Totalitarianism for the ‘greater good’
We all hear the endless justifications for governmental policies, whose proponents say such policies are for the so-called ‘greater good’ of society. But just who is ‘society’ if not individuals, and what exactly is the greater good? Who decides what constitutes a greater good, and who enforces it?
The answers to these questions differentiate a free society from one in which people are enslaved by the state. One which justifies its every decree and power grab as being good not for the individual citizens, but for a collectivist construct to which we must all bow.
Does the individual exist for the sake of society, or does society exist for the sake of the individual citizens? Communist and totalitarian regimes impose the belief that the individual must subordinate himself to, and conduct himself for, the benefit of ‘society,’ and sacrifice his individual private interests, and thus his freedom, to the ‘common good.’ Hitler, Stalin and Mao all preached, “the common good before the individual good.” All totalitarian regimes, be they fascist or communist, preach the same mandated surrender of individual freedoms to the all-knowing state and its mythical beneficiaries.
At first glance it would seem to be compassionate to sacrifice one’s personal interests to those of ‘society.’ Upon closer inspection, however, a philosophical error called The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness occurs. The error occurs when a simple concept or abstraction is made out to be an actual entity that exists in the real, concrete world. Society is such a concept: it is an abstraction which is merely a concept of all of the individual relationships between and among people. But in the eyes of the fascist or communist state, it is given an ascendant position with its own existence.
[Swiss psychiatrist C. G.] Jung pointed out that “society is nothing more than a term, a concept for the symbiosis of a group of human beings; a concept is not a carrier of life.” In life, he pointed out, the “State” is a personified concept which has no life of its own apart from the individual. All life is the plural of individual lives. Society does not exist apart from the thoughts and actions of people; it has no “interests,” and does not aim at anything. Its interests are defined by the ruling class, imposed by the ruling class, and justified by the ruling class. From time immemorial the ruling classes have defined the ‘greater good,’ then assigned themselves the authority to enforce this ideal and the policies of its procurement upon people.
Individual humans become little more than sacrificial animals to the God of state, emperor, king, pharaoh, proletariat, Mother Earth, etc. The rulers then have no compunction about cutting out hearts on stone altars, tossing children into volcanoes, burning heretics at the stake, exterminating millions in slavelabor camps, etc., to protect the purity of the race, appease the Gods or further the common good of the proletariat. Such are the justifications for the atrocities.
America itself is at the juncture where collectivism is exalted and individualism is judged to be selfish. Yet in granting each individual the right to pursue their own good, a collective good is in fact pursued, but by free individuals exercising free will, and not imposed by an authoritarian state sowing seeds of envy, resentment, suspicion and hatred among its citizenry.