Putting the Common Man in His Place: Part 3

A look at how collectivism regards human value

• Contrary to popular opinion, collectivism is not more compassionate than individualism

• Under collectivism:

  • your value has an expiration date

  • you are only as valuable as you are useful

  • your true identity is not found in individuality but in conformity

  • the State’s agenda is more important than its citizens

  • the State is your god

  • any evil can be nullified by a “greater good”

• Collectivism is an infernal evil poised to consume us all

---

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed the clash of worldviews that is driving us toward a third world war. In short: the world is split between those who believe that human beings are both inherently and equally valuable, and those who do not.

In Part 2, I provided an overview of individualism — the belief that human beings are inherently and equally valuable.

In this installment, I’ll discuss collectivism’s contention that human beings are not inherently valuable.

---

A lot of people have the wrong idea about collectivism. They think it’s more compassionate than individualism because it sounds like it cares about more people — a collective instead of an individual. But the two beliefs aren’t differentiated by the number of people they care about, they’re differentiated by the level at which they care about them.

Individualism regards each person as objectively and equally valuable, and it requires the government to treat them accordingly. Collectivism, however, does not see people at all; it sees “The People” — an abstract concept rather than the reality of flesh-and-blood human beings.

Collectivists love to wax poetic about “The People,” sometimes even naming their countries after them (e.g., The People’s Republic of China); but in practice they have the rather ironic habit of killing them, usually in their own name. Effectively: it is on behalf of The People that we are exterminating the people.

Your value has an expiration date

This kind of wanton slaughter is characteristic of collectivist societies because they begin with the premise that there is no God. Or if there is, he isn’t the biblical God who equally values every human being. And since there’s no God to give us value, none of us actually matters. Not even black lives.

You see, in order to be valuable, you have to be valuable to someone. When you’re valuable to God, as you are under individualism, your value is locked in because:

1. your value was granted by God, so it isn’t dependent upon you;

2. God is truth, so the value He gave you is a fact of the universe as true as two and two making four; and 

3. God neither dies nor changes, so your value is held constant by the most powerful and stable force in existence.

When there is no God, however, the whole situation is turned on its head. Instead of your value being based on what God put into you, it is based on what man can get out of you. This is why beautiful women, talented musicians, and iron chefs will always be in demand. But the moment one of them stops giving us those good feelings — the instant we no longer get high on his product — he becomes worthless and forgotten, and another takes his place.

Composer and musician Billy Joel reflected on the fickleness of being valued in this way with these lyrics:

I am the entertainer and I know just where I stand

Another serenader and another long-haired band

Today, I am your champion; I may have won your hearts

But I know the game: you'll forget my name

And I won't be here in another year

If I don't stay on the charts

When your value is determined by man, it necessarily comes with an expiration date because, apart from God, you have no permanent, inherent value. Unfortunately, that also means that you don’t have inherent rights because worthless things have no rights. Your government may claim that you as a citizen have certain rights, but those granted by government can also be rescinded (or ignored) by it; and since there is no God, there are no God-given rights that transcend government control.

You are only as valuable as you are useful

This has all been pretty depressing thus far, but once we involve government it goes from depressing to dangerous. From the perspective of those in power, your lack of inherent value means that you:

• are inherently expendable,

• are only as valuable as you are useful, and

• have no legitimate protection against their predations.

You are not an independent, irreplaceable being with your own unique identity, you are merely one drop in the vast ocean of the State. Fascist leader Benito Mussolini made this explicit in his “Doctrine of Fascism”:

Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived in their relation to the State.

Under collectivism, you are nothing more than a State asset to be exploited until your usefulness has been exhausted. At that time, you are discarded lest you continue consuming without contributing — what the Nazis called a “useless eater” or “life unworthy of life.”

This seems barbaric (hint: it is), but it’s also entirely logical in a system devoid of human value. No one regrets discarding garbage because garbage is worthless, so why should anyone shed a tear for an equally worthless person?

This is why atrocity is routine in collectivist societies. If a person isn’t valuable, there’s no basis for rejecting his murder, enslavement, torture, or other abuse. But then if humans really are worthless, they can’t actually be abused at all. In such an environment, words like “abuse,” “atrocity,” and “dehumanization” lose all potency because there is nothing physical or metaphysical prohibiting those with all the power from feasting on those with none.

The agenda > the people

Thus the State always grants higher value to its agendas than it does to its citizens, who are merely fuel for the tyrannical ambitions of the powerful. Ruling elitists will chew through as many lives as it takes — millions, if necessary — to see their grand visions come to fruition. Whether Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Stalin’s collectivized farming, or Hitler’s Final Solution, human life is always subordinate to the State agenda.

We saw this on display when Barack Obama was campaigning for Obamacare. In a townhall setting, a woman named Jane Sturm told him the story of her mother who, at 100 years old, was able to have a pacemaker installed on account of her unusually good health. Sturm asked Obama how State-run healthcare could account for individual circumstances like her mother’s.

His response was as chilling as it was telling. He suggested that it would be better for someone like her mother to take a pain pill (and die) instead of receiving lifesaving surgery. Why should someone lose his life when it could be saved through routine medical intervention? Because the State agenda is the greater good.

Lest we think this deprioritizing of human life is somehow a relic of the past, let’s recall what just happened to all of us under the guise of COVID. Vast numbers of people were not only allowed to die but in many cases were effectively executed by the deliberate suppression of true, lifesaving information and treatments. This wasn’t the result of some autocratic directive threatening the lives of all who did not comply, it was voluntarily enforced by politicians, doctors, “philanthropists,” and media — all groups supposedly working for the welfare of humanity.

But as it turns out, there was a political agenda more important than governing, healing, helping, or informing. And its value was so great that the deaths of millions was deemed an acceptable purchase price.

Collectivist morality

We shouldn’t think that such brutality means collectivist societies have no morality, though. 

Human beings are moral creatures and thus require a moral framework. The office of “God” exists in every human heart, and it is never vacant. Even those who reject the person of God find it necessary to fill the position of “God” because moral beings require a moral authority.

But since collectivism rejects God, His job falls to the State. As substitute deity, it becomes the ultimate authority on all matters. It decides which thoughts, actions, people, and groups are good and which are bad — determinations that vary according to the whims of the State.

It also determines the rankings of various identity groups, each of which is assigned a value proportional to its political utility. The more useful a group is to the those in power, the more valuable its members are, and the more privilege they will enjoy in society.

In its role as God’s replacement, the State also makes a pretense of having moral omniscience — knowledge of what Thomas Sowell refers to as “cosmic justice.” It sees justice as a balance scale with good on one side and evil on the other, and it presumes to know how far out of balance the scale is.

This view of justice claims that good deeds make up for bad ones, and that it is therefore acceptable to inflict harm if doing so accomplishes some “greater good.” For example, the State may choose to discriminate against all whites to help rebalance the scales that were upset by whites’ past discrimination of blacks. This is literally the assertion that two wrongs make a right — an idea currently being promoted by race-grifters such as Ibram Kendi, who infamously said:

The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.

If these ideas sound familiar — that individuals within a group are completely interchangeable, and that yesterday’s injustice can be rectified by today’s — it’s because this is how the modern Democrat Party approaches the issue of morality. It’s why they’ve gone from a party that once promised to do things for people to one that now promises to do things to them.

Conclusion

Collectivism is not compassionate in any regard; it is immoral, infernal, false, and anti-human. It makes the absurd contention that it’s possible to care about all of the people without caring about any of them, and from there gives itself license to slaughter real people in the name of abstract ones.

Unfortunately and terrifyingly, it is ascendent not just across the world but within our own culture. Once the last outpost of liberty, Western Civilization has become so compromised by the cancer of collectivism that our survival will require nothing short of a miracle.

The forces arrayed against us may be varied and have competing interests, but what they all have in common is collectivism’s denial of human value. In that sense, it doesn’t really matter which of them ultimately succeeds because, in all cases, humanity fails.