Collectivism? - 1 comment

Via Stumbling and Mumbling, wherein you will find (as usual) a fine selection of recent posts, I discovered an interesting article from Potlatch, a blog I don't think I've happened upon more than once or twice.

Apparently, Soundings magazine is currently hosting an online debate called Left Futures, organised around a series of article-blogposts. Sounds great. Potlatch's contribution is entitled What does free market collectivism mean for the left?, challenging the collectivist left to explain the appeal of individualism, and to justify the idea that collectivism can be judged (how?, when?) superior to individualism, without some particular, stated ethical or political goal.

Political discussion certainly would be more interesting, and less divisive, if we all thought about fracturing 'left' and 'right' into, at the very least, and for example:

• Free-market/Non-free-market
• Capitalist/Anti-capitalist
• Individualist/Collectivist

Just imagine if we were free to choose societies on the basis of those eight different combinations, rather than just from one side of the line. A good many of the most irritating ideologues could be bypassed, for one thing, and you can be sure that there are blogs covering each possibility.

I wonder: is the contemporary 'collectivism' of 'shared national vision' any substitute for the collectivism of the pre-industrial village, the terraced street, or the pre-Thatcher trade union? Building communities from scratch is hard: is it possible to construct them (without extensive individual rights) outside of deprivation or oppression? Are nationalism and regionalism the communities of last resort? How comfortable can the political left be on this territory, and how much more careful should it be to protect the individual rights of those who have, throughout the ages, been terrorised within groups they cannot escape because of their difference, or refusal to conform? And if the left of 2007 has moved on from the left of 1967, can collectivism be any more than a buzzword?