Anthony In a world where ancient rhythms of nature meet the pulse of the digital age, a unique and mystical opportunity awaits you.
Dear Anthony , imagine a journey not through physical landscapes, but through realms of spiritual energy and ancient wisdom. As a seer attuned to the echoes of the old and the vibrations of the new, I invite you to discover an offering that intertwines destiny with the digital – the Digital Lucky Rabbit’s Foot.
This is no ordinary token, Anthony . It’s a symbol of fortune and safeguarding, revered across various cultures, now re-envisioned for our interconnected world. This digital amulet is a beacon of olden magic and contemporary technology, created to resonate with your personal aura and journey. Its existence in the digital realm frees it from earthly constraints, allowing it to align with your essence more profoundly.
As you read on, Anthony , let your spirit be open to the transformative power of this ancient talisman, reimagined for your modern path. The journey we embark upon with the Digital Lucky Rabbit’s Foot is one of personal alignment, fortune, and protection, uniquely tailored for you.
Unveiling to you Anthony , the Power of the Lucky Rabbit’s Foot
Now, Anthony , let us unveil the essence of this mystical artifact. The Lucky Rabbit’s Foot, a charm steeped in legend and mystery, has been a symbol of good luck and protection for centuries. Its roots extend deep into various cultures, each weaving their own stories and beliefs into its magical tapestry. From the ancient Celtic tribes, who saw it as a link to the sacred earth, to the diverse traditions of North America, where it has been cherished as a beacon of fortune, this talisman has stood the test of time.
In our digital era, this ancient symbol is reborn with a new form of magic. The Digital Lucky Rabbit’s Foot combines the mystical heritage of the past with the boundless possibilities of our present technology. It is a unique amalgamation of tradition and innovation – an amulet that transcends physical form to become a potent digital talisman.
This digital transformation does not diminish its power; rather, it amplifies it. In its new form, the Lucky Rabbit’s Foot is not bound by the limitations of the physical world. It travels with you, Anthony , through the digital realms you inhabit, offering its protective and fortuitous energies in the spaces where modern life unfolds.
I’am the last of the Nordic seers, I’m nurtured under the celestial glow of the Aurora Borealis, I have witnessed the ebb and flow of fortunes across two decades. My journey, woven with ancient sagas and the whispers of the spirits, has shown me the profound impact symbols hold over our fate. In this tradition, I bring to you, Anthony , the Digital Lucky Rabbit’s Foot, a talisman of deep-rooted power and prosperity, reimagined for the digital era.
Throughout my years of communion with the old spirits and the study of ancient runes, I have seen fortunes turn as if by the hand of the gods themselves. I have watched seekers like you, Anthony , rise from the ashes of doubt to the pinnacles of success, their paths illuminated by the mystic forces I channel. The Lucky Rabbit’s Foot, a symbol revered from the mist-shrouded hills of ancient Celtic lands to the vast, untamed wilderness of the Americas, has been a constant companion in these transformations.
Now, look at the power of this age-old symbol, reborn through digital alchemy. Face its influence amplified by my two decades of spiritual practice and insight, intertwining with the heavens energy of your own destiny.This is not a mere trinket, but a portal to untold riches. With my guidance, the Digital Lucky Rabbit’s Foot has the potential to increase your wealth significantly — increments of $50,000, $100,000, or even life-changing sums that eclipse these figures. It’s a beacon of prosperity that can guide you through the complex labyrinths of modern finance, I’am looking at this happening now in Dayton.
Embrace this fusion of ancient wisdom, my extensive experience, and digital innovation. Let the Digital Lucky Rabbit’s Foot be a guiding force in your journey, a vessel of the luck and protection that I, as the last Nordic seer, have spent over a lifetime – years understanding and mastering. With this enchanted charm, Anthony , step confidently onto a path lined with the golden promises of prosperity and the whispers of ancient spirits.
Now Anthony , let’s face the realm of the mystic, where each snowflake and pine needle is unique, so too is the path of every seeker. Anthony , in my two decades as the last Nordic seer, I have learned the art of tailoring ancient magic to the individual soul. The Digital Lucky Rabbit’s Foot is not a one-size-fits-all charm; it is a personalized beacon of fortune, meticulously crafted to align with your unique life and destiny.
Drawing upon the ancient art of rune casting and the celestial wisdom of astrology, I imbue each digital amulet with specific energies that resonate with your personal details.When crafting your talisman, Anthony , I consider the intricate tapestry of your life — your birth date, your name’s vibrational essence, and even the nuanced aspects of your personal journey that you share. This bespoke approach ensures that your Digital Lucky Rabbit’s Foot is not just a general symbol of luck, but a deeply personal and powerful artifact, attuned to the rhythm of your existence.
The power of personalization goes beyond mere customization; it creates a symbiotic connection between the amulet and its bearer. Just as the ancient Nordic warriors had weapons and shields uniquely forged for their hands, your digital talisman is shaped for your spirit. It becomes an extension of your essence, a focal point for attracting fortune and warding off adversity.
How the Ancient Magic Meets Modern Technology ?
In the sacred silence of the North, where time whispers secrets of the unseen, the essence of the rabbit’s foot is reborn. Anthony , as the last Nordic seer, I have embraced the digital sphere, where the rabbit’s foot’s ancient energies find new expression. The digital format is not a mere replication; it is an amplification of the mystical properties that have long been revered.
In this transformation, the talisman’s essence is distilled into a form that transcends physical boundaries, allowing its protective and lucky essence to integrate into the very fabric of your digital existence. The essence, once bound to a physical form, now extends its reach into the spaces you navigate each day – your phones, computers, and the cloud. Here, in the digital realm, the rabbit’s foot’s power is omnipresent, its magic uninterrupted by the constraints of time or space.
The process is a delicate alchemy, where I, with over two decades of insight, channel the ancient magic through the runes and into the digital artifact, encoding its essence with algorithms that resonate with luck and protection. This creates a talisman that is both intangible and immensely powerful, a companion in all your virtual endeavors that attracts opportunities and repels misfortune.
As the digital rabbit’s foot emerges, its ancient magic converges with modern technology, it becomes a living charm that pulsates with the rhythms of both the old world and the new. It is an innovative and convenient way to carry luck and protection with you, Anthony , safeguarding your digital footsteps and opening doors to unexpected treasures in the virtual and physical realms alike.
This is the essence of digital magic – a seamless blend of the seer’s ancient practices and the boundless potential of modern technology, brought together to guide and enrich your life, Anthony , in ways our ancestors could only dream.
EMBRACE YOUR CHANCE FOR GOOD FORTUNE
Anthony , the threads of fate are weaving a rare opportunity before you. The Digital Lucky Rabbit’s Foot, a talisman of ancient might and digital prowess, is ready to intertwine with your spirit. The time to act is now, with the decisiveness of the old Viking chiefs. Seize this beacon of transformation, for it heralds a tide of prosperity and luck that is yours to command. Let not this moment pass like mist over the fjords; grasp it with the fervor of the ancient warriors and change your destiny.
MY PROMISE TO YOU
As Freyja, the seer who has walked the hidden paths of knowledge, my promise to you is as steadfast as the mountains of the North. The efficacy of this digital amulet is backed by my years of attunement to the unseen realms. With this enchanted digital charm, I assure you a bond of magic, a circle of protection as you navigate the rivers of existence.
JOIN THE CIRCLE OF THE FORTUNATE
I call upon you, Anthony , to step beyond the veil of the mundane and join the esteemed lineage of the fortunate. By accepting the Digital Lucky Rabbit’s Foot, you are lighting the beacon of your epic tale, a saga graced with the fortunes of old. Embrace this moment, Anthony , and let your life be an odyssey marked by the ancient luck of the Nordic legacy.
Have you ever caught yourself mumbling to yourself in the kitchen, rehashing an imaginary conversation in the shower, or cheering yourself on out loud when faced with a challenge? Rest assured, you’re far from alone—and that’s great news! Science has been digging into this inner (or outer) monologue, and the results are pretty flattering. Here’s why talking to yourself might just be one of your best habits.
Research has shown that verbalizing our thoughts can improve our problem-solving abilities. A study led by Gary Lupyan , a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, found that participants who articulated out loud what they were looking for in a series of photos were able to locate the desired objects more quickly.
Why? Because pronouncing words activates several areas of the brain simultaneously, which strengthens neural connections. In other words, talking to yourself helps you better structure your thoughts and pronouncing the name of the object activates a visual representation in your mind, which facilitates orientation and concentration . Talking to yourself can thus act as a real Ariadne’s thread to help you find your bearings.
What’s the Best Weight for a Weighted Blanket?Unmute
An ally for memory and organization
Reading notes or to-do lists out loud is also a great way to strengthen memory. By transforming visual information into auditory stimulation, the brain consolidates information more efficiently and makes it easier to remember. In addition, verbalizing your thoughts helps you organize your ideas in a more structured way. By clarifying your goals and stating the steps needed to achieve them, you can better prioritize your actions and make more informed decisions.
A boost for motivation and stress management
Beyond the cognitive aspect, talking to yourself plays a major role in emotional regulation. Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, has shown that using the second and third person in our self-encouragement ( “You can do it!” , “You are capable!” ) can reduce anxiety and improve our performance in the face of challenges. This form of internal dialogue allows us to step back from our emotions and position ourselves as an observer of our own thoughts, thus providing a welcome distance from stressful situations. This mechanism allows us to adopt a more rational attitude and one that is less overwhelmed by stress, thus promoting emotional well-being.
A strategy to channel your negative thoughts
Our minds can sometimes feel like a joyful chaos. For people who feel overwhelmed by a relentless stream of negative thoughts, talking out loud can also serve as a regulation strategy. Gabrielle Morse, a therapist in New York City, notes that the practice helps calm and monitor the flow of thoughts. By articulating your thoughts, it becomes easier to examine them in a more objective light, which can help curb the cycles of rumination often associated with anxiety disorders.So, far from being a marginal behavior or revealing psychological disorders, talking to yourself appears to be a natural and beneficial practice. The next time someone catches you talking to yourself, don’t blush. You’re simply maximizing your cognitive abilities, pretty cool, right? And if you ever see intrigued looks, smile and say: “Science approves.”
Individualism endorses the principle that the ends or purposes of the human individual possess dignity and worth that take precedence over communal, metaphysical, cosmological, or religious priorities. While individualism may appeal to certain metaphysical or epistemological schools of thought such as nominalism or empiricism, it will be treated here as primarily a moral and/or political doctrine. Individualism is commonly seen by both its proponents and opponents to be the creation of the modern Western world, a development of Enlightenment liberal values.
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The term individualism was first coined in the nineteenth century, initially around 1820 in French, and then quickly spread to the other European languages. In its origins, the term’s connotations were pejorative: Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) equated “individualism” with the “infinite fragmentation of all doctrines,” and Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782–1854) treated it as indistinguishable from anarchy. The language of individualism was picked up and widely spread by the followers of Claude-Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825). In Germany, England, and the United States, however, the negative overtones were soon stripped away. In Germany individualism became closely associated with the aspirations of Romanticism, in England, with utilitarianism and laissez-faire economics, and in America with the core political and social values of democracy and capitalism.
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Concentration on the linguistic diffusion of individualism overlooks the fact that many cultures outside the Atlantic world at many times before the nineteenth century have promulgated doctrines that were individualistic in inclination. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that many who champion individualism count tendencies inherent in modernity itself among the chief threats to the individual. Thus, a full study of the history of individualism requires a survey of a broad range of thinkers and writings.
Ancient Sources
The major schools of classical Indian religion and philosophy generally upheld the doctrine of karma, the idea that an individual’s status in the present life is a function of one’s deeds in previous lives. This entailed not only that the soul was separable from the body—indeed, any body—but that it had a specific identity that transcended even corporeal death. Karma thus implied deep individual responsibility for one’s actions and a system of assigning merit and demerit in the future depending on how one lives one’s life in the present. That moral judgment is embedded in dharma—a universalistic system of absolute moral duties—is irrelevant. It still remains central to Indian thought that individual deeds are the wellspring of the moral system. For many Indian schools, and especially for Buddhists and Jainists, spiritual purification and eventual union with the Ultimate stem solely from the personal efforts of the individual. The right path is laid out, but it is up to the individual to follow it.
China produced doctrines that echoed the Indian emphasis on the individual. Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.) challenged both egalitarianism and hierarchical naturalism as explanations of human character. Although people are born with equal capacities, only some achieve superior moral standing because the individual’s moral qualities are dependent on practice and education. Confucius’s follower Meng-Tzu (c. 371–298 b.c.e.; romanized as Mencius) elaborated this position by stipulating that environment and instruction are insufficient as explanations for why only some individuals attain superiority; in his view many simply “throw themselves away,” choosing not to adopt the path to righteousness, beneficence, and wisdom. Attainment of superiority thus rests in part on something like self-determination. Daoism, particularly Neo-Daoism, also evinced respect for individuality. The Daoist belief that each thing possessed its own nature could be interpreted not merely to pertain to natural species or types but to individual characters. According to the Daoist Chuang Tzu (fourth century b.c.e.), the freedom and peace of the spirit occur solely through knowledge of one’s own inner nature, a position that, in turn, requires equal recognition and respect on the part of each person for the nature of one’s fellow creatures. This focus on the nature of the individual was crystallized in the Neo-Daoist concentration on the particularity of human natures.
Self-knowledge was also the path to one’s individuality for the Greek philosopher Socrates (469–399 b.c.e.), who sought to live by what he claimed as his personal motto, “Know yourself.” Accordingly, he maintained that virtue and other forms of knowledge cannot be taught or communicated directly from one person to another. Rather, each individual must discover what is true for him-or herself. But if wisdom is incommunicable, the philosopher may still question other human beings in order to prod them to realize the falsity that they embrace and to stimulate them in the process of self-questioning that yields self-knowledge. In Plato‘s Apology Socrates describes himself as a “gadfly” who annoys fellow Athenian citizens with his difficult and embarrassing questions and reveals their ignorance. Socrates’ trial and death at the hands of the Athenian democracy has often been held up as a noble self-sacrifice in the cause of individualism against the conformity of the masses.
Socrates was not alone among Greek thinkers in proposing a version of individualism. Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 b.c.e.) emphasized the atomic nature of all matter and, thus, licensed a conception of humanity that emphasized the discrete character of individual creatures. In turn, this theory of individuation has been shown by recent scholars to have direct political overtones that favored the Athenian democracy. The Sophist Protagoras of Abdera (c. 485–420 b.c.e.) upheld the doctrine that “man is the measure,” which he interpreted as a moral principle, as well as an epistemological one, that supported the individual as the source and standard of human virtue.
Revealed Religion
Christianity contributed doctrines of the freedom of the will and personal salvation that added a further dimension to human individuality. Created as equal persons in God‘s image, human beings enjoy inherent dignity by virtue of the divine flame that burns within their souls. Christian moral teaching replaced status, race, gender, occupation, and all other markers of social difference with one’s individual orientation toward God as the determinant of the ultimate disposition of one’s soul. While Judaism had conveyed some overtones of personal salvation, the dominant relation with God was conditioned by the divine covenant with the Jewish people as a whole. In contrast, Jesus’ message was directed to all people who were open to his words and treated them as individuals capable of receiving divine grace and blessing. Every person, as one of God’s created, could, through individual effort and renunciation of worldly concerns, render him-or herself worthy for salvation.
The implicit individualism of early Christian moral theology was reinforced by later thinkers such as St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 c.e.). According to Augustine, all human beings possess the capacity to choose between good and evil and to choose to accept or to turn away from the divine will. Of course, the objects between which one chooses are not of equal worth. Rejecting God by preferring one’s own desires yields dissatisfaction and unhappiness in one’s earthly life as well as the misery of eternal damnation, whereas submitting to God properly expresses one’s divinely granted freedom, the correct use of the will with which human beings have been endowed. Nevertheless, it remains up to the individual (even up to the moment preceding death) to decide whether to submit to or renounce God’s offering. The individual is the final and ultimate source of the destiny of his or her own soul.
Islam did not entirely share Christianity’s affinity for personal freedom of the will, emphasizing instead a strict adherence to religious law, namely, shari’a. Yet the Koran did uphold human freedom, so Muslim teaching maintained that it was the individual, not God, who was responsible for sin. Likewise, the Koran offered a vision of personal salvation that was far more embodied and carnal than Christianity’s. Thus Islam, too, adopted important elements of individualism.
Despite the common perception of medieval Europe as monolithic and hostile to expressions of individualism, the period did much to extend the idea of human individuality. In law, the concept of human beings with personal rights and liberties was expressed in both secular and religious documents. In public life, the principle of individual consent to the imposition of political power (captured in the ubiquitous phrase “What touches all must be approved by all”) was articulated. In moral philosophy and theology, the conception of the rational will, which defined the individual as the primary unit of analysis, was elevated to axiomatic status. Regardless of the institutional and ecclesiastical barriers to individualism, scholars have repeatedly looked to Latin Christian Europe as a source for individualism.
The Reformation and the Aftermath
These medieval tendencies came to fruition during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so that individualism in the modern world deserves to be understood as a culmination of far earlier intellectual trends. The Reformation brought not only a challenge in practice to the unity of the Christian Church but also a transformation of important theological categories. Martin Luther (1483–1546) insisted on the unique presence of God alone in the conscience of believers, with the implication that the faithful Christian is responsible directly and immediately to God. The consequence of this teaching—while perhaps recognized only fleetingly by Luther and his followers—was that salvation did not depend on submission to the authority of the priesthood or the church. Nor did it fall to the secular power, to which pertained the control of bodies and behavior, to discipline the souls of subjects. Thus, whether intentionally or not, Luther opened the door to claims of public respect for liberty of conscience and eventually individual freedom of worship.
In the generation after Luther, inferences about personal freedom of religion were deduced by reforming thinkers. Sebastian Castellion (1515–1563) published pseudonymously a treatise entitled De haereticis, an sint persequendi (On heretics, whether they are to be persecuted) in response to John Calvin‘s organization of the burning of a fellow Christian theologian for heresy at Geneva. Castellion argued that Christian belief must be held with sincere conviction. Hence, clerics and magistrates must refrain from persecution of convinced Christians who cling to doctrines that do not coincide with official teachings. Castellion maintained that the individual Christian’s duties extend to forbearance of the free and honest faith of one’s fellows even in the face of disagreements of understanding and interpretation.
In the seventeenth century, the individualism implicit in confessional pluralism would become more pronounced. For instance, Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) claimed a broad application for the right to liberty of thought and belief without interference from a sovereign power’s (or a church’s) determination of the truth or falsity of one’s ideas. Pierre Bayle (1647–1706) asserted that all forms of persecution (innocuous as well as harsh) of religious diversity encourage hypocrisy and erode social order. An erring conscience, if it be held in good faith, deserves as much protection as a correct one—a principle that Bayle extended even to atheists.
John Locke (1632–1704) proposed liberty of individual conscience as justified in the case of most Christian (and perhaps some non-Christian) rites. For Locke, the role of the magistrate should be confined to the maintenance of public tranquility and the defense of individual rights rather than the care of the soul. Hence, Locke’s Letter concerning Toleration (1690) defended a vision of the church as a purely voluntary association that a believer was free, according to conscience, to enter or leave at will. Locke crystallized a key Reformation shift: the idea that one’s religious confession is a matter of individual choice rather than institutional imposition.
The evolving acceptance of individualism paralleled changes in other European cultural, social, and political practices and attitudes. The invention of the printing press and movable type in the mid-fifteenth century immeasurably enhanced the ability of individuals to spread their ideas and made it possible for a larger public to access the written word. Demands were heard for freedom of the press (literally and figuratively) from censorship by clerical and secular authorities alike. While republican values that promoted civic virtue over personal choice retained a hold on public discourse, political liberty in geographically extensive regimes with monarchic institutions tended to be conceived in terms of individual freedom rather than civic populism. Hence, it is at this time and place that the origins of the bundle of individualist doctrines known as liberalism are found.
Liberalism and Individualism
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) generally is identified as the most important direct antecedent of modern individualist philosophy. In his Leviathan (1651), Hobbes ascribed to all individuals natural liberty (as well as equality) on the basis of which they are licensed to undertake whatever actions are necessary in order to preserve themselves from their fellow creatures. Hobbes believed that the exercise of such natural liberty logically leads to unceasing conflict and unremitting fear so long as no single sovereign ruler exists to maintain peace. The exchange of chaotic natural freedom for government-imposed order requires renunciation of all freedoms that humans possess by nature (except, of course, self-preservation) and voluntary submission to any dictate imposed by the sovereign. Yet, even under the terms of Hobbes’s absolute sovereignty, individuals are deemed to remain at liberty to choose for themselves concerning any and all matters about which the ruler has not explicitly legislated.
Locke begins his mature political theory in the Second Treatise of Government (1689) with the postulation of the divinely granted liberty of all individuals, understood in terms of the absolute right to preserve one’s life and to lay claim to the goods one requires for survival. Arguing against the patriarchal doctrine of Sir Robert Filmer (1588–1653), Locke insists that no natural basis—neither paternity nor descent—justifies the submission of one person to another. Rather, each individual is the proprietor of his or her (divinely endowed) physical and mental talents, abilities, and energies. The individual thus constitutes the basic unit of social and political analysis for Locke, who is sometimes considered the proponent of the doctrine of “possessive individualism” par excellence.
In contrast to Hobbes, Locke maintains that the natural condition of individual proprietorship can be maintained tranquilly because human beings are deemed sufficiently rational that they can and do generally constrain their free action under the terms of the laws of nature. Hence, should people choose to enter into formal bonds of civil society and authorize a government in order to avoid the “inconveniences” and inefficiency of the precivil world, the only rule worthy of consent is that which strictly upholds and protects the liberty they naturally possess. According to Locke, any government that systematically denies to its subjects the exercise of their God-given liberty (as Hobbes’s sovereign would do) is tyrannical and cannot expect obedience.
Individualism and Modern Society
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed an emerging role for the individual that culminated in the appearance of the language of individualism. One strand in the intensified interest in the individual was the rise of capitalism as an economic system that emphasized the individual both as the holder of self-interest and as the foundation of all legal rights. Perhaps the most famous early advocate of economic individualism was Adam Smith (1723–1790). Although Smith is sometimes labeled the first great economist of capitalism, he preferred to describe his system in terms of “natural liberty,” arguing that the welfare of society is best served when every individual seeks his or her own advantage without reference to any overarching scheme of goodness or justice. When individuals are left to their own devices, Smith held, the ensuing system possesses an inherently self-adjusting quality that will ensure the maximum satisfaction of individual desires.
The apotheosis of individualism may be found in the utilitarian doctrine, formulated most clearly by Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), that social policy should promote the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This idea rested on the principle that all individual estimations of utility deserve equal treatment and respect in comparison with all others. Hence, no person could claim that his or her calculation of happiness counted for any more or less than another’s. A truly democratic society should treat the wishes and desires of each of its individual members with the same dignity, without regard for moral judgments concerning the content of those aims. Bentham elaborates the basic insight of Smith to cover the full range of political and social programs and institutions.
Although liberalism could seem to take individualism for granted, the extreme egalitarianism of the utilitarian position, coupled with the events of the French Revolution (1789–1799), made many thinkers (including those of a liberal stripe) nervous. Edmund Burke (1729–1797) was concerned that the spread of democratic equality and the breakdown of the organic social order would lead to the fragmentation of persons into atomized individuals lacking any sense of identity or place. He scorned the individual’s “private stock of reason” in comparison with the wisdom of history, fearing that the glorification of individuality presaged the crumbling of regard for the tradition-bearers of social authority, such as the monarchy, the nobility, and the church. Under such circumstances, Burke predicted (presciently, as it turns out) that authoritarian forms of government would step into the breach and provide an artificial identity for individuals as a remedy for their extreme alienation.
The French social commentator Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) similarly believed that an excess of democratic equality bred individualistic isolation in which people retreat from public life into families and small groups of interested combines. The unavoidable results of individualism are egoism, the suppression of all virtues, and the concession of political deliberation to the “tyranny of the majority”—conclusions reached on the basis of his observations of American as well as French modes of democracy. In Tocqueville’s view, America’s avoidance of the corrosive effects of individualism (at least in the early nineteenth century) stemmed from its valorization of liberty over equality as the basis of social relations. Note that true liberty is not, for Tocqueville, individualistic.
Karl Marx (1818–1883) occupies an interesting position in the history of individualism. Although Marx is commonly regarded as a holistic social thinker, he in fact repeatedly asserted that individual self-realization was the standard against which social relations should be judged. In his early writings, he condemned capitalism for the alienating and dehumanizing impact that it exercised on individual workers, while in the Communist Manifesto (1848) he called for a system of equitable distribution of the fruits of labor on the grounds that the precondition of the liberty of each is the liberty of all. Like his predecessor Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and his contemporaries, such as the anarchist Jean-Pierre Proudhon (1809–1865) and the utopian Charles Fourier (1772–1837), Marx believed that communal equality constituted the necessary prerequisite for the flourishing of free individuals.
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) shared some elements of nineteenth-century skepticism about mass democratic society, but his writings crystallized the understanding of individualism still widely shared in Western societies. According to Mill’s important essay “On Liberty” (1859), the interests of humanity are “progressive,” in the Enlightenment sense that human beings seek material and moral improvement. Mill holds that the societies that are most likely to promote this goal—societies that he terms “civilized”—share the common factor of defending and promoting individual liberty. Individualism—understood as experimentation with lifestyles and ideas—challenges uncritically received sureties and broadens the basis of human knowledge. Borrowing from Tocqueville, Mill admits that democratic society contains the potential to dampen or even forbid many expressions of personal liberty that stand at odds with mass tastes or beliefs. In contrast to Tocqueville, however, Mill maintains that individualism stands on the side of liberty, not equality. A free society supports individualism.
The trend toward the foregrounding of the individual continued in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Nietzsche reviled the “herd mentality” of modern mass society, which espouses conformity and mediocrity as the highest aspirations of humanity. He proposed, instead, that an individual might attain the “transvaluation of values,” by which he meant that one could generate authentically for one’s self the unique principles that would guide oneself and oneself alone. Principles of this higher sort cannot be imposed or taught by one to another. Rather, the authentic individual must discover in a radically individualized way those precepts that realize his or her own valuation. Nietzsche drew no explicit political theory from this because politics, as the realm of imposition of coercive authority over others (the “will to power”), was incompatible with the deep individualism that he advocated.
Persisting Debate
The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have witnessed the spread around the globe of a culture that valorizes the human individual. Expressions of this individualism have been, however, extremely diverse. The philosophical and literary school of existentialism found a vast audience among both intellectuals and popular audiences during the middle of the twentieth century. The existentialists—the best known of whom were Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)—proclaimed the radically individualistic situation of human beings. In particular they focused on the profound nothingness of death—the one element of human existence that each person necessarily experiences uniquely and individually, since no one can die another person’s death—as a way of clarifying the condition of human Being. Positing the nonexistence of God, existentialism asserts that each individual must create meaning in his or her life through acts of personal will. Dependence on other people or institutions—priests, philosophers, governments, or even family and friends—for meaning leads to inauthentic forms of existence. Because death cannot be escaped, inauthenticity ultimately reveals itself in the confrontation with one’s own mortality. Each and every individual must eventually face the question, “Why do I exist?” And only in the deeds one freely performs does an authentic response arise.
Under the growing influence of economic thought, individualism has also been promoted under the guise of the logic of market relations. Libertarians such as Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992), Robert Nozick (1938–2002), and, more popularly, Ayn Rand (1905–1982) proposed schemes of society that radically limited the power of the state and permitted broad scope for individual choice in all spheres of life. Each adopted a different starting point for these doctrines: for Hayek it was a quasi-utilitarian model of laissez-faire economics, for Nozick Lockean natural rights theory, and for Rand an original philosophical system that she called “objectivism.” Yet, each thinker proposed that governmental regulation of the individual, and thus constraint on free choice and autonomy, amounted to a denial of authentic humanity.
In its avowedly neoclassic turn against Keynsian welfare economics, recent economic thought reinforces much of the individualism of the libertarian school (Hayek, of course, is well known as a leading economist as well as a political philosopher). Neoclassic economics holds that growth and efficiency within markets depends on the maximization of individual rational satisfaction. When political institutions (or presumably any other extrinsic factors) impinge on choice by limiting options or regulating competition, the perfect flow of information that the free market produces is impeded and inefficiency is introduced. The salient assumption of this economic theory is that individuals are rational satisficers or mazimizers; that is, they are the best (indeed, the only legitimate) source of decisions about what is best for themselves. Neoclassic economics, broadly construed, embraces rational egoism and hedonism as the only psychological premises that comport with the principles of free markets. The economic model has in turn been appropriated by other social sciences, such as political science, under the name of “public choice” or “rational choice” theory.
Of course, individualism remains a controversial idea. No less than Saint-Simon and his followers, modern communitarians worry about the socially corrosive effects of individualism, as evinced by rising levels of crime, political alienation, and unrestricted consumerism. In a widely acclaimed recent empirical analysis of social capital in America, Robert D. Putnam (b. 1940) has argued that the phenomena Tocqueville once identified as bulwarks against social decay in American democracy—in particular, local-level voluntary associations and community-based activities—are increasingly disappearing. Americans are “bowling alone” (to employ Putnam’s own central image of rampant individualism) rather than joining leagues or social clubs to pursue common interests. Leaving aside its empirical dimensions, Putnam’s provocative thesis raises for communitarians the specter of whether a social order composed of monadic units can sustain the values of democratic politics.
See alsoAlienation; Free Will, Determinism, and Predestination; Identity; Person, Idea of the; Personhood in African Thought; Responsibility; Society; State, The; Utilitarianism; Utopia.
bibliography
Black, Anthony. “Society and the Individual from the Middle Ages to Rousseau: Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory.” History of Political Thought 1 (1980): 145–166.
Coleman, Janet, ed. The Individual in Political Theory and Practice.New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
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——. Two Treatises of Government. Edited by Peter Laslett. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Lukes, Steven. Individualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973.
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CaryJ.Nederman
New Dictionary of the History of Ideas Nederman, Cary
Individualism
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INDIVIDUALISM
Individualism is a doctrine concerning both the composition of human society and the constitution of sociocultural actors. The term was invented in the 1820s, apparently, in France (Swart 1962). Its first appearance in English dates from the 1835 translation of Alexis de Tocqueville‘s study of the United States (Tocqueville [1850] 1969, p. 506). The basic notion conveyed by the newly coined word, that the individual is sovereign vis-à-vis society, was intensely controversial, for it stood on the grave of one established order, proclaiming the rise of another. As an early French critic saw it, individualism “destroys the very idea of obedience and of duty, thereby destroying both power and law,” leaving nothing “but a terrifying confusion of interests, passions and diverse opinions” (cited in Lukes 1973, p. 6).
Individualism should be distinguished from historically specific constitutions of the individuality of human beings. The word “individual,” used to discriminate a particular human being from collectivities (“family,” “state”), had been in circulation for centuries prior to Tocqueville (albeit mainly as an adjective), and individualizations had been practiced under one description or another long before that, at least as evidenced in the oldest surviving texts of human history. However, premodern constitutions of individuality did not become the foci of a distinctive doctrine of individualism. That development came in response to the profound changes of social structure and consciousness that had been slowly accumulating during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the transformation from a medieval to a modern world, new transparencies of meaning evolved—among the most important, a particular conception of “the individual.” The enormous power of that conception is reflected in the fact that people of modern society have generally had no doubt as to what an “individual” is. The reference has been self-evident because the object referred to, an individual, has been self-evident, pregiven, natural.
But one must remember that “the individual” is a construct. Like all constructs, it is historically variable. The meaning of individualism’s “individual” was formed under specific historical circumstances that, in practice as well as in ideology, increasingly prized values of rational calculation, mastery, and experimentation; deliberate efforts toward betterment of the human condition; and a universalism anchored in the conviction that “human nature” is basically the same everywhere at all times and that rationality is singular in number. These commitments were manifested in the doctrine of individualism (as, indeed, in the formation of the modern social sciences). By the time of Tocqueville and the newly coined word, individualism’s individual had become integral to much of the practical consciousness of modern society. Human beings were being objectified as instances of “the individual”—that is, as instances of a particular kind of individuality.
The forces created during that formative period wrought great changes in the fabric of society, many of which continue to reverberate. Of course, as historical circumstances have changed, both “the individual” of individualism and the constitution of individuality have changed. Nonetheless, a certain transparency of meaning remains still today in our practical consciousness of “the individual,” and it is still informed by a doctrine of individualism. Thus, when a sociologist says that “a natural unit of observation is the individual” (Coleman 1990, p. 1), he can assume without fear of failure that most of his readers will know exactly what he means.
The remainder of this article offers brief accounts of (1) the development of individualism during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, (2) recent shifts of emphases in individualism’s conception of “the individual,” and (3) some current issues and concerns. More extended treatments can be found in Macpherson (1962), Lukes (1973), Abercrombie and colleagues (1986), Heller and colleagues (1986), and Hazelrigg (1991), among others.
THE SELF-REPRESENTING INDIVIDUAL
While elements of individualism can be seen in expressions of practical affairs as early as the twelfth-century renaissance (Macfarlane 1978; Ullmann 1966), the first more or less systematic statement of the doctrine came during the 1600s. Scholars such as René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke believed that in order to understand a whole (e.g., society) one had first to understand the parts of which it is composed. In the case of society, those parts, the building blocks of a society, were instances of “the individual.” Although disagreeing on various specific issues—for example, whether human agency is distinct from a natural world of causal necessity (Descartes) or a product of that causal necessity (Hobbes)—these seventeenth-century scholars displayed a remarkable confidence in their understandings of “the individual” as a presocial atom. Their individual was a highly abstract being, squatting outside the world.
In the premodern order of European society, social relations had been organic, corporate, and mainly ascriptive. Sovereignty was a complex relation of duty, responsibility, and charity, focused on a specific location in the hierarchical order of organic community. Certainly members of the community were individualized, but the distinction was constituted primarily by ascriptive position in the hierarchical order. It is clear from surviving documents of the twelfth century, for example, that one individual knight was discriminable from any other in ways that we would describe as “personality.” With rare exceptions, however, the discrimination was local. Otherwise, knights were discriminable mainly by pedigree, lines of fealty, and quality of chivalry. Individuals could rise (and fall) through gradations of rank, but vertical movement was first within the family or household group. A knight who aspired to still higher standing had first to be retained in another, more powerful family. Similarly, while there is no reason to doubt that residents of a twelfth-century village or town could reliably discriminate one another by physiognomic features, the portrayal of human beings in paintings concentrated on matters of costume, placement, and posture to signal social distinctions among virtually lifeless mannequins. Even in the revolutionary works attributed to Giotto (1267–1337), whose use of subtle gestures and glances began to individualize portrayals sufficiently to be called portraits in the modern sense, such facial features as warts, wens, moles, wrinkles, lines, scars, and sagging skin were still quite irrelevant to, and therefore absent in, the visualized identity or character of a person. But by the end of the 1400s we see, most notably in Domenico Ghirlandaio‘s Portrait of Old Man and Boy (c. 1490), depictions that to the modern sensibility count as realistically individualized faces. The art of portraiture gradually developed into advertisements of a new actor, front and center—modernity’s sovereign individual (Haskell 1993).
In this new order, by contrast to its predecessor, social relations were conceived as contractual rather than organic, based on achieved rather than ascribed traits of individuals liberated from constraints of community. City life was once again the center of gravity in territorial organization, having displaced the manorial system. What would become the modern nation-state was beginning to take shape during the period of relative peace inaugurated by the several Treaties of Westphalia in 1648. Within this context of invention and experimentation with new (or renewed) organizational forms, the new individual was conceived as a wholly separate entity of self-identical integrity, a “bare individual” who could freely consent to enter into concert with other, equivalently constituted individuals, each propelled by self-interest. This was, as Macpherson (1962) described it, the advent of “possessive individualism,” and it correlated well with the developing motivations of capitalism.
By the end of the eighteenth century, individualism had attained mature statement in treatises by David Hume, Adam Smith, and Immanuel Kant, among others. This mature statement, worked out in the context of rapidly changing political-economic institutions, emphasized the centrality of a “self-representing individual.” The chief claim—that “every individual appears as the autonomous subject of his [or her, but primarily his] decisions and actions” (Goldmann [1968] 1973, p. 20)—served as the linchpin to formalized explanations of the political and economic rights of members of society, especially the propertied members. Expressions of the chief claim in moral and legal rights of the individual became enshrined in newly invented traditions, in legitimizing principles such as “popular sovereignty” and “inalienable rights,” and in documents of public culture such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Constitution of the United States of America (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983; Morgan 1988). The prayerful injunction “God bless the squire and his relations and keep us in our proper stations” had been replaced by the almost wholly secular “I pledge allegiance to the flag” (i.e., to an abstract sign). While the claim of autonomy emphasized the universality of rights and the particularity of the “I,” the practical emphasis on a self-representing individual was formulated in political-economic terms that “necessitated” elaborate definitions and procedures for the defense of “property rights” long before equivalent attention would be given to, say, “rights of the handicapped.”
Much like the individual of organic community, the self-representing individual is a substantial presence, manifest as the embodiment of a uniform human nature, and as such is the bearer of various traits, dispositions, and predications. However, the site of the self-representing individual’s capacity of agency and potential for autonomy is neither the community nor the accumulated traits, dispositions, and predications. Rather, it is deeply interior to what became a new “inner nature” of the human being. Beneath the faculty of reason, beneath all feeling and emotion and belief, there is “the will.” Emile Durkheim ([1914] 1973) described it as the egoistic will of the individual pole of homo duplex, for George Herbert Mead (1934) it was “the principle of action.” But before either of those sociologists, the master theorizer of the self-representing individual, Immanuel Kant, had formulated the basic principle as the pure functioning of the “I” through time. Only because I can unite a variety of given representations of objects in one consciousness, Kant ([1787] 1929, B133) argued, is it possible that I can “represent to myself the identity of consciousness,” throughout those representations. In other words, the very possibility of a knowledge of the external world is dependent on the temporal continuity of the “I.” The individual is absolute proprietor of this pure functionality, this willing of the “I” as basic principle of action; the individual owes absolutely nothing to society for it.
By conceiving the essential core of human individuality to be a deeply interiorized, radically isolated pure functionality, connections between the individual and the substantive traits that he or she bears become arbitrary. The individual is formally free to exercise choice in which traits to bear, free to be mobile geographically, socially, culturally, personally. Ascriptive traits are devalued in favor of achieved traits, and one set of achieved traits can always be exchanged for yet another set. This principle of freely exchangeable traits, an aspiration directing progress toward “the good society,” depended on new means of socialization (or “internalization of norms”), so as to insure sufficient regularity in processes of exchange. Indeed, the self-representing individual was central to a distinctive regimen of behavior, a new practical meaning of “discipline” (Foucault [1975] 1977). As the doctrine of individualism saw it, the contractual, associative forms of social relation, though looser fitting in their normative constraints than the old organic community, were complemented by the figure of “the self-made man” who had internalized all the norms of rectitude and propriety so nicely as to merit life in an unprecedentedly free society. When reality failed the image, there were courts and legal actions for deciding conflicts of interest and the clash of individuals’ rights. Notably, not a single book on the law of torts had been published in English by the mid-1800s; the explosive growth of tort law and third-party rules was only beginning (Friedman 1985, pp. 53–54).
Because the doctrine of individualism provided a set of answers to questions that were foundational to sociology (as to the social sciences in general)—What is the individual? How is society possible? and so forth—virtually every topic subsequently addressed by sociology has in one way or another involved aspects of individualism. Given the composition of individualism’s self-representing individual, the most prominent issues have often centered on questions of relationship between the rise of individualism and the development of new forms of political-economic organization as manifested in capitalism, bureaucracy, and the modern state. Indeed, that relationship was focus of one of the great controversies occupying many early sociologists (Abercrombie et al. 1986). Hardly anyone doubted the existence or importance of a relationship. Rather, the debates were about such issues as causal direction (which caused which?), periodizations (e.g., when did capitalism begin?), and whether ideas or material conditions (each category conceived as devoid of the other) were the primary motive force. In many respects the debates were a continuation of the struggles they were about.
Other, more specific topics addressed by sociologists have also involved aspects of the rise of individualism. Several have already been mentioned (e.g., a new regimen of discipline). Additional examples are the development of sectarian (as opposed to churchly) religions, followed by an even more highly privatized mystical-religious consciousness of the isolated individual; changes in domestic architecture, such as greater emphasis on individualized spaces of privacy and functionally specialized rooms; changes in table manners, rules of courtesy, and other “refinements of taste”; the emergence of a “confessional self” and practices of diarykeeping; increased emphasis on romantic love (“affective individualism”) in mate selection; new forms of literary discourse, such as the novel and autobiography; the rise of professionalism; and the rise of the modern corporation as an organizational form that, having gained standing as a legal actor comparable to a flesh-and-blood person, cast into doubt reliance on understandings of “the will” as foundation and motive force of contractual relations (see Abercrombie et al. 1986; Horwitz 1992; Perrot [1987] 1990).
THE SELF-EXPRESSING INDIVIDUAL
The figure of the self-representing individual proved to be unstable, even as the meaning of representation gradually changed. This was mainly because the same factors that had produced this version of individualism’s individual also led to dissolution of the transparent sign. For example, whereas clothing, manners, bodily comportment, and similar traits had been, in the old order, reliable signs (representations) of a person’s rank or station in life, the sign became increasingly arbitrary in its relationship to ground. This loosening of the sign, together with a proliferation of signs in exchange, led to a new universalism of “the empty sign.” The prototype was money and the commodity form: Devoid of intrinsic value and capable of representing everything, it represents nothing in particular. As one recent scholar has described the process, borrowing a clause from Karl Marx, “all that is solid melts into air” (Berman 1983).
At the same time, the rhetoric of transhistorical forms of value (e.g., the commodity, inalienable rights) allows for an enormous amount of individual variation in the sociocultural conditions under which it can succeed. Individualism’s emphasis on the bare individual was being increasingly generalized, further reducing the import of group-based relations and traits. In the mid-1800s, for instance, the distinction between public affairs and private matters was drawn at the door of home and family. Family life provided the chief “haven” of organic relations, nurturant domesticity, and refuge from the trials of work and politics. But soon the haven itself became a site of struggle toward still greater individuation. Of the many factors contributing to this rebellion against the traditional restraints of family, one of the most important was a new culture of sexuality, which manifested a more general and growing concern for the interior interests and needs of the individual.
Precedent for this concern can be seen in Kant’s conception of the self-representing individual (because of the transcendental “I,” every individual has in common a potential for self-actualization) as well as in romanticist movements of the early 1800s. However, the development of a new “inner discourse of the individual” has been mostly a twentieth-century phenomenon. The psychology of Sigmund Freud and his disciples formed part of that development, certainly; but another part was formed by the conception of a new “social citizenship” (Marshall 1964), which emphasized an individual’s rights of social welfare in addition to the earlier mandates of political and economic rights. A new figure of individualism’s individual gradually emerged, the “self-expressing individual.”
The individualism of the self-representing individual promoted the idea that all interests are ultimately interests of the bare individual. The new version of individualism both extends and modifies that idea. Whereas the self-representing individual puts a premium on self-control and hard work, the self-expressing individual generalizes the value of “freedom of choice” from political-economic exchange relations to matters of personal lifestyle and consumption preferences (Inglehart 1990). The central claim holds that “each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized” (Bellah et al. 1985, p. 336), and each person has the right to develop his or her unique capacities of self-expression. A recent change in divorce law partly illustrates the import of that claim. Prior to the 1960s one of the few organic relations still surviving in modern society was the marital bond; few conditions were deemed grave enough to have legal standing as grounds for breaking it. With the invention of “no fault” divorce (relatively noncontroversial legislation that spread rapidly from state to state; Jacob 1988), the marital relation became a civil contract much like any other, and a spouse’s freedom to choose divorce in the interest of satisfying unfulfilled needs of self-expression gained recognition.
Another manifestation of this self-expressing individual is the recent development of a specialized field, the sociology of emotions (e.g., Barbalet 1998; Thoits 1989). Certainly earlier scholars (e.g., Georg Simmel) had recognized emotive dimensions of sentiment, tradition, trust, and the like, and had assumed motivations such as fear of power, anxiety about salvation, envy of success, frustrated ambition, and eponymous glory. No one imagined that persons of premodern societies did not experience emotions—though usually this would have been in an idiom of “the passions,” and scholars disagreed whether these were in fact ahistorical, noncultural formations. But emotions had rarely been treated as important topics of inquiry by sociologists until the latter decades of the twentieth century. The emotive dimensions of life had typically been regarded as subordinate to other dimensions, just as the passions had been treated as dangerous when unbridled—energies which belonged properly in the harness of reason or “the rational faculty.” (Most of the seven deadly sins, remember, were emotional states or effects of emotional states.) When rightly yoked by reason, emotive energies of the self-representing individual could achieve highly valued public outcomes even if the particular emotion itself was classified as a vice. Thus, avowed Adam Smith among others, private greed or avarice could become, through the device of market transaction, a public benefit. For the self-expressing individual, on the other hand, emotive aspects of life are, or should be, valued in themselves, not only for what might result from them. Whereas the eighteenth-century “pursuit of happiness” (one of the self-representing individual’s inalienable rights) was idiomatic for the unfettered formal liberty of the individual to pursue self-interest in commerce (an inherently outward-looking, social activity), for the self-expressing individual the pursuit of happiness refers to a much more introspective, privately evaluated emotional state, “being happy with who one is.”
Individualism’s self-expressing individual remains a trait-bearing substantial entity, to be sure. The variety of bearable traits is greatly expanded by the shift in emphasis from self-control to self-expression through lifestyle experimentation (“the person as work-in-progress-from-within,” as it were). Moreover, this shift in emphasis is accompanied by the stipulation that only those traits that an individual can freely choose to assume, and then jettison, should be relevant criteria by which to discriminate and evaluate individuals. Criteria falling outside the bounds of individual choice (“immutable” traits, whether biological or sociocultural) are deemed to be both irrelevant and, increasingly, a violation of an individual’s rights. In conjunction with the “entitlements” logic of social citizenship, this stipulation of a radically individualistic freedom of reversible choice has been linked to the emergence of a generalized expectation of “total justice” (Friedman 1985).
By the same token, the doctrine of individualism has always contained a large fictive component. Long after the doctrine proclaimed the sovereignty of the bare individual, for example, the actual individuality of human beings continued to be heavily marked by ascriptive traits (e.g., gender, race) and by sociocultural inheritances from one’s parents. The shift to an expressive individualism reflects efforts to situate the agency of a “free individual” outside the separately conceived domain of relations of domination. Rather than attempt to change those relations, the self-expressing individual would “transcend” them by concentrating on a logic of rights pertaining to the free expression of individual will in a domain of “personal culture” (Marcuse [1937] 1968).
Fictions can be productive in various ways, however. The fictions of individualism have often been made taskmasters, as women, African Americans, persons with disabilities, and other human beings discriminated primarily by ascriptive or group-based criteria have struggled to make reality conform to doctrinal image.
SOME CURRENT ISSUES
Because individualism has been one of the professional ideologies of the social sciences (“methodological individualism”), a perennial issue concerns the proper structure of explanation—specifically, whether explanation of any sociocultural phenomenon must ultimately refer to facts about individuals, and if so, what precisely that means (Coleman 1990; Hazelrigg 1991; Lukes 1973). No one denies that collectivities are composed of individuals. But that truism settles neither the question of how “composition” is to be understood nor the question of what constitutes “the individual.” In short, the methodological issue involves a number of theoretical-conceptual issues, including several that are located at the intersection between individualism’s “individual” and historical variations in the actual constitution of individuality (Heller et al. 1986). The doctrine of individualism has consistently conceptualized “the individual” as a distinct and self-contained agent who acts within, yet separate from, a constraining social structure. Rather than being an ensemble of social relations, individualism’s individual is the substantial atom out of which any possible social relations are composed. This has certain implications for the empirical field.
How, for instance, does one understand the category “rational action”? What minimal criteria must be satisfied in order that a particular action can count as “rational”? The individual who stands forth in individualism tends to the heroic—self-made, self-reliant, and self-governing, rising above circumstances, taking charge of one’s own destiny, and, in the aggregate of similar atoms, building a better world. This individual was soon accorded central place as the chief fount of rational action. Whereas late eighteenth-century scholars such as Adam Smith continued to remind readers that rational action could and did stem from nonrational motivations (e.g., moral sentiment, the ethos of tradition, even the simple inertia of habit), pride of place in the list of motivational sources increasingly shifted to that part of the “faculties of mind” called “the rational faculty,” conceived as an instrument of the will. The emphasis on rationality as faculty, an “instrumental rationality,” was no doubt encouraged by, and at the same time promoted, a growing list of successes in the inventiveness of carefully deliberated, calculated designs, plans, and projects of human engineering. (Recall the success of Dutch efforts, beginning on an ever larger scale in the 1600s and 1700s, to push back the sea and create thousands of square miles of new land—for most of us a barely remembered fact of history, but in those earlier times a truly audacious undertaking.) Are the limits of rational action therefore as closely circumscribed as the limits of an individual actor’s rational deliberations, calculations, and intentions? Most sociologists today are agreed in answering “no” to that question, although they diverge, sometimes sharply, in particulars of the answer (Coleman 1990; Kuran 1995; Sica 1988).
Social action can be highly rational in the aggregate, both in outcome and in process, even when individual actors, attending more to nonrational or irrational than to rational motivations and intentions, behave in ways that hardly fit the doctrinal image of “heroic actor.” People do learn from experience (if fitfully and slowly), and part of the accumulated fund from that learning consists in organizational forms that have rationalities built into them. This “rationality as form”—a materialized intelligence in the same way that a hand-held calculator, an airplane, or a magnetic resonance imager is a materialized solution to a set of problems—enables many more people to use, benefit from, and even operate the rationalities built into such devices than have the understanding (“rationality as faculty”) required to design their architectures or to convert design into working product. Moreover, whereas the examples just cited can be readily interpreted as immediate and punctual products of some specific individual’s rational faculty (thus fitting the heroic-actor model of the inventor or discoverer as genius), many other examples of rationality-invested organizational forms—family structures, markets, bureaucracy, and so forth—are as much or more the gradual accretions of indirection, sentiment, habituation, and happenstance than the intended consequences of rationally deliberated, calculated, instrumental actions of particular individuals. The doctrine of individualism has often slighted the importance of these latter wellsprings of rational action, as if the actions they motivate do not quite count, or do not count in quite the same way, as action that directly manifests the willful force of an individual’s reasoned intentions.
In a related vein, if the individual owes nothing to society for the “I” as principle of action, where should the distinction be drawn between determinants of action that are social and those that are psychological? Consider, for instance, a person suffering the characteristics clinically (and thus socially) categorized as “depression.” Are these characteristics proper to the individual only, or are they also in some way descriptive of a social condition that is integral to the individual so characterized? If Willy Loman, of Arthur Miller‘s Death of a Salesman, is depressed, does that description say anything about the circumstances of a life Loman shared with countless others, or is it the description only of a misery interior to an isolated individual? Each of these accounts of what is under description has had its proponents. The popularity of a medicative regimen that emphasizes direct palliation or amelioration of psychic state (as in chemical applications, whether Prozac or psilocybin) suggests a growing preference for the second account.
Some sociologists contend that individualism’s self-expressing individual is an accurate depiction of contemporary reconstitutions of individuality, and that in this new form of “the individual” the substance of selfhood, an individual’s self-identical integrity, is being evacuated. Bellah and colleagues (1985) indict the emergence of “a language of radical individual autonomy” in which people “cannot think about themselves or others except as arbitrary centers of volition (p. 81).” Others argue that the emphasis on individual autonomy and separation is an expression of masculine, patriarchal values, as contrasted to feminine values of social attachment (Gilligan 1982). Still others see the development of an entirely new “order of simulacra” (Baudrillard [1976] 1983), in which simulation or the simulacrum substitutes for and then vanquishes the real (e.g., television images establish the parameters of reality). The alleged result is a collapse of “the social” into the indifference of “the masses,” who no longer care to discriminate among “messages” (beyond their entertainment effects) since one simulation is as good as another.
Equally contentious issues surround the evident growth in people’s sense of entitlement and in the array of legal rights claimed and often won on behalf of “individual choice.” Individualism’s figure of the self-expressing individual is held by some to be the harbinger of a new age of democracy, by others to be the confirmation of a continuing trend toward greater atomization (Friedman 1985). Both assessments point to the emergence of a “rights industry” that promotes the invention of new categories of legal right pertaining to everything from a guaranteed freedom to experiment with unconventional lifestyles without risk of discrimination or retribution, to the rights of animals both individually and at the species level, to the possibility of endowing genes with “subject-like powers” and thus legal standing (Glendon 1991; Norton 1987; Oyama 1985). Some critics contend that the expansion of concern for increasingly particularized and “arbitrary” individual choices comes at the expense of a diminished concern for social outcomes. “Unless people regain the sense that the practices of society represent some sort of natural order instead of a set of arbitrary choices, they cannot hope to escape from the dilemma of unjustified power” (Unger 1976, p. 240). The conviction recalls that of the early French critic quoted in the opening paragraph.
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The term individualism covers a range of ideas, philosophies, and doctrines that emphasize the unlimited freedom of the individual and the individual’s right to protect his or her own interests against those of society. The French liberal writer Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) coined the word to characterize individual selfishness—a value system that predisposes human beings to be concerned only with themselves and their small circle of family and friends. Arising in reaction to the collectivist spirit of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, its original meaning tended to be rather negative and controversial, implying that individualism was a source of social atomism, anarchy, and public disorder. Thus, while praising the individualism of nineteenth-century America, Tocqueville at the same time cautioned against its threat to public life through the weakening of social bonds and obligations.
Today the term is often employed to describe a political and social philosophy—sometimes referred to as “liberal individualism” or “laissez-faire individualism”—that stresses the primacy of the individual and the importance attached to individual freedom, self-reliance, privacy rights, and individual choice. In its full-fledged form, it emerged first in Britain with the spread of the laissez-faire ideas of Adam Smith (1723–1790) and the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) in economic and political theory. In the Anglo-Saxon world, liberal individualism became a catchword for free enterprise, free markets, limited government, and unrestricted economic freedom, as well as for the individualistic attitudes, forms of behavior, and aspirations that sustain the idea of “self-made man.” One influential version of this usage was U.S. president Herbert Hoover’s campaign speeches in 1928 celebrating “rugged individualism” in America. Above all, individualism came to signify a preference for a minimal government role in social, economic, and religious affairs, as exemplified by the slogan “That government that governs least governs best”—though not in matters of public morality or law and order—as opposed to the more collectivist ideals of socialism.
Individualism is frequently contrasted with collectivism, a social philosophy in which the collective or common weal rather than the individual good is considered paramount. Man is seen in the Aristotelian tradition as a social animal, whose very nature, wants, and capacities are to a very large extent the product of society and its institutions—running the gamut from the family through the workplace and all kinds of voluntary associations to the nation-state and the global market. For example, the famous Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) advocated subordinating the individual will to the collective will, a view that is in fundamental opposition to the philosophy of individualism. Rousseau’s popular treatise Social Contract (1762) maintains that each individual is under an implicit contract to submit his or her will to the “general will” of the entire citizenry (volonte generale ), although the “general will” need not be the will of absolutely all citizens (volonte de tous ).
In his major work Democracy in America (1835, 1840), Tocqueville himself took a rather ambiguous stand about individualism, at times giving it a distinctly pejorative flavor. He was torn between his admiration for the individualism of American democracy and his anxiety about its political implications, such as the danger of widespread social conformism. He pointed to two major aspects of the individualistic character of American society—on the one hand, a faith in individual reason as the sole basis of public opinion, and, on the other, a self-centered, self-interested preoccupation with private concerns.
This second aspect of American individualism manifested itself in pervasive egoism, a widespread tendency to withdraw from public affairs and to focus on the material welfare of the family as the most important purpose in life. This egoism was evident in unrestrained personal ambition and atomistic competition. In a society where the scramble for power and possession was widely thought to be open to all—and failure could not be ascribed to disadvantages of birth or any other privilege—the contest was bound to be fierce and uncompromising. Tocqueville believed that individualism could pose a threat to liberty, because individualistic attitudes encourage individual subservience to public opinion and conformism. U.S. democracy found its source of intellectual authority in prevailing public opinion based on the idea of the moral equality of all individuals. The conformity to generally held attitudes and social standards was thus the result of the imposition of social sanctions by one’s peers. When Tocqueville asked why there were no professed atheists in the United States, his answer was that atheists would not get any jobs or customers. When faced with the opinion of the majority, the individual felt powerless: If the majority of one’s equals is always right, then a dissenting opinion must be always wrong. For Tocqueville, this conformist attitude was an assault on individual liberty—a “new kind of despotism” over isolated individuals too afraid of public opinion to object, too absorbed in private concerns to participate in public activity, too aware of the economic value of public order to threaten protest and disorder. Such “tyranny of the majority,” the Frenchman warned, would weaken not only liberty but the very will to liberty.
Tocqueville’s warnings about the paradoxical contradictions of individualism have been echoed numerous times in modern social and cultural criticism. The philosophy of liberal individualism has been criticized for creating a culture of what Canada’s most eminent political theorist, C. B. Macpherson (1911–1987), called “possessive individualism,” a theory of human nature that is rooted in the seventeenth century and is based on “a conception of the individual as essentially the proprietor of his own person or capacities, owing nothing to society for them” (Macpherson 1962, p. 3). Such a society, according to Macpherson, where individual skills are a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market, demonstrates a selfish and unrestricted thirst for private consumption that is celebrated as the very essence of human nature. The American sociologist Robert Bellah (1985) has similarly warned that individualism is becoming so pervasive and excessive in the United States that it is destroying the integrity and moral foundations of American society.
During the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, economic individualism in the form of laissez-faire capitalism came into conflict with political individualism in the form of representative democracy, as the newly enfranchised working-class voters increasingly came to demand government intervention in the marketplace far beyond the mere enforcing of economic contracts. The rise of militant labor unions and the mass socialist parties built upon them made free-market economic policies morally untenable and politically risky, especially after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s and the governmental response to it based on the interventionist theories of John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946), the preeminent British economist who revolutionized the science of economics by advocating active state involvement in the capitalist economy, ushered in the collectivist-inspired “social-welfare state” and also seemed to sound the death knell for the discredited doctrines of economic individualism. But the waning of western social democracy and the decline and eventual downfall of Soviet-style “state socialism” in the late twentieth century led to the revival of the ideas of laissez-faire capitalism—first during the era of Thatcherism in the United Kingdom and Reaganism in the United States, and later with the neoliberal policies of “globalization capitalism.” The anti-Keynesian and antistatist writings of Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), Friedrich von Hayek (1899–1992), Milton Friedman (1912–2006), and their followers have also contributed to restoring the previously tattered intellectual reputation of economic individualism.
In another widespread, although thematically separate usage, the so-called “methodological individualism” in the social sciences refers to the position adopted by those who argue that groups (collectivities) are nothing more than their individual members. In this view, there are no properties of groups that are not reducible to individual properties. Not only must scientists study individuals, but also the explanations of the social phenomena they study—phenomena such as social class, power, the political system, and so on—must be formulated as, or be reducible to, the characteristics of individuals. While not denying that groups exist, the individualist does deny that they have any independent status and that they are more than the sum of their parts. As former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher famously declared, “There is no society, only individuals.”
This individualistic position stands in marked contrast to the so-called “methodological holism,” the theoretical principle that each social entity (group, institution, society) has a totality that is distinct and cannot be understood by studying merely its individual component elements. There are emergent group properties that are not reducible and, therefore, groups (collectivities) are more than the sum of their parts. For example, the famous French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) claimed that collective phenomena are not reducible to the individual actor or psyche; hence, social facts can be investigated and explained independently of the individual. The debate over methodological individualism versus methodological holism in the social sciences reflects an underlying ideological tension about the relationship between the individual and society, recognizing that these two analytical levels are distinct and may have to be explicated separately.
SEE ALSOAltruism; Bentham, Jeremy; Bolshevism; Choice in Psychology; Collectivism; Competition; Conformity; Constructivism; Durkheim, Émile; Elite Theory; Elites; Enlightenment; Freedom; French Revolution; Friedman, Milton; Great Depression; Hayek, Friedrich August von; Keynes, John Maynard; Laissez-faire; Libertarianism; Liberty; Microanalysis; Microeconomics; Mises, Ludwig Edler von; Party Systems, Competitive; Philosophy; Philosophy, Political; Political Theory; Reductionism; Rousseau, JeanJacques; Smith, Adam; Social Contract; Sociology, Micro-; Tocqueville, Alexis de; Tyranny of the Majority; Utilitarianism; Welfare State
Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, et al. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Brodbeck, May. 1958. Methodological Individualism: Definition and Reduction. Philosophy of Science 25 (1): 1–22.
Hayek, Friedrich A. von. [1948] 1976. Individualism and Economic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Macpherson, Crawford B. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
O’Neill, John, ed. 1973. Modes of Individualism and Collectivism. London: Heinemann.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. [1835, 1840] 1994. Democracy in America. New York: Knopf.
Rossen Vassilev
International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
Individualism
views 2,333,716updated May 17 2018
INDIVIDUALISM
INDIVIDUALISM. One of our most familiar terms of analysis, individualism is also one of the most elusive. It is employed in so many different ways—approving and disapproving, descriptive and normative, social and psychological, economic and political—that one never knows quite what is meant when the word is trotted out. It is rarely clear, for example, whether “individualism” is describing a consciously held set of formal philosophical or ideological doctrines or merely an ingrained ethos, or mentalité, a set of assumed internalized social norms that is not being articulated. Even more bewildering, the student of American culture is likely to find that “individualism” is first highly praised and then roundly condemned in nearly the same breath. Everyone, it seems, finds something to dislike about individualism, but rarely the same thing. Conservatives may be severe critics of individualism in the moral and expressive spheres, but tend to be staunch supporters of individualism in the economic sphere. By the same token, liberal critics of individualism are likely to restrict their criticism to economics and distributive justice, preferring instead to celebrate the very moral and expressive individualism that conservatives deplore.
Such confusion should not blind us to the irreducible core of validity in this often nebulous concept. A widely shared belief in the dignity and worth of the individual person has long been a distinctive feature of what we imprecisely call Western civilization. As the medievalist Colin Morris well expressed the matter, “We [Westerners] think of ourselves as people with frontiers, our personalities divided from each other as our bodies visibly are.… It is to us a matter of common sense that we stand apart from the natural order in which we are set, subjects over against its objectivity, and that we have our own distinct personality, beliefs, and attitude to life.” But in fact, he continues, Western individualism is so far from “expressing the common experience of humanity” that it might more aptly be regarded as “an eccentricity among cultures.” And yet this “eccentricity” forms the indispensable basis for the ideas of liberty and equality, which are among the West’s chief gifts to humanity. Belief in the independent standing of the individual human being loses none of its central importance as a legitimizing principle of Western moral and political life because it emerged only in fits and starts over the course of Western history; has nearly always been applied selectively and inconsistently; and is often more honored in the breach than the observance.
The first stirrings of this emphasis on the individual person can be detected as far back as the world of classical antiquity, in the emergence of philosophical inquiry and democratic institutions in Greece, and especially in the intensely self-directed moral discipline of Hellenistic-era Epicureanism and Stoicism. The ideas and institutions arising out of biblical monotheism also played a vital part in the formation of an individualistic ideal, placing heavy emphasis upon the infinite value, personal agency, and moral accountability of the individual person. That emphasis reached a pinnacle of sorts in the synthetic vision of Western Christianity, which incorporated the divergent legacies of Athens and Jerusalem into a single universalized faith.
Yet none of these expressions of belief should be equated with what we mean by modern individualism. Such freedom as the premodern individual enjoyed, particularly after the advent of Christianity, was always constrained by belief in the metaphysical existence of an objective moral order, which could not be violated with impunity by antinomian rebels or advocates of romantic subjectivity. It was equally constrained by belief in the inherent frailty of human nature, which insisted that moral virtue could not be produced in social isolation. Although nearly all influential Western thinkers had conceded the signal importance of the individual, none employed the term “individualism” to express that belief. Only with the dawning of modernity did essential components of modern individualism such as the belief in natural rights—that is, rights that precede the creation of political society—began to fall into place and prepare the way for what was to come.
As for “individualism” itself, like many of our most useful words, it began life as a term of abuse, appearing first in the discourse of opponents of the French Revolution. The nineteenth-century French archconservative Joseph de Maistre used the word “individualism” to describe the Revolution’s overturning of established social hierarchies and the dissolution of traditional social bonds in favor of an atomizing and leveling doctrine of natural individual rights, which freed each individual to be his or her own moral arbiter. Maistre’s idea of “individualism” was not an affirmation of personal human dignity. Instead, for him it represented a disordered nightmare of egotism and moral anarchy.
Alexis de Tocqueville also employed the term critically, albeit much more moderately so, in his classic study Democracy in America (1835–1840), a locus classicus for the consideration of the term’s American career. Individualism is, he argued, a characteristic pitfall for all societies that are “democratic,” by which he meant societies lacking any legally sanctioned distinctions of rank or status among their members. Indeed, he concluded that the American propensity for individualism was characteristic of all modernity, because America, as the first “great republic,” represented the avant-garde of human history, and therefore served as a pioneering exemplar of what the future would likely bring to Europe.
Tocqueville’s complaint was very different from Maistre’s, however. Egotism, he thought, was a mere emotional disorder, the passionate and exaggerated self-love one could find manifested throughout human history. But individualism was also something else. It was a more or less self-conscious social philosophy, “a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellow-creatures: and to draw apart with his family and friends: so that … he willingly leaves society at large to itself.” In other words, individualism was a conscious and calculated withdrawal, not from all human contact, but more specifically from the responsibilities of citizenship and public life. For Tocqueville—who was, unlike Maistre, a qualified friend of democracy, which he believed to be the God-ordained direction of human history—there was no greater threat to the health and stability of this new order than such a tendency toward privatism.
So “individualism” began its life as a critical term, and a reasonably precise one. But it did not remain so. Indeed, the critical view of individualism taken by these two French writers seems strikingly at odds with the self-conception that would come to be characteristic of most Americans, who had little or no comparable experience of feudal, aristocratic, monarchical, and other premodern political institutions, and who saw individualism in a largely favorable light. In the American context, especially with the social opening that came with the rise of Jacksonian democracy, the word has only rarely taken on pejorative connotations. It was more likely to refer to the sturdy values of the self-reliant frontiersman or the self-made entrepreneur—or to a broadly libertarian under-standing of the relationship between the individual and society or the state, wherein the liberty and dignity of the former are shielded from the grasping hands of the latter. As such, it pointed toward a view of all political and social groups as mere aggregations of otherwise naturally self-sufficient individuals, whose social bonds are largely governed by choice and consent. Even more radically, it might point toward a view, increasingly pervasive in our own day, that to the maximum degree possible, the individual should be regarded as an entirely morally autonomous creature—accountable to no person and no “higher law,” armed with a quiver of inviolable rights, protected by a zone of inviolable privacy, and left free to “grow” and “develop” as the promptings of the self dictate.
In any event, there seems little reason to doubt that the dominant view in our own day tends to endorse the highest possible degree of individual liberty and self-development in political, religious, social, and economic affairs. American history is a record of the defeat or weakening of nearly all competing ideas. The language of individual rights—the tendency to regard individual men and women as self-contained, choosing, contract-making, utility-maximizing, and values-creating actors, who accept only those duties and obligations they choose to accept—grew steadily more powerful and pervasive in the latter part of the twentieth century, and now stands triumphant. The recourse to individual rights, whether expressed as legal rights, voting rights, expressive rights, reproductive rights, sexual rights, membership rights, or consumer rights, has become the near-invincible trump card in most debates regarding public policy. Although there are serious challenges to the hegemony of such “rights talk,” particularly as evidenced in the critical works of such communitarian thinkers as Mary Ann Glendon, Philip Selznick, and Amitai Etzioni, such challenges have yet to find a broad audience.
The Unique Development of American Individualism
This has not always been the state of affairs in America, and we are reminded of just this fact by much of the best scholarship in colonial and early national history in recent years. The crucial role of Protestant Christianity in making the early American social and political ethos has been repeatedly emphasized. For example, the political scientist Barry Alan Shain has made the case that it was not Enlightenment liberalism but a very constrained form of communitarian Reformed Protestantism that best represented the dominant social and political outlook of early America. The political theorist Michael Sandel has argued that, until the twentieth century, America’s public philosophy was based largely on the “republican” assumption that the polity had a formative, prescriptive, “soulcraft” function to perform in matters of the economy, the family, church-state relations, personal morality, free speech, constitutional law, privacy, productive labor, and consumption. Like so much else about the early American milieu, that assumption has been so completely erased by the individualistic liberalism of our own day that we have forgotten it was ever there.
In retrospect, however, it is hard not to see those earlier perspectives as fatally fragile. Certainly by the middle of the nineteenth century, figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman—romantic American nationalists and prophets of the unconstrained self—were already trumpeting the note that would have the most lasting resonance in the American imagination. It was Emerson who declared famously that a society is a “conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members,” and that “nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” And it was Whitman who declared that “the Great Idea” is “the idea of perfect and free individuals,” and that “nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s-self is.” One could hardly deny that such driving, self-interested ambition was itself a logical corollary to the spirit of unrestrained self-development, although both men would live long enough to be disappointed in the crass materialism that seemed to take hold of American society in the post–Civil War years. So, too, there is the irresistible story of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the semi-noble, semi-savage boy who lit out for the territory rather than enduring the phony rigors of civilization. Indeed, one sure index of the hold that individualism has had on American thought and expression is the culture’s richness in figures of heroic individuality—and its relative poverty in providing convincing representations of community or social obligation.
There have always been a few important countercurrents, however, to this pervasive celebration of individuality. One such current emerged from women writers, both inside and outside the nascent feminist movement. Individualism being a game still reserved largely for males, the fiction and “domestic economy” literature produced by such nineteenth-century writers as the sisters Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe often had a very different tone, emphasizing the satisfactions of settlement, family life, nurture, and human connectedness—all the things that Henry David Thoreau and Huck Finn sought to escape. Such arguments were carried to a high pitch by the southern anti-suffragist Louisa McCord, who urged women to stand at a critical distance from the coarse individualism of the male public world. To be sure, the works of northern feminists such as Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were nothing if not individualistic in tone, testifying to the fact that some women were eager to get in on the game. Various forms of that same tension between equality and difference have persisted into the twenty-first century and continue to color our discussions of individualism and gender.
The immense human suffering and social dislocation wrought by industrialization was another stimulus to anti-individualistic thinking. One can see some elements of this critique emerging idiosyncratically in the antebellum years—for example, in the fascinating career of the anti-capitalist Catholic convert Orestes Brownson, who railed against individualism for destroying the grounds of human solidarity; or in the works of pro-slavery apologist George Fitzhugh, who presented slavery as an organic and patriarchal institution, far preferable to the inhumane and predatory institution of “wage slavery.” But the best example could be found in one of the most widely read books of the nineteenth century, Edward Bellamy‘s 1888 fantasy Looking Backward, an effort to imagine a perfected postindustrial Boston, reconstituted as a socialist cooperative commonwealth in the year 2000. Bellamy openly reviled individualism, proposing in its place a post-Christian “religion of solidarity,” which would radically de-emphasize the self, and instead emphasize social bonds over individual liberty (and traditional Christian doctrine).
The popularity of Bellamy’s book showed that there was a market hungry for such ideas, and many of the most “progressive” forces of the day—ranging from the cooperation-minded Knights of Labor, the theological advocates of a modernist “social gospel,” to Progressive reformers such as Herbert Croly, Jane Addams, and John Dewey—unreservedly admired and emulated its spirit. Indeed, the Progressive movement itself, at least in some of its manifestations, advanced a new corporate ideal that sought to downplay individualism and instead to defend and preserve “the public interest” in the face of industrial capital’s power. In the hands of a sophisticated thinker like Dewey, a case was made that the values of community and individuality, far from being in opposition, are mutually supporting and mutually sustaining, particularly in an age dominated by large industrial combinations, immense asymmetries of wealth and power, and vast impersonal networks of communication. It was pointless, in their view, to restore the small-scale community of days past. Economic and social forces had rendered such community, with its personal bonds and face-to-face business transactions, impossible. The task ahead was the creation of something new, which Dewey called “The Great Community,” a systematically reconstituted social order that, it was hoped, would adapt the best features of the old community forms to the inexorable realities of the new economy and society, and thereby preserve the possibility of a healthy form of individuality as well.
Individualism in a Postindustrial World
In retrospect, though, a social and political ideal based on solidarity seems never to have had much of a chance. Even the crisis of the Great Depression did little to dislodge Americans’ individualistic assumptions, and a decisive blow to communitarian alternatives was administered by the rise of the totalitarian regimes of Europe, whose terrifying success in suppressing the individual for the sake of the nation threw all communitarian and corporate ideals into a disrepute from which they have yet to recover. The concerns generated thereby decisively shaped both the liberalism and the conservatism of the postwar years. Libertarians like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek and liberals like David Riesman, Lionel Trilling, and Reinhold Niebuhr—even conservatives like Robert Nisbet and Russell Kirk—all paid their disrespects to the Leviathan nation-state and thereby called into question the efficacy of any modern corporate or communitarian ideal. Instead, the social and political thought of postwar America seemed to be devoted to an entirely different ideal: the guardianship of the self.
The 1950s were awash in works devoted to that cause. Riesman’s The Lonely Crowd (1950) warned against the conformism of “other-direction” in the American personality, and William Whyte’s The Organization Man (1956) deplored the predominance of a “social ethic” in America’s white-collar classes. Ayn Rand‘s fierce pop-Nietzschean novels celebrated the autonomy of the individual creative genius, sneered at altruism as a form of self-betrayal, and gave rise to the still lively intellectual movement called Objectivism. Neo-Freudian psychology concerned itself with the problems of the ego, and such leading psychological theorists as C. G. Jung and Erik Erikson focused obsessively on the problem of “individuation.” Even the emergence of a New Left movement in the early 1960s, which purported to challenge the bourgeois assumptions of its liberal forebears, did little to alter this trend, since the movement’s communitarian tendencies were no match for its commitment to a radical, near-anarchic standard of behavioral and expressive liberty.
In the age of postmodernity, then, the self has become the chief source of moral value. But one need only state such a proposition to realize how deeply problematic it is. Notwithstanding the naive certitude of Descartes’s cogito, there is nothing more elusive than the self, which is both something that we “are” and something that we “have” in our less-than-full custody. Not only is it the ultimate seat of our subjectivity, it is equally the object of our therapeutic ministrations. Moreover, it is an entity whose highest refinement is its reflexive ability to stand outside of itself, enacting a selfhood that is beyond self. Indeed, the tortuous complexity of this description lends plausibility to one of the most powerful themes of post-modernism: its assertion that the modern idea of the unitary self cannot bear the weight placed upon it by fragmented modern life, and that in fact what we call the “self” is finally deconstructible into an ensemble of social roles. If so, though, then in what can individualism, let alone morality, be grounded?
It may be, too, that what appears to be unrestricted individualism turns out, on closer examination, to be something rather different. It may be that our broadened individual liberty is constrained in ways we hardly notice, so that we have been granted greater and greater freedom to live lives of less and less heft and consequence. A choosing consumer is not the same thing as a deliberating citizen, because the freedom to choose is not the same thing as freedom to shape. The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, among others, has argued that the expanding moral freedom of the modern world has been purchased at a very considerable price in public disempowerment. In our “bifurcated” modern world, moral evaluation has been relegated to “the realm of the personal,” he says, while vast public bureaucracies and private corporations rule unchallenged over “the realm of the organizational” by means of impersonal procedural dicta. Hence individuals are remarkably free to order their personal lives as they see fit, but at the cost of having ceded any substantial voice in the shaping of public life. There is, MacIntyre has asserted, a “deep cultural agreement” between the ideal of the unencumbered private self and the corporatist ideal of rule by bureaucracy. Both accept a diminished understanding of humanity. In this view, we may already resemble the soma-numbed denizens of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) more than we would like to think.
Such a state of affairs bears an uncanny resemblance to the condition Tocqueville most feared, in which individualism enervates Americans’ will to act in public ways. Accordingly, it would seem that the most useful response to the disintegration and diminution of the self might be a movement away from the characteristic preoccupations of modern sociology and psychology, and toward a fresh reconsideration of our political natures, in all their complexity, contingency, and promise. Just such a view was put forward memorably by the late American historian Christopher Lasch, who argued that it is in the school of public life, and in the embrace and exercise of the title of “citizen,” that the selves of men and women become most meaningfully equal, individuated, mature, and free—not in those fleeting, and often illusory, moments when they evade the constraints of society and retreat into a weightless zone of privacy, subjectivity, and endlessly reconstructed narratives of the “self.” This insight will be well worth our pondering in the years to come.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arieli, Yehoshua. Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964.
Brown, Gillian. Domestic Individualism: Imagining Self in Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
Curry, Richard O., and Lawrence B. Goodheart, eds. American Chameleon: Individualism in Trans-National Context. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991.
Hewitt, John P. Dilemmas of the American Self. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989.
Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations. Revised, New York: Norton, 1991.
———. The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics. Reprint, New York: Norton, 1991.
McClay, Wilfred. The Masterless: Self and Society in Modern America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Morris, Colin. The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200. Reprint, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995.
Sandel, Michael. Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1996.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.
WilfredMcClay
Dictionary of American History McClay, Wilfred
Individualism
views 3,441,084updated May 23 2018
INDIVIDUALISM
A powerful ideal that signifies the preeminence of the self as an autonomous, rights-bearing entity, individualism first emerged as a national ethic during the half-century after the American Revolution. Elements of individualistic thought reach back to ancient Greece and Renaissance Europe. Over the centuries, various writers have used individualistic themes to express and proclaim all sorts of agendas and convictions. All of these efforts, however, strive to locate the singular person within—or atop of—the social institutions that standardize life. Individualism is, at root, a relational idea, one that responds to and rejects its foils: anonymity, passivity, conformity. As such it has often borne a defensive or embattled posture. This was certainly true in early national America. For some, individualism helped to define the Republic against its ancien régime enemies; for others, individualism menaced both public order and personal morality.
roots of american individualism
The concept of individualism grew from religious, political, and economic roots in early America. Protestant Christianity, practiced in some vein by most Euro-Americans, rejected the symbolic and institutional props of Catholicism in favor of a more intimate link between the seeker and God. The personalized thrust of Protestantism inhered in Puritan diaries, through which the writer catalogued his or her search for salvation, and in Quaker meetings, during which men and women silently accessed their “inner light” of faith. The conversion experiences of eighteenth-century Evangelicals also underlined this personal connection to God. American individualism also derived from liberal political theory, especially from John Locke‘s precept that an individual’s rights preceded the formation of governments. According to Locke, all men—women were subsumed by their fathers or husbands—bore inherent entitlements to life and property that the state had to respect. Finally, the concept of individualism issued from the market economy that developed throughout the North Atlantic world during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In light of this new economic setting, some philosophers celebrated the “natural” workings of trade and commerce. When each person pursued his own interests, they argued, every person benefited. Mercantilist or paternalistic controls on self-interest (and, by extension, self-awareness) thereby lost some of their cultural legitimacy.
the individual vs. duty, obligation, and the public interest
As powerful as these experiences and belief systems were in colonial America, they cut against the grain of early modern thought and culture. In both Europe and North America, most of those in power as well as most philosophers understood society as an organic whole, a “body politic” of unequal but interdependent parts. No one but Robinson Crusoe lived alone or unattached; all people bore duties and obligations to those above and below them on the “great chain of being.” In Revolutionary America, political radicals who called themselves “republicans” found these old ideas increasingly hollow. Haughty aristocrats who curried favor with the crown did not appear to uphold their responsibilities to the commonweal. Yet such radicals did not seek an alternative to monarchical “corruption” in the ascension of the individual. On the contrary, republicans exhorted would-be citizens to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the political community. “Every man in a republic,” declared the physician and Revolutionary Benjamin Rush, “is public property. His time and his talents—his youth—his manhood—his old age—nay more, life, all belong to his country” (Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, p. 61). Thus, neither the monarchical precepts that Americans rejected nor the republican philosophies they embraced during the Revolution celebrated (or even tolerated) the free-floating, autonomous individual.
Nonetheless, the American Revolution propelled individualistic thought toward its eventual enshrinement as a (not the) national ethic. Historians often argue that the Revolution bequeathed a dual legacy of republican and “liberal” tendencies to American culture, and that the latter eventually won out. Individualism is often taken as the end product of liberal capitalism and liberal democracy. Early national Americans, however, would have puzzled over the term “liberalism.” Many, perhaps most, explicitly invoked or implicitly embraced Christian and republican virtues of self-sacrifice and public service. Yet others discerned a fresh potential for self-fulfillment within the cultural topography of the new Republic. They celebrated “emulation”—creative tension between an individual and a certain goal or another person—as the key to such fulfillment. Teachers, ministers, and other local notables argued that emulation pushed people, especially youth, to “excel” their peers in learning or virtue, tapping reservoirs of personal energy that monarchy had kept frozen. Some even lauded the long-feared passion of “ambition”—the personal desire for honor and preeminence—as a potential virtue, an emotional “fire” to be harnessed rather than stamped out. Such beliefs intersected with hero-worship of Revolutionary figures (“which one of you will be the next Washington?” asked one academy preceptor) and manifested in everything from school spelling-bees to debate societies. For the first time, the cultivation of the self for a distinct role in “the grand theater of the world” gained widespread legitimacy.
Again, though, such ideas ran counter to vital currents of thought and experience. Even as Americans moved toward a popular and competitive rather than an elitist and consensual political culture, and even as they participated in an ever-expanding commercial economy, they remained enmeshed in household and neighborhood obligations. The family economy, in which women and children worked for household heads, survived the Revolution. In fact, it adapted to and helped to propel a burgeoning of commerce in the early nineteenth century. Farmers and artisans enhanced labor demands on their wives and children and used republican citizenship to affirm their authority within the household. Many an “ambitious” farm lad found his aspirations thwarted by his father’s wishes. Ironically, proponents of emulation often assailed such fathers as litigious, greedy, and selfish—in other words, as individualistic. Protestant views of the self as depraved and worthless also retained their power over the new nation’s religious culture.
a celebration of self-definition
The term “individualism” finally emerged in national discourse during the 1820s, as those who inherited the Revolution and its new grammar of personal potential gained civic, cultural, and economic power. The word, and the social types associated with it, celebrated personal discovery and self-definition, not (or not just) personal gain and self-interest. The appearance of the term coincided with the rise of the autobiography as a popular genre. The first of the so-called “self-made men” in America were those who had left the farm, admired and imitated some hero or ideal type, and then invented a special vocation or niche—a “career”—in society. They included itinerant ministers, factory founders, Western explorers, and college professors; they also included many who went bankrupt and a few who struck it rich. Women faced even greater obstacles to self-definition. Effectively marginalized from the world of commerce, ambitious women sought distinction and personal fulfillment in reform movements like temperance, antislavery, and, of course, women’s rights. All of the early autobiographers conveyed a sense of struggle—with physical disabilities, with financial hardships, and with the provincial mores and local commitments that fettered the self.
By the 1830s, the language of individualism helped to portray the United States as a hurried and “bustling” place, one where the demands of moneymaking and self-making intersected and collided. Yet no sooner had individualism established itself in the American vocabulary than it provoked new criticisms and alternatives. The French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), for example, believed that the America he toured in 1831 was degenerating into individualism, which he called “a calm and considered feeling which disposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows.” Many middle-class commentators, who now worked in offices or shops rather than at home, praised that very tendency. The middle-class home, by design, provided a gentle retreat from the callous world of work. But many worried that this withdrawal hindered the civic engagement and public spirit that made republics better than monarchies. Tocqueville also noted that the prevailing sense of self-interested busy-ness actually suffocated personal creativity and self-expression. Individualism was, in a sense, its own worst enemy.
Even as it became the nominal core of the democratic, capitalistic world of nineteenth-century America, individualism remained a controversial and complex notion. As home and work divided in the industrial age, more and more Americans took for granted the need to exercise one’s ambition, to find one’s unique place in the wide world. Competition and the disciplined pursuit of wealth and status became organizing principles of American society—at least, of its bourgeois elements. But the formation of a full-blown market economy and democratic polity only sparked a new quest for authentic freedom and self-determination. Transcendentalists like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau sought a more satisfying form of autonomous experience than industrial society, or conventional ideas of individualism, would allow. Thoreau found his in the solitude of Walden Pond outside Concord, Massachusetts; Emerson, in the introspective faith he called “self-reliance.” Religious perfectionists, moral reformers, and factory workers all invented new kinds of associations to combat the anonymity and inequity of nineteenth-century America. And the vexed career of individualism stretches to the present day, underscoring the multiple and conflicting legacies of the American Revolution.
Appleby, Joyce. Inheriting the Revolution: The First Generation of Americans. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2000.
Bellah, Robert N., ed. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. 2 vols. 1835, 1840. Translated by George Lawrence, edited by J. P. Mayer. New York: HarperPerennial, 2000.
Wood, Gordon S. The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
J. M. Opal
Encyclopedia of the New American Nation
Individualism
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Allusions–Cultural, Literary, Biblical, and Historical: A Thematic Dictionary
Explain the context in which America grew into its role as a world power
Explain the causes of the Great Depression and its effects on the economy
Explain how the Great Depression and the New Deal impacted American political social and economic life over time
Explain how and why U.S. participation in World War II transformed American society
Compare the relative significance of the major events of the first half of the 20th century in shaping American identity
Introduction
On Saturday, March 4, 1933, newly inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt told the nation “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” (see the Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933 Primary Source). However, the economic collapse called the Great Depression meant the American people had every reason to be fearful. On the morning Roosevelt took office, the governors of New York and Illinois had closed the great financial centers of New York City and Chicago, the culmination of six weeks during which state after state had closed its banks to halt the runs as desperate customers lined up to withdraw their money. The country’s gross domestic product (GDP) had fallen by one-third since 1929. Between one-quarter and one-third of the industrial work force was out of a job, and many of the rest were working only part-time. Agriculture, which employed one-third of the nation’s workforce, was stricken. World commodity prices had collapsed, and cotton and wheat farmers found themselves with huge surpluses that sold well below the cost of production, if at all. In some areas, conversely, drought had destroyed what crops there were (see the The Dust Bowl Narrative). Everywhere, indebted farmers lost their farms when they could not pay their taxes or repay mortgages. In the cities, 1,000 homeowners a day were losing their homes.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was sworn in as president on March 4, 1933, in front of the U.S. Capitol.
From Hoover to Roosevelt
To this economic calamity, still the worst in the nation’s history, government had had little effective response. President Herbert Hoover was an activist executive with a deserved reputation as a humanitarian for his earlier efforts to alleviate hunger in war-torn Europe. He worked tirelessly to persuade businesses to maintain employment levels, to cajole private citizens to provide relief for the unemployed, to encourage farmers to control their production, and to renegotiate their loans and debts with other nations. But these appeals to voluntarism failed, and the downturn continued remorselessly. Hoover increasingly pinned his faith on a balanced budget as a precondition of securing international stabilization.
Many Americans blamed the president for their suffering during the Great Depression. They were losing their farms, homes, jobs, and life savings. Their need stretched and even exhausted the resources of private charities and local and state governments, and they turned to the national government and the president to provide a solution. In the face of the president’s perceived failings and the ongoing economic catastrophe, voters elected governor of New York Franklin D. Roosevelt president with his promise of bold, persistent experimentation. When he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in July 1932, Roosevelt pledged a “new deal for the American people,” reversing his predecessor’s approach. His progressive faith in the role of government to assist the poor and unemployed appealed to the rural southern and western wings of the Democratic Party and the lower-income immigrant voters of the northern cities. But Roosevelt had few details worked out for his legislative or recovery programs when he took office, despite the four months during the interregnum between the election and his inauguration.
The New Deal and the Hundred Days
Roosevelt and his advisers had no plans to deal with the collapse of the banking system, which was the most immediate and pressing problem they faced. Relying on suggestions from holdover officials of the outgoing Hoover administration, Roosevelt shut the remaining banks and called Congress into special session. On its first day, Congress passed a bill for the phased reopening of the banks. Still, Roosevelt was taking a tremendous gamble. He used the medium of the radio to speak to the American people on Sunday, March 12, 1933, explaining the legislation and appealing for confidence when the banks reopened the next day. The pause calmed people’s fears, and when the banks reopened, customers deposited more than they took out.
The rest of Roosevelt’s New Deal aimed at the goals of relief, recovery, and reform. The administration attempted to provide the American people with direct relief, usually in exchange for work, to ease suffering and prevent mass homelessness and starvation. Roosevelt and his “Brain Trust” of academic advisers also sought economic and business recovery from the depths of the economic depression. The third goal was long-term reform of the American economic system of capitalism through government regulation, because of the belief that it could prevent another economic disaster.
The goals of relief, recovery, and reform often conflicted with each other and produced mixed results, but Roosevelt wanted bold and persistent action and experimentation by the federal government to alleviate the crisis. His strategy coincided with the rise of Keynesian economics, which was the idea that the government needed to control the business cycle to support growth and mitigate recessions through taxing and spending policy. The federal government would encourage growth during recessions by cutting taxes or increasing spending and control inflation during booms by increasing taxes and decreasing spending.
Congress’s willingness to rush through banking legislation that it had had almost no time to scrutinize led Roosevelt to ask the legislators to stay in session. During the next 100 days, Congress passed 16 major pieces of legislation. Among many notable results were the creation of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), headed by reformer Harry Hopkins, which provided money to the states to give relief to the unemployed, and the Public Works Administration (PWA) which, with a budget of $3.3 billion, was responsible for building the Hoover Dam (known as the Boulder Dam at the time it was constructed), the Key West causeway, and New York City’s Triboro Bridge. The PWA budget represented 165 percent of federal government revenues for 1933. The Civil Works Administration (CWA) provided another $400 million in the winter of 1933–1934 for building schools, parks, and roads. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) hired hundreds of thousands of young men to plant trees to prevent soil erosion and work on flood control. These programs often allowed states to distribute aid, which, in turn, allowed southern states to discriminate against African Americans, who received fewer benefits.
Another goal of the Hundred Days was to aid farmers and rural residents devastated by the Great Depression. By 1933, wheat prices had plummeted to 38 cents a bushel from 86 cents in 1929, and corn fell to 32 cents a bushel from 82 cents. Farm income had dropped to one-third of 1929 levels (see the Photographs: The Dust Bowl and Rural Poverty, 1936–1937 Primary Source). Congress passed the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) and paid farmers not to plant crops in order to prevent overproduction and, therefore, raise prices. The Department of Agriculture also persuaded farmers to slaughter six million pigs and destroy 10.5 million acres of cotton to increase prices. The animals were slaughtered although Americans were starving, and the move caused consumers to have to pay more for food even though they were out of work. Congress created the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to control flooding and build dams for public hydroelectric power to modernize the South and combat poverty. Nevertheless, during the next two years, more than one million white and black tenant farmers were forced by conditions to move off the land in search of jobs. In United States v. Butler (1936), the Supreme Court declared the AAA unconstitutional because it regulated intrastate production, and it was replaced by other agricultural programs that continued price supports and production controls.
The cornerstone of business recovery was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which was administered by the National Recovery Administration (NRA). The enactment of this legislation was directed by General Hugh Johnson, who had headed government-industrial planning during World War I. On the basis of earlier examples of government-business cooperation in the Progressive Era, World War I, and the 1920s, the NIRA suspended antitrust regulations. It allowed businesses within industries to regulate themselves and create “codes of fair competition” for setting production and price goals. This meant that businesses could legally act as oligopolies and set prices paid by consumers artificially high. Section 7(a) of the act protected workers’ rights to join unions and use collective bargaining. It also set maximum hours and minimum wages (see The National Recovery Administration and the Schechter Brothers Narrative).
The emergency programs of the New Deal were made possible by Roosevelt’s personal political skills and the sheer scale of the economic collapse, which led constituents to demand that their representatives in Congress support the president, whatever their long-standing ideological skepticism of government intervention had been. The White House received millions of letters from impoverished farmers who appreciated New Deal relief programs, even as they were embarrassed to accept government aid because of their persistent belief in American individualism.
Critics of the New Deal
Roosevelt was nevertheless assailed by critics on both sides. Conservatives railed against the unprecedented increase in government spending and power, and radicals criticized the president for not doing enough to combat the lingering depression (see the New Deal Critics Narrative).
Conservatives formed the Liberty League, which protested the centralization of the American state and the perceived threat to liberty they believed it posed (see the Huey Long and the American Liberty League, 1934 Primary Source). Other critics demanded more federal programs. Dr. Francis Townshend was a local California physician who won public attention with a plan to give retired people older than age 60 years a $200 a month pension if they spent the money quickly. Louisiana governor Huey Long proposed the Share Our Wealth program, with steep progressive taxes to be redistributed to needy Americans. Father Charles Coughlin, the “radio priest,” combined calls for social justice and inflation with overt anti-Semitism. Socialists and Communists called for changes to a capitalist system that had produced worldwide despair. The author of The Jungle, Upton Sinclair, ran (unsuccessfully) for governor of California with a plan called End Poverty in California (EPIC), in which the government was to confiscate abandoned factories and farmland for the unemployed to use to form cooperatives. Despite the critics, the Democrats increased their majorities in both houses of Congress to two-thirds in the 1934 congressional elections.
From the start, the New Deal did not merely seek economic recovery. Roosevelt and his New Deal allies also wanted to reform the economy. In financial services, the government guaranteed bank deposits, turned the Federal Reserve into a powerful central bank, and regulated the stock market through the newly created Securities and Exchange Commission. It renegotiated farm and home mortgages and then underwrote both long-term home mortgages and farm credit. New financial regulation virtually eliminated bank closures for half a century. The new mortgage provisions helped increase the rate of homeownership in the United States until it was the highest in the world. Farm foreclosures virtually stopped after 1933.
The Second New Deal
In late 1934, the president delivered one of his so-called fireside chats, using the radio to speak directly to the American people and fostering an intimacy that reassured them that he understood their problems and was working to solve them. He also explained his rationale for the New Deal and the changing purpose of government: “The legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all or cannot do so well for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.”
By 1935, the economy had recovered slightly, and unemployment had dipped from an estimated 25% to 20% with the infusion of billions of dollars by the federal government, but the economy was still deeply entrenched in the Depression. Backed by Democratic majorities in Congress, the Roosevelt Administration, in 1935 and 1936, passed another wave of reforms to achieve its goals; these reforms often are referred to as the Second New Deal.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was created in 1935 and employed three million people to build highways, bridges, and parks; it also funded artists, writers, and theaters (see the Art Analysis: The Art of the New Deal, 1934 Primary Source). The federal government underwrote direct relief for the unemployed administered by state governments, providing, in poorer states, as much as 90 percent of the payments to the poor. But Harry Hopkins, who oversaw the New Deal’s welfare program, always wanted to provide jobs rather than a handout for the unemployed. At their height, New Deal jobs programs employed four million workers—nearly 40 percent of those left unemployed by the Depression. The federal government assumed much of the responsibility for providing jobs for Americans and restoring their economic well-being during the economic downturn.
In 1935, the Supreme Court declared the NIRA unconstitutional in Schechter v. United States because it allowed Congress to regulate intrastate trade and delegate authority to the executive branch. As a result, workers lost the protections of Section 7(a). Partly in response to the Court’s decision, Congress passed the Wagner Act of 1935, which was one of the most important and transformative pieces of legislation of the New Deal era. The Wagner Act outlawed a host of traditional anti-union activities by employers and protected workers’ right to organize and bargain collectively with employers. The act also created an executive agency, the National Labor Relations Board, to enforce the law. This agency provided vital protection for union organizers as they recruited mass-production workers for the first time in 1936 and 1937.
Rank-and-file workers also pushed hard for the recognition and expansion of unions. In 1937, autoworkers launched a series of sit-down strikes at General Motors plants that spread to other industries [see the “Sit Down,” Maurice Sugar, 1936–1937 Primary Source]. These successful strikes increased organizing power and led to the growth of the powerful Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) labor union. By the end of the decade, union membership had tripled and included almost one-quarter of the industrial workforce. Those unions provided the radical cutting edge of New Deal politics in the late 1930s (see the Labor Upheaval, Industrial Organization, and the Rise of the CIO Narrative).
The 1935 Social Security Act was a core element of the federal government’s increasing assumption of responsibility for individuals’ economic security. The act created a permanent old-age social insurance program funded by employer and employee contributory taxes; that is, those in the labor force would fund those in retirement. It provided for unemployment insurance and aid to single women with dependent children. The Social Security Act had several limitations, including regressive taxes, variations in state provisions, the absence of health insurance, and the lack of coverage for some of the neediest. It also withdrew money from the economy in the form of taxes without paying benefits for the next five years, conflicting with the belief of the administration that government spending stimulated the economy.
The Second New Deal included several other important congressional programs to fulfill the administration’s goals. The Rural Electrification Administration (REA) built on the work of the TVA to bring electricity to rural homes. The Emergency Relief Appropriation Act provided an additional $5 billion for relief programs, much of which went to the WPA. The Revenue Act of 1935 significantly increased taxes on the wealthiest Americans, with the top rate going as high as 79 percent. It also raised corporate taxes and hiked estate taxes.
As Roosevelt faced his first reelection campaign, he was riding a crest of popularity. The government had spent billions of dollars during Roosevelt’s first administration and ran large deficits. Although the recovery was meager, it was real and many people were thankful for the relief and that the government was acting. Millions switched their allegiance to the Democratic Party as a result.
Third New Deal
The New Deal’s reforms, jobs programs, and relief measures cemented lower-income voters’ loyalty to the Democratic Party for a generation. By 1936, the popularity of these initiatives had helped Roosevelt and the Democrats forge a new coalition that gave evidence of a realignment in national politics. The New Deal coalition included urban ethnic voters and party bosses, southern Democrats, organized labor, African Americans, Catholics, and Jews, leading to the triumph of modern liberalism from the middle of the twentieth century through the 1960s. However, Roosevelt’s greatest victory, deriving from the strength of this coalition, also contributed to the decline of the New Deal.
Roosevelt ran for president against Republican Alf Landon of Kansas in 1936 and won in a massive landslide, taking 46 states and 523 Electoral College votes. Democrats built on their supermajorities in both houses of Congress. Despite these overwhelming victories, the New Deal faced difficulties.
Between 1933 and 1937, the economy was beginning to recover and unemployment was down to approximately 14 percent of the workforce. Roosevelt was uneasy about the high government spending and increasing budget deficits. He cut spending on relief programs, and the new Social Security taxes took money out of the economy. The economy went into another tailspin as a result of the cuts, and unemployment climbed back to 19 percent during the sharp recession of 1937–1938.
Roosevelt’s popularity also decreased because of his “court-packing” plan. After the Supreme Court invalidated the AAA, NIRA, and other New Deal measures, the president attacked the Court for frustrating reform with what he considered to be an outmoded interpretation of the Constitution. He retaliated with a plan to appoint an additional justice to the Court for every judge older than 70 years up to a total of 15. The political motivation of the plan—to pressure the Court to validate New Deal programs—was transparent, and many critics attacked Roosevelt’s tampering with the Constitution. The plan became superfluous when the Court declared the Wagner Act, Social Security, and other New Deal programs constitutional and thereby upheld several key New Deal programs. Still, the president and his reform program suffered a blow and lost momentum that was not recovered (see the Court Packing and Constitutional Revolution Narrative).
By 1938, a conservative coalition had been strengthened by Roosevelt’s missteps. Southern Democrats had enthusiastically supported the emergency New Deal, but they were now skeptical of the nonemergency New Deal, which threatened traditional patterns of racial dependency in the South by providing relief to African Americans. Conservative Republicans were concerned about years of rapidly expanding government spending and programs. After 1938, they combined in a bipartisan coalition to block efforts to expand the New Deal.
The New Deal and Minorities
Many white southern politicians feared New Deal interference in segregation in the 1930s. The New Deal did not challenge segregation or the disfranchisement of African Americans. In fact, it discriminated against African Americans in the administration of its programs through outright exclusion and lower wages and by leaving the distribution of funds in the hands of state and local officials who favored segregation. Moreover, Roosevelt refused to support the demands of African Americans, despite the lobbying of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt for an antilynching bill, because he feared the political consequences of offending powerful southern committee chairs in Congress.
Nevertheless, African Americans were one of the poorest groups in the country and received more government assistance than ever before. As a result, from 1934 on, many African Americans in northern cities transferred their political allegiance from the Republican “Party of Lincoln” to the Democratic Party of Roosevelt. African American leaders in the South saw the potential for the federal government, which had transformed a region’s economy, to transform that region’s race relations as well. What those leaders saw as potential salvation, however, many white southerners saw as potential disaster.
Unlike African Americans, American Indians were unequivocally a federal government responsibility. Under a new head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the reformer John Collier, the New Deal reversed the government’s longstanding policy of forced assimilation, in place since 1887, and aimed to revive the American Indian economy on the reservations and modernize Native American education with the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. Collier’s goal was to protect and revive, not eradicate, traditional cultural and religious practices. He pinned his faith on a measure of self-government for American Indians, but in the long run, his policies foundered on the hostility of western politicians and the lack of enthusiasm of Native Americans themselves.
Hispanics in the United States suffered a great deal during the Depression. An estimated one million Mexicans emigrated to the United States in search of opportunity. Most were unskilled and uneducated and found work as migrant agricultural workers in the West, though some moved to industrial jobs in the Midwest. They often lived in grinding poverty in urban barrios or rural communities. . In 1931, immigration officials began forcibly deporting thousands of Mexicans who were in the country illegally. Because of federal policy, discrimination, competition for scarce jobs, and poor economic conditions, an estimated 500,000 eventually left the United States voluntarily or were removed. New Deal relief programs and labor unions often discriminated against Hispanics, though they fought for and won equality at times, such as in advances made by some unions in Los Angeles.
In the 1930s, women exercised an influence over national policy-making that remained unmatched until the 1970s. A network of college-educated women had been involved in progressive reform movements earlier in the century, focusing on the elimination of municipal corruption and the protection of female and child workers. Under the New Deal, the members of this network, headed by Eleanor Roosevelt and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the nation’s first female cabinet member, secured an unprecedented number of federal appointments. Their social welfare expertise was crucial to the success of the New Deal’s welfare and social security programs (see the Did the New Deal End the Great Depression? Point-Counterpoint).
Isolationism in the 1930s
Roosevelt’s initial focus was on the domestic economy, but foreign affairs demanded his attention with the rise of authoritarian and expansionist governments in Europe and Asia. Only a few weeks after he took office in 1933, an Enabling Act in Germany gave the decrees of the new chancellor Adolf Hitler the force of law and ended any pretense of parliamentary democracy. Scornful of the ineffective western democracies and fueled by a desire to expand Germany’s borders, Hitler broke the Versailles Treaty and launched a massive re-armament program. He marched into the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936, effectively annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939, invaded Poland in 1939, and conquered most of continental Europe in 1940 before attacking the Soviet Union in 1941. Meanwhile, in the Far East, an increasingly authoritarian, militaristic Japan invaded Manchuria and China and clearly intended to exercise complete economic and military control of East Asia.
The Neutrality Acts
In the United States, disillusionment with earlier American involvement in World War I was strong. In 1934, congressional hearings by the investigating Nye Committee had blamed American entry into the war on domestic bankers and arms manufacturers who were financially dependent on an Allied victory. The determination not to be entangled in future European conflicts led to increasingly rigorous neutrality legislation in the 1930s and the scaling back of America’s military might. Americans generally supported a policy of nonintervention that kept the nation out of foreign wars and focused on events at home.
The 1935 and 1936 Neutrality Acts embargoed arms and banned loans to all belligerents at war to avoid the United States being dragged into the conflict. The Neutrality Act of 1937 prevented all trade with belligerents, though it did allow for “cash and carry” of nonmilitary provisions to help nations that were victims of totalitarian aggression. The “cash and carry” policy meant that any supplies provided by the United States needed to be paid for in cash and transported by the purchaser. Roosevelt also called for free nations to “quarantine” aggressor nations. By 1938, the U.S. Army consisted of fewer than 140,000 men, and isolationist sentiment ran high.
From the start, Roosevelt had been under no illusion about the nature of the Hitler regime and its anti-Semitic character. But he could not ignore the strength of isolationist sentiment in the United States. He cooperated with Congress in formulating neutrality legislation that would avoid the danger of America being sucked into war through the provision of arms to the belligerents. But he increasingly believed that Hitler sought world domination and that the Americans could not simply rely on the barrier of the Atlantic and the British Navy to protect the American homeland.
After the Munich crisis of 1938 in which Great Britain and France acceded to Hitler’s demands for territory in Czechoslovakia, Roosevelt launched a massive drive to re-arm the United States. As Germany marched through Europe after 1939 and threatened to destroy Britain, Roosevelt worked to enable Britain to survive. In 1939, Congress replaced the Neutrality Acts with a new cash-and-carry program that allowed for the purchase of military as well as nonmilitary goods. This effectively ended the arms embargo that had been in place since 1936.Then, during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, Roosevelt agreed to send 50 old destroyers to Britain in return for several naval bases around the globe. In addition to this expansion of the military arsenal, Congress passed the Selective Service Act in 1940 to expand the nation’s armed forces with the country’s first peacetime draft.
In 1941, Congress expanded the concept of cash and carry and began the Lend-Lease program, providing billions of dollars in arms to the Allies. The U.S. Navy increasingly protected British convoys as they collected munitions and arms and carried them to Britain. For a long time, Roosevelt hoped Britain would somehow survive without the United States going to war. The debate over U.S. participation in World War II continued as the isolationist America First Committee and the aviator Charles Lindbergh rallied the American people against the war, while the Committee to Defend America, led by journalist William Allen White, pushed for measures to stop militarist expansion across the globe.
Roosevelt articulated his vision of what was at stake in the war against tyranny. On January 6, 1941, the president delivered the State of the Union address, declaring he was determined to support the free nations already engaged in war against Germany, Italy, and Japan. He stated that the United States must defend the essential “four freedoms,” which were freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear (or aggression). In August, Roosevelt met with Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Newfoundland and declared common principles of free nations in the Atlantic Charter (see The Atlantic Charter, 1941 Primary Source). The Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter were assertions of free principles rather than specific policies for defeating the militarist forces.
In the Far East, the Roosevelt administration increased pressure on the Japanese to stop the expansion of their brutal empire after the massacre of hundreds of thousands in Nanking, China. Japanese leaders, denied access to raw materials by an American embargo, did not believe the Americans had the appetite for a war 10,000 miles from home, or that they could fight a two-front war against both Germany and Japan. Therefore, in December 1941, Japan therefore launched a surprise attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii, hoping to inflict sufficient damage to force the United States to a settlement that would meet Japanese economic needs (see the Pearl Harbor Narrative). But for all the devastating losses inflicted at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had not secured a knockout blow, because many U.S. aircraft carriers were not present during the attack. The Japanese attacks did succeed, however, in prompting the United States to formally enter the war (see the Foreign Policy in the 1930s: from Neutrality to Involvement Narrative).
The United States in World War II
In 1942, the American Navy fought two crucial battles at the Coral Sea and Midway that halted an apparently unstoppable Japanese drive through Southeast Asia and the Pacific. American industrial might was sufficient to replace the nation’s lost planes and ships, but the Japanese could not do the same. An island-hopping campaign by U.S. Marines between 1942 and 1945 gradually established the bases needed for a relentless bombing of the Japanese home islands (see the Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima Narrative). Finally, the United States’ dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 forced the Japanese to surrender (see the Dropping the Atomic Bomb Decision Point)
The overwhelming priority of President Roosevelt and his advisers was to defeat Germany. Hitler helped make the case for that by declaring war on the United States immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. American industrial power was expected to contribute greatly to an Allied victory, but it still took time for the nation to assemble and train the necessary troops and produce the weapons they needed. In the meantime, the United States had to help Britain and Russia survive the Nazi onslaught, which looked unstoppable through 1942. The United States joined Great Britain to open a second front in North Africa in 1943, followed by invasions of Sicily and Italy.
From the German invasion of Russia in 1941 to the Allied invasion of occupied northern France on D-Day in June 1944, the Soviet Red Army shouldered the largest burden of fighting the German army. The Russians halted the German advance at Stalingrad and gradually drove Hitler’s army back through western Russia and Eastern Europe, though at an enormous cost of life. In 1943, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin wanted the American and British forces to open a second front in Western Europe. The British feared that such a cross-channel invasion might be premature and persuaded Roosevelt to send American troops to help them drive the Germans from North Africa and invade Italy instead. By June 1944, the British and Americans had had time to assemble an enormous force to invade the European mainland (see the D-Day Narrative and the Dwight Eisenhower, D-Day Statement, 1944 Primary Source). From D-Day, June 6, 1944, through May 1945, U.S. general Dwight D. Eisenhower led this combined army as it liberated France and the Low Countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg) and fought its way into Germany, though not without serious setbacks in a ferocious German counterattack at the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944.
At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the allies Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill discussed the coming end of the war and the shape of the postwar world. They agreed on Germany’s and Japan’s unconditional surrender, free elections and democratic governments in Eastern Europe, and Soviet participation in the United Nations, founded as an international organization later that year, and in the war against Japan. Critics argued that Roosevelt, by this time a sick and dying man, had conceded too much to the Soviets at Yalta, effectively selling out Eastern Europe. Others contend that Roosevelt had few illusions about Stalin but accepted the fact that the Soviet Red Army was effectively in control of Eastern Europe and that little could be done to prevent Stalin’s setting up puppet regimes to guarantee his country’s future security.
During the war, upward of six million Jews and millions of others, including Catholic priests and Jehovah’s Witnesses, members of the Polish Underground, the Romani, homosexuals, and people with disabilities, were systematically exterminated in the Holocaust. Nazi ideology promoted virulent anti-Semitism based upon pseudo-scientific racial theories. When Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had come to power in the 1930s, they decreed a boycott of Jewish businesses, banned Jews from professions, and passed the 1935 Nuremberg Laws restricting Jewish citizenship and marriage with Germans. The Holocaust began in 1941 with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, when German troops began rounding up and shooting Jews in conquered territories. By 1942, the Nazis began systematically exterminating Jews in concentration camps.
The Roosevelt administration received initial evidence of mass murder and was well-informed about the Holocaust but did not act against it in any significant way. The administration had turned away a liner, the S.S. St. Louis, filled with Jewish refugees in early 1939 before the war started, and officials in the State Department actively stalled any efforts on behalf of Jews. When Roosevelt learned of this, he established the War Refugee Board in 1944, which worked to help Jews and displaced persons in Europe, but it did not have the resources to save more than about 1,000. Various military schemes to help the Jews were considered, including the bombing of concentration camps like Auschwitz, but were rejected because of superseding military objectives and the risk that such attacks would kill inmates. The Allies instead pursued the strategy of winning the war as quickly as possible to help the persecuted millions under the heel of the Nazi regime (see the Images from the Congressional Committee Investigating Nazi Atrocities, 1945 Primary Source).
The United States emerged from the war a global military and economic superpower. It did so without any physical damage to the mainland United States and its civilian population unharmed, but with 400,000 soldiers killed. By contrast Britain lost two million soldiers, suffered the physical destruction of its major cities, was virtually bankrupt, and lost its great-power status. Soviet lands were devastated, the population endured appalling hardships, and more than 20 million men and women were lost. Yet the Soviet Union came out of the war as the other global superpower.
On the American Home Front in World War II
The federal government used precedents from World War I to mobilize millions of workers to produce supplies for the war and to draft millions of soldiers for the armed forces. Executive agencies were again created to rationalize the war effort and manage the American economy and society. The Office of War Information managed popular opinion through propaganda posters and films such as the Why We Fight series (see the World War II Propaganda Posters, 1941–1945 Primary Source). The War Production Board, Office of War Mobilization, and National Resources Planning Board helped manage war production. The National War Labor Board helped negotiate labor-management relations.
The American industrial achievement in becoming the “arsenal for democracy,” as Roosevelt described the country’s production capacity to supply itself and its allies, was astonishing. In 1939, defense spending was a mere 1 percent of GNP; by 1944 it was 44 percent. Government spending increased from $9 billion a year at the beginning of the war to $98 billion in 1944 and totaled approximately $300 billion. During the war, the country produced 100,000 tanks, 300,000 airplanes, 1,500 naval vessels, 2.3 million trucks, 35,000 landing craft, dozens of aircraft carriers, and the technology to manufacture two atomic bombs (see The Manhattan Project Narrative).
The war convinced liberals that Keynesian government spending could secure full employment. Whereas the New Deal had scarcely reached 1929 levels of employment after 10 years, the war created 17 million new jobs. The government funded the war with a combination of taxes and war bonds in almost equal amounts. What made this level of funding possible was that in 1945, approximately 42.6 million Americans paid federal income tax, compared with only three million in 1939.
Government spending during the war contributed significantly to the emergence of the “Sun Belt” across the South and West. Military bases opened across the region to train millions of troops. Shipbuilding in New Orleans, Pascagoula, Charleston, and Norfolk attracted tens of thousands of workers. Factories and research facilities for war production sprang up, and local communities grew around them. The Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb built facilities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos, New Mexico; and Hanford, Washington. During the war and after, millions of people left the old industrial centers of the Northeast and Midwest and rural areas of the South in search of jobs in the growing Sun Belt.
During the war, labor unions achieved large gains, building on their New Deal protections and success in organizing workers. Union membership increased from nine million to 15 million during the war to reach the zenith of organized labor’s strength during the twentieth century. Union leaders wanted to prove their contribution to the war with a “no strike” pledge in return for continued federal protections, such as the “maintenance of membership” policy in which the government protected the closed shop in which workers were forced to join unions. Nonetheless, government wage and price controls could not curb inflation during the war, and in response, workers launched “wildcat” strikes, walkouts that were not officially sanctioned by the unions. In 1943, Congress passed the Smith-Connally Act, giving the president authority to seize plants or mines where striking workers interfered with war production.
To meet demands for labor, the defense industries and the armed services had to turn to African American workers and military recruits. African American leaders in World War II demanded concessions for their participation in the war effort (see the A. Philip Randolph, The Call to Negro America to March on Washington, 1941 Primary Source). A threatened march on Washington forced Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802, which aimed to eliminate racial discrimination in firms with defense contracts and to end discrimination, but not segregation, in the armed services. One million African Americans left farms and moved to the southern and northern cities to work in factories. Another million served in the military. African American leaders campaigned for a Double V, victory against segregation and racism at home and victory overseas (see the Double V for Victory: The Effort to Integrate the U.S. Military Narrative). African Americans also flocked to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and participate in lawsuits against segregation. They increasingly held the electoral balance of power in northern cities. In the South, black servicemen returned from the war with raised expectations and a determination to assert their civil rights.
Mexican Americans also experienced significant change during the war. Almost 350,000 sought opportunity or a chance to serve their country in the armed forces during the war. Many continued to serve in agricultural work but found increasing opportunity in industrial jobs such as shipbuilding and aircraft production, especially in western cities. The U.S. government allowed the immigration of braceros, temporary farm workers, from Mexico to the West because of a wartime agricultural-labor shortage. The migration to cities led to racial tensions in Los Angeles as sailors fought with gangs of Mexican American youth dressed in flashy “zoot suits” with long jackets and flared pants in riots that lasted for two days in June 1943.
Industry and government also had to turn to women workers. More than 8.5 million women entered the work force during the war (Figure 12.7). By 1945, they constituted 36 percent of the work force, compared with 25 percent in 1940. Most had held jobs before, and married women, especially, returned to the work force during the war. Approximately 72 percent of the new workers were married. The labor shortage meant they took not just clerical jobs in government but also jobs in heavy industry that had previously excluded them, notably in the shipyards and airframe factories where they soon constituted 44 percent of the work force (see the Photographs: Women at Work on the Homefront during World War II, 1941–1945 Primary Source). In both unions and government, however, women had little input to policy at the leadership level. In vain, women leaders argued that the need to recruit them made their social welfare expertise all the more relevant. Although more women remained in the work force after the war than anticipated, a quarter of those in factory jobs were laid off within three months, when the end of the war greatly reduced the need for military goods.
Marriage boomed during the war and afterward, reaching its highest levels since the 1920s. After the, war most women remained at home to raise their families. The number of babies born in 1943 was the highest annual total since the beginning of the twentieth century and set the stage for the postwar Baby Boom (1946–1964).
Japanese Americans were especially targeted for discrimination on the home front during World War II. In the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, many Americans on the West Coast were fearful of additional attacks and suspected Japanese Americans might act as saboteurs, even though no such act was ever discovered. In February 1942, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which forced Japanese Americans to move away from the West Coast. Approximately 15,000 went to live with relatives or friends in other parts of the country, and those already residing outside the proscribed area stayed where they were. Soon, 130,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast were relocated to what the government called internment camps under the control of the War Relocation Authority. The camps were enclosed and guarded, but detainees could get passes for agricultural work outside the camp. Many lost their property and jobs while they were confined at the camps. Approximately 33,000 Japanese Americans served in U.S. armed forces, and 3,000 of those formed the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team. In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court asserted that curtailing civil liberties on account of race was “immediately suspect” but upheld Fred Korematsu’s conviction for violating the evacuation order. By then, however, the Japanese Americans were returning to their homes, though many found their property had been stolen (see the Korematsu v. United States and Japanese Internment DBQ Lesson)
In 1932, the United States had been in desperate economic straits. It had a tiny military and no soldiers outside the mainland and Hawaii. But by 1945, the nation was enjoying a level of prosperity unequalled anywhere in the world. In only 13 years, the federal government, for the first time, had become a significant presence for ordinary Americans. Its size and spending dramatically increased to combat economic catastrophe and authoritarian expansion overseas. Globally, the United States went from having an isolationist foreign policy to being an atomic superpower with worldwide commitments and military bases around the globe.
After the war, the G.I. Bill gave unprecedented educational, housing, and health benefits to the 13 million men and women who had served in the military. In the years that followed, the pent-up demand for consumer goods and the strong economy helped produce the “Affluent Society.” Americans faced the new challenges of the Cold War and economic growth with a renewed faith in the federal government tempered by a resilient suspicion of the state. The national commitment to self-help, localism, and individualism had survived both the Depression and the war.
1. To combat the Great Depression President Herbert Hoover relied on
voluntary actions of producers and farmers to maintain employment and production levels
deficit spending to increase consumer demand
abandonment of a balanced budget
federal programs to provide relief to the unemployed and create jobs
2. In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt received electoral support from all the following except
rural southern and western Democratic voters
lower-income immigrant voters in northern cities
northern bankers and manufacturers
factory workers
3. The bank holiday of March 1933 was designed to
nationalize the major banks
reorganize the banking system under 12 regional banks
put the U.S. banking system on the gold standard
restore public confidence in the banking system
4. During the first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration the policies enacted showed
Congress was being an effective check on executive authority
a balanced budget was attainable
Congress was willing to follow the president’s lead
the administration had a well-thought out organized plan to end the Great Depression
5. Which New Deal agency sought to oversee stock market operations?
The Federal Reserve System
The Securities and Exchange Commission
The National Labor Relations Board
The Works Progress Administration
6. The federal works projects passed during the New Deal sought to
reform unemployment insurance
create temporary employment opportunities to relieve unemployment
permanently expand the federal bureaucracy
replace the private sector as the nation’s primary employer
7. The ultimate impact of the New Deal was to
increase the federal government’s responsibility for individuals’ economic well-being
create an America First foreign policy
increase state power to regulate the economy in emergency situations
recognize the continuation of capitalism was unsustainable
8. The Wagner Act of 1935 most directly benefited
consumers
manufacturers
union workers
farmers
9. New Deal reform programs that fundamentally altered the role of the government in the economy included all the following except
the Security and Exchange Commission
the National Labor Relations Act
the Social Security Administration
the Works Progress Administration
10. Which statement most accurately states the relationship between African Americans and New Deal programs?
Southern African Americans received little support from New Deal spending and continued to support the Republican Party.
Despite discrimination in the administration of New Deal programs, a political realignment occurred with African Americans beginning to vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
New Deal legislation specifically prohibited racial discrimination.
African Americans rejected the assistance provided by New Deal programs.
11. The major challenge President Franklin Roosevelt faced in his first term was
the Great Depression
rising totalitarian regimes in Germany and Italy
the Communist Revolution in the Soviet Union
an attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese
12. In the 1930s the military strength of the United States could best be characterized as
among the best prepared and equipped in the world
the “arsenal of democracy”
limited by isolationist sentiment in Congress and the public
the world’s superpower at that time
13. Compared with that of Congress and the public President Franklin Roosevelt’s view of the role of U.S. foreign policy toward the growing threats in Europe and Asia in the 1930s was
more isolationist
more willing to provide aid and assistance to the Allies
less likely to believe Adolf Hitler posed a threat to the United States
more likely to believe the Monroe Doctrine would protect the country
14. The United States’ primary military objective in mid-December 1941 was to
defeat Nazi Germany
drop the atomic bomb on Japan
attack the Soviet Union
launch a second front on the European continent
15. U.S. forces halted Japanese advances in the Pacific at
Pearl Harbor Honolulu Hawaii
the Battles of Midway and the Coral Sea
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Nanking China
16. Allied wartime conferencing during World War II included all the following topics except
development of a postwar international peacekeeping organization
the boundaries of postwar Europe
joint development of atomic weapons by the Big Three: United States Great Britain and the Soviet Union
commitment to the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan
17. The United States emerged from World War II with all the following except
an expanded federal government
an end to racial discrimination in the armed forces
a strong economy
a renewed commitment to exert active international leadership
18. Which statement best applies to working women during World War II?
Women had very few types of jobs from which to choose.
Most women remained on the job after the war and rose to supervisory positions.
Government publicity programs were created to dissuade married women from working.
Women helped avert the labor shortage during the war but later many voluntarily left their jobs or were forced out of those jobs.
Free Response Questions
Explain the major arguments against the New Deal by both conservatives and liberals.
Evaluate the success of the New Deal in tempering the effects of the Great Depression.
Explain how the United States’ foreign policy changed from 1920 to 1941.
AP Practice Questions
Refer to the images provided.
1. A historian might use these two images to support the claim that
government-sponsored work programs led to socialism
the New Deal created a limited welfare state
public art created during the New Deal era celebrated the common worker
the construction of public buildings increased dramatically during the Great Depression
2. What theme do these images have in common?
Energy and cooperation among workers engaged in big jobs
Sadness and desperation because of the Depression
Eager preparation for war
Gloom and foreboding about dangers ahead
3. The images best reflect which continuity in U.S. history?
Automation rapidly decreased the number of manufacturing jobs
Infrastructure benefitted from federal expenditures
Rural areas more strongly represent traditional values
Industrial expansion started in northeastern cities
“The President of the United States of America and the Prime Minister Mr. Churchill representing His Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom being met together deem it right to make known certain common principles . . .
First, their countries seek no aggrandizement territorial or other;
Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;
Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; . . .
Fourth they will endeavor . . . access on equal terms to the trade and to the raw materials of the world . . .;
Fifth they desire to bring about the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field . . . ;
Sixth after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny they hope to see established a peace . . in freedom from fear and want;
Seventh such a peace should enable all men to traverse the high seas and oceans without hindrance;
Eighth they believe that all of the nations of the world for realistic as well as spiritual reasons must come to the abandonment of the use of force. . . . The establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security that the disarmament of such nations is essential.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston S. Churchill Atlantic Charter August 14, 1941Refer to the excerpt provided.
4. The excerpt most directly resulted from which earlier ideas?
George Washington’s Farewell Address
The Monroe Doctrine
The anti-imperialism movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
Woodrow Wilson’s plan for the post-World War I world
5. This excerpt was written in response to the
annexation of the Philippines
rise of fascism in Europe
passage of congressional neutrality legislation
Nazi expansion by war throughout most of Europe
6. The point of view in the provided excerpt challenged which prevailing norm in the United States at the time?
Rising internationalism
Support for an “America First” neutrality movement
Widespread support for ratification of the Treaty of Versailles
Bipartisan support for passage of a peacetime draft
“Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry (The Nye Report) U.S. Congress Senate 74th Congress 2nd sess. February 24 1936 pp. 3-13.” https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/nye.htm
Badger Anthony J. The New Deal: The Depression Years 1933-1940. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee 2002.
Blum John Morton. V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II. New York: Mariner Books 1977.
Brinkley Alan. Voices of Protest: Huey Long Father Coughlin & the Great Depression. New York: Vintage 1983.
Dallek Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life. New York: Viking 2017.
Daniels Roger M. Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. New York: Hill and Wang 2004.
Dunn Susan. A Blueprint for War: FDR and the Hundred Days That Mobilized America. New Haven CT: Yale University Press 2018.
Hamby Alonzo L. Man of Destiny: FDR and the Making of the American Century. New York: Basic Books 2015.
Katznelson Ira. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. New York: Liveright, 2013.
Kennedy David M. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press 1999.
Leuchtenberg William E. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940. New York: Harper 2009.
Lichtenstein Nelson. Labor’s War At Home: The CIO In World War II. Philadelphia: Temple University Press 2008.
Olson Lynne. Those Angry Days: Roosevelt Lindbergh and America’s Fight Over World War II 1939-1941. New York: Random House 2013.
Rauchway Eric. The Great Depression and the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press 2008.
Spector Ronald. Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan. New York: Vintage 1985.
Weinberg Gerhard L. World War II: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press 2013.
Weiss Nancy J. Farewell to the Party of Lincoln. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press 1983.
Worster Donald. Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press 2004.DownloadSave to My LibraryShareGenerate Citation
Duration45 minStandards
Topics: 7.1 Contextualizing Period 7 7.9 Great Depression 7.10 New DeaShow moreGrade Level9, 10, 11, 12Period Era1930s, 1940s, World War IITopicExecutive Power, War
Discover whether you and your flame can be together through love compatibility. Get practical dating advice and take your relationship to the next level.
Pisces and Cancer make for an interesting and strong partnership. For starters, they’re both cut from the same cloth, or rather drawn from the same well. This shared element is Water, making these two characters emotionally complex, deeply rooted in personal connections, and ever thirsty for knowledge in all its forms. Their motivations, philosophies, and interests often overlap, and that overlap helps to establish connections between the signs more easily in the short term and makes them more sustainable in the long term.
That’s not all the watery overlap can do for the Cardinal and Mutable elementals, it also permits them a strong complimentary edge with one another where they add to each others’ strengths while adding an extra layer of complexity to the proceedings. The Crab is certainly a lot more grounded than the Fish which allows Cancer to teach Pisces the values of patience and practicality. Meanwhile, Pisces has a lot to teach Cancer regarding spirituality and the matters of the world beyond what can be measured or understood as we see it.
Two facets about the Water element are personified by the Cardinal and Mutable members of its trio. Cancer is known by most as one of the most nurturing and responsible members of the Great Wheel, reflective of Water’s life-giving properties in nature. Pisces meanwhile personifies Water’s unpredictability and all-encompassing nature and is able to convey that sense of joy and curiosity to those around them. The Water couple then, makes for a sprightly couple with each other, and good parents to their children.
Weaknesses as a Couple
There are unique challenges for the Water Couple to overcome that only come about in same-element couples. For one, a common challenge for them is to think outside the box and come up with new solutions to certain problems when they arise. Pisces’s Mutability allows them to detach themselves from a situation to search for a solution but then comes the challenge of convincing their Cancer partner of the value of their idea when Cancer will stubbornly stick to their guns under the belief that if it worked once, it will work all the time.
As mentioned, there is significant overlap between the two Water signs in terms of interests and ideals, but where they differ most greatly is in their personalities. This is reflective in the symbolism of their signs themselves. Pisces is modeled after the fish, a sort of animal that travels within water at great speed but has great difficulty staying put if their life depended on it. Cancer is modeled after the Crab and while certainly not a sedentary sort is much less maneuverable than its fishy counterpart. But they can explore the land in a sustainable manner, a feat few fish can reproduce. Cancer lovers are emotionally invested, irrational at times, and prone to crabbiness. Pisces can’t stay put, their eyes wander too much, and worst of all their convictions are not set in stone. Malleable yes, reliable not so much.
The other major clashing point for these two Water Signs comes to how they deal with each other on personal matters. Cancer is a controlling type. They like plans, schedules, doctrines and will stick to them strictly. Pisces has no plans, does not like plans, and only holds them in regard to disregard them. It is the primordial Crab of Order confronted with the primal Fish of Chaos. There will be stress and there will be tension in their time, and if these two can’t find a compromise, they’re as good as done.
Compatibility
Romance
It will come as no surprise that two Water Signs will be brought together by their mutual romantic feelings for one another. Its basis will be rooted deep in the emotional cores of both parties. Cancer in particular has a strong connection with their emotions, and this can be enough to anchor even the most feisty Pisces lover into a commitment.
It’s a bit of give and take in this romantic affair. Cancer will hold their heart close to their partner and give them meaningful intimacy at all times. Pisces will bring their dynamic nature into the discourse and beholden their crabby partner to new delights and sensations they’ve never experienced before.
If there is any tension between these two, it will most certainly come from the conflicting upbringing of the signs. Cancer is traditional, while Pisces is more experimental. This can be overcome with genuine care and consideration, but it is something the couple must be mindful of even in their most vulnerable moments.
Activities
Interests and therefore activities overlap for these two lovers. As such Cancer and Pisces will enjoy a bounty of activities to perform with one another, at least in the beginning. They also bring their personalities into the engagement; Pisces dynamic action clashed against considered judgment calls from the Cancer partner.
That dynamism will be a detriment in the long run however especially if the Cancer partner is unable to keep up with Pisces’s boundless energy. There will be a choice for these two to consider; allow the Pisces partner a greater degree of freedom to display that wanton need for action, movement, and energy. Or Pisces can opt to calm themselves down and see if they can expend that energy for activities that would be more suited to Cancer’s energy levels.
Communication
Pisces is known for being flighty and schizophrenic at the worst of times, yet if there was ever one thing that is consistent about them is Pisces’s need to talk and talk about everything under the Sun. Thankfully Cancer is just happy to oblige and will listen to the mad ramblings of their hopeless lover.
Despite appearances, the Pisces has seen the depths of humanity; the same depths that Cancer gladly probes in their quiet moments. So given some patience, the Cardinal Water sign is able to extract deeper meaning from even the most inane proceedings.
Values
The Order vs Chaos conflict reveals itself in this aspect of their romantic relationship once again, and this might be the clincher for both parties to consider whether or not they want to continue their burgeoning relationship or not. Cancer is a creature of order and wants more than just a loving partner, but a sense of stability within their life and a home to return to after the day’s end.
Pisces meanwhile could care less about these things and is happy to join the ride through the highs and lows, often happily causing highs and lows to keep themselves stimulated. They thrive off of moment-to-moment actions and live in chaos. Once more a compromise must be struck; their connection to one another must never stagnate for the sake of both parties, and if that ever happens, one or the other must be willing to put in the work to jump-start the sequence all over again if they truly want this to work.
Emotions
Cancer’s ability to sift through emotions is one of a kind. As the Cardinal Water sign, they can see right through the threads that tie peoples’ emotions to their characters and know better than most how to adjust and fix them. They’re able to see Pisces for what they truly are, and that is something that the Mutable Water sign appreciates.
Pisces meanwhile have their own magic touch. They possess a genuine warmth and tenderness that will catch even the most cloistered Cancer off their guard; allowing them to open up and be candid about certain things they would never speak of under normal circumstances.
Healing Crystals for Pisces and Cancer
Turquoise
One of the problems that these two might encounter is the fact that they execute their intuitive powers differently. On the one hand, Cancer relies strongly on their purest emotions, whereas Pisces yearns for spirituality more than their emotions.
As such, we can see this in Cancer as someone who loves to nurture their partners, whereas Pisces is leaning towards change and creativity. With that, proper communication and balance is ultimately necessary for them to capitalize on their strong points as a couple.
Also known as the stone of communication, Turquoise is a healing crystal that plays a vital role in helping couples express their thoughts in a proper way. When we communicate, it is obvious that what’s in our head will not always be relayed properly to the other person. But with the help of this healing crystal, such can be addressed.
Thus, by using this healing crystal as a bodily ornament, it will impart it positive energy. By wearing it as a necklace, this healing crystal will be brought closer to the throat chakra, allowing for better effectiveness!
Agate
As mentioned in the previous healing crystal, the problem between these two is balance. And sometimes, communicating what they think is not enough. Within themselves, they need to achieve some sort of balance so as to translate thought into action.
Perhaps the most popular and common earth crystal, Agate is known to bring balance and stability. Grounding you back to your roots, its energy commands you to remember your footing. By empowering that inner maturity in you, Agate can aid in helping you remain calm and collected even in the midst of a rollercoaster of emotions.
Thus, they can take advantage of this healing crystal by wearing it as an ornament. In this way, you can constantly remind yourself and your partner to remain in touch with what is instead of dwelling in the uncertainties that life has to offer.
Black Tourmaline
While this pairing is a strong one right off the bat, negativity and conflict are unavoidable. As such, even when they are compatible, paying no mind to these lingering negative energies can cause dents that will break the relationship. Thus, it is ultimately necessary to remove such.
For instance, small conflicts can lead them to doubt whether or not they have that strong intuitive connection. Because of some uncontrollable and unforeseen negative circumstantial events, conflicts may arise and lead them to heavily argue against each other.
With that, Black Tourmaline is a great crystal companion for them. Taking away the negative energies before it even grows, this healing crystal will work its wonders in the background. While it doesn’t highlight itself, it is always active 24/7 in ensuring that negative energies don’t get past it.See your Horoscope for Today
After witnessing the deceptions revealed by the Seven of Swords, The Star appearing in your present position is like a divine light breaking through storm clouds.
This luminous card marks a profound period of healing and renewal in your love journey, where truth finally begins to shine through past shadows.
A Spiritual Awakening in Love Begins… The Star shows that you’re currently experiencing a spiritual awakening in matters of the heart.
All those experiences with dishonesty and hidden truths?
They’re being washed away by a wave of divine clarity.
You’re entering a phase where your intuition is becoming crystal clear, allowing you to distinguish genuine connections from false promises.
Celestial Signs Guide You to True Love… What makes this moment particularly powerful is how The Star indicates you’re being divinely guided toward authentic love.
I’m sensing that you’ve recently begun experiencing moments of unexpected hope about romance, perhaps even dreams or intuitive flashes about a special connection.
These aren’t random thoughts…
…They’re celestial breadcrumbs leading you toward your destiny.
Your Path to Love Is Being Cleared… The Star’s presence suggests that the Universe is actively clearing your path to love.
You might notice you’re naturally releasing old doubts and fears that stemmed from past deceptions.
This isn’t just emotional healing…
…It’s a complete rebirth of how you understand and approach love.
You’re Ready for Authentic Connection… What’s fascinating is that this card appears when someone is being prepared for a connection of extraordinary authenticity.
Unlike the veiled relationships of your past, your coming connection will be marked by absolute truth and transparency.
It’s as if the Universe is saying, “Now you’re ready for real love.”
Your Love Light Is Growing Stronger… I’m seeing that your energy is becoming more radiant, more magnetic to genuine love.
The Star shows that you’re emanating a new frequency of authenticity that will naturally attract someone who matches your truth.
This isn’t about hoping for love anymore…
…It’s about knowing it’s already on its way.
A Beautiful Truth Awaits… But there’s something even more remarkable about to unfold…
Would you like to see what the 3rd card reveals about this destined connection?
I sense it holds crucial information about the beautiful, authentic love story that awaits you…
