economic life, the United States could redeem the individual, establishing a new cultural and political foundation for free associations, replacing the failing work-based free market individualism. Social scientists, socialists, and Marxists proposed to free Americans from excessive concerns about economic matters, liberating them in life's more important venues—the cultural, communal, and, as Hoover had hoped, the spiritual.

Still others supported a more practical, traditional remedy. One of the most important political issues of the Great Depression was legislated work-sharing. The Black-Connery bill of 1933, limiting hours of work to thirty a week, attracted critics of work-based free market individualism, who, stopping short of the cooperationists' remedy, saw in steadily increasing leisure the best way to reestablish individualism outside the economy. Seeking, in the words of Richard Pells in his Radical Visions and American Dreams, "to liberate the American people from the bondage of economic anxiety—to shift their attention from material to moral and existential concerns" people such as William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, "liberation capitalists" such as W. K. Kellogg, and progressive reformers such as Stuart Chase proposed that a shorter workweek would provide time for alternate, free forms of association. Through increased leisure, the family, the community, churches, voluntary groups, and local governments would flourish as never before. These, instead of work and the market, would become the new media for individual growth and expression.

Roosevelt was lukewarm to the new cooperationist schemes and to work-sharing. Such measures as the National Recovery Administration and Social Security were primarily designed to provide industrial stabilization and a safety net for a free-swinging economy. Instead, Roosevelt attempted to redeem work-based free market individualism by marshaling government in support of perpetual economic growth and work-creation, employing the now familiar New Deal reform strategies: public works, liberal monetary policy, deficit spending, and direct expansion of government jobs.

With Roosevelt, leaders of the women's movement and the emerging civil rights struggle reaffirmed the importance of work-based free market individualism. The Harlem Renaissance matured and began to recognize the importance of the individual's struggle with society. Similarly, the nascent civil rights movement began to direct its efforts toward gaining equality through the marketplace, with jobs becoming a primary arena for struggle. Advancing beyond the suffrage victories of the previous decade, American women also began to make inroads into the workforce, and, like African Americans, they began to look for independence and individual liberation through work. African Americans and women turned to the government to open free and equal access to jobs, and thus extend the ideal of work-based individualism to previously excluded groups.

The rise of authoritarian, repressive regimes in Europe and the coming of World War II curtailed cooperationist talk in the United States. Work-based free market individualism entered the 1940s vigorous and growing, made stronger by the challenges offered to it during the Great Depression.